Between Black & White
Between Black & White

IMMIGRANT PERSPECTIVES ON RACE

Between Black & White

Between Black & White Between Black & White Between Black & White

IMMIGRANT PERSPECTIVES ON RACE

Between Black & White

Between Black & White Between Black & White Between Black & White

CHAPTER 1

The American Flamingo

Immigrants of different races share their perspectives on inclusion and exclusion in Cuban-majority Miami. Host Jaswinder Bolina recounts the history of the American Flamingo and takes a tour of Hialeah with Cuban American novelist Chantel Acevedo, 

CHAPTER 2

A Steward of Blackness

Black immigrants from the Caribbean share how and why they differentiate themselves from Black Americans. Jaswinder tells a story about basketball and race. In a conversation, Jason Jackson, "The Official Radio Voice of the Miami Heat," shares his perspectives on being "a steward of Blackness."

IMAGINE

Imagine trying to explain race in America to someone who’d never been here before, someone who’d only seen the U.S. in books and newspapers, in the movies or on tv. What would you tell them?


Would you talk about slavery and segregation? About what happened to indigenous peoples here? About immigration or affirmative action?  

 
Or would you say there’s no difference between races in America, that we pay too much attention to race, and anyway opportunity is the same here for everyone, success hard-earned through hard work?   


What if they asked you about the role skin color plays in our politics, on our streets, in our workplaces, and in our popular culture?   


What if they asked you why it is that people who look one way so often seem to live in certain safe and prosperous places while other kinds of people seem to live in places where poverty and crime and violence are common?   


What if they asked you where they fit in, where they might be able to live and work and prosper? Would you consider what they looked like before answering?   

What would you tell them about race in America?   


We decided to ask some newcomers to this country—either recent immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants—for their answers to these questions. We wanted to know what they’ve come to believe about the role race plays here, how race affects their lives and how their views on race affect the way they treat others. We wanted to learn what their perspectives can teach all of us about race in these United States.

Place

Miami-Dade County

In each season of Between Black & White, we’ll explore a new city, inviting perspectives on race from immigrant communities across the United States. We’ll travel from Seattle to Chicago, from Charlotte to San Diego, and anywhere in-between. But in season 1, we’re beginning between the vast Atlantic and the warm Caribbean Sea, between the American South and South America, in the hot, crowded, glittering city of Miami. 


Of course, “Miami” isn’t just Miami. It’s a sprawl of cities and suburbs, of American and immigrant communities situated between languages, cultures, and histories that make it unlike anywhere else in the U.S. It’s Miami’s undeniable betweenness, its irrepressible otherness, that make it the perfect place to return to our all too familiar American conflicts over things like immigration, equity, and race.

Between Black and White, which race would I rather be mistaken for in America? Which side has the better chance at safety, comfort, wealth, and power?

Jaswinder Bolina, Host

HOST

Jaswinder Bolina

Jaswinder Bolina’s latest collection English as a Second Language and Other Poems (2023) is available now from Copper Canyon Press.
His debut collection of essays Of Color (2020) is available from McSweeney’s.


Jaswinder's previous books include The 44th of July (2019), long-listed for the 2019 PEN America Open Book Award; Phantom Camera (2013),winner of the 2012 Green Rose Prize in Poetry; Carrier Wave (2007), winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry; and the digital chapbook The Tallest Building in America (2014). Phantom Camera (2013) is also available in syndicated international edition from Hachette India.Bolina’s poems have been featured in The Best American Poetry series and have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. His essays can be found at The Washington Post, The Paris Review, Shenandoah, Poetry Foundation dot org, and elsewhere.

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TEAM

JOCELYN GONZALES Executive Producer

JOCELYN GONZALES Executive Producer

JOCELYN GONZALES Executive Producer

Jocelyn Gonzales is Executive Producer of Studio 360 and comes from a noisy, joyful Filipino family in Queens and New Jersey. She taught sound design at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU for 13 years, and worked in a variety of audio jobs, from college radio to network broadcasting, audiobooks to film mixing, and public radio to podcasting.

Jocelyn Gonzales is Executive Producer of Studio 360 and comes from a noisy, joyful Filipino family in Queens and New Jersey. She taught sound design at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU for 13 years, and worked in a variety of audio jobs, from college radio to network broadcasting, audiobooks to film mixing, and public radio to podcasting. Her work can be heard on Feet in Two Worlds, WNYC, Studio 360, Peppergreen Media, Marketplace, Headstepper Media, the Popcast and Book Review podcasts of the New York Times, the Signal podcast from StatNews, and The MashUp Americans.

SANJEEV CHATTERJEE Producer

JOCELYN GONZALES Executive Producer

JOCELYN GONZALES Executive Producer

Sanjeev Chatterjee is a professor, visual storyteller and an avid mentor to young changemakers in the media and related fields.  After earning his M.A. in English literature from Delhi University, Sanjeev worked for two years as a grassroots filmmaker focused on rural development in India. In 1987 he was awarded a full scholarship to Broo

Sanjeev Chatterjee is a professor, visual storyteller and an avid mentor to young changemakers in the media and related fields.  After earning his M.A. in English literature from Delhi University, Sanjeev worked for two years as a grassroots filmmaker focused on rural development in India. In 1987 he was awarded a full scholarship to Brooklyn College where he completed his M.F.A. in Radio and Television specializing in documentary storytelling.  Sanjeev joined the faculty at Emerson College, Boston as an assistant professor in 1989. He has been on the faculty of the School of Communication, University of Miami since 1994. He is currently a full professor with appointments in the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media (primary) as well as the Department of Journalism (secondary). He teaches courses in visual storytelling, media and society, film and television production.  Sanjeev also serves on the faculties of Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change (since 2006), Anant Fellowship (Since 2028) and Young India Fellowship (2011- 2018).  


 In 2015, Sanjeev founded the independent Florida based non-profit (501 (c) 3) Media for Change with the goal of creating a global collaborative network of media change makers.  Sanjeev’s documentary work has won top awards internationally and attracted funding from multiple sources including the Knight Foundation, Florida Humanities Council, UNDP, UN Water, Stockholm International Water Institute, United States Institute for Peace and others. He was a Fulbright Scholar (India) in 2011 and currently serves on the Fulbright national selection committee (USA and Egypt). 

LIVIA BROCK Producer

JOCELYN GONZALES Executive Producer

LIVIA BROCK Producer

Livia Brock has been a freelance podcast producer and audio editor since 2019. She has worked closely with the hosts of several podcasts to help create and/or grow their show, including helping to develop show concepts, structure, and storylines, creating a production timeline, recruiting guests, monitoring recordings in order to obtain h

Livia Brock has been a freelance podcast producer and audio editor since 2019. She has worked closely with the hosts of several podcasts to help create and/or grow their show, including helping to develop show concepts, structure, and storylines, creating a production timeline, recruiting guests, monitoring recordings in order to obtain high-quality audio content, transcribing, scripting, pulling audio selects, and mixing, mastering, and sound-designing with ProTools.She has also assisted in developing a project budgets, distributing shows across listening platforms, and coming up with strategies for promotion and monetization.

Livia completed a podcast workshop at NYU Tisch, and I has a graduate certificate in Radio and Podcasting from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Community Reporters

The work of our community reporters has been instrumental in putting together this podcast. Community reporters are youth who belong to immigrant communities and serve as reporters who identify and interview members of their own community and family. Community members who agreed to being interviewed were given the option of remaining anonymous, in the interest of having honest, often difficult conversations.


Our community reporters are:


Jamison Brown

Darrel Creary

Isabella Cunningham

Paul Duillion

Ajhada Gabriel

Zanolee Grant

Isabella Morales

Veronica Porges

Brandi Troup


Our artists are:

Abhi Chatterjee 

Nayantara Mukherjee


Find out more

Backstory

How We Got Started

In 2019, a niece called Dr. Sumita Chatterjee to ask if she would help with a family dispute a friend was in the middle of with their college age son. The young man, who was born and educated in the US, had lost all patience with his parents' views of African Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement. Sumita teaches history, as well as gender and sexuality at the University of Miami. She, like the parents in question immigrated to the United States in the 1980s and established families and live here. The points of views and issues that emerged from a virtual meeting co-moderated by Sumita and the young man in the family warranted further exploration.

Based on the above spark, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Miami applied for the rapid response ULink Grant on equity under the title Racism in America: Beyond Black and White. In the process of the year-long exploration, Between Black and White: Immigrant Perspectives on Racewas adopted as the project title.


The original interdisciplinary research and development team at the University of Miami consisted of:

John Beier, Division of Environmental and Public Health, Miller School of Medicine

Jaswinder Bolina, Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences

Sanjeev Chatterjee, Department of Cinematic Arts and Journalism, School of Communication

Sumita Chatterjee, Departments of History and, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, College of Arts and Sciences

Imelda Moise, Department of Geography, College of Arts and Sciences

José Szapokznik, Departments of Public Health Sciences, Architecture, Psychology and Education, Miller School of Medicine, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture


The team's graduate assistant was:

Fernanda Da Silva, PhD Candidate, School of Communication


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