Mixed Race Studies

Not So Plain as Black and White: Afro-German Culture & History, 1890-2000

University of Rochester Press
2005-03-01
266 pages
Pages: 266
Size: 9 x 6
Hardback 13 Digit ISBN: 9781580461832
Imprint: University of Rochester Press

Edited by

Patricia M. Mazón, Associate Professor of History
State University of New York, Buffalo

Reinhild Steingröver, Assistant Professor of German
University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music

Since the Middle Ages, Africans have lived in Germany as slaves and scholars, guest workers and refugees. After Germany became a unified nation in 1871, it acquired several African colonies but lost them after World War I. Children born of German mothers and African fathers during the French occupation of Germany were persecuted by the Nazis. After World War II, many children were born to African American GIs stationed in Germany and German mothers. Today there are 500,000 Afro-Germans in Germany out of a population of 80 million. Nevertheless, German society still sees them as “foreigners,” assuming they are either African or African American but never German.

In recent years, the subject of Afro-Germans has captured the interest of scholars across the humanities for several reasons. Looking at Afro-Germans allows us to see another dimension of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideas of race that led to the Holocaust. Furthermore, the experience of Afro-Germans provides insight into contemporary Germany’s transformation, willing or not, into a multicultural society. The volume breaks new ground not only by addressing the topic of Afro-Germans but also by combining scholars from many disciplines.

Table of Contents

1. Dangerous Liaisons: Race, Nation, and German Identity
2. The First Besatzungskinder: Afro-German Children, Colonial Childrearing Practices, and Racial Policy in German Southwest Africa, 1890-1914
3. Converging Specters of an Other Within: Race and Gender in Pre- 1945 Afro-German History
4. Louis Brody and the Black Presence in German Film Before 1945
5. Narrating “Race” in 1950s’ West Germany: The Phenomenon of the Toxi Films
6. Will Everything Be Fine? Anti-Racist Practice in Recent German Cinema
7. Writing Diasporic Identity: Afro-German Literature since 1985
8. The Souls of Black Volk: Contradiction? Oxymoron?

We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity

Harvard University Press
2005
336 pages
5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
Paperback ISBN: 9780674025714

Tommie Shelby, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy
Harvard University

2005 New York Magazine Best Academic Book

African American history resounds with calls for black unity. From abolitionist times through the Black Power movement, it was widely seen as a means of securing a full share of America’s promised freedom and equality. Yet today, many believe that black solidarity is unnecessary, irrational, rooted in the illusion of “racial” difference, at odds with the goal of integration, and incompatible with liberal ideals and American democracy. A response to such critics, We Who Are Dark provides the first extended philosophical defense of black political solidarity.

Tommie Shelby argues that we can reject a biological idea of race and agree with many criticisms of identity politics yet still view black political solidarity as a needed emancipatory tool. In developing his defense of black solidarity, he draws on the history of black political thought, focusing on the canonical figures of Martin R. Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois, and he urges us to rethink many traditional conceptions of what black unity should entail. In this way, he contributes significantly to the larger effort to re-envision black politics and to modernize the objectives and strategies of black freedom struggles for the post-civil rights era. His book articulates a new African American political philosophy–one that rests firmly on anti-essentialist foundations and, at the same time, urges a commitment to defeating racism, to eliminating racial inequality, and to improving the opportunities of those racialized as “black.”

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction: Political Philosophy and the Black Experience
• 1. Two Conceptions of Black Nationalism
• 2. Class, Poverty, and Shame
• 3. Black Power Nationalism
• 4. Black Solidarity after Black Power
• 5. Race, Culture, and Politics
• 6. Social Identity and Group Solidarity
• Conclusion: The Political Morality of Black Solidarity
• Notes
• Index

DNA tests probe the genomic ancestry of Brazilians

Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research
Volume 42, Number 10 (October 2009)
pages 870-876
DOI: 10.1590/S0100-879X2009005000026

S .D. J. Pena
GENE, Núcleo de Genética Médica, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil

L. Bastos-Rodrigues
Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil

J. R. Pimenta
GENE, Núcleo de Genética Médica, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil

S. P. Bydlowski
Laboratório de Genética e Hematologia Molecular (LIM-31), Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, Hospital das Clínicas, São Paulo, SP, Brasil

We review studies from our laboratories using different molecular tools to characterize the ancestry of Brazilians in reference to their Amerindian, European and African roots. Initially we used uniparental DNA markers to investigate the contribution of distinct Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lineages to present-day populations. High levels of genetic admixture and strong directional mating between European males and Amerindian and African females were unraveled. We next analyzed different types of biparental autosomal polymorphisms. Especially useful was a set of 40 insertion-deletion polymorphisms (indels) that when studied worldwide proved exquisitely sensitive in discriminating between Amerindians, Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. When applied to the study of Brazilians these markers confirmed extensive genomic admixture, but also demonstrated a strong imprint of the massive European immigration wave in the 19th and 20th centuries. The high individual ancestral variability observed suggests that each Brazilian has a singular proportion of Amerindian, European and African ancestries in his mosaic genome. In Brazil, one cannot predict the color of persons from their genomic ancestry nor the opposite. Brazilians should be assessed on a personal basis, as 190 million human beings, and not as members of color groups.

Introduction

Brazilians are one of the most heterogeneous populations in the world, the result of five centuries of interethnic crosses between peoples from three continents: Amerindians, Europeans and Africans. Little is known about the number of indigenous people living in the area of what is now Brazil when the Portuguese arrived in 1500 (1), although a figure often cited is that of 2.5 million individuals. The Portuguese-Amerindian admixture started soon after the arrival of the first colonizers and later became commonplace, being even encouraged after 1755 as a strategy for population growth and colonial occupation of the country….

From the middle of the 16th century, Africans were brought to Brazil to work on sugarcane farms and, later, in the gold and diamond mines and on coffee plantations. Historical records suggest that between circa 1550 and 1850 (when the slave trade was abolished), around four million Africans arrived in Brazil (2)…

Uniparental genetic markers in Brazilians

…To learn about the maternal counterpart, we analyzed mtDNA, which revealed a different reality. Considering Brazil as a whole, 33, 39, and 28% of matrilineages were of Amerindian, European and African origin, respectively (9,12). As expected, the frequency of different regions reflected their genealogical histories: most matrilineal lineages in the Amazon region were of Amerindian origin, while African ancestrality was preponderant in the Northeast (44%) and European haplogroups were prevalent in the South (66%). These data have since been amply confirmed by numerous other studies. For instance, we recently analyzed the mtDNA haplogroup structure of 242 self-identified white individuals from São Paulo and ascertained 24% Amerindian, 22% African and 54% European matrilineal proportions (Dornelas HG, Bydlowski SP, Pena SDJ, unpublished data).

Next, for further confirmation, we studied mtDNA lineages in 120 black individuals from the city of São Paulo. The results, as expected, showed a mirror image of those previously found in white Brazilians: on the one hand, 85% of the lineages originated in Sub-Saharan Africa, 12% were from Amerindians and only 3% were from Europe; on the other, only 48% of the Y chromosome lineages originated from Sub-Saharan Africa (the vast majority belonging to haplogroups E3a7 and E3a*). Studies on black individuals from the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre produced very similar results.

Taken together, these numbers disclose a picture of very strong directional mating between European males and Amerindian and African females, which agrees perfectly with the known history of the peopling of Brazil since 1500. These studies also reveal that the genomes of most Brazilians are mosaic, having mtDNA and NRY of different phylogeographical origins.

Biparental genetic markers and ancestry in Brazilians

In Brazil, notwithstanding relatively large levels of genetic admixture and a myth of “racial democracy”, there exists widespread social prejudice that seems to be particularly connected to the physical appearance of an individual. Color (in Portuguese, cor) denotes the Brazilian equivalent of the English term race (raça) and is based on a complex phenotypic evaluation that takes into account, besides skin pigmentation, also hair type, nose shape and lip shape. The reason why the word color is preferred to race in Brazil is probably because it captures the continuous aspects of phenotypes. In contrast with the situation in the United States, there appears to be no racial descent rule operational in Brazil and it is possible for two siblings differing in color to belong to completely diverse racial categories.

Based on the criteria of self-classification of the 2000 census of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), the Brazilian population was then composed of 53.4% Whites, 6.1% Blacks and 38.9% Brown (“pardos” in Portuguese). How do these numbers correlate with genomic ancestry?..

Read the entire article here.

Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity

Duke University Press
2008
264 pages
5 photographs, 2 tables
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4058-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-4058-4

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Studies
Wesleyan University

In the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) of 1921, the U.S. Congress defined “native Hawaiians” as those people “with at least one-half blood quantum of individuals inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778.” This “blood logic” has since become an entrenched part of the legal system in Hawai‘i. Hawaiian Blood is the first comprehensive history and analysis of this federal law that equates Hawaiian cultural identity with a quantifiable amount of blood. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui explains how blood quantum classification emerged as a way to undermine Native Hawaiian (Kanaka Maoli) sovereignty. Within the framework of the 50-percent rule, intermarriage “dilutes” the number of state-recognized Native Hawaiians. Thus, rather than support Native claims to the Hawaiian islands, blood quantum reduces Hawaiians to a racial minority, reinforcing a system of white racial privilege bound to property ownership.

Kauanui provides an impassioned assessment of how the arbitrary correlation of ancestry and race imposed by the U.S. government on the indigenous people of Hawai‘i has had far-reaching legal and cultural effects. With the HHCA, the federal government explicitly limited the number of Hawaiians included in land provisions, and it recast Hawaiians’ land claims in terms of colonial welfare rather than collective entitlement. Moreover, the exclusionary logic of blood quantum has profoundly affected cultural definitions of indigeneity by undermining more inclusive Kanaka Maoli notions of kinship and belonging. Kauanui also addresses the ongoing significance of the 50-percent rule: Its criteria underlie recent court decisions that have subverted the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and brought to the fore charged questions about who counts as Hawaiian.

Table of Contents

A Note to Readers
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Got Blood?

1. Racialized Beneficiaries and Genealogical Descendants
2. “Can you wonder that the Hawaiians did not get more?” Historical Context for the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act
3. Under the Guise of Hawaiian Rehabilitation
4. The Virile, Prolific, and Enterprising: Part-Hawaiians and the Problem with Rehabilitation
5. Limiting Hawaiians, Limiting the Bill: Rehabilitation Recoded
6. Sovereignty Struggles and the Legacy of the 50-Percent Rule

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Blackness, Hypodescent, and Essentialism: Commentary on McPherson and Shelby’s “Blackness and Blood”

Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy
Volume 1, Number 1, May 2005

Gregory Velazco y Trianosky, Professor of Philosopy
California State University, Northridge

In their fascinating and thoughtful paper, McPherson and Shelby seek to defend everyday African American understandings of their own identity against the critique launched by Anthony Appiah in his Tanner lectures. I have no deep disagreements with their defense. Instead I will propose what I hope are useful clarifications of some of the key claims in that defense, and perhaps some further contribution to the discussion they have begun.

1. Roughly speaking, Appiah argues as follows: (1) African Americans typically adhere to the rule of hypodescent, understood as a criterion for membership in the group of black people. However, says Appiah, in conjunction with (2) the nationalist belief that black people owe special obligations of support or group solidarity to other black people, this adherence is problematic. For the truth is that (3) many phenotypically white people in the United States in fact have black ancestors and thus, by a strict application of the rule of hypodescent, are black rather than white, regardless of appearance. Given this fact, (4) adherence to the rule of hypodescent requires black people (insofar as they are nationalists) to extend to many phenotypically white people the same kind of support they believe they owe to all black people. But this means (5) that the actions of black nationalists will, insofar as they are based on the facts, undermine the very project of black nationalism. Appiah goes on to argue that in cases where a group’s beliefs about its identity undermine its own political and social projects, the liberal state should intervene to “soul-make,” that is, to reshape the understanding that group has of itself…

Read the entire commentary here.

Reading between the (Blood) Lines

Southern California Law Review
Volume 83, Number 3 (2010)
pages 473-494

Rose Cuison Villazor, Professor of Law
Hofstra University School of Law

Legal scholars and historians have depicted the rule of hypodescent—that “one drop” of African blood categorized one as Black—as one of the powerful ways that law and society deployed to construct racial identities and deny equal citizenship. Ariela J. Gross’s new book, “What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America,” boldly complicates the dominant narrative about hypodescent rules in legal scholarship. On the one hand, “What Blood Won’t Tell” argues that the legal and social construction of race was far more complex, flexible and subject to manipulation than the scholarship regarding the rules about blood distinctions has suggested. On the other hand, “What Blood Won’t Tell” highlights circumstances, both historically and in recent memory, of the ways in which blood distinctions played crucial roles in shaping the identity of people of color, including indigenous peoples. Importantly, “What Blood Won’t Tell” also examines how blood quantum rules relate to contemporary efforts to reassert indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and claims to lands.

This Review highlights the important contributions of “What Blood Won’t Tell” to our understanding of the racial experience of indigenous peoples and the contemporary methods used to remedy the present-day effects of indigenous peoples’ colonial experience. “What Blood Won’t Tell” advances a more robust account of the racialization of people of color through rules about blood differences in at least three ways. First, it places the colonial experience of indigenous peoples within the larger historical contexts of racial subordination and efforts to promote White domination and privilege. Second, it underscores the federal government’s ongoing responsibility to counteract the long-standing effects of its past misdeeds by addressing indigenous peoples’ unresolved claims to lands that have been stolen from them. Third, it allows us to take a careful look at the relationship between blood quantum rules and the right of indigenous peoples to exercise self-determination. Taken together, these three perspectives reveal the immense challenges inherent to remedying the long-term effects of the racialization and colonization of indigenous peoples.

Read the entire article here.