Mixed Race Studies

Review: The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing

The College Dropout: Book blog and occasional wisdom on paleo, making money, and life
2013-10-10

Charles Franklin

The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing by Greg Carter

• My rating: 4 of 5 stars
• Pros: Historical scholarship, Intriguing content, Great historical insight
• Cons: Some parts remind me of college history textbook (though this book is a little more interesting!)

Carter’s book delves into a topic that American history and society has a hard time understanding racial mixing. In this book, he confronts our (well most of us) limited view of the history of people of mixed race in the United States. It was not all tragic as commonly depicted, nor was it all optimistic (we have only to point to miscegenation laws for that), but it was as complicated as all human relations tend to be. Carter explores the complexity of race both in individuals and in society as a whole…

Read the entire review here.

My racial composition and my position in the world are realities which I alone may determine… I do not expect to be told what I should consider myself to be.

—Jean Toomer to his publisher Horace Liveright (September 5, 1923)

Continuing this discussion of terminology, I prefer mixed race over multiracial, to distance myself from those who wanted to create a new category for racially mixed people. Coverage of the 2000 census gave the impression that all within the Multiracial Movement wanted this. In reality, most wanted some useful identifier of mixed heritage, and the decision to implement multiple checking was satisfactory to them. The faction that did want a new category tended to believe that there was a true, singular, multiracial consciousness that united racially mixed people across race, class, gender, and geography. Because mixed-race experiences are so varied, I reject this notion. Similarly, I avoid labels that connote specific configurations of mixing, for example, hapa or biracial. The former hails from the native Hawaiian term hapa haole and often refers to mixed Asian and white individuals. It is a term popular with racially mixed Asian Americans to express pride in their mixture. At the hands of scholars of mixed race, Multiracial Movement activists, and journalists, the latter term often refers to mixed black and white individuals. Although the word is indeterminate, its use reinforces the notion that race in the United States is only about blacks and whites.

Greg Carter, The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing, (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 9.

What’s History Got to Do with It? Evolving Classifications of Race

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Othmer Library
Saturday, 2014-01-25, 15:00-18:00 EST (Local Time)

Part Three of the reading series Quantifying Bloodlines

• How did historical distinctions emerge, such as: mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, creole, 1/16th Native American…?
• What is the one-drop rule?
• Why do we talk about our backgrounds, bloodlines, ethnic and racial make-ups in terms of percentages and fractions?
• Does race-mixing mean racial harmony?
• Do people still “pass” to blend in in order to be accepted?

Join in an engaging discussion about the formation of racial classifications, privilege and pedigree. As a focus, we will read and review a historical novel, based on the real-life family history of Creole society in Central Louisiana. Cane River by Lalita Tademy describes this family and society as experienced through more than four generations of women’s lives.

Please plan to have read the book prior to our meeting.

Session is limited to 15 participants. Active participation is key. 

This reading and discussion group is co-sponsored by MixedRaceStudies.org

For more information, click here.

What’s Purity Got to Do with It? Searching Family History and Genealogy

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Othmer Library
Saturday, 2013-12-07, 15:00-18:00 EST (Local Time)

Part Two of the reading series Quantifying Bloodlines

How do stories help us to understand the ways in which we dissect lineage?

Bring in your own family tree, genealogical research, family photos, or family name origins, while we take a close look at The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo.  Short multi-media pieces will be screened detailing more about Joe Mozingo’s search for family history through a surname that both haunts, confuses and intrigues him, and unlocks hidden histories about migration and genealogy.

If you are just beginning a search for your family history or have searched for many years, this discussion session with Jennifer Scott, anthropologist and public historian at the New School, will help to illuminate the discovery process about lineage, identity and race.

Please plan to have read the book prior to our meeting.

Session is limited to 15 participants. Active participation is key.

This reading and discussion group is co-sponsored by MixedRaceStudies.org

For more information, click here.

Black Seminoles and The Underground Railroad

AC Bilbrew Library
150 E. El Segundo Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90061
310-538-3350
Saturday, 2013-11-23, 14:30 PST (Local Time)

Phil Wilkes Fixico

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month by exploring the history of free Blacks and fugitive slaves who escaped to Florida between the 1600s and 1800s, forging alliances with the Seminole Nation and establishing their own autonomous communities and unique culture.

Phil Wilkes “Pompey” Fixico is a Seminole Maroon descendant , member of the L.A. chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers and Dept. of Interior/National Park Service/ National Underground Railroad/ Network to Freedom Private-Sector Partner (Semiroon Historical Society). He is also the honorary spokesman for John Horse Band of the Texas Seminoles.

For more information, click here.