tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/multiracial-25304/articlesMultiracial – The Conversation2020-11-24T13:08:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1495132020-11-24T13:08:52Z2020-11-24T13:08:52ZA century ago, James Weldon Johnson became the first Black person to head the NAACP<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370552/original/file-20201120-21-1mlayw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C14%2C609%2C433&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These NAACP leaders met at a 1916 conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a50780/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In this moment of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/12/after-this-summers-protests-americans-think-differently-about-race-that-could-last-generations/">national racial reckoning</a>, many Americans are taking time to learn about chapters in U.S. history left out of their school texbooks. The early years of the <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NAACP_intro.shtml">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>, a civil rights group that initially coalesced around a commitment to end the brutal practice of lynching in the United States, is worth remembering now.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html">An interracial group of women and men</a> founded the group that would soon become known as the NAACP in 1909. A coalition of white journalists, lawyers and progressive reformers led the effort. It would take another 11 years until, in 1920, <a href="https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-james-weldon-johnson/">James Weldon Johnson</a> became the first Black person to formally serve as its top official.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://anthonysiracusa.org/">I explain</a> in my forthcoming book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663005/nonviolence-before-king/">Nonviolence Before King: The Politics of Being and the Black Freedom Struggle</a>,” interracial organizing was extremely rare in the early 20th century. But where it did take place – like in many of the summer of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests – it was because some white Americans united with Black Americans over their shared concern about wanton violence directed against Black people.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C237%2C2061%2C1612&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A medallion monument of a Black man and a white woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C237%2C2061%2C1612&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370420/original/file-20201119-23-e8h0xz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary White Ovington were among the NAACP’s founders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/65193799@N00/168549224">David/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>Lynching in America</h2>
<p>Between 1877 and 1945, more than <a href="https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/">4,400 Black Americans were lynched</a>. Many of these lynchings were public events that attracted thousands of spectators <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807871973/lynching-and-spectacle/">in a carnival-like atmosphere</a>. </p>
<p>A violent attack by white people on the Black community in Abraham Lincoln’s longtime hometown inspired the NAACP’s founding. In August 1908, two African American men in Springfield, Illinois were accused without clear evidence of murder and assault and taken into custody.</p>
<p>When a white mob that had organized to lynch the two men, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/land-lincoln-long-buried-traces-race-riot-come-surface-180971036/">Joe James and George Richardson</a>, failed to locate them, it lynched two other Black men instead: <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2015.139">Scott Burton and William Donnegan</a>. White mobs raged for days afterwards, burning black homes and businesses to the ground.</p>
<p>Only after Illinois Gov. Charles Deneen called in <a href="http://springfieldnaacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Springfield-Il-1908-Race-Riot-Brochure2012.pdf">thousands of the state’s National Guardsmen</a> was the <a href="https://www.nprillinois.org/post/efforts-rebuild-after-springfield-s-1908-race-riot-still-ongoing-0#stream/0">white mob violence</a> quelled.</p>
<h2>‘The call’ for racial justice</h2>
<p>Two of the NAACP’s most prominent African American founders were <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dubois/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, a sociologist, historian, activist and author, and the journalist and activist <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett">Ida B. Wells</a>, who had been publicly challenging lynching since the early 1890s.</p>
<p>They were joined by a number of white people, including New York Post publisher <a href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2009633550/">Oswald Garrison Villard</a> and social worker <a href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003669896/">Florence Kelley</a> in issuing “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/civil-rights-and-the-making-of-the-modern-american-state/D13BB115C9C82A5B5053E65053E0AE85">the call</a>” for racial justice on the centenary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth: Feb. 12, 1909.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a young women in the late 1800s" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370195/original/file-20201118-19-u24s3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells was among the NAACP’s founders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93505758/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The group organized a precursor to the NAACP known as the <a href="https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/reconstruction-and-its-impact/platform">National Negro Committee</a> in 1909, which built on earlier efforts known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/naacps-first-meeting-was-held-in-canada-but-there-were-no-canadians-there-110762">Niagara Movement</a>. This loose affiliation of Black and white people <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html#obj2">called on</a> “all believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” Du Bois chaired a <a href="https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-mary-white-ovington/">May 1910 conference</a> that led to the NAACP’s official formation.</p>
<p>As the historian <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/lift-every-voice">Patricia Sullivan writes</a> the NAACP emerged as a “militant” group focused on ensuring equal protection of under the law for Black Americans.</p>
<p>The NAACP’s founders, in their words, envisioned a moral struggle for the “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/civil-rights-and-the-making-of-the-modern-american-state/D13BB115C9C82A5B5053E65053E0AE85">brain and soul of America</a>.” They saw lynching as the preeminent threat not only to Black life in America but to democracy itself, and they began to organize chapters across the nation to wage legal challenges to violence and segregation.</p>
<p>The group also focused its early efforts on challenging portrayals of Black men as violent brutes, starting its own publication in 1910, <a href="https://www.thecrisismagazine.com/">The Crisis</a>. Du Bois was tapped to edit the publication, and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40338447">Wells was excluded</a> from this early work despite her expertise and prominence as a writer – an exclusion she later blamed on Du Bois.</p>
<p>Although the group’s early work was an interracial effort, according to historian Patricia Sullivan, all <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/lift-every-voice">members of its initial executive committee were white</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old NAACP poster calls attention to 3,436 people lynched between 1889 and 1922." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The NAACP produced this anti-lynching poster in 1922.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.si.edu/object/poster-naacp-anti-lynching-campaign:nmaahc_2011.57.9?edan_q=naacp&oa=1&edan_fq%5B0%5D=media_usage:CC0&destination=/search/collection-images&searchResults=1&id=nmaahc_2011.57.9">National Museum of African American History and Culture</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>James Weldon Johnson</h2>
<p><a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/lift-every-voice">James Weldon Johnson</a> joined the organization as a field secretary in 1916 and quickly expanded the NAACP’s work into the U.S. South. Johnson was already an accomplished figure, having served as U.S. consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua under the Taft and Roosevelt administrations.</p>
<p>Johnson also wrote a novel called “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man/oclc/631781750&referer=brief_results">The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man</a>” – a powerful literary work about a Black man born with skin light enough to pass for white. And he wrote, with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, the song “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469638607/may-we-forever-stand/">Lift Every Voice and Sing</a>,” which to this day serves as the unofficial Black national anthem.</p>
<p>As field secretary, Johnson oversaw circulation of The Crisis throughout the South. The NAACP’s membership grew from <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NAACP_map-basic.shtml">8,765 in 1916 to 90,000 in 1920</a> as the number of its local chapters exploded from 70 to 395. Johnson also organized more than 10,000 marchers in the NAACP’s <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-silent-protest-parade">Silent Protest Parade of 1917</a> – the first major street protest staged against lynching in the U.S.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man in suit holds hold-fashioned telephone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Weldon Johnson became the first Black American to head the NAACP in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93505758/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These clear successes led the <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/lift-every-voice">board to name Johnson to be the first person</a> – and the first Black American – to serve as the NAACP’s executive secretary in November 1920, cementing Black control over the organization. He united the hundreds of newly organized local branches in national legal challenges to white violence and anti-Black discrimination, and made the NAACP the most influential organization in the fight for Black equality before World War II.</p>
<p>Johnson united local chapters in advocating for the introduction of an <a href="https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Temporary-Farewell/Anti-Lynching-Legislation/">anti-lynching bill</a> in Congress in 1921. Despite efforts in 2020 to finally <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/rand-paul-anti-lynching-bill-senate.html">accomplish this goal</a>, the U.S. still lacks a law on the books outlawing racist lynching.</p>
<p>Johnson did, however, preside over the NAACP when the group notched its first of many major Supreme Court wins. In 1927, the court ruled in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/273/536/">Nixon v. Herndon</a> that a Texas law barring Black people from participating in Democratic Party primaries violated the constitution.</p>
<p>Johnson’s tenure at the NAACP’s helm ended in 1930, but his ability to unite local chapters in national litigation laid much of the groundwork for numerous Supreme Court wins in the years ahead, including the 1954 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> Supreme Court decision which marked the beginning of the end for legalized segregation in the United States.</p>
<p>In later years, Johnson became the <a href="https://nyunews.com/2019/02/28/under-the-arch-black-history-month-nyu/#:%7E:text=James%20Weldon%20Johnson%2C%20the%20first,the%20%E2%80%9CBlack%20National%20Anthem.%E2%80%9D">first Black professor to teach at New York University</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i30SdcfEpSE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Alicia Keyes performing ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The work continues</h2>
<p>Among Johnson’s contributions to the NAACP was hiring <a href="https://www.si.edu/object/walter-francis-white:npg_NPG.82.197">Walter White</a>, an African American leader who succeeded Johnson as executive secretary. White presided over the organization between 1930 and 1955, a period that included many successful legal actions.</p>
<p>The struggle launched by Du Bois, Wells and Johnson and their white allies a century ago continues today. The killing of Black Americans that led to the NAACP’s founding remains a harrowing continuity from the Jim Crow era.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In 2020, 155 years after the Civil War ended, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/03/us/politics/mississippi-voters-approve-flag-with-magnolia-instead-of-confederate-symbol.html">the people of Mississippi voted to remove the Confederate battle flag</a> from their state flag, confirming an act Mississippi lawmakers undertook a few months earlier. Utah and Nebraska <a href="https://apple.news/AZdOUwSoRRwSwRiHKwLaAsA">stripped archaic slavery provisions</a> from their state constitutions. Alabama nixed language <a href="https://www.fox10tv.com/news/alabama/alabama-voters-back-move-to-cut-racist-language-from-constitution/article_6b4aa049-4402-5a1b-ac89-c625c5e13ba5.html">mandating school segregation</a> from its state constitution.</p>
<p>These changes were the result of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">millions of Americans</a> joining together to take action against racism, a sign that an interracial movement for justice in America has never been stronger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Siracusa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The influential civil rights group got its start following a wave of brutal white-led violence against Black people in Springfield, Illinois.Anthony Siracusa, Director of Community Engagement, University of MississippiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1452332020-09-01T19:13:47Z2020-09-01T19:13:47ZWith Kamala Harris, Americans yet again have trouble understanding what multiracial means<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355624/original/file-20200831-21-1j3dgxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C29%2C2436%2C1590&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/democratic-vice-presidential-nominee-sen-kamala-harris-news-photo/1228230133?adppopup=true">Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>News that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/politics/kamala-harris-vp-biden.html">Sen. Kamala Harris was Joe Biden’s choice for the 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee</a> drove speculation and argumentation about her identity. The big question appeared to be, “Is Kamala Harris truly African American?” </p>
<p>There were numerous articles and opinion pieces about whether Harris can legitimately <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/14/nation/kamala-harris-is-black-woman-its-not-complicated/">claim to be African American</a>; the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/the-wikipedia-war-over-kamala-harris-race/615250/">authenticity of her Black identity</a> if she has an Indian mother; what it means for her to be <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/8/14/21366307/kamala-harris-black-south-asian-indian-identity">biracial</a>; and other articles opining and speculating about her racial, ethnic and even <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/some-questions-kamala-harris-about-eligibility-opinion-1524483">national</a> identity. </p>
<p>Harris, the daughter of immigrant parents from Jamaica and India, identifies as <a href="https://www.harris.senate.gov/about">Black/African American while also embracing her Indian heritage</a>. Yet the questions in social media and news outlets swirling around her identities demonstrate a continued misunderstanding of race and mixed-race people.</p>
<h2>Where do loyalties lie?</h2>
<p>While the debates about Harris’ racial identities may seem new given the recent media attention focused on her, they are similar to the commentary other high-profile mixed-race people have received. </p>
<p>When I did research for my chapter on Tiger Woods in my book “<a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/racial-ambiguity-in-asian-american-culture/9780813570693">Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture</a>,” I found much criticism of Woods’ calling himself “Cablinasian” (a word Woods made up as a teen to account for his Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian heritages) and for not solely identifying as Black. Several articles expressed <a href="http://www.espn.com/gen/s/2002/0521/1385355.html">confusion about his multiraciality</a> – the uncertainty over the most accurate racial category to fit him into. </p>
<p>The discussions of Woods mirror the critiques of Harris. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tiger Woods." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355625/original/file-20200831-20-n61bfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Golfer Tiger Woods has undergone scrutiny similar to Harris about his multiracial identity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tiger-woods-of-the-united-states-looks-on-from-the-seventh-news-photo/1269527580?adppopup=true">Stacy Revere/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The competing interpretations of Harris’ identity, like with Woods, seem to be a function of her multiple, intersecting identities (including race, class and gender) as well as the public’s <a href="https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1748&context=dissertations_mu">deep discomfort with people who don’t fit into fixed boxes</a>. </p>
<p>For example, some people want to <a href="https://apnews.com/afs:Content:9220904531">disavow Harris’ Blackness</a> because of her multiple ethnic and racial affiliations. Others claim her as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/politics/kamala-harris-heritage/index.html">Jamaican</a> or <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-sen-kamala-harris-indian-heritage-pioneering-mother-propelled-her-n1237347">Indian</a>, which serves as evidence of her success as a member of an ethnic group or which celebrates a shared cultural connection with her. </p>
<p>Some see her Jamaican and Indian ethnicities as diminishing her claim to a Black American experience, unlike those who are known as <a href="https://ados101.com/about-ados">“ADOS,”</a> or American Descendants of Slavery. Because Harris’ ancestors do not include those who were enslaved in the U.S., <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/controversial-group-ados-divides-black-americans-fight-economic/story?id=66832680">ADOS’s concern</a> is that neither she nor her family can know the deep historical pain of U.S. anti-Black racism.</p>
<p>Embedded in this concern are echoes of the questions Black Americans face who have <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/what-is-racial-passing-ijx09h/">passed</a>, who <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/passing-passing-peculiarly-american-racial-tradition-approaches-irrelevance/">chose whiteness</a> to escape slavery or the Jim Crow South or those who choose multiraciality to flee the social stigma of Blackness. Questioning Harris’ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/14/why-some-african-americans-are-questioning-kamala-harriss-blackness/">bona fides to being a Black American</a> is questioning where her loyalties lie. </p>
<h2>‘100% Black and 100% Japanese’</h2>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/opinion/kamala-harris-black-identity.html">political reasons why some may want to discredit Harris’ claims to Blackness</a>, believing that saying she’s not truly Black means she shouldn’t be relatable to Black voters.</p>
<p>But the desire to see Harris as only Black or worry that she is not truly African American derives from the racist U.S. past of the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html">one-drop rule</a> of racial impurity, which sociologist F. James Wood has described as the idea that “a single drop of ‘black blood’ makes a person a black.” That was an ideology from the majority of U.S. history – from its founding through to the Jim Crow era – when race was firmly believed to be a matter of blood. </p>
<p>Scientists for well over half a century have <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/">disproven any link between race and genetics</a>. Scholars have been writing and researching, for decades, about how <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction">race is a social construction</a> rather than a biological absolute.</p>
<p>But in public discussion in the U.S., race is treated as an entity that can be measured and labeled. That is why people are questioning the validity of Harris’ African American identity. They believe that her racial affiliation can somehow be quantified and weighed on a scale of <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/kamala-harris-not-black-ados-reparations-movement.html">authenticity</a>. </p>
<p>Underlying these questions of authenticity are questions of legitimacy. <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/multiracial-in-america/">Multiracial people are constantly confronted by</a> those who question their whole selves and their choice to authentically identify with multiple races. For these critics, to qualify for membership in a race or ethnicity means one must be 100% of that group. Anything less means you cannot be a real member of any given culture, ethnicity or race. </p>
<p>Yet the reality and experiences of multiracial people’s lives, like that of Harris, suggest that basic math cannot capture the realities of what it means to embody multiple races and ethnicities. As one subject of multiracial artist Kip Fulbeck’s photo installation of mixed-race Asian Americans in <a href="http://kipfulbeck.com/the-hapa-project/">The Hapa Project</a> states, “I am 100% Black and 100% Japanese.” </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Evolution of racial categories</h2>
<p>Racial identity is not only about external features (eye shape, hair texture, skin color) and ancestral lines. It is about the cultural and social habits and rituals that people participate in as they claim their affiliations with ethnic and racial groups.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1141375083807748096"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/xz7rNOAFkgE">The Indian food that Harris consumes</a> speaks volumes about the ethnic influences she embraces, as does <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/16/kamala-harris-grew-up-mostly-white-world-then-she-went-black-university-black-city/?arc404=true">the Black sorority she pledged and the historically Black college she attended</a>. </p>
<p>Anyone confused about Kamala Harris’ multiraciality may recall that the U.S. is a nation that was not built by a single ethnic or racial group. </p>
<p>Indeed, U.S. land was taken from various Indigenous nations and built by the enslaved labor of people from multiple African nations and tribes for the benefit of others who hailed from a variety of European nations. And other immigrants from Latin America and the Pacific Rim settled in North America and made the U.S. their home. </p>
<p>Harris, as the U.S.’s first multiracial, multiethnic female vice presidential candidate, reflects the evolution of racial categories, which coincides with an ever-evolving understanding of race and racism in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Ho is the current president of the Association for Asian American Studies.</span></em></p>While the debates about Kamala Harris’ multiraciality may seem new, they are similar to the commentary other high-profile mixed-race people in the US have received about their racial identities.Jennifer Ho, Professor. Asian American Studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/991732018-07-05T10:38:24Z2018-07-05T10:38:24ZHow do Americans really feel about interracial couples?<p>According to the most recent U.S. census, <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/">approximately 15 percent</a> of all newlywed couples are interracial. More interracial relationships are also appearing in the media – <a href="https://splinternews.com/2015-was-a-huge-year-for-interracial-relationships-on-t-1793853816">on television</a>, <a href="https://www.economist.com/prospero/2016/12/08/loving-and-a-united-kingdom">in film</a> and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/11/gay-commerial-honeymaidadvertising.html">in advertising</a>. </p>
<p>These trends suggest that great strides have been made in the roughly 50 years since the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/11/us/50-years-after-loving-v-virginia.html">struck down anti-miscegenation laws</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-FtUAvQAAAAJ&hl=en">But as a psychologist who studies racial attitudes</a>, I suspected that attitudes toward interracial couples may not be as positive as they seem. My <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116300555">previous work</a> had provided some evidence of bias against interracial couples. But I wanted to know how widespread that bias really is. </p>
<h2>What does each race think?</h2>
<p>To answer this question, my collaborator James Rae and I recruited participants from throughout the U.S. to <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618783713">examine</a> implicit and explicit attitudes toward black-white interracial couples. </p>
<p>Psychologists typically differentiate between explicit biases – which are controlled and deliberate – and implicit biases, which are automatically activated and tend to be difficult to control. </p>
<p>So someone who plainly states that people of different races shouldn’t be together would be demonstrating evidence of explicit bias. But someone who reflexively thinks that interracial couples would be less responsible tenants or more likely to default on a loan would be showing evidence of implicit bias. </p>
<p>In this case, we assessed explicit biases by simply asking participants how they felt about same-race and interracial couples. </p>
<p>We assessed implicit biases using something called the <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html">implicit association test</a>, which requires participants to quickly categorize same-race and interracial couples with positive words, like “happiness” and “love,” and negative words, like “pain” and “war.” If it takes participants longer to categorize interracial couples with positive words, it’s evidence that they likely possess implicit biases against interracial couples. </p>
<p>In total, we recruited approximately 1,200 white people, over 250 black people and over 250 multiracial people to report their attitudes. We found that overall, white and black participants from across the U.S. showed statistically significant biases against interracial couples on both the implicit measure and the explicit measure. </p>
<p>In contrast, participants who identified as multiracial showed no evidence of bias against interracial couples on either measure. </p>
<p>The figure below shows the results from the implicit association test. The lines indicate the average discrepancy in the length of time it took participants to associate interracial couples with positive words, when compared to associating same-race couples with positive words. Notice that for multiracial participants, this average discrepancy overlaps with zero, which indicates a lack of bias. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226156/original/file-20180704-73335-1xl8hx4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the implicit association test, black and white participants took longer to associate people in interracial relationships with positive words, like ‘happiness’ and ‘love.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Allison Skinner and James Rae</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Next is a figure detailing the results from the explicit bias test, with lines measuring average levels of explicit bias against interracial couples. Positive values indicate bias against interracial couples, while negative values indicate bias in favor of interracial couples. Note that multiracial participants actually show a bias in favor of interracial couples.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226157/original/file-20180704-73303-13sdywx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the explicit bias test, black and white participants expressed a significant level of discomfort with interracial relationships.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Allison Skinner and James Rae</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although we cannot know for sure from our data, we believe that the lack of bias observed among multiracial participants may stem from the fact that they’re the product of an interracial relationship. Then there’s the reality of their own romantic relationships. Multiracial people have few romantic options that would not constitute an interracial relationship: Over 87 percent of multiracial participants in our sample reported having dated interracially. </p>
<h2>Predicting bias</h2>
<p>We also wanted to know what might predict bias against interracial couples. </p>
<p>We anticipated that those who had previously been in an interracial romantic relationship – or were currently involved in one – would hold more positive attitudes. </p>
<p>For both white and black participants, this is precisely what we found. There was one catch: Black participants who had previously been in an interracial relationship were just as likely to harbor explicit biases as those who hadn’t been in one. </p>
<p>Next, we wanted to test whether having close contact – in other words, spending quality time with interracial couples – was associated with positive attitudes toward interracial couples. Psychological evidence has shown that <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02147.x">contact with members of other groups</a> tends to reduce intergroup biases.</p>
<p>To get at this, we asked participants questions about how many interracial couples they knew and how much time they spent with them. We found that across all three racial groups, more interpersonal contact with interracial couples meant more positive implicit and explicit attitudes toward interracial couples.</p>
<p>Finally, we examined whether just being exposed to interracial couples – such as seeing them around in your community – would be associated with more positive attitudes toward interracial couples. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jasp.12037">Some have argued</a> that exposure to interracial and other “mixed status” couples can serve as a catalyst to reduce biases. </p>
<p>Our results, however, showed no evidence of this. </p>
<p>In general, participants who reported more exposure to interracial couples in their local community reported no less bias than those who reported very little exposure to interracial couples. In fact, among multiracial participants, those who reported more exposure to interracial couples in their local community actually reported more explicit bias against interracial couples than those with less exposure. </p>
<h2>The outlook for the future</h2>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/2-public-views-on-intermarriage/">polling data</a>, only a small percentage of people in the U.S. – 9 percent – say that the rise in interracial marriage is a bad thing. </p>
<p>Yet our findings indicate that most in the U.S. harbor both implicit and explicit biases against interracial couples. These biases were quite robust, showing up among those who had had close personal contact with interracial couples and even some who had once been involved in interracial romantic relationships. </p>
<p>The only ones who didn’t show biases against interracial couples were multiracial people. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, in 2015, 14 percent of all babies born nationwide were <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/06/the-rise-of-multiracial-and-multiethnic-babies-in-the-u-s/">mixed race</a> or mixed ethnicity – nearly triple the rate in 1980. In Hawaii, the rate is 44 percent. So despite the persistence of bias against interracial couples, the number of multiracial people in the U.S. will only continue to grow – which bodes well for interracial couples.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99173/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More interracial couples are appearing on TV and in advertising. But is media exposure enough to change attitudes?Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo, Psychology Researcher, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/714432017-02-17T02:01:34Z2017-02-17T02:01:34ZWho counts as black?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157004/original/image-20170215-27391-7xf0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/multicultural-crayons-representing-different-skin-tones-574934023?src=mYYtqxwJlChMIMQrMUSSiw-1-0">'Crayons' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For generations, intimacy between black men and white women was taboo. A mere accusation of impropriety could lead to a lynching, and interracial marriage was illegal in a number of states. </p>
<p>Everything changed with the 1967 Supreme Court decision <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395">Loving v. Virginia</a>, which ruled that blacks and whites have a legal right to intermarry. Spurred by the court’s decision, the number of interracial marriages – and, with it, the population of multiracial people – has exploded. <a href="http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_multi.html">According to the 2000 Census</a>, 6.8 million Americans identified as multiracial. By 2010, that number grew to <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/02/16/57543/in-an-increasingly-multiracial-america-identity-is/">9 million people</a>. And this leaves out all of the people who might be a product of mixed ancestry but chose to still identify as either white or black. </p>
<p>With these demographic changes, traditional notions of black identity – once limited to the confines of dark skin or kinky hair – are no longer so. </p>
<p>Mixed-race African-Americans can have naturally green eyes (like the singer <a href="http://www.arogundade.com/rihannas-tyra-banks-vanessa-williams-eyes.html">Rihanna</a>) or naturally blue eyes (like actor <a href="http://www.wetpaint.com/you-tell-us-what-color-are-jesse-williams-eyes-641896/">Jessie Williams</a>). Their hair can be styled long and wavy (<a href="http://www.essence.com/galleries/hair-evolution-alicia-keys">Alicia Keys</a>) or into a bob-cut (<a href="http://www.etonline.com/news/190948_halle_berry_reveals_new_edgy_shaved_flower_haircut/">Halle Berry</a>). </p>
<p>And unlike in the past – when many mixed-race people <a href="http://racerelations.about.com/od/hollywood/tp/Passing-For-White-In-Hollywood.htm">would try to do what they could to pass as white</a> – many multiracial Americans today unabashedly embrace and celebrate their blackness.</p>
<p>However, these expressions of black pride have been met with grumbles by some in the black community. These mixed-race people, some argue, are not “black enough” – their skin isn’t dark enough, their hair not kinky enough. And thus they do not “count” as black. African-American presidential candidate Ben Carson even <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/ben-carson-obama-was-raised-white-219657">claimed</a> President Obama couldn’t understand “the experience of black Americans” because he was “raised white.”</p>
<p>This debate over “who counts” has created somewhat of an identity crisis in the black community, exposing a divide between those who think being black should be based on physical looks, and those who think being black is more than looks. </p>
<h2>‘Dark Girls’ and ‘Light Girls’</h2>
<p>In 2011 Oprah Winfrey hosted a documentary titled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UWwbTglQKg">Dark Girls</a>,” a portrayal of the pain and suffering dark-skinned black women experience. </p>
<p>It’s a story I know only too well. In 1992, I coauthored a book with DePaul psychologist Midge Wilson and business executive Kathy Russell called “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Color_Complex.html?id=3asbkganD14C">The Color Complex</a>,” which looked at the relationship between black identity and skin color in modern America.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DOjgTIN9pTE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘Dark Girls.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As someone who has studied the issue of skin color and black identity for over 20 years, I felt uneasy after I finished watching the “Dark Girls” film. No doubt it confirmed the pain that dark-skinned black women feel. But it left something important out, and I wondered if it would lead to misconceptions. </p>
<p>The film seemed to suggest that if you are black, you have dark skin. Your hair is kinky. Green or blue eyes, on the other hand, represent someone who is white.</p>
<p>I was relieved, then, when I was asked to consult on a second documentary, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN_81iytSXU">Light Girls</a>,” in 2015, a film centered on the pain and suffering mixed-race black women endure. The subjects who were interviewed shared their stories. These women considered themselves black but said they always felt out of place, on the outside looking in. Black men often adored them, but this could quickly flip to scorn if their advances were spurned. Meanwhile, friendships with darker-skinned black women could be fraught. Insults such as “light-bright,” “mello-yellow” and “banana girl” were tossed at lighter-skinned black women, objectifying them as anything but black.</p>
<h2>Identity experts weigh in</h2>
<p>Some of the experts on identity take issue with the general assumptions many might have about “who is black,” especially those who think blackness is determined by skin color. </p>
<p>For example, in 1902 sociologist Charles Horton Cooley <a href="http://mills-soc116.wikidot.com/notes:cooley-looking-glass-self">argued</a> that identity is like a “looking glass self.” In other words, we are a reflection of the people around us. Mixed-race, light-skinned, green-eyed African-Americans born and raised in a black environment are no less black than their dark-skinned counterparts. In 1934, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/field-sepik.html">said</a> that identity was a product of our social interactions, just like Cooley.</p>
<p>Maybe the most well-known identity theorist is psychologist Erik Erikson. In his most popular book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Identity_Youth_and_Crisis.html?id=v3XWH2PDLewC">Identity: Youth and Crisis</a>,” published in 1968, Erikson also claimed that identity is a product of our environment. But he expanded the theory a bit: It includes not only the people we interact with but also the clothes we wear, the food we eat and the music we listen to. Mixed-race African-Americans – just like dark-skinned African-Americans – would be equally uncomfortable wearing a kimono, drinking sake or listening to ongaku (a type of Japanese music). On the other hand, wearing a dashiki, eating soul food and relaxing to the beats of rap or hip-hop music is something all black people – regardless of skin tone – can identify with. </p>
<p>Our physical features, of course, are a product of our parents. Indeed, in the not-too-distant future, with more and more interracial marriages taking place, we may find black and white hair texture and eye and skin color indistinguishable. It’s worth noting that there’s an element of personal choice involved in racial identity – for example, you can choose how to self-identify on the census. Many multiracial Americans simply identify as “multiracial.” Others, even if they’re a product of mixed ancestry, choose “black.” </p>
<p>Perhaps true blackness, then, dwells not in skin color, eye color or hair texture, but in the love for the spirit and culture of all who came before us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald E. Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the number of multiracial Americans growing, there’s a fierce debate in the black community over who’s black – and who isn’t.Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/645092016-10-05T10:02:20Z2016-10-05T10:02:20ZHow saying you’re multiracial changes the way people see you<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140199/original/image-20161003-20239-1atkaxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Race and perceived beauty are closely intertwined.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-176175434/stock-photo-cultural-diversity-two-faces-colored-black-white-yin-yang-style.html?src=pp-same_model-176972174-2&ws=1">'Faces' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last month, rapper Kanye West posted <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/kanye-west-multi-racial-casting-call-backlash">a controversial casting call</a> for his clothing line, Yeezy, mandating “multiracial women only.” Many objected, arguing that West had insulted darker-skinned black women. </p>
<p>But Kanye was only adhering to something fairly common in <a href="https://psmag.com/the-idea-of-racial-hierarchy-remains-entrenched-in-americans-psyches-3dcf1cc3a815#.5zxexe2ka">a society that still operates under a racial hierarchy</a>: the belief that multiracial people are more attractive, what <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2012.672838">sociologist Jennifer Sims has termed</a> the “biracial beauty stereotype.”</p>
<p>Attractiveness may seem like a trite and shallow topic for an academic to study or even care about. But as a sociologist who specializes in inequality, I believe there’s a great deal to unpack, particularly when exploring how attractiveness might lead to biases in the same way race and gender do. </p>
<p>It’s not just important to point out who we find attractive; just as important is why we find them attractive. I’ve been especially interested in how racial self-identification influences these perceptions, exploring this topic in a recent study.</p>
<h2>The gift of beauty</h2>
<p>A wide variety of research has demonstrated that how attractive you’re perceived to be can dramatically shape your life. For example, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6348439.pdf">people who are seen as more attractive earn more money</a>, while in the classroom, <a href="http://rer.sagepub.com/content/62/4/413.short">teachers assume attractive people are more capable students</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, a <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155313">2016 study by sociologist Shawn Bauldry</a> found that more attractive people were much more likely to achieve social mobility. And as with many other aspects of American society, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886903002022">attractiveness has a racial element</a>, with black people on the bottom – seen as the least attractive – and white people perceived as most attractive.</p>
<p>But racialized attractiveness doesn’t operate in a strict dichotomy, with all black people automatically deemed uniformly unattractive.</p>
<p>Instead, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3090169?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">it’s more of a spectrum</a>. Studies have shown that black people who look more stereotypically black (darker skin, bigger lips, wider noses) tend to be perceived as less attractive than those who look less stereotypically black (lighter skin, thin lips, straight hair). </p>
<p>This idea undergirds the biracial beauty stereotype, particularly for black people. The prevailing belief is that multiracial people will have fewer of the physical features that make black people appear unattractive. In other words, in the context of beauty, multiracial means “more white” or “less black.”</p>
<p>These sentiments are historically rooted and build on a <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.600.7562&rep=rep1&type=pdf">long history of racial stratification and color segmentation</a> facilitated by <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-79098-5_3">the media</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CyQEzCEV9XkC&pg=PA379&lpg=PA379&dq=Mulattoes+and+Blacks:+Intra-group+Color+Differences+and+Social+Stratification+in+Nineteenth-Century+Philadelphia&source=bl&ots=6vEQwFa3qI&sig=PSZzO96tJogilcvl0oGUkCZJQnU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis1snHy6zPAhUn4YMKHcZYDNsQ6AEILzAF#v=onepage&q=Mulattoes%20and%20Blacks%3A%20Intra-group%20Color%20Differences%20and%20Social%20Stratification%20in%20Nineteenth-Century%20Philadelphia&f=false">social organizations</a> and other cultural forces. It all <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/45857099/Shades_of_Discrimination_Skin_Tone_and_W20160522-8650-5a7h11.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1474880806&Signature=iI3hClyhdNHBl6LWO4my9A9DgbE%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DShades_of_Discrimination_Skin_Tone_and_W.pdf">culminates in a preference for whiteness</a> that privileges black people who appear more like white people.</p>
<h2>Digging deeper</h2>
<p><a href="http://media.wix.com/ugd/5fff9b_76453571b1a54ed0bb5cd1bea7af4317.pdf">In a study I published in The Review of Black Political Economy</a>, I wanted to take this idea a step further. I wondered: What if people who identified as black simply said they were multiracial? Would people, in turn, tend to rate them as more attractive by virtue of how they self-identified? </p>
<p>In other words, is the simple suggestion that a person is not just black but black “plus something else” so powerful that others will think those people are more attractive irrespective of how they actually look?</p>
<p>Research already conducted by <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-010-0010-5">sociologist Siohban Brooks</a> and <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/g-strings-and-sympathy/?viewby=title">cultural anthropologist Katherine Frank</a> hinted this would be the case. In separate studies of American strip club patrons and workers, they found that female exotic dancers would tell customers they were multiracial as a way to make more money. They’d do this regardless of whether they actually identified this way, often fabricating a genealogy (“one-quarter Asian, one-quarter Native American, half black”) instead of just saying they were black.</p>
<p>For my investigation, I relied on regression analysis and a nationally representative survey, <a href="http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth">the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health</a>, which was originally conducted to track the social outcomes of adolescents through young adulthood. A diverse team of trained interviewers collected data on 3,200 black people. The interviewers recorded, among much other information, the skin tone of the respondent on a scale of one to five, hair color, eye color, race and how attractive they perceived the person on a scale from one to five. </p>
<p>The interviewers recorded their information, including attractiveness, about each respondent at the end of each interview – but only after they’d learned the respondent’s racial identification. </p>
<p>I tested whether multiracial black people were rated more attractive than monoracial black people even when accounting for racialized physical features: skin tone, hair color and eye color. </p>
<p>They were. Multiracial identification positively predicted attractiveness regardless of other physical features. In fact, it was a stronger predictor of attractiveness than skin tone – an astonishing finding considering the <a href="http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/03/04/sf.sou007.short">growing amount of research</a> demonstrating the strong negative effect of skin tone on social outcomes. </p>
<p>Not only were people who identified as multiracial rated as more attractive on average, but even the multiracial people with the darkest skin tones were rated as more attractive than the monoracial black people with lighter skin tones. In essence, this combination of results means that simply identifying as multiracial may make a black person appear more attractive to others, regardless of how he or she actually looks.</p>
<h2>The power of simple self-identification</h2>
<p>This complicates both our idea of race and our idea of attractiveness. </p>
<p>Research already suggests that perceived attractiveness influences people’s perception of characteristics completely unrelated to physical appearance. (For example, <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-015-9644-6">people who are perceived as more attractive are also thought to be happier and more competent</a>.) </p>
<p>As far as race is concerned, it adds to our understanding of how knowing someone’s racial identification can have astonishing cognitive effects. </p>
<p>Famously, MacArthur Fellow and social psychologist Jennifer Richeson found that the stress of interracial interactions may be so great that <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/3/287.short">it temporarily decreases the memory and reasoning ability</a> of some white people as they struggle to not be perceived as racist. Conversely, <a href="http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2005.23.4.336">she found a similar phenomenon at play</a> for black people as they try to avoid conforming to racist stereotypes. And more recently, psychologists Adam Waytz, Kelly Marie Hoffman and Sophie Trawalter report that white people, in a display of dehumanization, <a href="http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/03/1948550614553642.abstract">generally think of black people as superhuman</a>, possessing abnormal strength, speed and pain tolerance.</p>
<p>The relationship between racial identification and attractiveness may operate similarly. It doesn’t matter what we see. The mere suggestion of a person’s blackness creates a cognitive hiccup that leads a sweeping judgment that influences how attractive they seem. </p>
<p>This, in turn, may influence how happy, competent and successful they appear – and, in the end, are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert L. Reece does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A sociologist wanted to know how simply self-identifying as ‘multiracial’ – regardless of how you actually looked – would influence your attractiveness.Robert L. Reece, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, Duke UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/594362016-05-27T02:00:56Z2016-05-27T02:00:56ZImpeachment, culture wars and the politics of identity in Brazil<p>Brazil is in the midst of its worst political crisis since the 1960s and possibly its most severe economic downturn in the last 100 years. </p>
<p>The economy will not – and cannot – improve until the country emerges from the political chaos of the moment and puts into place strong and legitimate leadership. </p>
<p>Most of the commentary on Brazil’s current crisis has focused on politics and economics. I believe that a more profound threat generated by this crisis will be to Brazilians’ sense of self – to their very identity as Brazilians.</p>
<p>In my 40 years studying Brazilian history and culture, I have never seen the country more polarized. Over the past decade, I have spent extended periods in Brazil researching and writing “Becoming Brazilians: Race and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Brazil,” which will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. More so than many countries, Brazil has had a powerful and dominant narrative of national identity for decades.</p>
<h2>A deep divide</h2>
<p>But now Brazilians are bitterly divided. One side hates President Dilma Rousseff, ex-President Inácio “Lula” da Silva and their Workers Party (PT). The other side sees Rousseff’s impeachment as an abuse of the legislative process by corrupt politicians. </p>
<p>Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy, one of its most stable democracies and a growing power on the world stage. Should the current crisis cripple Brazil, it would have serious economic and political repercussions for the region, for the United States, and for the emergence of the so-called Global South.</p>
<p>I suspect that the damage to the world’s sixth largest economy will likely be short-term. However, the specter of politicians – who are themselves under indictment and investigation for corruption – ousting a president on flimsy charges could damage the fourth largest democracy on the planet for the long term. Brazilian civic culture and national identity could be additional casualties of this deepening political divide.</p>
<h2>Race and national identity</h2>
<p>For much of the 20th century Brazilians of all social groups collectively forged a rich and vibrant cultural nationalism around the notion of <em>mestiçagem</em> — racial and cultural mixing. </p>
<p>The iconic intellectual <a href="http://www.peterlang.com/download/datasheet/50589/datasheet_16509.pdf">Gilberto Freyre</a> (1900-1987) produced the most influential version of this narrative. <a href="https://lasa.international.pitt.edu/forum/files/vol44-issue2/Debates4.pdf">According to Freyre</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every Brazilian, even the light-skinned fair-haired one, carries with him in his soul, when not in body and soul … the shadow, or at least the birthmark, of the Indian or the Negro. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many diverse political regimes from the 1930s to the 1980s placed an official seal of government approval on this narrative of mestiçagem. They hoped to publicize Brazil’s supposed “racial democracy” to the world. As I argue in my book, the lived realities of the great masses of Brazilians seemed to provide abundant evidence of the creative power of <em>mestiçagem</em>. Carnaval and Brazilian music like samba and bossa nova arose out of this dynamic mixing. The jazz on the playing pitch of Pelé and other great players produced the world’s most beautiful soccer.</p>
<p>As Brazil moved out of a military dictatorship and to a <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7295.html">truly vibrant democracy</a> in the 1980s, many new social movements flourished. The black movement, grassroots feminism, and environmentalism fostered a flowering of civic culture on a scale never experienced in Brazilian history. </p>
<p>Movements promoting Afro-descendant and indigenous rights challenged the dominant narrative of <em>mestiçagem</em>. They condemned Freyre as a racist bent on eliminating the African influences in Brazil. These movements helped forge a new multi-culturalism in Brazilian politics and society.</p>
<p>The powerful national narrative of a society with a rainbow of peoples and skin tones has come under sustained assault. </p>
<p>Brazil’s last three presidents have promoted decrees and legislation recognizing Brazil’s history of <a href="http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-311X2010000100023">racism</a> and prejudice. The government has promoted many <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XfvaMfG13PgC&lpg=PA209&ots=tCBXK0Qh0k&dq=Afro-Brazilian%20Politics%3A%20White%20Supremacy%2C%20Black%20Struggle%2C%20and%20Affirmative%20Action&pg=PA209#v=onepage&q=Afro-Brazilian%20Politics:%20White%20Supremacy,%20Black%20Struggle,%20and%20Affirmative%20Action&f=false">affirmative action programs</a> throughout the bureaucracy and the <a href="http://www.usp.br/cje/anexos/pierre/freire_gilberto_casa_grande_senzala.pdf">public education system</a>.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Brazilians continue to describe their society and the Brazilian people as mixed. The dominant narrative of cultural identity, however, has been eroding for several decades. </p>
<h2>A looming culture war?</h2>
<p>The suspension of Dilma Rousseff from the presidency provided vivid evidence of what may be a looming battle of cultural narratives and civic society. At his hasty inauguration, Vice President Michel Temer, who is of Lebanese descent, surrounded himself with his 22 newly named cabinet ministers. All are male and light skinned. </p>
<p>In both his statements about the new administration and <a href="http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/brazil-minister-takes-leave-of-absence-after-secret-recording-revealed-736783.html">his appointments</a> one thing is clear. The officially sanctioned government approval of multiculturalism and the new social movements over the past 20 years will now come under <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/world/americas/michel-temer-brazils-interim-president-may-herald-shift-to-the-right.html?_r=0">direct assault</a>. Much of the inflamed rhetoric in both houses of congress during the impeachment proceedings demonstrates the resurgence of an unrepentant Right after more than 13 years of PT administrations.</p>
<p>The New York Times quoted Brazilian TV evangelist Silas Malafaia as saying Temer’s new education minister will “be able to sweep away the ideology of pathological leftists.” </p>
<p>This resurgent Right may attempt to erase many of the constitutional and legal changes that have supported this multiculturalism. Brazilians could find themselves in an intensifying culture war over what it means to be Brazilian. The emphasis on redressing past social and cultural injustices could end. </p>
<p>The political shift could roll back affirmative action and efforts to redress discrimination against peoples of indigenous and African descent. We may see an official return to a narrative of racial democracy. </p>
<p>Ultimately, disillusionment with the political system may prove even more damaging than cultural warfare. For several decades through civic mobilization many groups have asserted their rights to become full-fledged citizens. The example of widespread corruption across all political parties may damaging this activism. </p>
<p>Deposing Rousseff will not help the legitimacy of the political system for many groups across the political spectrum. </p>
<p>Whatever the resolution of the impeachment process, it is likely to set back decades of expanding civic culture and participatory politics. It will leave Brazilians questioning who they are as a people and who they might become.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marshall Eakin has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright-Hays, and US Department of Education, and the Brazilian National Research Council (CAPES). </span></em></p>Brazil has a powerful and dominant national identity, which could be a casualty of the current political crisis. The author of an upcoming book on the subject considers the harm that’s been done.Marshall Eakin, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554662016-03-01T04:28:30Z2016-03-01T04:28:30ZAfrican dance festival that’s been one step ahead through the decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113215/original/image-20160229-4087-18ffnpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Tribhangi Dance Company performs Circles and Squares at the South African Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Hogg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s always been easy to coin a “lucky packet” metaphor around the <a href="http://www.danceforumsouthafrica.co.za/">Dance Umbrella</a>, Johannesburg’s unique contemporary dance festival. It’s often pot luck for an audience where “sweets” – as a quality yardstick – get mixed with “sours”. This is as it should be for the discipline, which is arguably one of the most difficult for a lay audience to watch.</p>
<p>But after nearly three decades of existence, the festival has become an institution about much more than being critically fêted.</p>
<p>Similar to classical or traditional dance, <a href="http://www.contemporary-dance.org/">contemporary dance</a> has its own nonverbal language, which is not immediately accessible to everyone. Similar to theatre, it can draw in a range of elements such as lighting and sound to uplift or lend it nuance. Similar to visual art, it has the power to take on political issues and shock an audience into awareness. Blending all of these tools, it remains a field of art that fits with some difficulty into the unconditional love of a fan base. </p>
<p>But if you turn from looking at the stage to looking at the audience in any given Dance Umbrella work, you would be hard-pressed to believe this. Not only has Dance Umbrella grown dance, it has grown an audience.</p>
<h2>Physical expression</h2>
<p>It was coined as a platform for contemporary dance in Johannesburg by dance critics Marilyn Jenkins and Adrienne Sichel in conversation with Vita Promotions. Dance Umbrella debuted in 1989, showcasing the work of <a href="http://www.danceforumsouthafrica.co.za/history-of-dance-umbrella.html">just 14 choreographers</a>. It has since ticked all the proverbial boxes in terms of not only attempting to shape an audience but in giving extraordinary levels of physical expression validity and currency.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African artist Steven Cohen has always pushed the boundaries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One need not think beyond performance artist/contemporary dancer <a href="http://www.stevenson.info/artists/cohen.html">Steven Cohen</a>. Over the years he has taken the festival by storm with his outrageous and oft impromptu gestures engaging with sexuality, xenophobia and hatred head on. Cohen has done so in a manner that made it difficult for audience members or even dance administrators to side-step.</p>
<p>Dance Umbrella in 2008 featured French choreographer Dominique Boivin’s Transports <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auVy2_dnZtE">Exceptionnels</a>, which was staged on the Johannesburg Market Theatre’s parking lot. It anthropomorphosised a trench digger that “danced” to the sound of <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/maria-callas-9235435">Maria Callas’</a> voice – one of those unforgettable moments that made you open your heart to what contemporary dance is or can do.</p>
<h2>Dance firebrands</h2>
<p>The notion of “undance” was coined by choreographers of the ilk of <a href="http://eludanceco.org/portfolios/02/">Elu</a>. The audience’s role was challenged by mavericks such as <a href="http://www.robynorlin.com/about.htm">Robyn Orlin</a>, one of Dance Umbrella’s founding choreographic firebrands. From year one, Dance Umbrella enabled contemporary dance to be rich with as yet undreamed of possibilities. Effectively on several levels, the discipline became a catch-all.</p>
<p>But in juxtaposition with a stretching and a shattering of the envelope in which dance used to be able to sit comfortably, the role of Dance Umbrella was about opening doors that creative young South Africans didn’t even know existed. The time, in 1988, was ripe for a festival specialising in what contemporary dance could be in Johannesburg. </p>
<p>Many of apartheid’s punitive and violent regulations were collapsing from within. South Africa was still reeling from a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/state-emergency-south-africa-1960-and-1980s">State of Emergency</a> and its society was ripe to start re-identifying itself.</p>
<p>Moving Into Dance <a href="http://www.midance.co.za/">Mophatong</a>, the Newtown-based dance company established by dancer-choreographer <a href="http://www.midance.co.za/dance-company/management-administration/">Sylvia Glasser</a> who enjoyed an interest in ethnodance, was then ten years old. It was rapidly developing as a multiracial platform: the first of its kind in the country when it was technically still illegal to host black and white dancers on the same stage together. It was both melting pot and incubator for new dance blood.</p>
<h2>Astonishing achievement</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African dancer Sonia Radebe performing at the Dance Umbrella.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Hogg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fast forward 28 years, and a broad overview on what Dance Umbrella is and what it has achieved, is astonishing. Glasser recently immigrated to Australia, having retired from Moving Into Dance. She leaves in her wake choreographers such as <a href="http://www.vuyani.co.za/gregmaqoma.html">Gregory Maqoma</a>, <a href="http://www.dancewebeurope.net/index.php?id=32&detail=88">Boyzie Cekwana</a>, <a href="http://www.dance.uct.ac.za/dnc/confluen/confluences2015/overview">Vincent Mantsoe</a>, <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2014/09/06/mashigo-s-latest-piece-keeps-audiences-on-their-toes">Portia Mashigo</a>, <a href="http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=29401">Moeketsi Koena</a>, <a href="http://www.openlab-southafrica.co.za/Sonia.html">Sonia Radebe</a>, <a href="https://robynsassenmyview.wordpress.com/">Sunnyboy Motau</a>, <a href="http://200ysa.mg.co.za/2013/fana-tshabalala/">Fana Tshabalala</a> and many others, whose lives she touched and focused significantly. Most of them are internationally respected today.</p>
<p>But it would not be accurate to focus on MIDM only. While it was the first dance company to open its doors in Johannesburg in 1978, its existence enabled other dance companies in the city. These include PJ Sabbagha’s <a href="http://forgottenangle.co.za/">Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative</a> (established in 1995), Martin Schönberg’s <a href="http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=21157">Ballet Theatre Afrikan</a> (1996-2009), Jayesperi Moopen’s <a href="http://www.tribhangi.co.za/">Tribhangi</a> (established in 1988) and Maqoma’s <a href="http://vuyani.co.za/vdt/">Vuyani Dance Theatre Project</a> (established in 1999). Each of these companies has in turn generated new approaches to the discipline and new performers and choreographers.</p>
<p>More than all the critical success and collaborative energy Dance Umbrella generates, is the kind of audiences that traditionally each February, when the festival takes place, fill its venues. </p>
<p>Old, young, black and white, the consistently full houses represent South African’s society’s spectrum. Not necessarily comprehensively dance-savvy, it’s an audience with a buzzing curiosity. And long may they continue to be seduced by Dance Umbrella as it feeds contemporary dance’s relevance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Sassen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s foremost contemporary dance festival is celebrating its 28th birthday in 2016. It has remained relevant, vital and – despite the format’s esoteric nature – hugely popular.Robyn Sassen, Research Fellow, African Art Centre, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.