Mixed Race Studies

Staged Bodies: Passing, Performance, and Masquerade in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.
Volume 37, Number 4, Winter 2012
pages 69-91
DOI: 10.1353/mel.2012.0062

Margaret Toth, Assistant Professor of English
Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., claims that “one of the ironies” of the New Negro Movement “is that words, not the tactics of visual representation, were the tools blacks used to assert their self-image” (xliv). While we can point to exceptions that complicate this observation—James Van Der Zee’s photography, Archibald Motley’s paintings, or W. E. B. Du Bois’s photographic collection Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U. S. A. (1900)—Gates identifies an important gap in the history of African American self-imaging. What happens, however, when we open up Gates’s terms to examine how authors using words might simultaneously employ “tactics of visual representation”? These written and visual representational modes are not easily or neatly separated. In fact, early African American literature regularly combined them. The first African American novelists creatively integrated these methods of representation in their texts, strategically dismantling racist visual iconography by developing an ocular language that invited consumers of their fiction not just to read their words but also to see the images those words conjured. This practice became even more prevalent during the New Negro Movement, particularly in passing novels that sought to embody mixed-race characters for socio-political purposes. This essay thus revises Gates’s claim that “until the 1920s there was virtually no black counterpoint to the hegemony of racist visual images that dominated the popular arts and more subtly infiltrated the fine arts” (xliv). Authors of the written word were developing a specific language, a visual discourse that sought to topple the hegemony Gates describes.

Visual discourse builds on the practice of “word painting” that dominated US realist writing by the turn of the twentieth century. Edith Wharton identifies word painting as highly descriptive language that “help[s] to make [a character] bodily visible” (485). While not the only tool available for “conferring visibility” to “the reader’s mind” (484), the artist’s brush, when applied to the written page, aided realists who sought to convey an “acute visibility which makes the [reader’s] heart throb and the marrow tingle at the flesh-and-blood aliveness” of literary characters (481). Word painting facilitates the textual or readerly gaze; it encourages the reader to picture or see a character.

Authors deploying visual discourse certainly rely on evocative word painting, but they push beyond descriptive language into a more complex discursive register. They emphasize ocularity by consciously staging their descriptions. For example, when William Wells Brown provides his first portrait of the eponymous heroine in Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter (1853)—describing her creamy skin, “her long black wavy hair done up in the neatest manner; her form tall and graceful” (47)—he embeds it within a framework that underscores the act of looking. Specifically, Clotel is on the auction block, being inspected by a crowd of potential buyers. In this passage, which the narrator explicitly refers to as a “scene” (48), the straightforward description of Clotel, or what Wharton calls the “vivid picturing” (485) of a character, functions within a layered linguistic system that both relies on and foregrounds the mediated gaze. Fictional characters within the novel look at Clotel, and readers look along with them.

Moreover, authors exploiting visual discourse often allude to—and sometimes rework the codes of—traditional visual and performing arts such as painting and theater, photography, and, by the early twentieth century, silent film. Another early text, Julia C. Collins’s The Curse of Caste; Or The Slave Bride (1865), provides an informative illustration of how this practice functions to generate the textual gaze. In the ekphrastic veiled portrait scenes of the novel, readers behold Richard rendered as art: his haunting face dominates the vivid oil painting, which appears “lifelike and breathing” (57). At the same time, readers are compelled to see the similarities between Richard and his mixed-race daughter Claire, who gazes at the image’s “dark, noble beauty, with quivering lips and flushed cheeks”; as the narrator puts it, the “two…

Dr. Yaba Blay Explores ‘One-Drop’ Rule [VIDEO]

NewsOne: For Black America
2012-12-14

Jeff Mays

Remember when President Barack Obama won in 2008 and pundits started asking if the United States was post-racial because we had a Black man in the White House?
 
Well, people like Dr. Yaba Blay (pictured) knew better.
 
Blay, an assistant teaching professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University, explores Black racial identity and the politics of skin color with her creative and thought-provoking (1)ne Drop project.
 
The one-drop rule refers to the centuries-old rule that deemed anyone with any sort of African heritage to be Black, even if you are of mixed heritage. It’s the idea that one drop of Black blood makes you Black. The rule is still alive and well today, which has been discussed by people of mixed heritage like Obama and Halle Berry.
 
And it’s an issue we play out with one another. Four hundred years after Blacks were first brought to this country as slaves, it wasn’t uncommon for African Americans to discriminate against one another based on the color of their complexions. Just look at the complexions of women considered to be attractive in the media productions of African Americans. How many of our politicians are dark-skinned?
 
“Many of us would like to believe that we have a Black President and it’s how many years since enslavement and that we’ve come a long way and these things don’t matter,” said Blay…

Read the entire article here.

Demographic, residential, and socioeconomic effects on the distribution of nineteenth-century African-American stature

Journal of Population Economics
Volume 24, Issue 4 (October 2011)
pages 1471-1491
DOI: 10.1007/s00148-010-0324-x

Scott Alan Carson, Professor of Economics
The University of Texas of the Permian Basin

Nineteenth-century mulattos were taller than their darker-colored African-American counterparts. However, traditional explanations that attribute the mulatto stature advantage to only socioeconomic factors are yet to tie taller mulatto statures to observable phenomenon. Vitamin D production may also explain part of the nineteenth-century mulatto–black stature differential. Mulattos were taller than darker-pigmented blacks across the stature distribution, and higher melanin concentrations in darker black stratum corneums reduced the amount of vitamin D synthesized. The interaction with sunlight in darker-complexioned blacks was associated with larger stature returns for darker-complexioned blacks than their mulatto counterparts.

Read the entire article here.

Association of Contextual Factors with Drug Use and Binge Drinking among White, Native American, and Mixed-Race Adolescents in the General Population

Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Volume 41, Issue 11 (November 2012)
pages 1426-1441
DOI: 10.1007/s10964-012-9789-0

Hsing-Jung Chen
Department of Social Work
Fu-Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

Sundari Balan, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Department of Psychiatry
Washington University in St. Louis

Rumi Kato Price, Research Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Washington University in St. Louis

Large-scale surveys have shown elevated risk for many indicators of substance abuse among Native American and Mixed-Race adolescents compared to other minority groups in the United States. This study examined underlying contextual factors associated with substance abuse among a nationally representative sample of White, Native American, and Mixed-Race adolescents 12–17 years of age, using combined datasets from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH 2006–2009, N = 46,675, 48.77% female). Native American adolescents displayed the highest rate of past-month binge drinking and past-year illicit drug use (14.06 and 30.91%, respectively). Results of a logistic regression that included seven predictors of social bonding, individual views of substance use, and delinquent peer affiliations showed that friendships with delinquent peers and negative views of substance use were associated significantly with both substance abuse outcomes among White and Mixed-Race adolescents and, to a lesser extent, Native American adolescents. The association of parental disapproval with binge drinking was stronger for White than for Native American adolescents. Greater attention to specific measures reflecting racial groups’ contextual and historical differences may be needed to delineate mechanisms that discourage substance abuse among at-risk minority adolescent populations.

Read the entire article here.

The Life Narrative of a Mixed-Race Man in Recovery from Addiction: A Case-Based Psychosocial Approach to Researching Drugs, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity

Journal of Social Work Practice: Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community
Published online: 2012-12-06
DOI: 10.1080/02650533.2012.745841

Alastair Roy, Senior Lecturer
Psychosocial Research Unit, School of Social Work
University of Central Lancashire

This paper explores the use of a psychosocial approach to researching drugs, race and ethnicity. It produces an analysis of interviews with Bobby, a mixed-race man in recovery from addiction. Sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives are brought to bear on the data in order to consider the character of Bobby’s opportunities, identifications, crises and resolutions. Despite the affective components of the wider discourse on drugs and race, the majority of previous research on the subject has focused on the production of rational explanations produced within objectivist epistemological frames. In contrast, the methods used in this project seek an explicit engagement with the irrational and unconscious aspects of researching these subjects. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of psychosocially oriented narrative methods in this field.

Read or purchase the article here.

So while it is important to understand self-identification in thinking about race and ethnicity, people cannot simply choose an identity of their own making, nor can they escape the views and prejudices in others in navigating the world.

Dr. Omar Khan, “Who are we? Census 2011 reports on ethnicity in the UK,” Runnymede Trust: Intelligence for a multi-ethnic Britain, (December 11, 2012). http://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/188/359/Who-are-we-Census-2011-reports-on-ethnicity-in-the-UK.html

That Barack Obama self-identifies as African American rather than ‘Mixed’ has probably little to do with a rejection of his mother’s heritage or a radical kind of separatist politics. Rather, Obama’s identity is informed by his social experience, and the reality of racism is evidenced not simply in his experiences in the 1970s or 1980s, but in the continued focus on his place of birth and by the fact that over 90% of White American voters in Mississippi and Alabama voted for his opponent.

Dr. Omar Khan, “Who are we? Census 2011 reports on ethnicity in the UK,” Runnymede Trust: Intelligence for a multi-ethnic Britain, (December 11, 2012). http://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/188/359/Who-are-we-Census-2011-reports-on-ethnicity-in-the-UK.html

Britain is now a better place to grow up mixed race. But don’t celebrate yet

The Guardian
2012-12-15

Lanre Bakare, The Guide’s Previews Editor

Prejudices have receded significantly in the past 20 years, but a report out this week shows racist attitudes remain

Growing up as a mixed race child, with a mother from Leeds and a father from Nigeria, my Bradford childhood certainly wasn’t trouble-free. But I had the kind of relatives to see me through any tricky moments. As well as a fantastic, loving family on my mother’s side, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a strong Nigerian community, focused around a friendship club my father founded, which acted as a focal point for a small but vibrant community.

With my dad and his mates I would hear Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa spoken; I’d listen to the music of Fela, Shina Peters and Ayinla Kollington, and get to taste jollof rice, eba, moinmoin and other Nigerian cuisine. This understanding and engagement with the other side of my ancestry and culture was vital to me. It gave me confidence to fall back on when people would question who I was. Both my parents instilled the idea in me that being different was a huge positive. It was something special, that should be celebrated and cherished rather than hidden or denied.

Not everyone is so lucky, of course. But this week a report released in the wake of the 2011 census threw fresh light on mixed race relationships in the UK and the public’s perception of them. And it seemed to bring good news. The census revealed there are a million people who identify as mixed race. British Future, the thinktank that produced the report (titled The Melting Pot Generation – How Britain Became More Relaxed About Race), found that 15% of the public have a problem with these relationships, compared to 50% in the 80s and 40% in the 90s.

The so-called Jessica Ennis Generation (those born in the 80s and 90s, like me) was portrayed as more tolerant of, and essentially not bothered by, mixed race families…

Read the entire article here.

Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America [Eisenberg Review]

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 36, Issue 5 (May 2013)
pages 923-925
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.748214

Martin Eisenberg
Department of Urban Studies
Queens College, City University of New York

Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver and Tract Burch. Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2012. xii + 260 pp.

In this book. Hochschild, Weaver and Burch contend that the USA is on the cusp of a democratic transformation of its racial order On the basis of survey data and demographic analyses, they are struck by the increasing heterogeneity and interactions across differences that have developed over the last two decades. Whether a democratic transformation occurs depends upon new policies that make it possible to overcome the obstacles that arc part of the old racial order. There are no certainties, but the authors arc optimistic that major “ethno-racial” boundaries will continue to blur in the near future.

The authors believe that the social forces generating the possibility of change in the racial order are immigration, multiraiialism, genomics, and the current, equalitarian cohort of young adults, all interacting with one another, and underlain by demographic and legal changes. Immigration and multiracialism contribute to blurring the traditional categories of racial difference. Nearly 50 million Latino, Caribbean Asian and African immigrants have settled in the USA since 1970. Some immigrant groups bring with them their own racial categories, and the children of some of these groups intermarry and have children at relatively high rates with whites. The authors see multiracialism as a political movement, and as a public identity. Some Americans have succeeded in asserting the legal right to identify as ‘multiracial’, not just as a single race on the US Census and other official documents. Also, multiracialism generates variations in how people identify in different situations. And, surveys show that young adults possess more democratic attitudes and interact across difference with more frequency, in ways less governed by stereotypes, and without the conflicts of the past in their collective memories.

According to the authors, genomics is the branch of genetics that studies organisms in terms of full DNA sequences. Its goal is mainly medical to discover genes and genomic interactions that cause disease and to develop effective medications. Scientists have confirmed that all human beings share 99.9% of their genetic makeup: that about 94%. of all physical variation lies within the ‘so-called’ racial groups; and that there is much overlapping of genes and phenotypes in neighbouring populations. Yet, despite the overlapping and blurring of boundaries around groups, some concepts like race or ethnicity or bio-geographic ancestry remain useful for genomic purposes to designate clusters of genes. Genomic science answers the question, ‘what is race?’ ambiguously. It thoroughly undermines the older conception of a few biologically distinct and internally homogeneous races. But it also undermines the claim that race, defined genetically, is merely arbitrary. Genomically, the authors write, races are simultaneously real, arbitrary, heterogeneous, and blurred, so it is not surprising that individual classifications are intricate and confused. And, it will continue that way until it becomes possible lo avoid racial classifications by testing for alleles and developing treatments for the genetic components of diseases among individuals. Until those procedures are developed, the authors predict continued contentiousness among biological scientists on how to conceptualize race…

Read or purchase the review here.

Mixed race children and young people are individual nation states. They defy classification

The Independent
2012-12-012

Shyama Perea

This week we learned that the number of mixed race people in the UK has doubled to 1.2 million. I’m adding my children to the arsenal of weapons for change

n the late 1940s, the Eurasian poet Cedric Dover wrote a poem about his racial identity. Entitled The Brown Phoenix, it includes the lines: I am tomorrow’s man/ Offering to share/Love, and the difficult quest,/In the emerging plan.

How fitting that in the week that a post-war musical, Privates on Parade, opened with a Eurasian love interest—“Welsh Bombay”—rejected on the grounds of her colour, we learn that in the 2011 census, the number of mixed-race people in the UK has doubled to 1.2 million. On the same day, the On the same day, the think-tank British Future reported that only 15 per cent of people oppose mixed-race relationships. Among the under-25s, that drops to under 5 per cent. British Future calls it The Melting Pot Generation. The Sun proudly declared: “We Are the World.”

Should we be surprised by this after a summer of sporting magic in which so many British Olympians, including the poster girl Jessica Ennis, were golden-hued – an event masterminded by Lord Coe whose father is white English and mother Indian? London has a mayor with a mixed-race wife. Half the X Factor contestants, from Leona Lewis to Marvin and Aston from JLS and this year’s Jahmene Douglas, have black fathers and white mothers. The one thing – possibly the only thing –that Rupert Murdoch and Vince Cable have in common is mixed-race children…

Read the entire article here.