Tag Archives: Identity

Celebrating Multiracial Heritage

a multicolor banner

In honor of Multiracial Heritage Month, student group Mixed Kids of Middlebury (MKM) has organized a multimedia display of works created by and featuring multiracial individuals, interracial couples and interracial families. Come to the Davis Family Library atrium from Monday, April 2nd through Monday, April 9th to see it. Three students of multiracial heritage respond to questions about representation and identity below.

Participants:

  • senior Rachel Nelson (RN)
  • sophomore Coralie Tyler (CT)
  • sophomore Reg Eva Bod (EB)

In terms of multiracial identity, how do you identify?

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A photo of Middlebury student Rachel Nelson

RN: I’ve started identifying as “Not Black, Not White” or maybe just “Not”. Most of my life I identified as black and white.

CT:  I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Raised between the U.S., South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia. Ethnically, I’m Irish, Scottish and German through my dad, and I’m Afro-French, Portuguese, and Japanese through my mom. I always identified as being mixed race/multiracial.

EB: Mixed. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Raised in Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

Did you have any exposure to any books/shows/movies featuring and/or reflecting multiracial individuals and their families growing up? How did you feel about them?

RN:  Hm. I feel like I had access to ‘African’/’African American’ things and white people things. I don’t think I was exposed to anything involving a mixed couple/mixed people… unless it was like a novel I read on slavery and about how lighter slaves worked in the house and could occasionally read, escape easier… but yeah. Not like that was a role model for me. And I read a ton growing up.

I don’t think not having a role model affected me negatively much growing up. My dad’s biracial, and I’m the kid who literally looks half him and half my white mother.

My parents did a really good job at letting us know we were different, they were talking awhile ago about our drawings of our family and we always chose the yellow crayon for white people and tried mixing the yellow with the brown for us kids. I’m the youngest of three kids. Sometime in later middle school the fact that I was completely white passing made itself clear to me. When the ‘only white’ kids could get tanner than me, or kept their tans longer— I was really jealous actually. When I was in like, elementary school, I regularly would pick a freckle/birthmark out on my skin and wish I was that color, imagine myself like that, so I could be like my aunts.

I wish I had more exposure to multiracial identities growing up. I think it would’ve helped me understand what being white-passing means and given me more strength in dealing with that and who I am.

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Founder and president of Mixed Kids of Middlebury Coralie Tyler

CT: I don’t actively recall recognizing prominent characters like me (whether it’s similar to my background or not) in TV shows and films although I would now be able to pinpoint several examples from my childhood. I am definitely more aware of mixed race families and individuals whenever I partake in media these days.

My parents always pointed out actors, athletes, musicians and other famous figures that are mixed race.  Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Kimora Lee Simmons are ones that I recall being in awe of as they were like me. As a family, we still like to causally point out mixed people in the media to each other.  My brother does it a lot with athletes and musicians while I tend to do it more with movies, TV shows and fashion since that’s my niche.

My parents also made it a point to expose us to multiracial kids and their families (regardless of the mixture), introduce us to their multiracial adult friends and surround us with people with who saw us as mixed race.

That definitely played a huge part in being confident and proud of our heritages and uniqueness for my brother and me.

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Middlebury College sophomore Eva Bod

 EB: When I was little, I had a cloth doll named Babette. My hair was blonde like her yarn hair, but my nose was round and I wanted it to be like hers. I waited until I was 11 to see a black Disney princess. My lips were full like Tiana’s (from The Princess and the Frog), but my color didn’t match her beautiful skin. It wasn’t until I found Jidenna, a rapper/singer/songwriter, that I learned about mixed excellence. He found power in fashion, and I found power in his voice. For those unfamiliar with him: Jidenna grew up in Wisconsin and Massachusetts (like me) and spends his time curating his signature style, marrying European and West African aesthetics. Our parents taught us “how to make a silver spoon out of plastic” in an environment that uses binaries against us. In his words, “well done’s better than well said” (a lyric from Jidenna’s “Long Live the Chief“).

What do you wish people understood more about multiracial identities?

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A photo of musical artist Jidenna

EB:  I wish people understood non-binary racial identity. I am not a chameleon, becoming “white” or “black” depending on my surroundings. I am European, Island Carib, Asian, and African.  Just because my father is not African American, doesn’t mean he’s ignorant to the black experience in America. He is black and he has been discriminated against, too. Blackness is not always binary.

Some white people will see me as white, and some POCs (people of color) will see me as black. I am neither, I am both.

RN: I’m invisible. In all settings.

I heard a girl at the Loving Day* celebration (a court case that has twice enabled me to exist legally) standing right behind me complaining about all the white people there, and I was there with my white-passing friend and his white girlfriend and I just turned around and was like, “Hi, we’re not white, we’re just white-passing,” and my friend waved. I didn’t want to deal with it beyond that, so I turned around. And I understand this skin tone gives me so much privilege, but like everyone, I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t want it.

I don’t usually remember specific instances of white people being racist. Probably because I avoid those people and haven’t worked in really conservative and rural areas. Or maybe because I swallow it down.

I feel like whenever we talk about race, I have to ‘come-out’ about it. That gives me a lot of anxiety because I don’t feel like I have a claim to say that I am either of these two races. It’s probably why I’m identifying as ‘Not’ now.

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Middlebury junior Pele Voncujovi and Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer contribute to the In Your Own Words oral histories project. Pele is of multiracial heritage, having one parent who Ghanaian and another who is Japanese. Listen in to hear his thoughts.

CT: That being multiracial is being intersectional 24/7. Being mixed race means that you have multiple backgrounds, cultures, belief systems and histories within you. You find yourself looking at things in multiple ways that helps you find a perspective that people may not necessarily discover. I am unable to look at things from one “side” without having to reconcile it with the others. By the time you combine that with your gender, sexuality, upbringing, nationality, etc., you realize that the way you see things is entirely different and that not everyone would get that. I think it’s the most beautiful part of being mixed.

Are there any sources (books, magazines, movies, shows, music) you would recommend to learn more about multiracial heritage and multiracial families/ the historical and cultural contributions of multiracial individuals?

covert art from the Loving DVD

Loving is a biopic that follows the lives of an interracial couple who chose to be together when the law would not allow it. It can be borrowed from the Davis Family Library.

CT: Loving, which is a film based off of the Loving v. Virginia case back in 1967. Although the case isn’t very well known, it was responsible for the legalization of interracial marriage and paved the way for same-sex marriage rights later on.

Once in a while, I read and re-read this article  Meghan Markle wrote for Elle Magazine back when she was still an actress titled, “I’m More Than An Other.” She talks about her sense of identity and how her upbringing as a mixed race child impacted her sense of self, career and so on. As she has been recently catapulted into the world’s public sphere as the newest member of the British Royal Family, it’s amazing to see such a person unapologetically self-identify as multiracial, which plays a huge role in representation and awareness for mixed race individuals around the world in this era.

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Meghan Markle is an American actress who is currently engaged to Prince Harry of Wales. She is biracial, having one parent who is African American and another who is Caucasian American.

EB: If you’d like a statement for allies asking to be taught about race, read: “When You Walk Into the Valley” by John Metta, a writer on Medium.

*Loving Day (June 12) is the date that commemorates the Loving v. Virginia case that lifted the ban on interracial marriages throughout the United States back in 1967. Today, it is celebrated by multiracial families and individuals around the world.

To see an exhaustive list of the materials included in the Davis Family Library’s atrium display, visit this spreadsheet.

 

 

 

Trapped in the ’70s, Dreaming about the ’40s: What about Tomorrow?

I’d like to write this entry in a slightly less belligerent tone that usual. Not that I think it will offend anyone in particular, but because I should really practice calming down once in a while.

Lebanon will soon be remembering the 35th anniversary of the beginning of its disastrously famous civil war (April 13th), and an article I read today on NowLebanon inspired me to think over the issue a bit. NowLebanon is an independent news site that leans towards the March 14th end of the political spectrum, and so what it says has to be taken with a grain or two of salt, but nonetheless I found the article, which was about memorials and memory in Lebanon, fairly spot-on.

In general, Lebanon is not very gung-ho about remembering its Civil War – it’s a touchy subject. Unfortunately, the end of the War did not really coincide with any sort of meaningful change of relations or attitudes between the parties involved – it was more like an end to killing. While nice enough, the Taif Accord did not really change the political scenery enough to prevent another war in the future. Furthermore, it is the older generation – those who experienced the war – that is least interested in violence, but the newest generation has been raised in an environment in which it hasn’t really been public discussion. Their discussions have been mostly private, and (if they’re anything like mine were) highly partison, which simply hands down old prejudices instead of rethinking them. The current generation, then, remembers very little or nothing of the War and its effect on the country. This is very, very dangerous.

In the developing world, the million dollar question has long been simply, ‘how do we move forward?’ The reality is that everyone has different ideas of what sort of future they want for their country, and Lebanon – a pluralistic society to some extent – is no exception. A country that cannot agree on the legacy of its past is crippled in the present, and so the task of moving forward, of making life better for the people now and in the future, is shelved or dead in the water. It is therefore important, one way or another – through public or private initiatives – for the Lebanese to address their past.

Possibly the worst thing the country did when it began reconstruction after the Civil War was to hire an architect to design the downtown area (now Place de l’Etoile) who essentially recreated the French mandate in architecture. Rather than hiring the famous Bernard Khouri, who had grand plans for Beirut that aimed to create a city space ‘of the future,’ Solidere recreated Lebanon as people wanted to remember it before the War, looking towards a moment of past glory that is in no way in sync with the present reality. Now, I will be the last to say that Place de l’Etoile is not pretty – it is beautiful, in fact. But instead of creating an urban space to orient Lebanese towards the future, it merely traps them in grandiose memories of a lost past – the French mandate and the Maronite hegemony associated with – whose power inequalities are simply  untenable today. It was the easy way out to construct this, because it essentially forgot the two decades of war. Personally, I’m glad some neighborhoods of the city are still gutted and flame-charred, because at least young passersby will look, shudder, and contemplate.

As the NowLebanon article notes, there is very little in the way of public art of memorials to form a coherent national history of the war, accessible to all Lebanese. The paucity of memorials is awful, but it should be acknowledged that memorials are almost impossible to agree upon, even when everyone is happy. Germany has had an awful time erecting monuments to the Holocaust, but there they are – and they are some of the best ones in the world. Without addressing its dark past, Germany could not move forward, and move forward it did. Lebanon, though not a mirror of Germany, will find its path ahead through this very lesson.
Why am I writing about this? Well (and here I’m going to mention that I am Lebanese-American again), it touches me pretty directly. On the other hand, Lebanon is often called the microcosm of the Middle East, and the lessons learned there might be applicable to its regional neighbors like Egypt and Iraq. So if I’m talking about a ‘lesson,’ it’s more or less something everyone already knows:  there can be no future if you are stuck in the past.  So please, let’s do ourselves a favor and get out of the past.

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Identity Prospecting

In the latest step in the on-going conflict over memory-rights and the Holy Land, Benjamin Netanyahu decided today to include two shrines located in the West Bank – among them the Cave of the Patriarchs – in the list of Israeli national heritage sites. For those of you unfamiliar, the Cave of the Patriarchs is considered holy by the whole Abrahamic tradition and is thought to be the resting place of Abraham and a few others of Biblical note.  The stories can be read here, here and here. As is its wont, the New York Times ran a story that you had to know existed to read.

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It is easy to appreciate the significance of this move given the rhetoric and the people cheering for it, namely, that ‘…Our existence depends not only on the IDF or our economic resilience – it is anchored in…the national sentiment that we will bestow upon the coming generations and in our ability to justify our connection to the land,” to take that wholesale from Ha-Aretz. This is not new, but it is reflective of past policies of landscape and memory claiming that have taken place in Israel and the West Bank more specifically.

We know that historical memory is a touchy subject, but it’s especially touchy in this case because it maintains the tradition of mingling national identity with religion. While it is unclear what real effects will be felt now that they are on a register of Israeli historical sites, it is obvious that the Palestinian reaction has not been welcoming, again pointing to discrimination and an effort to wipe them off the historical map. That the government would budget 500,000 shekels for the ‘renovation’ of these sites struck me as particularly ominous.

If we want peace – two-state solution, one-state solution, whatever – it cannot be achieved by claiming sites of historical memory. It just can’t. If there is to be some modicum of peace between Palestinians and Israelis, it has to be on the basis of shared heritage, not cultural domination. Mark Regev commented that ‘the list was not meant to set borders,’ but it has already violated some of the most important borders, all of this even if we discount settlement activity and the fact that Hebron is smack in the middle of the West Bank. Israeli conservatives (and the Israeli government) should consider that strengthening the Israeli national narrative comes, sometimes, at the cost of prospects for peace with those troublesome Palestinians, who have their own legitimate historical connection to the land.

Look, I do not know what will actually come of this aside from the emotional responses (which are powerful enough on their own), but I cannot help but think of how beautiful this sight could be in the future: Muslims, Christians and Jews worshiping their shared forefathers. Instead, it has been a battleground for the soul of the Holy Land, and looks like it will continue to be so, at least in the near future.

Doha To Be Capital of A Dream

This morning I stumbled upon an old edition of The Economist – which I do not typically read – from July, treating on an topic that is occasionally forgotten: Arab nationalism. The article was entitled “The Arab World Wakes,” and went on to treat the Arab world as if it were a functioning whole of sorts, with shared problems, shared achievements, and a shared future.

…whoa.

For those of us who have spent time in the Middle East, are about to, or have some other backhand form of experience with the region, suffice it to say that the idea of Arab unity has been something of a disappointment – look at the history of secular and semi-secular Arab nationalism if you are eager for information. Arabs are the first to admit that there have been complications on the path to decolonization, like Israel, but when measured against the historic dream of a unified political entity embracing all Arabs has proven unrealistic with the departure of the British and the French and the establishment of disparate centers of power.

But is that true? As an Arab-American, I am inclined to be skeptical of the rhetoric of which my father (who is Lebanese) is so very fond, and to focus on what divides the Arab nation today – political boundaries, economic might, patron-states, religious identity – the important stuff. The sad fact that a politically unified Arab state is so unlikely in the offing has made me conflate statehood with collective identity more than is healthy, especially given my academic focus in the discipline of political geography.

After I read that article, I noticed that celebrations had begun in Doha, which has just been crowned Capital of Arab Culture for 2010. For those of you who are not familiar, this is an annual endeavor begun in 1996 with Cairo that sought to give a formal edge to Arab cultural identity and unite the Arab peoples beyond their borders – in addition to non-Westerners – in appreciating the contributions that Arabs have made to world civilization. The opening operetta of the ceremony was entitled “بيت الحكمة” or “The House of Knowledge,” after the legendary library of Baghdad that produced so many vital translations for Arab and, eventually, European scientists of the Middle Ages. A clip (in Arabic, sorry) from Al-Jazeera is available here.

Watching the performers dance about I was moved to appreciate what I should have already known, which is that political power is not the same as collective identity or nationalism; what the Arabs as a people have done in Doha is create a program to remind the world of this. As much as we may believe that Lebanese, Egyptians, Syrians and Emiratis do not get along politically, they are bound by something much more significant than mere politics, which is the belief that their ties are something that matter. That is why Gulf states invest so heavily in Arab business across the region, that is why they have funded the rebuilding of towns across Southern Lebanon, and that is why the people continue to express what my father has told me since childhood – that all Arabs are brothers.

So when you read this article, try not to be too skeptical. Arab nationalism is not dead – it’s simply dormant.