Mixed Race Studies

Café con leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela

University of Texas Press
1990
184 pages
4 illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-292-79080-3

Winthrop R. Wright, Professor Emeritus of History
University of Maryland

For over a hundred years, Venezuelans have referred to themselves as a café con leche (coffee with milk) people. This colorful expression well describes the racial composition of Venezuelan society, in which European, African, and Indian peoples have intermingled to produce a population in which almost everyone is of mixed blood. It also expresses a popular belief that within their blended society Venezuelans have achieved a racial democracy in which people of all races live free from prejudice and discrimination. Whether or not historical facts actually support this popular perception is the question Winthrop Wright explores in this study.

Wright’s research suggests that, contrary to popular belief, blacks in Venezuela have not enjoyed the full benefits of racial democracy. He finds that their status, even after the abolition of slavery in 1854, remained low in the minds of Venezuelan elites, who idealized the European somatic type and viewed blacks as inferior. Indeed, in an effort to whiten the population, Venezuelan elites promoted European immigration and blocked the entry of blacks and Asians during the early twentieth century.

These attitudes remained in place until the 1940s, when the populist Acción Democrática party (AD) challenged the elites’ whitening policies. Since that time, blacks have made significant strides and have gained considerable political power. But, as Wright reveals, other evidence suggests that most remain social outcasts and have not accumulated significant wealth. The popular perception of racial harmony in Venezuela hides the fact of ongoing discrimination.

Contents

• Preface
• 1. The Myth of Racial Democracy
• 2. The Colonial Legacy: Racial Tensions in a Hierarchical Society
• 3. Whitening the Population, 1850–1900
• 4. Positivism and National Image, 1890–1935
• 5. Race and National Image in the Era of Popular Politics, 1935–1958
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831

University of Pittsburgh Press
August 2007
216 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper ISBN: 9780822959656

Marixa Lasso, Associate Professor of Latin American History
Universidad Nacional de Colombia

This book centers on a foundational moment for Latin American racial constructs. While most contemporary scholarship has focused the explanation for racial tolerance-or its lack-in the colonial period, Marixa Lasso argues that the key to understanding the origins of modern race relations are to be found later, in the Age of Revolution. Lasso rejects the common assumption that subalterns were passive and alienated from Creole-led patriot movements, and instead demonstrates that during Colombia’s revolution, free blacks and mulattos (pardos) actively joined and occasionally even led the cause to overthrow the Spanish colonial government. As part of their platform, patriots declared legal racial equality for all citizens, and promulgated an ideology of harmony and fraternity for Colombians of all colors. The fact that blacks were mentioned as equals in the discourse of the revolution and later served in republican government posts was a radical political departure. These factors were instrumental in constructing a powerful myth of racial equality-a myth that would fuel revolutionary activity throughout Latin America. Thus emerged a historical paradox central to Latin American nation-building: the coexistence of the principle of racial equality with actual racism at the very inception of the republic. Ironically, the discourse of equality meant that grievances of racial discrimination were construed as unpatriotic and divisive acts-in its most extreme form, blacks were accused of preparing a race war. Lasso’s work brings much-needed attention to the important role of the anticolonial struggles in shaping the nature of contemporary race relations and racial identities in Latin America.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: The Wars of Independence
• 2. Racial Tensions in Late Colonial Society
• 3. A Republican Myth of Racial Harmony
• 4. The First Republic and the Pardos
• 5. Life Stories of Afro-Colombian Patriots
• 6. Race War
• 7. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Read the entire book here.

Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil

Rutgers University Press
November 2001
278 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-3000-0
Web PDF ISBN: 978-0-8135-5602-4

Robin E. Sheriff, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of New Hampshire

In the 1933 publication The Masters and the Slaves, Brazilian scholar and novelist Gilberto Freyre challenged the racist ideas of his day by defending the “African contribution” to Brazil’s culture. In so doing, he proposed that Brazil was relatively free of most forms of racial prejudice and could best be understood as a “racial democracy.” Over time this view has grown into the popular myth that racism in Brazil is very mild or nonexistent.

This myth contrasts starkly with the realities of a pernicious racial inequality that permeates every aspect of Brazilian life. To study the grip of this myth on African Brazilians’ views of themselves and their nation, Robin E. Sheriff spent twenty months in a primarily black shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, studying the inhabitants’s views of race and racism. How, she asks, do poor African Brazilians experience and interpret racism in a country where its very existence tends to be publicly denied? How is racism talked about privately in the family and publicly in the community—or is it talked about at all?

Sheriff’s analysis is particularly important because most Brazilians live in urban settings, and her examination of their views of race and racism sheds light on common but underarticulated racial attitudes. This book is the first to demonstrate that urban African Brazilians do not subscribe to the racial democracy myth and recognize racism as a central factor shaping their lives.

Table Of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Hill
• Chapter 2 Talk: Discourses on Color and Race
• Chapter 3 Silence: Racism and Cultural Censorship
• Chapter 4 Narratives: Racism on the Asphalt
• Chapter 5 Narratives: Racism at Home
• Chapter 6 Whiteness: Middle-Class Discourses
• Chapter 7 Blackness: Militant Discourses
• Chapter 8 Conclusion: Dreaming
• Epilogue
• Notes
• References
• Index

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case

Tripod: New Orleans At 300
89.9 FM WWNO
New Orleans, Louisiana
2016-06-16

Laine Kaplan-Levenson, Producer

The Provost Guard in New Orleans taking up Vagrant Negroes. (1974.25.9.190) THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION

It was June. It was hot. Kids were out of school, keeping busy outdoors. Parents were inside. Kind of like how it is now, except it was 146 years ago.

“It is a world turned upside down,” says Michael Ross, historian and author of ‘The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era.’ He’s talking about the year 1870, at the height of reconstruction. “You have five cities in the South that have integrated their police forces, at a time when not a single police force in the North had integrated.

It’s true. The NOPD first hired black officers in the 1860s. New York City didn’t have an African American in their ranks until 1911. This is one of the many things that makes New Orleans a stage for social change in the U.S. after the Civil War. One crime in particular brought these changes into focus.

Molly Digby is 17 months old and playing outside with her older brother. Two women of color walk up to the kids and start talking to them, until they’re all interrupted by a loud noise down the street. The women tell the boy he can go see what all the excitement is about, and they’ll watch the baby. He runs off, and when he comes back, the women, and baby Molly, are gone.

“A white baby is abducted by two mixed race women called Mulattos at the time,” Ross explains. “That story would have been just one of many terrible stories of that day that would have been buried in the third page of the newspaper. But a number of factors lead to it getting front page attention.”…

Read the story here. Listen to the episode here.

Star Trek’s Zoe Saldana Drops the Mic

Allure
June 2016

Sarah Van Boven

She doesn’t shy away from confronting sexism. She doesn’t shy away from facing issues of race in Hollywood. In fact, Zoe Saldana doesn’t shy away. Full stop.

Zoe Saldana is talking shit. No, for real: “Everybody told me, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I know you hate changing diapers, but when you have your own kid…. Well, guess what? I had my own kids, and I will do whatever I need to do to not change a dirty diaper,” the 38-year-old star of this month’s Star Trek Beyond says of her now-19-month-old identical twin boys, Cy and Bowie. “A blowout? I can’t do it—I end up with shit everywhere! There is shit on the boy; there is shit on me; there is shit in my hair. And I’m like, How did this happen?”

How did this happen? How did the little girl from Queens who got shipped off to the Dominican Republic at nine years old when her father died suddenly and her mother needed to focus like a laser on supporting her family end up here, dropping an ice cube into the glass of pink champagne she’s having to celebrate wrapping up a photo shoot with Patrick Demarchelier? Well, first of all, you get the feeling that things don’t “happen” to Zoe Saldana. She wills them into existence with the same titanium-core determination that propelled her from her breakout role as a mouthy ballet student in the 2000 movie Center Stage straight through to her impressive current position of starring in not one, not two, but three blockbuster movie franchises that have already grossed a cumulative $4.4 billion worldwide (and that’s before the filming of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has even wrapped or Avatar 2, 3, 4, or 5 has come to an IMAX anywhere near you). But enough about her hugely successful career. Saldana wants to get back to talking about her toddlers…

…Which brings us to a topic that has dogged Saldana for almost five years: her role as the iconic black singer in the recently released biopic Nina. From her initial casting in 2012 to the first trailer on YouTube to the quiet, no-fanfare release of the film in April, Saldana has been pilloried online for having the audacity to play the dark-skinned, highly political singer. And after Saldana tweeted a quote from Simone, the singer’s estate tweeted, “Cool story but please take Nina’s name out of your mouth. For the rest of your life.” Saldana faces these criticisms, like everything else in her life, head-on.

“There’s no one way to be black,” she says quietly and slowly, clearly choosing her words carefully. “I’m black the way I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I am black. I’m raising black men. Don’t you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain.”…

Read the entire article here.

Becoming American in Creole New Orleans: family, community, labor and schooling, 1896-1949

University of Sussex
May 2015
371 pages

Darryl G. Barthé, Jr.

Doctorate of Philosophy in History

The Louisiana Creole community in New Orleans went through profound changes in the first half of the 20th-century. This work examines Creole ethnic identity, focusing particularly on the transition from Creole to American. In “becoming American,” Creoles adapted to a binary, racialized caste system prevalent in the Jim Crow American South (and transformed from a primarily Francophone/Creolophone community (where a tripartite although permissive caste system long existed) to a primarily Anglophone community (marked by stricter black-white binaries). These adaptations and transformations were facilitated through Creole participation in fraternal societies, the organized labor movement and public and parochial schools that provided English-only instruction. The “Americanization of Creole New Orleans” has been a common theme in Creole studies since the early 1990’s, but no prior study has seriously examined the cultural and social transformation of Creole New Orleans by addressing the place and role of public and private institutions as instruments and facilitators of Americanization. By understanding the transformation of Creole New Orleans, this thesis demonstrates how an historically mixed-race community was ultimately divided by the segregationist culture of the early-twentieth century U.S. South.

In addition to an extensive body of secondary research, this work draws upon archival research at the University of New Orleans’ Special Collections, Tulane University Special Collections, the Amistad Research Center, The Archdiocese of New Orleans, and Xavier University Special Collections. This thesis makes considerable use of census data, draws upon press reports, and brings to bear a wide assortment of oral histories conducted by the author and others.

Most scholars have viewed New Orleans Creoles simply as Francophone African Americans, but this view is limited. This doctoral thesis engages the Creole community in New Orleans on its own terms, and in its own idioms, to understand what “becoming American” meant for New Orleans Creoles between 1896-1949.

Read the entire dissertation here.

For me, identifying as Black has nothing to do with distancing myself from my mom, her whiteness, her family, heritage, or culture. Rather, it is one way I resist racism every day. By claiming and embracing my Blackness, I push back on the messages within me and around me that would have us believing that being Black is anything I wouldn’t want to be.

Megan Madison, “Yes, I’m Black! Here’s why.” Medium, June 16, 2016. https://medium.com/embrace-race/yes-im-black-here-s-why-482640e6ed4a.

The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire

W. W. Norton & Company
2016-06-14
368 pages
6.1 × 9.3 in
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-393-23925-6

Karl Jacoby, Professor of History
Columbia University, New York, New York

• Winner of the 2017 Phillis Wheatley Award for nonfiction from the Harlem Book Fair

A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur.

A black child born in the twilight of slavery, William Henry Ellis inhabited a world of fraught, ambiguous racial categories on the anarchic border between the United States and Mexico. He adopted the name Guillermo Enrique Eliseo and passed as a Mexican: traveling as Hispanic in first-class train berths, staying in the finest hotels, and eating in leading restaurants. A shrewd businessman, he became fabulously wealthy and found himself involved in scandalous trials, unexpected disappearances, and diplomatic controversies. Constantly switching identities, Eliseo was a genius at identifying and exploiting the porousness of the color line and the border line.

Through Ellis’s picaresque biography, Karl Jacoby presents an intriguing narrative set in a secret and ever-changing world. The Strange Career of William Ellis reinterprets the borderlands, showing how U.S. and Mexican histories intertwined during Reconstruction, and he offers new insight into the arbitrary and evolving definitions of race in America.

Visit the website here.

Another Health Funder That’s Focused on Race in a Big Way

Inside Philanthropy
2016-06-16

Rob McCarthy

The racial dimension of health equity has long preoccupied top funders in the healthcare space and it’s not hard to see why. Spend five minutes looking at health data for the United States and you’ll be blown away by the scope of racial disparities in all aspects of health, including how long people live, the chronic conditions they face and whether they have health insurance.

In turn, it’s not hard to trace these inequities back to larger social and economic disparities by race, not to mention gross inequities in who has power in American society. As we report often, national health funders like RWJF and Kresge operate very much with this larger context in mind, and aren’t afraid of getting into some edgy advocacy work.

Lately, more state-level health care funders have been getting with the same program—and, in some cases, taking things even further. Just the other day, we wrote about how the Missouri Foundation for Health is making a $6 million push to address racial equity issues raised in the wake of the police shooting in Ferguson. We’ve also written about the huge investments by California funders to improve the health, and broader well-being, of that state’s Latino population.

Then there’s the Connecticut Health Foundation, which made a shift in 2013 to focus its grantmaking laser-like on the non-white residents of this New England state…

Read the entire article here.

Revealed: MP’s alleged killer ‘bought manual on how to make a handgun and bombs from a US far-right group and has links to neo-Nazi organisations going back decades’

The Daily Mail
London, England
2016-06-17

James Tozer, Chris Greenwood, Andy Dolan, and Claire Duffin For The Daily Mail
Richard Spillett, Stephanie Linning, and Lucy Crossley for MailOnline

• Detectives were last night questioning Thomas Mair over Jo Cox’s murder
• US civil rights group say their records show he bought far-Right books
• Claims the quiet loner had been recently released from psychiatric care
• Mair was brought up by his grandmother and lived in his childhood home
• Half-brother says Mair never expressed any ‘racist tendencies’, adding: ‘I’m mixed race and I’m his half-brother. We got on well’

The man suspected of killing Labour MP Jo Cox previously bought a book on how to make a handgun, it was claimed this morning.

Thomas Mair has been described as a loner who was ‘socially isolated and disconnected from society’ as a result of long-term mental illness.

Detectives were last night questioning 52-year-old Thomas Mair, amid fears he was motivated by Mrs Cox’s political campaigning.

Documents obtained from a US far-right group show a 1999 receipt for a manual on how to build a homemade gun with Mr Mair’s name and address on the top…

…Duane St Louis, age 41, the suspect’s half-brother and Mary’s son with second husband Reginald St Louis, said Mair had obsessive compulsive disorder and cleaned himself with Brillo pads because he was ‘obsessed with his personal hygiene’.

Reginald, who is believed to be from Grenada, and Mary had married when Mair was around 16. The couple lived with Duane and Mair’s younger full brother Scott, while Mair stayed with his grandmother. Reginald died in the 1980s. It is not known if Mair’s father, named locally as James, is still alive.

Speaking from his home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, he added: ‘He’s never expressed any views about Britain, or politics or racist tendencies. I’m mixed race and I’m his half-brother, we got on well. He never married. The only time I remember him having a girlfriend was as a young man, but a mate stole her off him. He said that put him off [women] for life.’…

Read the entire article here.