Mixed Race Studies

Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey 2012 Annual Convention: Call for Papers

Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey
2012-01-31

Building on the success of the inaugural 2011 conference, the second annual convention of the Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey (BGCSNJ) will be held at Barnard College in New York City on August 10-11, 2012.  This year’s convention will focus on the theme of “What Is the Black German Experience?” The conference will feature a keynote address by Yara Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria, screenings of the films “Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story” and “Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984-1992,” and readings by Black German poet-performers Olumide Popoola and Philipp Khabo Köpsell.

The BGCSNJ Review Committee invites proposals for papers that engage the multiplicity and diversity of the experiences of Blacks of German heritage and on Blackness in Germany. We welcome submissions for twenty-minute presentations on three academic panels and two sessions devoted to life writing, oral history and memoir. To participate please send a one-page abstract and a CV or short biographical statement to: bgcsinc@gmail.com. Deadline for proposals: March 15, 2012

For more information, click here.

Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies

University of California, Berkeley
Friday, 2012-03-16 through Saturday, 2012-03-17

Co-Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender and Ethnic Studies Department.

In traditional Ethnic Studies, mixed race scholarship has often been marginalized, misappropriated, tokenized or simply left out. In order to allow for a collaborative environment given the need for more critical scholarship on the experiences of mixed race people, in Fall 2009, a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley formed the inter-disciplinary working group at the Center for Race & Gender, Transnational Mixed Asians In-Between Spaces (TMABS). The goal of the working group is to to create a safe space for scholars to discuss issues of mixed race identity and also to provide a venue for those doing work in this area to present developing ideas and projects. Furthermore, the working group seeks to expand the notion of mixed race to include other factors such as culture and space. Overall, it is our intent to encourage and promote research on mixed race/culture in Ethnic Studies and bring together scholarship from multiple disciplines to collaborate on future research areas.

In Spring 2012, we will host our inaugural conference entitled, “Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies.” The conference will take place March 16-17th at the UC Berkeley campus and will include panels, film screenings, poetry performances and an art exhibit.

The co-founders of TMABS are: Kevin Escudero, Joina Hsiao, Ariko Ikehara and Julie Thi Underhill, doctoral students in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley.

For more information, click here.

Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority

Policy Press
February 2012
256 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN-10: 1447301005; ISBN-13: 978-1447301004

Andrew J. Jolivétte, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies (Also see biographies at Speak Out! and Native Wiki.)
Center for Health Disparities Research and Training
San Fransisco State University

Since the election in 2008 of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States there have been a plethora of books, films, and articles about the role of race in the election of the first person of color to the White House. None of these works though delves into the intricacies of Mr. Obama’s biracial background and what it means, not only in terms of how the President was elected and is now governing, but what multiraciality may mean in the context of a changing U.S. demographic. Obama and the Biracial Factor is the first book to explore the significance of mixed-race identity as a key factor in the election of President Obama and examines the sociological and political relationship between race, power, and public policy in the United States with an emphasis on public discourse and ethnic representation in his election. Jolivette and his co-authors bring biracial identity and multiraciality to forefront of our understanding of racial projects since his election. Additionally, the authors assert the salience of mixed-race identity in U.S. policy and the on-going impact of the media and popular culture on the development, implementation, and interpretation of government policy and ethnic relations in the U.S. and globally. This timely work offers foundational analysis and theorization of key new concepts such as mixed-race hegemony and critical mixed race pedagogy and a nuanced exploration of the on-going significance of race in the contemporary political context of the United States with international examples of the impact on U.S. foreign relations and a shifting American electorate. Demographic issues are explained as they relate to gender, race, class, and religion. These new and innovative essays provide a template for re-thinking race in a ‘postcolonial’, decolonial, and ever increasing global context. In articulating new frameworks for thinking about race and multiraciality this work challenges readers to contemplate whether we should strive for a ‘post-racist’ rather than a ‘post-racial’ society. Obama and the Biracial Factor speaks to a wide array of academic disciplines ranging from political science and public policy to sociology and ethnic studies. Scholars, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students as well as community organizers and general audiences interested in issues of equity, social justice, cross-cultural coalitions and political reform will gain new insights into critical mixed race theory and social class in multiracial contexts and beyond.

Contents

• Part I
  • Obama and the biracial factor: An introduction – Andrew Jolivette
  • Race, multiraciality, and the election of Barack Obama: Toward a more perfect union? – G. Reginald Daniel
  • “A Patchwork Heritage” Multiracial citation in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father – Justin Ponder
  • Racial revisionism, caste revisited: Whiteness, blackness and Barack Obama – Darryl G. Barthé, Jr.
• Part II: Beyond black and white identity politics
  • Obama mamas and mixed race: Hoping for “A More Perfect Union” – Wei Ming Dariotis and Grace Yoo
  • Is ‘no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama’? Racial authenticity, cognitive flexibility and the racial Rorschach test – Rebecca Chiyoko King O’Riain
  • Mixed race kin-aesthetics in the Age of Obama – Wei Ming Dariotis
  • Mutt like me: Barack Obama and the mixed race experience in historical perspective – Zebulon Miletsky
• Part III: The battle for a new American majority
  • A different kind of blackness: The question of Obama’s blackness and intraracial variation among African Americans – Robert Keith Collins
  • Obama and race in the recessionary period of the colorblind era – Kathleen Odel Korgen and David L. Brunsma
  • Barack Obama and the rise to power: Emmett Till revisited – Andrew Jolivette

Assimilating to a White Identity: The Case of Arab Americans

International Migration Review
Volume 41, Issue 4, December 2007
pages 860–879
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2007.00103.x

Kristine J. Ajrouch, Adjunct Associate Research Professor in the Life Course Development Program
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan

Amaney Jamal, Associate Professor of Politics
Princeton University

Racial identity is one of the primary means by which immigrants assimilate to the United States. Drawing from the tenets of segmented assimilation, this study examines how the ethnic traits of immigrant status, national origin, religious affiliation, and Arab Americaness contribute to the announcement of a white racial identity using a regionally representative sample of Arab Americans. Results illustrate that those who were Lebanese/Syrian or Christian, and those who felt that the term “Arab American” does not describe them, were more likely to identify as white. In addition, among those who affirmed that the pan-ethnic term “Arab American” does describe them, results illustrated that strongly held feelings about being Arab American and associated actions were also linked with a higher likelihood of identifying as white. Findings point to different patterns of assimilation among Arab Americans. Some segments of Arab Americans appear to report both strong ethnic and white identities, while others report a strong white identity, yet distance themselves from the pan-ethnic “Arab American” label.

Read or purchase the article here.

New Geographic Categories Listings for MixedRaceStudies.org

2012-03-10

Steven F. Riley

Over the next few days, I will be removing several frequently used geographic tags (indexed items) and converting them into categories (which are listed on the right-hand side).  The current tags (that will be placed under the parent tag United States) are: Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas. South Africa will be placed under Africa. The last tag, Mexico will be placed under Caribbean/Latin America.

Thanks again to Dr. G. Reginald Daniel for letting me flush out my ideas with him.

Métis identity matters

Winnipeg Free Press
2011-02-09

Editorial

The question of Métis identity has befuddled Canadians, governments and the courts ever since Louis Riel occupied Upper Fort Garry in 1869 and established a provisional government. Just who were these troublemakers, who had their own language, customs and practices, and who now claimed territorial rights?

Well, they weren’t First Nations and they weren’t Europeans, and they weren’t merely “half-breeds,” but a relatively new nation born in the fur-trading culture of 18th-century North America.

That was probably good enough, as definitions go, until 1982 when the Canadian Constitution guaranteed legal rights to aboriginal peoples, including the Métis, but left it to the courts to sort out those rights. Obviously, if they had rights, whatever those rights were, it mattered who and what was a Métis…

Read the entire editorial here.

Exploring Prejudice, Miscegenation, and Slavery’s Consequences in Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 1, Issue 1, Article 3 (2011)
5 pages

Steven Watson
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia

This research paper analyzes Mark Twain’s use of racist speech and racial stereotypes in his novel Pudd’nhead Wilson. Twain has often been criticized for his seemingly inflammatory language. However, a close reading of the text, supplemented by research in several anthologies of critical essays, reveals that Twain was actually interested in social justice. This is evident in his portrayal of Roxana as a sympathetic character who is victimized by white racist society in Dawson’s Landing, Mississippi during the time of slavery. In the final analysis, Twain’s writing was a product of the time period during which he wrote. This knowledge helps students understand the reasons behind Twain’s word choices, characterization, and portrayal of race.

In his novel Puddn’head Wilson, Mark Twain uses racist speech and ideology to examine slavery’s consequences and make a plea for the elevation of the black race. Roxana, the true protagonist and an obviously sympathetic character, appears to be a white supremacist. This is a logical contradiction. It is one of many contradictions that lend the book its complexity and make it challenging to interpret. Roxana has a dual nature in more ways than one. She is smart yet always loses. She is committed to her own survival while being filled with self-loathing. She is free and relishes her freedom, yet can be bought and sold at any time.

The basic plot of Pudd’nhead Wilson involves Roxana, a house slave of Percy Driscoll living in Dawson’s Landing, Missouri. She gives birth to a child on the same day that Driscoll’s wife does. Fearing her child will be sold down the river, Roxana switches the two babies in their cribs so that her son will be raised as Driscoll’s son and heir. She is able to do this because both she and her son are of mixed race and can pass for white (Twain 15). When the children become adults, one is accused of murder. Only the title character, a disgraced young lawyer, is able to sort out the identities and identify the murderer…

Read the entire article here.

Race and American Indian Tribal Nationhood

February 2009
44 pages

Matthew L. M. Fletcher, Professor of Law & Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center
Michigan State University

Forthcoming in a 2011 University of Wyoming Law Review issue.

American Indian tribes and nations are at a crossroads. One on hand, many tribes like the Cherokee Nation—mired in the politics and law of disenfranchising the Cherokee Freedmen—continue to hold to a citizenry based in race and ancestry. Federal Indian law tends to protect, and encourage, even the worst abuses of this regime. The United States long has adopted Indian blood quantum as a proxy for tribal citizenship, creating unfortunate paradoxes for Indian tribes and their citizens. For example, the Supreme Court just a few days ago in Carcieri v. Salazar held against an Indian tribe in Rhode Island on an important land case, perhaps, because the tribe’s citizens did not have significant blood quantum collectively.

But in most other cases, the Court is skeptical of tribal government authority because tribal citizenship is based at least in part on race. This means for the Court, especially Justice Kennedy, that non-Indians by blood or ancestry can never be citizens of an Indian tribes. And the Court worries that a tribal government seeking to assert jurisdiction over these persons somehow violates the social contract.

I argue, perhaps for the first time, that Indian tribes must move beyond race and ancestry as the single most important means of determining tribal citizenship. It will not be easy for Indian tribes to move beyond race and ancestry, but it is necessary if Indian nations wish to move beyond their status as an afterthought in the American constitutional structure and develop into more complete sovereign nations. I suggest several ways for Indian tribes to alter their citizenship criteria and recommend an incremental solution based on immigration law and policy.

Read the entire paper here.

A Race or a Nation? Cherokee National Identity and the Status of Freedmen’s Descendents

bepress Legal Series
Working Paper 1570
2006-08-17
72 pages

S. Alan Ray, President
Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois

The Cherokee Nation today faces the challenge of determining its citizenship criteria in the context of race. The article focuses on the Cherokee Freedmen. As former slaves of Cherokee citizens, the Freedmen were adopted into the Cherokee Nation after the Civil War pursuant to a treaty with the United States, and given unqualified rights of citizenship. The incorporation of the Freedmen into the tribe was resisted from the start, and now, faced with a decision of the Cherokee Nation’s highest court affirming the descendents’ citizenship rights, the Nation prepares to vote on a constitutional amendment which would impose an Indian “blood quantum” requirement for citizenship. If approved, potentially thousands of African-descended citizens would be eliminated from the tribal registry. In this Article, Professor Ray examines the legal and social history of the Cherokee Freedmen to criticize and reject definitions of Cherokee political identity based on either the federal Dawes Rolls of the allotment era, or notions of “Indian blood.” Both, he argues, are heteronymous authorities for determining tribal citizenship criteria and should be replaced by the critical hermeneutic of indigenous cultural resources. Professor Ray offers a model for constructing tribal citizenship criteria that attempts to deliver ancestry from biology, and law from legal fetishism of the Dawes Rolls. The wise use of sovereignty, he suggests, requires sustained dialogue between Freedmen’s descendents and Cherokees by ancestry, not the “quick fix” of the political process.

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• I. LUCY ALLEN AND THE CHEROKEE FREEDMEN CONTROVERSY
• II. THE FREEDMEN CONTROVERSY AS A CRISIS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
  • A. A Race or a Nation? Identity by Blood or Base Roll
  • B. Cherokee Identity: Legal Definitions and their Limits
    • 1. Collective Definitions: The Cherokee Nation
    • 2. Individual Definitions: Citizenship in the Cherokee Nation
    • 3. The Limits of Legal Definitions of Citizenship
  • C. Cherokee Identity: Biological Definitions and their Limits
    • 1. The Construction of the “Red” Race
    • 2. The Construction of “Black” by “Red”
    • 3. Cherokee Slavery and Cherokee Nation
    • 4. The Limits of Biological Definitions of Citizenship
  • D. From Biology to Ancestry, From Legal Fetishism to Law
• III. RADICAL INDIGENISM AS A RESOURCE FOR RESOLVING THE FREEDMEN CONTROVERSY
  • A. Foundational Commitments
  • B. Assumptions of the Model
    • 1. Role of Practical Knowledge
    • 2. Relationship to Spiritual Heritage
    • 3. Effective History of Colonization
  • C. Critical Hermeneutics of Ancestry and Reciprocity
    • 1. Relationship to Ancestry
    • 2. Responsibility to Reciprocity
• CONCLUSION

Read the entire paper here.

Blood Quantum, Race, and Identity in Indian Country

January 2011
32 pages

Sarah Montana Hart, Judicial Clerk
Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby
Federal District Court for the District of Montana

This article discusses how blood quantum laws affect racism and other relations between Indian nations and the United States.

1. Introduction

Throughout the history of our country, different levels of “blood quantum” have been required to achieve different levels of status – one drop here, one-half there, and so on. In this way, “[o]ur propensity to sort people into categories has, over the course of history, contributed to immense human suffering.” Depending on the group, its political clout, and the monetary resources at stake, different lines are drawn around or through a group, and only enough “blood” will get you across those different lines. For example, one drop of “black” blood (aka anyone black in your family tree) was enough to make you a member of the “negro” group. However, it took anywhere from one-fourth to one-half “Indian” blood (an Indian parent or a grandparent) to get you into the “Indian” group. In this way, blood quantum has been used to define the boundaries of groups throughout our history.

A closer examination of the history of Indian blood quantum shows, however, that sometimes this boundary drawing was completely arbitrary, based on nothing more than an individual’s appearance. Sometimes the determination of insider/outsider status was also based on the property interest of the powerful class (read: whites). Despite the dubious history of blood quantification, however, the mechanism is still used today by many Indian tribes to determine insider or outsider status. Blood quantum has been adopted by the tribes to determine, for their own purposes, who is considered an Indian and who is not. Thus, blood quantum has been used by tribes to decide tribal membership.

Adoption of blood quantum rules by Indians themselves would be troubling enough, given the imperial and arbitrary history of their early implementation by the U.S. government. What is even more troubling, however, is that even today, blood quantum is used to determine who gets valuable resources – land, money, and preference. Those who are determined, by their blood quantum, to be “Indian” enough are given rights to land, natural recourses, per capita payments, and a number of other valuable assets.

In the United States, however, we have developed a very strong belief in equal protection: no one should be deprived of anything, or get anything extra, based only on the color of their skin, their racial heritage, or their affiliation with a certain group. We take this equality very seriously; people died to make sure that could happen. And yet, Indian tribes today are determining that one tribal member gets a certain amount of government money because they have the right “blood quantum,” while depriving someone who does not have that same “blood quantum” of getting an equal amount of money. To many people, tribal members or otherwise, this determination seems suspect. Given the history of our country, and our tradition of equal protection, should we be suspect of any rule that gives an individual anything on the basis of race alone?

The United States Supreme Court has said, however, that “Indian” is not a racial category. It has determined that Indian blood quantum is a political, rather than a racial determination, and therefore no one is getting anything extra, or being denied anything, based on their race. The Court has carved out Indian blood quantum rules from regular equal protection analysis, and created a troubling legal fiction. By insisting that “Indians” are political, rather than racial beings, the Court ignores both the history and the reality of tribal membership.

This paper argues that this legal fiction is not only absurd, but harmful to Indian interests. Blood quantum is a suspect classification that should be subject to normal equal protection analysis. Part Two of this paper discusses the intellectual concept of “blood quantum” and defines it in the abstract. This discussion and definition show how easily blood quantum rules can be used as arbitrary political tools. Part Three puts this abstract definition into actual historical contexts and shows how Indian blood quantum rules came to exist. The history shows that the rules were based on a disturbing historical precedent, and implemented by the U.S. government with the specific intention of limiting the number of “Indians” who were eligible for land grants. The history also makes it clear that who was determined “Indian” and who was not was the product of a split-second, racial determination by random government officials during a chaotic enrollment process. Part Four shows how, despite the dubious history of blood quantum rules, tribes have increasingly used them to determine tribal membership. Part Five discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court continues to insist that “Indian” is not a racial category, but a political one. The section explains why, in the light of the history and the practical use of blood quantum by tribes today, this is a complete legal fiction.

Part Six discusses why the continued use of blood quantum rules should matter, based on an equal protection analysis. The section explains that maintaining a legal fiction (that “Indian” is not a racial category), actually harms Indian interests, and promotes racism rather than understanding. While blood quantum rules are racial, and should be subject to strict scrutiny, this section also discusses arguments that could be used to overcome that judicial hurdle. The conclusion, in Part Seven, reiterates that discussion about Indian identity, and the benefits or preferences that one can receive as an Indian, should be candidly one of racial distinction. This discussion should also include a justification of policies specifically tailored to advance a compelling tribal and governmental interest in maintaining a trust relationship and righting historical wrongs. If that conversation can occur openly, the racist idea that Indians get special treatment or something for nothing, is addressed head on, and justified through recognizable equal protection standards. This is a far more productive discussion than side-stepping the issue entirely and pretending that race is not a factor in the equation…

Read the entire paper here.