Mixed Race Studies

Pio Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California

University of Oklahoma Press
2010
256 pages
5.5″ x 8.5″, Illustrations: 7 B&W Illus.
Hardcover ISBN: 9780806140902
Paperback ISBN: 9780806142371

Carlos Manuel Salomon, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
California State University, East Bay

The first biography of a politically savvy Californio who straddled three eras

Two-time governor of Alta California and prominent businessman after the U.S. annexation, Pío de Jesus Pico was a politically savvy Californio who thrived in both the Mexican and the American periods. This is the first biography of Pico, whose life vibrantly illustrates the opportunities and risks faced by Mexican Americans in those transitional years.

Carlos Manuel Salomon breathes life into the story of Pico, who—despite his mestizo-black heritage—became one of the wealthiest men in California thanks to real estate holdings and who was the last major Californio political figure with economic clout. Salomon traces Pico’s complicated political rise during the Mexican era, leading a revolt against the governor in 1831 that swept him into that office. During his second governorship in 1845 Pico fought in vain to save California from the invading forces of the United States.

Pico faced complex legal and financial problems under the American regime. Salomon argues that it was Pico’s legal struggles with political rivals and land-hungry swindlers that ultimately resulted in the loss of Pico’s entire fortune. Yet as the most litigious Californio of his time, he consistently demonstrated his refusal to become a victim.

Pico is an important transitional figure whose name still resonates in many Southern California locales. His story offers a new view of California history that anticipates a new perspective on the multicultural fabric of the state.

California’s Hispanic Heritage: A View Into the Spanish Myth

The Journal of San Diego History
San Diego Historical Society Quarterly
Volume 19, Number 1 (Winter 1973)

Manuel Patricio Servin, Professor of Southwestern and Mexican-American History
Arizona State University, Tempe

No aspect of Borderlands’ history has been more distorted than that of the Spanish colonization of the Southwest. Despite the writings of eminent historians on the racially mixed background of the Spanish-speaking pioneers, the myth that the early settlers, and consequently the old families, were preponderantly of Spanish stock persists in many quarters.

Members of old families, whose mixed-blood ancestors early adopted the Spanish ideals of success, proudly extol their Spanish lineage and background. Viewing history through special lenses, the descendants of early settlers, as well as their Anglo-American friends and relatives, seem to focus only on the Spanish conquistadores, explorers, and settlers of the Borderlands. Overlooking their unbleached mestizo, mulatto, and Indian ancestors, these anointed Spanish-speaking pioneers see themselves as the descendants of intrepid Castilian gentlemen.

This act of self-deception appears to afflict almost the entire Borderlands’ area. New Mexico, perhaps because of its long history and galaxy of noble-like conquistadores, more than any other area suffers from this Spanish fever. The names of Don Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, Don Antonio de Espejo, and Don Juan de Oñate dominate the history of the state. Consequently, New Mexico is generally considered Spanish and its Spanish-speaking inhabitants are consequently Hispanos—not Mexicans of mixed Spanish, Indian, and African stock. Texas, with its so-called Spanish founders of San Antonio, also suffers from a similar affliction. The Spanish-speaking rico, the person of status, is consequently the descendant of either the notoriously indolent Canary Islander or of an alleged Spaniard or criollo. California, where earlier American historians over glorified the Spanish period of the province as well as the names of Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolá, relishes in its Spanish origins and traditions. Its distinguished families, suffering from an acute case of color blindness, call themselves californios, descendants of supposed Spaniards.

The recognition of the role that colonial Mexicans—that is, the role that the persons of mixed-blood—played in settling the Borderlands and especially California does not reject the essential part that Spaniards performed in the exploration, colonization, and missionization of the Southwest. Spanish peninsulares overwhelmingly were the adelantados, the officials, and the priests who explored, governed, and served settlers. But to claim that the settlers were preponderantly Spaniards—as the Californios assert—must be rejected as historically untenable. These settlers, as the study of California’s settlement shows, were not Spanish, but overwhelmingly mixed-bloods from Indian, Spanish, and also Negro stock…

Read the entire article here.

The first mixed race student is admitted to Wheaton

Wheaton College History
Wheaton College, Newton, Massachusetts
2011-02-02

Deanna Hauck

The first African-American student to attend Wheaton probably did so unbeknownst to the school. In 1856-57, Mary E. Stafford of Cumberland Island, Georgia attended Wheaton. She was the daughter of a white father [Robert Stafford] and an African-American mother [Elizabeth Bernardey], and seems to have been able to pass as white, since it was not known that she was of mixed race until many years after she had actually attended Wheaton.

Source: General Files: 1856-1857: J. Ehrenhard and M. Bullard, “Stafford Plantations, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia,” p. 16.

Also see: Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island: Growth of a Planter

The Anglo-Indians: A Disorganized Marginal Group

Social Forces
Volume 14, Number 2 (December 1935)
pages 263-268

Paul Frederick Cressey, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Wheaton College, Newton, Massachusetts

FOUR centuries of European contact with India have left a biological residue of many thousand people of mixed European and Indian stock. Since 1911 this group has been officially designated by the government of India as the Anglo-Indian Community. Elsewhere in Asia racial hybrids of European and Oriental stock are commonly known as Eurasians. The Anglo-Indians are by far the largest group of such hybrids in Asia.

The distribution of the Anglo-Indians accurately reflects their history. They are concentrated in those areas where the maximum European contact has occurred. In the four largest port cities, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Rangoon, live one-third of all the Anglo-Indians, while an additional one-third live in other parts of the provinces in which these cities are located. Anglo-Indians are predominantly city dwellers, and their life and problems have an urban setting. In 1931 the Anglo-Indian population of India and Burma was returned by the official census as 138,395. This represents an increase of 11.4 per cent during the preceding decade, and 12.1.9 per cent for the last fifty years. The increase in the total population of India in these same periods has been 10.1 per cent and 31.3 per cent respectively. There is a tendency for many persons of light complexion to return themselves as British, and some Indian Christians are enumerated as Anglo-Indians. The Census of India recognizes these errors and estimates the corrected total for Anglo-Indians to be approximately 165,000. In 1931 the sex ratio was 1,061 Anglo-Indian males for every 1,000 females.

Many European stocks are represented among these hybrids, including British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese. The term Anglo-Indian is thus something of a misnomer, but the largest single stock is British, and the group is predominantly British in its cultural affiliations. On the Indian side the stock is almost entirely of Hindu origin, only a very few persons being of Moslem descent.   There is no…

Read or purchase the article here.

How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon

Verso Books
October 2008
Hardback, 240 pages
Paperback, 272 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781844672752
Paperback ISBN: 9781844674343

David R. Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History
University of Kansas

An absorbing chronicle of the role of race in US history, by the foremost historian of race and labor.

In this absorbing chronicle of the role of race in US history, David R. Roediger explores how the idea of race was created and recreated from the 1600’s to the present day. From the late seventeenth century—the era in which DuBois located the emergence of “whiteness”—through the American revolution and the emancipatory Civil War, to the civil rights movement and the emergence of the American empire, How Race Survived US History reveals how race did far more than persist as an exception in a progressive national history. Roediger examines how race intersected all that was dynamic and progressive in US history, from democracy and economic development to migration and globalization.

Exploring the evidence that the USA will become a majority “non-white” nation in the next fifty years, this masterful account shows how race remains at the heart of American life in the twenty-first century.

Interracial Marriage and Admixture in Hawaii

Biodemography and Social Biology
Volume 17, Issue 4 (1970)
pages 278-291
DOI: 10.1080/19485565.1970.9987885

Clarence E. Glick, Professor of Sociology
University of Hawaii

Michener’s phrase “the golden men of Hawaii” reflects a popular romantic interest in the blending of ethnic elements that has been going on in Hawaii for almost two centuries. More seriously, if less romantically, scholars have been analyzing interracial marriages and intermixture and attempting to trace their effects on the emergent population of Hawaii (Adams, 1937; Hormann, 1948; Lind, 1967; Cheng and Yamamura, 1957; Taeuber, 1962; Schmitt, 1965). A landmark study, Genetics of Interracial Crosses in Hawaii, published by the geneticist Newton E. Morton and his associates in 1967, has given us a valuable comparison of “mixed” and “unmixed” children bom in Hawaii, through a detailed analysis of nearly 180,000 births registered during the eleven-year period 1948-58.

Part of the focus of the present paper is upon demographic, cultural, and social factors that must have affected genetic changes in Hawaii’s population, even though some of these considerations must be somewhat impressionistic. Moreover, it is necessary to interpret the usual measures of interracial marriage and racial admixture on which studies of genetic changes in Hawaii might be based. Such an interpretation points to an even greater breakdown in traditional mating patterns and subsequent genetic recombinations than the statistical evidence indicates.

CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF “RACIAL” CATEGORIES

Hawaii is fortunate in having census data for a longer period than any other area in the Pacific. Census reports go back to 1847, but there have been many variations in the “racial” categories used as well as in the actual racial make-up of the people designated by certain categories (Schmitt, 1968). These variations reflect changing social definitions of ethnic groups in Hawaii’s population and the changing circumstances under which interracial marriage has taken place. The 1853 census, for example, used the terms “natives” and “half-natives” for groups later called “Hawaiians” and “Part-Hawaiians”. The general term “foreign population” was subdivided to differentiate Portuguese from other Europeans, Americans from Europeans, and Chinese and Filipinos as other categories of foreigners. The term “half-castes” was used from 1866 to 1890. The censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930 attempted to differentiate between “Caucasian-Hawaiians” and “Asiatic-Hawaiians”; those of…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Hybrid in Hawaii as a Marginal Man

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 39, Number 4 (January 1934)
pages 459-468

William C. Smith
William Jewell College

Several factors conspire to make the hybrid in Hawaii occupy a position markedly different from that of the mixed-blood in other areas. The relative absence of race prejudice on the part of the Hawaiians has created an atmosphere which is favorable both to intermarriage and to persons of mixed blood. There are certain differences between the several groups. The Chinese-Hawaiian is, by consensus, a superior product and is accorded a high status. The Caucasian-Hawaiian is given a lower rating and consequently is more sensitive and self-conscious. There is a considerable group of multiple hybrids, the results of several crosses. These tend to form a group of their own since they cannot readily attach themselves to any of the pure-blood groups as do the dual hybrids. The mixed-bloods of all sorts are drawn together, and within this group there is little hesitancy with reference to intermarriage. This entire group mingles rather freely with the Hawaiians, but there is considerable social distance between them and the Nordics. The hybrid plays an important role in the life of Hawaii. As a participant in two or more cultures he acts as an intermediary and interpreter. The presence of a considerable number of hybrids has been responsible for the relative absence of race prejudice. The hybrids are increasing in numbers and in importance, and it is in the minds of these persons that the conflicts and fusions of culture are taking place. To understand fully the life of Hawaii, attention must be directed to this marginal group.

A study of the hybrids, or racial crosses, in the Hawaiian Islands is interesting because of the contact of so many racial and cultural groups. They constitute one of the major population groups of the Territory. According to the Census of 1930 there are 12,592 Asiatic-Hawaiians and 15,632 Caucasian-Hawaiians out of a total population of 368,336. In addition there are a number of Asiatic-Caucasians and other crosses distributed among the various ancestral groups.

The situation of the hybrids in Hawaii differs markedly from that of the Eurasian in India or the mulatto in continental United States. They are not all in the same situation, however, for there are certain differences in the treatment accorded the various crosses. In the main they are not sensitive as to their mixed ancestry. It is not at all unusual to hear someone say, “I am of mixed blood, and I am proud of it.”

Several factors determine their status in Hawaii. For several centuries the Hawaiians had lived in isolation, which precluded the cultivation of prejudices. When Europeans began to make frequent…

Read or purchase the article here.

Beyond Liverpool, 1957: Travel, diaspora, and migration in Jamal Mahjoub’s The Drift Latitudes

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
Volume 46, Number 3 (September 2011)
pages 493-511
DOI: 10.1177/0021989411409813

Jopi Nyman, Professor
University of Eastern Finland, Finland

This essay discusses the novel The Drift Latitudes (2006) by the Anglo-Sudanese author Jamal Mahjoub. By telling the stories of the German refugee Ernst Frager and his two British families, I argue that Mahjoub’s novel utilizes the tropes of transnational travel and migration to present a critique of discourses of purity and nationalism. Through its uncovering of silenced family narratives, the novel hybridizes British and European identities and underlines the need to remember the stories of ordinary people omitted from official histories. As the novel’s supposedly British families appear to possess transnational links with Sudan, Germany, and the Caribbean, the novel reconstructs European identity as transnational and in need of historical reassessment. As a further contribution to the importance of hybrid identity, the story of black cultural identity and its construction in post-Second World War Liverpool is told in tandem with the importance of black music as a means of constructing black diasporic identity.

Read or purchase the article here.