Light-skinned-ed Girl

May is Mixed Experience History Month 2013

It's May and that means it's Mixed Experience History Month, a month-long celebration of people and events that have shaped the Mixed experience.  I founded this celebration in 2007 with the hope of bringing awareness to the long history of racial and cultural connectedness.  I had become frustrated with the idea that my discussions of "mixed-ness" was for a small niche-group and set out to show that the Mixed experience is the American experience--that we're all part of this larger story.

In the last three years as I've traveled across the country with my book, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, I have been most heartened by the fact that my book hasn't just found a foothold in multiracial literature studies or just found an audience with multiracial indviduals and blended families, it has found a place in the mainstream.  People of all stripes and polka dots have related to the story and found a way to articulate, claim and explore their own mixed roots and connections.  I hope that is true for this project too.

Starting next week I will post a new profile of a person or event in the Mixed experience each weekday of the month.  If you have nominations for inclusion, please leave a comment below. 

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

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Roots, Race, and My Dad: My Newest Huffington Post Essay

I've done a lot of writing about my dad over the last 20 years since he died, but have kept much of it private.  I wrote this essay for a news organization but ultimately it didn't fit the series.  But I was happy with the balance in the piece, as well as the small measure of peace I found in writing it.  I hope you will take a read over at the Huffington Post: My Father's Silence, A Kind of Grace.

Bryan Stevenson: "We Need to Talk about an Injustice"

I posted this on my Facebook and Twitter accounts a couple of weeks ago, but it's so important and so moving and absolutely transforming--that I had to post it here too.

This is Bryan Stevenson's TED Talk on injustice, his grandmother, and the importance of sharing the truth of one's identity to help others.

 

 

Hunger Games Fans' Racist Remarks

I'm chiming in on this a little late, but it's been absolutely heart-breaking and horrifying--and I wasn't sure how to respond in words.

If you haven't heard: many Hunger Games book fans chimed in on Twitter about their disappointment that some of the book's characters were African-American in the film.  Okay, let's just say it the way it is: they tweeted hateful and racists things like:

"why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie"

AND from another Tweeter:

"kk call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn't as sad"

(Maybe there should have been a third "k" in that greeting?)

Heart-breaking, horrible and horrifying on so many levels: 1) that these folks are so limited (read racist); 2) that these young people can't muster any empathy for someone different; 3) that their imaginations are so limited.

BTW: As this blog post explains, Rue was described as brown skinned in the book.  Somehow, these Tweeters also failed in reading comprehension.  (In the film, Rue is played by the very talented Amandla Sternberg who happens to be a fellow Afro-Viking (African-American and Danish)--be sure to check her out in Columbiana too.)

What does this say about our society?

Mel the Milkbite is Mixed

I hadn't seen these commercials starring Mel, the Milkbite, until Laura M. and Jason S. brought them to my attention. 

What did I think, they asked?

Well, first let me explain: Mel, the Milkbite is a character created by Kraft to help sell a new granola bar that is half milk and half granola.  It has so much milk, they say, that it needs to be stored in the refrigerator.

So, the first of the ads I watched was called "Parents." Mel is talking to his parents: his mom is a glass of milk, his dad is a bowl of granola, and Mel asks woefully: "Did you think about the kids?"  I have to say, this did make feel me yucky.  It is, of course, the "well-intentioned" question of so many who oppose interracial and intercultural marriages--

The jingle is off-putting too: "I'm part milk and part granola, but mostly I'm confused."
But then there are several more Mel the Milkbite ads including one in which Mel allies himself with a spork (because he understands coming from two worlds); and one in which he goes to art therapy, etc. which are just kind of funny-- I laughed out loud at the Dating video.

The ads speak to a need to put humor into the discussions about the Mixed experience, but where does it cross the line and become mocking? I'm not sure. Thoughts?

CNN Dialogue with Wolf Blitzer

I'm excited to be a part of this new series CNN Dialogues on Race moderated with Wolf Blitzer on August 31 at 7PM in Atlanta. Other panelists include actor Edward James Olmos, Survivor winner Yul Kwon, and Professors Kris Marsh, and Dana White. For ticket information visit the university website.

Why is this blog called Light-skinned-ed Girl?

I was 11 the first time I heard the term "light-skinned-ed."  (And yes, the kids said it with the extra "ed.")

My family had just moved and we were living in a mostly black community for the first time. Someone had asked me the now-familiar question "What are you?"  I had learned pretty quickly that when people asked they wanted to know what race I was; why did I look the way I did?  "Black and white," I'd said.  "Oh," the girl said, "I thought you were just light-skinned-ed."

It baffled me at the time.

Now, I claim the term as my invitation or pass into black womanhood.  (I say black womanhood specifically because I felt most estranged from black women growing up--even though I wanted so much to belong.)

When I claim my light-skinned-ed-ness, it's not to valorize my skin color, but to accept the way that in some ways I belong to the world of black womanhood.  I can look like this and not have to Prove my allegiance.

Yes, well, then why claim it at all?  Why not be on firm ground and simply identify as a black woman?  Many women -- more light-skinned-ed than I -- have done that through the ages.  The answer is simply that it would negate my actual experience -- it doesn't tell the whole of the story I want to tell.

It's complicated this naming business.  I'm not sure that I've figured it out completely myself. 

The Black Family in the Obama Age

A reporter reached out to me for a story about the impact of the First Family being black.  Did I think it would change anything?  Well, there will be one more black couple for Essence to photograph for its black love cover.  

But he asked another question: did it make a difference that Michelle Obama is "not of a different race" or "ethnically ambiguous"?  I knew what he was getting at.  Successful black man doesn't marry white woman.  That's news!  Well, look, the news is I don't buy into that thinking anymore.  Believe me there was a (self-hating) stint during which I did.  I think it's time for women of color to give up the drama about the "white wife."  And I think we are.  Thoughts?

Zadi Smith on Black Authenticity

If I had known about writer Zadi Smith's talk last night at the New York Public Library, I surely would have been there.  But, lucky for me (and you), here is the audio recording! 

Wandering in the Red States in the Obama Age

We've been wandering through a very red state.  I have been on my ps & qs for fear of running into something I didn't want to run into.  Note: I did not go to the rope museum in Sheridan; the history of black people and ropes is not one I would like to re-live.  And I did not go to the Mint Bar, or to the bluegrass music bar--not knowing whether something (a word, a look, an anything) could disturb my peace and throw me off my game as I wrote.  I did return to the Silver Spur this week with my "white gang" as Kate called it--and found it a very different place than just a month ago.  I wasn't the one who integrated it.  There were some other colored folks (one and a half) in attendance that day.  How surprised was I?  And then yesterday, on the border of Wyoming and Idaho, we stopped for gas and a big soft drink with ice (for me it is always Diet Pepsi).  We commented on how cheap the gas was ($2.15/gallon--) and a woman behind us in line said: "It's great.  I hope my man Obama keeps the prices coming down."  Now, I understand this could have been patronizing.  But I didn't take it that way because she kept talking to us--chit chat--but she continued the conversation.  It was a really cool moment for me because I thought: now (white) folks have a way to connect with black people with whom they may not know how to connect.  Okay, yeah, this is naive.  And maybe she was making fun.  Even at the integrated Silver Spur there hung on the bulletin board a large facsimile of a $50 bill with a Sambo face instead of a president's.  But I liked being naive today.  I liked to know that I didn't have to be on edge.