Mixed Race Studies

The New Colored People: The Mixed Race Movement in America (Book Review)

Mixed American Life
2012-11-15

Charles T. Franklin

The New Colored People: The Mixed Race Movement in America by Jon Michael Spencer (1997) makes the argument that the US multi-cultural movement, like other movements in the past, is something that we need to pay attention for two reasons. Spencer cites the first reason to pay attention is due to the increasing numbers of people who are born with or have become more comfortable expressing their “mixed-race”heritage. The second reason Spencer gives is his assertion that our society as whole is not particularly ready to deal with the potential social, legal, and cultural consequences that could happen as a result. In other words, the multi-racial movement is more than just the right to check multiple ethnicities or the “Other” section for race on an application. Spencer’s interest in the growing multicultural movement of the US is not for its own sake (though he believes it worth studying) , but to compare this movement with similar movements in South Africa and use that comparison to predict the impact of the multicultural movement in the future. Spencer conducts a comprehensive analysis on the subject; however his primary audience and the target of his study is the impact of the mixed-race movement on the African-American community…

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Human Migration and the Marginal Man

The American Journal of Sociology
Volume 33, Number 6 (May 1928)
pages 881-893

Robert E. Park (1864-1944), Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago

Migrations, with all the incidental collision, conflicts, and fusions of peoples and of cultures which they occasion, have been accounted among the decisive forces in history. Every advance in culture, it has been said, commences with a new period of migration and movement of populations. Present tendencies indicate that while the mobility of individuals has increased, the migration of peoples has relatively decreased. The consequences, however, of migration and mobility seem, on the whole, to be the same. In both cases the “cake of custom” is broken and the individual is freed for new enterprises and for new associations. One of the consequences of migration is to create a situation in which the same individual—who may or may not be a mixed blood—finds himself striving to live in two diverse cultural groups. The effect is to produce an unstable character—a personality type with characteristic forms of behavior. This is the “marginal man.” It is in the mind of the marginal man that the conflicting cultures meet and fuse. It is, therefore, in the mind of the marginal man that the process of civilization is visibly going on, and it is in the mind of the marginal man that the process of civilization may best be studied.

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Coping with the crickets: a fusion autoethnography of silence, schooling, and the continuum of biracial identity formation

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Published online: 2012-11-07
DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2012.731537

Lynnette Mawhinney, Assistant Professor of Elementary/Early Childhood Education
The College of New Jersey, Ewing, New Jersey

Emery Marc Petchauer, Assistant Professor of Teacher Development & Educational Studies
Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

This study explores biracial identity development in the adolescent years through fusion autoethnography. Using an ecological model of biracial identity development, this study illustrates how family, peers, and school curricula validate and reject racial self-presentations. We pay specific attention to the different forms of silence (i.e. “crickets”) that teachers and peers deploy as tactics of rejection and how racially coded artifacts such as hip-hop culture and Black Liberation texts function as validations of racial self-presentations. Overall, this study helps researchers and practitioners to understand the fluidity of biracial and multiracial identity development as it relates to everyday school spaces and processes.

Ask any biracial or multiracial person what question makes mem crazy, and 9 times out of 10 the answer will be Ihe question. “What are you?” As a biracial person, even to this day, my response to this question is often physical and visceral: I cringe, clench my jaw, and tense my body. Lewis (2006) writes in his book Fade: My Journeys in Multiracial America that his first thought after this question is, “Here we go again” (3). Ultimately, the question is infuriating because it is provoked by our physical appearance that seems ambiguous or “exotic” according to the insufficient, binary heuristics of race in the USA (Funderburg 1994; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002; Rockquemore. Brunsma. and Delgado 2009). Though not intending to offend, a person asks the question based upon these narrow heuristics and expects the multiracial person to clearly identify in one category. Some people with multiracial backgrounds do indeed identify as one race, yet instances such as this are problematic, as Lewis (2006, 40) argues, because:

For multiracial people, there is an additional layer in the identity development process. It involves creating a sense of self by assembling pieces of their heritage that others view as incompatible or mutually exclusive.

This additional layer of identity development is inseparable from the process of schooling. Young people spend an enormous amount of their time in schools, thus…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Skin We’re In: A Literary Analysis of Representations Of Mixed Race Identity in Children’s Literature

University of Illinois, Chicago
2012
232 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3530952
ISBN: 9781267715739

Amina Chaudhri, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago

A Thesis Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago

This study systematically analyzed novels of contemporary and historical fiction with mixed race content intended for readers age 9-14. In the context of an increasingly multiracial and multicultural society, this study was primarily concerned with the question of identity representation: What is contemporary children’s literature saying about the experience of being racially mixed? This question was investigated along three strands: 1) How can literature about multiracial identity be usefully described and define? 2) What historical perspectives inform books about multiracial people? and 3) To what degree are contemporary authors maintaining or challenging racial paradigms?

A content analysis of ninety novels with mixed race content was undertaken to determine specific features such as gender, age, racial mix, family situation, socio-economic situation, racial makeup of environment, and setting. Three categories were created based historical paradigms about mixed race identity, and themes that emerged from the novels: 1) Mixed Race In/Visibility, 2) Mixed Race Blending, and 3) Mixed Race Awareness. All ninety novels were evaluated with respect to the criteria of the categories. Thirty-three novels were selected for deep literary analysis, demonstrating the ways historical perspectives about mixed race identity inform contemporary children’s literature.

Findings indicated three broad trends in representations of mixed race identity in children’s literature with novels falling almost equally between the three categories. Books in the Mixed Race In/Visibility category depicted stereotypically traumatic experiences for mixed race characters and provide little or no opportunity for critique of racism. Books in the Mixed Race Blending category featured characters whose mixed race identity was descriptive but not functional in their lives. Mixed Race Awareness books represented a range of possible life experiences for biracial characters who respond to social discomfort to their racial identity in complex and credible ways.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Background
  • Rationale
  • Overview of the Study
  • Research Questions
• II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Literary Criticism
    • Literary Criticism in Children’s Literature
  • Critical Race Theory
    • Critical Race Theory in Children’s Literature
  • Mixed Race Perspectives
    • Theorizing Mixed Race Identity
    • Mixed Race Research in Children’s Literature
    • Setting the Stage
• III. METHODOLOGY
  • Text Identification
  • Search Parameters
    • Publication Date
    • Genre
    • Age of Intended Readership
  • Text Selection for Literary Analysis
  • Text Analysis – Content Analysis
  • Text Analysis – Literary Analysis
  • Terminology
• IV. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS
  • The Big Picture
  • Mixed Race Identity in the Categories
    • Mixed Race In/Visibility (MRIV)
    • Mixed Race Blending (MRB)
    • Mixed Race Awareness (MRA)
  • Trends in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
  • Trends in Historical Fiction
  • Literary Analysis of Representative Books in Each Category
    • MRI/V in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRI/V in Historical Fiction
    • MRB in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRB in Historical Fiction
    • MRA in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRA in Historical Fiction
• V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
  • Themes in the Categories
    • Mixed Race In/Visibility
      • Wounded by Words
      • Inferior Vitality
      • Incomplete Amalgamation
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race In/Visibility
    • Mixed Race Blending
      • One Drop Still Rules
      • Revelations
      • All-American Biracials
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race Blending
    • Mixed Race Awareness
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race Awareness
  • Talking About Mixed Race Identity
  • Contributions
  • Limitations
  • Future Research
  • Conclusion
• VI. APPENDICES
  • APPENDIX A: Books Identified for this Study
  • APPENDIX B: Books Listed by Genre
  • APPENDIX C: Books Listed by Category
  • APPENDIX D: Books Listed by Racial Mix
  • APPENDIX E: Instrument for Collecting Individual Text Data
• VII. REFERENCES
  • CHILDREN’S LITERATURE CITED
• VIII. CURRICULUM VITAE

LIST OF TABLES

• TABLE III–1. Categories for Content Analysis
• TABLE IV–1. Author Race
• TABLE IV–2. Features of Books With Mixed Race Characters
• TABLE IV–3. Mixed Race Representation Across Genre and Category

Read the entire dissertation here.

HCOL 86 E: D1: Mixed: Multiracialism in U.S. Culture

University of Vermont
The Honors College
Spring 2013

John Gennari, Associate Professor of English

This seminar will examine the theme of multiracial identity and culture in the United States. We’ll consider how U.S. concepts and ideologies of race have developed historically, and why within that history multiracial people and culture have been considered both a problem (e.g. the “tragic mulatto” figure in pre-1960s fiction and film) and a solution (e.g. the vaunted racial pluralism of jazz, the reformist rhetoric and ideology of post-civil rights era multiculturalism). We’ll consider how mixed-race identity and experience challenge and complicate racial classification schemes that govern U.S. institutional life, public policy, popular perception, and private imagination. We’ll reckon with the myriad ways multiracial people and culture point up the massive confusion of American thinking about race—a confusion perhaps best typified by the heralding of a so-called “post-racial” order upon the election of a mixed-raced President, only immediately to see Barack Obama’s racial and national identity become a source of lurid obsession. Course materials include historical and theoretical literature, personal essays and narratives, film, music, and other forms of popular culture. In addition to participating actively in class discussions, students will engage in regular informal and formal writing (in-class free writing, short essays, a longer final paper) and will stage a group presentation.

Covering Multiracial America Requires Historical Perspective

Maynard Media Center on Structural Inequity
Maynard Institute
2012-11-14

Nadra Kareem Nittle

Although people of mixed races have lived in the United States for centuries, authorities on multiracial identity say mainstream media continue to report on these people as if they are a new phenomenon.

In 1619, the first slaves were brought to Britain’s North American colonies. The following year, says Audrey Smedley, professor emerita of anthropology and African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, the first “mulatto” child was born. Thus, mixed-race people have a long history in this country, disproving the notion often mentioned today that miscegenation will somehow magically cure racism.

Most major stereotypes about multiracial people in America historically involved individuals whose heritage was black and white or Native American and white. Such people were largely thought to yearn for the same advantages as whites but found them off-limits because of the “one-drop rule,” which originated in the South and mandated that just a drop of black blood meant they were of color.

In the 21st century, newer stereotypes about multiracial people have gained popularity. Rainier Spencer, founder and director of the Afro-American Studies Program and senior adviser to the president at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says contemporary media coverage of mixed-race people isn’t filled with tragic mulattoes but with docile symbols of a colorblind America yet to reach fruition.

“Multiracial people are infantilized,” Spencer says. “They [the media] don’t treat them as fully capable agents. Mixed-race people are quiet and happy, and they don’t complain. They’re our postracial future.”

Spencer, author of “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix,” cautions that these notions are dangerous. The stereotype that multiracial people represent a bridge between races that will soon eradicate bigotry ignores the fact that such people were in North America more than a century before U.S. independence and that racism remains a reality.

This idea also lets the establishment off the hook, he says. “If mixed-race people are going to take us to a postracial destiny, then the power structure doesn’t have to worry about it. It’s very convenient.”…

…In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau permitted declaring more than one race on census forms. In the subsequent decade, several published articles reported that the mixed-race population was increasing, especially among young people.

But Heidi W. Durrow, who grew up as the only daughter of an African-American father and a Danish mother, would like to see news stories about multiracial people that don’t revolve around census figures…

…Laura Kina, a founding member of the Critical Mixed Race Studies biennial conference and associate professor of Art, Media and Design at DePaul University, has similar concerns. She considers the idea that mixed-race people are new to be a stereotype. “They go back a very long ways,” she says.

Kina is the daughter of an Okinawan father from Hawaii and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, according to her website…

…Dominique DiPrima, host of Los Angeles radio show “The Front Page,” takes issue with the concept of multiracialism because she disputes the concept of race. “I think the media should differentiate between culture, ethnicity and race,” says DiPrima, daughter of Italian-American poet Diane di Prima and African-American writer Amiri Baraka…

Read the entire article here.

Carnival, Convents, and the Cult of St. Rocque: Cultural Subterfuge in the Work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Georgia State University
2012-08-09
57 pages

Sibongile B. N. Lynch

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2012

In the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson the city and culture of 19th century New Orleans figures prominently, and is a major character affecting the lives of her protagonists. While race, class, and gender are among the focuses of many scholars the eccentricity and cultural history of the most exotic American city, and its impact on Dunbar-Nelson’s writing is unmistakable. This essay will discuss how the diverse cultural environment of New Orleans in the 19th century allowed Alice Dunbar Nelson to create narratives which allowed her short stories to speak to the shifting identities of women and the social uncertainty of African Americans in the Jim Crow south. A consideration of New Orleans’ cultural history is important when reading Dunbar-Nelson’s work, whose significance has often been disregarded because of what some considered its lack of racial markers.

Read the entire thesis here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. “CREOLES OF ANY COLOR”
• 2. CARNIVAL AND CULTURAL SUBTERFUGE
• 3. CONVENTS AND CULTS
• CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

Curious Studies of Mixed Bloods in the West Indies

Timaru Herald
Timaru, New Zealand
Volume XXXVI, Issue 2366
1882-04-22
page 3
Source: Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa

The following is contributed by the Paris correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune—There has been an interesting diicussion on the negro question m the French West Indies, carried on in two of our newspapers. An argument in one of them presents views which are so new to me that I have thought they may be novel to you, and so I translate the rejoinder. It was made to an article written to break down the prejudice of color, which keeps wide apart in Martinique white men and negroes. It ways “Unfortunately, the separation of whites and blacks is not caused by a mere prejudice. It is not a vain, stupid pride which leads whites to exclude negroes from their society. Our opponent imagines that ’emancipation, taking their privilege from whites, led the latter to make more of point of pride than ever to keep from confounding with people whom the law had as their equals.’ We must tell our opponent that pride had nothing to do with the separation of color. If the whites kept aloof from the negroes it was because equality made marriages possible socially, alliances which, unfortunately, considered anthropologically, would lead to the most disastrous consequences. There is a physiological law which must be deplored, for negros often deserve great sympathy; but this law must be brought to the knowledge of France, because Frenchmen are ignorant of it, and because this law explains the greater part of these differences which are wrongly attributed to politics. A great many observations have demonstrated that it is, so to say, impossible for a negro family, even after an infinite series of marriages with whites, to change completely the nature of their blood, while if a white family do but once marry with a negro, they lose for ever the purity of their race. In France we call mulatto all persons who are neither black nor white. In the colonies mulatto is applied only to tho offspring of a white man and a negress. After the first cross the children are classed by a scale whose degrees are very numerous, and depends whether the mulattress allies herself to blacks or whites. The first, second, third, or fourth degrees especially have distinct names; two mark the preponderance of white blood, two of negro. If the mulattress ally herself to a negro, the child is called a cafres; if the cafresse ally herself also to a negro, the child is called a griffe. On the contrary, if the mulattress ally herself to a white, the child is called mestif: if the mestive, too, ally herself to a white the child is called quadroon. The terrible consequences of the physiological law mentioned is this:—If the woman be of a more swarthy color than the man to whom she allies herself, the child’s color is like the mother’s color. If the father’s color be the blackest, the child’s color is like the father’s color. When two portons of tho same color are allied, their children are blacker than their parents, and curiously enough the second child is blacker than the first, the third blacker than the second, and so on. In fine, it is beyond doubt that a mixed population, left to themselves, are fatally destined to become negroes in a very few generations. We must add another and still more deplorable fact. It will explain the causes which have compelled the separation between whites and negroes, which cannot possibly be removed. On a plantation in one of the Lesser Antilles une mestive was born of a mulattress mother and a white father. This mestive became the mother of a quadroon. All the daughters of the successive alliances were for six generations allied to white men. Only boys issued from the seventh alliance. At the same time similar phenomena were observed on a neighboring plantation, but here only girls issued from the seventh alliance. The two last children of these seven alliances were married to whites. They were of remarkable beauty; their hair was of the lighter blond nothing about them retained anything of the African race; their skin was so white that they would easily hive been taken, not only for children of northern climes, but even for Albinos, had they not been so graceful and vigorous, so intellectual, nay, so brilliant. Well, their children were more than swarthy, and their grandchildren very dark mulattos. After these indisputable facts, we may well ask how many successive alliances with whites would be necessary to make all trace of black blood disappear? Could the result ever be attained? It may. From these facts, easily be seen why Creole females of pure while blood are averse to ever allying themselves with persons whose veins contain the least drop of negro blood. After a first marriage with this tainted blood, a second fault of that same sort would transform that white family that is to say, this European family, able at any time to return to Europe, to France, and reassume the social position it had before immigration—a second fault would transform it into a family of mulattos, and from mulatto to negro the road is short. We would be of the opinion of our opponent, and would hold with him, that we should lift up completely negroes to the level of whites, to make of them real Frenchmen, to subject them to the military draft, and make them serve in the garrisons of France as well aa of the colonies. Alas! a serious objection to this scheme exists—an objection whose importance Napoleon I saw, eager as he was to aeek soldiers everywhere. He said: “French blood would be soon tainted, and France would be menaced with possessing in a few years a great many persons of mixed blood.”

Paradigm Lost: Race, Ethnicity, and the Search for a New Population Taxonomy

American Journal of Public Health
Volume 91, Number 7 (July 2001)
pages 1049-1056
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.91.7.1049

Gerald M. Oppenheimer, Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently recommended that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reevaluate its employment of “race,” a concept lacking scientific or anthropological justification, in cancer surveillance and other population research. The IOM advised the NIH to use a different population classification, that of “ethnic group,” instead of “race.” A relatively new term, according to the IOM, “ethnic group” would turn research attention away from biological determinism and toward a focus on culture and behavior.

This article examines the historically central role of racial categorization and its relationship to racism in the United States and questions whether dropping “race” from population taxonomies is either possible or, at least in the short run, preferable. In addition, a historical examination of “ethnicity” and “ethnic group” finds that these concepts, as used in the United States, derive in part from race and immigration and are not neutral terms; instead, they carry their own burden of political, social, and ideological meaning.

Read the entire article here.

‘The Black Count:’ the epic true story behind ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’

The Seattle Times
2012-11-16

Tyrone Beason

Tom Reiss’ swashbuckling new book, “The Black Count,” tells the true story of Alex Dumas, son of a French nobleman and an African slave, the father of author Alexandre Dumas and the inspiration for the younger Dumas’ classic novel “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss Crown, 414 pp.

There are no statues in monument-laden France commemorating the legendary 18th century swordsman and general Alex Dumas, whose son Alexandre based literary classics like “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo” on scenes from the elder’s epic life story.

It’s a sad civic oversight, but nothing compared to the tragic decline suffered by the novelist’s heroic father as laid out in Tom Reiss’ fascinating, and dare to say, swashbuckling new biography, “The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo.”

It turns out that the heroes in those classics are modeled on a black man who was born in 1762 in the French colony of Haiti. Alex Dumas was the son of a wayward French nobleman and an African slave, and it is his biracial identity that adds such rich complexity to his rise through the ranks of the French military to become one of the most beloved generals of his time, arguably even more admired than Napoleon, a fact that probably didn’t sit well with the megalomaniacal future ruler.

It was Napoleon who tapped Dumas to command the cavalry that invaded Egypt, an enormous, and as it turns out, fateful honor.

“The Black Count” meticulously evokes the spirit of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, but it also explains the exasperating paradox of a nation that was simultaneously a huge slaveholding empire and the pioneering exponent of the concept of “liberté, egalité, fraternité.”

Let’s not forget the context. By the 1750s, black slaves taken to France were able to sue their masters for freedom. After the French Revolution in 1793, special schools were set up in France to educate the children of “revolutionaries of color” from the colonies. Black and mixed-race politicians were allowed to serve in the national government…

Read the entire review here.