Mixed Race Studies

Kept in, kept out: the Formation of Racial Identity in Brazil, 1930-1937

Simon Fraser University
November 1996
95 pages

Veronica Armstrong

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Latin American Studies Program

This thesis examines the roles of historian Gilberto Freyre and the Sao Paulo black press in the formation of racial identity in Brazil in Casa Grande e Senzala. published in 1933, Freyre presented a hypothesis of Brazilian national identity based on positive interpretations of slavery and miscegenation. His emphasis on racial harmony met with the approval of Getúlio Vargas, a president intent on the unification of Brazilian society. With Vargas’ backing, racial democracy became Brazilian national identity. Supporters included the black press which welcomed an idea that brought blacks into definitions of Brazilianness. Yet, blacks were embracing an interpretation of Brazilian identity that would replace a growing black racial awareness. Reasons for the undermining of black racial consciousness and the enshrining of racial democracy as Brazilian national identity emerge in an overview of shifts occurring during the first decades of the twentieth century.  The forces of mass immigration, negative evaluations of Brazil by scientific racism, and the nation-building politics of Vargas affected the elite minority and the poverty-stricken majority of Brazilians, but in differing ways. For while economic stability and national pride were the goals of the former, research suggests that survival was the paramount aim of the latter. Addressing the needs of both groups, the adoption of racial democracy as national ideology in the late 1930s maintained elite privilege, defused the potential of racial unrest, and promised social mobility to the masses.

Benefits to the largely-black masses, however, had strings attached. Social mobility depended on their acting “white” and becoming “white” through miscegenation. In the face of desperate poverty, blacks had few options and assimilation seemed a way to move beyond their low socio-economic status. Furthermore, contrasts with American segregation convinced black writers that battling discrimination had to be secondary to the economic survival of their community. The thesis concludes by seeking to explain the paradox of a society characterised by many foreigners and most Brazilians as a racial paradise from the 1930s to the 1970s even though Brazilian reality evinces gross inequality between the small Europeanised elite and the large black and mixed-race underclass.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Approval
• Abstract
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction Kept in, Kept out: The Question of Brazilianness and Black Solidarity 1930-1937
  • The search for national identity
  • Brazilianness vs. Blackness
• Chapter 1. Ideology and Identity.
  • The dawning of a new era of national thought
  • A historic moment
  • Whitening
  • A New Era
• Chapter 2. Race
  • Miscegenation and Racial Terminology
  • Racial Democracy: Theory and Revision
• Chapter 3. The Making of a Cultural Hero
  • Freyre: the child and the man
  • Freye’s “Old Social Order”
  • Casa Grande e Senzala
  • Freyre, the Intellectual
  • Freyre, Father of National Identity
• Chapter 4. The Politics of Identity
  • The Black Press in Brazil
  • The Meaning of Language
  • From the mulato to the black press
  • The Black Press: an alternative path
  • Assimilation vs. segregation
  • A Frente Negra
• Chapter 5. Only we, the Negros of Brazil, know what it is to feel colour prejudice
  • AVoz da Raça
• Conclusion: We are Brazilian
  • Intellectuals and Ideology
  • Searching for identity
• Epilogue
• Bibliography

Read the entire thesis here.

The Historiography of Métis Land Dispersal, 1870-1890

Manitoba History
Number 30, Autumn 1995

Brad Milne
History Department
University of Manitoba

The Manitoba Act of 1870 provided substantial land grants to the Métis at Red River. Section 31 set aside 1.4 million acres of land for distribution among the children of Métis heads of families residing in the province, while section 32 guaranteed all old settlers, Métis or white, “peaceable possession” of the lots they occupied in the Red River settlement prior to 15 July, 1870. Subsection 32(5) guaranteed allotments of land to commute the rights of hay and common in the outer two miles that accompanied many of the old river lots. Additional legislation of 1874 granted $160 scrip, redeemable in Dominion lands, to all Métis heads of families. However, as most students and scholars of Métis history are aware, very little of this land and scrip remained in Métis hands by the late 1870s. Instead, the period from 1870 to 1890 saw the widespread dispersal of the Métis from Red River.

In the last two decades, a virtual “explosion in Métis scholarship” has emerged to determine why this large scale migration occurred.With native political organizations and the governments of Canada and Manitoba embroiled in an on-going court battle, various scholars have received generous financial support to investigate Métis land claims in Manitoba. For two scholars in particular, Douglas Sprague and Thomas Flanagan, the Métis dispersal has become a subject of bitter dispute. Flanagan, a University of Calgary political scientist and a historical consultant for the federal Department of Justice, believes that the federal government fulfilled the land provisions of the Manitoba Act. On the other hand, Sprague, a historian retained by the Manitoba Métis Federation to undertake research into Métis land claims, argues that through a process of formal and informal discouragement, the Métis were victims of a deliberate conspiracy in which John A. Macdonald and the Canadian government successfully kept them from obtaining title to the land they were to receive under terms of the Manitoba Act of 1870. Although Sprague and Flanagan remain the central combatants in this historiographical battle, significant research has been conducted by many other scholars, most notably Gerhard Ens and Nicole St-Onge.

In short, the issue of Métis land dispersal is controversial and is the focus of an impressive historiographical debate. This article will not add to the debate. It is designed to help those who are not specialists in Métis history gain an understanding of the state of the argument over land claims…

Read the entire article here.

Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic: Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiahs

Routledge: Routledge Studies on African and Black Diaspora
2009-12-15
204 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-87226-3
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-89391-6
eBook ISBN: 978-0-203-85736-6

Daniel R. McNeil, Associate Professor of History
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

This is the first book to place the self-fashioning of mixed-race individuals in the context of a Black Atlantic. Drawing on a wide range of sources and a diverse cast of characters – from the diaries, letters, novels and plays of femme fatales in Congo and the United States to the advertisements, dissertations, oral histories and political speeches of Black Power activists in Canada and the United Kingdom – it gives particular attention to the construction of mixed-race femininity and masculinity during the twentieth century. Its broad scope and historical approach provides readers with a timely rejoinder to academics, artists, journalists and politicians who only use the mixed-race label to depict prophets or delinquents as “new” national icons for the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents

1. New People?
2. An Individualistic Age?
3. “Je suis métisse”
4. “I. Am. A Light Grey Canadian.”
5. “I’m Black. Not Mixed. Not Canadian. Not African. Just Black”
6. “Yes, We’re All Individuals!” “I’m Not.”
7. Conclusion

Real Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood [Review by Steve George]

Ethnicities
Volume 27, Number 2 (2005)
Pages 272–274

Steve George
Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland

Real Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood. By Bonita Lawrence. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004. Pp. 303, bibliography, index, ISBN 0-7748-1103 -X)

The title of Lawrence’s book is as direct as it is provocative. The book’s title states the book’s purpose to examine the central and perhaps most volatile question in Aboriginal communities today: “Who is an Indian?” In 2003, Lawrence edited Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival (Sumach Press) with Kim Anderson and in many respects this new work is a continuation of the voices heard in that book. Lawrence is a Mi’kmaq scholar whose research at Queen’s University, and more recently at York University, has concerned how “Indian/nativeness” is defined in Euro-Canadian and Native contexts, from within historical and legal paradigms as well as within native communities across Canada.

Bonita Lawrence’s work is a continuation of powerful works like Howard Adams’ Prison of Grass (1975) and Maria Campbell’s Half-Breed (1973) and more recent works by Joseph Bruchac, Bowman’s Store (Lee & Low Books, 2001) and Warren Carriou’s, Lake of the Prairies (Anchor, 2003). It has the depth of these works because we read mixed-blood peoples’ voices directly from the page. The importance of these voices lies in how each of these persons tells their stories, relates their experiences, and shares their family and community histories. Lawrence’s style of writing is easy to read while her research approach is organic in its having informants speak for themselves.

As a mixed-blood Mi’kmaw, I read this book from both a very personal level of experience as well as from an academic one, as a Masters graduate student in Folklore. In Canada the subject of mixed-blood Native people remains a controversial one from within native communities and from without, in the large urban centres across the country. Lawrence has interviewed several mixed-blood informants to tell stories that show the different kinds of experiences mixed-bloods have had in the city of Toronto and across North America. Some of these narratives involve pain, abuse, neglect, and lack of self worth, while others involve stories of empowerment, community involvement, and survival. Each one of the informants speaks from life experiences that involve a mix of acceptance and non-acceptance of their “Indian/nativeness,” both from within themselves, from their families as well as from different native communities. The responses interviewees give Lawrence are direct and bear fruit to the underreported and underwritten subject of mixed-blood Native peoples…

Read the entire review here.

Canada’s famous first black doctor

National Review of Medicine
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Volume 1, Number 4 (2004-02-28)

Marvin Ross

Born in Toronto in 1837, Dr Anderson Abbott was a close friend of Abe Lincoln but refused to serve in the US Colored Troops

Not only was Anderson Ruffin Abbott the first black man to graduate from medical school in Canada (University of Toronto, 1861), he is described in a US history textbook as “probably the most famous British North American-born surgeon to serve coloured soldiers during the Civil War.” He was also a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, whose widow presented him with the shawl Lincoln wore to his first inauguration.

Dr Abbott’s father, Wilson, was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1801 to free parents but he eventually moved to Canada in 1835 to escape prejudice in the US. Wilson prospered in Toronto where he became an influential real estate dealer and city alderman. Anderson, who was born in 1837, studied medicine at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1861. While working as an intern, or medical licentiate as it was then known, in 1863 he petitioned President Lincoln to be allowed to join the Union Army.

He became one of only eight black surgeons serving, which brought him to the president’s attention and led to their friendship. Dr Abbott, however, refused to serve in the United States Colored Troops—a segregated unit. Instead, he opted to work as a contract surgeon. He explained why in a 1907 letter, writing that he felt equal to operating on any man and that having been born in a land where all men are free, he was not going to submit to government-endorsed segregation. His heroic act had a negative side effect, though: because of his refusal to serve in the segregated regiment, his widow was denied a Civil War Widow’s Pension…

…His son, Wilson R. Abbott, also became a doctor and practised as a lung and heart surgeon in Chicago. But unlike his father, he wasn’t relegated to a segregated black hospital—not because the laws had changed, but because he worked at a white hospital by passing. Anderson Abbott had married a woman from St Catharines, Ontario who was of mixed racial background. His son, Wilson, married a white woman and they and their descendents began to live as whites. Ms Slaney only learned that she was part black in 1975 at age 24 when she was approached by the Ontario Black History Society to ask about her great-great grandfather. No one had ever told her that half her family was black and, as she pointed out that at the time, “I didn’t even know any black people.” Her story and that of her black ancestor is the subject of her book Family Secrets: Crossing the Colour Line.

Read the entire article here.

Black & White: Search for roots uncovers forgotten family secret

National Post
Toronto, Canada
2012-02-17

Sarah Boesveld, General Assignment Writer

About 20 years ago, David Dossett watched his grandfather politely shut down a woman who called to say she was a relative and that their family had come to Canada from Jamaica and that they were black. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Dossett said to his granddad, businessman John B. Sampson, who seemed amused by this idea. Their family — Mr. Dossett’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side — had come to Canada from Scotland in 1907 and settled in Toronto. No one disputed that. But while doing some casual family tree sleuthing online a few years ago, Mr. Dossett, an IT manager and father of four, stumbled upon a tree that looked a lot like his. As it turns out, it belonged to the woman who called his grandfather that day — Jenny Sampson from Illinois. And so began Mr. Dossett’s “obsessive” hunt for a family’s past that had remained a secret for over 100 years. In the end, he discovered his family is not Protestant and Scottish, but Jamaican and Jewish. Not everyone is pleased about the discovery — much of which was broadcast last week on an episode of The Generations Project on Brigham Young University TV. Mr. Dossett spoke with the Post’s Sarah Boesveld from his hometown of Kingston, Ont.:

Q Jenny Sampson had been doing research independently before you began to question your family’s roots and identity. What had she found?

A When I was looking at her family tree, it was describing my family, it was describing me. And the tree said the family was Jewish, that they lived on an estate in Jamaica called Gaza. The name “Gaza” sounds very Jewish, so I’m thinking “Wow.” I contacted the person whose name was on the website — it ended up being her husband — and Jenny emailed back, explained the whole thing — that her family had come to Toronto in 1907, that they came as mulatto Hebrews. When it really sank into me that this was true I started thinking “What are the odds that my family is from Jamaica?” The odds turned out to be pretty good…

…Q Why do you think your family kept their heritage a secret even years after they immigrated?

A Deep down inside I think people [in my family] are concerned about having Jewish or black heritage. My mother’s cousin was concerned her father, my great-uncle the decorated war hero [and top-ranked army official] Franklin Augustus Sampson, would be looked down on if it was revealed our family lied about their heritage. But what are they going to do? Yank medals away from people? He’s dead. My grandfather lied about his heritage because he said he was born in Toronto, not Jamaica. A lot of people lied when they enlisted in WWI, lied about their age, lied about their ethnicity. One of my cousins found out many years ago through a blood test that there was either Asian or African blood in her system. When she took the blood test, she went into grandfather’s office, she threw it down on his desk in front of him and said “Explain this.”

Q How did your mother react?

A She doesn’t believe it. She says we’re from Scotland, but doesn’t provide details. She’s going through stages of dementia, but even without that she wouldn’t believe it. Jenny told me her mother is no longer speaking to her. If this had happened maybe 20 years earlier, I could have been a little concerned about it too.

Q Did you feel betrayed at all that your family kept this from you?

A Initially I was, but then I became aware of why this was done. I think what I find most discouraging is the way people were treated when they came to the country, if they weren’t from this white background. We have a past we don’t like to talk about. It’s too bad that Canada wasn’t as open a country as it could have been…

…Q You say there are likely thousands of other families out there who may actually be of black heritage despite their families’ white complexions.

A In the late 1800s there was a mass exodus of Jews from Jamaica. The perception was that they were becoming too powerful, so laws were passed to limit what they could own and how much they could acquire. I bet there are a lot of people out there that aren’t searching because they just don’t know. Maybe they just assume they’re from Scotland. Other than myself going to Queen’s University, no one in my family has a kilt, I don’t like bagpipes, I don’t eat oatmeal, I don’t like haggis. Nothing about me would indicate I’m Scottish except for my appearance — I have reddish hair because my grandfather married an Irish woman. They were very pale and I burn quite easily…

Read the entire article here.

Mahtani wins prestigious geography award

Inside UTSC
University of Toronto, Scarborough
2012-03-29

Minelle Mahtani won the Glenda Laws Award for geography, which is given to early and mid-career scholars for outstanding contributions to geographical research on social issues.
 
It is administered by the Association of American Geographers, and endorsed by the Institute of Australian Geographers, the Canadian Association of Geographers, and the Institute of British Geographers.
 
“Her contributions to geographic research on social issues build bridges between the academy and other centers of knowledge, like the policy, media and not-for-profit worlds. Her experience as a former national television news producer provides unique insights into critiques about media and minority representation as well as geographies of news consumption. She has also paid scholarly attention to geography’s expertise in an era of specialized knowledge economies, challenging the ivory tower to produce anti-racist geographies in the academy and challenging geographers to teach for inclusion,” the award presentation reads in part…

…Mahtani has also written about issues of race within the academy. She has written about the discrimination faced by women of colour geographers, and suggested that geography’s historical engagement with colonialism and imperialism works to ensure the domination of whiteness among faculty and students of geography.
 
Mahtani is especially interested in documenting the experiences of mixed-race Canadians, and has published a number of papers on mixed-race identities. She is an editor of the forthcoming book entitled Global Mixed Race to be published by New York University Press.
 
Mahtani brought her expertise on multiraciality to aid in the editing of Lawrence Hill’s memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. In a recent visit to UTSC, Hill, author of the bestseller, Book of Negroes singled out Mahtani for encouraging him to consider the relationship between geography and identity.
 
Mahtani also designed the first course to be offered in geography and mixed race in Canada, entitled “Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory”, taught in the department of Social Sciences here at UTSC.

Read the entire article here.

Marion: The Story of an Artist’s Model

McGill-Queen’s University Press
2012-03-19
410 pages
21 b&w photos
6 x 9
Paper (077353962X) 9780773539624

Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954)

Introduction by:

Karen E. H. Skinazi, Lecturer
Princeton Writing Program
Princeton University

The daughter of an English merchant father and Chinese mother, Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954) was a wildly popular fiction writer in her time. Born in Montreal, Eaton lived in Jamaica and several places in the United States before settling in Alberta. Her books, many of them published under the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna, encompass the experiences of marginalized women in Canada, Jamaica, the United States, and a romantic, imagined Japan. Marion: The Story of an Artist’s Model is Eaton’s only book that explicitly deals with being “foreign” in Canada.

The novel follows the life of “half-foreign” Marion Ascough—a character based on Eaton’s own sister—while never identifying her “foreignness.” Escaping the unrelenting racial discrimination her family endures in Quebec, Marion follows her dream of being an artist by moving to New York, where she becomes “Canadian” instead of ethnic – a more palatable foreignness. Having successfully stripped herself of her ethnicity, Marion continues to experience discrimination and objectification as a woman, failing as an artist and becoming an artist’s model. Karen Skinazi’s introduction to Eaton’s fascinating narrative draws attention to the fact that although the novel uses many of the conventions of the “race secret” story, this time the secret is never revealed.

This new edition of Marion: The Story of An Artist’s Model brings back into print a compelling and sophisticated treasure of Asian Canadian/American fiction that offers a rare perspective on ethnicity, gender, and identity.

Driving FORCE Métis community significant economic resource

Winnipeg Free Press
2012-03-17

Barbara Bowes

Although time has passed quickly, I’m sure you’ll recall that Manitoba recently celebrated Louis Riel Day. For most people, Louis Riel Day is simply another statutory holiday while for others, it is recognition that the Métis people were the driving force behind Manitoba becoming Canada’s fifth province.

Many people and especially new immigrants are not familiar with the term Métis, nor its historical significance. To help bring about a better understanding, we define the Métis people as one of the aboriginal groups that can trace their ancestral heritage to marriages of mixed First Nations and European heritage. And today, 144 years later, our Métis citizens are once again being seen as a driving force in Manitoba’s economy.

Yet, if the Métis people are indeed a driving force in the economy, where are they located? How can they be accessed as potential employees?

Believe it or not, if you checked recent demographic data, you’ll find there are over 100,000 Métis people in Manitoba living in various communities. Over half of this population is under the age of 30 and lives in an urban setting. However, in spite of having the highest rate of post-secondary education completion of all aboriginal groups in the province, the Métis median income is 24 per cent lower than for non-aboriginal people.

As you can imagine, a population of 100,000 represents a significant and relatively untapped resource in terms of employment and business partnerships. The challenge now is how to create a co-ordinated effort to link potential job candidates with employers so they can work together as partners in Manitoba’s economic growth…

Read the entire article here.

Japanese-Canadian Identity Issues: One Big Hapa Family Screening with Jeff Chiba Stearns

University of Toronto, St. George
Hart House
2012-03-21, 18:30-20:30 EDT (Local Time)

According to recent statistics, the rate of mixed marriages among Japanese-Canadians is at 70% with intermarriage at 95%. Why? Jeff Chiba Stearns attempts to address this phenomena and more with his award-winning documentary, One Big Hapa Family. The combination live-action/animated film is a joint presentation between Hart House’s Conscious Activism Doc series and the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival. Screening and artist talk followed by Q&A with introductory remarks by Aram Collier, Reel Asian Film Festival Programming Director. Wed., March 21 at 6:30 pm in the Music Room at Hart House, 7 Hart House Circle, University of Toronto (St. George Campus). FREE.

Jeff Chiba Stearns is an award-winning Canadian independent filmmaker, writer and illustrator whose work incorporates animation, documentary, and experimental filmmaking. Stearns founded his Kelowna, BC-based company Meditating Bunny Inc. in 2001. He frequently addresses the issues of mixed race identity in his films, and has published articles and spoken around the world on issues of cultural awareness, Hapa and the animation process.

Hart House is a living laboratory of social, artistic, cultural and recreational experiences where all voices, rhythms and traditions converge. As the vibrant home for the education of the mind, body and spirit envisioned by its founders, Hart House encourages and supports activities that provide spaces for awakening the capacity for self-knowledge and self-expression.

For more information, click here.