Mixed Race Studies

Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears

Smithsonian Magazine
November 2015

Edward Ball, Lecturer in English
Yale University

A coffle of slaves being marched from Virginia west into Tennessee, c. 1850. (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia)

Edward Ball is the author of five books of nonfiction and a lecturer in English at Yale University. His book, Slaves in the Family (1998) won the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller.

America’s forgotten migration – the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South

When Delores McQuinn was growing up, her father told her a story about a search for the family’s roots.

He said his own father knew the name of the people who had enslaved their family in Virginia, knew where they lived—in the same house and on the same land—in Hanover County, among the rumpled hills north of Richmond.

“My grandfather went to the folks who had owned our family and asked, ‘Do you have any documentation about our history during the slave days? We would like to see it, if possible.’ The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, ‘Sure, we’ll give it to you.’

“The man went into his house and came back out with some papers in his hands. Now, whether the papers were trivial or actual plantation records, who knows? But he stood in the door, in front of my grandfather, and lit a match to the papers. ‘You want your history?’ he said. ‘Here it is.’ Watching the things burn. ‘Take the ashes and get off my land.’…

…New Orleans, the biggest slave market in the country, had about 50 people-selling companies in the 1840s. Some whites went to the slave auctions for entertainment. Especially for travelers, the markets were a rival to the French Opera House and the Théâtre d’Orléans.

Today in New Orleans, the number of monuments, markers and historic sites that refer in some way to the domestic slave trade is quite small. I make a first estimate: zero.

“No, that’s not true,” says Erin Greenwald, a curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection. “There is one marker on a wall outside a restaurant called Maspero’s. But what it says is wrong. The slave-trade site it mentions, Maspero’s Exchange, was diagonally across the street from the sandwich place.”…

…Developing the exhibit, Greenwald and her team created a database of names of the enslaved who were shipped from the Eastern states to New Orleans. William Waller and his gang, and other hundreds of thousands arriving by foot, did not leave traces in government records. But people who arrived by ship did.

“We studied hundreds of shipping manifests and compiled data on 70,000 individuals. Of course, that is only some.”

In 1820, the number of ships carrying slaves from Eastern ports into New Orleans was 604. In 1827, it was 1,359. In 1835, it was 4,723. Each carried 5 to 50 slaves.

The auction advertisements at the end of the Slave Trail always said, “Virginia and Maryland Negroes.”

“The words ‘Virginia Negroes’ signaled a kind of brand,” Greenwald says. “It meant compliant, gentle and not broken by overwork.

“One thing that is hard to document but impossible to ignore is the ‘fancy trade.’ New Orleans had a niche market. The ‘fancy trade’ meant women sold as forcible sex partners. They were women of mixed race, invariably. So-called mulatresses.”

Isaac Franklin was all over this market. In 1833, he wrote the office back in Virginia about “fancy girls” he had on hand, and about one in particular whom he wanted. “I sold your fancy girl Alice for $800,” Franklin wrote to Rice Ballard, a partner then in Richmond. “There is great demand for fancy maids, [but] I was disappointed in not finding your Charlottes­ville maid that you promised me.” Franklin told the Virginia office to send the “Charlottesville maid” right away by ship. “Will you send her out or shall I charge you $1,100 for her?”

To maximize her price, Franklin might have sold the “Charlottesville maid” at one of the public auctions in the city. “And the auction setting of choice was a place called the St. Louis Hotel,” Greenwald says, “a block from here.”…

Read the entire article here.

Brazil through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics

University of New Mexico Press
October 2015
264 pages
59 halftones
6 x 9 in.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8263-3745-0

Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History
Howard University, Washington, D.C.

In 1858 François-Auguste Biard, a well-known sixty-year-old French artist, arrived in Brazil to explore and depict its jungles and the people who lived there. What did he see and how did he see it? In this book historian Ana Lucia Araujo examines Biard’s Brazil with special attention to what she calls his “tropical romanticism”: a vision of the country with an emphasis on the exotic.

Biard was not only one of the first European artists to encounter and depict native Brazilians, but also one of the first travelers to photograph the rain forest and its inhabitants. His 1862 travelogue Deux années en Brésil includes 180 woodcuts that reveal Brazil’s reliance on slave labor as well as describe the landscape, flora, and fauna, with lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the rain forest. Thoroughly researched, Araujo places Biard’s work in the context of the European travel writing of the time and examines how representations of Brazil through French travelogues contributed and reinforced cultural stereotypes and ideas about race and race relations in Brazil. She further summarizes that similar representations continue and influence perspectives today.

Counseling the Multiracial Population: Couples, Individuals, and Families

Microtraining Associates
2003
01:15:00

Kelley Kenney

Mark Kenney

This film presents the worldview experiences of interracial couples, multiracial individuals, and multiracial families including trans-racial adoptive families. It also makes clear suggestions for action in the interview.

Six live demonstrations showcase typical issues such as concerns and challenges faced by the multiracial population, acceptance and respect by society and family, questions of identity, positive identity development, and navigating cultural worldview differences.

Read the leader guide here.

Just Black?: Multi-Racial Identity

Filmakers Library
1992
00:59:00

Produced by:

Francine Winddance Twine

Jonathan F. Warren

Francisco Ferrandiz

Most of us at one time or other are faced with an official form requiring us to “check” the applicable ethnic designation. What “box” does a person check if his or her parents come from different racial backgrounds?

In this provocative documentary, we meet several articulate young men and women of mixed racial heritage. Each has one black parent, and a white, Asian or Hispanic second parent. They share with us their struggle to establish, acquire and assert a racial identity. Their experiences lead one to question whether there is room in America for a multi-racial identity.

The interviews presented reflect the research of anthropologist Francine Winddance Twine. Her searching questions on dating, family relationships, friendships and childhood experiences reveal a wide range of reactions to having a dual heritage. As these young people speak of their hopes and frustrations, they all reveal the tension of having their multicultural background overlooked and being classified as having one racial identity.

The candor with which these college students reveal themselves makes this compelling viewing for university and general audiences.

Awards

• American Psychological Association, 1993
• Honorable Mention, American Film & Video Festival,1992
• Special Jury Award, National Educational Film & Video Festival, 1992

New Film Shows Misty Copeland’s Journey as a Black Ballerina

NBC News
2015-09-30

Maya Chung

The 2015 Urbanworld Festival closed out on Saturday night with the highly anticipated documentary “A Ballerina’s Tale,” which details Misty Copeland’s journey to become a principal ballerina.

The film festival, founded in 1997, is a five-day event that showcases narrative features, documentaries, short films, and spotlight screenings with the goal of redefining and advancing the impact of the multicultural community in the film world.

“A Ballerina’s Tale” is one film that is making that impact. The documentary gives an in-depth picture of Copeland’s struggles with being black in a predominantly white Ballet world and it chronicles her experience recovering from a leg fracture – one that could’ve stopped her dream of becoming a principal dancer…

…Copeland, 33, beat the odds and became the American Ballet Theatre’s first black female principal dancer in the company’s 75-year history this past June. But, it wasn’t easy and the film makes that clear. She explained that she struggled being a black dancer when she first began in the professional ballet world.

“I’ve never strayed away from being black. I’m biracial but something that my mom constantly said to me growing up in southern California was ‘Yes, you are Italian, you are German, and you are black, but you are going to be viewed by the world as a black woman’,” Copeland said. “I never felt different growing up but when I came into the ballet world as a professional I immediately felt different.”…

Read the entire interview here.

New ‘Hysterical’ Web Series Explores Single Life for 40-Something Women of Color

Chic Rebellion
2015-10-01

Elayne Fluker, Chief Executive Officer

“You know, marriage is hard. I’m not always happy–the shit gets hard.” So goes a line by Rain Pryor to actress Esther Friedman in Friedman’s new web series, Hysterical Historical Hillary–which screens at the Bushwick Film Festival on Saturday, October 3, 2015 in Brooklyn, New York. Friedman plays Hillary, a 40-something woman longing for love in New York City. Having had a successful web series on FunnyorDie.com in 2008 and a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014 that raised $8430, the New York native teamed up with her sixteen-year-old brother Sam Friedman, already an award winning filmmaker, to tell stories of what they call “the not-so-hot topics of human experiences.” And as any singleton in New York knows that if dating in the Big Apple is anything it is certainly an experience!

ChicRebellion.TV caught up with Friedman to chat about meaning of the phrase “hysterical historical, her personal connection to Hillary, if web series have helped even the playing field for women of color who have a story to tell, and why she chose the path less traveled when deciding how to distribute her work…

Read the entire interview here.

Public Symposium — DNA and Indigeneity

Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH)
Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2015-10-22, 12:30-17:30 PDT (Local Time)

On October 22 at 12:30 pm, join us for the DNA and Indigeneity: The Changing Role of Genetics in Indigenous Rights, Tribal Belonging, and Repatriation conference in downtown Vancouver. This event will bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of archaeologists, anthropologists, bioethicists, geneticists, and representatives from Indigenous organizations to explore the promise and perils of using biological and genetic information to inform understandings of identity. Ultimately, this event will investigate the degree to which biology and genetics currently inform these areas, and—perhaps most importantly—identify the limitations of this approach.

The public symposium will be held at Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver and is free for all to attend (make sure you RSVP). The symposium will include presentations that weave together perspectives from anthropology, bioethics, and genetics.

For more information, click here.

Korla Pandit — Disguising identity: From Black to Indian

Northwest Asian Weekly
Seattle, Washington
Volume 34, Number 43 (October 17 – October 23, 2015)
2015-10-16

Andrew Hamlin

Korla Pandit

Two hands hold a large censer. A voice speaks of wisdom and rubies. A deep, slightly scraggly voice. The action fades-in to a man in a turban with a jewel mounted between his eyes. Fixing his eyes upon the camera, Korla Pandit begins his act.

And his act was the Hammond Organ, augmented with a Steinway piano to his right. Playing mostly organ, occasionally piano, sometimes one with each hand, Pandit played for fifteen minutes on Los Angeles’ KTLA-TV from 1949 until 1951. He did not rock and roll and he did not get down and dirty with the blues, but he flitted easily between all other types of music, playing popular tunes, show tunes, traditional, and ethnic music from around the world. He was one of the first television stars, but he never spoke on camera. The narrator off-screen was someone else.

And Korla Pandit had reason to never speak. Speaking might have given away his secret…

Read the entire article here.

Human Variation: A Genetic Perspective on Diversity, Race, and Medicine

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
2014
131 pages
(21 4C, 5B&W), index
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-621820-90-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-936113-25-5

Edited by:

Aravinda Chakravarti, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, Molecular Biology & Genetics, and, Biostatistics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Institute of Genetic Medicine

Since the appearance of modern humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago, we have migrated around the globe and accumulated genetic variations that affect various traits, including our appearance, skin color, food tolerance, and susceptibility to different diseases. Large-scale DNA sequencing is now allowing us to map the patterns of human genetic variation more accurately than ever before, trace our ancestries, and develop personalized therapies for particular diseases. It is also reinforcing the idea that human populations are far from homogeneous, are highly intermixed, and do not fall into distinct races or castes that can be defined genetically.

This book provides a state-of-the-art view of human genetic variation and what we can infer from it, surveying the genetic diversity seen in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and India. The contributors discuss what this can tell us about human history and how it can be used to improve human health. They also caution against assumptions that differences between individuals always stem from our DNA, stressing the importance of nongenetic forces and pointing out the limits of our knowledge. The book is thus essential reading for all human geneticists and anyone interested in how we differ and what this means.

Contents

• Preface
• Perspectives on Human Variation through the Lens of Diversity and Race / Aravinda Chakravarti
• What Type of Person Are You? Old-Fashioned Thinking Even in Modern Science / Kenneth M. Weiss and Brian W. Lambert
• Social Diversity in Humans: Implications and Hidden Consequences for Biological Research / Troy Duster
• Demographic Events and Evolutionary Forces Shaping European Genetic Diversity / Krishna R. Veeramah and John Novembre
• Genetic Variation and Adaptation in Africa: Implications for Human Evolution and Disease / Felicia Gomez, Jibril Hirbo and Sarah A. Tishkoff
• A Genomic View of Peopling and Population Structure of India / Partha P. Majumder and Analahba Basu
• How Genes Have Illuminated the History of Early Americans and Latino Americans / Andres Ruiz-Linares
• Can Genetics Help Us Understand Indian Social History? / Romila Thapar
• Race in Biological and Biomedical Research / Richard S. Cooper
• Personalized Medicine and Human Genetic Diversity / Yi-Fan Lu, David B. Goldstein, Misha Angrist, and Gianpiero Cavalleri
• Index

Regulating Mixed Marriages through Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Volume 662, Number 1, November 2015
pages 170-187
DOI: 10.1177/0002716215595390

Betty de Hart, Professor of Law
Radboud University, The Netherlands

Mixed marriages have always had an ambiguous and often problematic relationship with the law. On one hand, mixed marriages have been seen as a key indicator of sociocultural integration into mainstream society. In terms of the law, this perception has been expressed, for example, as privileged access to citizenship status for immigrant family members of citizens. On the other hand, mixed marriages have been seen as a threat to society and social cohesion. In this article, I argue that these contradictory perceptions of mixed relationships have informed the development of citizenship law over time. Building on literature on the regulation of mixed marriages in law, as well as gender and citizenship law, I use the Netherlands as a case study to demonstrate how citizenship law has been used as a tool to prevent certain types of “undesirable” mixed couples and how this approach has informed Dutch citizenship law until today.

Read or purchase the article here.