JC
Newswise reports on a study to come out of the University of Maryland about marriages where one partner is black and one partner is white. While many of the interviewees mention that race is not central to the issues they face as a couple, the study shows that it remains an important dimension of the […]

CVK
NPR’s All Things Considered did a story on Mavin’s Generation Mix tour. You can listen to the feed online here: A Generation of Mixed Race Youth Speaks Out. The story is pretty basic, but at least it doesn’t further reinforce any of the awful stereotypes out there about mixed folks. Sometimes, that alone is […]

CVK
The San Fransisco Chronicle covers a study of Asian Americans in primetime TV that demonstrates (surprise, surprise) that they’re way under-represented:
Asians, who make up 5 percent of the U.S. population, play 2.7 percent of regular characters. It also shows virtually no Asian actors are on situation comedies, and the characters they play in dramas tend […]

CVK
California paper Red Bluff Daily News covers Ward “Moneybags” Connerly’s recent speech at a Republican fundraiser. Interesting that the paper refers to affirmative action as “racial preferencing.” Anyway, here’s Ward’s usual load of bull:
“It shouldn’t be controversial for me to say that giving a person 250 bonus points simply because of his or her race […]

JC

The NY Times featured an article in their Sunday Styles section about Mavin’s Generation Mix tour and some of the other activism that is coming out of the mixed community. We were especially excited to have Mixed Media Watch mentioned! This is definitely one of the better articles we have seen written about the mixed […]

JC
Nicholas Jones of the US Census Bureau has just released a report on the multiracial respondents of the 2000 Census, We the People of More Than One Race in the United States.
This report provides a portrait of the Two or More Races population in the United States and discusses the twelve largest race combinations within […]

CVK

Woah. Last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model was… interesting. They did a photo shoot where each model was transformed into an ethnicity different from their own, and were supposed to emote that ethnicity from within, or something. In one priceless moment, Tyra berated a model for not emoting “Eskimo” enough, saying: “Think about […]

CVK
The Contra Costa Times interviews Emily Raboteau, author of the newly released novel, The Professor’s Daughter. The article is pretty cheesy (the doll metaphor they start off with is STRAIGHT out of “Imitation of Life”) but the book sounds good. Like the novel’s protagonist, Raboteau is a young biracial woman. Here’s part of the Publisher’s […]

CVK
The Office for National Statistics has published a new report on inter-ethnic marriage statistics in the U.K:
Two per cent of marriages were between people from different ethnic backgrounds (219,000). Of these inter-ethnic marriages, most (198,000) included a White person…
The most common inter-ethnic marriages were between White and Mixed race people, 26 per cent of all […]

AUM (a new MMW contributor!)
In this article from the NY Times Opinion pages, Armand Marie Leroi argues that the concept of race as a genetic reality, a concept which we had all replaced with the easier-to swallow “race as a social construct” model, may actually have biological basis.
“The idea that human races are […]

JC
UCBerkeley News follows up on their article of last week about four mixed students in order to highlight some additional thoughts from other members of the Berkeley community.
Thus, for me, race is an artificial construct, which isolates me from those unknowledgeable of the biracial experience. At the same time, my races help me […]

CVK
This is the letter I wrote to Essence magazine, complimenting them on their profile of Mariah Carey. Historically, Essence has not been the most forward-looking in the way they’ve handled mixed race issues or interracial relationships. Therefore, it was refreshing to see a very different take on the topic in their April 2005 issue. In […]

CVK
Mariah Carey graces the cover of Essence’s April issue. Though the coverline takes a one-drop stance (”Mariah Carey: America’s Most Misunderstood Black Woman”), the article inside deals almost completely with her mixed identity, and makes for pretty interesting reading. Here are some excerpts:
So this isn’t a twenty-first-century version of Imitation of Life. Still, race and […]

JC
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports on the shutting down of Panzerfaust. This white-supremacy record label has gotten a lot of attention for their proactive distribution of hateful anti-ethnic messages to teenagers across the country. In September, Panzerfaust announced plans to pass out 100,000 copies of a “pro-white sampler CD.” Now they are in the […]

CVK

There’s a good article on UC Berkeley’s NewsCenter that explores what it’s like to be a mixed student at that school, where 22.9% of undergrads self-identified as mixed in a 2004 survey. (Across the UC system, the average was 25.8 percent. ) The article details the divergent experiences of four students, but also does a […]

JC
The New York Times reviews new release, Angry Black White Boy - Or, The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, by Adam Mansbach. Main character Macon Detornay is a “down whiteboy” who attempts to atone for his people’s sins and find acceptance within the black community by attacking and terrorizing other white people.
A graduate of Newton South […]

JC
A story in the Kalamazoo Gazette takes a look at the rising numbers of interracial marriages, the changes in anti-miscegenation laws, the attitude shifts, and then asks, have things really gotten better?
Davidson said it might be hard to determine how big an impact interracial marriages are having on race relations as a whole, but if […]

JC

Aaron McGruder of The Boondocks wrote “Moneybags” into Saturday’s strip….hmm…i’ve been wanting to give him a piece of my mind…gives me ideas. See it here.

ELW
I too saw ‘In Race We Lust’ last night. I agree that it did a pretty good job of talking about lots of the stereotypes.
What i did not like were the sections where they polled the various interviewees about which mixed celeb is more this or that (insert race). Like asking people who they […]

CVK
Just when you thought Ward “Moneybags” Connerly couldn’t possibly squeeze any more money out of pimping his mixed race identity to conservatives out to destroy affirmative action, along comes the Bradley Prize, which gave him a quarter million dollars for… well, just for being his adorable little self. The Washington Post reports on the evening […]