Mixed Race Studies

The Negro Problem: Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States from a South African Point of View by M. S. Evans; The Mulatto in the United States, Including a Study of the Role of Mixed-Blood Races throughout the World by E. B. Reuter Review by: Ellsworth Huntington

Geographical Review
Volume 11, Number 2 (April, 1921)
pages 311-313

Ellsworth Huntington, Professor of Geography
Yale University

The Negro Problem

M. S. EVANS. Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States from a South African Point of View. xii and 299 pp.; map, bibliogr., index. Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York, 1915. $2.25. 9 x 6 inches.

E. B. REUTER. The Mulatto in the United States, including a Study of the Role of Mixed-Blood Races throughout the World. 417 pp.; indexes. Richard G. Badger, Boston, 1918. $2.50. 8 x 5 inches.

Many people have written on the problem of the negro, but it is doubtful whether anyone has written with a truer balance than Mr. Evans. His “Black and White in South-East Africa” is the standard book on the problem in Africa, and the present book on the United States is equally good. According to Mr. Evans, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour line.” His method of solving it is first that the white man should really know the negro…

…In the Geographical Review for October last there appeared a review of Houghton’s book on the Metis or French-Indian half-breeds. The gist of the book was that the “Indians” who have distinguished themselves have been almost wholly half-breeds. By far the best results have come from intermarriages of scions of the French nobility with the daughters of chiefs. In other words heredity is of dominant importance. It is most interesting to find that in Mr. Reuter’s book on the mulatto in the United States the general conclusion is the same. The method, however, is so much more exact than in any previous study of this subject that the book may almost be considered the final word.

The first part of Mr. Reuter’s book is a straightforward account of the races of mixed blood in all parts of the world and at all times. This is interesting and valuable for reference but contains little that is new. Then follows a discussion of types of mulattoes or mixed races and of their position as the key to the race problem. This leads to the main problem of racial intermixture in the United States. First an attempt is made to estimate the actual number of the mixed types who stand between whites and negroes. For the country as a whole about a fifth of all those classed as negroes are mulattoes, but this proportion varies, being least in the South and greatest in the North and West where negroes are least numerous. The first half of the book ends with a good account of the growth of the mulatto class in the United States, the types of intermixture at various periods and in various regions, and the social status of the mulattoes. Reuter believes that a large part of the mulattoes are the descendants of white men of a decidedly inferior type and on the whole the colored women of the baser sort. Exceptions, however, are very numerous.

The second half of Reuter’s book is an accurate and painstaking statistical study of the leaders among the negroes, using the word to include every one who has even a trace of negro blood. From every available source the author procured lists of prominent colored people. Then by means of photographs or descriptions he classified these according to the color of the skin, texture of the hair, regularity of the features, etc. Those who plainly show Caucasian characteristics are counted as mulattoes, the rest as full-blooded negroes. So far as this classification errs, it is on the side of putting too many into the full-blooded group…

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Professor Alcira Dueñas: Illuminating the Andes: Indigenous and Mestizo Intellectuals in Colonial Peru

¿Qué Pasa, OSU?
Ohio State University
Autumn 2009

Michael J. Alarid

A citizen of Colombia, Professor Alcira Dueñas is a historian who conducts research on the cultural and intellectual history of Amerindians and other subordinated groups of the Peruvian Andes during the colonial era. Professor Dueñas earned her Bachelor of Arts from Universidad de Bogotá, Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Economics, and her Master of Art and Doctorate in History from The Ohio State University, where she focused on the history of Latin America. For more than twenty years, professor Dueñas has taught courses on Colonial and Modern Latin America, Women’s history of Latin America, and modern World History. Professor Dueñas has had a distinguished career: she is a Fulbright scholar, recipient of the OSU Graduate School Alumni Research Award, and, along with a group of faculty of color from the History Department, she has recently been honored with the Distinguished University Diversity Enhancement Award from the University Senate, as well as with an equivalent distinction from the College of Humanities. …

…Professor Dueñas continues to feel indebted to OSU for her intellectual flowering, and through her OSU education she has infused an interdisciplinary approach into her historical methodology as well. Her first book, which hits shelves in the spring of 2010, utilizes tools of literary criticism and ethnohistory to highlight the presence and practices of indigenous and mestizo intellectuals in colonial Peru. She develops a textual analysis of Andean manifestos, memoriales (petitions), reports, and letters to identify the rhetorical strategies these intellectuals utilized to reach out to the royal powers. Dueñas explains, “I place such analysis in the historical context of the major critical conjunctures of Spanish colonialism in the Andes, particularly the insurrections that intersected with some of the writings under study. I apply anthropological methods, as I examine issues of identity, religion, and Andean political culture.”

Professor Dueñas’ creative approach to research has resulted in her manuscript being picked up by a major academic press; the book is complete and in production with the University Press of Colorado. Her book reconstructs the history of indigenous and mestizo intellectuals in mid and late colonial Peru, illuminating the writing practices and social agency of Andeans in their quest for social change. Dueñas elucidates, “I conclude that Andean scholarship from mid-and-late colonial Peru reflects the cultural changes of the colonized ethnic elites at the outset of modernity in Latin America. Their intellectual and political struggles reveal them as autonomous subjects, moving forward to undo their colonial condition of “Indians,” while expanding the intellectual sphere of colonial Peru to educated ‘Indios ladinos.’ They used writing, Transatlantic traveling, legal action, and even subtle support to rebellions, as means to improve their social standing and foster their ethnic autonomy under Spanish rule.” Dueñas concludes, “They attempted to participate in the administration of justice for Indians and seized every opportunity to occupy positions in the ecclesiastical and state bureaucracy.”…

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Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City”: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru

University Press of Colorado
2010
320 pages
5 line drawings, 1 map
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-60732-018-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-60732-019-7

Alcira Dueñas, Assistant Professor of Latin American History and World History
Ohio State University, Newark

Through newly unearthed texts virtually unknown in Andean studies, Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City” highlights the Andean intellectual tradition of writing in their long-term struggle for social empowerment and questions the previous understanding of the “lettered city” as a privileged space populated solely by colonial elites. Rarely acknowledged in studies of resistance to colonial rule, these writings challenged colonial hierarchies and ethnic discrimination in attempts to redefine the Andean role in colonial society.

Scholars have long assumed that Spanish rule remained largely undisputed in Peru between the 1570s and 1780s, but educated elite Indians and mestizos challenged the legitimacy of Spanish rule, criticized colonial injustice and exclusion, and articulated the ideas that would later be embraced in the Great Rebellion in 1781. Their movement extended across the Atlantic as the scholars visited the seat of the Spanish empire to negotiate with the king and his advisors for social reform, lobbied diverse networks of supporters in Madrid and Peru, and struggled for admission to religious orders, schools and universities, and positions in ecclesiastic and civil administration.

Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City” explores how scholars contributed to social change and transformation of colonial culture through legal, cultural, and political activism, and how, ultimately, their significant colonial critiques and campaigns redefined colonial public life and discourse. It will be of interest to scholars and students of colonial history, colonial literature, Hispanic studies, and Latin American studies.

Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Foundations of Seventeenth-Century Andean Scholarship
• Chapter 3. Andean Scholarship in the Eighteenth Century: Writers, Networks,and Texts
• Chapter 4. The European Background of Andean Scholarship
• Chapter 5. Andean Discourses of Justice: The Colonial Judicial System under Scrutiny
• Chapter 6. The Political Culture of Andean Elites: Social Inclusion and Ethnic Autonomy
• Chapter 7. The Politics of Identity Formation in Colonial Andean Scholarship
• Chapter 8. Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

Amalgamations, New and Old: The Stratification of America’s Mixed Black/White Population

University of California, Berkeley
2004
184 pages

Aaron Olaf Gullickson, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and Demography

This research focuses explicitly on the life chances of biracial black/whites. I contrast the “new” biracials, those born to interracial couples in the post Civil Rights era, to the “old” biracials, the lighter-skinned descendants of the original mulatto elite. Both groups have occupied privileged positions relative to monoracial blacks within educational and occupational institutions. For the old biracials, this privilege derives both from the inherited advantages of the mulatto elite and from the independent signi cance of skin tone within the black community.

I show that the skin tone privileges of lighter-skinned blacks declined for cohorts coming of age during and after the Civil Rights era. This decline marked the end of a system of stratification that characterized the black population for over a century. Furthermore, it seems to suggest that the new biracial advantage over monoracial blacks in educational outcomes is not the result of a skin tone hierarchy within the black population.

These new biracials differ from the old in that they have access to intimate white relatives within their family networks. On the one hand, the new biracial advantage could potentially result from race-based resources, such as access to the cultural and physical resources of their white parent. On the other hand, the new biracial advantage may result from class-based resources, primarily the selection of highly-educated parents into interracial unions.

I show that the new biracial advantage over monoracial blacks in educational outcomes can be largely explained by their relatively privileged family backgrounds. These advantages, and not biraciality itself, result in higher grades and lower grade retention, although they do not explain differences in standardized test scores. Thus, in order to understand the new biracial advantage, we must understand the dynamics of union formation in the immediately prior generation.

I show that this this pattern of interracial union formation can be most accurately described as one of lower-class black isolation. While traditional models of interracial union formation are all plausibly supported by the data, the most accurate model focuses on the exclusion of blacks with a high school degree or less from interracial unions, regardless of their potential partner’s education. This results holds in both marital and non-marital unions and points to the possibility of greater isolation for lower class blacks as interracial unions increase and to a generational bifurcation of the black class structure directly tied to issues of racial identity.

Contents

• List of Figures
• List of Table
• 1 Understanding Race in America, Understanding Race Mixing in America
  • 1.1 The Race Concep
  • 1.2 New and Old
  • 1.3 The Life Chances of Mixed Race Individuals
    • 1.3.1 The mulatto vanguard or the black elite?
    • 1.3.2 Eve and the new biracials
  • 1.4 Outline of this study
• 2 The Demise of the Mulatto Legacy
  • 2.1 The Skin Tone Legacy
  • 2.2 Colorism
  • 2.3 The Rise and Fall of the Skin Tone Hierarchy
    • 2.3.1 Trends across cohorts
    • 2.3.2 Formal multivariate models
  • 2.4 The Unremarked Demise
• 3 The New Biracials
  • 3.1 The K-12 Racial Hierarchy
    • 3.1.1 The Biracial Advantage
    • 3.1.2 Understanding the Racial Hierarchy
  • 3.2 Understanding the Biracial Advantage over Blacks
    • 3.2.1 Data
    • 3.2.2 Measures
    • 3.2.3 Models
    • 3.2.4 Analysis
  • 3.3 The Uncertain Position
• 4 Back a Generation
  • 4.1 The Selectivity of Interracial Unions
    • 4.1.1 Theories of Interracial Marriage
    • 4.1.2 Interracial Unions outside of Marriage
  • 4.2 Models
  • 4.3 Data
  • 4.4 Understanding Black Selectivity
    • 4.4.1 Interracial Marriage
    • 4.4.2 Interracial Cohabitation
  • 4.5 The Unnoticed Isolation
• 5 Tommorrow
  • 5.1 The Story So Far
  • 5.2 Possibilities
  • 5.3 Directions
  • 5.4 A Final Note
• A Supplemental Tables
• B Genealogical Data
• C Sensitivity Analysis
• Bibliography

List of Figures

• 1.1 Stylistic depiction of interracial sexual contact across United States history
• 1.2 Race and skin tone strati cation
• 2.1 Skin tone differences relative to light-skinned blacks in years of education across birth cohorts, National Survey of Black Americans
• 2.2 Skin tone differences in occupational attainment (Duncan SEI) relative to light-skinned blacks across birth cohorts, National Survey of Black Americans
• 2.3 Skin tone differences relative to light-skinned blacks in spousal years of education across marital cohorts, National Survey of Black Americans
• 2.4 BIC’ statistic for educational attainment threshold models based on year of threshold
• 2.5 Predicted effect of skin tone on educational attainment (highest grade completed) across birth cohorts, based on fourth-degree polynomial models
• 2.6 BIC’ statistic for occupational attainment threshold models based on year of threshold
• 2.7 Predicted effect of skin tone on occupational attainment (Duncan SEI scores) across birth cohorts, based on fourth-degree polynomial models
• 2.8 BIC’ statistic for spousal attainment threshold models based on year of threshold
• 2.9 Predicted effect of skin tone on spousal years of education across marriage cohorts, based on fourth-degree polynomial models
• 3.1 Logit effect of race on probability of having ever been held back across nested models, Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1995
• 3.2 Logit effect of race on probability of having ever been held back across nested models, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 3.3 Effect of race on grades in 8th grade across nested models, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 3.4 Effect of race on CAT-ASVAB scores across nested models, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 4.1 Spousal educational distributions by race, race of spouse, and sex, Census 1990
• 4.2 Stylized depiction of racial intermarriage patterns
• 4.3 Parameterizations for models of interracial educational partnering
• 4.4 Parameters from models of interracial educational partnering for married and cohabiting unions
• 5.1 Possible scenarios for the future, based on two dimensions of change
• B.1 Strength of interracial sexual contact in Herskovits sample, based on different assumptions
• C.1 Comparison of parameters from log-linear models with different age groups
• C.2 Comparison of parameters from log-linear models with marriages of various durations

List of Tables

• 2.1 Sample size and years for waves of the National Survey of Black Americans and the General Social Survey, 1982
• 2.2 Fit of threshold models and year of best- tting threshold compared to models without cohort change
• 2.3 Threshold models predicting educational attainment (total number of grades completed)
• 2.4 Polynomial models predicting occupational prestige (Duncan SEI Score)
• 3.1 Cross-classi cation of biological parents’ race in two surveys
• 3.2 Outcome measures by race
• 3.3 Variables by race, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 3.4 Variables by race, Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• 3.5 The relative position of biracials
• 3.6 Structure of the nested models
• 3.7 Race effects, gross and net
• 4.1 Union type distribution of new parents by race of parents
• 4.2 Proportion of black partners in each union type who have more than a high school education by sex and race of partner
• 4.3 Sample size of data sets
• 4.4 Fit of different interracial union formation models to marriages from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses
• 4.5 Important parameters from log-linear models, 1980
• 4.6 Important parameters from log-linear models, 1990
• 4.7 Important parameters from log-linear models, 2000
• 4.8 Comparison of isolation model to an alternative educational propensity model
• 4.9 Comparison between gender symmetry and BM/WF only models
• 4.10 Fit of models comparing interracial union formation between marital and cohabiting unions
• A.1 Polynomial models predicting educational attainment (years of schooling)
• A.2 Polynomial models predicting spouse’s years of schooling
• A.3 Models predicting whether respondent has ever been held back, Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• A.4 Models predicting whether the respondent has ever been held back, NLSY97
• A.5 Models predicting grades in 8th grade, NLSY97
• A.6 Models predicting CAT-ASVAB test scores, NLSY97
• A.7 Proportion of black partners in each union type who have a college degree by sex and race of partner
• A.8 Proportion of black partners in each union type who have more a high school diploma by sex and race of partner
• B.1 Possible Genealogies in the Herskovits Sample

Read the entire dissertation here.

Recasting Race after World War II: Germans and African Americans in American-Occupied Germany

University Press of Colorado
2007
320
9 b&w photos
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-87081-869-1

Timothy L. Schroer, Associate Professor of History
University of West Georgia

Historian Timothy L. Schroer’s Recasting Race after World War II explores the renegotiation of race by Germans and African American GIs in post-World War II Germany. Schroer dissects the ways in which notions of blackness and whiteness became especially problematic in interactions between Germans and American soldiers serving as part of the victorious occupying army at the end of the war.

The segregation of U.S. Army forces fed a growing debate in America about whether a Jim Crow army could truly be a democratizing force in postwar Germany. Schroer follows the evolution of that debate and examines the ways in which postwar conditions necessitated reexamination of race relations. He reveals how anxiety about interracial relationships between African American men and German women united white American soldiers and the German populace. He also traces the importation and influence of African American jazz music in Germany, illuminating the subtle ways in which occupied Germany represented a crucible in which to recast the meaning of race in a post-Holocaust world.

Recasting Race after World War II will appeal to historians and scholars of American, African American, and German studies.

“So what are you…?”: Life as a Mixed-Blood in Academia

The American Indian Quarterly
Volume 27, Numbers 1 & 2 (Winter/Spring 2003)
pages 369-372
E-ISSN: 1534-1828 Print ISSN: 0095-182X
DOI: 10.1353/aiq.2004.0038

Julie Pelletier, Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies and Director of the Aboriginal Governance Program
University of Winnepeg

My mentor, Loudell Snow, and I were standing in the anthropology department’s shabby little lounge, discussing the merits of French wine. Lou was teasing me for being partial to French wine since I am French American (I have always disliked the term “Franco-American,” which brings to mind bad canned pasta, so I say “French American” instead). “Hey, I thought that you’re an American Indian, but now you are saying you are French? Make up your mind!” Lou and I looked at each other in amazement when my anthropological theory professor interrupted our conversation with this comment. I am not insensitive to the complicated nature of my identity. I was appalled, however, to be addressed in such a way by a man who, in the classroom, reveled in discussions of postmodernity and the permeability of boundaries, including the boundaries of identity. Lou had the presence of mind to point out this contradiction to the professor with a snappy comeback of some kind. This conversation become one of those moments that many of us have: we linger over the memory and come up with one cutting retort after another, none of which come to mind during those stunned, seemingly endless seconds after we have been verbally assaulted.

I am French and Native American, or perhaps I should say Native Canadian, since my father was born in Quebec. Of course, in Canada I am labeled “Métis” a term used to describe people of mixed Indigenous and French ancestry. If my paternal grandfather had been Indian and his wife white, instead of the reverse, I would be a First Nations person. To make matters just a bit more interesting, I am descended from two tribal groups, the Mi’kmaq and the Maliseet. I also have dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship…

Read or purchase the entire article here.

Intelligence of Negroes of Mixed Blood in Canada

The Journal of Negro Education
Volume 10, Number 4 (October, 1941)
pages 650-652

H. A. Tanser

Miscegenation, as between the White and Negro races, presents an interesting field for study. Herskovits, Hooton, Peterson and Lanier, and others have attempted to investigate such so-called racial differences as those which concern colour of skin, hair and eyes, thickness of lips, the nasal breadth, prognathism, interpupillary distance, texture of hair, etc. An attempt has also been made to study the relationship between intelligence and certain Negroid traits. As a result of his research a few years ago Herskovits came to the conclusion that the American Negro is forming a type which lies somewhere between the European, the African, and the American Indian. The increasing uniformity of type in the American Negro he attributes to social rather than biological factors. Peterson and Lanier, after testing ninety-one cases on the Otis, and forty-nine cases on the Myers, report that there is no significant relation between lightness of skin colour and intelligence. They find a coefficient of correlation of .044±.067 for the first group, and .180±.091 for the second group.

While Davenport and Steggerda, on investigation of race crossing in Jamaica, hold the opinion that crossing Whites and Negroes results in disharmonic combinations, Reuter, on the other hand, champions the cause of mulattoes on account of the hybrid vigour they display as compared with the general lack of achievement on the part of full-blooded Negroes. He makes the interesting contention that mulattoes are the result of a process of biological selection in which the best elements of the Negro race have been assimilated into the mixed blood of the mulattoes. He also makes the observation that in the days of slavery the White masters naturally selected the intellectually superior Negro women for their mistresses. He and Herskovits further contend that this process of biological selection has been perpetuated by the tendency that exists for talented Negroes to marry girls whose skin is light in colour. On account of the social cleavage that still exists between the Whites and Negroes, to a greater extent in the Southern States and to a less extent in the Northern States and Canada, one would naturally expect that any race crossing that takes place would represent the best elements of the Negroes and the less superior elements of the Whites.

In investigating the intelligence of Negroes, Mixed-bloods, and Whites, the present writer would like to emphasize…

Read or purchase the article here.

Color, Race, and Genomic Ancestry in Brazil: Dialogues between Anthropology and Genetics

Current Anthropology
Volume 50, Number 6 (2009)
pages 787-819
DOI: 10.1086/644532

Ricardo Ventura Santos, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Public Health
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
also Associate professor of Anthropology
National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Peter H. Fry, Professor
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Departamento de Antropologia
Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais/UFRJ, Largo de São Francisco de Paula 1

Simone Monteiro, Senior Researcher
Oswaldo Cruz Institute

Marcos Chor Maio, Senior Researcher
House of Oswaldo Cruz
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

José Carlos Rodrigues, Professor
Fluminense Federal University
also Associate Professor
Catholic University

Luciana Bastos-Rodrigues
Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at the Institute of Biological Sciences
Federal University of Minas Gerais

Sérgio D. J. Pena, Professor of Biochemistry and Immunology
Institute of Biological Sciences
Federal University of Minas Gerais

In the contemporary world, “race” narratives are so multifaceted that at times, different views of the concept appear mutually incompatible. In recent decades biologists, especially geneticists, have repeatedly stated that the notion of race does not apply to the human species. On the other hand, social scientists claim that race is highly significant in cultural, historical, and socioeconomic terms because it molds everyday social relations and because it is a powerful motivator for social and political movements based on race differences. In this paper we present the results of an interdisciplinary research project incorporating approaches from genetics and anthropology. Our objective is to explore the interface between information about biology/genetics and perceptions about color/race in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We argue that the data and interpretation of our research resonate far beyond the local level, stimulating discussion about methodological, theoretical, and political issues of wider national and international relevance. Topics addressed include the complex terminology of color/race classification in Brazil, perceptions about ancestry in the context of ideologies of Brazilian national identity, and the relationship between genetic information about the Brazilian population and a sociopolitical agenda that turns on questions of race and racism.

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The Future is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet, Revised Edition

University Press of Colorado
2000
136 pages
8.2 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
Paper ISBN:978-0-87081-576-8

Virgilio Elizondo (1935-2016), Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology; Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies and Kellogg Institute
Notre Dame University

Twelve years after it was first published, The Future is Mestizo is now updated and revised with a new foreword, introduction, and epilogue. This book speaks to the largest demographic change in twentieth-century United States history-the Latinization of music, religion, and culture.

Contents

• Foreword by Sandra Cisneros
• Preface The Great Border
• Introduction The Future Is Mestizo: We Are the Shades by David Carrasco
• 1. A Family of Migrants
  • My City
  • My Family
  • My Neighborhood and Parish
• 2. Who Am I?
  • Moving into a “Foreign Land”
    vAcceptance, Belonging, and Affirmation
  • Experiences of Non-Being
  • Neither/Nor but Something New
• 3. A Violated People
  • The Masks of Suffering
  • The Eruption
  • The Eruption Continues
  • Going to the Roots
• 4. Marginality
  • Festive Breakthrough
  • Institutional Barriers
  • Invisible Mechanisms
• 5. My People Resurrect at Tepeyac
  • The Dawn of a New Day
  • From Death to New Life
  • First “Evange!ium” of the Americas
  • Beginning of the New Race
• 6. Galilee of Mestizos
  • Is Human Liberation Possible?
  • Conquest or Birth
  • The Unimagined Liberation
  • From Margination to Unity
• 7. Toward Universal Mestizaje
  • From Unsuspected Limitations to Unsuspected Richness
  • A New Being: Universal and Local
  • Continued Migrations
  • Threshold of a New Humanity
  • The Ultimate Mestizaje
• Epilogue: A Reflection Twelve Years Later
  • The Negative
  • The Challenge

Is the Future Mestizo and Mulatto? A Theological-Sociological Investigation into the Racial and Ethnic Future of the Human Person within the U.S.

Zygon Center for Religion and Science
Third Annual Student Symposium on Science and Spirituality
Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Illinois
2011-03-25
13 pages

Kevin Patrick Considine
Loyola University, Chicago

My study is a theological investigation into the racial and ethnic future of the human person within a changing racial context. I examine the concept of mestizaje/mulatez, which has its theological roots in the work of Virgilio Elizondo, and perform a mutually critical correlation between it and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s and George Yancey’s sociologies of the changing racial structure. Elizondo is pointing towards God’s creation of an eschatological people of cultural and biological hybridity who embody a new creation that transcends racial categorization and is made incarnate in the person of the Galilean Jesus. At the same time, mestizaje/mulatez contains ambiguity in that it possesses both liberating and oppressive possibilities for the future of humankind and its struggle against racialized suffering. Nevertheless, I contend that mestizaje/mulatez embodies a small sacrament of salvation, a cautious hope, for the redemption of the human community from racial suffering within an emerging multiracial context.

Read the entire paper here.