Born from a sexually promiscuous black mother and a white father who could not resist the sexual lure of a black savage, emerges the tragic mulatto. She is so stricken by her circumstances that she completely rejects her African heritage to pass as white and searches for her identity through having sex with numerous men. She has the looks and the class of the white people but deep down she is just as savage as her mother was, making her a great mistress but never a woman to marry. This is the stereotype of the tragic mulatto portrayed in the late 19th and 20th century in novels such as Nella Larsen’s Passing and movies such as Imitation of Life. Peola, the lighter skinned mixed race character in Imitation of Life chooses to pass as white until, when her mother dies guilt overwhelms her and she reveals her African ancestry. But what shaped Peola’s racial identity and if she were here today, where would she find belonging?
Within a society that still holds the vestiges of 400 years of chattel slavery, black and white racial identity has formed within a dichotomist system that maintains racial hierarchy. Multi-racial identities are not exempt from these restrictive categories but instead have been shaped by it. As miscegenation grew in the United States, so did mixed race bodies and as brown, tan and olive complexions populated the United States, whiteness and its purity became threatened. Mixed race women have been primary targets for racial scrutiny, including being subject to sexual objectification and stereotyping. In this paper I will argue that because of a history of dichotomizing black and white racial identity, biracial or multiracial are still not racial categorizations that are visibly recognized by most Americans. In...
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Musser, Amber J. Other Tongues: Mixed-race Women Speak out. Ed. Adebe DeRango-Adem and Andrea Thompson. Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2010. Print. 63.
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Mixed Chicks Chat won‘Best Podcast’ from the Black Weblog Awards. The hosts have been featured on NPR, CNN, and in the Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle and Blur Digital. For more information visit www.mixedchickschat.com
For more information on the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival, visit http://www.mxroots.org/
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Lee, Felicia R. "Pushing Boundaries, Mixed-Race Artists Gain Notice." New York Times 06 July 2011: C1. Print.
In the case of Amanda America Dickson, “her personal identity was ultimately bounded by her sense of class solidarity with her father, that is, by her socialization as David Dickson’s daughter, her gender role as a lady, and her racial definition as a person to whom racial categories did not apply.”1 This may mean that her freedom was less proscribed by race because she was not a male seeking political advantage. Some people of mixed-race in the nineteenth century South managed to create a personal identity and
In nineteenth century, a discourse on homosexuality started to occur; meanwhile, boundaries between black and white became more and more clear. (16) It was the era when the issues that were considered as minority started to appear, and it was also the time when people were reinforcing their ideal “social norms” into the society. It was a dark age for LGBT people, African American people and female. In the article, Scientific Racism and the Homosexual Body, the author, Siobhan Sommerville, makes a strong connection between scientific racism and sexology and women’s bodies. “Although some historians of the scientific discourse on sexuality have included brief acknowledgement of nineteenth century discourses of racial difference in their work,
America is a presumptuous country; its citizens don’t feel like learning any other language so they make everyone else learn English. White Americans are the average human being and act as the standard of living, acting, and nearly all aspects of life. In her essay “White Privilege: The Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh talks about how being white has never been discussed as a race/culture before because that identity has been pushed on everyone else, and being white subsequently carries its own set of advantages. Gloria Anzaldua is a Chicana, a person of mixed identities. In an excerpt titled “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she discusses how the languages she speaks identifies who she is in certain situations and how, throughout her life, she has been pushed to speak and act more “American” like. McIntosh’s idea of whiteness as a subconscious race that carries its own advantages can enlighten why Anzaldua feels like she
In each film's representation of the transgressive woman-the black daughter who looks white, and who, because of the contradiction between being and seeming which defines her, can fit comfortably into neither culture-there is a correspondence between feminine sexuality and alterity which results in a sexualization of the radical 'otherness' of the black woman. (44)
Race and ethnicity is a main factor in the way we identify others and ourselves. The real question here is does race/ethnicity still matter in the U.S.? For some groups race is not a factor that affects them greatly and for others it is a constant occurrence in their mind. But how do people of mix race reacts to this concept, do they feel greatly affected by their race? This is the question we will answer throughout the paper. I will first examine the battle of interracial relationship throughout history and explain how the history greatly explains the importance of being multiracial today. This includes the backlash and cruelty towards interracial couple and their multiracial children. Being part of a multiracial group still contains its impact in today’s society; therefore race still remaining to matter to this group in the U.S. People who place themselves in this category are constantly conflicted with more than one cultural backgrounds and often have difficulty to be accepted.
Trends that can be noticed in these entries are the main focal point, which the authors all seem to cover, that is racism and the social-cultural problems created for young African American women. Many of the authors seemed to blame white culture, or the colourist culture for the problem of lost identity in black girls. They seemed to take the same direction in their articles, but many took different routes in explaining and proving their point. These ideas seemed to be arranged by the stating that Pecola Breedlove is a lost little black girl, who because of her idea that being white would solve all her family and life problems, loses her true self. The authors would then blame the white culture for this deficiency in the young mind of an African American girl.
About a month ago, a rather unique woman became the topic of discussion in millions of homes and social network accounts across the world. Rachel Dolezal, a former chapter president of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), now claims to be a “transracial” woman that was recently exposed for pretending to be black for so many years. While she has gained many supporters, the naysayers were the ones that have really made her story a controversial one. What really seems to be the concern is why her story is such a big deal. Every day, we see people of different social and cultural backgrounds trying to pass off as a member of a community that they were not born into. This paper will be addressing why the media
Colorism in the United States is a result of the history of people being discriminated based upon one’s skin tone. For many years, the European standard of beauty has been set forth and pushed upon mainly young men and women of many backgrounds
Settles 2006; Wilkins 2012). These stereotypes of black women describe positive characteristics that many black women tend to ascribe to and attain. I argue that even though these stereotypes may yield positive behaviors from black women, they are still considered stereotypes because the majority will utilize these stereotypes to negatively categorize black women. In the words of Pat Hill Collins (2004: 263), “African American women’s race and gender classification disadvantages them”. Thus, these stereotypes may inhibit black women’s own individual freedoms to become an individual woman separate from the stereotypes (Chavous et al.
Living in a world where African Americans are judged because of their skin color, while whites are passed by with no other thought is confusing. What do people think when they see me? I am biracial, and because of this, I’ve faced the struggle of having to explain my races to those who can’t tell, or just make an incorrect assumption. It’s not a bad thing, having two races and two cultures, because I’ve been open to multiple traditions my entire life, but sometimes it’s hard not being considered a whole person because I’m not considered one race or the other. Being biracial has shaped my life experience and the way I see the world in countless ways.
The way humans look externally and feel internally has been a barrier and the kernel to many of America’s social conflicts. Audre Lorde’s essay, “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” attempts to answer why Black women feel contempt among one another. It resonates that Black women, in lieu of their hatred for each other, should replace it by bonding together because they share the same experiences of being women and Black. In the essay titled, “Colorblind Intersectionality,” penned by, Devon W. Carbado seeks to expand the definition of “intersectionality,” which is a theory Professor Crenshaw initially introduced as a, “Drawing explicitly on Black feminist criticism,” (Carbado 811). Carbado is able to provide other forms of intersections by
In the United States, racial relations have changed drastically over a relatively short time period. In Racial Formation in the United States From the 1960s to the 1990s, authors Michael Omi and Howard Winant present several viewpoints on evolving and differing racial theories while presenting their own findings and theories that have resulted from years of study and observation. They believe the present and past theories on race and racial definitions throughout history, individually, are severely inaccurate when applied to modern day and “[fail] to capture the centrality of race in American politics and American life” (p. 2). They argue that race is much more complex than how it has been presented and offer up their own theories in order to rectify previously believed notions of race.
The article, “RACE AND ETHNICITY- CHANGING SYMBOL IS OF DOMINANCE AND HIERARCHY IN THE UNITED STATES” by Karen I. Blu is an exceptional work that clearly expounds on the racial and ethnic groups especially in America. Racial and ethnic groupings are gradually becoming popular in the public arena, in which people are shifting their focus on classifying other people on the basis of racial groupings to rather classifying them on the basis of ethnicity. Moreover, race grouping is slowly submerging into ethnic grouping with Black activism being the role player in this (Blu, 1979). The following is a summary of the aforementioned article in how it relates to racial and ethnic groups and response regarding its views.
The Association of Black Psychologist (ABP) (2013) defines colorism as skin-color stratification. Colorism is described as “internalized racism” that is perceived to be a way of life for the group that it is accepted by (ABP 2013). Moreover, colorism is classified as a persistent problem within Black American. Colorism in the process of discriminatory privileges given to lighter-skinned individuals of color over their darker- skinned counterparts (Margret Hunter 2007). From a historical standpoint, colorism was a white constructed policy in order to create dissention among their slaves as to maintain order or obedience. Over the centuries, it seems that the original purpose of colorism remains. Why has this issue persisted? Blacks have been able to dismantle the barriers faced within the larger society of the United States. Yet, Blacks have failed to properly address the sins of the past within the ethnic group. As a consequence of this failure, colorism prevails. Through my research, I developed many questions: Is it right that this view remain? How does valuing an individual over another cause distribution to the mental health of the victims of colorism? More importantly, what are the solutions for colorism? Colorism, unfortunately, has had a persisted effect on the lives of Black Americans. It has become so internalized that one cannot differentiate between the view of ourselves that Black Americans adopted from slavery or a more personalized view developed from within the ethnicity. The consequences of this internalized view heightens the already exorbitant mental health concerns within the Black community, but the most unfortunate aspect of colorism is that there is contention on how the issue should be solved.
This paper will argue that to be a Black woman with natural hair, is deviant in the eyes of white culture. Natural hair is regarded as unkempt, unclean, and unprofessional (Thompson 2009). American society seeks to demonize the hair of Black women because natural hair disregards Eurocentric beauty standards (Robinson 2011). To rebel and wear one’s hair naturally comes with a price - especially in the workplace and school environment - because there are discriminatory dress-codes that prevent Black women from meeting institutional requirements (Klein 2013). Black women face discrimination for their natural hair due to the power imbalance of white men in work and educational structures.