Aarathi Prasad sets out to challenge the science of racial purity and examines provocative claims that there are in fact biological advantages to being mixed race.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.youtube.com
biracial identity
Voices of Multiracial Americans – Pew Research
How some in America’s growing demographic view race, identity, relationships and the future.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.pewresearch.org
Near Black | White-to-Black Passing in American Culture
In the United States, the notion of racial “passing” is usually associated with blacks and other minorities who seek to present themselves as part of the white majority. Yet as Baz Dreisinger demonstrates in this fascinating study, another form of this phenomenon also occurs, if less frequently, in American culture: cases in which legally white individuals are imagined, by themselves or by others, as passing for black. In Near Black, Dreisinger explores the oft-ignored history of what she calls “reverse racial passing” by looking at a broad spectrum of short stories, novels, films, autobiographies, and pop-culture discourse that depict whites passing for black. The protagonists of these narratives, she shows, span centuries and cross contexts, from slavery to civil rights, jazz to rock to hip-hop. Tracing their role from the 1830s to the present day, Dreisinger argues that central to the enterprise of reverse passing are ideas about proximity. Because “blackness,” so to speak, is imagined as transmittable, proximity to blackness is invested with the power to turn whites black: those who are literally “near black” become metaphorically “near black.” While this concept first arose during Reconstruction in the context of white anxieties about miscegenation, it was revised by later white passers for whom proximity to blackness became an authenticating badge. As Dreisinger shows, some white-to-black passers pass via self-identification. Jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow, for example, claimed that living among blacks and playing jazz had literally darkened his skin. Others are taken for black by a given community for a period of time. This was the experience of Jewish critic Waldo Frank during his travels with Jean Toomer, as well as that of disc jockey Hoss Allen, master of R&B slang at Nashville’s famed WLAC radio. For journalists John Howard Griffin and Grace Halsell, passing was a deliberate and fleeting experiment, while for Mark Twain’s fictional white slave in Pudd’nhead Wilson, it is a near-permanent and accidental occurrence. Whether understood as a function of proximity or behavior, skin color or cultural heritage, self-definition or the perception of others, what all these variants of “reverse passing” demonstrate, according to Dreisinger, is that the lines defining racial identity in American culture are not only blurred but subject to change.
– See more at: http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/near-black#.dpuf
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.umass.edu
HT Marie Nubia-Feliciano @MNubiafeliciano via @fanshen
Raising Biracial Children to Be Well Adjusted
By: Nadra Kareem Nittle,
Race Relations Expert
Mixed-race children face unique challenges, but raising biracial children who are happy and healthy is possible if parents teach them to embrace all facets of their racial makeup, settle in diverse communities and choose schools that celebrate multiculturalism, among other measures.
- Reject Myths About Mixed-Race Kids
- Celebrate Your Child’s Multiethnic Heritage
- Choose a School That Celebrates Cultural Diversity
- Live in a Multicultural Neighborhood
Continue reading
Sourced through Scoop.it from: racerelations.about.com
Four Commonly Misused Words – Hispanic, Caucasian, White & Female
Hispanic for Latino – NOPE
The word Hispanic was derived from Hispaniola (Spanish speaking island) and the word Hispanic is meant to indicate all Spanish speaking people (including Spain), but leaves out Portuguese speaking people (Brazil).
And more troublesome, onomatopoeically Hispanic sounds really bad.
Continue reading…
Source: communityvillageus.blogspot.com
Introduction
New Blog!
Biracial Generation
Welcome to biracial generation,
We are Nina and Veronica, and we are the sole creators of this blog. The reason why we started this blog is to talk about what it’s like growing up to be a mixed child. We both have white fathers and black mothers and we both live in a single family home, the only difference is that Veronica lives with her father, and Nina lives with her mother. So our lifestyles are both different, yet we share some of the same experiences.
The concept of this blog is to talk about our experiences growing up being mixed. We will be talking about many different topics from hair care to relationships. Please note that we understand that not everyone is in our situation, and we respect that. That is why we are starting this blog because we feel that the biracial community does not get much recognition.
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Help Me Find My Black-and-Apache Dad
Tracing Your Roots: She is mixed-race and knows her white heritage but longs to know the rest of the story.
See on www.theroot.com
The McGill Daily » Half-Asian sublimation
What’s in a name? ‘Mixed,’ ‘biracial,’ ‘black’
African-American, black or negro? Professor Martha Jones writes that the language of race has always been a moving target.
See on www.cnn.com
Biracial, and also black
University of Michigan professor Martha S. Jones is biracial, but always saw herself as black, until her students made her rethink her identity.
See on www.cnn.com
Mixed American Life 
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