The controversy has stirred up fresh debate about the divisive issue of biracial self-identification-a divisiveness I, and many other mixed-race people, have experienced firsthand. Personally, as a biracial American, I prefer to be identified as such. But my Establishment colleague, Ijeoma Oluo, who is also biracial, prefers to identify as black.
Neither of us are wrong.
Jessica Sutherland, "Taye Diggs Isn't Wrong (Or Right) About His Son's Biracial Identity," The Establishment, November 20, 2015. http://www.theestablishment.co/2015/11/20/taye-diggs-isnt-wrong-about-his-biracial-identity-and-neither-are-you/.
Borderliners
Posted in Asian Diaspora, Audio, Biography, Caribbean/Latin America, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2019-07-13 21:38Z by Steven
In a new poem for Radio 4, Hannah Lowe explores the mysteries surrounding the lives of her Chinese Jamaican family.
The term 'borderliner' was once a derogatory term for having mixed heritage. "Between 'bi-racial' and 'bounty,'" Hannah writes, "I find the label 'borderliner' which the dictionary tells me, means uncertain or debatable." Using this term and its troubling history as the basis for a new poetic form, the poem reflects on borders and borderlines, both physical and psychological.
Hannah Lowe
Drawing on half-memories and imagined images from her family history, Hannah Lowe re-creates moments from the lives of her Jamaican Chinese father who came to the UK by ship in 1947 and became a professional gambler, her Chinese grandfather who moved to Jamaica as a legacy of indentured labour in the Caribbean, and most elusive of all the mystery surrounding the life of her Jamaican grandmother of whom she has only one photograph.
Producer: Jo Wheeler
Reader: Burt Caesar
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4
Listen to the story (00:27:39) here.
Tags: BBC, BBC Radio 4, Burt Caesar, Hannah Lowe, Jamaica, Jo Wheeler, Just Radio
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Being black in Nazi Germany
Posted in Articles, Arts, Europe, History, Media Archive on 2019-05-22 00:29Z by Steven
Damian Zane
This photo was used in genetics lectures at Germany's State Academy for Race and Health Library of Congress
Film director Amma Asante came across an old photograph taken in Nazi Germany of a black schoolgirl by chance.
Standing among her white classmates, who stare straight into the camera, she enigmatically glances to the side.
Curiosity about the photograph – who the girl was and what she was doing in Germany – set the award-winning film-maker off on a path that led to Where Hands Touch, a new movie starring Amandla Stenberg and George MacKay.
It is an imagined account of a mixed-race teenager's clandestine relationship with a Hitler Youth member, but it is based on historical record…
…Racist caricatures
The derogatory term "Rhineland bastards" was coined in the 1920s to refer to the 600-800 mixed-race children who were the result of those relationships.
The 1936 headline in the Frankfurter Volksblatt says: "600 Bastards Accused, the legacy of black crimes against the Rhinelanders" Robbie Aitken
The term spoke to some people's imagined fears of an impure race. Made-up stories and racist caricatures of sexually predatory African soldiers were circulated at the time, fuelling concern…
Tags: Afro-Germans, Amandla Stenberg, Amma Asante, BBC, BBC News, Damian Zane, George MacKay, Germany, Nazi Germany
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The 'Brown Babies' who were left behind
Posted in Articles, Biography, History, Social Work, United Kingdom, United States, Women on 2019-05-20 16:37Z by Steven
Many of the babies were put in children's homes, such as Holnicote House in Somerset
Leslie York
When Babs Gibson-Ward was born in 1944, her mother's navy officer husband did not question whether he was her father.
"He honestly believed I was his child, I think because my complexion at that time was very fair. It took six months for it to change," she said.
She was one of 2,000 mixed race babies born to white British women and black American GIs during World War Two.
The children were dubbed "Brown Babies" by the media and many had troubled childhoods.
When Mrs Gibson-Ward's skin darkened, her mother's lie was revealed – her real father was a black US Airforce engineer…
…"Many British people had never seen a black person before. They were charming and less arrogant than the white officers.
"They met women at dance halls or pubs, on evenings which were designated 'blacks only'," Lucy Bland, Professor of Social and Cultural History at Anglia Ruskin University, said.
But relationships were forbidden and their children were often kept secret. Most had never shared their stories until Prof Bland found 45 of them for her book, titled Britain's Brown Babies…
Tags: Babs Gibson-Ward, BBC, BBC News, Charlie Jones, England, Leon Lomax, Lucy Bland, Monica Roberts, Terry Harrison
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Obituary: Andrea Levy
Posted in Articles, Biography, Caribbean/Latin America, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United Kingdom, Women on 2019-02-15 16:29Z by Steven
Andrea Levy, who has died of cancer at the age of 62, told the stories of the Windrush generation with humour and compassion.
As Britain struggled to revive its post-war economy, invitations were extended to citizens of the Empire. "Come and make your lives in the Mother Country," the advertisements said.
Levy's books chart the experiences – and disappointments – of the first Caribbean immigrants and their children.
Her Jamaican father, Winston, was aboard the Empire Windrush, the first ship to dock at Tilbury in 1948.
The open arms which the 492 men expected were not forthcoming. Racism and rejection, small rooms and chilly receptions awaited instead.
Her writing could have been angry and preachy, but it wasn't. It was witty, humane and often moving, and full of richly drawn characters.
She brought ignored and forgotten stories back to public consciousness. And she drew on her own mixed-race, working class experience to enrich her themes of family and displacement…
Tags: Andrea Levy, BBC, BBC News
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Belize's thriving Afro-Caribbean community
Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Slavery on 2018-11-21 22:42Z by Steven
Heide Brandes
When West Africans on their way to the New World's slave markets escaped in 1635, they intermarried with Caribbean islanders to create a new and distinct culture.
The boats came at dawn along the shores of the town of Dangriga on the coast of Belize.
Onboard, vibrantly dressed men, women and children carried homemade flags and waved bright green fronds of coconut palm branches as they approached the shore. On land, a crowd waited, ready to cheer as feet stepped out of the boats to touch sand.
On a similar morning in 1832, the Garifuna people – descendants of Carib, Arawak and West African people – made the same journey from St Vincent Island in the Caribbean, finally able to call Belize home after being turned away by the British government three times. Every year on 19 November, the Garifuna celebrate Garifuna Settlement Day, marking their arrival in Belize (which was then a British colony) and their many contributions to the Belizean landscape.
With this re-enactment of the boat landing, as well as oral history intoned by village elders and music, dancing and food, the national holiday attracts visitors from throughout Belize and the world. It immerses them in why the culture is so unique – and why its people are fighting to keep their heritage alive in an increasingly modern world…
Tags: BBC, BBC News, Belize, Heide Brandes
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Hungary's first black MP aims to 'destroy prejudice'
Posted in Articles, Europe, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy on 2018-06-11 15:18Z by Steven
Tom Mulligan
Orsolya Kovacs
Olivio Kocsis-Cake: Fidesz always finds an enemy who must be hated
Hungary has a reputation for anti-immigration politics, but a young black liberal MP wants to revamp the country's image.
Olivio Kocsis-Cake, of the opposition Parbeszed (Dialogue) party, is being sworn in as an MP on Monday, taking a seat vacated by a colleague who is stepping down.
Mr Kocsis-Cake (pronounced "kochish-tsocker") has become a talking point in Hungary because of the strong anti-migrant rhetoric – particularly against non-whites – ratcheted up by members of the governing Fidesz party, its loyal national media and far-right groups like Jobbik.
"In the 1990s I was physically in danger a number of times when confronted by skinheads on the street. But now this is very unusual. Mostly I just get suspicious looks," Mr Kocsis-Cake told independent news website Index.hu.
Parbeszed won just five seats in the 2018 election, in which the right-wing Fidesz of Prime Minister Viktor Orban secured a super-majority of 133 seats and the ultra-nationalist Jobbik came second with 26 seats…
…Two different generations
Olivio Kocsis-Cake was born in 1980. His mother is Hungarian and his father, from Guinea-Bissau, came to Hungary via Senegal in 1976, aged 18.
Like many students invited to communist Eastern Europe from developing countries, Marcelo Cake-Baly studied and graduated at the Karl Marx Economics University. He settled and found work as a Budapest tram-driver and was even a one-time film actor…
Tags: BBC, BBC News, British Broadcasting Corporation, Hungary, Olivio Kocsis-Cake, Parbeszed Party, Tom Mulligan
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Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century
Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United Kingdom on 2018-05-25 02:20Z by Steven
Palgrave Macmilan
26 b/w illustrations
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-33927-0
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-33928-7
Chamion Caballero, Visiting Senior Fellow
Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader
University of Kent, United Kingdom
Presents a comprehensive history of racial mixing in Britain during the twentieth century
Contrasts 'ordinary' voices sourced from archival material from across the twentieth century with official media and government accounts of racial mixing in Britain
Formed the foundations of the popular BBC Two television series Mixed Brittannia that explored the history of Britain's mixed-race community
This book explores the overlooked history of racial mixing in Britain during the course of the twentieth century, a period in which there was considerable and influential public debate on the meanings and implications of intimately crossing racial boundaries.
Based on research that formed the foundations of the British television series Mixed Britannia, the authors draw on a range of firsthand accounts and archival material to compare 'official' accounts of racial mixing and mixedness with those told by mixed race people, couples and families themselves.
Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century shows that alongside the more familiarly recognised experiences of social bigotry and racial prejudice there can also be glimpsed constant threads of tolerance, acceptance, inclusion and 'ordinariness'. It presents a more complex and multifaceted history of mixed race Britain than is typically assumed, one that adds to the growing picture of the longstanding diversity and difference that is, and always has been, an ordinary and everyday feature of British life.
Introduction; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
'Disharmony of Physical, Mental and Temperamental Qualities': Race Crossing, Miscegenation and the Eugenics Movement; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
Mixed Race Communities and Social Stability; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
'Unnatural Alliances' and 'Poor Half-Castes': Representations of Racial Mixing and Mixedness and the Entrenching of Stereotypes; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
Fitting In and Standing Out: Lived Experiences of Everyday Interraciality; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
'Tan Yanks', 'Loose Women' and 'Brown Babies': Official Accounts of Mixing and Mixedness During the Second World War; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
'Undesirable Element': The Repatriation of Chinese Sailors and Break Up of Mixed Families in the 1940s; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
Conviviality, Hostility and Ordinariness: Everyday Lives and Emotions in the Second World War and Early Post-war Years; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
Redefining Race: UNESCO, the Biology of Race Crossing, and the Wane of the Eugenics Movement; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
The Era of Mass Immigration and Widespread Population Mixing; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
'Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Black Man?': Representation and Lived Experiences in the Post-war Period; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
The Emergence of the 'New Wave': Insider-Led Studies and Multifaceted Perceptions; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
Social Acceptance, Official Recognition, and Membership of the British Collectivity; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
A Postscript to the Twentieth Century: Mainstream and Celebrated Limitations, and Counter-narratives; Caballero, Chamion (et al.)
Tags: BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, Chamion Caballero, Mixed Britannia, Palgrave Macmilan, Peter Aspinall, Peter J. Aspinall
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A different portrait of black fatherhood
Posted in Articles, Arts, Asian Diaspora, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, United States on 2018-03-06 19:31Z by Steven
Zun Lee was raised in Germany by Korean parents – but as an adult he discovered his real father was a black American with whom his mother had had a brief affair.
After this discovery, he began to explore fatherhood among black Americans.
Lee says the US media mainly portrays black fathers in one of two ways:
the absent father, often portrayed as a "deadbeat"
the traditional family patriarch, as seen in TV programmes such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
And his project, on display at the Bronx Documentary Centre, in New York, aims for a more balanced and nuanced portrayal.
Tags: BBC, BBC News, photography, Zun Lee
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Children of black American GIs, Going on holiday with mum, Salome at the National Theatre
Posted in Audio, Autobiography, History, Media Archive, United Kingdom, Women on 2017-05-28 21:06Z by Steven
Jenni Murray, Presenter
Beverley Purcell, Producer
Carole Travers from Poole in Dorset is one of a number of mixed heritage children born to African-American fathers who were stationed in the UK during World War II. With their husbands away fighting the war, some women had relationships and children with them. Fiona Clampin talks to Carole who's been trying to trace her father the whole of her adult life, and to John who is still deeply affected by his early experiences.
With the Election looming, we're in Sunderland talking to some women about the issue that most concern them. The South African playwright and theatre director Yael Farber discusses her new play Salome, at The National Theatre, a radical revision of the biblical tale. And the joys and pitfalls of going on holiday with your mum no matter what age you are.
Listen to episode here.
Tags: BBC, BBC Radio, BBC Radio 4, Beverley Purcell, Carole Travers, Fiona Clampin, Jenni Murray, Woman's Hour, Yael Farber
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Terry and Judy – A Mixed Race Journey
Posted in Audio, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2016-11-23 21:16Z by Steven
The listening project: It's surprising what you hear when you listen
2016-11-23, 10:55Z
Fi Glover, Presenter
Marya Burgess, Producer
Fi Glover introduces a conversation between a mixed race couple who met at a time when their relationship was a lot more unusual than it is today. Another in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation – they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference – lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject.
Listen to the conversation here.
Tags: BBC, BBC Radio 4, Fi Glover, Marya Burgess
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