Scholars Say Chronicler of Black Life Passed for White

Posted in Articles, Biography, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2010-12-30 17:16Z by Steven

Scholars Say Chronicler of Black Life Passed for White

New York Times
2010-12-26

Felicia R. Lee

Renown came to Jean Toomer with his 1923 book “Cane,” which mingled fiction, drama and poetry in a formally audacious effort to portray the complexity of black lives. But the racially mixed Toomer’s confounding efforts to defy being stuck in conventional racial categories and his disaffiliation with black culture made him perhaps the most enigmatic writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Now Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard scholar, and Rudolph P. Byrd, a professor at Emory University, say their research for a new edition of “Cane” documents that Toomer was “a Negro who decided to pass for white.”…

…Toomer’s racial complexity has long been intriguing to critics and scholars, but Mr. Gates and Mr. Byrd’s assertion about his identity is certain to spark debate. Richard Eldridge, a Toomer biographer, said recently that he had not read the new edition — and will stand corrected if its case is persuasive — but that Toomer never “passed” in the classic sense of pretending to be white. Rather, he said, Toomer (whose appearance was racially indeterminate) sought to transcend standard definitions of race.

“I think he never claimed that he was a white man,” Mr. Eldridge said. “He always claimed that he was a representative of a new, emergent race that was a combination of various races. He averred this virtually throughout his life.” Mr. Eldridge and Cynthia Earl Kerman are the authors of “The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness” published in 1987 by Louisiana State University Press

…Yet this new edition of “Cane” documents that over the course of his life Toomer variously denied ever living as a black person; called himself racially mixed; and said he was a new kind of American, transcending old racial terms. Toomer did not want to be featured as a Negro in the marketing of “Cane” and later did not want his work included in black anthologies…

Read the entire article here.

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Cane

Posted in Biography, Books, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Novels, Passing on 2010-12-30 16:43Z by Steven

Cane

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
January 2011 (Originally published in 1923)
560 pages
5 × 8 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-93168-6

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Edited by:

Rudolph P. Byrd (1953-2011), Goodrich C. White Professor of American Studies and African American Studies
Emory University

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
Harvard University

A masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance and a canonical work in both the American and the African American literary traditions, Cane is now available in a revised and expanded Norton Critical Edition.

Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane remains an innovative literary work—part drama, party poetry, part fiction. This revised Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was edited by the late Darwin T. Turner, a pioneering scholar in the field of African American studies. The Second Edition begins with the editors’ introduction, a major work of scholarship that places Toomer within the context of American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. The introduction provides groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer and examines his complex, contradictory racial position as well as his own pioneering views on race. Illustrative materials include government documents containing contradictory information on Toomer’s race, several photographs of Toomer, and a map of Sparta, Georgia—the inspiration for the first and third parts of Cane. The edition reprints the 1923 foreword to Cane by Toomer’s friend Waldo Frank, which helped introduce Toomer to a small but influential readership. Revised and expanded explanatory annotations are also included.

“Backgrounds and Sources” collects a wealth of autobiographical writing that illuminates important phases in Jean Toomer’s intellectual life, including a central chapter from The Wayward and the Seeking and Toomer’s essay on teaching the philosophy of Russian psychologist and mystic Georges I. Gurdjieff, “Why I Entered the Gurdjieff Work.” The volume also reprints thirty of Toomer’s letters from 1919–30, the height of his literary career, to correspondents including Waldo Frank, Sherwood Anderson, Claude McKay, Horace Liveright, Georgia O’Keeffe, and James Weldon Johnson.

An unusually rich “Criticism” section demonstrates deep and abiding interest in Cane. Five contemporary reviews—including those by Robert Littell and W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke—suggest its initial reception. From the wealth of scholarly commentary on Cane, the editors have chosen twenty-one major interpretations spanning eight decades including those by Langston Hughes, Robert Bone, Darwin T. Turner, Charles T. Davis, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Barbara Foley, Mark Whalan, and Nellie Y. McKay.

A Chronology, new to the Second Edition, and an updated Selected Bibliography are also included.

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The Cajuns of Southern Alabama: Morphology and Serology

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Media Archive, Tri-Racial Isolates, United States on 2010-12-30 03:04Z by Steven

The Cajuns of Southern Alabama: Morphology and Serology

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 47, Issue 1 (July 1977)
pages 1-6
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330470103

William S. Pollitzer
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Kadambari K. Namboodiri
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

William H. Coleman
University of Alabama, Huntsville

Wayne H. Finley
University of Alabama, Birmingham

Webster C. Leyshon
Laboratory of Developmental Biology and Anomalies
National Institute of Dental Research, Bethesda, Maryland

Gary C. Jennings
University of Florida, Gainesville

William H. Brown
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

A survey was conducted of 324 members of the Cajun isolate of Southern Alabama. Tradition and appearance suggest that this population of about 3,000 are not entirely White, Black, or Indian but constitute a triracial community somewhat reproductively isolated and inbred. The earliest American settlement in the area, along the banks of the Mobile and Tombigbee Rivers, lay between Spaniards to the South and Indian tribes on the other sides: Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee.

Physical measurements are reported for 71 adults, plus color of skin, eyes, and hair. X-rays were taken of wrist and ankle bones of some 253 children. Red blood samples were typed on adults and children, and haptoglobin, Gm, and Gc types were determined from serum. History and physical examinations were also made.

Physical measurements and observations suggest predominantly White ancestry, and D2 analysis confirms this, with least similarity to Indians. Analysis of serological traits implies almost 70% White, almost 30% Black, and very little Indians genes. Few defects of clear genetic etiology were discovered. Growth patterns judged from X-rays appeared normal. All genetic loci testable were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium except Gc. While history and some common surnames suggest endogamy in the past, the medical and serological findings, plus some additional surnames, indicate that the isolate has already been largely diluted or dissolved.

Read or purchase the article here.

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Cultural Activities, Identities, and Mental Health Among Urban American Indians with Mixed Racial/Ethnic Ancestries

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Social Work, United States on 2010-12-30 02:27Z by Steven

Cultural Activities, Identities, and Mental Health Among Urban American Indians with Mixed Racial/Ethnic Ancestries

Race and Social Problems
Volume 2, Number 2 (2010)
pages 101-114
DOI: 10.1007/s12552-010-9028-9

Yoshitaka Iwasaki, Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences and Social Work
Temple University

Namorah Gayle Byrd, Assistant Professor, Developmental English
Gloucester County College, New Jersey

Focus groups were conducted to appreciate the voices of Urban American Indians (UAI) who have mixed ancestries residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Participants (15 women and 10 men, 19–83 years of age) with a variety of Native ancestries coming from different nations (i.e., blackfeet, blackminkwa, Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Lakota, Powhatan, Seminole, and Shawnee) reported to also have a Non-Native racial/ethnic ancestry such as African/black, Hispanic, and/or Caucasian/white. Specifically, this study provided evidence about (a) the complexity and challenge of being “mixed” UAI (e.g., “living a culture” as opposed to blood quantum in determining a personal identity) (b) the linkage of cultural identities to mental health (c) contributions of cultural activities to identities and mental health (e.g., therapeutic and healing functions of cultural activities), and (d) very limited urban Native-oriented mental health service (e.g., visions for Native American-centered mental health clinic in an urban setting). Building on those UAI’s voices, this paper provides a context for the need of a culturally respectful transformation of urban mental health system by highlighting the clinical significance of cultural identity and mental health promotion for UAI.

Read or purchase the article here.

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Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Canada, Gay & Lesbian, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Poetry, United States, Women on 2010-12-29 22:00Z by Steven

Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out

Inanna Publications
November 2010
250 pages
ISBN-10: 1926708148
ISBN-13: 978-1-926708-14-0

Edited by

Adebe De Rango-Adem (Adebe D. A.)

Andrea Thompson

This anthology of poetry, spoken word, fiction, creative non-fiction, spoken word texts, as well as black and white artwork and photography, explores the question of how mixed-race women in North America identify in the twenty-first century. Contributions engage, document, and/or explore the experiences of being mixed-race, by placing interraciality as the center, rather than periphery, of analysis. The anthology also serves as a place to learn about the social experiences, attitudes, and feelings of others, and what racial identity has come to mean today.

Adebe De Rango-Adem recently completed a research writing fellowship at the Applied Research Center in New York, where she wrote for ColorLines, America’s primary magazine on race politics. She has served as Assistant Editor for the literary journal Existere, and is a founding member of s.t.e.p.u.p.—a poetry collective dedicated to helping young writers develop their spoken word skills. Her poetry has been featured in journals such as Canadian Woman Studies, The Claremont Review, Canadian Literature, and cv2. She won the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005 to become Toronto’s first Junior Poet Laureate, and is the author of a chapbook entitled Sea Change (2007). Her debut poetry collection, Ex Nihilo, will be published in early 2010.

Andrea Thompson is a performance poet who has been featured on film, radio, and television, with her work published in magazines and anthologies across Canada. Her debut collection, Eating the Seed (2000), has been featured on reading lists at the University of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art and Design, and her spoken word CD, One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award in 2005. A pioneer of slam poetry in Canada, Thompson has also hosted Heart of a Poet on Bravo tv, CiTr Radio’s spoken word show, Hearsay. In 2008, she toured her Spoken Word/Play Mating Rituals of the Urban Cougar across the country, and in 2009 was the Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Table of Contents (Thanks to Nicole Asong Nfonoyim)

  • Acknowledgements
  • Preface – Carol Camper
  • Introduction – Adebe DeRango-Adem and Andrea Thompson1
  • RULES/ROLES
    • Enigma – Andrea Thompson
    • Blond- Natasha Trethewey
    • Mixed- Sandra Kasturi
    • pick one – Chistine Sy and Aja
    • My Sista, Mi Hermana – Phoenix Rising
    • little half-black-breed – Tasha Beeds
    • “White Mask” – Jordan Clarke
    • “Nothing is just black or white” – Jordan Clarke
    • Roll Call – Kirya Traber
    • What Am I? – Marijane Castillo
    • Casting Call: Looking for White Girls and Latinas – D.Cole Ossandon
    • Conversations of Confrontation – Natasha Morris
    • “why i don’t say i’m white”- Alexis Kienlen
    • “Confession #8” – Mica Lee Anders
    • “Other Female” – Mica Lee Anders
    • “MMA and MLA” – Mica Lee Anders
    • The Pieces/Peace(is) in Me – monica rosas
    • Generation Gap (Hawaiian Style) – ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui
    • The Incident that Never Happened – Ann Phillips
    • In the Dark – Anajli Enjeti-Sydow
    • ananse vs. anasi (2007) – Rea McNamara
    • Contamination-  Amber Jamilla Musser
    • A Mixed Journey From the Outside In – Liberty Hultberg
    • What Are You? – Kali Fajardo-Anstine
    • One Being Brown – Tru Leverette
    • One for Everyday of the Week – Michelle Lopez Mulllins
    • Savage Stasis – Gena Chang-Campbell
    • The Half-Breed’s Guide to Answering the Question – M. C. Shumaker
    • My Definition – Kay’la Fraser
    • Pop Quiz – Erin Kobayashi
  • ROOTS/ROUTES
    • Melanomial – Sonnet L’Abbe
    • half-breed – Jonina Kirton
    • “Inca/Jew” – Margo Rivera-Weiss
    • Open Letter – Adebe DeRango Adem
    • Prism Woman – Adebe DeRango-Adem
    • Southern Gothic – Natasha Trethewey
    • The Drinking Gourd- Miranda Martini
    • Reflection – Jonina Kirton
    • “Untitled” White Sequence – Cassie Mulheron
    • “Untitled” Black Sequence – Cassie Mulheron
    • Mapping Identities – Gail Prasad
    • Whose Child Are You? – Amy Pimentel
    • From the Tree – Lisa Marie Rollins
    • My sister’s hair – ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui
    • I, too, hear the dreams – Peta Gaye-Nash
    • Learning to Love Me – Michelle Jean-Paul
    • A Conversation among Friends – Nicole Salter
    • The Combination of the Two – Rachel Afi Quinn
    • “Loving Series: Elena Rubin” – Laura Kina
    • On the Train – Naomi Angel
    • Coloured – Sheila Addiscott
    • Of Two Worlds – Christina Brobby
    • What is my Culture? – Karen Hill
    • mo’oku’auhau (Genealogy) – ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui
    • Siouxjewgermanscotblack [cultural software instructions] – Robin M. Chandler
    • “Loving Series: Shoshanna Weinberger” – Laura Kina
    • A Hairy Situation – Saedhlinn B. Stweart-Laing
    • “Pot Vida” – Margo Rivera-Weiss
    • Songs Feet Can Get – Rage Hezekiah
    • Opposite of Fence – Lisa Marie Rollins
    • Applique – Lisa Marie Rollins
    • Blanqueamiento – Adebe DeRango-Adem
    • The Land – Farideh de Bossett
    • Native Speaker: Daring to Name Ourselves – Nicole Asong Nfonoyim
  • REVELATIONS
    • Colour Lesson I – Adebe DeRango-Adem
    • Concealed Things – Adebe DeRango-Adem
    • Serendipity – Priscila Uppal
    • “Ultramarine” – Margo Rivera-Weiss
    • before i was this – Katherena Vermette
    • Firebelly – Andrea Thompson
    • From Chopsticks to Meatloaf and Back Again – Jasmine Moy
    • My Power – Sonnet L’Abbe
    • Whitewashed – Kathryn McMillan
    • Actually, I’m Black – Marcelite Failla
    • “Self” – Lisa Walker
    • Grey (A Bi-racial Poem) – Sonya Littlejohn
    • Nubia’s Dream – Mica Valdez
    • both sides – Jonina Kirton
    • Mulatto Nation – Marika Schwandt
    • Colour Lesson II – Adebe DeRango-Adem
    • racially queer femme – Kimberly Dree Hudson
    • mypeople – Ruha Benjamin
    • My Life in Pieces – Jennifer Adese
    • Burden of Proof: From Colon-Eyes to Kaleidoscope – Angela Dosalmas
    • Recipe for mixing – Tomie Hahn
    • Metamorphosis – Gena Chang-Campbell
    • The Land Knows – Shandra Spears Bombay
    • Land in Place: Mapping the Grandmother – Joanne Arnott
    • “I am the leaf, you are the leaf” – Lisa Walker
    • Language and the Ethics of Mixed Race – Debra Thompson
    • Hybrid Identity and Writing of Presence – Jackie Wang
  • Contributors Notes
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Les Enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l’Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté / Children of The Colonies: The Métis of the French Empire: Citizens or Subjects?

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Books, Europe, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2010-12-29 19:12Z by Steven

Les Enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l’Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté / Children of The Colonies: The Métis of the French Empire: Citizens or Subjects?

Éditions La Découverte
2007
336 pages
Dimensions: 155 * 240 mm
ISBN: 9782707139825

Emmanuelle Saada, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies
Columbia University

The colonial encounter in the French Empire produced tens of thousands of ‘métis’ children. Most were the product of short-term relationships between European men and native women. Many were abandoned by their fathers, and condemned to illegitimacy. Colonial elites considered them a threat because they blurred the sharp distinction between citizens and subjects on which the colonial order rested. Colonial authorities met this challenge with an array of social and legal efforts to resolve this ambiguity—to «reclassify» the « métis problem » out of existence. Education and culture played a key role in this process, as métis children were placed in special orphanages devoted to « straightening out their heredity », turning them into French citizens of « soul and quality ». This book explores the forgotten history of these children of the colonies, and of their central place in larger strategies of imperial domination and the management of colonial sexuality. It pays special attention to Indochina, which served as a laboratory for the “métis question”, but it is also an account of a global Empire marked by the persistent challenge of maintaining boundaries between citizen and subject. In exploring this intersection between sexuality, race and citizenship in the colonial context, this book challenges and revises the ‘republican model’ of nationhood that has dominated histories of France since the 19th century.

Pendant la colonisation française, des dizaines de milliers d’enfants sont nés d’« Européens » et d’« indigènes ». Souvent illégitimes, non reconnus puis abandonnés par leur père, ces métis furent perçus comme un danger parce que leur existence brouillait la frontière entre « citoyens » et « sujets » au fondement de l’ordre colonial. Leur situation a pourtant varié : invisibles en Algérie, ils ont été au centre des préoccupations en Indochine. La « question métisse » a également été posée à Madagascar, en Afrique et en Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Retraçant l’histoire oubliée de ces enfants de la colonie, cet ouvrage révèle une face cachée, mais fondamentale, de l’histoire de l’appartenance nationale en France : il montre comment les tentatives d’assimilation des métis ont culminé, à la fin des années 1920, avec des décrets reconnaissant la citoyenneté à ceux qui pouvaient prouver leur « race française ». Aux colonies, la nation se découvrait sous les traits d’une race.

Cette législation bouleversa le destin de milliers d’individus, passant soudainement de la sujétion à la citoyenneté : ainsi, en Indochine, en 1954, 4 500 enfants furent séparés de leur mère et « rapatriés » en tant que Français. Surtout, elle introduisait la race en droit français, comme critère d’appartenance à la nation. Cela oblige à revoir le « modèle républicain » de la citoyenneté, fondé sur la figure d’un individu abstrait, adhérant volontaire à un projet politique commun et à souligner les liens entre filiation, nationalité et race.

Table of Contents

  • Préface, par Gérard Noiriel
  • Introduction
  • I / Le métissage : une question sociale coloniale
  • 1. Une question impériale – Nouvel empire, nouvelle question – Hybrides et bâtards – Géographie de la question métisse – Un problème impérial – Les chiffres du métissage
  • 2. Menace pour l’ordre colonial – Légionnaires, filles de peu et parias – Déracinés et déclassés – Le spectacle du désordre – Dignité et prestige en situation coloniale
  • 3. « Reclasser » les métis – Produire des métis en leur portant secours ? – De la nécessité d’intervenir – Vers une prise en charge par l’État colonial – Notables vs. prolétaires de la colonisation – Dépister, signaler et secourir – Passer les frontières – Vers une demande de droit
  • II / La question métisse saisie par le droit
  • 4. Nationalité et citoyenneté en situation coloniale – Les enjeux d’une condition juridique – Les juristes et l’indigène – La citoyenneté française en pratique – Les métis entre sujétion et citoyenneté
  • 5. La controverse des « reconnaissances frauduleuses » – Les « reconnaissances frauduleuses », « fraudes » à la citoyenneté – Destin d’une controverse juridique – La production d’un droit impérial – Paternité, citoyenneté et ordre politique
  • 6. La recherche de paternité aux colonies – La recherche de paternité en métropole : un texte de compromis – Un débat colonial – Paternité et citoyenneté : nature et volonté – Paternité et race
  • 7. Citoyens en vertu de la race – Le droit hors de lui – La « question métisse » saisie par le droit – Le retournement de la jurisprudence – La fabrique du droit colonial – Vérité sociologique/vérité biologique, « droit reflet »/« droit instituant » – Mise en œuvre d’un droit racial
  • III / La force du droit
  • 8. Le passage du droit : les effets de la citoyenneté sur la catégorie de « métis » – La racialisation des pratiques administratives – Renforcement de la prise en charge des métis – Les métis, des cadres de la colonisation – Une question postcoloniale
  • 9. Des identités saisies par le droit – Des Français des colonies – Vers un multiculturalisme impérial ? – Catégorie juridique et sentiment d’identité
  • 10. Le statut des métis, miroir de la nationalité et de la citoyenneté françaises ? – La race dans la loi – Métis coloniaux et métis juifs – La question métisse et les « modèles républicains » de la nationalité et de la citoyenneté
  • Conclusion – Sources – Bibliographie.
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Dangerous Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated South

Posted in Books, History, Law, Media Archive, Monographs, United States on 2010-12-29 18:24Z by Steven

Dangerous Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated South

The University of Arkansas Press
2003
160 pages
6″x9″
Paper: 1-55728–833-X (978-1-55728-833-2)
Cloth: 1-55728-755-4 (978-1-55728-755-7)

Charles F. Robinson II, Associate Professor of History, Vice Provost for Diversity, and Director of African American Studies program
University of Arkansas

In the tumultuous decades after the Civil War, as the southern white elite reclaimed power, “racial mixing” was the central concern of segregationists who strove to maintain “racial purity.” Segregation—and race itself—was based on the idea that interracial sex posed a biological threat to the white race. In this groundbreaking study, Charles Robinson examines how white southerners enforced anti-miscegenation laws. His findings challenge conventional wisdom, documenting a pattern of selective prosecution under which interracial domestic relationships were punished even more harshly than transient sexual encounters. Robinson shows that the real crime was to suggest that black and white individuals might be equals, a notion which undermined the legitimacy of the economic, political, and social structure of white male supremacy.

Robinson examines legal cases from across the South, considering both criminal prosecutions brought by states and civil disputes over marital and family assets. He also looks at U.S. Supreme Court decisions, debates in state legislatures, comments in the U.S. Congressional Record, and newspaper editorials. He not only shows the hardening of racial categories but assesses the attitudes of African Americans about anti-miscegenation laws and intermarriage.

Dangerous Liaisons vividly documents the regulation of intimacy and its fundamental role in the construction of race.

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The other thing is, as Reggie [G. Reginald Daniel] said, Reggie knows that we are all multiracial.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2010-12-29 03:47Z by Steven

The other thing is, as Reggie [G. Reginald Daniel] said, Reggie knows that we are all multiracial.  He doesn’t need a genetic test to prove that.  I mean, we know that. Even though this can tell us new information—and I think it is an opportunity for conversation—it’s not enough because we already know it and it hasn’t been enough.  You know that slave owners knew those brown children where their children. Did it matter?  They knew those were multiracial children were related to them.  It didn’t make a difference… To me it is a political revolution that we need to see that we’re connected as human beings.  Genetics isn’t going to do it by itself.

Dorothy Roberts, “A Rx for the FDA: Ethical Dilemmas for Multiracial People in Race-Based Medicine” (panel at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, November 5-6, 2010).

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Recent Studies on Biracial Identity and Hypodescent to be Discussed on Mixed Chicks Chat (Pre-recorded)

Posted in Audio, Identity Development/Psychology, Interviews, Media Archive, Social Science on 2010-12-28 22:00Z by Steven

Recent Studies on Biracial Identity and Hypodescent to be Discussed on Mixed Chicks Chat (Pre-recorded)

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #186 – Discussion on Recent Studies on Biracial Identity and Hypodescent
When: Tuesday, 2010-12-28, 22:00Z (17:00 EDT, 16:00 CDT, 14:00 PDT)


In this pre-recorded episode recent studies by Harvard Ph.D. student, Arnold K. Ho (“Evidence for hypodescent and racial hierarchy in the categorization and perception of biracial individuals”) and University of Vermont Assistant Professor Nikki Khanna (“Passing as Black: Racial Identity Work among Biracial Americans”) will be discussed.

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

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“’Tain’t no tragedy unless you make it one”: Imitation of Life, Melodrama, and the Mulatta

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-12-28 21:37Z by Steven

“’Tain’t no tragedy unless you make it one”: Imitation of Life, Melodrama, and the Mulatta

Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory
Volume 66, Number 4, Winter 2010
pages 93-113
E-ISSN: 1558-9595, Print ISSN: 0004-1610

Molly Hiro, Assistant Professor of English
University of Portland, Portland, Oregon

“I just moved here. My name is Maureen Peal. What’s yours?”

“Pecola.”

“Pecola? Wasn’t that the name of the girl in Imitation of Life?”

“I don’t know. What is that?”

“The picture show, you know. Where this mulatto girl hates her mother ’cause she is black and ugly but then cries at the funeral. It was real sad. Everybody cries in it. Claudette Colbert too.”

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 1970

Sometimes, when I feel as though I cannot stand this agony, this torture, this scorn, I’m utterly glad that Peola did what she did. Sometimes when Fannie Hurst is engraved deeply in my mind, I say to myself while I am washing dishes or getting dinner, “I wonder how Peola and her white husband got along. I wonder if he ever found out.”

—from a fan letter to Fannie Hurst, 1934

The epigraphs with which I begin demonstrate the remarkable emotional staying power of Peola, the young mixed-race character in Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel Imitation of Life and the two film adaptations titled the same. Yet even a cursory glance shows that Peola appeals quite differently to one of these speakers than to the other. In The Bluest Eye, Maureen Peal remembers Imitation of Life for its power to make “everybody cr[y]” along with Peola, who herself expresses regret for “hat[ing] her mother” by “cr[ying] at the funeral” (67). Here, Peola’s fate—what makes the story “real sad”—communicates a clear moral lesson through a shared emotional experience, but in the second quotation, Peola is made to seem far less accessible, her fate far more open-ended. The anonymous…

Read or purchase the article here.

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