The melungeons: A mystery people of east Tennessee

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, History, Media Archive, Tri-Racial Isolates, United States on 2011-10-14 03:04Z by Steven

The melungeons: A mystery people of east Tennessee

Ethnos
Volume 29, Issue 1-2 (1964)
pages 43-48
DOI: 10.1080/00141844.1964.9980946

Paul G. Brewster
Cookeville, Tennessee, USA

The United States has long been called, and with some justification, “the melting-pot of nations” and the intermarriage of members of different races is a commonplace. The children born to such unions are as a rule aware of their mixed ancestry and identify themselves as Swedish-French, Irish-Italian, Welsh-English, etc. However, there are many groups which have no knowledge at all as to their racial origin or, at best, only a tradition supported by no historical evidence. Such are the Weromos and the Renabees of Virginia, the “Rivers” of North Carolina, and similar groups in Delaware and Maryland. Of this type are also the “Jackson Whites” of upper New York State and the Ramapo Mountain area of northern New Jersey, some of whom live hardly more than twenty-five miles from New York City and yet have all the clannishness, hostility toward the outside world, and primitive way of life usually associated with mountain people of the Deep South. Although they themselves know (or care) nothing about their ancestry, research has established that they are the descendants of some 3500 women shipped to New York for the pleasure of British troops during the American Revolution. The name Jackson derives from that of the contractor who supplied them, and they were called “Whites” to distinguish them from the West Indian women included in the shipment. At the close of the War they were released by the British and left to fend for themselves, with the…

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I Am What I Say I Am: Racial and Cultural Identity among Creoles of Color in New Orleans

Posted in Dissertations, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Louisiana, Media Archive, United States on 2011-10-14 01:23Z by Steven

I Am What I Say I Am: Racial and Cultural Identity among Creoles of Color in New Orleans

University of New Orleans
2009-05-15
62 pages

Nikki Dugar

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

This paper examines the generational changes in the culture and racial self-identification of Creoles of Color of New Orleans. This study argues that the key to understanding Creole culture is the role that isolationism has played in its history. While White ethnics pursued a path of assimilation, Creoles of Color pursued a path of isolationism. This path served them well during the Jim Crow era, but it suddenly became undesirable during the Black Power era. Now, however, new values of multiculturalism have resurrected Creole identity as a cultural asset.

Table of Contents

  • List of Figures
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Historiography
  • Early Debate
  • Distinctly Creole
  • Passing
  • Light Skin With Good Hair
  • Civil Rights Creoles
  • Contemporary Creoles
  • American Racial Policy and Ideology
  • Multiracial Chic
  • Conclusion
  • Epilogue
  • Vita

List of Figures

  • Figure 1. Map depicting the proximity of traditional Creole institutions to each other
  • Figure 2. Plan of New Orleans, 1872
  • Figure 3. Geographic Distributions and Shifts of the Creole Population in New Orleans, 1800-2000
  • Figure 4. North Claiborne Avenue before the construction of Interstate Highway 10, 1966
  • Figure 5. North Claiborne Avenue after the construction of Interstate Highway 10, 2009

Introduction

“I‟m too white to be black and too black to be white,” remarked Ronald Ricard, a New Orleans Creole of Color, in an interview in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1977. Ricard was expressing a sentiment that many Creoles of Color continue to have about themselves. The feeling of not quite belonging to one race or the other has been an issue for many since the antebellum period. Since that time, the Creole community has gone through many political and social changes, which have affected not only the community‟s structure but also ideas about its racial identity. This study will focus particularly on three generations of Creoles: those who came of age before World War II, here called “Traditional Creoles” (born during the colonial period up to the 1930s); those who matured in the post war years, designated “Civil Rights Creoles” (born between 1940s and 1960s); and “Contemporary Creoles” (born in the 1970s to present day). In comparing these pre- and post-war groups, this study will explore how generational differences exist in how Creoles racially identify themselves.

To complicate matters further, Contemporary Creoles do not share a monolithic racial identity, for older and younger members of this category view certain issues very differently. This is to be expected, because identity is a constantly evolving phenomenon influenced by many external factors. Rather than gloss over their differences, this study will examine them closely in search of trends and patterns that will illuminate the entire history of Creoles of Color in New Orleans.

Primary sources used in this study include newspaper and magazine articles, maps, census data, and interviews conducted by the author. The latter were comprised of written questionnaires and follow-up oral interviews administered between Spring 2008 and Spring 2009. The sixteen interviewees were Creoles of Color, meaning people of mixed French-, African-, Spanish-, and Native-American ancestry, most of whom reside in or have familial ties to Louisiana. On the questionnaires, respondents supplied background information on themselves and family members including name, age, gender, current and previous neighborhood residences, and schools attended. They were then asked their opinions regarding Creoles of Color in New Orleans: what traits define the group, what racial and cultural differences separate Creoles from other African Americans, and what racial identity they and their families claim. After completing the questionnaires, participants were invited to contribute additional details, stories, and comments. These interviews, combined with other primary materials noted above, constitute the core of this research endeavor.

An array of secondary sources also informs this study. Secondary sources include works that examine the development of Creole culture. Sources on New Orleans history are used to place the different generations of Creoles within a historical context. Sources on multiculturalism, American popular culture, and Whiteness studies were also used to discuss the generations of Contemporary Creoles.

On the basis of the aforementioned primary and secondary sources, this study argues that the key to understanding Creole culture is the role that isolationism has played in its history. While White ethnics pursued a path of assimilation, Creoles of Color pursued a path of isolationism. This path served them well during the Jim Crow era, but it suddenly became undesirable during the Black Power era. Now, however, new values of multiculturalism have resurrected Creole identity as a cultural asset…

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Bill John Baker named official winner in Cherokee chief election

Posted in Articles, Native Americans/First Nation, New Media, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2011-10-13 17:50Z by Steven

Bill John Baker named official winner in Cherokee chief election

Tusla World
2011-10-13

Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, World Correspondent

TAHLEQUAHBill John Baker is now officially principal chief-elect of the Cherokee Nation.

About 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, the Cherokee Nation Election Commission certified the results from the tribe’s special election. The certified results show Baker defeating former chief Chad Smith, 10,703 votes to 9,128.

“I’d just like to thank every person involved in this election,” said commission chairwoman Susan Plumb. “First and foremost, a big thank you to the voters, who came out in record numbers. We received ballots from all 50 states and four foreign countries.”

Almost 20,000 Cherokee citizens voted in the special election, an increase of 5,000 people from the June 25 general election…

…Among the Baker supporters were several freedmen who came in part because of a tribal Supreme Court order issued Tuesday afternoon.

The order, filed at noon, declined to recognize an agreement brokered in federal district court that reinstated the tribal citizenship of 2,800 freedmen descendants.

“This is a time-out for all the racism that’s going on in all the tribes,” said Yvette Hill. “The large amount he (Baker) won by shows that the Cherokee Nation is not for that. The people have spoken, and the tribe needs to be an example.”

About 1,200 freedmen were registered to vote. It is unknown how many cast ballots in the special election.

The tribe’s attorney general, Diane Hammons, issued a statement Tuesday that the tribe does not have the option of ignoring a federal order. As of Wednesday, it is still unclear, what – if any – impact the justices’ order will have on the election.

On Aug. 22, the tribe’s Supreme Court had upheld a 2007 tribal referendum that disenrolled the freedmen descendants and required at least one Cherokee ancestor on the final Dawes Rolls in order to apply for citizenship…

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In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-10-13 14:00Z by Steven

In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger

The New York Times
2011-10-13

Susan Saulny

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — “How come she’s so white and you’re so dark?”

The question tore through Heather Greenwood as she was about to check out at a store here one afternoon this summer. Her brown hands were pushing the shopping cart that held her babbling toddler, Noelle, all platinum curls, fair skin and ice-blue eyes.

The woman behind Mrs. Greenwood, who was white, asked once she realized, by the way they were talking, that they were mother and child. “It’s just not possible,” she charged indignantly. “You’re so…dark!”

It was not the first time someone had demanded an explanation from Mrs. Greenwood about her biological daughter, but it was among the more aggressive. Shaken almost to tears, she wanted to flee, to shield her little one from this kind of talk. But after quickly paying the cashier, she managed a reply. “How come?” she said. “Because that’s the way God made us.”

The Greenwood family tree, emblematic of a growing number of American bloodlines, has roots on many continents. Its mix of races — by marriage, adoption and other close relationships — can be challenging to track, sometimes confusing even for the family itself…

Jenifer L. Bratter, an associate sociology professor at Rice University who has studied multiracialism, said that as long as race continued to affect where people live, how much money they make and how they are treated, then multiracial families would be met with double-takes. “Unless we solve those issues of inequality in other areas, interracial families are going to be questioned about why they’d cross that line,” she said.

According to Census data, interracial couples have a slightly higher divorce rate than same-race couples — perhaps, sociologists say, because of the heightened stress in their lives as they buck enduring norms. And children in mixed families face the challenge of navigating questions about their identities…

…Once, on a beach chair at a resort in Florida years ago, a white woman sunning herself next to Mrs. Dragan bemoaned the fact that black children were running around the pool. “Isn’t it awful?” Mrs. Dragan recalled the woman confiding to her.

Within minutes, Mrs. Dragan, ever feisty despite her reserved appearance, had her brood by her side. “I’d like to introduce you to my children,” she told the woman. Awkward silence ensued…

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The Marginalization of Afro-Asians in East Asia: Globalization and the Creation of Subculture and Hybrid Identity

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science on 2011-10-13 01:06Z by Steven

The Marginalization of Afro-Asians in East Asia: Globalization and the Creation of Subculture and Hybrid Identity

Global Tides: Pepperdine Journal of International Studies
Volume 5 (2011)
15 pages
Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

Sierra Reicheneker

This article explores the topic of children born of biracial couplings in East Asia. The offspring of such unique unions face severe discrimination and marginalization. The status and future of this minority is especially salient in primarily homogenous states, such as Korea, Japan, and China, where racism varies from social stigma to institutionalized policies. The article will show that they have yet to create a cohesive group identity; they remain vulnerable to negative self-image and socially imposed isolation. In such nations, progress in equality for Afro-Asians will require key Afro-Asian leaders and public figures taking a stand against prejudices, as well as international pressure, and an increase in the number of biracial people due to globalization, in addition to the growing interconnectedness through New Media. Through these actions a hybrid identity and group mentality will form for the Afro-Asians of East Asia.

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible – and even the impossible may only be so as of now.” – Pearl S. Buck

The growing presence of an Afro-Asian population in Asia, particularly in Korea, Japan and China, has recently come to light in the global media. The homogenous nature of these countries exposes its biracial citizens to psychological marginalization. Despite the frequent trend within marginalized groups to create solidarity through a viable counter-culture, the Afro-Asian populations have not done so. However, with the increase in globalization, leading to larger numbers of biracial people born in these states, as well as their ability to connect through the Internet, this small minority will begin to form a group identity. This is furthered by icon-status Afro-Asians leading the way and acting as beacons of aspiration for all Afro-Asians. In addition, with the help of the international community in applying pressure on governments to change racist policies, an Afro-Asian subculture and hybrid identity is likely to emerge.

A Brief History

The first Afro-Asians were the product of American G.I.s during World War II. Starting in 1946, with the occupation of Okinawa and later mainland Japan, as well as the temporary military government of South Korea, Amerasian—including Afro-Asian—children became a visible reality in East Asia. The products of both prostitution and legally binding marriages, these children were largely regarded as illegitimate. When the military presence returned to America, the distinction between the two was, for all practical purposes, null. As the American military departed, any previous preferential treatment for biracial people ended, and was replaced with a backlash due to the return of ethnically-based national pride.

Korea has the largest Afro-Asian population in the Far East, due to increased interracial relationships during the Korean War (1950-1953). Once again, children were the product of both legitimate marriages and prostitution. After the war, the United States Congress passed acts to allow for immigration of biracial children, including the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987. The Korean government strongly supported the emigration of Amerasian children to the United States, considering it a “cost-effective way of dealing with social welfare problems,” as they viewed the children, particularly those from Black fathers, as “institutional burdens.”However, American military men looking to bring their Asian families to the states were heavily discouraged from doing so by their superiors; Marines in particular were threatened with court martial. Despite overwhelming support and willing adoptee families in the United States, the majority of Amerasian children remained in Korea. A staggering amount of mothers abandoned their babies, especially Afro-Asian offspring, either to be raised by distant, maternal relatives or to be sent to orphanages—though this is not the case for all of the Amerasian Koreans.

In China, the Afro-Asian people group is a newer phenomenon. They first began to appear beginning with African-American and African students coming to study in China, first in the city of Beijing and later in other larges cities, such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Prominent Afro-Chinese have recently been featured in international news, helping to bring to light the growing Afro-Asian population in China and in East Asia, as a whole…

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Institutional Barriers, Marginality, and Adaptation Among the American-Japanese Mixed Bloods in Japan

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science on 2011-10-13 00:44Z by Steven

Institutional Barriers, Marginality, and Adaptation Among the American-Japanese Mixed Bloods in Japan

The Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 42, Number 3 (1983)
pages 519-544
DOI: 10.2307/2055516

William R. Burkhardt, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ohio University

Guided by the perspective of marginality theory, the author examines the problems that have faced the mixed-blood progeny of Japanese women and American military servicemen who were reared in father-absent homes and institutions in Japan. The group has experienced discrimination according to racial, class, and family background characteristics and has encountered barriers in the areas of education, employment, marriage, and citizenship or legal status. Although culturally Japanese, mixed bloods are often stereotyped by Japanese as cultural oddities or aliens. Black Japanese have been especially victimized by discrimination and negative stereotypes. Although most American-Japanese have accepted their marginal situation with a fate-orientation common among Japanese, some have responded maladaptively with deviant patterns of aggressive or self-destructive behavior. Others have sought emigration, and a few may have “passed” into Japanese society. The author places these findings in the context of existing research on the Burakumin and Korean minorities in Japan, Korean Amerasians, and Eurasians in East and South Asia.

This study examines the extent to which the American-Japanese or Amerasian mixed-blood group in Japan has been in a marginal situation relative to the larger society. This is accomplished by an historical sketch of the problems faced by mixed bloods in Japan; an examination of specific institutional areas in which opportunities have been blocked and marginality has resulted; and a discussion of three types of adaptations to marginal status, which is based on a review of some case examples of mixed bloods. The research is grounded on unstructured interviews with eight American-Japanese mixed bloods, interviews with several Japanese who have had professional or personally intimate relationships with Amerasians, and a review of the existing literature, including the translation of biographical materials published in Japanese.

The focus of the research is on father-absent Amerasians who have spent at least their childhood and adolescence in Japan. As the Japanese government has never officially identified Amerasians as a distinct racial or societal group, there is no accurate way to estimate their total number, which, according to various sources, probably ranges between ten and sixty thousand. The research will not be concerned with mixed-blood children who were adopted at an early age,  usually by families of American military servicemen, or with the several thousand progeny of Japanese women who married U.S. military personnel or civilians and have a family and cultural life that is characteristically American…

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Savage Half-Breed, French Canadian or White US Citizen? Louis Riel and US Perceptions of Nation and Civilisation

Posted in Articles, Canada, History, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2011-10-12 23:21Z by Steven

Savage Half-Breed, French Canadian or White US Citizen? Louis Riel and US Perceptions of Nation and Civilisation

National Identities
Volume 7, Issue 4, 2005
pages 369-388
DOI: 10.1080/14608940500334390

Lauren L. Basson, Assistant Professor of Politics and Government
Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Louis Riel was the late nineteenth-century leader of the Métis, an indigenous, North American people of mixed descent. His political protests challenged conventional notions of Canadian identity and earned him a prestigious place in Canadian national history. His challenges to US national identity, however, have been almost totally overlooked. This article examines how the responses of US press members and policy makers to Riel’s politics and racial status reflected and contributed to changing understandings of what it meant to be a member of the US nation and of civilisation more broadly. It suggests that ascriptive criteria such as race, ethnicity, religion and language were central aspects of US national identity.

Introduction

In the spring of 1885, a violent conflict erupted in Canada, garnering front-page headlines in North American newspapers for months. Louis Riel, leader of the Métis, a people of indigenous and European descent, had launched his second militant protest against the Canadian government’s violation of Métis land rights. Riel a charismatic, bi-national political activist not only redefined the Canadian political landscape; he also challenged conventional notions of what it meant to he American and a member of the civilised world. Kiel’s multiracial. Métis identity and political goals compelled US press members and policy makers to re-examine their assumptions about the meanings of US nationhood and civilisation.

In the late nineteenth century, many US journalists, politicians and other citizens expressed a world view that resembled a series of concentric circles defining the boundaries of (heir nation and civilisation. According to this worldview, the inner…

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In/visible Sight: The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand

Posted in Anthropology, Books, Family/Parenting, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Monographs, Oceania on 2011-10-12 22:35Z by Steven

In/visible Sight: The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand

Bridget Williams Books also Athabasca University Press
June 2009
220 pages
ISBN: 978-1-877242-43-4

Angela Wanhalla, Lecturer in History
University of Otago, New Zealand

Angela Wanhalla starts her story with the mixed-descent community at Maitapapa, Taieri, where her great-grandparents, John Brown and Mabel Smith, were born. As the book took shape, a community emerged from the records, re-casting history and identity in the present.

Drawing on the experiences of mixed-descent families, In/visible Sight examines the early history of cross-cultural encounter and colonisation in southern New Zealand. There Ngäi Tahu engaged with the European newcomers on a sustained scale from the 1820s, encountering systematic settlement from the 1840s and fighting land alienation from the 1850s. The evolving social world was one framed by marriage, kinship networks and cultural practices – a world in which inter-racial intimacy played a formative role.

In exploring this history through a particular group of family networks, In/visible Sight offers new insights into New Zealand’s colonial past. Marriage as a fundamental social institution in the nineteenth century takes on a different shape when seen through the lens of cross-cultural encounters. The book also outlines some of the contours and ambiguities involved in living as mixed descent in colonial New Zealand.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.

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Defending Home and Hearth: Walter White Recalls the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2011-10-12 22:21Z by Steven

Defending Home and Hearth: Walter White Recalls the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot

Web Source: History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web
Walter White, A Man Called White
1948; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969
pages 5–12

Walter White (1893-1955)

The riots that broke out between 1898 and 1906 were part of a pattern of anti-black violence that included several hundred lynchings each year. One of the most savage race riots in these years erupted in Atlanta on September 22, 1906 after vague reports of African Americans harassing white women. Over five days at least ten black people were killed while Atlanta’s police did nothing to protect black citizens, going so far as to confiscate guns from black Atlantans while allowing whites to remain armed. In this selection from his memoirs, Walter White, the future head of the NAACP recalled how, at age 13, he and his father defended their home from white rioters.

The unseasonably oppressive heat of an Indian summer day hung like a steaming blanket over Atlanta. My sisters and I had casually commented upon the unusual quietness. It seemed to stay Mother’s volubility and reduced Father, who was more taciturn, to monosyllables. But, as I remember it, no other sense of impending trouble impinged upon our consciousness.

I had read the inflammatory headlines in the Atlanta News and the more restrained ones in the Atlanta Constitution which reported alleged rapes and other crimes committed by Negroes. But these were so standard and familiar that they made—as I look back on it now—little impression. The stories were more frequent, however, and consisted of eight-column streamers instead of the usual two or four-column ones.

Father was a mail collector. His tour of duty was from three to eleven P.M. He made his rounds in a little cart into which one climbed from a step in the rear. I used to drive the cart for him from two until seven, leaving him at the point nearest our home on Houston Street, to return home either for study or sleep. That day Father decided that I should not go with him. I appealed to Mother, who thought it might be all right, provided Father sent me home before dark because, she said, “I don’t think they would dare start anything before nightfall.”Father told me as we made the rounds that ominous rumors of a race riot that night were sweeping the town. But I was too young that morning to understand the background of the riot. I became much older during the next thirty-six hours, under circumstances which I now recognize as the inevitable outcome of what had preceded.

…Late in the afternoon friends of my father’s came to warn of more trouble that night. They told us that plans had been perfected for a mob to form on Peachtree Street just after nightfall to march down Houston Street to what the white people called “Darktown,” three blocks or so below our house, to “clean out the niggers.” There had never been a firearm in our house before that day. Father was reluctant even in those circumstances to violate the law, but he at last gave in at Mother’s insistence…

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White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP

Posted in Biography, Books, Law, Media Archive, Monographs, Passing, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2011-10-12 22:14Z by Steven

White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP

The New Press
Fall 2002
496 pages
Trim: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-56584-773-6

Kenneth R. Janken, Professor, African and Afro-American Studies
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

A publishing landmark, the first biography of the man who brought the NAACP to national prominence

From his earliest years, Walter White was determined to transcend the rigid boundaries of segregation-era America. An African American of exceptionally light complexion, White went undercover as a young man to expose the depredations of Southern lynch mobs. As executive secretary of the NAACP from 1931 until his death in 1955, White was among the nation’s preeminent champions of civil rights, leading influential national campaigns against lynching, segregation in the military, and racism in Hollywood movies.

White is portrayed here for the first time in his full complexity, a man whose physical appearance enabled him to negotiate two very different worlds in segregated America, yet who saw himself above all as an organization man, “Mr. NAACP.” Deeply researched and richly documented, White’s biography provides a revealing vantage point from which to view the leading political and cultural figures of his time—including W.E.B. DuBois, Eleanor Roosevelt, and James Weldon Johnson—and an unrivaled glimpse into the contentious world of civil rights politics and activism in the pre–civil rights era.

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