Mixed Race Studies

Coloured Members of the Bahamian House of Assembly in the Nineteenth Century

College of the Bahamas Research Journal
Volume 10 (2001)

Rosalyn Themistocleous

This article focuses on some little known ‘coloured’ members of the House of Assembly of the nineteenth century. The position of the Bahamians of mixed race is discussed, particularly vis-à-vis the white Nassauvian elite. Their achievements are noted, but the limitations of their political careers are emphasised. These men were, in essence, politically and socially ambitious individuals, who did not seek to represent the lower classes or black Bahamians. Moreover, party organisation was not yet a feature of the Bahamian political system, except during a period of religious turmoil in mid-century when denominational adherence was the grouping factor. The coloured representatives were generally pro-Government and pro-established Church.

INTRODUCTION

In the Post-Emancipation era of Bahamian history a small but significant number of coloured Bahamians were elected to the House of Assembly. They achieved this despite the prevalent racism and political and socio-economic dominance of the former slave-owners and their descendents. Colour was of defining importance in nineteenth century Nassausociety. The main distinction in slave society had been between slave and free; in the reconstructed society race and colour came to be the most important consideration. The white Bahamian elite had to employ a number of strategies, political, socio-economic and judicial, to ensure its continued dominance. Land remained in the hands of the former slaver-holders, while the former slaves became sharecroppers or tenants, eking out a bare living from the soil. The credit and truck systems, rather than a wage labour system, were employed in the majority of industries; these were coercive labour systems that only benefited Nassau merchants.

Having subjected most of the lower classes to a state of economic dependency, the white Nassauvians also controlled most of the seats in the House of Assembly and the Councils. This is of particular significance in a colony still ruled under the Old Representative system, where the local elite was allowed a large degree of self-government. In The Bahamas local legislation specified that decisions must be those of the Governor-in-Council and the Imperial Government acknowledged the established usage whereby the Governor acted in accordance with the Council’s advice. The Council separated into two bodies in 1841: the Executive Council acted as this advisory body, while the Legislative Council was the Upper House of the Legislature. There were ex-officio and unofficial members, appointed by the Governor, in both bodies. The Colonial Secretary, Attorney-General and Receiver-General sat in the Executive Council in the second half of the century, forming the ex-officio element. The white Bahamians monopolised the non-official seats on the Executive and Legislative Councils. Most of the unofficial members, who formed a majority in the Executive Council were members of the elected House of Assembly or the Legislative Council. Hence the Legislature had some control over the Executive. Moreover, the House of Assembly had the ‘power of the purse’, that is the sole right to introduce money bills and initiate taxation. This was a potent weapon that could be used by the local elite against the Governor. The electoral system, which retained open voting, inequitable constituencies, a franchise weighted in favour of the propertied classes and plural voting, ensured the white Nassauvians controlled most of the twenty-nine seats in the House. The widespread bribery and corruption and the fact that the lower classes failed to organise themselves politically particularly facilitated white political dominance. Besides many electors were in debt to Nassau merchants so, in an open voting system, were unlikely to vote against an approved candidate. In New Providence there was always a cross-section of colours and classes included on the electoral registers and these voters often had coloured or black middle class candidates to vote for. But in the Out Islands voters, with few exceptions, had to choose from among the white candidates from Nassau as islanders could not afford to spend the time to attend the House meetings, members not being paid a salary. The result was that, as Stipendiary Magistrate L.D.Powles (1888) so accurately recorded, “the House of Assembly is little less than a family gathering ofNassau whites, nearly all of whom are related to each other, either by blood or marriage” (p.41). There was a prevailing assumption by the whites that their leadership was indispensable to good governance.

Seen in this context, the dent into the white power monopoly by a few Bahamians of mixed race is quite an achievement. Certainly, a degree of co-optation of the coloured middle class was tolerated by the white elite. The coloureds were encouraged to adopt elitist values and attitudes to law and order and social institutions. Of course, the paler the coloureds were (near-white or high yaller in local parlance) the more chance they had of being tolerated. Moreover, it was noted by several visitors to the islands that a good many “so called white families” in Nassau were not of pure white blood, but were fair enough to pass for white in Europe and were considered white in Nassau. L.D. Powles (1888) described this confusing state of affairs thus: “Where the line that separates the white man, so-called, from the coloured is drawn in Nassau, must ever remain a mystery to the stranger” (p.12l).

The successful coloured politicians of the nineteenth century had acquired middle class status from their positions as relatively wealthy, small businessmen or as professional men. As Raymond Smith (1988) notes, after 1838, “classes seemed to be defined in terms of race” in the West Indies (p.93). Thus the term ‘coloured middle class’ is the commonly used term for the intermediate group between the white elite and the labouring and under classes, even though the class also contained some blacks and whites. The class is also defined in terms of occupation and values and outlooks. The middle class is taken to include those in the professional occupations and public service, craftsmen, small businessmen, printers and journalists, managers and supervisors and senior clerical workers. As for outlook, Gail Saunders (1990) sums up the Bahamian position thus: “Aspiring coloureds attempted to obtain a good education, secure good jobs, own land, enter politics and attend the right churches” (pp. 2-3). They sought respectability, if anything assuming mores of stricter morality than the white elite.

The coloured middles classes of Nassau had to accommodate themselves to the socioracial dividing lines that existed in the town. They lived predominantly in Delancy Town. The Established Church was the preference of most coloureds, probably an indication of identification with British culture and tradition, but they were generally assigned to the side aisles. Coloured Methodists usually worshipped at Ebenezer Chapel in the eastern suburbs, the congregation at Trinity Methodist Chapel exhibiting a desire to remain exclusively white. Some coloured boys were able to get a secondary education at the Boys Central School or the Anglican Nassau Grammar School. Further education was uncommon unless parents were wealthy enough to send their sons abroad (but this was true for whites too). Whites, naturally, found more opportunity for clerkships with Bay Street merchants and law firms, but a number of coloureds did overcome these barriers. Social discrimination, though, continued throughout the century. Whites worked with and sometimes showed respect to coloureds, but did not invite them to their homes. The coloureds thus became quite a closely-knit group. There were exceptions to this social prejudice, notably the acceptance of Thomas Mathews and William Armbrister, who probably “passed” for white. The practice adopted by most coloureds was to accept their position in the social hierarchy. The mulatto exhibited no pride in his African blood and tried to emulate and, if possible, join white society. The ideal was to ‘marry up’ to produce offspring of a lighter complexion and they treated anyone a shade darker than themselves with the same prejudices that they experienced from the whites. The coloured members of the Bahamian Assembly were essentially ambitious individuals and did little to further legislation to aid the coloured and black population at large…

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Is race a ‘salient…’ or ‘dominant identity’ in the early 21st century: The evidence of UK survey data on respondents’ sense of who they are

Social Science Research
Available online 2012-11-07
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.10.007

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
Centre for Health Services Studies
University of Kent

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

The term ‘master status’, coined by Everett Hughes in 1945 with special reference to race, was conceptualised as one which, in most social situations, will dominate all others. Since then race and other collective social identities have become key features of people’s lives, shaping their ‘life scripts’. But is race still a ‘master’ or ‘dominant identity’ and, if not, what has replaced it? Analyses of recent social surveys show that race has lost its position to family, religion (in the South Asian and Black groups) and (amongst young mixed race people) also age/life-stage and study/work. However, many of these different identity attributes are consistently selected, suggesting the possibility – confirmed in in-depth interviews – that they may work through each other via intersectionality. In Britain race appears to have been undermined by the rise of ‘Muslim’ identity, the increasing importance of ‘mixed race’, and the fragmentation of identity now increasingly interwoven with other attributes like religion.

Highlights

• Race has lost its dominant position to family, religion, age/life-stage & study/work.
• Many selected identity attributes work through each other via intersectionality.
• Race has been undermined by religion, mixedness, & fragmentation of identity.

Read or purchase the article here.

In Judaism, one’s mother must be Jewish in order to be ‘officially recognized’ as Jewish. Because it was my father who was Jewish, I didn’t count. And although I was born in Japan, I was not granted citizenship because only my mother was Japanese. From both sides, stranded. When I was 18, I decided to convert to Judaism. My mother was supportive, but she insisted that if I were to have a mikvah I must also start taking Japanese lessons. I’m not sure why she though these two things went together, or that they somehow balanced each other out. Balance was something both my parents strove for. Balance was important, they explained.

Naomi Angel, “On the Train,” in Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out, edited by Adebe De Rango-Adem and Andrea Thompson (Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2010): 143.

Being Anglo-Indian: Practices and Stories from Calcutta

Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
2005
263 pages

Robyn Andrews, Lecturer, Social Anthropology Programme
Massey University

A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University

This thesis is an ethnography of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta. All ethnographies are accounts arising out of the experience of a particular kind of encounter between the people being written about and the person doing the writing. This thesis, amongst other things, reflects my changing views of how that experience should be recounted. I begin by outlining briefly who Anglo-Indians are, a topic which in itself alerts one to complexities of trying to get an ethnographic grip on a shifting subject. I then look at some crucial elements that are necessary for an “understanding” of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta: the work that has already been done in relation to Anglo-Indians, the urban context of the lives of my research participants and I discuss the methodological issues that I had to deal with in constructing this account.

In the second part of my thesis I explore some crucial elements of the lives of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta: the place of Christianity in their lives, education not just as an aspect of socialisation but as part of their very being and, finally, the public rituals that now give them another way of giving expression to new forms of Anglo-Indian becoming.

In all of my work I was driven by a desire to keep close to the experience of the people themselves and I have tried to write a “peopled” ethnography. This ambition is most fully realised in the final part of my thesis where I recount the lives of three key participants.

Read the entire dissertation here.

Organizing 101: A Mixed-Race Feminist in Movements for Social Justice

Chapter in:
Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism
Seal Press
April 2002
432 pages
ISBN-10: 1580050670
ISBN-13: 9781580050678

Edited by:

Daisy Hernandez
Bushara Rehman

Foreword by: Cherríe Moraga

Chapter Author:

Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz

pages 29-39

I have vivid memories of celebrating the holidays with my maternal grandparents. My Jido and Sito (“grandfather” and “grandmother,” respectively in Arabic), who were raised as Muslim Arabs, celebrated Christmas rather than Ramadan. Every year, my Sito set up her Christmas tree in front of a huge bay window in their living room. It was important to her that the neighbors could see the tree from the street. Yet on Christmas day Arabic was spoken in the house, Arabic music was played, Arabic food was served and a hot and heavy poker game was always the main activity. Early on, I learned that what is publicly communicated can be very different from what is privately experienced.

Because of the racism, harassment and ostracism that my Arab grandparents faced, they developed ways to assimilate (or appear to assimilate) into their predominantly white New Hampshire community. When my mother married my Jewish father and raised me with his religion, they hoped that by presenting me to the world as a white Jewish girl, I would escape the hate they had experienced. But it did not happen that way. Instead, it took me years to untangle and understand the public/private dichotomy that had been such a part of my childhood.

My parents’ mixed-class, mixed-race and mixed-religion relationship held its own set of complex contradictions and tensions. My father comes from a working-class, Ashkenazi Jewish family. My mother comes from an upper-middle-class Lebanese family, in which—similar to other Arab families of her generation—women were not encouraged and only sometimes permitted to get an education. My mother has a high-school degree and no “marketable” job skills. When my father married her, he considered it an opportunity to marry into a higher class status. Her background as a Muslim Arab was something he essentially ignored except when it came to deciding what religious traditions my sister and I were going to be raised with. From my father’s perspective, regardless of my mother’s religious and cultural background, my sister and I were Jews—and only Jews.

My mother, who to this day carries an intense mix of pride and shame about being Arab, was eager to “marry out” of her Arabness. She thought that by marrying a white Jew, particularly in a predominantly white New Hampshire town, that she would somehow be able to escape or minimize the ongoing racism her family faced. She converted to Judaism for this reason and also because she felt that “eliminating” Arabness and Islam from the equation would make my life and my sister’s life less complex. We could all say—her included—that we were Jews. Sexism and racism (and their internalized versions) played a significant part in shaping my parents’ relationship. My father was never made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome because he had married a Muslim Arab woman. He used his white male privilege and his Zionistic point of view to solidify his legitimacy. He created the perception that he did my mother a favor by “marrying her out” of her Arabness and the strictness of her upbringing.

My mother, however, bore the brunt of other people’s prejudices. Her struggle for acceptance and refuge was especially evident in her relationship with my father’s family, who never fully accepted her. It did not matter that she converted to Judaism, was active in Hadassah or knew all of the rituals involved in preparing a Passover meal. She was frequently made to feel that she was never quite Jewish enough. My Jewish grandmother was particularly critical of my mother and communicated in subtle and not so subtle ways that she tolerated my mother’s presence because she loved her son. In turn, I felt as if there was something wrong with me and that the love that I received from my father’s family was conditional. Many years later this was proven to be true: when my parents divorced, every member of my father’s family cut off communication from my mother, my sister and me. Racism and Zionism played a significant (but not exclusive) role in their choice. My father’s family (with the exception of my Jewish grandfather, who died in the early seventies) had always been uncomfortable that my father had married an Arab woman. The divorce gave them a way out of examining their own racism and Zionism.

Today my mother realizes that her notions about marrying into whiteness and into a community that would somehow gain her greater acceptance was, to say the least, misguided. She romanticized her relationship with my father as a “symbol of peace” between Jews and Arabs, and she underestimated the impact of two very real issues: racism within the white Jewish community and the strength of anti-Semitism toward the Jewish community. At the time she did not understand that her own struggle against racism and anti-Arab sentiment was both linked to and different than anti-Semitism…

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American Dilemma: The Negro problem and Modern Democracy

Harper and Brothers Publishing
1944
822 pages

Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987)

With the Assistance of

Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose

This landmark effort to understand African-American people in the New World provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks.

CONTENTS

• Foreword, by Frederick P. Keppel
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction
  1. The Negro Problem as a Moral Issue
  2. Valuations and Beliefs
  3. A White Man’s Problem
  4. Not an Isolated Problem
  5. Some Further Notes on the Scope and Direction of This Study
  6. A Warning to the Reader
• PART I. THE APPROACH
  • Chapter 1. American Ideals and the American Conscience
    1. Unity of Ideals and Diversity of Culture
    2. American Nationalism
    3. Some Historical Reflections
    4. The Roots of the American Creed in the Philosophy of Enlightenment
    5. The Roots in Christianity
    6. The Roots in English Law
    7. American Conservatism
    8. The American Conception of Law and Order
    9. Natural Law and American Puritanism
    10. The Faltering Judicial Order
    11. Intellectual Defeatism
    12. “Lip-Service”
    13. Value Premises in This Study
  • Chapter 2. Encountering the Negro Problem
    1. On the Minds of the Whites
    2. To the Negroes Themselves
    3. Explaining the Problem Away
    4. Explorations in Escape
    5. The Etiquette of Discussion
    6. The Convenience of Ignorance
    7. Negro and White Voices
    8. The North and the South
  • Chapter 3. Facets of the Negro Problem
    1. American Minority Problems
    2. The Anti-Amalgamation Doctrine
    3. The White Man’s Theory of Color Caste
    4. The “Rank Order of Discriminations”
    5. Relationships between Lower Class Groups
    6. The Manifoldness and the Unity of the Negro Problem
    7. The Theory of the Vicious Circle
    8. A Theory of Democracy
• PART II. RACE
  • Chapter 4. Racial Beliefs
    1. Biology and Moral Equalitarianism
    2. The Ideological Clash in America
    3. The Ideological Compromise
    4. Reflections in Science
    5. The Position of the Negro Writers
    6. The Racial Beliefs of the Unsophisticated
    7. Beliefs with a Purpose
    8. Specific Rationalization Needs
    9. Rectifying Beliefs
    10. The Study of Beliefs
  • Chapter 5. Race and Ancestry
    1. The American Definition of “Negro”
    2. African Ancestry
    3. Changes in Physical Appearance
    4. Early Miscegenation
    5. Ante-Bellum Miscegenation
    6. Miscegenation in Recent Times
    7. “Passing”
    8. Social and Biological Selection
    9. Present and Future Genetic Composition Trends
  • Chapter 6. Racial Characteristics
    1. Physical Traits
    2. Biological Susceptibility to Disease
    3. Psychic Traits
    4. Frontiers of Constructive Research
• PART III. POPULATION AND MIGRATION
  • Chapter 7. Population
    1. The Growth of the Negro Population
    2. Births and Deaths
    3. Summary
    4. Ends and Means of Population Policy
    5. Controlling the Death Rate
    6. The Case for Controlling the Negro Birth Rate
    7. Birth Control Facilities Tor Negroes
  • Chapter 8. Migration
    1. Overview
    2. A Closer View
    3. The Great Migration to the Urban North
    4. Continued Northward Migration
    5. The Future of Negro Migration
• PART IV. ECONOMICS
  • Chapter 9. Economic Inequality
    1. Negro Poverty
    2. Our Main Hypothesis: The Vicious Circle
    3. The Value Premises
    4. The Conflict of Valuations
  • Chapter 10. The Tradition of Slavery
    1. Economic Exploitation
    2. Slavery and Caste
    3. The Land Problem
    4. The Tenancy Problem
  • Chapter 11. The Southern Plantation Economy and the Negro Farmer
    1. Southern Agriculture as a Problem
    2. Overpopulation and Soil Erosion
    3. Tenancy, Credit and Cotton
    4. The Boll Weevil
    5. Main Agricultural Classes
    6. The Negro Landowner
    7. Historical Reasons for the Relative Lack of Negro Farm Owners
    8. Tenants and Wage Laborers
    9. The Plantation Tenant
  • Chapter 12. New Blows to Southern Agriculture During the Thirties: Trends and Policies
    1. Agricultural Trends during the ‘Thirties
    2. The Disappearing Sharecropper
    3. The Role of the A.A.A. in Regard to Cotton
    4. A.A.A. and the Negro
    5. The Local Administration of the A.A.A.
    6. Mechanization
    7. Labor Organizations
    8. The Dilemma of Agricultural Policy
    9. Economic Evaluation of the A.A.A.
    10. Social Evaluation of the A.A.A.
    11. Constructive Measures
    12. Farm Security Programs
  • Chapter 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture
    1. Perspective on the Urbanization of the Negro People
    2. In the South
    3. A Closer View
    4. Southern Trends during the Thirties
    5. In the North
    6. A Closer View on Northern Trends
    7. The Employment Hazards of Unskilled Work
    8. The Size of the Negro Labor Force and Negro Employment
    9. Negro and White Unemployment
  • Chapter 14. The Negro in Business, the Professions, Public Service and Other White Collar Occupations
    1. Overview
    2. The Negro in Business
    3. Negro Finance
    4. The Negro Teacher
    5. The Negro Minister
    6. The Negro in Medical Professions
    7. Other Negro Professionals
    8. Negro Officials and White Collar Workers in Public Service
    9. Negro Professionals on the Stage, Screen and Orchestra
    10. Note on Shady Occupations
  • Chapter 15. The Negro in the Public Economy
    1. The Public Budget
    2. Discrimination in Public Service
    3. Education
    4. Public Health
    5. Recreational Facilities
    6. Public Housing Policies
    7. Social Security and Public Assistance
    8. Specialized Social Welfare Programs during the Period After
    9. The Social Security Program
    10. Assistance to Special Groups
    11. Work Relief
    12. Assistance to Youth
    13. General Relief and Assistance in Kind
  • Chapter 16. Income, Consumption and Housing
    1. Family Income
    2. Income and Family Size
    3. The Family Budget
    4. Budget Items
    5. Food Consumption
    6. Housing Conditions
  • Chapter 17. The Mechanics of Economic Discrimination as a Practical Problem
    1. The Practical Problem
    2. The Ignorance and Lack of Concern of Northern Whites
    3. Migration Policy
    4. The Regular Industrial Labor Market in the North
    5. The Problem of Vocational Training
    6. The Self-Perpetuating Color Bar
    7. A Position or “Indifferent Equilibrium”
    8. In the South
  • Chapter 18. Pre-War Labor Market Controls and Their Consequences for the Negro
    1. The Wages and Hours Law and the Dilemma of the Marginal Worker
    2. Other Economic Policies
    3. Labor Unions and the Negro
    4. A Weak Movement Getting Strong Powers
  • Chapter 19. The War Boom—and Thereafter
    1. The Negro Wage Earner and the War Boom
    2. A Closer View
    3. Government Policy in Regard to the Negro in War Production
    4. The Negro in the Armed Forces
    5. …And Afterwards?
• PART V. POLITICS
  • Chapter 20. Underlying Factors
    1. The Negro in American Politics and as a Political Issue
    2. The Wave of Democracy and the Need for Bureaucracy
    3. The North and the South
    4. The Southern Defense Ideology
    5. The Reconstruction Amendments
    6. Memories of Reconstruction
    7. The Tradition of Illegality
  • Chapter 21. Southern Conservatism and Liberalism
    1. The “Solid South”
    2. Southern Conservatism
    3. Is the South Fascist?
    4. The Changing South
    5. Southern Liberalism
  • Chapter 22. Political Practices Today
    1. The Southern Political Scene
    2. Southern Techniques for Disfranchising the Negroes
    3. The Negro Vote m the South
    4. The Negro in Northern Politics
    5. What the Negro Gets Out of Politics
  • Chapter 23. Trends and Possibilities
    1. The Negro’s Political Bargaining Power
    2. The Negro’s Party Allegiance
    3. Negro Suffrage in the South as an Issue
    4. An Unstable Situation
    5. The Stake of the North
    6. Practical Conclusions
• PART VI. JUSTICE
  • Chapter 24. Inequality of Justice
    1. Democracy and Justice
    2. Relative Equality in the North
    3. The Southern Heritage
  • Chapter 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts
    1. Local Petty Officials
    2. The Southern Policeman
    3. The Policeman in the Negro Neighborhood
    4. Trends and Outlook
    5. Another Type of Public Contact
  • Chapter 26. Courts, Sentences and Prisons
    1. The Southern Courts
    2. Discrimination in Court
    3. Sentences and Prisons
    4. Trends and Outlook
  • Chapter 27. Violence and Intimidation
    1. The Pattern of Violence
    2. Lynching
    3. The Psychopathology of Lynching
    4. Trends and Outlook
    5. Riots
• PART VII. SOCIAL INEQUALITY
  • Chapter 28. The Basis of Social Inequality
    1. The Value Premise
    2. a. The One-Sidedness of the System of Segregation
    3. The Beginning in Slavery
    4. The Jim Crow Laws
    5. Beliefs Supporting Social Inequality
    6. The Popular Theory of “No Social Equality”
    7. Critical Evaluation of the “No Social Equality” Theory
    8. Attitudes among Different Classes of Whites in the South
    9. Social Segregation and Discrimination in the North
  • Chapter 29. Patterns of Social Segregation and Discrimination
    1. Facts and Beliefs Regarding Segregation and Discrimination
    2. Segregation and Discrimination in interpersonal Relations
    3. Housing Segregation
    4. Sanctions for Residential Segregation
    5. The General Character of Institutional Segregation
    6. Segregation in Specific Types of Institutions
  • Chapter 30. Effects of Social Inequality
    1. The Incidence of Social Inequality
    2. Increasing Isolation
    3. Interracial Contacts
    4. The Factor of Ignorance
    5. Present Dynamics
• PART VIII. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
  • Chapter 31. Caste and Class
    1. The Concepts “Caste” and “Class”
    2. The “Meaning” of the Concepts “Caste” and “Class”
    3. The Caste Struggle
    4. Crossing the Caste Line
  • Chapter 32. The Negro Class Structure
    1. The Negro Class Order in the American Caste System
    2. Caste Determines Class
    3. Color and Class
    4. The Classes in the Negro Community
• PART IX. LEADERSHIP AND CONCERTED ACTION
  • Chapter 33. The American Pattern of Individual Leadership and Mass Passivity
    1. “Intelligent Leadership”
    2. “Community Leaders”
    3. Mass Passivity
    4. The Patterns Exemplified in Politics and throughout the American Social Structure
  • Chapter 34. Accommodating Leadership
    1. Leadership and Caste
    2. The Interests of Whites and Negroes with Respect to Negro leadership
    3. In the North and on the National Scene
    4. The “Glass Plate”
    5. Accommodating Leadership and Class
    6. Several Qualifications
    7. Accommodating Leaders in the North
    8. The Glamour Personalities
  • Chapter 35. The Negro Protest
    1. The Slave Revolts
    2. The Negro Abolitionists and Reconstruction Politicians
    3. The Tuskegee Compromise
    4. The Spirit of Niagara and Harper’s Ferry
    5. The Protest Is Still Rising
    6. The Shock of the First World War and the Post-War Crisis
    7. The Garvey Movement
    8. Post-War Radicalism among Negro Intellectuals
    9. Negro History and Culture
    10. The Great Depression and the Second World War
  • Chapter 36. The Protest Motive and Negro Personality
    1. A Mental Reservation
    2. The Struggle Against Defeatism
    3. The Struggle for Balance
    4. Negro Sensitiveness
    5. Negro Aggression
    6. Upper Class Reactions
    7. The “Function” of Racial Solidarity
  • Chapter 37. Compromise Leadership
    1. The Daily Compromise
    2. The Vulnerability of the Negro Leader
    3. Impersonal Motives
    4. The Protest Motive
    5. The Double Role
    6. Negro Leadership Techniques
    7. Moral Consequences
    8. Leadership Rivalry
    9. Qualifications
    10. In Southern Cities
    11. In the North
    12. On the National Scene
  • Chapter 38. Negro Popular Theories
    1. Instability
    2. Negro Provincialism
    3. The Thinking on the Negro Problem
    4. Courting the “Best People Among the Whites”
    5. The Doctrine of Labor Solidarity
    6. Some Critical Observations
    7. The Pragmatic “Truth” of the Labor Solidarity Doctrine
    8. “The Advantages of the Disadvantages”
    9. Condoning Segregation
    10. Boosting Negro Business
    11. Criticism of Negro Business Chauvinism
    12. “Back to Africa”
    13. Miscellaneous Ideologies
  • Chapter 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations
    1. A General American Pattern
    2. Nationalist Movements
    3. Business and Professional Organizations
    4. The National Negro Congress Movement
    5. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
    6. The N.A.A.C.P. Branches
    7. The N.A.A.C.P. National Office
    8. The Strategy of the N.A.A.C.P.
    9. Critique of the N.A.A.C.P.
    10. The Urban League
    11. The Commission on Interracial Cooperation
    12. The Negro Organizations during the War
    13. Negro Strategy
  • Chapter 40. The Negro Church
    1. Non-Political Agencies for Negro Concerted Action
    2. Some Historical Notes
    3. The Negro Church and the General American Pattern of
    4. Religious Activity
    5. A Segregated Church
    6. Its Weakness
    7. Trends and Outlook
  • Chapter 41. The Negro School
    1. Negro Education as Concerted Action
    2. Education in American Thought and Life
    3. The Development of Negro Education in the South
    4. The Whites’ Attitudes toward Negro Education
    5. “Industrial” versus “Classical” Education of Negroes
    6. Negro Attitudes
    7. Trends and Problems
  • Chapter 42. The Negro Press
    1. An Organ for the Negro Protest
    2. The Growth of the Negro Press
    3. Characteristics of the Negro Press
    4. The Controls of the Negro Press
    5. Outlook
• PART X. THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
  • Chapter 43. Institutions
    1. The Negro Community as a Pathological Form of an American Community
    2. The Negro Family
    3. The Negro Church in the Negro Community
    4. The Negro School and Negro Education
    5. Voluntary Associations
  • Chapter 44. Non-Institutional Aspects of the Negro Community
    1. “Peculiarities” of Negro Culture and Personality
    2. Crime
    3. Mental Disorders and Suicide
    4. Recreation
    5. Negro Achievements
• PART XI. AN AMERICAN DILEMMA
  • Chapter 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem
    1. The Negro Problem and the War
    2. Social Trends
    3. The Decay of the Caste Theory
    4. Negroes in the War Crisis
    5. The War and the Whites
    6. The North Moves Toward Equality
    7. Tension in the South
    8. International Aspects
    9. Making the Peace
    10. America’s Opportunity
• Appendix 1. A Methodological Note on Valuations and Beliefs
  1. The Mechanism of Rationalization
  2. Theoretical Critique of the Concept “Mores”
  3. Valuation Dynamics
• Appendix 2. A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science
  1. Biases in the Research on the American Negro Problem
  2. Methods of Mitigating Biases in Social Science
  3. The History and Logic of the Hidden Valuations in Social Science
  4. The Points of View Adopted in This Book
• Appendix 3. A Methodological Note on the Principle of Accumulation
• Appendix 4. Note on the Meaning of Regional Terms as Used in This Book
• Appendix 5. A Parallel to the Negro Problem
• Appendix 6. Pre-War Conditions of the Negro Wage Earner in Selected Industries and Occupations
  1. General Characteristics of Negro Jobs
  2. Domestic Service
  3. Other Service Occupations
  4. Turpentine Farms
  5. Lumber
  6. The Fertilizer Industry
  7. Longshore Work.
  8. Building Workers
  9. Railroad Workers
  10. Tobacco Workers
  11. Textile Workers
  12. Coal Miners
  13. Iron and Steel Workers
  14. Automobile Workers
  15. The Slaughtering and Meat Packing Industry
• Appendix 7. Distribution of Negro Residences in Selected Cities
• Appendix 8. Research on Caste and Class in a Negro Community
• Appendix 9. Research on Negro Leadership
• Appendix 10. Quantitative Studies of Race Attitudes
  1. Existing Studies of Race Attitudes
  2. The Empirical Study of Valuations and Beliefs
  3. “Personal” and “Political” Opinions
  4. The Practical Study of Race Prejudice
• List of Books, Pamphlets, Periodicals, and Other Material Referred to in This Book
• Numbered Footnotes
• Index

From pages 102-106

If white Americans can believe that Negro Americans belong to a lower biological species than they themselves, this provides a motivation for their doctrine that the white race should be kept pure and that amalgamation should, by all means, be prevented. The theory of the inborn inferiority of the Negro people is, accordingly, used as an argument for the antiamalgamation doctrine. This doctrine, in its turn, has, as we have seen, a central position in the American system of color caste. The belief in biological inferiority is thus another basic support, in addition to the no-social-equality, anti-amalgamation doctrine, of the system of segregation and discrimination. Whereas the anti-amalgamation doctrine has its main importance in the “social” field, the belief in the Negro’s biological inferiority is basic to discrimination in all fields. White Americans have an interest in deprecating the Negro race in so far as they identify themselves with the prevailing system of color caste. They have such an interest, though in a lower degree, even if their only attachment to the caste order is that they do not stand up energetically as individuals and citizens to eradicate it…

…In adhering to this biological rationalization, specified in the six points stated above, the white man meets certain difficulties. A factual difficulty to begin with is that individual Negroes and even larger groups of Negroes often, in spite of the handicaps they encounter, show themselves to be better than they ought to be according to the popular theory. A whole defense system serves to minimize this disturbance of the racial dogma, which insists that all Negroes are inferior. From one point of view, segregation of the Negro people fulfills a function in this defense system. It is, of course, not consciously devised for this purpose, and it serves other purposes as well, but this does not make its defense function less important. Segregation isolates in particular the middle and upper class Negroes,” and thus permits the ordinary white man in America to avoid meeting an educated Negro. The systematic tendency to leave the Negro out when discussing public affairs and to avoid mentioning anything about Negroes in the press except their crimes also serves this purpose. The aggressive and derogatory altitude toward “uppity” Negroes and, in particular, the tendency to relegate all educated Negroes to this group also belongs to the defense system.

Since he has a psychological need to believe the popular theory of Negro racial inferiority, it is understandable why the ordinary white man is disincline to hear about good qualities or achievements of Negroes. ‘The merits of Negro soldiers should not be too warmly praised, especially in the presence of Americans,” reads one of the advices which the French Military Mission, stationed with the American Expeditionary Army during the First World War, circulated but later withdrew. It should be added that white people who work to help the Negro people and to improve race relations see the strategic importance of this factor and direct their work toward spreading information about Negroes of quality among the whites.

Another difficulty has always been the mulatto. White Americans want to keep biological distance from the out-race and will, therefore, be tempted to discount the proportion of mulattoes and believe that a greater part of the Negro people is pure bred than is warranted by the facts. A sort of collective guilt on the part of white people for the large-scale miscegenation, which has so apparently changed the racial character of the Negro people enforces this interest.

The literature on the Negro problem strengthens this hypothesis. Only some exceptional authors, usually Negroes, gave more adequate estimates of the proportion of mixed breeds, and it was left to Hrdlicka and Herskovits in the late ‘twenties to set this whole problem on a more scientific basis. The under-enumeration of mulattoes by the census takers decade after decade and also, until recently, the rather uncritical utilization of this material, indicate a tendency toward bias. The observations of the present author have, practically without exception, indicated that the nonexpert white population shows a systematic tendency grossly to underestimate the number of mulattoes in the Negro population.

It may, of course, be said against this assumption of a hidden purpose that one should not assume the ability of uninformed and untrained persons to distinguish a mulatto from a pure bred Negro. But the facts of historical and actual miscegenation are fairly well known, at least in the South, and are discussed with interest everywhere. And if a wrong estimate systematical goes in the same direction, there is reason to ask for a cause. It has also been observed that the ordinary white American gets disturbed when encountering the new scientific estimates that the great majority of American Negroes are not of pure African descent. Similarly, the ordinary white American is disturbed when he hears that Negroes sometimes pass for white. He wants, and he must want, to keep biological distance.

But the mulatto is a disturbance to the popular race theory not only because of his numbers. The question is also raised: Is the mulatto a deteriorated or an improved Negro? In fact, there seems never to have been popular agreement among white Americans whether the mulatto is worse than the pure bred Negro, or whether he is better because of his partially white ancestry. The former belief should per se strengthen the anti-amalgamation doctrine, in fact, make adherence to it to the interest of the entire society. The second belief can serve a purpose of explaining away Negro accomplishments which are, with few exceptions, made by mulattoes and which then could be ascribed to the white blood. Actually, I have often heard the same man use both arguments…

Read the entire book here.

Race Treason: The Untold Story of America’s Ban on Polygamy

Columbia Journal of Gender and Law
Volume 19, Number 2 (2010)
pages 287-366

Martha M. Ertman, Carole & Hanan Sibel Research Professor of Law
University of Maryland

Today’s ban on polygamy grew out of nineteenth century Americans’ view that Mormons committed two types of treason. First, antipolygamists charged Mormons with political treason by establishing a separatist theocracy in Utah. Second, they saw a social treason against the nation of White citizens when Mormons adopted a supposedly barbaric marital form, one that was natural for “Asiatic and African” people, but so unnatural for Whites as to produce a new, degenerate species that threatened the project of white supremacy. This Article reveals how both kinds of treason provided the foundation of polygamy law through the discourse of legal, political and medical “experts, ” as well as, most vividly, cartoons of the day. This discourse designated the overwhelmingly White Mormons as non-White to justify depriving them of citizenship rights such as voting, holding office, and sitting on juries. Paralleling the Mormon question to miscegenation disputes also raging in the decades after the Civil War, the Article suggests two theoretical perspectives to understand the “blackening” of Mormons. First, postcolonial theorist Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism helps explain how designating Mormons a subject race rendered their subjection inevitable. Second, Sir Henry Maine’s 1864 observation that progressive societies move from status to contract reveals the visceral defense of status embedded in antipolygamy discourse. That defense of status may also have implicated other ways status was giving way to contract, such as wage labor replacing slavery and the partnership theory of marriage beginning to displace coverture. In either case, the Article contends, the racial foundations of American antipolygamy law require us to rethink our own often reflexive condemnation of the practice. It concludes by suggesting three questions to help us frame that inquiry, asking: (1) whether we need to rethink this rarely-enforced ban; (2) whether current antipolygamy law’ associates polygamy with barbarism, foreignness, and people of color; and (3) whether it is coincidental that the plain language of the Defense of Marriage Act prohibits both polygamy and same-sex marriage.

INTRODUCTION

Race is at the center of all of American history.
— Ken Burns

Many people think that American law bans polygamy to ensure women’s equality and shield teenage girls from marrying old men. But that notion is largely wrong, at least if we interpret the relevant cases and statutes in light of the intentions of the lawmakers who enacted four federal statutes and the courts that upheld them in a line of cases that are still cited as good law. They were hardly concerned with gender equality or protecting children’s safety. Instead, the statutes went far beyond criminalizing polygamy, depriving Mormon men and women of voting and other citizenship rights to achieve the larger goal of preventing the traitorous establishment of a separatist theocracy in Utah. Polygamy was merely a symptom, fascinatingly salacious and easily ridiculed, of the pathology that most Americans saw in Mormonism. However, knowing the treason-based genesis of antipolygamy law need not force us to rethink the ban on polygamy. Treason remains unlawful, making it a permissible justification for the law today.

But race is also at the center of antipolygamy law, in a way that forces us to rethink the ban itself. Many Americans, from the highest levels of government to political cartoonists, viewed the Mormons’ political treason as part of a larger, even more sinister offense that I call race treason. According to this view, polygamy was natural for people of color, but unnatural for White Americans of Northern European descent. When Whites engaged in this unnatural practice, antipolygamists contended, they produced a “peculiar race.”  Antipolygamists linked this physical degeneration to Mormons’ submission to despotism, reasoning that their primitive form of government was common among supposedly backward races. The Supreme Court accepted this argument in the leading antipolygamy case, Reynolds v. United States, in which it rejected Mormon claims that polygamy was protected as the free exercise of religion. The Court reasoned that polygamy was “odious among the northern and western nations of Europe,” “almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people,” and ultimately “fetters the people in stationary despotism.” Well into the twentieth century, many Americans continued to associate White Mormons with people of color, as evidenced by a character’s quip in Jack London’s 1914 novel, “They ain’t whites; they’re Mormons.”

This racialization requires us to ask whether the polygamy ban today continues to import those white supremacist values. In another context, states criminalized cocaine and marijuana in the early twentieth century to police and generally demonize Chinese and Mexican immigrants as well as African Americans. By the late twentieth century, that policy, though officially rejected, found expression in federal sentencing guidelines that penalized offenses related to crack cocaine (more common in African American communities), more harshly than powder cocaine (more common in White communities). There, as here, virulent racial motivations that animated a legal rule requires us to examine the law’s current incarnation to ensure it has shed the taint of its origin.

Casting overwhelmingly White Mormons as non-White required rhetorical slights of hand. While Mormons’ distinctive theology and social organization were politically unsettling in many ways, the practice of polygamy justified the larger culture’s demotion of Mormons from full citizenship on the grounds of racial inferiority. This Article tells the story of race in polygamy law through the words of government actors and scholars, using political cartoons to literally illustrate the widespread view of Mormons as race traitors.

It then offers two theoretical frames through which to view nineteenth century perceptions of polygamy as race treason: Orientalism and jurisprudential insights about the tensions between status and contract. Edward Said’s work on Orientalism offer some clues as to why cartoonists might have portrayed Mormon polygamists as Black and Asian. Viewing the discourse as Orientalist—essentially an “us/them” rubric that primarily underpins colonialism—shows that antipolygamy discourse also spoke of Mormon polygamy in “us/them” terms, treating polygamists not as people, but as problems to be solved. The most valuable insight Orientalism offers here is that framing a group as Oriental—an inherently backward, sensual, and therefore subordinated Other—makes its subjection inevitable. Thus the public imagination’s construction of Mormons as members of subject racial groups (Asian and Black, mainly) played a crucial role in subjecting Mormons to federal control…

…This Article uses political cartoons of the day to demonstrate how viscerally the American polity fought against the Mormons’ attempt at private ordering, deploying images of domestic and governmental disorder to rail against the chaotic consequences of abandoning status in marriage. In the cartoons, race and gender served as shorthand for status, the notion of assigned, inherent and unchanging roles. Because marriage was deeply raced and gendered, and not coincidentally defined citizenship, antipolygamists’ equation of polygamy with Asian and Black foreignness reaffirmed the centrality of Whiteness to full citizenship. Equating Whiteness with citizenship mattered enormously in the time of which we speak. Abolitionists and Freedmen pushed hard for full civic membership for the freed slaves. The cartoons here oppose it, using polygamy to beat back African Americans’ claims to civil membership in the wake of the Civil War…

…The cartoon depicts a fierce eagle, stars and stripes on its wings representing the United States, protecting its nest, which is labeled “union.” Inside the nest are eaglets, all White, each labeled for a state. A “carrion crow” labeled “Utah” rises up in their midst, clutching a bone labeled “Mormonism.” Three things bear mentioning. First, the cartoon appeared less than a generation after the end of the Civil War, when most viewers would situate its imagery within the national catastrophe of Confederate Secession. Second, it labeled the bird representing Utah as “Carrion Crow.” This crow gets its name from its habit of eating dead animals, making its presence in the caption depict Mormonism as a harbinger of death. Moreover, the birds representing the other states seem to be eaglets, the same species as the eagle, while the crow represents a new species, black, holding its own bone and defiantly turning its back on the mother. In contrast, the eaglets either beg for food or look out as if guarding the nest.

Integrating these elements, we can interpret the single Black crow White eaglets as signaling political defiance against the Union, racial grounds for denying Utah statehood, and miscegenation. In the decades after Civil War, intense legal, political, and social battles raged over the citizenship of African Americans, generally resulting in severely limited social and political rights for the freed slaves. Consequently, this cartoon, published in that climate, seems to reference both the Civil War and the place of Blacks in America in the wake of emancipation. The Black crow symbolizing Utah, nestled among White eaglets symbolizing the other states, is akin to the Confederacy seceding to protect its own peculiar domestic institution. In this view, depicting Utah as a carrion crow would justify denying “black” Utah membership in the Union just as the Black Codes and other measures denied African Americans full citizenship. The mix of white and black baby birds in the cartoon also raises the specter of miscegenation, which animated the Black Codes.

The nation was struggling over the constitutionality of miscegenation laws at the very moment that Mormon polygamy attracted intense debate and regulation. Many southern states repealed their miscegenation statutes shortly after the Civil War, reasoning that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution allowed African Americans to contract marriages just like White citizens. However, they reinstated miscegenation laws in the 1880s and 1890s, claiming that the ban on interracial marriage did not violate principles of equal protection, since it prevented both Blacks and Whites from marrying outside their race. Indeed, in 1883, a year after “The Carrion Crow,” the U.S. Supreme Court used this rationale to uphold miscegenation laws in Pace v. Alabama. As the sole Black child among White siblings, the crow signifies multiracial families produced by race-mixing. By linking Mormon polygamy with political treason and racialized political and familial degeneration, the cartoon triggers explosive issues far beyond polygamy as a marital variation…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-race Jewish children locate their communal comfort zone

The Jewish Chronicle Online
2009-11-12

Sue Fishkoff

Dafna Wu, a 48-year-old San Francisco nurse, was born to a Jewish mother and Chinese father. She was raised Jewish but looks Asian, as does her daughter, nine-year-old Amalia, whose father was also Chinese.

The Hebrew School Amalia attends is filled with mixed-race children, but the parents in the congregation are all white, as is the majority of American Jewry. That concerns her mother.
 
“All my life I’ve had to defend being Jewish,” says Ms Wu. “When I go to a new synagogue, people ask who I’m with. I don’t want her to have to explain her Judaism, or be exoticised for it. I just want her to be a kid, not ‘that special, multi-racial kid’.”
 
That’s why Ms Wu brings Amalia to Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a San Francisco-based organisation for ethnically and racially diverse Jews. At the group’s most recent retreat last month, at a camp north of San Francisco, Amalia played with other Jewish children who are black, Hispanic and Asian. They sang Hebrew songs, built a succah, and learned about tzedakah, but they also talked openly with their counsellors about what it means to be Jews of colour, to have an identity people do not see due to the colour of their skin.

About 5.4 per cent of America’s Jews are either non-white or Hispanic, according to the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. A 2004 study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, Be’chol Lashon’s parent organisation, puts that number at about 10 per cent. Nevertheless, say activists in the field, the prevailing assumption is that Jews are white, and that Jews of other racial or ethnic backgrounds are adoptees or converts. Sometimes they are, but increasingly they are not, as the children of mixed-race couples grow to adulthood and begin raising their own Jewish children…

Read the entire article here.

Jewish multiracial families grow in numbers and commitment

The Denver Post
Denver, Colorado
2012-09-25

Electa Draper

Three Denver mothers heading multiracial families are seeking to build on what it means to live in Jewish community.

The community is changing.

It’s perhaps a surprising slice of demography that shows that 16 percent of metro Denver Jewish households headed by people ages 39 and younger are multiracial.

Among all age groups, 9 percent are multiracial, according to the 2007 Metro Denver/Boulder Jewish Community Study. National organizations note that the trend is increasing through conversion, marriage and adoption…

…For years, American Jews have been characterized as a “white” ethno-religious group, “both in terms of their racial classification and in terms of their cultural alignment in American society,” reported the UJA-Federation of New York in its comprehensive 2011 study released in June.

“However, several factors — intermarriage and adoption among them — have been working to alter that nearly all-white imagery and reality to some extent,” the report states…

Read the entire article here.

Roots: Saint Lucia’s Hindu Legacy

Hinduism Today
October/November/December 2012

Gajanan Nataraj
Saint Lucia

I am a Saint Lucian citizen. I was born in the US Virgin Islands and lived briefly on the mainland (USA), but for the better part of 23 years I was raised on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. I am roughly two-quarters Indian and two-quarters Negro–meaning both my parents were themselves of mixed heritage. This is common in Saint Lucia. We are called dougla–which comes from doogala (“two necks”), a demeaning label meaning mixed race or half-caste in Bhojpuri and Hindi. In Saint Lucia, the term is sometimes used affectionately, sometimes not so affectionately.

Though many on the island are of Indian heritage, I am one of the very few Hindus. I have a Hindu name, perform daily puja to Lord Ganesha and consider the cow a sacred creature. I believe in karma, dharma, reincarnation, the divinity of the Vedas and in the need for a satguru to guide my spiritual journey. Of all the Indian families who came to Saint Lucia from Kolkata as indentured workers in the 19th century, mine is one of the few to reclaim our Hindu heritage. In being Hindu, I am almost unique among the fifth generation of Indian immigrants. Even among my close relatives, almost all are Christians.

How did I come to be a Hindu in a land where Christianity reigns supreme, even among Indians? I attribute my discovery of this beautiful religion to the interplay of my soul’s natural calling and God’s blessing of being born to parents who are ardent seekers of spiritual truth. Indeed, my growth from non-religious, Christian-influenced spiritual confusion can only be credited to the marvelous journey of my parents…

Read the entire article here.