Mixed Race Studies

On This Day: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander

Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement
University of North Carolina
2012-12-05

Alison Shay

On December 5, 1925—87 years ago today—the jury in the annulment trial Rhinelander v. Rhinelander found in favor of a mixed-race woman sued for marriage annulment by her white husband.

Leonard Kip Rhinelander, a wealthy white society man, pursued and in 1924 married Alice Jones, a working class woman with British parents—one white, the other of mixed ethnicity. Only one month after their marriage, Leonard sued to annul the marriage, claiming that Alice had misrepresented her racial background.

Leonard’s family had objected to the couple’s relationship throughout their courtship, but had failed to break them up. By marrying Alice, Leonard caused her to be the first African American woman listed in The Social Register...

…In Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness (UNC Press 2009), Elizabeth Smith-Pryor argues that the Rhinelander trial encapsulated the tremendous anxieties over racial passing, class slippage, and black migration in the northern United States during this era.

Other books about the trial include Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family (Yale University Press, forthcoming in 2013) and Heidi Ardizzone’s Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White (Norton 2002)…

Read the entire article here.

Is There Colorism on the Campaign Trail?

The Root
2012-12-13

Keli Goff, Political Correspondent

Experts weighed in on when skin tone matters in politics and society.

(The Root) — The latest installment of CNN’s docuseries Black in America asked the question “Who Is Black in America?” and examined the issue of colorism: bias based not just on race but also on actual skin color. The news special cited well-documented research confirming that lighter-skinned immigrants earn more than their darker-skinned counterparts. But one topic the special did not explore is whether skin-color bias has a tangible impact on American politics, particularly at the national level.

Are Americans more likely to vote for a minority candidate who is lighter-skinned? The experts we spoke with said it appears so.

David A. Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank specializing in research relating to blacks, said that the numbers speak for themselves. “You can’t think of many [black politicians] who are very dark,” he noted.

To his point, most elected (as opposed to appointed) black American politicians who have broken a significant barrier have either been extremely light-skinned or part white. Examples include Edward Brooke, the first black senator to be popularly elected; Adam Clayton Powell Jr., New York’s first black congressman; Douglas Wilder, the first black governor in the U.S.; and David Dinkins, New York’s first black mayor. Then, of course, there is President Barack Obama, who is not as light as the others, but is also not dark — and whom most Americans are aware is of biracial parentage…

…In an interview with The Root, Yaba Blay, founder of the “(1)ne Drop” project and a consulting producer on “Who Is Black in America?” explained, “In slavery, white ancestry communicated, through skin color, one’s approximation to whiteness at a time when whiteness was equated with being human, and blackness was equated with chattel. So looking white was a saving grace. [It meant] you are more human, civilized, smarter — all the more positive associations people assign to whiteness. So when we look at the larger society and the ability to see a black person as a potential leader, I think it’s absolutely connected to colorism in that historical framework.”…

…The intersection of skin color and class status among black Americans began during slavery. As explained in the textbook Black Slave Owners in Charleston, when black female slaves would give birth to children fathered by their white slave owners, some slave owners would leave property or other forms of inheritance to their children, and some would bestow freedom upon them, too. This created a class of “free persons of color” who were more likely to be fair-skinned and have some measure of economic stability, upward mobility and education…

Read the entire article here.

Olsen: A multiracial, multiethnic future

Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City, Utah
2012-12-28

Erica Olsen

Recent political analysis has focused on the decline of the white vote, and a corresponding rise in the number of minority voters. According to exit polls in November, President Barack Obama won the votes of about 93 percent of African Americans, 71 percent of Hispanics (crucial to his victory in Colorado) and 73 percent of Asians. Mitt Romney took 59 percent of the white vote.

Looking at these numbers, you’d think all voters fit neatly into one — and only one — racial or ethnic category. Pretty strange, considering that the guy who got re-elected doesn’t fit neatly into one category himself. Black father, white mother: Obama may identify as African American, but it doesn’t take Nate Silver to do the math and conclude that our president is biracial…

…Mixed-race identities defy easy matching with political attitudes. In a world of Democrats and Republicans, blue states and red, mixed identities remind us that we’re all individuals, with beliefs that are mixed, as well.

As a fiction writer, identities — and the stories we tell about ourselves — grab me more than overtly political issues. Who is a Westerner? With my mixed heritage and newcomer status in the Four Corners, am I one?…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Census Bureau Rethinks The Best Way To Measure Race

National Public Radio
2012-12-27

Corey Dade, National Correspondent, Digital News

Possible revisions to how the decennial census asks questions about race and ethnicity have raised concerns among some groups that any changes could reduce their population count and thus weaken their electoral clout.

The Census Bureau is considering numerous changes to the 2020 survey in an effort to improve the responses of minorities and more accurately classify Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern and multiracial populations.

Potential options include eliminating the “Hispanic origin” question and combining it with the race question, new queries for people of Middle Eastern or North African heritage, and spaces for Asians to list their country of descent. One likely outcome could be an end to the use of “Negro.”

The stakes surrounding population counts are high. Race data collected in the census are used for many purposes, including enforcement of civil rights laws and monitoring of racial disparities in education, health and other areas…

…Broadly, the nation’s demographic shifts underscore the fact that many people, particularly Latinos and immigrants, don’t identify with the American concept of race…

Read the entire article here.