Critical Mixed Race Studies

"Obama and the ‘Arab Spring’: desire, hope and the manufacture of disappointment. Implications for a transformative pedagogy"

by John Schostak

paper just published with co-author Lorna Roberts. It develops themes and arguments in earlier conference versions available on academia.edu: see: ‘Democracy matters in race matters’: Obama, desire, hope and the manufacture of disappointment.

For a period, in the run up to the election (2007–2008) and the months after the election, the name ‘Obama’ signified... more For a period, in the run up to the election (2007–2008) and the months after the election, the name ‘Obama’ signified hope for millions, not just in America but across the world. As the hope turned to disappointment, the financial crisis deepened and the Arab Spring renewed a call for a ‘humanity’ that could transcend the differences of nations and faiths. What can be learnt from such events about the pedagogies of hope, disappointment and public action? Are there lessons for a transformative pedagogy, an education that could underpin and continuously create the conditions for a politics of freedom and social justice? A range of print, broadcast and digital/Internet news media is analysed to explore the political/rhetorical/pedagogical strategies already set into play that ‘manufacture disappointment’ in order to undermine and negate the transformative, transgressive symbolic significance of ‘Obama’ and thus manage the theme of change to reassert the same.

A Troubled Experiment's Forgotten Lesson in Racial Integration

by Carina Ray

A version of this Op-Ed first appeared in the Point Reyes Light at: http://www.ptreyeslight.com/Point_Reyes_Light/Opinion/Entries/2012/3/15_A_troubled_experiments_forgotten_lesson_in_racial_integration.html

A Troubled Experiment's Forgotten Lesson in Racial Integration

by Carina Ray

A version of this op-ed was first published in the Point Reyes Light in March 2012: http://www.ptreyeslight.com/Point_Reyes_Light/Opinion/Entries/2012/3/15_A_troubled_experiments_forgotten_lesson_in_racial_integration.html

“A Space Beyond Beulah: Assessing the Mixed Race Body in Danzy Senna’s ‘The Land of Beulah.’’”

by Simone Drake

Published in: America and the Black Body: Identity Politics in Print and Visual Culture.  Ed. Carol E. Henderson.  Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009.

Multiracial Identity and Affirmative Action

by Nancy Leong

12 UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal 1 (2007)

This article examines the relationship between a categorical, box-checking race classification system and the... more This article examines the relationship between a categorical, box-checking race classification system and the diversity-based, higher education affirmative action regime approved by the Supreme Court. It concludes that the two systems are inconsistent: the mere act of checking a box does not indicate anything about the diversity that an applicant might or might not bring to a school.

Moreover, the article concludes that box-checking classifications systems are inconsistent with multiracial identity itself. Sociological research collected in the article suggests that multiracial identity is fluid and nuanced; it cannot be captured by the mere act of checking a box on a form. Forcing multiracial applicants to describe their racial identity in this way is both tyrannical, and, ultimately, inaccurate.

Crossing the Racial Frontier

by Wei Ming Dariotis

Teaching Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far: Multiple Approaches

by Wei Ming Dariotis

GenerAsians: transgressive sexuality and transformations of identity

by Wei Ming Dariotis

Developing a Kin-Aesthetic: Multiraciality and Kinship in Asian and Native North American Literature

by Wei Ming Dariotis

"The McClymonts of Nabiac: Interracial Marriage, Inheritance and Dispossession in C19th New South Wales Colonial Society" in Alison Holland and Barbara Brookes (Eds) Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colonial Encounter, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011.

by Victoria Grieves

The link is to a sample of the book, the introduction, the chapter has now been uploaded...

...for the book: In recent years race has fallen out of historiographical fashion, being eclipsed by seemingly more... more ...for the book: In recent years race has fallen out of historiographical fashion, being eclipsed by seemingly more benign terms such as culture, ethnicity and difference. This timely and highly readable collection of essays re-energises the debate by carefully focusing our attention on local articulations of race and their intersections with colonialism and its aftermath. In Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colonial Encounter Alison Holland and Barbara Brookes have produced a collection of studies that shift our historical understanding of colonialism in significant new directions. Their generous and exciting brief will ensure that the book has immediate appeal for multiple readers engaged in critical theory, as well as those more specifically involved in Australian and New Zealand history. Collectively, they offer new and invigorating approaches to understanding colonialism and cultural encounters in history via the interpretive (not merely temporal) frame of the moment.

CFP: Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey 2012 Annual Convention

by Rosemarie Pena

Building on the success of the inaugural 2011 conference, the second annual convention of the Black German Cultural... more Building on the success of the inaugural 2011 conference, the second annual convention of the Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey (BGCSNJ) will be held at Barnard College in New York City on August 10-11, 2012.  This year’s convention will focus on the theme of “What Is the Black German Experience?” The conference will feature a keynote address by Yara Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria, screenings of the films “Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story” and “Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984-1992,” and readings by Black German poet-performers Olumide Popoola and Philipp Kabo Köpsell.

The BGCSNJ Review Committee invites proposals for papers that engage the multiplicity and diversity of the experiences of Blacks of German heritage and on Blackness in Germany. We welcome submissions for twenty-minute presentations on three academic panels and two sessions devoted to life writing, oral history and memoir. To participate please send a one-page abstract and a CV or short biographical statement to: bgcsinc@gmail.com .


Deadline for proposals: March 15, 2012
http://www.blackgermans.us

Making sense of 'mixture': states and the classification of 'mixed' people

by Miri Song

A Poetics of Belonging: Caribbean Sovereignties and Hybrid Homelands



by Kaneesha Parsard

Presented at 2011 meeting of the Caribbean Studies Association, Willemstad,  Curaçao, May 2011.

The Caribbean archipelago—the site of convergence for imperial powers, enslaved Africans, Asian indentured laborers or... more The Caribbean archipelago—the site of convergence for imperial powers, enslaved Africans, Asian indentured laborers or “coolies,” and indigenous peoples—bears markers of cultural, linguistic, and racial hybridity. Afro- and Indo-Caribbeans, specifically, maintain a tenuous relation to representations of ‘old’ Africa and India, and mixed-race figures such as douglas are bifurcated by disparate sites of origin. Further, the descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured South Asians alternately inherit and resist colonial legacies. In particular, Hugh C. Stollmeyer's 1933 poem "The Time Has Come" laments the ways in which "chains of iron [are] engendering other chains" and supplicates Africans and Indians to eschew the colonial presence. Likewise, contemporary poet Christian Campbell presents current political landscapes in "Curry Powder": the dougla speaker illustrates the generational process of marrying away from Mother India, speaking at once to choices that advance creolization, its political consequences, as well as to the interiority of those who occupy bodies in-between. Ultimately, I seek to illuminate how Afro-, Indo-, and mixed-race Caribbean peoples negotiate their subjectivity in relation to imagined homelands and, often, reinscribe old, colonial forms of power to create hierarchies in the postcolonial moment.

Is there a mixed race group in Britain? The diversity of multiracial identification

by Miri Song

'Mixed Emotions': Reflections on researching 'mixing' and 'mixedness

by Chamion Caballero

Caballero, C. (2009) 'Mixed Emotions': Reflections on researching 'mixing' and 'mixedness' in Weller, S. and Caballero, C. (2009) Up Close and Personal: Relationships and Emotions Within and Through Research, Families & Social Capital Group Working Paper No 25. London: London South Bank University.

Researching racial and ethnic issues can involve entering a highly emotive terrain and the subject of ‘mixed race’ is... more Researching racial and ethnic issues can involve entering a highly emotive terrain and the subject of ‘mixed race’ is no exception. The growing collection of contemporary accounts of those who are mixing or are of mixed race and ethnicity highlight the often intensive emotions involved in crossing perceived boundaries of colour and culture (e.g. Camper 1994, Gaskins 1995, Ifwekwunigwe 1998, Alibhai-Brown 2001, Olumide 2002, Dewan 2008). Yet, whilst discussions of the sensitivities and politics facing those who are mixing or of mixed race or ethnicity form the backbone of much research into the subject, much less is said about these issues in relation to the researcher. Such reflections, however, are important not only for making sense of the frequent intensity of emotion that emerges from such research but also as regards constructing, conducting and disseminating it. Drawing on a number of research projects, this paper will discuss some of the emotive issues involved in researching mixed race and their implications for the researcher as well as the researched.

Challenging Assumptions

by Chamion Caballero

C.Caballero (2011) 'Challenging Assumptions' in Runnymede Bulletin, Autumn 2011,

Short article discussing initial findings from ESRC-funded project 'Insiders' or 'Outsiders'? Lone Mothers of Children... more Short article discussing initial findings from ESRC-funded project 'Insiders' or 'Outsiders'? Lone Mothers of Children from Mixed Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds, focusing on the mothers' experiences of parenting and the types of support or problems they encountered.

The Alchemy of Mixed Race

by Ayo Mansaray

Traveling Identities: Mixed Race Quests and Fran Ross's" Oreo"

by Tru Leverette

Speaking Up

by Tru Leverette

On Being Brown

by Tru Leverette