Mixed Race Studies

Celebrating Afro-Venezuelan Heritage

Global Exchange
Reality Tour Blog
2013-12-13

The following post is written by Reality Tours communications intern William Jones Jr as he explores Afro-Venezuelan identity historically and in its current context. Visit Venezuela on a Reality Tour to learn more about the struggles, contributions, and successes of Afro-Venezuelans.

History and Legacy

Under the leadership of the late President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has made strides toward combating the historical legacy of racism and recognizing the national importance of African heritage, promoting social inclusion and respect for Afro-Venezuelans. Among them is the official celebration of the Month of Africa in May and Day of Afro-Venezuelans on May 10.

Although Abolition occurred in 1854, freedom did not bring equality. Venezuela, like many other Latin American countries, used the idea of the mestizo born of European, Indigenous, and African blood, to uphold a myth of racial democracy that denied rampant discrimination on the basis of skin color and African identity on paper.  In reality African cultural traditions remained marginalized and European traditions were promoted. Blacks remained at the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy…

Read the entire article here.

Veteran Served as a White, Convicted of Miscegenation

The Milwaukee Journal
Monday, 1948-12-20
page 20, columns 2 & 3

Davis Knight —AP Wirephoto

Ellisville, Miss.—(AP)—A young veteran who served in the navy as a white man and later married a white woman has been convicted of miscegenation and sentenced to five years in prison.

Dist. Atty Paul Swartzfager said the conviction Saturday of 23 year old Davis Knight was believed to be the first under the state’s miscegenation law, in force since reconstruction days. The law forbids marriage or cohabitation between white persons and those with at least one-eighth Negro or Mongolian blood. Conviction automatically cancels the marriage.

Knight whose marriage was performed in April, 1946, by the mayor of this south Mississippi town of 3,000, filed notice of appeal. Knight was arrested when “people started talking” and told his employer in Laurel that he was a Negro. Quitman Ross, his attorney, explained.

The main issue in the trial was the ancestry of Knight’s great-grand-mother, who was known as Rachel and who lived on the plantation of Capt. Newt Knight a picturesque character in Mississippi history. Rachel the state contended, was a Negro, and witnesses were introduced who testified that she and her children were known as Negroes. Among these witnesses was Tom Knight, 89 year old son of Capt. Knight who said that the young navy veteran’s grandfather was a son of Rachel.

Defense witnesses testified that they believed Rachel was a Cherokee Indian.

Swartzfager said no charges were planned against the white woman who married Knight under the impression that he was of all white blood.

Knight was drafted as a white, man at Camp Shelby in 1943 and his discharge papers. Swartzfager said, listed him as white.

Note from Steven F. Riley: For more about the Knight family, please read Victoria E. Bynum’s superb monograph, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War.

Professor shifts the lens on race through portraiture, new book

FIU News
Florida International University
2014-01-02

Evelyn Perez

What is blackness? What does it mean to be black? Is blackness a matter of biology or consciousness? Who and what determine who is black and who is not?

A new book by Yaba Blay, co-director of the Africana Studies Program at Drexel University, and Noelle Théard MA’10, adjunct professor in the FIU African and African Diaspora Studies Program, explores these questions and challenges society’s narrow perception of blackness and what it looks like. Titled (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, its name is a reference to the “one-drop rule” from the early 20th century, meaning that anyone with 1/32 of “African black blood” was black.

“Although we live in a ‘post-racial’ society with a president of mixed-race ancestry and a lot of strides have been made since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, we still live in a society where issues of race and racial identity are salient,” Théard said. “There is a tendency for folks to not want to have conversations pertaining to issues of race…

Read the entire article here.

DNA Double Take

The New York Times
2013-09-16

Carl Zimmer

From biology class to “C.S.I.,” we are told again and again that our genome is at the heart of our identity. Read the sequences in the chromosomes of a single cell, and learn everything about a person’s genetic information — or, as 23andme, a prominent genetic testing company, says on its Web site, “The more you know about your DNA, the more you know about yourself.”

But scientists are discovering that — to a surprising degree — we contain genetic multitudes. Not long ago, researchers had thought it was rare for the cells in a single healthy person to differ genetically in a significant way. But scientists are finding that it’s quite common for an individual to have multiple genomes. Some people, for example, have groups of cells with mutations that are not found in the rest of the body. Some have genomes that came from other people…

Read the entire article here.

The Alternative History of 2013: Alt-Weeklies Year in Review

AAN News
Association of Alternative Newsmedia
2013-12-19

Jason Zaragoza

For our first-ever Alt-Weeklies Year in Review, we asked AAN editors and reporters to share the stories they are the most — and least — proud of from the past year. What follows is an edited version of their responses.

…Stephen Segal, Philadelphia Weekly

Philly Weekly produced an awful lot in 2013 that I’m proud of — but if I have to pick one single piece I found most noteworthy, I’ll point to an issue where our staff got out of the way and let the primary source speak for itself. We excerpted as a cover story Prof. Yaba Blay’s provocative new book “One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race,” which presents stunning photographic portraits of variously-hued and multiracial Black Americans alongside essays by those subjects in which they discussed how their specific skin color, and its relationship to their lives, has shaped their unique identities. Just fascinating reading. (And an editorial note: Among other things, I find this story has pushed me into the school of thought that, AP style notwithstanding, “Black” should indeed be a capitalized ethnic term.)…

Read the entire article here.