Mixed Race Studies

Dominica in Brooklyn

The New York Times
2011-01-13

Carol Vogel, Art Reporter

The Brooklyn Museum has acquired an 18th-century painting by Agostino Brunias, a little-known London-based Italian artist. Around 1764 the British government sent Brunias to the West Indies to document one of that empire’s newest colonies, Dominica. Depicting two richly dressed mulatto women on a walk accompanied by their mother and children—all members of the island’s colonial elite—the painting also shows eight African servants on a sugar plantation.

“We have a large West Indian community,” said Richard Aste, the museum’s curator of European art. “When I saw it, it just screamed Brooklyn. We were looking for something from the 18th century, and we didn’t have anything like this.”

Mr. Aste first saw the painting in Paris in September at the booth of the London gallery Robilant & Voena at the Biennale des Antiquaires. The dealers had bought it from Sotheby’s after the painting failed to sell at auction a year ago. It had belonged to Jayne Wrightsman, a collector and a longtime trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

While the Brooklyn Museum will not say what it paid for the painting, Sotheby’s was estimating it would bring $200,000 to $300,000. The museum has titled the canvas “Free Women of Color With Their Children and Servants in a Landscape,” and it will go on view on March 7.

Brooklyn Museum Acquires 18th Century Painting by Agostino Brunias Depicting Colonial Elite

artdaily.org: The First Art Newspaper on the Net
2011-01-18

Agostino Brunias (Italian, ca. 1730-1796), Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape, ca. 1764-1796, Oil on canvas, 2010.59, Gift of Mrs. Carll H. de Silver in memory of her husband, and gift of George S. Hellman, by exchange.

BROOKLYN, NY.—The Brooklyn Museum has acquired, by purchase from the London gallery Robilant + Voena, Agostino Brunias’s (1730-1796) painting Free Women of Color with Their Children and Servants in a Landscape, (circa 1764-96), a portrait of the eighteenth-century mixed-race colonial elite of the island of Dominica in the West Indies. Brunias, a London-based Italian painter, left England at the height of his career to chronicle Dominica, then one of Britain’s newest colonies in the Lesser Antilles. [The painting will go on view 2001-03-07.]

The painting depicts two richly dressed mixed race women, one of whom was possibly the wife of the artist’s patron. They are shown accompanied by their mother and their children, along with eight African servants, as they walk on the grounds of a sugar plantation, one of the agricultural estates that were Dominica’s chief source of wealth. Brunias documents colonial women of color as privileged and prosperous. The two wealthy sisters are distinguished from their mother and servants by their fitted European dresses…

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Shades of Brown: The Law of Skin Color

Duke Law Journal
Volume 49, Number 6 (April 2000)
pages 1487-1557

Trina Jones, Professor of Law
Duke University

Because antidiscrimination efforts have focused primarily on race, courts have largely ignored discrimination within racial classifications on the basis of skin color. In this Article, Professor Jones brings light to this area by examining the historical and contemporary significance of skin color in the United States. She argues that discrimination based on skin color, or colorism, is a present reality and predicts that this form of discrimination will assume increasing significance in the future as current understandings of race and racial classifications disintegrate. She maintains that the legal system must develop a firm understanding of colorism in order for the quest for equality of opportunity to succeed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION
• I. DISTINGUISHING RACE AND SKIN COLOR
  • II. COLOR DISTINCTIONS THROUGH THE LENS OF TIME
  • A. Before the Civil War: 1607-1861
  • B. After the Civil War: 1865-2000
  • C. The Social Psychology of Contemporary Black-White Colorism
• III. COLOR IN CONTEMPORARY LAW
  • A. Statutory Support for Color Claims
  • B. Substantive Content of Color Claims
  • C. Race, Color, Mixed Racial Identity and Employment Discrimination Law
  • D. Colorism and the Quest for Equality of Opportunity
• CONCLUSION
• FOOTNOTES

INTRODUCTION

On the Saturday evening following my mother’s recent marriage, old friends and new gathered at a local restaurant to celebrate the occasion. While standing in the buffet line, I turned to introduce my new step-niece, Aaliyah (age 4), to the son of a family friend, LaShaun (age 5). Immediately following the introduction, LaShaun, who is clearly outgoing and charismatic, looked up at me with the innocent honesty of a child and said, “I know another Aaliyah at my school, but she’s brown.”

The first thing LaShaun, whose skin is a rich Michael Jordan chocolate, noticed about Aaliyah was her light golden brown skin. LaShaun did not create or invent these differences. Without deliberate or conscious design, his statement merely reflects the fact that he operates in a social context where people learn early on that color is significant. Although some people may claim that color differences [*pg 1489] within racial groups are without meaning and that people do not notice or care about fine differences in skin pigmentation, the observations of a five-year-old child belie these statements. And so does history.

This Article examines the prejudicial treatment of individuals falling within the same racial group on the basis of skin color in the context of antidiscrimination law. In a 1982 essay, Alice Walker called this prejudicial treatment “colorism.” Although this terminology appears to be relatively new, colorism is not a recent invention. In the United States, this form of discrimination dates back at least as far as the colonial era. Yet, notwithstanding its long existence, colorism is often overshadowed by, or subsumed within, racism. As a result, courts are either unaware of the practice or tend to minimize its importance.  This state of affairs is unfortunate because, as I demonstrate in this Article, color differences are still frequently used as a basis for discrimination independently of racial categorization.

The analysis proceeds in three parts. Part I distinguishes colorism from racism. Because the ultimate result of race-mixing was the creation of tone or hue variations within racial groups, Part II explores the history of miscegenation in this country in order to demonstrate how society has used skin color to demarcate lines between racial groups and to determine the relative position and treatment of individuals within racial categories. This history illuminates contemporary discrimination on the basis of color. Part III examines the judicial response to contemporary claims based on color and explains why courts can and should permit color claims in the context of antidiscrimination law. Part III also investigates the suggestion that racial classification may become increasingly difficult in the future as the acceptability of the one-drop rule declines and as race-mixing increases. Assuming that there is merit to this suggestion, Part III probes whether legal recognition of claims based upon skin color will provide suitable redress for discrimination against persons who are neither visibly White nor visibly Black.

My hope is that this Article will assist in the development of a more nuanced understanding of the intricate ways in which people discriminate in this country. More specifically, by engaging in this investigation, I seek to prevent the law from becoming a source of injustice by showing how progress towards equality of opportunity may be overstated if colorism is ignored. Briefly, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, employers have hired increasing numbers of Blacks into positions not previously available to them. The increasing number of Blacks in these positions suggests racial progress. Studies show, however, that Blacks in positions of prominence and authority tend to be lighter-skinned. Thus, some employers may be hiring only a subset of the Black population, a subset selected, in part, based on skin color. Because some Blacks are being denied access to employment opportunities due to colorism, the appearance of progress is more limited than we might assume. Legal recognition of color claims is one way to begin redressing this situation.

It is important to note that the analysis contained herein focuses on color dynamics among Black Americans. Although some scholars have criticized the tendency to analyze racial issues in terms of a Black/White dichotomy, I have chosen to concentrate on the Black community in order to limit the magnitude of this project without sacrificing its utility. In addition, this focus allows me to probe more directly the peculiar symbolism of black and white as colors. This symbolism suggests that although colorism is an important element of racism, it is equally its own distinct phenomenon. Finally, although I do not wish to endorse the reduction of race relations to a Black/White paradigm, I have chosen to focus on the dynamics of the racial group with which I am most familiar. I recognize that similar issues concerning skin color exist within Native American, Asian-American, and Latino communities, and believe that issues peculiar to those communities merit detailed study. Although such analysis is beyond the scope of this initial project, I hope this Article will nonetheless be of assistance to scholars in future investigations involving questions specific to other racial groups…

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The Hapa Project: How multiracial identity crosses oceans

UH Today
University of Hawai`i
Spring 2007

Alana Folen and Tina Ng

Hawai`i—often overlooked as nothing more than a scenic paradise—recently started to live up to its “melting pot” reputation when a U.S. senator representing Illinois formally announced his presidential candidacy. With personal ties to Hawai`i, Sen. Barack Obama inadvertently put Hawai`i in the spotlight.   

It was his physical appearance that separated Obama from his competitors. Obama is hapa. His father was black and from Kenya; his mother was white and from Kansas. His unique look brought attention to the hapa population in Hawai`i.

Although the growing population of hapa people is beginning to get recognized, their experiences in Hawai`i and the continental United States vary from each individual. The cultural implications of having multiple identities have surfaced and more hapa people have needed to defend who and what they are…

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Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, & American Law (Anderson review)

The Catholic Historical Review
Volume 97, Number 1 (January 2011)
pages 179-180
E-ISSN: 1534-0708, Print ISSN: 0008-8080

R. Bentley Anderson, S. J. Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies
Fordham University

In Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, & American Law, Fay Botham, adjunct professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa, focuses on a rarely examined issue in American race matters: the intersection of religion, law, and interracial marriage. To what extent did Protestant or Catholic understanding of marriage influence secular law regarding this institution? In particular, how did the Catholic understanding of marriage as a sacrament and the Protestant notion that marriage was sacred but a state matter influence judicial decision making? Furthermore, what are the proper roles of the church and state in establishing marriage laws in this country?

Divided into six chapters, Almighty God begins with an examination of the 1948 California-based case Perez v. Lippold, which outlawed religious discrimination in marriage. The deciding vote in the state of California’s Supreme Court decision was cast by a Christian Science jurist who agreed with the…

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Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race

The New York TImes
2008-03-31

Mireya Navarro

Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.

“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.

“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.

“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.

“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”

Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.

“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”…

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Biracial Youth: The Role of the School Counselor in Racial Identity Development

Professional School Counseling
2001-10-01

Teri Olisky

Amy E. Benedetto

Since the 1967 Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia, which prohibits anti-miscegenation laws, the number of biracial births has more than tripled (Sandor & Larson, 1994). Schwartz (1998a) reported that through 1996 more than 100,000 babies were born annually to parents of interracial marriages. Literature also suggests that a disproportionate number of biracial youth require special attention in school due to difficult behaviors (Herring, 1995; McRoy & Freeman, 1986). These behaviors are affecting school performance and, as such, counselors will likely find themselves assisting a student of biracial descent. Because school counselors  are in a unique position to assist biracial youth, it is important that these professionals are multiculturally sensitive and knowledgeable about working with these students.

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