Mixed Race Studies

Anthropology 324L/American Studies 321: The Black Indian Experience in the United States

University of Texas, Austin
Fall 2011

Circe Dawn Sturm, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Texas, Austin

This course explores the entwined histories, cultures and identities of African American and Native American people in the United States. Long neglected in popular and scholarly accounts, the Black Indian experience sheds light on comparative histories and legacies of racial formation, as well as the conjoined role that these two groups played in the emergence of the United States as an independent nation. Students will be exposed to a range of voices, including Black Indian artists, scholars and activists, as well as other scholars working in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, Native American Studies, African American Studies, American Studies and women’s studies. The readings will range from primary historical documents and ethnographies, to creative and autobiographical accounts. Course content will cover key issues and topics critical to Black Indian communities, such as US settler colonialism, American Indian slaveholding, cultural and linguistic exchange, kinship practices, forms of resistance, and ongoing struggles for tribal citizenship, with an in depth focus on several different tribes as they are represented in the required texts. Throughout the course, we will focus particular attention on how American race making practices have shaped Native American and African American views of one another and overshadowed the contexts in which they have interacted. Students are also required to consider how their own perceptions of race, culture, and indigeneity might limit their understanding of how American Indians, African Americans, and those of both heritages, answer the question, “Who am I,” for themselves.

Blacks, Black Indians, Afromexicans: the Dynamics of Race, Nation, and Identity in a Mexican Moreno Community (Guerrero)

American Ethnologist
Volume 27, Issue 4, November 2000
pages 898–626
DOI: 10.1525/ae.2000.27.4.898

Laura A. Lewis, Professor of Anthropology
James Madison University

In this article, I explore identity formation in Mexico from the perspective of residents of San Nicolás Tolentino, a village located on the Costa Chica, a historically black region of the southern Pacific Coast of Guerrero. Outsiders characterize San Nicolás’s residents as black, but in Mexico, national ideologies, anthropologies, and histories have traditionally worked to exclude or ignore blackness. Instead, the Spanish and Indian mestizo has been constituted as the quintessential Mexican, even as the Mexican past is tied to a romanticized and ideologically powerful Indian foundation. Ethnographic evidence suggests that San Nicolás’s “black” residents in fact see themselves as morenos, a term that signifies their common descent with Indians, whom they consider to be central to Mexicanness. As morenos interweave their identities, experiences, and descent with Indians, they also anchor themselves through Indians to the nation. These identity issues are complicated by the recent introduction to the coast of Africanness in the context of new national and scholarly projects reformulating the components of a new Mexican multicultural identity. In part, local morenos see Africanness as an outside imposition that conflicts with their sense of themselves as Mexican while it reinforces their political and economic marginality.

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Caroline Bond Day (1889–1948): A Black Woman Outsider Within Physical Anthropology

Transforming Anthropology
Volume 20, Issue 1, April 2012
pages 79–89
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7466.2011.01145.x

Anastasia C. Curwood, Visiting Fellow
James Weldon Johnson Institute for Race and Difference
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

This article examines the significance of Caroline Bond Day’s vindicationist anthropological work on mixed-race families early in the 20th century. Day used the techniques of physical anthropology to demonstrate that mixed-race African Americans were in no way inherently deformed or inferior. Using Day’s published work and unpublished correspondence, I show that her study was noteworthy for two reasons. First, unlike most other anthropologists of her time, but presaging later scholars, she studied her own family and social world, a perspective that both gave her unique data unavailable to others and removed barriers between herself and her subjects. Second, as a mixed-race African American woman, she found herself not only fighting preconceptions about the racial inferiority of African Americans but also serving as a liaison between her research subjects and mainstream, White-dominated physical anthropology. This article argues that Day’s importance as a scholar lies not only in her argument against racial inferiority but also in the outsider-within status that allowed her to make her case within academic anthropology in the early 20th century.

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Identity Politics and the New Genetics: Re/Creating Categories of Difference and Belonging

Berghahn Books
January 2012
226 pages
tables & figs, bibliog., index
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-85745-253-5

Edited by:

Katharina Schramm, Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg

David Skinner, Reader in Sociology
Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom

Richard Rottenburg, Professor Social Anthropology
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg

Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.

Contents

• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Ideas in Motion: Making Sense of Identity After DNA; Katharina Schramm, David Skinner, Richard Rottenburg
• Chapter 1. ‘Race’ as a Social Construction in Genetics; Andrew Smart, Richard Tutton, Paul Martin, George Ellison
• Chapter 2. Mobile Identities and Fixed Categories: Forensic DNA and the Politics of Racialised Data; David Skinner
• Chapter 3. Race, Kinship and the Ambivalence of Identity; Peter Wade
• Chapter 4. Identity, DNA, and the State in Post-Dictatorship Argentina; Noa Vaisman
• Chapter 5. ‘Do You Have Celtic, Jewish, Germanic Roots?’ – Applied Swiss History Before and After DNA; Marianne Sommer
• Chapter 6. Irish DNA: Making Connections and Making Distinctions in Y-Chromosome Surname Studies; Catherine Nash
• Chapter 7. Genomics en route: Ancestry, Heritage, and the Politics of Identity Across the Black Atlantic; Katharina Schramm
• Chapter 8. Biotechnological Cults of Affliction? Race, Rationality, and Enchantment in Personal Genomic Histories; Stephan Palmié
• Notes on Contributors
• Bibliography
• Index

The Founder Effect and Deleterious Genes

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 30, Issue 1 (January 1969)
pages 55-60
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330300107

Frank B. Livingstone (1928-2005), Professor Emeritus of Biological Anthropology
University of Michigan

During the rapid growth of a population from a few founders, a single deleterious gene in a founder can attain an appreciable frequency in later generations. A computer simulation, which has the population double itself in early generations, indicates a lethal could attain a frequency of 0.1. Since deleterious recessive genes are eliminated from large populations at a very slow rate, variations in their frequencies in present major human populations may be due to the founder effect during earlier rapid expansion.

Many distinctive human populations are characterized by the presence of one or more lethal or severely deleterious genes in frequencies which would be defined as polymorphic according to Ford’s (’40) famous definition. The particular genetic disorder, however, varies. The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania have a gene frequency of 0.07 for the recessive Ellis-van Creveld syndrome, while the Amish as a whole have a frequency of about 0.05 of the recessive cartilage-hair hypoplasia syndrome ( McKusick et al., ’64). Many of the tri-racial isolates of Eastern United States also have a high frequency of a deleterious gene (Witkop et al., ’66). Although such populations are frequently defined by religious or ethnic criteria, there are others not so defined. Several island populations in the Åland archipelago have a gene frequency of greater than 0.1 for von Willebrand’s disease (Eriksson, ’61), and the Boer population of South Africa and some populations of Northern Sweden have frequencies of porphyria much greater than those of other populations (Dean, ’63; Waldenstrom and Haeger-Aronsen, ’67). However, these conditions are dominant and do not have the very severe effects of other hereditary disorders found in high frequencies. On the other hand the population of the Chicoutimi District of Quebec has recently been found to have a gene frequency of about 0.02 for tyrosinemia, which is a lethal recessive (Laberge and Dallaire, ’67).

In most of these cases the population in question has undergone a rapid increase in recent years, and the question arises as to whether this rapid expansion and the original small size of the isolate could account for the high frequency of the deleterious gene. Such an explanation by the founder effect seems obviously to apply to most of the cases cited above, but the founder effect may well be a more general explanation of human gene frequency differences. It is now becoming apparent that the major populations of mankind vary significantly in their frequencies of deleterious genes and that many large populations such as Eastern European Jews have high frequencies of deleterious genes which are found in low frequencies in other populations McKusick, ’66). There have been many attempts to determine how such genes could be polymorphic, for example, Anderson et al. (’67) and Knudson et al. (’67) have discussed cystic fibrosis and Myrianthopoulos and Aronson (’66), Tay-Sachs disease. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to determine the extent to which the founder effect can cause high frequencies of deleterious genes with various models of population expansion.

The occurrence which initiated this research is the gene for sickle cell hemoglobin in the Brandywine isolate of Southeast Maryland. At present the sickle cell gene frequency in this isolate is about 0.1 (Rucknagel, ’64). The high frequencies of this gene in many parts of Africa, India, and the Middle East are now well-accepted as being due to a relative resistance of the sickle cell heterozygote to falciparum malaria. The high frequency in the Brandywine isolate may have a similar explanation, but the surrounding Negro population does not have such a high frequency. And although the endemicity of falciparum malaria in Southeast Maryland in the last century is not known in any detail, it would not appear to have been great enough to explain the high sickle cell frequency in the Brandywine isolate. The isolate also has many other deleterious genes in high frequency (Witkop et al., ’66).

The Brandywine isolate seems to have had its beginning in the early Eighteenth Century when laws were passed to prohibit co-habitation and marriage among races, which prior to then were presumably frequent or at least known. Up to 1720 there were several prosecutions under these laws of individuals with surnames currently present in the isolate (Harte, ’63). Harte (’63) has maintained that the Brandywine isolate is derived from these illegal unions, and Witkop et al. (‘66) show that the most common surname came from such a union. In 1790 the first United States Census recorded 190 persons with the group’s surnames as “other free people,” and since then over 90% of the recorded marriages have been endogamous or between individuals with surnames within the group (Harte, ’59). According to Harte (’59) there are six “core” surnames which have been associated with the group since its founding and comprise 66% of the population and another ten surnames which entered the group after the Civil War, but Witkop et al. (‘66) list seven core surnames and eight marginal ones. The total population of the isolate is now estimated to be 5,128 (Witkop et al., ’66), and the statistics do indicate rapid, if erratic, growth (Gilbert, ’45; Harte, ’63)…

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Métis identity matters

Winnipeg Free Press
2011-02-09

Editorial

The question of Métis identity has befuddled Canadians, governments and the courts ever since Louis Riel occupied Upper Fort Garry in 1869 and established a provisional government. Just who were these troublemakers, who had their own language, customs and practices, and who now claimed territorial rights?

Well, they weren’t First Nations and they weren’t Europeans, and they weren’t merely “half-breeds,” but a relatively new nation born in the fur-trading culture of 18th-century North America.

That was probably good enough, as definitions go, until 1982 when the Canadian Constitution guaranteed legal rights to aboriginal peoples, including the Métis, but left it to the courts to sort out those rights. Obviously, if they had rights, whatever those rights were, it mattered who and what was a Métis…

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Exploring Prejudice, Miscegenation, and Slavery’s Consequences in Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 1, Issue 1, Article 3 (2011)
5 pages

Steven Watson
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia

This research paper analyzes Mark Twain’s use of racist speech and racial stereotypes in his novel Pudd’nhead Wilson. Twain has often been criticized for his seemingly inflammatory language. However, a close reading of the text, supplemented by research in several anthologies of critical essays, reveals that Twain was actually interested in social justice. This is evident in his portrayal of Roxana as a sympathetic character who is victimized by white racist society in Dawson’s Landing, Mississippi during the time of slavery. In the final analysis, Twain’s writing was a product of the time period during which he wrote. This knowledge helps students understand the reasons behind Twain’s word choices, characterization, and portrayal of race.

In his novel Puddn’head Wilson, Mark Twain uses racist speech and ideology to examine slavery’s consequences and make a plea for the elevation of the black race. Roxana, the true protagonist and an obviously sympathetic character, appears to be a white supremacist. This is a logical contradiction. It is one of many contradictions that lend the book its complexity and make it challenging to interpret. Roxana has a dual nature in more ways than one. She is smart yet always loses. She is committed to her own survival while being filled with self-loathing. She is free and relishes her freedom, yet can be bought and sold at any time.

The basic plot of Pudd’nhead Wilson involves Roxana, a house slave of Percy Driscoll living in Dawson’s Landing, Missouri. She gives birth to a child on the same day that Driscoll’s wife does. Fearing her child will be sold down the river, Roxana switches the two babies in their cribs so that her son will be raised as Driscoll’s son and heir. She is able to do this because both she and her son are of mixed race and can pass for white (Twain 15). When the children become adults, one is accused of murder. Only the title character, a disgraced young lawyer, is able to sort out the identities and identify the murderer…

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Am I that Race? Punjabi Mexicans and Hybrid Subjectivity, or How To Do Theory So That It Doesn’t Do You

Hastings Women’s Law Journal
Volume 21, Number 2 (Summer 2010)
page 311-332

Falguni A. Sheth, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory
Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts

I. INTRODUCTION
 
This paper explores the conceptual and racial status of “Punjabi Mexicans” at the turn of the twentieth century. I refer primarily to marriages between East Indian men and Mexican or Mexican-American women on the West Coast and in the Southwestern United States. The scant information available about these alliances has been uncovered by several historians and an anthropologist.  In that literature, this group appears to be a “given,” i.e., it is portrayed as a coherent identity that emerges from a simple set of circumstances.  Yet, it is anything but a given; its existence and its collective and individual consciousness is created out of a complex nexus of legal, political, social, and natural environments that spurred the migration of East Indian men and Mexican women from their homelands and to their adopted lands. I am interested in examining the collective consciousness of individuals who are located in the same moment, but who are living in distinct but overlapping contexts. The structural sources – laws, institutions, explicit and implicit prohibitions, cultural trends, and economic interests – converge to give this population its subjectivity. By subjectivity, I refer to the complex existence of human beings, whose self-understanding is found in the nexus of historical, political, and social circumstances; juridical and social institutions such as laws and government; as well as in their creativity and imagination in negotiating and resisting those circumstances in order to survive or flourish. In other words, as Michel Foucault says, “There are two …

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Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance

University Press of America (an Imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
February 2004
182 pages
Size: 5 1/2 x 7 3/4
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7618-2775-7

Anita González, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Theatre Arts
State University of New York, New Paltz

Brown-skinned men and women move across Mexico’s national stages dancing the folkloric jarocho, a symbolic blend of Spanish, Native American, and African cultures. Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance traces the evolution and transformation of an Afro-Mexican dance form into a national cultural icon. It is an ethnographic study that compares and contrasts Mexican performance of national identity with Untied States dance styles. The book uses the image of the jarocho as a window to explore the phenomena of racial/cultural mixing that is endemic to Mexico and increasingly apparent in the politics and aesthetics of United States cultural performances.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 List of Illustrations
• Chapter 2 Preface
• Chapter 3 Acknowledgments
• Chapter 4 Introduction: Crafting Self; Frames of Reference; Locale and Methodology; Chapter Overviews
• Chapter 5 Cultural Mixing and Mexican Performance: Mapping Art: Cultural Contexts; Studies in Revolutionary Nationalism: Manuel Ponce; Amalia Hernandez; Celestino Gorostiza; A Legacy of Performance Strategies; Provincial Identity
• Chapter 6 Roots of Jarocho Dance
• Chapter 7 Jarocho as Folkloric Dance: State Images Ballet Folklórico del la Universidad Veracruzana; Miguel Velez and the Authenticity Mission; Raices del Pueblo (The Peoples’ Roots)
• Chapter 8 Jarocho as Theater: Company History, Veracruz, Veracruz Interprets Jarocho; Actors’ Interpretive (Re)Circulations in Veracruz, Veracruz; Implications and Interpretations
• Chapter 9 Remembering and Transforming the Past: Fiesta de las Cruces; Rewriting Government Agendas
• Chapter 10 Conclusion
• Chapter 11 Glossary
• Chapter 12 References
• Chapter 13 Index

Population structure and admixture in Cerro Largo, Uruguay, based on blood markers and mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms

American Journal of Human Biology
Volume 18, Issue 4 (July/August 2006)
pages 513–524
DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.20520

Mónica Sans
Departamento de Antropología Biológica, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación
Universidad de la República

D. Andrew Merriwether
Department of Anthropology
Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York

Pedro C. Hidalgo
Laboratorio de Inmunogenética e Histocompatibilidad
Instituto Nacional de Donación y Trasplante de Células, Organos y Tejidos
Hospital de Clínicas “Manuel Quintela”

Nilo Bentancor
Laboratorio de Inmunogenética e Histocompatibilidad
Instituto Nacional de Donación y Trasplante de Células, Organos y Tejidos
Hospital de Clínicas “Manuel Quintela”

Tania A. Weimer
Laboratório de Biotecnologia Veterinária
Universidade Luterana do Brasil

Maria Helena L.P. Franco
Departamento de Genética, Instituto de Biociências
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Inés Alvarez
Laboratorio de Inmunogenética e Histocompatibilidad
Instituto Nacional de Donación y Trasplante de Células, Organos y Tejidos
Hospital de Clínicas “Manuel Quintela”

Brian M. Kemp
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Davis

Francisco M. Salzano
Departamento de Genética, Instituto de Biociências
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Recent studies of the Uruguayan population revealed different amounts of Amerindian and African genetic contributions. Our previous analysis of Afro-Uruguayans from the capital city of the Department of Cerro Largo showed a high proportion of African genes, and the effects of directional mating involving Amerindian women. In this paper, we extended the analysis to a sample of more than 100 individuals representing a random sample of the population of the whole Department. Based on 18 autosomal markers and one X-linked marker, we estimated 82% European, 8% Amerindian, and 10% African contributions to their ancestry, while from seven mitochondrial DNA site-specific polymorphic markers and sequences of hypervariable segment I, we determined 49% European, 30% Amerindian, and 21% African maternal contributions. Directional matings between Amerindian women and European men were detected, but differences involving Africans were not significant. Data about the specific origins of maternal lineages were also provided, and placed in a historical context.

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