Mixed Race Studies

Book Review: Go White, Young Man

Vanderbilt Law Review
Volume 65, En Banc 1 (2012-01-30)
10 pages

Alfred L. Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law
University of North Carolina School of Law

Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 9781594202827.

Sharfstein’s book follows three families whose members at some point crossed the color line separating black from white—or tried and failed to. These case studies tell us what it is to be American—how race is central to our identity, how we use race to take down opponents or to exclude—and how the line separating black and white is sometimes porous. However, is not the story of race and American legal history about the ways that race is defined by law and by norms? Race mattered because people policed the line separating blacks and whites. That many states classified people with a small percentage of African ancestry as white suggests that it was possible to move across the color line. Still, the cases where the color line was policed, rather than crossed, are significant.

Our nation’s struggle with race is now about one-third of a millennium long. So there is a lot for Daniel Sharfstein’s epic work of American history, The Invisible Line, to engage as it sweeps across centuries—from Virginia in the 1600s to Washington, DC, in the 1950s—and as it details generations of lives, from humble farmers in Appalachia to heirs of Gilded Age merchants. Where most other people who have looked at such issues focus on the chasm between white and black, Sharfstein looks at people on the line separating black and white. He is able in this way to get at key—and often overlooked—issues, such as how people have crossed the color line in America and what efforts to cross and police it tell us about our national struggle with race and with equality.

To detail the sine curve of attitudes towards race, Sharfstein offers three case studies of how racial categorization has functioned and how it kept (or attempted to keep) African-Americans in their place. The book follows three families whose members at some point crossed the line separating black from white—or tried and failed to. Sharfstein’s elegant prose illuminates how the color line functioned for people on both sides of it. For those who could do so, there were great incentives to claim to be white rather than black. In one era, race could define who might be a slave; in later eras, it was central to who could live in desirable locations, who could go to the most desirable schools, who could have access to the best government jobs. From statutes to social norms, African-Americans were told that they were inferior and had to maintain their place. Thus, those who might pass for white—those who had light enough skin color and perhaps the geographic mobility to mask their family history—often did so.

Some of the story of passing is well known. President Warren G. Harding is said to have remarked in response to an allegation that he had African ancestry, “How do I know? One of my ancestors may have jumped the fence.” Some of the best-known literature of the Jim Crow era was about crossing the color line, like Nella Larson’s Passing. And even antebellum literature often addressed the crossing of the line from black to white. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for instance, has a vignette about a light-skinned former slave who passed for white. Yet, even though we know that families crossed the color line (or attempted to), one wonders if the most important lessons from Sharfstein’s book are the ways the line was successfully policed rather than the ways it was crossed…

…We learn a great deal about the policing of the color line in Sharfstein’s book. Attempts to prevent passing sometimes failed, as in the Regulator Movement and in the Spencers’ Appalachia. In both of those cases, opponents of families who had once been identified as African-American unsuccessfully claimed that they were still African-American. But Sharfstein illustrates numerous occasions when the line was successfully policed: in Washington, DC, after Reconstruction, when O.S.B. Wall helped lead a western exodus movement; in the early twentieth century, when disfranchisement of blacks led to loss of representation in Congress and loss of civil service jobs, such as Stephen Wall’s at the Government Printing Office; and when an heir to the Field fortune—who, as a member of the Gibson family, had some African ancestry—put on a display at the Field Museum about the races of mankind.

We learn that statutes helped police the color line. For instance, statutes defined the blood quantum that permitted one to be considered white. Yet even when statutes defined one as black, social norms often classified a person as white. Sharfstein makes a bold statement about the porous nature of the color line in regard to slavery: “The difference between black and white was less about ‘blood’ or biology or even genealogy than about how people were treated and whether they were allowed to participate fully in community life. Blacks were the people who were slaves, in fact or in all but name; the rest were white.” This argument shifts the basis for being considered black from blood quantum to status—though the two were often highly correlated…

Read the entire review here.

Batson Revisited in America’s “New Era” of Multiracial Persons

Seton Hall Law Review
Volume 33, Issue 1 (2003)
Article 3
pages 67-108

John Terrence A. Rosenthal

Since two bloods course within your veins, Both Jam’s and Japhet’s intermingling; One race forever doomed to serve, The other bearing freedom’s likeness.
—Poem from Jacob Steendam to his multiracial son

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction—to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
—Letter from President George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (Sept. 9, 1790)

I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
—Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine (1789)

INTRODUCTION

From the time of this country’s founding, America has always been a multiracial society. In the coming decades, America’s racial and ethnic diversity will continue to increase. The 2000 Census evidences the present and coming racial complexity. Mandated by the Constitution, this decennial census, for the first time allowed individuals to chose more than one race in identifying their racial heritage. The preliminary results of the 2000 Census show that the number of individuals claiming multiracial status is not insignificant. As many as 2.4 percent of our nation’s citizens consider themselves multiracial; and in California, the nation’s most populace state, the percentage is 4.7.

Given our society’s historical penchant for discrimination against minority racial groups, persons of multiracial backgrounds do and will continue to face many of the same problems related to racial discrimination that other minority racial groups in our country have historically faced. These problems include, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and discrimination in the administration of our criminal justice system. Due to the difficulty often associated with distinguishing which racial groups multiracial individuals belong to or derive from, the problems of discrimination will present these people with unique, and often unrecognized and unaddressed problems. This Article will address one of these potential problems, which is associated with the administration of the criminal justice system: discrimination based on race in the use of peremptory challenges during the selection of jurors.

This country has an extensive history of racial discrimination in the context of the jury selection process. Although both the courts and legislatures have attempted to deal with the problem of racial discrimination in the jury selection process, the solutions provided do not solve the problem for those persons of multiracial descent who may not be readily identified or perceived as racial minorities. In particular, it is a challenge for society to prevent the racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in the jury selection process, if only one side in the litigation recognizes a multiracial potential juror as being multiracial and discriminates based on that person’s racial makeup. What if a juror is dismissed from the jury pool by one side due to his or her racial heritage, but neither the other side nor the judge recognizes the discrimination because the racial makeup of the juror is not readily apparent to either?

The present jury selection process, mandated by Batson v. Kentucky to address racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges, depends upon the ability of the judge and the attorneys for both sides to perceive the racial makeup of the potential juror. Only then will one party be on notice of the possibility of racial discrimination and raise the proper challenge. If this party does not recognize the dismissed person as being of multiracial descent, then the constitutional violation goes undiscovered and unremedied. Therefore, Batson, as it is presently structured and enforced, may not, and most likely will not solve the problem of racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges to exclude multiracial persons from juries.

In Part I, the Article will review the legal and societal history of racial discrimination against multiracial individuals in our country. Part II will then examine the historical problem of racial discrimination in the context of the jury selection process and describe the present judicial remedy used to address this problem. In Part III, the Article will discuss the results of the 2000 Census, the implications of this data with regard to the racial make-up of juries, and how these data and anecdotal evidence suggest the existence of a unique problem of racial discrimination against multiracial individuals in the jury selection process. Finally, Part IV will suggest some potential remedies for this “vexing” problem…

Read the entire article here.

‘Race’ as a scientific and organizational construct: a critique

GeoJournal
Volume 41, Number 3 (March 1997)
pages 233-243
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006881215239

Georges G. Cravins, Professor of Geography
University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

“Race” for many years has been a major construct of science and society. While its importance as such has not historically been particularly pronounced on a global scale, the emergence of its most forceful architects, the Anglophone countries, to pre-eminence since World War II has significantly extended its geographical range and added to its significance as an idea within commercialized culture as well as within social organization.

In the present paper, “race” is critically examined from the following angles: 1) its role in the behavioral and medical sciences; b) its historical origins and manifestations within the Anglophone countries, particularly the United States; and c) its emergence as a “liberal” concept and operating principle since World War II. Questions of why and how “race” arose and its continued use in science, society and culture drive both the trajectory and depth of this research. “Race” is found to be a modern construct which arose as a consequence of colonialism and slavery, and was substantially constructed in its present form and substance by England and its off-spring societies, particularly the United States. “Race” was not used as a term expressing a social idea until modern times, and had no basis in the primordial civilizations which greatly influenced modern Western societies (e.g., ancient Greece and Rome). Efforts undertaken by liberals – particularly in the United States – to “humanize” the concept of “race”since the 1960″s have been largely unsuccessful. “race” is viewed as inherently hierarchical, a fact which is evident from its historical and present role in science and society.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a man believes himself to be the master of others who is, no less than they, slaves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Control Social (1762)

In this paper. I shall discuss the involvement of modern Western societies with the concept of ‘race,’ focusing special attention on its developmental and functional manifestations within Anglophone societies. By Anglophone* is meant the cultures and countries of the English-speaking world, most especially the United States. Canada, Britain, South Africa and Australia. My primary aim is to render a critical perspective on ‘race’ as academic idea and social praxis, so as to argue against its continued use within the human and medical sciences as well as an element of social and political policy.

Montagu (1974. p. 3) has called ‘race’ the ‘witchcraft of our time’. ‘Race’ is not only an academic or ideological construct, but also a notion whose applied manifestations and consequences arc intellectually, socially, politically and economically significant. Indeed, it is possible to discern two distinct yet mutually-supporting channels through which ‘race’ has been historically articulated: 1) as an idea around which major academic debates have been constructed within scientific communities; and 2) as an organizational construct which has played a significant role in shaping personal world views, individual and group identities and primary social relations.

As a serious organizational construct, ‘race’ owes its existence principally to Western societies, particularly the Anglophone countries. Although educated populations in most non-Western societies today are aware of the existence of ‘races’, this awareness is generally owed to diffusion through Western influences rather than to autochthonal development. Moreover, in the extent to which it functions organizationally, ‘race’ is universal neither in its societal and spatial significance, nor in its historical origins and development. Indeed, divorced from the empirical reality of social hierarchies and class divisions, and the day-to-day conflict it engenders within certain Western societies, race is meaningless, as it has long lost its significance on purely scientific grounds.

The consideration of ‘race’ in the pages that…

Read or purchase the article here.

MOsley WOtta Frontman Jason Graham to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

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: #245 – Jason Graham
When: Wednesday, 2012-02-22, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 14:00 PST)

Jason Graham,

Steven F. Riley, Guest Host

Don’t miss this chat with Jason Graham aka MOsley WOtta—spoken word artist extraordinaire!

For more on Jason Graham, see:

• “Telling His Story, Keeping His Promises: MOsley WOtta as performer and father,” True North
• “‘MOsley WOtta’ Transcends Boundaries Of Music, Poetry And Art,” OPB News
• “MOsley WOtta,” video from Arts Beat Oregon
• “MFNW 2010: We are all MOsley WOtta,” Oregon Music News

[Note from Steven F. Riley: I’ll will be the first Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival donor to receive the gift of guest hosting Mixed Chicks Chat]

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.