Newly Minted

Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded

Monday, December 28, 2009

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas. I hope to do some final editing on posts that I have started but never posted. This past semester has been beyond busy, in a very good way. I am working on my dissertation over the break as well as thinking about how to incorporate all of the work I have done into the final dissertation. I am teaching the mixed race class next semester, which I hope to be the last semester I am writing. Several students have come to me resulting in a mixed race luncheon group. The next semester brings my first student led mini-conference, which is really exciting! The blend of administrator and academic is serving our campus community well and I was not spread so thin that I snapped. Getting this dissertation off my plate would be a really big weight off my shoulders. For now, I am headed in to spend a little more time with my baby girl! Enjoy the week! 2010 is upon us!!!!!!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Are you her mother?

My new job and finishing a dissertation have been murder on being a Mommy. I finally, after we survived a bout of "flu-like" symptoms, made it into my daughter's classroom on Friday. It was her Halloween parade. Parents were allowed to watch the parade and then were banned from coming in and being part of the students' party. It had become too hard for the school personnel to keep track of who was coming and going at these parties. So, access and family support had been cut off for all students who don't have stay at home mothers, fathers, or grandmothers who can commit to a year of being room parents. This is the first year I have not been a room parent. Normally I would have been in three or four times already to read, to help, and to make sure my child and my child's classroom community knew who we were.

I decided to limit the damage of class and gender performance discrimination by joining my child at lunch. I signed in and had my daughter's pitchfork confiscated "it is a weapon you know" the principal said. I saw three pitchforks in the parade, but you cannot frisk EVERYONE now can you. I got to the cafeteria late, because I had stopped to buy said pitchfork, and my daughter was still in line. As I stepped through the door the bell for "12 minutes left rang", my child's right to eat a healthy meal at a healthy pace is another blog at another time.

Anyway...I stepped into the cafeteria and several children yelled my name. I used to be a good mother and be there all the time so a lot of the third graders know me already. My daughter waved from line, because stepping out of line is a HUGE infraction in third grade and there is always an angry staff person there to remind you of that. I went over to my daughter and she wrapped herself around me. She was so very excited to see me. We hugged for a couple of seconds; and suddenly I realized children were staring at us. My daughters' new classroom is full of "new" students. She learns differently so her class if filled with other students who learn differently as well. This group includes a lot of students who move in and out of the districts around here for whatever reason. Many of them I had never seen. Finally one timid little girl poked me on the leg and said, "excuse me, are you her mother?" My daughter tipped her head up to look at me and declared, "of course she is". The other little girl stepped back into line with her fingers in her mouth and a look of wonder on her face.

We repeated this scene five different times with five different little girls. It wasn't until I was at Kmart that I realized what had happened. While processing with the supervisor at the layaway counter, I realized that those little girls had never seen a black Mommy and a white baby. That to me isn't the big a-ha here. I understand THAT. I never get used to people not immediately knowing I am her mother, but I understand it. What stood out to me as a new thought or realization was that these little girls knew that we had a mother/daughter relationship. They could see by the way my daughter and I were acting that we were mother/daughter. It was an intimate familial performance that, despite the aesthetic information provided them, led them to the possibility that we might be mother and daughter.

Yet, they could not TRUST that information BECAUSE of the aesthetic. They still had to ask, and seemed to remain a bit confused after they received the answer. It is a bit hurtful when even third graders question whether I am my daughter's mother. At least these encounters ended with confused stares from cute little faces. I have had this experience my whole life, and often it has ended with far more pain and anger.

I can remember being no older than my daughter. My mother and I were out getting fire extinguishers filled (they used to do that). The guy in the store asked my mother "isn't it a bit late for the Fresh Air kids to still be here. You keepin' yours?" My mother went ballistic. She was so angry that my step-father had to go back and get the extinguishers. I can remember one other time, aside from the same classroom scenario I shared at the beginning of this entry which occurred every year, where the aesthetic difference between my mother and I trumped intimate familial relation. We went to the local Denny's (or was it still Sambos...God that place irritates me no matter what you call it) and after waiting in line an inordinate amount of time; it was our turn to be seated. It was my mother, step-father, sister, baby brother, and myself. We had stood in line a good 10-15 minutes (yeah, to eat at DENNY'S) and had gotten yelled at for knocking over a stanchion. When the waitress went to seat us, the only people in line, she stepped in between my family and I as they entered the dining room and said something like "wait your turn". Are we kidding, I was no more than 10 or 11 years old and there was not another adult in line waiting. Who did she think I was with. My mother and step-father jumped ALL OVER that waitress. I don't remember the rest, but I know my family and I am guessing it was not pretty.

I have had black women on the street and at the bus stop me with both of my boys and comment on how light they are. The interaction with black folks is different in that they KNOW these are my children; they are simply disgusted that they are mixed. One black woman on the city bus looked in my front pack at my sleeping three month old and said "if I had one that light, I would never have kept him". Betraying my race by keeping my own offspring. Grand.

My final example of this kind of harm would be my son's fourth grade picnic. I had just had my daughter in April, the picnic was in June. I had parked away from the pavilion so I could nurse her; not because I am afraid to nurse in public, but because I don't have time to educate other people's parents. I got done nursing my daughter and walked back over to the pavilion when my son's teacher grabs me. She is laughing and says "you are never going to believe this. One of the other mothers just came over and told me that someone was WET NURSING in the parking lot and that she was offended." That mother was one of our born again christian mothers who was always passing judgement on others. But wet nursing, really? How does someone even come up with that? I guess if you will have sex with people of opposite races, you will do anything.

The good news is, as I was standing there theorizing at Kmart with this stranger, the answer to the racial divide IS the intimate. Familial relationships are the next wave of racial understanding. Long before this became about race, relationships - deep intimate loving relationships WERE how we learned about other cultures and other lands. Those brides from Japan, Vietnam, and Korea changed the face of the United States. My hat is off to those wives and mothers, because I don't know what that had to be like to raise that first generation mixed race children in a land where they and their marriages were as foreign as their children. Their mixed race children were not hidden inside the other, they were out there for everyone to see as mixed race. Those are stories I hope to capture and share soon.

More soon...

Monday, October 19, 2009

Mixed Reflections

In the past week there were two events that critically impacted my life and my thinking both as a leader of color; and as a mixed race person in an interracial marriage.

Let's start with the negative event first. Really it would be hysterical if it weren't so damn tragic. Let's talk about Louisianna! "Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long".(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff) And based on this deep rigorous research and statistical data, our friend Keith has been denying interracial couples the right to marry for about 30 years. Bardwell appeared on CBS's The Early Show this morning and proudly announced that he did tell this couple where to get married "so I don't know what the problem is". Bardwell shared his "concern for the offspring" and then admitted that he also recuses himself from marrying drunk people..."who can come back when they sober up" - mixed race couples cannot.

When I teach my mixed race class, one of the very first things we talk about is that when my husband and I got married in 1999 it was still illegal in Alabama. Even though the federal government had repealed the anti-miscegenation laws that outlawed the marriage of interracial couples, many states took nearly 30 years to do so (and in Bardwell's world...still counting). These laws were not just an American phenomenon; they existed in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa as well. These laws often banned not only marriage between people of different races, but they also banned living together and intercourse.

It makes me wonder, what are people afraid of? Are mixed race people taking over the world? Are mixed race people privy to secret knowledge, privilege and power? Are mixed race people depleteing our source of labor? Will mixed race cause our prisions to empty? Will mixed race cause black and white populations to disappear completely? What IS the threat? Could interacial couplings produce offspring capable of running the free world??? Oh, wait...THEY CAN!

Moving on...the really positive thing that happened to me this week was my leadership retreat. My office took 20 "underrepresented students" into the woods for two days. We had workshops, round tables, fires, smores, and adventure challenges. They taught us more than we taught them, and we walked away with a community. The biggest lesson learned is that diversity inside diverse populations is often overlooked and possibily holds the key to solidarity and community building at our campus. My students were shocked to find out how different they were from the participants that looked like them, and came from the same places as them. One young man proclaimed "I have more in common with the lesbians than the other latino kids". Amen.

The point that connects these two moments? Difference is an important and necessary part of moving any multicultural community forward. And in case it is not clear, based on current events, the world is multicultural. Multiculturalism, mixed race, interrace is unavoidable - feel free to embrace it. The recognition of and utilization of difference; as well as the intersections of difference, gives us the tools to respond to a diverse global community. Doing one thing one way only guarantees becoming obsolete. Here is to hoping that people like Bardwell are obsolete. Our student groups have become just that, even though they are seen as "multiculturalism" on campus, this retreat helped them see that being people of color is not the same as being truly diverse.

Congratulations to Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay on their recent marriage. I hope that this experience adds a dynamic of accountability to your community interactions. I also hope that the world community understands what happened here and starts applying the same outrage to issues of equity in marriage for all humans on the planet. Gay marriage, heteronormative marriage, international marriage, and interracial marriage are all connected...we cannot ban one without affecting them all.

More soon...

Sunday, September 13, 2009

I have no other code to switch to and I am simply not Black Enough

I sent a panicked text to my colleague at Syracuse University: How old do I have to be, how long do I have to do this work, before I am black enough? He sent back a text with kind words of support. His institution had just hosted a speaker who had given a good lecture on this exact topic in regards to President Obama. My colleague also apologized for not remembering to invite me to that event.

I have spent the last two weeks, as I have many times in the last 40 years, authenticating my blackness. Let me clarify the allegation against which I am defending myself: I am simply not black enough. No, that is a simplification of the allegation. The allegation is that I don't like black people, that I prefer white people and that I think black men are idiots. Apparently even the way I introduce myself is uppity and deserving of physical violence. I am in desperate need of reprogramming in an attempt to correct my poor behavior around black folks.

Here is the deal: I have no other code to switch to. This is who I am, it is not a performance of any kind. This is how I perform blackness. This is the only way I know how to carry myself (too upright); introduce myself (with an accompanying analogy that helps people remember my name); dress myself (as if I am going to a meeting); do my hair (which is "natural" but apparently still not black enough because it is not "straigtened"); and speak (too proper for casual settings - too proper for any setting really). I have no other code to switch to.

Some of the other crimes attributed to my race traitorous behavior are the fact that I am married to a white man, the fact I do not try to hide that I was raised by a white mother, and the fact that my daughter has the audacity to have beautiful blond hair and light hazel eyes. And, if I try to speak slang (the urge overcomes me at times) I sound all the whiter and then I am accussed of making "fun" of people. Yet, it seems perfectly appropriate to level these accusations against me. It is great sport to share these judgements against me over a cup of rum. But I am always the one who is wrong. No matter what.

The reality of the situation: I crave time with black people. When I get the chance to be in a space where black people are willing to let me join them (or so I think, I often find out later I was unwelcome but too dumb to leave) I feel a sense of community and belonging. Apparently imagined community and belonging. Perhaps my inability to read the warning signs, the ones that suggest I don't belong, stems from always having been in situations where I basically did not belong and having learned how to negotiate those spaces. I keep talking, listening, and working until I am accepted. I am starting to realize that I have been using this skill alot in the converse (usually it is in an attempt to gain access to white spaces) lately. I am now hanging in there until, somehow, black folks decide I am okay and allow me to stay. Perhaps this is all a bit harsh and I shouldn't allow myself to abstract a few confirmed cases of exclusion, but each of those cases cuts so deeply I find my ability to recover and the will to keep trying are getting harder and harder to hang on to.

My girlfriend (our boys play football together) had a labor day party this year. Myself and my family were invited, mysels and two of my children were able to attend. It was the day of our first varsity football game of the season, a cause for great celbration here in Tiger country. With hard leomonade in hand and lot's of soul food; I was getting to capture a little piece of something I lost when my biological mother gave me away - loud, loving black folk. It was a moment to be around a family that looked like me and that is a want that cannot be expressed, it is not translateable to those raised with their biological family, only other adoptees understand.

My girlfriend's sister is a big, beautiful, black matriarch. She is what I imagine my biolgical grandmother to be. I had heard a lot about this woman and was excited to meet her. I introduced myself to her, she seemed a little cold, in hind sight, but nothing that prepared me for the realization five hours later that she had wanted to knock me out. While we were sitting in my lawn chairs, me with her grand child on my lap, she revealed to me that she had asked her sister to put up the rum "because I told her if I got drunk I was going to jack your uppity ass up". I was stunned. The pain in my chest and stomached stopped me from breathing. I was 14 again; that was how old I was the first time a black female rejected me based on how culturally white I seemed to be (except at 14 I didn't catch on until she "jacked me up"). I wanted to run and hide. Everyone was laughing; for them it was over. For me it was just beginning an endless loop of not belonging that I never seemed to be able to outrun. There I sat with the sun beating down on me, my hard lemonade buzz gone, wishing I could turn back the last five minutes. I would rather not have known. "It's okay" she said "I like you now" but it wasn't okay, it wasn't enough.

A few days ago, on 9/11, a student from one of our multicultural student organizations came to see me in the office. The night before I had brought concerns about the exclusionary behavior some of our freshman reported experiencing at the hands of our black females. I forget that my belief that what people are experiencing COUNTS regardless of other perspectives is not a universal belief. I asked the females in the Black Student Union, Carribiean Student Union, and La Familia Latina if they could be more welcoming to our new students of color in particular and new students in general. There was a near riot. The girls expressed to me that it was the job of the new females to approach THEM and introduce THEMSELVES. This totally goes against what I know about good social behavior and my belief is that being welcoming is a good social behavior regardless of what culture you are in or from. My students did not agree. There was yelling. We ended with hugs and I went home. The next morning one of my students came to tell me that she appreciated the conversation (yelling) the night before. She told me that she had learned a lot about me and that she owed me an apology for her misinterpretation of me. I, like a complete idiot (HOW I didn't know what the answer was going to be is BEYOND me), asked why her first impression of me was. She told me "honestly, that you didn't like black people, that you didn't want to associate with them, and that you would prefer to be around white people".

I asked her what gave her that impression and she told me that she misperceived some things I had said last semester about being more comfortable around white people because I was raised in white communities. At that time I was trying to get the point across how it was important that we love our sisters no matter how they perform blackness. I clearly needed to contextualize or provide more time and education before I tried to have that conversation. That moment, today, looks like my attempt to get the women of color around me to embrace me. My agenda...failed. She also said that it was more a feeling than any particular thing I said or did. I asked her if it was the way I spoke. She said "No, I am used to uppity females my aunt is a real bitch".

While I realize this young woman was APOLOGIZING to me, it still hurts because she was one of my favorites. Before that moment, I would have counted her among my supporters, among my sisters, and certainly on my side. Again, it is so painful having not even known she didn't care for me AND that she disliked me even, and she certainly didn't trust me... The conversation ended with "I like you now" and "I am going to tell the other girls how great you are". But again, it simply wasn't enough. I went to the 9/11 rememberance ceremony with a hole in my heart.

I will never be black enough. I will never be white. I am almost 40 years old, it is too late to think that someday I will be able to perform blackness in a way that will end this cycle of rejection or the demands for authentication. These two recent experiences really opened up some old wounds. I can intelletualize the interactions, and I question whether my shock and hurt stems from an unacknowleged priviliege that I have or am preceived to have. Right now i just feel angry, alone, and ready to quit. And I certainly don't feel Black Enough.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Aggregation: An issue of social justice

Posted October 4, 2009...Started July 17, 2009

I was at a diversity training a couple of weeks ago. The facilitator, in response to a faculty participant's resistance to the phrase "people of color", suggested that we accept such terms in their ambiguity as positive aggregations. His position was that these are not stereotypes or broad classifications (isn't that what an aggregation is) rather they are aggregations (no further explanation given). As an African National, I found it unsettling that he would accept and advocatge for a system that ignored or denied his nationality. If I understood his position, he would no longer be African royalty (something he is rightfully proud of); he would be aggregated black. That makes no sense to me...

The first reading I offer my students in my prejudice and discrimination class is about labeling. In the first three paragraphs the authors talk about aggregation as a form of labeling - labeling in this article is portrayed as a kind of harm. The paragraph about aggregation goes on to talk about African-American and Hispanic categories being a harmful aggregation of many places of origin and histories of people.

Yesterday during our Alumni Weekend which was carefully scheduled so that current students had the chance to interact with alum, one of our Asian Pacific Student Union members was talking about her experiences on our campus. We had all been talking about racist or racialized encounters we had all experienced during our time here. Alum, staff and students were being very open and emotions were raw. This young woman had not spoken all day so when she raised her hand I jumped to acknowledge her. Like a lot of our stories, this student had experienced a white student who approached her and made fun of her by calling her Chinese. Part of her sadness came from the fact that the white student was with his black roommate who thought making fun of her was not only acceptable, he participated. "Instead of realizing I was experiencing what he (the student of color) experiences on this campus, he just made fun of me too". My student was more deeply upset, however, by this miscategorization of her race/ethnicity which she took as intentional. She went on to tell us how painful it is that America and our college not only wants to aggregate all Asians, South Asians and Pacific Islander's into one category; but that they want to aggregate them in to one category called Chinese. What stands out to me most is that at the end of her statement she said: "This causes me pain". And I thought, yeah it is painful when some one reassigns your identity. It is painful when someone tells you that you cannot be who you KNOW you are.

Through this student's story, a framework presents itself for me to better articulate some recent thinking around the right of self-identification as a matter of social justice. My assertion is that when a person is denied the right to self-identify (race, gender, orientation, nationality, etc.) they suffer a real harm. My guess is, once I have had the chance to spend some real time with this, I will find that identities that are "non-normative" or "non-binary" are cumulative identity structures. By that I mean, these are not identities that individuals come to through inheritance; rather, these are identities mediated by lived experience, politics, and social theory (in a non-academic sense). Denying these identities is akin to denying a persons experience, awareness of self, intelligence, and individual/familial history as valid. And, in defense of these identities, I would suggest that they are better thought out than those identities that seem accepting of aggregated categories and more important the PROCESS of aggregation. The process of aggregation is a process of negation, deletion, and erasure. We know in other historical and social contexts that processes and practices of negation, deletion and erasure have certainly been located as issues of social justice.

On a local level, these aggregated categories are the reason my students are unable to identify my performance of blackness AS black or African-American. I believe once an identy accepts it's aggregation, that category is immediately mediated by ones own performance of that category/race/ethnicity. My student's experience suggests that on our campus Asian-American has become Chinese. Similarly, for my students of color African-American has become urban New York City and other people of color who do not share that culture do not fit into that aggregated category. The conflict and harm come in when an identity that shares that aggregated category, or is forced to, frames it differently as mediated by their own cultural differences. This conflict has played itself out in my student interactions by students telling me that I am not black. At the same time, the government tells me there is not such thing as mixed race. I am clearly not white. What does that leave me? Where does an identity like mine fit in? Where does my non-chinese student fit in? Aggregation limits who we can be, rather it limits who other people will allow us to be. That is harm.

I have a lot of things to say about this, most of which I have not yet been able to think through. As this thinking evolves one of the things I want to flesh out is how I believe the aggregation of blackness helped formulate my mixed race identity. Aggregation seperates me from my family, from my mother, sister and daughter. They become white and I become black, we become culturally/ethnically/racially different and unrelated. If I were seperated from my family in another way, as I was through my transracial adoption, people perceive (and have legislated against) that kind of seperation as a harm. The Heritage Act of 1970 made the argument that transracial adoption severed a child from their heritage. This severing was considered not only a harm, but an issue of social justice. What I am suggesting is that aggregation generates the same severing, the same harm, especially for bi-cultural/bi-racial people.

I think I am done with this for right now. I would really enjoy hearing other people's opinon on aggregation. More sooon...

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

More Than Just My Browness

Post finished June 6, 2009...

So my organizational skills really stink! I keep swearing that I will blog daily, and I don't. An interesting result of my self-examination has produced two posibilities. First, at the beginning of my academic pursuits a particularly evil and jealous little woman told me that she "didn't care how smart" I was. She declared, "You're an organizational disaster". While that accusation is wholly untrue, there are moments. Second, because I have dedicated this blog to mixed race, it is really not part of my every day in a blogable way. So when life takes over, mothering, marriage, performing and exhaustion; blogging falls by the wayside. I have decided today, that is not a bad thing.

So... I am not new to conversations about wholeness and identity. I get that my race is not my whole identity. But I will say that because my socio-racial location, scholarship, and my job are all wrapped up in race and critical race theory; race often feels central to my identity. I don't think that it is, which is really really interesting to me and a little bit of a relief. When I interviewed from my new job, one of the things I asked the folks in the interview was whether they were hiring me because they thought I had something extraordinary to contribute to the institution or because they have always had a black person in the positon. It was really important to me that I was being hired for me and what I was bringing to the table not because I was black. I am more than a demographic. I am more than a particular race or gender. I am an amazing person.

This is not a new position for me. When I was a young girl, elementary school aged, I tried out for cheerleading with my catholic youth organization team. I made it. On the way out of the gym, elated, I overheard a mother say something like "she only made it because she is black". I was the only black child there so there was no mistaking who she was talking about. I was crushed. Here is the downside to transracial adoptions without cultural support; I had noone to process this moment with. I was ashamed and embarrased and I didn't tell my mother; I dropped off the team instead. I remember an overwhelming sense that I didn't want to be on the team just because I was black and they had to take me. I didn't understand affirmative action. I understood discrimination. I understood being a token. I understood not being seen.

Throughout my life I have avoided what felt like privileged spaces reserved for tolerable blacks. I really don't have an academic articulation or even a position about affirmative action. But, I can tell you what the application of affirmative action feels like on my body. It feels like privilege and maybe in my case it is. I know that without affirmative action initiatives I wouldn't have any access to these spaces, but there is something about my family, friends, and in particular my sister not having access in the same way that makes it feel like privilege. I never understood why I could go to school and receive one kind of aid and she couldn't get any.

My sister and I are 11 months apart. We were raised like twins, I don't know how old we were when my grandmother stopped dressing us alike. Because of that, the differences between us were very very apparant. Until the end of graduate school, with my fellowship which is for underrepresented populations and allegedly not race based, I never took money allocated for black or brown peoples. The way I understand this choice not to take racialized money is that I feel that, in comparison to other black people in America, I have had more access and privilege through my white family. I was raised and nurtured in the dominant codes of this society that are mandatory for mobility and access. I feel like that money and those spaces were reserved for particular experiences that I have not had.

I had a classmate in graduate school who had the same fellowship as I did. She finished her dissertation yesterday! I am so very proud of her!!!! Go Shay!!!!! She actually received her fellowship first. In a conversation, in which she was trying to get me to fight for a fellowship of my own, she revealed to me that her underrepresentation stemmed from her native americanness. I also, allegedly, have a maternal grandmother who was a south west native american who resided on a reservation. My classmate was taking me to task for not using my native americanness to get funding. I refused. I refused because, like my blackness, I felt like I had not had a lived experience that qualified as "native american". I find this a responsible behavior around racialized initiatives. I get a lot of criticism from my feminist and critical race cohort because I keep suggesting that we, the academics, really need to pay attention to our privilege. The conversation goes something like - we are privilieged just by virtue of being in the academy. To which they respond - we are oppressed people of color. Period. I think there is a middle ground, imagine that - I see a middle ground - where we move between those oppressed and privilege spaces. Maybe that will be my next dissertation. Maybe one dissertation will be enough.

I don't know if this is related to my mixed raceness or not. I have no other me to compare the possibilties to. I do know that my socio-racial location is part of me, but not all of me. I will honor that distinction, and live that distinction, for the rest of my life.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Black/White Mixed Race: Intimate Realities

I am thinking about mixed race as an intimate reality; as an identity that is inherited, rather than an identity that has been chosen as a route of socio-racial escape. This conversation comes in direct response to those that argue that the mixed race identity in 2009 is nothing more than a way to avoid or escape blackness. My traditionally flippant answer is that I am not escaping anything, just watch me get followed through a retail store. But the real answer would be that blackness is a part of my mixed race identity that is undeniable. My identity is one of inclusiveness; one that honors both of my biological parents, my adoptive family, my husband and children. A mixed race identity is the most accurate representation of my cultural and lived experiences. I share many experiences with those who chose a stringently monoracial identity both in my blackness and in my cultural whiteness. Moving from one cultural or socio-racial space to another is a different movement than the implication of "passing". One of my students said "I am black when I need to be black and white when I need to be white". His use of the word "need" instead of "want" illustrates the distinction I am trying to make in my assertion that mixed race identity is an inherent identity rather than divisive one.

Of course my argument pushes up against the theoretical and social spaces that suggest that a mixed race identity only problematizes ideas of racial dominance and purity for both sides of the black/white binary. Some of my students this semester made a very strong argument that adding a mixed race identity only strengthens the dangerous ideas of race as a whole. While both of these are arguments have their merits, I am still stuck because I know that race and mixed race are more real than those arguments suggest. I also know that if I were to chose a monoracial identity, it would not be challenged - as long as it was the right one. Thus, if a mono racial identity is allowable and "real", how can the reality of mixed race not be real? For me, there is a distinction to be made between "real" and "allowable". Just because mixed race has been deemed not allowable and/or politically destructive to the black community, with the mixed race identity located as an escape hatch for light skinned black; it doesn't diminish the reality, in the same way that monorace is real, of mixed race.

If you combine butterscotch and honey, you have something that is a) not undoable, these two items are now forever inextricably combined; and b) something that is necessarily no longer butterscotch nor honey. I am buttersoney. I like to ask the "one-drop rule" contingency this question: if you wake up in the morning and one of your parents is black and one of your parents is white, what are you? I have never really received a good answer from those who argue against a mixed race identity. I have been told it is a stupid, useless question. Just as I am warned to be mindful of the history of mixed race, pointing to the negative relationships that mixed race has with racial construction in the Americas; I am suggesting the same mindfulness be applied to the reality of mixed race in the social construction of intimate relationships in 2009 and across historical periods as well. I am not suggesting that intimacy and history are unrelated. I am suggesting that intimacy and history are not given the same intellectual value in conversations about race and mixed race.

Allowing and nurturing a mixed race identity for my children has allowed my blond blue eyed daughter to have me as a mother. "Why is your mother a different color than you?" and "Why is your mother black and your father white?" are important questions for her as they were for me when I was a little girl. The mixed race identity is also our intimate reality and thus; these are questions for other people not us. More soon...

Friday, May 15, 2009

Who's Orange?

I realize I am several days behind, but keeping up with the Obama bashing took a back seat to senior proms, graduation and entitled students. That said, did our president REALLY make a comment about another man's skin color? I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it. The clip that left me breathless; our mixed race president stating that John Boehner's skin color was one "that does not appear in the natural world". I had to ask my husband what that meant exactly. My husband burst out laughing and said "the man is orange".

When my daughter was born, my childhood friend - also a person of mixed race who recently declined participating in my scholarly work as she refuses to be identified by race - which is fine and only relevant because her obsession with skin color, informed me that my daughter was orange. My daughter was born with a shock of jet black hair and while not orange, she had a now absent color in her skin. Both my boys were born extremely fair, my middle son was pink, so her skin color wasn't even an honorable mention in my examination of the new baby. My girlfriend, who refuses to be identified by race, wouldn't let it go. I finally got mad at her and confronted her about it. She said, well not Elmo orange (I am pretty sure Elmo is red) but orange like white people (thought they were pink). I never ever thought of white people as orange but apparently America does. My husband didn't think it was an odd color assignment for Boehner's skin, even though after extensive image googling I just don't see it. Anyway...

Skin gradation is a big part of my thinking about race, interrace, and post racial categorizations. Skin color is intimately related to how race is and has been socially organized. Evidence of this is easily found in how questions of race are handled in the South, Latin and Caribbean Americas. Some censuses have reported upwards of 23 categories of "race" which are all directly related to skin gradation. While logically we can imagine skin gradation as a principal way of identifying and categorizing "different" races; it is also particularly impactful inside communities of color. In my experience, having been raised in a white community with no access at all to people of color, skin gradation - at least as a tool of separation - is remarkably absent. In my home community, I was black because everyone else was white.

Before my orange daughter was born, my first experience with hierarchies of skin color occurred when I was about 27 years old. I had decided to get my hair done by a "black hair stylist" as we finally had one in our community. I had spent my life fighting with my hair, pulling it back and breaking it off. I had discovered, through media exposure, weaves...and I was going to get one. I was a general manager of a retail chain and was driving from store to store so I stopped to find out how to get my hair done. I was so excited. When I entered the proprietor left the client she was working on to greet me. The client in the chair lost her mind. She yelled "don't you stop working on me to talk to that yellow white bitch". I was used to being called white, but yellow? While the proprietor was nice and waited on me and gave me information, i was humiliated, and I left rejected and never went back. That afternoon one of our tenants was leaving her apartment and I relayed the experience to her. After laughing about how white I was, a regular occurrence for my neighbor, she explained the situation to me. She told me I was yellow, but not high yellow, and proceeded to map out the skin color landscape in the black community. Amazing. I asked if she would go to the hair stylist with me and she said "I'm not going to speak nigger for you". It was two years until I had my hair, at 29, professionally done for the first time in my life. What I had learned was that I didn't belong to the black community any more than I did the white community. I realized that day that there was a language and codes, like skin gradation, that I not only didn't understand but really had no access too. I was an outsider; yellowed in my brownness and isolated in my blackness by my whiteness.

I am sexy caramel, according to one of my favorite students. I like it far more than yellow. My daughter is white, according to her brother. And, John Boehner is orange according to our president. What I am most interested in are the politics connected to these external assignments of skin gradation. Outside of my student, who is obsessed with locating skin color as if it were her job, I haven't encountered anyone who has assigned their own skin color unless externally provoked. Reflecting on my own racial identity and its relationship to skin color, I am aware of both of those things - racial identity and skin color - as having been in contrast to another identity and skin color. I was black to my family and communities whiteness and I became brown in response to the black community. Okay I became yellow but I REFUSE to accept that. So sexy caramel it is...

A final thought for today on skin color. I am sure I will revisit it many times. Heck, its summer, I can explain to people for the 39th year in a row that YES, I DO tan... That aside, skin color, or the way one identifies with a racial identity that is possibly linked to or derived from a skin color can be useful when one chooses to use it politically. I found that once I started to identify as brown, a choice that was simultaneous with identifying as mixed race, my community started to include more people of color. My brownness cannot be challenged based on the simple fact that I am in fact brown. Brownness also connects me to others who are brown, South Asians, African-Americans, Latinas, Africans, indigenous people, and Texans... You get the picture. After a speech I gave this semester several students and faculty approached me and revealed that they also identified as brown and that they were also mixed race.

When my middle son was in kindergarten at a catholic school, I got a phone call. I don't think I realized the significance of the moment until right now. The art teacher called to report that my son had been insubordinate. Quite a feat at five. She had asked them to draw a self portrait. She was livid that my son refused to color his self portrait with the crayon she provided for him, the brown crayon. He put his head down on his desk and refused to color at all. I asked her what color he wanted to use. She said "I don't know why that matters but peach, he wanted to color his picture peach".

So, maybe my children ARE orange. You learn something new everyday.

More soon...

Thursday, May 14, 2009

My Child Is Asian?

To all the beautiful people in my life that identify as Asian, I am so sorry but I have failed you...So I think my eight year old might be a racist? I am only half kidding.

My eight year old daughter and her 16 year old brother have a recurring argument. He calls her a little white girl and then she says "I am NOT white I am biracial...your just mad because your ASIAN." Really?

I am particularly concerned about the racial infighting between my offspring. I recognize that the boys are jealous of Morgan's aesthetic. I think they are also trying to make sure she doesn't claim whiteness by negatively engaging her in this way. When I try to ask them about it, they simply shrug and walk away. Interestingly, there isn't a huge difference in the actual color of their skin. The boys, however, would never be "mistaken" for white. All three of them self-identify as mixed race; but I think internally they feel their racial identities are not the same or perhaps not equal. Again I realize that these are observations that come from the amount of time I spend thinking about race both as a scholar and as a parent, but what the hell?

I can remember a time when the boys were younger when the older one identified the younger one as being "whiter". The 16 year old has softer hair probably from his Italian ancestry. The 18 year old is me, with fairer skin and a far worse attitude. My 8 year old seems to be a direct descendant of my mother in law. Regardless, I am their mother and my husband their father, doesn't or shouldn't this make us all the same?

So back to being Asian for a minute. On the first day of class this semester, one of my students announced that there were only two races: Black and White. I asked him where indigenous people fell; he said black. Then I asked him where he located Asian people; he said white. I am sure this says something about me; but I understood his location of indigenous populations. I totally didn't understand how Asians could be considered white. I don't even know how to start thinking about a question that could possibly produce an answer to that question. What was truly odd about the whole thing is that this was around the same time that my daughter started calling her brother Asian. Did I miss some media phenomenon concerning the Asian identity?

My husband says they are just being siblings and fighting. I get that, kind of. My sister used to call me adopted which would send me running to my mother in tears. What my sister actually would say was that she was going to look for my receipt so they could send me back; something I felt was a distinct possibility. I would retaliate by calling her fat. Clearly these are equal things. Despite how cruel we both were, the insults made sense or at least were relevant to who we were. My daughter pulling Asian out of nowhere really concerns me. It suggests to me that a) she clearly is prioritizing being Asian as being less valuable than being white or mixed race; and b) my eight year old understands or is imitating some kind of performance of racial trumphing. I hate that she is devaluing Asians. I hate to think she is learning this at home either through her exchange with her brothers or somehow from my husband and I. Lastly, I don't understand why she is choosing something that doesn't relate to her brother in any way; certainly she has a billion other things she could swing back with. How did she come up with Asian.

Between the two situations I started to wonder about how we locate Asians on the racial landscape in America. Are there particular populations that are so peripheral to our own location that we don't consider them? I think about theorists who talk about reflected identities or knowing the self by recognizing the other. In my student's case, the other is white not Asian and he doesn't see himself reflected or contrasted with or against an Asian identity. In my daughter's case there is a clear devaluing of an Asian identity. Somehow her sense of "being Asian" seems more insulting to her own identity than her brothers' accusations of being white. Sadly, both identities are objectionable to her. The good news is that people who identify with those identities, white and Asian, are a big and welcome part of her life. She never even mentions race outside our house. Thank God, who knows who would be Asian then.

Not willing to allow my daughter to behave this way and having gained NO ground with her brothers, I engage her regularly about this. Her eight year old sensibility INSISTS that her brother is Asian. I started to believe that she really thought he WAS Asian until yesterday. The 18 year old irritated her and I told her to ignore him. My child looked me dead in the face and said "it doesn't matter, he's Asian too". Really? Do I start punishing her for this. I gave her a long lecture about how inappropriate her saying this is and she defended herself by saying "well, he calls me white".

Nothing gained... Finally I wonder if the way i reacted by the first time I heard it made Asian the insult that it has become in my house. Perhaps if I had ignored it, it would not have become useful. I am pretty sure I am guilty of a similar error when the boys started calling their sister white. Perhaps yelling "SHE IS NOT! DON'T CALL HER THAT!" was the wrong choice. I simply don't know what to do. And, so I write...

More soon...

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Examining The Year in a Mixed Race Professor's Life

First I am sorry for my neglect. I apparently lose all sense of time and space during the end of the semester. I also seem to lack an awareness of the connection between my assigning papers and exams and my correcting papers and exams. That said, it has been an amazing year, academically. I have no friends left but... I have just completed my first year as a faculty member at a State College. I am inspired to finish that dissertation. And it is summer here on the east coast - okay, that is optimistic. It is a healthy, hearty, warm, fragrant, exceptional spring. I am going to hoe out my office and start writing. I promise to blog every day. I promise to have my dissertation ready for aggressive critical committee review by the start of the fall semester. And finally, I promise to keep building our mixed race community.

Yesterday while I was turning back papers and exams in my office, one of my seniors sat with me. He seemed stuck in the chair, after five years, his life is changing radically. Honestly, he had no where else to go. Regardless, I feel honored that he chose to spend some time reflecting with me. We were discussing our "Examining Mixed Race Identity" class. One thing he said really stood out to me. He said something like "it was interesting how this class was able to come to a constructive conversation about race and race relations through the conversation about mixed race". Light bulb!

I have been thinking about the "bridging the gap" myth/mission/possibility that comes with mixed raceness. While I resent my recent appointment to "spokesman for Obama" as well as the ambassadorship for all people of color, I still think there is something about mixed raceness that creates spaces of possibility that monoraceness does not. What I know about myself is that I have become particularly averse to my duties as a bridge, rainbow, translator for my brown and white brethren. But, I have become very hopeful about conversations about mixed race as creating a space where people can think not only about race but about the implications of race. What we saw in our class was a growing connection between race, monorace in particular, and our being a part of the perpetuation of monoracial ideologies. By "our" I mean race scholars, students, etc. This realization was not only relegated to the mixed race students. Our white and black students also seemed to become very connected to their participation in the performance of race. Over the semester we watched the meaning of race shift from important to meaningless to a rethought understanding of self and other. Pretty awesome for a 200 level class. I am excited to see if this conversation reproduces itself next semester.

On the home front things are less inspiring. My middle child is going through something that I can only identify as the mixed race child's coming of age. I can see him trying to find himself, locate himself, on the racial landscape. His journey is slightly misguided and antagonistic. His brother went through some similar things, but I don't remember him being so confrontational. My son sees race and racism EVERYWHERE. On mother's day he whispered to his brother during mass something like "the old white folks are angry that the black family is in the front row". While I totally believe he is experiencing race and racism in a new and seemingly overwhelming way, I am saddened that he can't locate "racists" instead of "racism". Racism is everywhere and he needs to learn to negotiate it just like I did. Racists are a totally different story and should not be tolerated, but I don't think he appreciates that he is labeling an entire group "whites" as racists. And like my experience at his age, the "blacks" don't accept him either, but he doesn't know what to call that because in that context, "racist" doesn't make sense. It was through this experience and process of trying to find a space that I found my mixed race identity and I am hoping that this happens for him and soon.

Sadly, our community has become increasingly overt with the kind of racism that comes with economic decline. This only serves to make my son's journey that much more difficult. Perhaps we are also feeling the impact of having a man of color as president... My eight year old comes home with frequent stories of classmates who talk about Obama in the most hateful ways. One child punched the Obama book my daughter bought for her classroom. Her school didn't celebrate black history month... Regardless, my children have never been anything but loved and accepted by the majority of people in our community. He is a star athlete, very popular, and considered a leader amongst his peers. I don't know how to help him process and balance what I know he is experiencing and a sense of self and community. I want him to grow into a person who holds himself accountable for his life; not someone who blames everyone else for his shortcomings. My older son never really went through what my younger son reports. My younger son gets called nigger on the sports field and from the stands. I don't think it happens "all the time" but when it does people really minimize it. I try to help him understand people's discomfort or disconnect with his complaints while validating his experience. I am apparently doing it all wrong. All I seem to have done is reinforce his sense that everyone is racist. My husband really holds me as the cause of my children's feelings about race and racism. I don't know how to get him to understand that what they experience is different than what he or I experience and it is our job to acknowledge that. I think he is often left feeling like the white guy in a den of black militants...he regularly renounces his whiteness.

I am sure that other families have troubled teens, but I don't think that those families have children who use race as a weapon. The other day the 16 year old called his father a "white piece of shit". My husband is devastated. I feel like I am raising a little racist... I keep trying to get my children to talk about what "white" is? I keep reminding myself that I was never a black male... But, I just don't get it. Not entirely, more than my husband, but not entirely. My eldest cannot get a job and I know it is because of his giant afro. I try to explain that to him and he says it shouldn't matter. How do I tell him he is wrong? It SHOULDN'T matter. But it does...

more soon...

Friday, April 24, 2009

This week in race relations and racialized conversations

I know I promised to write on Monday about my project defense. I haven't because it was really quite traumatic. I passed; so I have had trouble understanding why I am so upset. And I am upset. My committee had been given the DVD of my documentary to watch on their own. That may have been a mistake, I wish that I could have been there to translate... My chair LOVED the documentary and told me to leave it the way it was after the first draft, so I did. One committee member also loved it so much that she shared it with her family. The other two, not so much. The one said she loved the documentary but, as I processed it, it was not scholarly or not scholarly enough. The final committee member simply did not understand a) why the documentary was just a succession of pictures one after the other; and b) why I hadn't used more of myself in the documentary.

Fortunately my chair had suggested I present for 10-15 minutes before our discussion and their ultimate decision. It was natural for me to write what I was presenting and the words flowed easily. In that presentation I expressed my wish for my committee to have the black/white mixed race conversation which includes allegations that the mixed race identity was only fabricated to allow mixed race people to deny or avoid their blackness. I expressed a need to have that conversation one last time and then, together with my committee, we would move forward to the conversation I was most intersted in having in the remainder of my dissertation. Some things just cannot be wished for or led.

Our conversation beyond the niceities ended up devolving into a conversation that went something like: we think you should find another way to speak about mixed race that does not invoke identity. Then they used my own documentary against me suggesting that my collaborators were proving that there was not a mixed race identity because many of them talked about identifying as monoracial or passing back and forth between identifying as black and white based on the context of the space they were negotiating. These statements were made despite the fact that my colloborators qualified their statements by saying that they are forced to negotiate their identities in this way because their mixed race identity was rejected or denied.

For the remainder of my two hour defense I listened to my committee reject and deny mixed race identity and in the end they suggested that I read more black scholarship, although I had read this body of literature for my masters exam, and focus my mixed race conversation on or around blackness.

So again, I had to defend myself and my schlorship as not being anti-blackness or a rejection of blackness. One committee member suggested that I only focus on black/white mixed race as she knows of other mixed race students who are Japanese and Swedish (and the other I cannot remember) who were affluent and amazingly gorgeous (because biracial people are soooo damn good looking don't you know) that she was certain had COMPLETELY different experiences from the black/white biracial person. What DOES that mean? That we black/white mixed race people are poor and just not that good looking? I was so frustrated and angry. I felt like everything I had worked on for the last year had been dismissed and I was being reset in such a way that guaranteed my arriving at this very same moment again in a year.

I know my committee really cares about me and really wants to see me succeed. They are not shy about telling me how bright and capable they think I am. So this is not a blamefilled rant, rather a frustrated exploration of a moment that keeps reproducing itself. When and how will I ever get to move into the contemporary conversation about mixed race identity that I want to have. I don't think I even understand the barriers or the processing that produces this moment. One committee member suggested that I try writing with mixed race women all over the world which would "pull me out of" of my own situation. I processed her comment as an assumption that I feel the way I feel but other mixed race women don't and I needed to expose myself to other more balanced and sensible mentalities. Well... I have. For me this suggestion dismissed the collaborators in the documentary as they were not scholars or academics so their expereinces didn't matter. Also, my committee seemed to dismiss the body of literature by and about mixed race experiences and identity formations. Ultimately, they seemed to be dismissing me, my mixed raceness, and my scholarship because of my location as a mixed race person.

I am attempting to reconcile the entire experience by working through my prospectus. I have outlined my thinking by suggesting that the mixed race conversation has and does occupy two different histories or as I am calling them right now...Phases. I am trying desperately to frame two different periods that are loosely related generationally while keeping those two periods from undermining each other. More soon...

Monday, April 20, 2009

A Big Day

Today is a big day. I am defending the first draft of my documentary as my area project. The documentary is called "Intimate Realities: Mixed Race Identities". I have had a few bumps with my committee; scheduling and what not. They really are the best though, so I am excited to see what they have to say, kind of. I showed the documentary to my class on Thursday, they seemed to enjoy it. I didn't really get feedback because we went overtime for class. The big problem is that I don't know what to ask, so I have no clue what is going to be asked of me today. I have one committee member who doesn't really believe in mixed race as an independent identity. In her experience, mixed race is about passing, privilege, and a denial of blackness. It is her comments I am most concerned about. My chair has already let me know she thinks the work is fine. I will update later today and let you know how it went. Think of me between 12-2. More soon...

Monday, April 13, 2009

The Newest Member of the Mixed Race Community

First, and most important, Happy Birthday Bitty Boop!!! My baby turned 8 today!!!!!

Today I am counting my blessings. One of the things that has been said to me, all too often by those who oppose mixed race as an identity, is that there is no community. I am here to testify to the fact that this is a complete untruth. My blog is not a month old and I have already connected with a "community" of mixed race thinkers. I will be attempting to add links to their blogs after I post this. I feel blessed to have something that looks like proof now. WE are a community, we have common experiences, and we recognize each other immediately as mixed race people. Being able to talk to other people about my socio-racial identity without fear of judgment; or without tailoring what I am saying in order to be accepted, is a gift.

These denouncements of mixed race identity come often in academia and frequently in everyday life. One such experience occurred after a department meeting at the college I am teaching at. One of my new "colleagues" cornered me and questioned me on my choice to study mixed race. "There is no community or culture" he informed me. I strongly disagree. My experience has been that there is a community, but like many marginalized communities, it is one that has not been allowed a physical space to call home. For me, mixed race is a kind of diasporic identity. This diaspora is uniquely positioned inside the community or communities that are responsible for the generation of a diasporic experience for those who claim a mixed race identity. For example, being a mixed race person living in a monoracially black or white community.

The narratives that my collaborators have been sharing with me suggest that they feel disconnected, not only from the majority race they belong to but from the minority race as well. That is to say someone who is black/white or asian/white might relate experiencing rejection not just from the white community that one parent came from but from the minority community that the other parent came from as well. For me, the majority of the rejection I have experienced, at least overtly, has been from the black community (and black scholars like the colleague in my story above). The accusations leveled at me have been of race trading and of denying my blackness. No one ever accuses the mixed race individual of denying her whiteness even when one or both parents are or appear to be white.

This colleague of mine, after literally backing me into a corner of the conference room and holding me hostage for about 20 minutes, then informed me that he had married a white woman (he is black) and that his child is a product of that union. So here is a man, allegedly an academic, who has made the intimate choice to marry a white woman and have a mixed race child, denouncing mixed race studies and identities. If his black community, black identity and monoracial identity as black is so important to him, why did he make this choice? I rationalize this and other attacks as best I can, there is something about me that suggests that I have an easier time embracing my mixed raceness than others might have (by the way, this is not true - I am making a political choice that reflects my intimate relationships). It may appear that I somehow have "special" permission or epistemological privilege that allow me to reach across monoracial borders and claim both blackness and whiteness (again, not true - however I will say that I experience a third set of borders that keeps me from claiming either full blackness or whiteness). I don't think that I am doing any of these treacherous things. I am not passing. I have no desire or ability to divorce myself from my blackness. I still experience my life as a person of color. I am not trying to claim duality. Instead, I am trying to claim wholeness. I was raised differently than a person with two black parents, or even a person with one black and one white parent. My intimate relationships were and are with the white parents, siblings, spouse, children and extended family that have raised and sustained me. I know I do not experience the world the same as every other black, white, latino, asian, native american, boy and/or girl. I am necessarily something different. When I am looking for other people who are like me, I find that similarity in my mixed race children not my monoracial mother or spouse. The conversations I have had this week have shown me that this is not a delusional observation but a lived experience that I do share with other people. I share these lived experiences with other people who identify as mixed race.

I have been looking for this community and culture my whole life. I have known for a very long time that such a thing exists; I didn't know where to find it. This week, it found me. Thank god for the internet. I have found several new sisters and brothers because of this blog and through my research. Each time I hear someone's story for the first time, I sigh, I think this IS the culture and community that people keep telling me doesn't exist. How can so many different people from so many different racial backgrounds and from so many different geographical locations have the SAME STORY? Clearly, life happens in a particular ways for particular groups of people Overall we recognize those experiences as ethnicities, races, creeds, class groups, and genders. Why then do we disallow the possibility of a mixed race experience as being different than monoracial experiences. To me it is as plain as the nose on our faces - all different noses - all different colors, etc. If we look different than our monoracial counterparts (since this seems to be the primary practice of recognizing difference) then why is it such a stretch to imagine that we ARE different.

This space for mixed race identity, culture or community is not by any means a call to close ranks and deny our relationships with other races, cultures and communities. But I do think that in the search for solidarity, one might consider the mixed race identity as different and therefore important enough not to be dismissed in the corner of a conference room.

More soon...

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Light-skinned Relativity

I am sure this will sound very strange. The other day I was at a dinner celebrating the 52nd anniversary of Ghana's Independence. Rarely am I in a room where the attendees are predominately dark skinned. My life experience has been that I am the only black person in the room most of the time. I was really enjoying the moment, the music, the colors, and the food. All of a sudden a wave of panic overtook me. I grabbed my husband's arm (the Irish guy) and pulled him close to whisper in his ear. "I am not as dark as I thought I was, look how yellow I am". Of course, my husband just laughed, because let's face it - what a weird ass comment. Still... I just couldn't get over how light my skin looked in that space. I have never thought of myself as light skinned, especially next to my family and my children. I have always thought of myself as dark skinned actually. Ever since that dinner, I am a little startled and totally obsessed with what I look like. I am desperately wondering what other people see. I have a student who describes everyone by a food related skin color. She has told me many times that I am caramel. You know what, I think I am! I don't know what to make of this realization. I don't think it is an "othering" experience - where I am simply realizing I don't fit in. I think it is a complete shift in how I imagine myself. I shared this story at Easter and my cousin who is a parole officer in Albany said: yeah, I would have always said you were medium to light skinned. It cracked me up! Why didn't anyone tell me. For me, light skinned is my blond haired blue eyed daughter, NOT ME!!! Anyway, this is not the best articulation of this experience, perhaps I can make more sense of it later. I just wanted to share...

More later...

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

More Things I should know about my children

My husband was reading the post entitled "Things I Should Know about my Children" and reminded me that our eldest son, Ben, had also been in a mixed race relationship. I apparently only observe OTHER people's lives. Ben also left his original highschool in the middle of his senior year because he could no longer take the racism in his school. He was dating a mixed race female and had a mixed race family, he was not only the target of racism, but just couldn't take that kind of thinking overall. Sorry Ben for forgetting you in my first post about my children. Love ya...

More soon...

Celebrating 39 Years of Life

After a certain age (21), birthdays become occasions for self-reflection. I am conflicted as to what that reflection should be. I am thinking, as always, about the biological mother that gave me up 39 years ago today. I always wonder if she thinks about me today every year. I also always wonder what she looks like. In my mind, she might be the only person on the planet that actually looks like me. A picture is all I have ever wanted from her...

I am a total advocate for transracial adoption. I have spent a lot of time with transracial adoptees; collaborating on my work. I have found that being transracially adopted, as well as bi-culturally raised, can position the transracial adoptee more in the mixed race identity than our monoracially adopted counterparts. When I put my first call for participants out for my photo essay in 2006; the call simply asked for those who self-identified as mixed race. I was blown away by the collaborators that responded. I expected black/white, asian/white, black/asian, etc. I was unprepared for the number of transracially adopted families, with monoracial parents and children, who responded. For them, as I understand it, being a transracial family made them mixed race, bi-cultural people. Experiencing race through each other had significant impact on the identification of not only the child, which one might anticipate, but on the parents. I have not discussed this with my own family, but my sister has hinted at experiencing my "otherness" in school. Also, there have been moments of realization for my husband, experienced through our children.

This question came up at the speech I gave in February 2009 at SUNY Cortland "Examining Contemporary Mixed Race". A professor asked if I considered transracial adoptees "mixed race". First, I have to say that it is not my job to "identify" other people. I am only researching people who identify themselves as "mixed race" or who identify mixed race as part of their socio-racial identity. All I can say then is that I consider my transracial adoption a contributing part of my self-identification as mixed race. For me, mixed race allows me to claim all of my intimate relationships including the one with my white adoptive family. The bi-cultural reality of my adoption causes reactions in other people and those reactions locate me outside of monoracial categories. I had one gentleman proclaim "you was raised with white folks weren't you?" Yes. Yes I was.

As I head into my 40th year (damn I AM old), I will be finishing my degree through research and collaboration regarding mixed race identities. This work is experiential, self-reflective, observational, communal and theoretical. The neatest thing about critical race studies is that it stays new. The journey is only beginning...more soon...

Friday, April 3, 2009

Binghamton Shooting 12-13 thought Dead

A prayer for those involved in and affected by the shooting in Binghamton, New York today. We hope that as many people as possible are untouched, at least physically, by today's events. I am thankful my family is safe, but my classmates' families might not be. I will never understand what makes people do this kind of thing. All we can do right now is hope, pray, and lend support. Yes, these things do happen in our neighborhoods too. We are ALL a community, we have all lost brother's and sister's today.

More soon...

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Are we joking right now?

I went to a seminar today, not at Binghamton University I must add. I was very excited about the topic - Obama. I am a bit of a fanatic, I am not going to lie. But, that is another blog. So I sit down excited to hear a non-critical race studies or politics of race take on Obama. I got one. So the speech itself was odd, I left with the lyrics "how bizarre, how bizarre" ringing in my head. It was this surreal combination of passion and ignorance wrapped in to a neat little professorial ball. I thought about walking out but I was riveted to my seat breathlessly waiting to see if it could get worse, and it did. After complaining that he, the speaker, couldn't get time to speak because of "that black history month" and then "they had to have women's month (I think that is women's history month, but whose paying attention)", he went on to talk about things loosely related (IMHO) to media and race. At one point he likened the way media handles ratings and advertising to slavery... He pointed out that until Obama spoke he was just another black guy who could shoot a ball into a hoop. Apparently, for the speaker, all Midwesterners are tall and white. I could fill this space today with these examples, I will refrain. Suffice it to say this was the way the whole hour went. At one point I wrote in my notes that I had no clue what the topic was and I wanted to go home. What I left with was this...simple black and white is complicated. The speaker also told us that Obama's seat in the white house is proof that America has conquered our obsession with race. I would suggest that his speech was proof to the contrary. I could dismiss all of this, if it had not been for this comment (loosely related): "There is only black and white. Yeah, we make noise about yellow, and red and this mixed race stuff... You know, some people write papers to get tenure or promotions, they write some mixed race "stuff" but it comes down to black and white" Yikes, my dissertation, life study, and identity dismissed in one lame uninformed statement. I beg to disagree, but I won't waste my energy disagreeing with that level of insensitivity. Instead, I will share it with you.

In closing, I have to say, the most profound or rather profane, part of this talk was that the speaker was a person of color. I realized that I need to re-evaluate my level of expectations as I enter academia. I have to accept that my peers still will find my research "lame stuff" that I am only producing to get a promotion. I also have to learn how to process and reconcile these views - scholarly product - that denounce and diminishe what I have chosen to do with my scholarship. The whole experience made me sad and tired. I don't think I will be going to anymore Obama speeches any time soon.

More soon...

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Should we be talking about something else?

My students are exceptional. I have one young man who really challenges me to think harder about race and mixed race. He asked me in class the other day why I would be advocating for the addition of another racial identity. He went on to express his concern that our conversations about a mixed race identity further perpetuated ideas of race, which he disagreed with. His feeling is that if race doesn't exist, scientifically at least, why would we "create" another "race" - mixed race? Great question. The conversation continued as each student talked about how they would identify if race did not exist. While my students who identified as white, mixed race, and raceless had little trouble embracing the idea of abandoning race, my students who identified as black resisted. One of my students said he would not abandon race because being a proud black man has been a life goal "who would I be without my race" he asked? "Nothing!" he answered. A fellow student shared his sentiment. "It is our culture, being black is a culture" he said. I am thinking about my own racial identity. I have to admit, I think I am attached to my race in a way that I was not aware of. Giving up my race, and my right to racially categorize myself as I see fit, is particularly important to me. I have to think more about why that is. An immediate guess is that I have become used to being the black girl (brown girl, mixed race girl, biracial girl, Sharon's black daughter) and that is how I know myself. I will have to think about how I would redefine myself without race. (And what the HELL would I study? :) Maybe I am just concerned that, without race, I would not be identifiable at all. This exercise, thinking about abandoning race, is starting to help me understand why my students who identify as white tell me they have no race or culture. I think that in the absence of exceptionality, if we are all the same, defining oneself inside of sameness does not make sense. I will have to really think about that one. Make today great!!!!!

More soon...

Monday, March 30, 2009

Things I should have known about my children...

As further proof that even though you study something you don't know it all, I made yet another shocking discovery today. I was going through still pictures to add to my documentary. I decided I would use some family pictures. As I went through and started to extract pictures of my sons, Matthew 18 and Joshua 16, I realized something huge. Both of my children are in mixed race relationships!!!! Not only are they in mixed race relationships, both of their girlfriends ARE mixed race. One might think I would have been keenly aware of this already...not so much...I guess I am too busy raising them. I wish I had realized this LAST WEEK when I was shooting. I guess that will have to happen in phase two. The neat thing is, other than realizing that I am still human and clearly flawed, there is still so much to learn right inside my own family. I wonder if my sons' choice of girlfriends is in anyway affected by being a) in a mixed race family and b) in a family that talks constantly about race and mixed race. My eldest son's girlfriend is Mexican/Caucasian and my youngest son's girlfriend is Puerto Rican/Caucasian. I cannot figure out if this means that I stink as an academic or just as a mother...

More soon...

Sunday, March 29, 2009

An earlier thought...Come think Mixed Race with Me

(previously posted on another site February 2009...)

So far, I have had the most amazing time finding collaborators and doing preliminary interviews with them. Everyones’ stories, regardless of racial composition, are so similar even though the participants are so different. I think it is one of the things that delights me the most about mixed race. It doesn’t seem to matter if folks are Asian/Black/White/Latina/First nations, etc. everyone has similar experiences as mixed race people. “What are you?” seems to be how every one of the folks I have talked to have located their mixed raceness (in that question) - it is kind of how you know you are mixed race. I have hopes - I hope that this blog will invite people to think with me about mixed race. Mixed race for me is not a black and white/Asian and white/native and spanish, etc. type of thing, it is a self-identifying thing. So anyone who self-identifies as mixed race please come think with me. I have fears - I fear the rejection I have already received from some of my “critical race” peers. I have been told that mixed race is a) not an identity; b) not a community; and c) not worth studying. Fortunately, people of mixed race tell me EXACTLY the opposite. I am privileging people of mixed race as being more knowledgeable about their own lives than “we” scholars, so I am eager to hear about mixed raceness from mixed race people. I will be encouraging my students, collaborators, and project participants to start sharing their ideas on this blog as well. Another thing, this is my FIRST blog experience. It is going to be rough, but at least I will be writing every day like my adviser wants me to
Be special always

"Self" Identification: Self Identified by the Others

My husband and I attempted to register our daughter for kindergarten in May of 2003. I happened to be sitting in my “Gender and Race in the Classroom” seminar listening to student presentations. I started to fill out the mandatory forms for our school district. I got to page three. Half way down was the “race” box. I suddenly realize that our box has been ELIMINATED! REALLY? other will no longer be recognized as a race. At the same time I realize that the instructions say I can check only ONE BOX. How do I pick one box for the blue eyed, blond haired, Irish skinned black girl? I was livid! I crossed out the section and wrote things like THIS IS RACIST and THERE IS NO BOX HERE THAT REPRESENTS MY DAUGHTER. they called my husband. The principal told my husband that the race box was mandatory and that our daughter could NOT be registered without her race being documented. bullshit. My husband also refused to pick a box that did not represent my daughter. So after several attempts, the principal PICKED A RACE FOR HER. she picked white. I called the superintendent of schools, our former friend, and demanded that the school district take a stand and refuse to participate in this racist practice. We had been told that both the mandatory tracking of race and the removal of the other box were products of the No Child Left Behind Act and that all schools would have to comply. bush. Our district was a pilot district for this program of tracking and classifying children. The superintendent, after a two hour conversation, informed me that I was being selfish by putting mine and my children’s identity ahead of the financial welfare of the school. During my uprising of one, I also realized that not only were we never told about this “new law’s” impact on the racial categorization of children which single handedly overturned the 2000 census which allowed a person to mark all that apply, but the school had changed my sons’ racial categorization as well. The boys were registered as other. "Other" just did not exist anymore. Apparently someone, who the school would not turn over, had changed the boys races, without ever asking my husband and I what their races were or what we wanted them to be categorized as. I felt powerless. How were other people classifying my children by race? How far have we come? In the end, we left the categorizations alone because they speak for the ignorance of the law and its application. The geniuses in our school district had classified my oldest child as black, my youngest child as white and my middle child as Hispanic.

Sunday, March 29th 2009

I am in the process of completing the first draft of my documentary; a large part of my dissertation. My belief is that the audio-visual, sensory expressions captured in the documentary are more powerful and accessible than written theory. What I have captured is far beyond my wildest dream. My assumptions that mixed race is a chosen political identity is apparent in the deep self-reflection and careful relation of experience produced by my collaborators during interviews. The major themes that are emerging: choice - that mixed race people choose mixed race, unlike historical occurrences of mixed race that originate in oppression, dominance, and coercion. stability - that mixed race is a stable identity with fluid characteristics that are often misinterpreted as confusion and displacement. resistance - that mixed race is a resistant identity that pushes against the binary racial system of categorization that polarizes whiteness and "the other". intimacy - that mixed race is an intimate choice that transcends race, culture, and familial expectations. There are more themes and sub-themes but these are the ones that occur in every single interview. What is most remarkable about these themes is their expression by collaborators no matter the age, race, gender, education, or social class. These themes do not disappear even when the collaborator is bi-cultural; where part or all of the collaborator's ideas of race come from outside of the United States. These themes, and their consistency across collaborators, point to the reality of mixed race as a shared identity and as a global culture not just as an exceptional phenomenon.

More soon...