Mixed Race Studies

Miscegenation

Anthropological Review
Volume 2, Number 5 (May, 1864)
pages 116-121

During the last two months there have come reports to Europe of the remarkable form of insanity which is just now affecting the people of Federal America.  We should not have thought it worth while to take any notice of the publication of the pamphlet under review, if it did not give us some insight into the extraordinary mental aberration now going on in Yankeedom.  It is useless, however, longer to close our eyes to the phenomenon now appearing in the New World.  Before we saw this pamphlet, we expected that is was merely a hoax, which some political wag had concocted for the benefit of his party.  But an examination of the works dispels that illusion, and shows that the author attempts to found his theory on scientific facts!

There is, indeed, just enough of the current scientific opinion of the day, and also enough of literary merit, to enable readers of this work to get very much confused as to the real nature of the opinions and theory therein propounded.  The anonymous author starts with some general assertions, and if these be admitted, the theory is not so utterly absurd as it otherwise appears.  Monogenists will,  indeed be astonished at the use made of their doctrine; but is is from the…

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Miscegenation: the theory of the blending of the races, applied to the American white man and negro.

H. Dexter, Hamilton & Co.
1864
76 pages
Source: Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection of The University of Manchester, The John Rylands University Library

David Goodman Croly

The Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection is a collection of 19th-century anti-slavery pamphlets received in 1923 from the executors of Henry Joseph Wilson (1833-1914), the distinguished Liberal Member of Parliament for Sheffield. The collection is of particular importance for the study of the activities of the provincial philanthropic societies, such as the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen’s Aid Association, the Birmingham and West Bromwich Ladies’ Negro’s Friend Society, the Glasgow Emancipation Society, the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society, and the Sheffield Ladies Female Anti Slavery Society. Of interest is the prominent role of women in the movement, who formed themselves into societies which lobbied MPs and printed pamphlets on the conditions of slaves. Here we have details of what was sold at their bazaars to raise funds and lists of names of subscribers, the minutiae which bring alive the history of the movement.

Note from Steven F. Riley: This pamphlet coined the term “miscegenation.”

Read the pamphlet here.

Pinturas de Casta: Mexican Caste Paintings, a Foucauldian Reading

New Readings
School of Modern Languages, Cardiff University
Volume 10 (July 2009)
page 1-17

Nasheli Jiménez del Val
Cardiff University

This article looks at the genre of casta painting developed in colonial Mexico during the eighteenth century. The genre consists of a series of paintings representing the different racial mixes that characterised New Spain throughout the colonial period and that continue to play an important role in contemporary Mexican society. By referring to several Foucauldian concepts such as disciplinary power, biopower, normalisation, deviance and heterotopia, this essay aims to locate the links between this genre and prevailing discourses on race, with a particular focus on the ensuing institutional and political practices implemented in the colony during this period. Centrally, by focusing on this genre as a representational technology of colonial surveillance, the paper argues that discourses on race in New Spain oscillated between an ideal representation of colonial society, ordered and stabilised through rigid classificatory systems, and a real miscegenated population that demanded a more fluid understanding of the colonial subject’s societal value beyond the limitations of racial determinism.

It is known that neither the Indian nor Negro contends in dignity and esteem with the Spaniard; nor do any of the others envy the lot of the Negro, who is the “most dispirited and despised”. […] It is held as systematic that a Spaniard and an Indian produce a mestizo; a mestizo and a Spaniard, a castizo; and a castizo and a Spaniard, a Spaniard. It is agreed that from a Spaniard and a Negro a mulatto is born; from a mulatto and a Spaniard, a morisco; from a morisco and a Spaniard, a torna atrás; and from a torna atrás and a Spaniard, a tente en el aire. The same thing happens from the union of a Negro and Indian, the descent begins as follows: Negro and Indian produce a lobo; lobo and Indian, a chino; and chino and Indian, an albarazado, all of which incline towards the mulatto. [For more terms, see here.]

—Pedro Alonso O’Crowley, 1774.

Casta painting is a pictorial genre produced by colonial artists between the early 18th century and the early 19th century that consists of a series of paintings representing the different racial mixings that characterised the colony of New Spain. As a pictorial genre, it is constituted by a succession of images that show a male and female subject from different ethnic origins and the offspring that result from this combination. The three racial strands of Spaniard, Indian and Black initiate the series, with the possible combinations that derive from these crossing being depicted in detail, to the degree that even fifth or sixth degrees of derivations are often assigned specific names and traits…

Read the entire article here.

Casta Paintings: Inventing Race Through Art

The Tavis Smiley Show
National Public Radio
2004-06-30

Mexican Art Genre Reveals 18th-Century Attitudes on Racial Mixing

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is hosting the first-ever major exhibition paintings that reflect what many upper-class Spaniards thought about race, class and skin color during the 1700s, when Mexico was a colony of Spain. NPR producer Nova Safo reports on the controversial exhibit.

The genre of art, called casta, reveals more about prejudices in Spain at the time than the reality in Mexico. One portrait of a family, used as the centerpiece of the LACMA exhibit, is typical of the genre: A mother with snow-white skin, a dark-skinned father and a daughter with skin tone in between the two appear as prosperous and well-dressed.

But the title of the portrait is curious: “De Espaniol y Albina, Torna Atras”—literally, “From a Spaniard and Albino, return backwards.” The prevailing theory at the time was that albinos were thought to be part African. So the union of an albino with a Spaniard was actually seen as a step backward, towards African heritage…

Read the entire article here.  Listen to the story (00:05:26) here in Real Media or Windows format.

I’ve got a Story to Tell: Critical Race Theory, Whiteness and Narrative Constructions of Racial and Ethnic Census Categories

Bowling Green State University
December 2010
245 pages

Candice J. LeFlore-Muñoz

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

This study examines the embedded nature of whiteness in the use of racial and ethnic categories on U.S. census forms. Specifically, this study focuses on people’s perceptions of racial and ethnic categories, how those categories have been historically used on U.S. census forms, and the relationship between this discourse on racial and ethnic categories and elements of whiteness. Like (Nobles, 2000), in this study, I argue that the rhetorical construction of race and ethnicity on census forms is not a trivial matter since the way that we structure these words and categories significantly influences how we understand them. Thus, this study practices critical rhetoric (McKerrow, 1989) and employs the use of critical race theory (Delgado & Stefanic, 2001) to investigate the relationship between the 20 counter narratives and the larger master narrative about racial and ethnic categorization in this country. Throughout this dissertation, I use Omi and Winant’s (1994) racial formation and racial projects to highlight several themes that emerge in the master narrative and counter narratives. By focusing on these themes, this analysis explores past, present, and future racial projects that may emerge in relation to the use of racial and ethnic categories on census forms and elements of whiteness.

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
  • Unveiling Whiteness in Discourse
  • Chapter Breakdown
• CHAPTER ONE: EXPLORING RACE AND ETHNICITY THROUGH THE LENS OF WHITENESS
  • Muddled Memories of a Multiracial Past
  • Situating Race and Ethnicity within Whiteness Studies and Critical Rhetoric
  • Whiteness Studies: An Overview of Scholarship
• CHAPTER TWO: PAST TO PRESENT – TRACES OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC CATEGORIZATION
  • Early Racial Classification Systems
  • Race as a Biological Construction
  • Race as a Social Construction
  • Race, Power, and Dominance
• CHAPTER THREE: RACE, ETHNCIITY, AND THE U.S. CENSUS
  • Upholding Whiteness: Racial and Ethnic Classification on the U.S. Census
  • Self-Identification and Official Racial and Ethnic Categories
  • Check ONE Box: Monoracial Ideology and the U.S. Census
  • Hypodescent Racial Projects and Census Classification
  • Maintaining the Rigid Color Line: Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the U.S. Census
  • Free White Persons: Intersections of Citizenship, Whiteness, and the Census
  • Mark One or More: Census 2000
• CHAPTER FOUR: CRT AND THE PRACTICE OF A CRITICAL RHETORIC
  • Critical Race Theory (CRT)
  • Critical Rhetoric
  • Dismantling Power: Complimentary Aspects of Critical Rhetoric and CRT
  • Telling Whose Stories: Data Collection and Study Design
• CHAPTER FIVE: THE MASTER NARRATIVE
  • Box Checking and Socialization
  • Box Checking and Self-Identity/Self-Esteem
  • Defining Race and Ethnicity
  • Well What are You? Stereotyping, Social Rules, and Racial/Ethnic Categories
• CHAPTER SIX: COUNTER NARRATIVES, CATEGORIES, AND PRIVILEGE: HOW WHITENESS WORKS WITH BOX CHECKING
  • Privilege, Passing, and Box Checking
    • The White Category and Privilege
    • Minority Categories and Privilege
  • Passing for Privilege
    • Skin Color and Privilege
• CHAPTER SEVEN: SHATTERING THE PAST: CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION OF THE MASTER NARRATIVE
  • What Race What Space?
  • Boxes Not Inclusive
    • Asian Groups – No Hyphen American
    • Cultural and National Identity
    • Boxes Not Inclusive for Whites
    • Boxes Not Inclusive for Latinos
  • Wording & the Use of Negro
• CHAPTER EIGHT: PRESERVING AND DISMANTLING THE AUTHORITY OF WHITENESS
  • Self-Identification, Public Policy, and Civil Rights Legislation
  • The Black/White Binary and Some Other Race
  • Possibilities for Change
    • Color Blindness
    • Honorary Whites and Collective Blacks
    • White Minority or White Majority?
  • Whiteness Deconstructed
    • Boxes Not Inclusive
  • Considerations for the Future
  • What Can Reasonably be Done?
    • Reducing Skepticism & Promoting Intersectionality
    • Limitations & Future Research
• REFERENCES
• APPENDIX A: LIST OF STUDY PARTICIPANTS
• APPENDIX B: RECRUITMENT FLYER
• APPENDIX C: CONSENT FORM
• APPENDIX D: NARRATIVE PROMPT
• APPENDIX E: CENSUS QUESTIONS HANDOUT
• APPENDIX F: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Introduction

Wondering…
1st grade: Wondering why my mom calls my light-skinned aunt Black, when I think she looks more White. 3rd grade: Wondering why Black and Native American are not considered mixed… wondering why my father is called Black when he is Native American too…

Acknowledging and Believing…
6th grade: Mutually acknowledging with one of my best friends from 1st grade (who is a White- appearing blond-haired, blue-eyed Native American boy) that we shouldn’t hang around each other because now the kids at school tend to hang out with the people who look like them and we are tired of getting teased. Middle school: Believing the one-drop rule… or that if you are anything mixed with Black, you are just Black. High school: Acknowledging that there are five “official” racial and ethnic categories—White, Black, Asian, Native American, and Latino. Knowing that White always comes first, but not fully understanding why… wondering why it is so easy for me to just say the five categories when there are other racial and ethnic categories out there.

Wondering and Questioning…
College: Being happy about the new Black golfer Tiger Woods even though he doesn’t describe himself as Black, but as multiracial. Wondering why he has to just be Black? Grad School: Being skeptical about all of the media referring to the new president (Barack Obama) as the first Black president… again because he is multiracial… then realizing that he refers to himself as Black. Questioning the very racial and ethnic categories that have framed so much of my life.

Since the first census in 1790, the United States has been a country that is obsessed with labels and the use of racial and ethnic categories. These labels have become a fundamental part of how individuals view the world, and they play a significant role in how reality is constructed. Whether a person identifies as Black or African American, Latina or Hispanic, Asian or Chinese American, these words have roots of significance far beyond the words that appear on the page. These labels carry their historical significance with them every time they are uttered, written, or seen on a page. Thus, given the fact that racial and ethnic labels enjoy widespread use, these terms are important in society and they become a central factor in how individuals craft their identity (Yanow, 2003)….

…Likewise, I also acknowledge the fact that my personal experiences with race and ethnicity have been undoubtedly shaped by their discursive constructions and the embedded nature of whiteness in our language system. As Fanon (1967) points out, “a man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language” (p. 18). In their discussion of the importance of whiteness studies to rhetoric and composition studies, Kennedy, Middleton, and Ratcliff (2005) also highlight this when they point out that whiteness is prevalent in the ways in which it socializes how we talk about groups of people through our racially-inflected language. This reminds me of Lorde‟s (1984) warning that “the master‟s tools will never dismantle the master‟s house” (p. 112).

As a result, I feel that it is necessary to briefly address the problematic nature of using a language system which is inherently shaped by whiteness, while simultaneously maintaining the ultimate goal of trying to deconstruct it. Thus, while I do not systematically place words like race and ethnicity in quotation marks throughout this dissertation, I envision them to be this way in order to serve as a reminder of their socially constructed status and their historical connection to notions of White superiority and pseudo-scientific research. Likewise, this also applies to my use of multiracial and mixed race since they are premised on the idea that pure, distinct racial groups exist that can be mixed and result in multiracial people. Furthermore, I also acknowledge the problematic nature of using words like White, non-White, people of color, other, minority and majority since the use of these terms rhetorically re-centers whiteness and demonstrates how notions of whiteness are normalized in the current language system. Thus, despite my use of people of color, I also envision White as a color even as I search for ways in which to talk about non-White people without re-centering whiteness…

Read the entire dissertation here.

Blood Quantum and Perceptions of Black-White Biracial Targets: The Black Ancestry Prototype Model of Affirmative Action

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume 37, Number 1 (January 2011)
pages 3-14
DOI: 10.1177/0146167210389473

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University

Jessica J. Good, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina

George F. Chavez
Department of Psychology
Rutgers University

The present study examined the causal role of amount of Black ancestry in targets’ perceived fit with Black prototypes and perceivers’ categorization of biracial targets. Greater Black ancestry increased the likelihood that perceivers categorized biracial targets as Black and perceived targets as fitting Black prototypes (e.g., experiencing racial discrimination, possessing stereotypic traits). These results persisted, controlling for perceptions of phenotype that stem from ancestry information. Perceivers’ beliefs about how society would categorize the biracial targets predicted perceptions of discrimination, whereas perceivers’ beliefs about the targets’ self-categorization predicted trait perceptions. The results of this study support the Black ancestry prototype model of affirmative action, which reveals the downstream consequences of Black ancestry for the distribution of minority resources (e.g., affirmative action) to biracial targets.

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New research explains why we see Barack Obama as “black” rather than “white”

News of Otago
University of Otago, New Zealand

2010-11-25

Why do people tend to see biracial individuals such as Barack Obama as belonging to the minority group in their parentage rather than the majority one? According to new studies led by a University of Otago psychology researcher, this phenomenon—known as “hypodescent”—can be explained by underlying mechanisms in how human brains learn and categorise groups.

Otago Department of Psychology Associate Professor Jamin Halberstadt says that previously, the hypodescent phenomenon was presumed to be a product of one of several motivations: for example, to deny rights to minority group members, or to grant rights to restore historical inequities.

“Through our face perception research we show that hypodescent need not be motivated by prejudice or anything else, and that the same minority-biased perception of mixed-race individuals can emerge as a simple result of how our brains learn new groups,” Associate Professor Halberstadt says…

“So when people encounter biracial individuals, who exhibit features of both majority and minority groups, their minority features are more influential. In other words, Barack Obama is “black” because, due to most people’s learning history, his dark skin is especially strongly associated with that category,” he says…

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Counseling Today Online: Under the radar

Counseling Today Online
American Counseling Association
2010-11-19

Lynne Shallcross

Five ACA members discuss their efforts to reach out to and connect with client populations at risk of being overlooked and underserved

No ethical counselor enters the profession and anticipates skipping over or ignoring a group in need of help. But in reality, some client populations aren’t easily reached or don’t readily avail themselves of counseling services. And others are simply overlooked, for one reason or another.

To shed light on a few of these underserved groups, Counseling Today asked five American Counseling Association members to share their experiences of actively reaching out to, connecting with and advocating for client populations that too often fly under the radar.

Multiracial clients

At times, Derrick Paladino still gets choked up talking about the prayer he would say nightly while in elementary school. It was a prayer offered by a little boy who desperately wanted to fit in. “I wish I woke up White,” he would pray before going to sleep.

At that point, Paladino, whose mother was born in Puerto Rico and whose father was second-generation Italian American, was the only non-White student at his school in a small Connecticut town. Now an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Graduate Studies in Counseling at Rollins College, Paladino says he felt his “differentness” every day at school. The discriminatory remarks he heard from other kids didn’t help…

…Even when he entered college at the University of Florida, Paladino didn’t feel like he fit in anywhere. He received invitations to join Latino student groups but felt like a fraud because he didn’t speak Spanish fluently. “I wasn’t whole of anything,” he says.

But a few years later, sitting in a multicultural counseling class in his master’s program at Florida, he read about a biracial identity model developed by [Walker S.] Carlos Poston. It became Paladino’s “aha” moment. “It was me on paper,” says Paladino, who also runs a private practice in Winter Park, Fla. “It was making sense of how I pushed away from my mom, because being brown was bad where I lived, and how I figured out how to navigate through life and my environments. It was a moment of change when I figured out, ‘I need to focus on who I am and how this identity affects me, and I need to do more with it.’ I could then also celebrate my multiracial identity and see the strengths that come with it.”…

Read the entire article here.

Through Mixed Eyes: The Biracial Experience and The Current State of Race in America

Williams College
2009-05-22
163 pages

Riki McDermott

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirement for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors In Sociology

President Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009. For many, this election served as a turning point in American history. His inauguration represented hope and change, and drew attention to the ways in which race relations have evolved with time. That being said, his election fails to tell the complete story. His presence distracts us from the racial injustices and inequalities that continue to plague American society. However, the case of biracial Americans draws our attention back to the controlling racial forces that proceed to haunt social institutions, interactions, and identities. Biracial Americans figuratively and literally serve as bridges between different races, thus signaling the importance of their interpretations of modern race relations. Through their eyes, we are able to better understand and assess the current state of race in America.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Dedications and Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Initial Identity Formation of Biracials
• Chapter 2: The Renegotiation ofBiracial and Ethnic Identity
• Chapter 3: The Transformation of Biracial and Multiracial Passing
• Chapter 4: Interpreting the Realities of Racial Misidentifications
• Bibliography

We are currently living in the era of multiracialism. Whether we are aware of it or not, American culture is becoming saturated by multiracialism. The United States 2000 Census revealed that out of 281,421,906 individuals, 6,754,126 of them self-identified as multiracial. The sheer number of individuals of mixed race currently existing within the United States can therefore serve as an initial illustration of how multiracialism is growing in American culture. With a growing number of mixed race individuals, the likelihood of coming into contact with multiracials increases, thus intensifying the presence of multiracialism in American life. However, the media furthermore contributes to the spread of multiracialism today. As Americans we’ve come to depend on the media to keep us connected to the world outside of our own realm of experiences, resulting in its highly influential nature. Thus, whatever the media chooses to focus on, or however the media decides to spin a story, it generally dictates what the general American thinks about. As a result, when the media decides to focus its attention on two highly respected and distinguished men in American culture, who just happen to be multiracial, America listens…

…Biracial and multiracial individuals occupy an interesting space within American society; a space in which many of these individuals are forced to think about race with great frequency, as a result of our society not accounting for and recognizing many of the specific racial make-ups of multiracial individuals. This is problematic for mixed race individuals who desire for their specific racial make-up to be socially acknowledged, but who find it difficult to assert themselves within a social context dominated by distinct monoracial categories. I have found that as a result of having to deal with this dilemma, individuals of mixed races dedicate a lot of time to thinking about the social realities and consequences of race. Furthermore, I think individuals of mixed races serve as a metaphorical turning point between the past and the future. The past of this country was monoracial individuals, despite the fact that biracial and multiracial individuals existed, who were socially unacknowledged as such. And the future of this country is multiracial individuals, many of whom will be unaware of their exact racial make-up, due to a long legacy of racial mixing. Thus, multiracial individuals are now living within a society that continues to be dominated by a monoracial mentality, even though we claim not to be.  I therefore view these individuals as being able to sympathize with the monoracial tendencies of the past and present, as well as the multiracial tendencies that have begun to surface and will continue to emerge in the future. For these reasons, I see biracial and multiracial individuals as a group whose insights about the present and future state of racial America are especially crucial for a sociological analysis…

Read the entire thesis here.

APA recognizes record number of student research projects

gradPSYCH Magazine
Volume 8, Number 3 (September 2010)
Page 7

J. Clark
 
The APA Science Student Council doubled its research prizes this year, awarding six $1,000 Early Graduate Student Research Awards to psychology doctoral students for their outstanding research.

“By recognizing the work of these students, we get to encourage them to pursue careers in research and continue producing knowledge that benefits society,” says Gabriel Lázaro-Muñoz, the Science Student Council chair.

The council received a record 159 applicants from students conducting innovative psychology research. This year’s winners worked on a variety of research projects, but all had one thing in common: scientific rigor that even a senior researcher could be proud of, says Lázaro-Muñoz. The award recipients are:…

…Jacqueline Chen, a social psychology student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who investigates the ways monoracial people perceive multiracial people. In one study, she asked monoracial participants to categorize people as black, white or multiracial as quickly as possible. She found that they correctly identified multiracial people at rates significantly above chance…

Read the entire article here.