Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Month: June 2009

  • Melungeon

    Melungeon (pronounced /məˈlʌndʒən/) is a term traditionally applied to one of a number of “tri-racial isolate” groups of the Southeastern United States, mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia: east Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and east Kentucky. Tri-racial describes populations thought to be of mixed (1) European, (2) sub-Saharan African, and (3) Native American…

  • Speaking Up: Mixed Race Identity in Black Communities

    Speaking Up: Mixed Race Identity in Black Communities Journal of Black Studies Volume 39, Number 3 (January 2009) pages 434-445 DOI: 10.1177/0021934706297875 Tru Leverette University of North Florida, Jacksonville Within Black communities, individuals of mixed Black/White parentage have faced diverse reactions, ranging from elevation to scorn. These reactions have often been based on the oppressions…

  • Mixing It Up: Early African American Settlements in Northwestern Ohio

    Mixing It Up: Early African American Settlements in Northwestern Ohio Journal of Black Studies Volume 39, Number 6 (July 2009) pages 924-936 DOI: 10.1177/0021934707305432 Jill E. Rowe, Assistant professor, African American studies Virginia Commonwealth University Prior to the 19th century, African American settlers founded a number of productive communities in northwestern Ohio.  During this time…

  • hypodescent

    Hypodescent is the practice of determining the classification of a child of mixed-race ancestry by assigning the child the race of his or her more socially subordinate parent.  Because Caucasians were historically socially dominant in the Western world, mixed-race children in slave societies were most frequently assigned the status of their non-Caucasian parent.  This was…

  • Mix-d:

    mix-d: (pronounced “mixed”) Describes a position of pride and place where one can bring all sides of their cultural identity together and express an identity which is similar to but not specifically like either. By dropping the term race we make a step forward and begin to talk about a fully lived experience rather than…

  • Psuedoscience

    …professors and medical doctors offered scientific evidence that ‘race mixture’ contaminated Europeans, biologically and culturally, and gave rise to a population of mixed origins that was physically inferior and psychologically unstable. …At the same time, the vigour with which White men opposed ‘race mixture’ officially, especially for men of colour, was exceeded only by the…

  • Multiracialism

    What this current discourse is about is lifting the lid of racial oppression in our institutions and letting people identify with the totality of their heritage. We have created a nightmare for human dignity. Multiracialism has the potential for undermining the very basis of racism, which is its categories. (G. Reginald Daniel, The New Yorker,…

  • The Era of Moral Condemnation: mixed race people in Britain 1920 – 1950

    From the University of Kent: ‘Invisible’ history of mixed race Britain becomes the subject of a major study A major new study, jointly undertaken by Peter Aspinall, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Kent, and Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow at London South Bank University, will investigate who was considered to be mixed race…

  • ‘Invisible’ history of mixed race Britain becomes the subject of a major study

    …The ‘mixed’ population is now the fastest growing ethnic group in Britain. While the substantial increase in the size of this group is a recent phenomenon, population mixing has happened throughout the 20th century and earlier. By the 1920s there were settled mixed race populations in a number of British seaports, including Liverpool and Cardiff,…

  • Records of the Eugenics Society, 1934

    ‘In certain circumstances, race mixing is known to be bad. Further knowledge of its biological effects is needed in order to make it possible to frame a practical eugenic policy.  Meanwhile, since the process of race mixture cannot be reversed, great caution is advocated.’ Records of the Eugenics Society, 1934