Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

Posted on Mar 20, 2017

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

Educator, actor and producer Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni performed her one-woman multimedia show, One Drop of Love, in which she explores her own racial identity in the context of her family history and American census methods. Ms. Cox DiGiovanni periodically scanned the faces of students as if she were collecting United States census data, using methods from the 1700s to the present day. Census methodology throughout history has grouped people into single, incomplete racial categories without considering the multiracial identities of many Americans. The title of Ms. Cox DiGiovanni’s show references rigid laws categorizing people as black if their ancestry included even “one drop” of African blood, which exposed them to legal and social discrimination. Through conversations with her parents, brother and grandmother, as well as a traumatic Peace Corps service mission in Cape Verde, West Africa, Ms. Cox DiGiovanni explores the intersections of race, gender and class in her life. “Without the context, we only understand a fraction of who we are,” she says. “It’s like filling out a form on a census.”

“I am a culturally-mixed woman, searching for racial answers. And I’m going to keep on searching, no matter how scary the questions and answers might get. I’m not going to hide from them, and I’m not going to pretend they don’t exist, because maybe that is how we can all get a little bit closer to some peace, and some justice, and then, perhaps, even one drop of love.”