Mixed Race Studies

Deciding on Doctrine: Anti-Miscegenation Statutes and the Development of Equal Protection Analysis

Virginia Law Review
Number 95, Issue 3 (May 2009)
pages 627-665

Rebecca Schoff
University of Virginia School of Law

In 1967, the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States were in complete agreement that the statutory scheme before them in Loving v. Virginia, which criminalized interracial marriage, should be invalidated. They did not, however, agree on which legal doctrines justified the invalidation. Eight Justices signed on to an opinion that carefully hedged the question with arguments related to both the equal protection and the due process clauses. Justice Potter Stewart authored a terse concurring opinion asserting that there could be no valid state law “which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor.” Although no other member of the Court was willing to sign on to this concurrence, it gave voice to a doctrine that had been a central argument of civil rights litigation, articulated as early as Justice [John Marshall] Harlan’s famed dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.

This Note will explore why the Warren Court chose the path it did to invalidate anti-miscegenation laws. More generally, it will analyze the Warren Court’s treatment of anti-miscegenation statutes with the object of gaining perspective on the relationship between decision and doctrine: assuming that Justices are in agreement as to which party should prevail, what factors, legal and non-legal, can influence the Court’s preference for one doctrine over another? In Loving, the decision to reject Justice Stewart’s rationale had far-reaching consequences. Had the Court followed Justice Stewart’s reasoning, review of criminal statutes, at least, would not require even a cursory analysis of the legislature’s purpose once a racial classification was detected. It might be argued that the Court was simply seeking the narrowest grounds on which to decide the case and that Justice Stewart’s reasoning was simply too broad. Loving’s now-controversial place as a precedent supporting substantive due process analysis in right-to-marriage jurisprudence, however, would have been minimized, if not eliminated, by Justice Stewart’s approach. It may be difficult to predict the ramifications of doctrinal choices, particularly with respect to the interaction be-tween equal protection, due process, and fundamental rights. Ultimately, this Note will argue that the Warren Court showed a preference for a less rule-like approach to equal protection analysis, in part because the conditions surrounding desegregation exacer-bated the difficulty of analyzing the scope of rules. Dissecting the circumstances under which the Warren Court viewed its potential paths to a ruling against Virginia in Loving may help us to under-stand how and why the Court resolves such problems in particular ways…

Read the entire article here.

Mapping Identity – Opening Lecture by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Haverford University
KINSC Sharpless Auditorium
2010-03-19 16:00 EDT (Local Time)

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy
Princeton University

Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery presents Mapping Identity, curated by Carol Solomon, Visiting Associate Professor, and Janet Yoon, HC ’10. The show will run Friday, March 19 – Friday, April 30, 2010, with an opening reception Friday, March 19, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Gallery.

Opening Lecture – Kwame Anthony Appiah
Called a post-modern Socrates, Kwame Anthony Appiah asks profound questions about identity and ethics in a world where the sands of race, ethnicity, religion and nationalism continue to realign and reform before our eyes. His seminal book Cosmopolitanism is a moral manifesto for a world where identity has become a weapon and where difference has become a cause of pain and suffering. In intellectually stimulating language, Appiah challenges you to look beyond the boundaries — real and imagined — that divide us, and to see our common humanity…

For more information, click here.

What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Review)

Law and Politics Book Review
American Political Science Association
2009-03-23
pp. 218-220

Mark Kessler, Chair of the Department of History & Government and Professor of Government
Texas Woman’s Univeristy

What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. By Peggy Pascoe. (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2009. 404 pages. Cloth ISBN13: 9780195094633, ISBN10: 0195094638)

In this highly original and important book, Peggy Pascoe describes and analyzes three centuries of laws in the United States prohibiting interracial marriages and sexual relations. In perhaps the most comprehensive and systematic study of legal marriage and sex prohibitions to date, Pascoe argues that these laws were central ideological tools used in constituting and reproducing white supremacy in the United States. Placing her study in its broadest context, she argues that examining the rise and decline of these laws “provides a locus for studying the history of race in America” (p.2). Pascoe’s study demonstrates how historical research, combined with critical cultural theory and analysis, may shed new light on significant questions regarding the power of law and legal interpretation in constructing and reconstructing social reality.

Throughout this work, the writing is admirably accessible, while the analyses and arguments are deeply nuanced. Pascoe begins many of the eleven chapters with stories describing the people and circumstances involved in miscegenation cases throughout history. These stories are carefully selected to show the great variation in characteristics of participants, laws, and regions of the country in which the cases arose, and to help address the broader questions of nation-building and nation-formation that emerge from this study. Pascoe uses these very human stories, along with landmark appellate court decisions and local legal practices, to explore the many and varied ways in which social and political relations based on race, gender, and sexuality illuminate the rise and fall of miscegenation law in the United States.

Pascoe’s narrative begins in the Reconstruction era, when the term “miscegenation” was first invented and applied to interracial marriage and sex. Her discussion focuses on the ways in which judges, legislators, and lawyers employed notions of what is “natural” and “unnatural” in conventional cultural discourses about sex, gender, and sexuality to create and apply laws prohibiting interracial marriage and sex. Such laws emerged first in the South and North and typically applied exclusively to relations between those categorized racially as “white” and as “black.”…

Read the entire review here.

Art Showcase Seeks to Study Racial Identity

Daily Nexus
University of California, Santa Barbara
2010-02-02
Issue 70, Volume 90

Julie Epstein, Staff Writer

The UCSB Women’s Center is currently hosting a multicultural art exhibit featuring work from students and professional artists.

The art on display ranges from paintings to photography, and even includes a work consisting of human hair on canvas. The show, entitled “Mixed Like Me,” will run until April 16. Third-year art major and show curator Lillian Edwards said the exhibit explores racial identity through an artistic lens.

“The theme of the show is to explore what it means to have a multiracial background,” Edwards said. “The goal is to bring an awareness and discussion about race through art.”

Read the entire article here.

Fathers of Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South (Book Review)

Civil War Book Review
Louisiana State University Special Collections

Kelly Kennington, 2009-2010 Law & Society Postdoctoral Fellow
Institute for Legal Studies
University of Wisconsin Law School

Jones, Bernie D. Fathers of Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South, University of Georgia Press. 216 pages. 2009.

Fathers of Conscience, Bernie D. Jones, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, examines southern state appellate court decisions concerning the wills of white slaveholders who left property to their mixed-race children. As numerous scholars have demonstrated, white slaveholders often engaged in sexual relationships with enslaved women. Southern communities typically accepted this behavior, as long as it remained hidden. But problems arose when white men chose to recognize the children of interracial unions and grant them freedom and property, particularly when these grants came at the expense of white relatives. In the latest contribution to the Studies in the Legal History of the South series, Jones argues that contests over wills forced southern judges to weigh the right of white slaveholders to dispose of their property as they wished against community concerns about the growing free black population and the threat it posed to the institution of slavery.

The first two chapters of Fathers of Conscience describe the types of cases that resulted throughout the antebellum South when potential white heirs challenged the validity of a slaveholder’s will, focusing especially on the language southern jurists used in their decisions. The first chapter argues that judges had “a limited set of tropes from which to choose” in deciding cases involving mixed-race inheritance, so they primarily described white testators in three ways: as “righteous fathers” who took responsibility for their mixed-race children; as “vulnerable old men” who were under the control of their enslaved black sexual partners; and as “degraded creatures” who garnered the disgust of southern jurists (42). In the second chapter, Jones describes judges whose language focused not on categorizing white men but on the consequences of these wills for southern society. Judges in these instances rebuffed white men’s efforts to free their enslaved children because jurists recognized the dangers of expanding the population of free people of color. In doing so, Jones argues that judges were “hiding behind the formal laws of slavery” when they cited statutes to deny the validity of wills (57)…

Read the entire review here.

History 270: Topics In American History – Mixed Race Identity in American Culture

Spring 2010

Greg Carter, Assistant Professor of History
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Through most of the United States’ history, laws have been in place to prevent interracial intimacy and the production of mixed-race offspring, and the Tragic Mulatto figure, victim of confusion and isolation, has remained in the popular imaginary since the nineteenth century, reappearing in novels, movies, and even social science writing that addresses the challenges of multicultural societies. At the same time, writers have equated American identity with the creation of new, hybrid men since Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur asked “What then is the American, this new man?” in 1782. While less prevalent than ideas that disparage racial mixing, fascination with it has always gone hand in hand with ideas of citizenship, American identity, and progress. Why has there been a combination of appeal with mixed-race Americans along with an antipathy towards them as “half-breeds,” “intermediary,” or marginal”? Have stereotypes of them altered through the past two hundred years? Do they reflect how mixed-race people identify themselves? Lastly, how have these issues changed in the decades since the Supreme Court invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in 1967? This course aims to answer these questions through a variety of interdisciplinary sources. We will be reading fiction, essays, newspaper articles, and texts from the behavioral and social sciences that address a number of topics, including: the one-drop rule, abolition, assimilation, racial passing, the proposed “Multiracial” category for the Census, and representations in popular culture…

Read the entire syllabus here.

Life on the Color Line: Exploring the Struggle to Conceptualize and Measure Racial Identity in the Mixed-Raced Population

Race & Ethnic Studies Institute
Texas A&M University
2010-01-29
14:30-16:00 CST (Local Time) 
ACAD 326

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Illinois at Chicago

Empirical research on the growing multiracial population in the U.S. has focused largely on documenting new forms of racial identification, analyzing psychological adjustment, and understanding the broader political consequences of mixed-race identification. Efforts toward conceptualizing multiracial identity, however, have been largely disconnected from empirical data, mired in disciplinary debates, and bound by historically specific assumptions about race and racial group membership. This talk will provide a critical overview of multiracial identity theories, examine the links between theory and research, explores the challenges in conceptualizing multiracial identity, and propose considerations for future directions in measuring the racial identity of the mixed-race population. Kerry Ann Rockquemore’s scholarship focuses on racial identity development among multiracial individuals, interracial family dynamics, and the politics of racial categorization. She is the author of Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (2001, 2007), Raising Biracial Children (2005), and over two-dozen articles and book chapters on multiracial youth. Her research has been featured in numerous media outlets such as the New York Times and ABC’s 20/20. In addition to her research, Dr. Rockquemore provides mentoring workshops for faculty of color at colleges across the U.S. She facilitates the popular online discussion forums at www.BlackAcademic.com, and is co-author of The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul (2008).

Princeton Professor tweets about  her views on mixed-race identity (Interview with Melissa Harris-Lacewell)

Mixed Child: The Pulse of the Mixed Community
2009-07-29

Jeff Eddings

MSNBC contributor, Princeton University’s Associate Professor of Politics & African American Studies and author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought Melissa Harris-Lacewell had a frank  discussion with a follower on Twitter about the concept of mixed-race identity.

The conversation with Jeff Eddings of Silicon Valley, CA went as follows (published Monday, July 27th [2009]):

Eddings: Wrong pres[idential]. predictions aside, the biggest missed opp. w/BO [Barack Obama] as pres. & you in the mix is lack of discussion re: multiracial.

Harris-Lacewell: I’m not sure its a missed opportunity. From my perspective I am not “multi-racial” the term has no meaning for me.

Eddings: We keep talking about race as if it were one thing. e.g. You & pres. are both multiracial, but only self-identify as black.

Harris-Lacewell: because race is a social construct it is clear to me that I am constructed as black and self-identify as such.

Eddings: Being multiracial & having grown up in both cultures, I can tell you that I’m not constructed as simply one or the other 🙂

Harris-Lacewell: Though I respect that ppl [people] have right to think of themselves as anything they like, I think “multi-racial” is a weird idea…

…Harris-Lacewell: I don’t believe multi-racial makes sense by my understanding of race.  Race is socially constructed and “multi-racial” seems to assume that race is biological: if parents are of different then the kid is “mixed”.  But that is not how race works. Race is constructed through law, history, culture, practice, custom, etc… I have a white mother and black father, but this doesn’t make me mixed race. Race is not biology. In USA this combo makes me black…

Read the entire interview here.

On the Borders of Love and Power: Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American West

Saturday, 2010-02-27, 08:15 – 16:30 CST (Local Time)
Dallas Hall, McCord Auditorium, 3rd Floor
Southern Methodist University
3225 University Blvd.
Dallas, TX 75205

Announcing the 2009-10 Annual Public Symposium
Co-sponsored by:

• The Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico
• Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry National Center
• The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University

In the U.S. West the history of the family includes stories of Comanche warriors, Pueblo Indian women, Catholic priests, children of the fur trade, Mexican mothers, and Washington policy makers. These and other topics are part of the symposium’s exploration of the multiple ways in which women, men, and children, across time and space, were linked by bonds of love, power, and obligation. Later these presentations will become a book of essays.

After an initial meeting and public program held in the fall at the University of New Mexico, participants will gather at SMU on Saturday, February 27, 2010 to present their revised papers. Their final essays will be published as a book for course adoption as well as for the general public.

Continuing Education Credit: this symposium has been approved for Continuing Education Credit for teachers.

Symposium Co-organizers:

Crista DeLuzio
Southern Methodist University

David Wallace Adams
Cleveland State University

For more information, click here.

Bi-Ethnic Identity: Converging Conversations

Language Literacy & Culture Review
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
2009

Anissa Sorokin
Univerisity of Maryland

This paper examines ethnic identity, with a focus on bi-ethnic identity, from academic, creative non-fiction, and personal perspectives. Social psychological models of ethnic identity development, along with salient aspects of ethnic identity, are explored and interpreted through the writings of qualitative researchers, creative writers, and the author. The paper centers on two factors of ethnic identity development, heritage language and religion, and makes connections between academic literature and personal narratives. A brief discussion of perceived cultural and personal responsibility concludes the paper.

Read the entire paper here.