Author: Steven

  • Speaking in Tongues The New York Review of Books Volume 56, Number 3 (2009-02-26) Zadie Smith The following is based on a lecture given at the New York Public Library in December 2008. 1. Hello. This voice I speak with these days, this English voice with its rounded vowels and consonants in more or less…

  • There is nothing new about crossing racial boundaries; what is new is the frequency of border crossings and boundary hoppings and the refusal to bow to the thorn-filled American concept, perhaps unknown outside the United States, that each person has a race but only one. Racial blending is undermining the master idea that race is…

  • “…The articles by Binning, Unzueta, Huo, and Molina (2009) and by Townsend, Markus, and Bergsieker (2009) showed the positive benefits that accrue when multiracial individuals are free to claim their multiracial backgrounds. Binning et al. (2009), for example, found that multiracial students who identify multiracially demonstrate higher levels of psychological and organizational well-being than multiracial…

  • A long-awaited history that promises to dramatically change our understanding of race in America, “What Comes Naturally” traces the origins, spread, and demise of miscegenation laws in the United States–laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, most often between whites and members of other races. Peggy Pascoe demonstrates how these laws were enacted and applied…

  • What is multiracialism—and what are the theoretical consequences and practical costs of asserting a multiracial identity? Arguing that the multiracial movement bolsters, rather than subverts, traditional categories of race, Rainier Spencer critically assesses current scholarship in support of multiracial identity.

  • The 1850 census marked a watershed in census-taking in several ways. For our purposes, a large part of its significance rests in the introduction of the “mulatto” category and the reasons for its introduction. This category was added not because of demographic shifts, but because of the lobbying efforts of race scientists and the willingness…

  • Runaway Western Carolinian Salisbury, North Carolina 1832-09-17 page 3, column 6 Source: The North Carolina Newspaper Digitization Project On the 10th of September last, from my plantation in Jones county, two negroes, one named WASHINGTON, about 27 years of age, a very bright mulatto, on one of his hands there is a scar occasioned by…

  • Identity for mixed-race kids? ‘Eurasian’ already exists The Straits Times Singapore Forum Letters 2013-03-30 Michael Ang York Poon I am baffled by Mr Peter Wadeley’s letter (“S’porean identity must include mixed-race kids“; March 16). What he is calling for already exists – that is, Eurasians, who are one of Singapore’s four main racial groups. In…

  • S’porean identity must include mixed-race kids The Straits Times Singapore Forum Letters 2013-03-16 Peter Wadeley MRS MARIETTA Koh Ai-meng (“Citizens have every right to expect privileges”; last Saturday) claims that rising consciousness of what it means to be Singaporean should not be decried as chauvinistic or jingoistic. Last year, former president S R Nathan said…

  • Cross-Cultural Affinities between Native American and White Women in “The Alaska Widow” by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far) MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Volume 38, Number 1 (Spring 2013) pages 155-163 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mls002 Mary Chapman, Associate Professor of English University of British Columbia When her work was recovered in the 1980s, Edith Eaton…