April 2003

Just five years ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find a college course that addressed mixed race issues. But ever since 7 million people self-identified as multiracial in the 2000 census by choosing two or more races, the interest in mixed race studies has exploded. At least sixteen universities across the country—from New Haven, CT to Santa Barbara, CA—offer classes that explore the social implications of being mixed in America. A mixed race movement is clearly taking form: politically, socially, and now, educationally.

“We start at the personal level, and then move to the social and historical issues of race,” says Professor Robert Allen, who teaches a class called People of Mixed Racial Descent at the University of California, Berkeley. The students’ first assignment is to write a 2-3 page autobiographical essay describing how they became aware of their racial and ethnic identity, what they learned, and how it has defined them.

The class, one of the first of its kind, was established in 1981 by Native American professor Terry Wilson. It began as a response to the growth of the mixed race population, especially in California’s Bay Area, as well as student interest on campus. Historically, the West has always been very multiracial because of high immigration levels and an early end to laws against interracial marriage. Forty percent of the 6.8 million U.S. residents who checked off more than one box for race live in the West, so it’s no wonder many mixed race studies courses originate in states like California.

Allen’s class has over a hundred students. About half are multiracial (of “all imaginable, possible combinations,”) others are involved in interracial relationships, and some are neither.

Allen uses a variety of literature, texts, readings, films, and speakers to teach the subject matter. An anthology edited by Teresa Williams-Leon and Berkeley Graduate student Cynthia Nakashima “The Sum of Our Parts” and Dr. Maria Root’s “The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders As the New Frontier” serve almost as “textbooks” in the class, although, many fictitious novels telling stories of mixed people around the world are also included in the course’s critical analysis of race.

Another approach to mixed race studies is finding where one fits in the bigger picture. Prof. Steven Ropp teaches Biracial and Multiracial Identity in the U.S. at California State University, Northridge. He stresses the importance of “being a part of all the communities we belong to, by having a presence, communicating, staying active.”

The class he currently teaches began about six years ago under the tutelage of Teresa Williams-Leon, professor and co-editor of “The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed Heritage Asian Americans.” This year is the first year Ropp has taught the class. His vision is to create a general multiracial studies class, in hopes that it will draw more students than a class catered to a specific ethnic group.

Read original article here…

>> Erica Schlaikjer <<

In the past they were hunter-gatherers, living largely off game, honey and the roots and fruits of plants. They lived – and some still do today in total harmony with nature, posing no threat to wildlife and vegetation by over-hunting or gathering. The semi-nomadic existence of the San was (and is) governed by the seasons and the movement of game.The San have short, slight bodies, small hands and feet and yellow-brown skin that wrinkle early. The women tend to store fat in their buttocks and have sharply hollowed backs. They look exactly like the characteristic profiles depicted in the San rock paintings. They store fat in their buttocks – a natural adaptation to their precarious existence in a harsh environment.

In time the whites encroached upon the San’s traditional hunting grounds. Some Bushmen went to live with them and others moved on west and north in search of land where they could live freely. Today they are found only in the Northwestern Cape, the Kalahari, Namibia and Botswana.

>> Read full article here <<

Kahlil Gibran once said ‘Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge’. My mission is to dissect, de-construct and redefine any boundary that serves to enslaves the mind of man. Trivialize that which seems offensive, and then after a while it will loose it significance. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. The once powerful Ku Klux Klan was brought to naught when their secrets were trivialized and infantilized on a radio show called ‘The Adventures of Superman’ by a brave man called Stetson Kennedy.

The genealogy and evolution of the word Aryan is rather fascinating. The word roots from the Sanskrit ‘Arya’, meaning noble. In time and in the hands of insecure, narrow minded nationalistic modernistic philosopher’s combined with the marked influence of Hitler, the designation Aryan race was born. It needs to be noted that at the time, at the turn of the last century, the study of genetics was still in its infancy.

Each and every period in the evolution of man, has it’s own set of values, parameters and opportunities that influence thinking at that specific point in time with consequences to bear. What seemed right, and totally reasonable at any point in time is made trivial and insignificant by new knowledge, new science, new understanding, new insight and new wisdom.

The aryan race came to mean and refer to the search for a pure race and a pure people. Anthropology, Genetics and History intimates that a ‘pure race’ in the narrow minded sense of the word is but a futile dream of entering heaven. The survival of man depends on genetic evolution and adaptation. The only pure race, is a surviving race, and a surviving race is a mixed race, a natural race of and for evolution.

Philosophy is a very interesting, very ubiquitous in truth. What fascinates me more, is the evolution of thinking. How we think today can never be seen in isolation, it is connected to every thing before this moment, during this moment, it is connected to science, to history, to politics, to economy, to everything.

If Aryan is to mean noble and a pure race (redefined of course) then it is high time that we as coloured people step up to the plate. The first step on this journey is education, education, education. At the same time we are education ourself and the people around us, entrepreneurship should become breathing. A people that is educated, is a people empowered.

‘First people’ status is parochial, narrow-minded and definitely colonial thinking. Recriminations, victim mentality and entitlement has never served anyone anyway, it only leads to more war and strife. Thinking out of the box, deconstruction and self-re-definition is the death knell of colonial thinking. For me their is no better way, then to define who I am, where I come from and where I going, by subverting, re-thinking, re-defining, de-constructing and re-constructing the claims and definitions of colonial thinking, or if you like oppression thinking.

Knowledge, understanding and wisdom is like a beautiful red rose. It takes time to germinate, to evolve and to be. Understanding does not always follow knowledge, it takes time. Whatever there is to know, you already know, it is just a matter of time, a little matter called (re) exposure.

Redemption, deliver us from evil. If we are not able to forgive, if we are not able to love then peace and understanding is but a futile dream of entering heaven.

‘I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul
by making me hate, him.’ – Booker T Washington

I will permit no man, word or ideology to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate or refuse him redemption. – Abridged Booker T Washington

>> Ross Rayners <<

The speech I gave in 2001 called “I pledge allegiance” is doing the rounds on email and the internet again. Unfortunately the original version has been hijacked along the way, so I thought I should post the “official” version here:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Many years ago I was an exchange student in the USA, and every morning in my school, as in all schools across America, all classes came to a halt as the Pledge of Allegiance came over the loudspeaker system and every student stood to repeat these words. I was quite amazed by this display of daily brainwashing in the so-called “land of the free”. But in hindsight it isn’t actually that amazing, because we’ve all experienced how Americans are just so proud to be American. No matter how big their problems, and heaven knows they’ve got a lot of them, Americans will still spend hours telling you how fantastic their country is, and in fact how it is better than pretty much anywhere else in the world.What a contrast then, when I later spent a few years in London, and I ended up actively avoiding other South Africans. Why? Because frankly their negativity about our homeland irritated me so much. These people, who will gladly put new South African flags on their cars and support a whole cottage industry importing biltong and NikNaks to munch on as they cheer on the Springboks at Twickenham, will spend hours telling anyone who will listen just how awful it is in South Africa, how lucky they are to be in London, and how they are never going back because it’s in such a mess. At the time I put it down to the fact that they were justifying why they were holed up in their dingy little flats under grey London skies while their friends and family enjoyed the sunshine on Camps Bay beach.

However, when I came home, expecting to be greeted by the smiles of new South Africans everywhere, I was very disappointed to find that exactly the same attitude is pervasive right here. The number of people who asked me why I came back here, and why on earth I had brought my French wife with me, simply amazed me. I would have thought the answer was perfectly obvious. I was later very disturbed, although not surprised, to hear that our president found it necessary to make a point to South African businessmen that they should stop running down their own country on overseas business trips. Can anyone tell me what it is that makes sense about running down your own home to foreign people that you would like to visit here and invest here?

Read full article here…

>> Guy Lundy <<