Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Category: United States

  • Michelle’s Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours

    Michelle’s Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours The Root 2009-10-08 Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research Harvard University First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves.…

  • A Sad Case Of Miscegenation

    A Sad Case Of Miscegenation Valley Spirit (source: Pittsburgh Post) Franklin County, Virginia 1867-02-06 page 1, column 8 Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library The piece relates the story of a woman, who, after consenting to marry a returning white Union officer, had an affair with a black…

  • President Johnson’s Message

    President Johnson’s Message Staunton Spectator Staunton Virginia 1867-12-10 Column 1 Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library A full transcript of President Johnson’s recent address to both houses of Congress, in which he argues that the most pressing danger facing the nation is the attempt “to Africanize the half…

  • Black or biracial? Census forces a choice for some

    There were 784,764 U.S. residents who described their race as white and black in the last census. But that number didn’t include Laura Martin, whose father is black and mother is white. “I’ve always just checked black on my form,” said Martin, a 29-year-old university employee in Las Vegas. She grew up surrounded by black…

  • Multiple Identification and Risks: Examination of Peer Factors Across Multiracial and Single-Race Youth

    Multiple Identification and Risks: Examination of Peer Factors Across Multiracial and Single-Race Youth Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume 41, Number 7 (July 2012) pages 847-862 DOI: 10.1007/s10964-012-9750-2 Yoonsun Choi The School of Social Service Administration University of Chicago Michael He The School of Social Service Administration University of Chicago Todd I. Herrenkohl Social Development…

  • Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.

    In “Articulate While Black,” two renowned scholars of Black Language address language and racial politics in the U.S. through an insightful examination of President Barack Obama’s language use—and America’s response to it

  • The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington, D.C.

    “The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor in the Case of Black Washington, D.C.” considers the function of oral history in shaping community dynamics among African American residents of the nation’s capitol.

  • An Answer to Northen: The Son of a Slave Mother on Southern Miscegenation.

    The Founder of the American Protective League Says the Poor Whites Are Not to Blame For Racial Amalgamation.

  • The White African American Body

    The White African American Body Rutgers University Press March 2002 240 pages 30 b&w illus. Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-3032-1 Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-3031-4 Charles D. Martin Explores the image of the white Negro in American popular culture from the late eighteenth century to the present. Blacks with white skin. Since colonial times, showmen have exhibited the bodies…

  • Race, Marriage, and Law

    A problem that consistently confronts racist law makers in the question of defining who is “Negro” and who is “white.”