Mixed Race Studies

The Mestizos of South Carolina

The American Journal of Sociology
Volume 51, Number 1 (July 1945)
pages 34-41

Brewton Berry

There are several communities of white-Indian-Negro hybrids in South Carolina, the members of which do not fit into the biracial caste system upon which the state’s whole social structure is built. Similar groups are found in other states. Some of these are amalgamating with the Negroes, while others have won an intermediate status as “Inidans.” Those in South Carolina have resisted both of these accommodations and have persistently fought for white status. Their present position in etiquette and is local institutions, such as churches and schools, is a particular one, being the status of neither Negroes nor whites.

There are in South Carolina today fully five thousand people—perhaps even ten thousand—who do not fit into the biracial caste system upon which the state’s whole social structure is built. These out-castes insist that they are white, and they claim the privileges and courtesies of white people. Some of them, if pressed, will not deny a strain of Indian, though they take no pride in the fact; and most of them are offended even at that suggestion. The dominant whites, on the other hand, are convinced that there is a trace of Negro blood in them and, on the theory that “one drop of Negro blood makes one a Negro,” are reluctant to accept them and regard their claim to white status with various and mixed emotions, ranging from amusement to horror.

This failure of a sizable group of people to fit into the social system creates many problems. It is, in fact, a threat to the whole structure, undermining the popular faith that the system functions adequately and will continue to function forever. “We simply cannot admit them to the white schools,” confessed one trustee, “because, if we did, pretty soon the Negroes would want to come in, and then where would we be?” The same question arises with respect to churches, hospitals, political parties, parks, playgrounds, moving pictures, hotels, restaurants, clubs, and cemeteries. These institutions, in all of which rigid racial segregation is the rule, are operated upon the assumption that every person is either white or black and that there are absolute criteria to determine in which group one belongs. It is so with regard to the etiquette of race relations. “I wish you would tell me what these Brass Ankles are,” said a bank teller, “so I would know whether to ‘mister’ them or not.” Most disturbing of all is the threat to the assumed purity of the white race; for if these doubtful ones are being absorbed without dire consequences, as seems to be the case, what is to prevent an inundation of Negro blood?

These outcastes, whom I call “mestizos,” are designated by a wide variety of names, none of them flattering. In Richland County they are known as “Red Bones.” In one section of Orangeburg County they are “Red Legs”; in another, “Brass Ankles.” The degrading name “Brass Ankle” is also commonly used in Dorchester, Colleton, Berkeley, and Charleston counties. In Sumter they arc called “Turks”; in Bamberg, “Buckheads”; while in Marlboro, Dillon, Marion, and Horry they are “Croatans,” a name that is sometimes shortened to the even more unflattering “Cro.” In Chesterfield they are known as “Marlboro Blues,”a slur on the adjoining county, whence they came. In some localities…

Read or purchase the article here.

Meridians: Mapping Metaphors of Mixed Race Indentity

University of Florida
August 2004
238 pages

Shane Willow Trudell

A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in partial fulfullment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

Although mixed race identity traditionally has been equated with conflict, the conflict is not necessarily lived but may be more accurately viewed as a conflict of language, a conflict of metaphors. Traditionally, metaphors of mixed race identity have reflected notions of opposition and hierarchy; at the same time, mixed race individuals have searched for Utopian spaces in which conflict and tragedy are alleviated and race is imagined as a unifying, rather than divisive, idea. This study looks at the treatment of mixed race women in twentieth century novels, beginning with Jean Toomer’s Cane (1925) and then jumping to the end of the century—to Fran Ross’s Oreo (1975), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), and Jenoyne Adams’s Resurrecting Mingus (2001)—to study texts written during and after the Black Power Movement. It begins with an analysis of metaphors of blackness and whiteness that developed in the nineteenth century and then questions the ways these metaphors have traditionally complicated possibilities for mixed race identity, resulting in replications of the tragic mulatto and adherence to the one-drop rule. Subsequently, the analysis moves to contemporary metaphors of mixed race identity to explore their limits and possibilities and the ways in which these metaphors are implicated by questions of gender. The texts under analysis respond to the same set of problems, including the longing for Utopian spaces of wholeness and harmony within mixed race identities and non-traditional families. Additionally, these texts contain a latent struggle over questions of history, family, and racial identity. They long to articulate Utopian visions while they are confined within the historical moments and literary formulas in which they were written, and they struggle to negotiate postmodern questions of identity, self, wholeness, and harmony—both individual and communal—while bound by literary and social conventions that resist the Utopian visions they hope to articulate. Each text attempts to envision Utopian social, political, familial and individual spaces where the “play” of identity—the possibility of negotiation and individualization—may be manifested, Utopian visions of harmony may be realized, and new metaphors may be articulated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PREFACE
• ABSTRACT
• CHAPTER
• 1. CARTOGRAPHIES OF RACIAL IDENTITY
  • Intimate Cartography
  • Mapping Past Paths and New Directions
  • Mapping the Contemporary Landscape
  • Mapping Metaphors
  • Mixed Metaphors
  • Playing With the Map
  • Mapping the Path Ahead
• 2. THE IVORY TOWER AND THE KETTLE BLACK: NINETEENTH CENTURY METAPHORS OF RACE
  • Race Crystallized
  • Climbing the Ivory Tower
  • Climbing into the Kettle Black
  • Continued Crystallization
• 3. LINES OF CONTACT AND COHERENCE: MERIDIANS IN THE WORK OF JEAN TOOMER
  • Points of Departure
  • Dividing Lines
  • Transcending the Divide
  • Points of Contact
• 4. TRAVELING THROUGH FRAN ROSS’S OREO, NO ORDINARY COOKIE
  • The Frontier: Where Two Come Together
  • TraveHng Beyond the Boundaries
  • “She Got Womb”
  • Travelers, Questers, and Cookies
  • Traveling in/as Twos
• 5. RE-VISIONS OF DIFFERENCE IN DANZY SENNA’S CAUCASIA
  • Disappearing: The Skin We’re In
  • Bodies at Play: Performing (and Being) Race(d)
  • Appearing in the Mirroring
  • Longing and Belonging
  • Appearing in Motion and Blurring the Lines
  • Reappearing beyond Recognition
• 6. HOME LIFE: CONFLICTED DOMESTICITY IN JENOYNE ADAMS’S RESURRECTING MINGUS
  • Home Bound
  • Divided Houses
  • Cracking the Mirror
  • Coming Home
• 7. MERIDIANS ON THE MAP OF IDENTITY
• WORKS CITED
• BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Read the entire dissertation here.

The Guineas of West Virginia

Ohio State University
1952
139 pages

John P. Burnell, Jr.

A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirments for the Degree Master of Arts.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Methodology
2. Geographical and Social Setting
3. History and Origin
4. Who Is A Guinea?
5. Social Participation
6. Attitudes and Beliefs
7. Summary and Conclusions

Bibliography
Map (See back folder)

Sociologists are becoming increasingly aware that there exists in the United States an “outcast element” the study of which has been neglected. This element is comprised of groups of people who are generally thought to be of tri-racial origin, that is, Negro, Indian and white. The whites tend to relegate these people to the status of Negroes, a status which most of them resent.

To mention but a few of these hybrid groups which have been reported on to date, there are those in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky referred to as “Melungeons“; in North Carolina, “Indiana of Robeson County” in the southern part of Ohio, “Carmel Indians”.  Dr. Brewton Berry has applied the generic term “mestizos” to the racial hybrids of South Carolina, who are known there by various opprobrious names such as, “Brass Ankles”, “Red Legs”, “Buckheads”, and “Turks”.  In Delaware the hybrids are known as “Moors” and “Hantichokes”; in Alabama, Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi, “Creoles” and “Cajuns“, and in Virginia, “Issues”.

The writer1s interest in the racial hybrid grew out of a general interest In race relations per se, and a firm conviction that only as these various, often socially and geographically isolated, groups are investigated and reported upon will the sociologist be in a position validly to generalize about them.

The purpose of this study was to observe and describe one of these groups, thereby contributing to the knowledge of racial hybrids which is being amassed.   The group chosen for this purpose resides in the state of West Virginia, more specifically in the northeastern part of this state In Barbour and Taylor counties.

The people who constitute this group are generally considered by the white population as being a mixture of white, Negro, and Indian ancestry. Locally, they are referred to as “Guineas“, or “Guinea niggers”, both terms being of a derogatory nature.  Although the Guineas are for the most part very white in appearance, as will be noted in a later chapter devoted to a description of their physical characteristics, the whites in the area resist accepting them as social equals largely on the basis that “one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro“.   In spite of a substantial number of whites acknowledging “Indian blood”, and many more, not being quite certain as to what racial strains have gone into the make-up of these people, it seems to matter very little, for as one white Informant summed it up: “That one drop of nigger blood never washes away” The Guineas then, are referred to as “colored people.” In the areas where they reside and by virtue of this classification are subject to differential treatment by white society.

This particular group of people was chosen for study because: (1) they were conveniently located to the writer’s home; (2) the writer is a resident of the state in which they are located, and therefore it was felt that rapport could be more easily attained; and (3) only a modicum of information concerning these people Is to be found in the literature.

It must be pointed out from the very beginning that the primary object of going out into the field was to observe these people In their real life situation with a view toward describing that situation.

Lack of time and finances acted as definite limiting factors to the scope and comprehensiveness of the field work and largely contributed to limiting this study to a descriptive level.   It is hoped, however, that a more extensive and comprehensive piece of work, free from such limitations, will soon be forthcoming.   Moreover, it must be emphasized that the foregoing limitations, especially lack of finances, restricted most of the data gathered to Barbour County, even though many Guineas are to be found scattered throughout the southern part of Taylor County. To defray the expenses of the writer it was necessary for him to procure employment, and a position which permitted freedom of movement during daylight hours was found in Phillppi, the county seat of Barbour County thereby making this community a convenient center of operation.  It was felt by the writer that the latter limitation was not as much a hindrance to the study as It may at first appear because: first, there seem to. be more Guineas, or at least more people who are defined by the local populace as “Guineas”, residing in Barbour than in Taylor county; and second, they are more concentrated within specific areas in Arbour county.  Since several trips were made into Taylor county, some data which were gathered there pertaining to the Guineas has been utilized within the text. However, wherever any of these data appear, specific reference to Taylor county has been made.

It will be noted by the reader that the terms “white” and “Guinea” appear throughout the text. The writer uses the term “Guinea” as a means of identifying the people who are the aubject of this paper, but does not wish to convey the derogatory connotations generally associated with this term. In some cases the term “hybrid” is used interchangeably with Guinea. The term white applies to all of those people who are not considered either Negro or Guinea.

The methodology utilized in this study is explained in the following chapter…

Read the entire thesis here.

Black and White and Married in the Deep South: A Shifting Image

The New York Times
2011-03-19

Susan Saulny, National Correspondent

HATTIESBURG, Miss. — For generations here in the deepest South, there had been a great taboo: publicly crossing the color line for love. Less than 45 years ago, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal, and it has been frowned upon for much of the time since.

So when a great job beckoned about an hour’s drive north of the Gulf Coast, Jeffrey Norwood, a black college basketball coach, had reservations. He was in a serious relationship with a woman who was white and Asian.

“You’re thinking about a life in South Mississippi?” his father said in a skeptical voice, recalling days when a black man could face mortal danger just being seen with a woman of another race, regardless of intentions. “Are you sure?”

But on visits to Hattiesburg, the younger Mr. Norwood said he liked what he saw: growing diversity. So he moved, married, and, with his wife, had a baby girl who was counted on the last census as black, white and Asian. Taylor Rae Norwood, 3, is one of thousands of mixed-race children who have made this state home to one of the country’s most rapidly expanding multiracial populations, up 70 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to new data from the Census Bureau.

In the first comprehensive accounting of multiracial Americans since statistics were first collected about them in 2000, reporting from the 2010 census, made public in recent days, shows that the nation’s mixed-race population is growing far more quickly than many demographers had estimated, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest. That conclusion is based on the bureau’s analysis of 42 states; the data from the remaining eight states will be released this week.

In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it expanded by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70 percent.

“Anything over 50 percent is impressive,” said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The fact that even states like Mississippi were able to see a large explosion of residents identifying as both black and white tells us something that people would not have predicted 10 or 20 years ago.”… 

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective by Mark Christian [Book Review]

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 32, Number 2 (November 2001)
pages 261-264
DOI: 10.1177/002193470103200206

Molefi Kete Asante, Professor of African American Studies
Temple University

Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective, by Mark Christian. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

Mark Christian has written a perceptive, enlightening account of the international politics of racial identity. Here is the first example of a scholarly approach, using African agency, to the issue of race and identity in the United Kingdom and the United States. Thus, what Christian has given us is not so much a comparative discussion of multiracial identity but a discourse on the meaning of the term multiracial identity given the social and political history of the United Kingdom and the United States. It is easy to understand why this theme has not been attempted before Multiracial Identity. It is a difficult subject to plow through given the many stumps that stick out of the political ground to halt the would-be interpreter. Christian showed an unusual courage in taking on this deeply complicated subject. He has simply burst the bubble of racial quietude in both the United Kingdom and the United States by demonstrating how the concept of multiracial identity is wrapped up in the idea of White supremacy. Racism in Britain, we also discover, is hardly different from racism in the United States and other parts of the world. Although there have been British intellectuals in the past eager to suggest that Britain was categorically more progressive in its race relations than the United States or South Africa, Christian has shown that racism is an international phenomenon. This book is important if for no other reason than the fact that Christian has taught us that the elements of racism that appear pervasive and all too common in America’s national life occur with regularity in Britain and other nations as well. This is a profound point. He has demonstrated a broad and deep appreciation of the difference between Britain and the United States while recognizing that there is a commonality of the engine of racial animosity. Both societies operate on the basis of White racial supremacy. Furthermore, British…

Read or purchase the review here.