Lone Mothers of Children from Mixed Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds: A Case Study

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

A problem that consistently confronts racist law makers in the question of defining who is “Negro” and who is “white.” In general, two schools of “thought” prevail is the United States on this issue. In about nine states a Negro is anyone who had a grandparent who was a Negro. The laws generally define such a person as “having one-eighth or more Negro blood” or as an “octoroon.” The other definition of Negro is used in at least six states: a Negro is any person who has “any trace of Negro blood.” The circularity of these statements does not seem to trouble the opponents of miscegenation.

Virginia provides an interesting example of racist legal gymnastics. Whites in that state can marry neither Negroes nor American Indians. In Virginia, a Negro is a person who has any Negro ancestor, and an American Indian is a person who had at least one Indian grandparent. If someone has one-sixteenth or less “Indian blood” then he is a white. But Virginia still hasn’t decided what you are if you have one-eighth Indian heritage, i.e. one of your great-grandparents was an Indian. Furthermore, if a man is an inhabitant of an Indian tribal reservation and has at least one Indian grandparent and less than one-sixteenth “Negro blood,” then despite the state’s definition of a Negro he may be regarded as an Indian on the reservation. Once he leaves the reservation, however, he undergoes a legal metamorphosis and becomes a Negro. Of course he can then move to Mississippi, where the “octoroon” requirement prevails, and thus become a Caucasian.

Oklahoma courts have decided that American Indians are “white” and therefore may not marry “any person of African descent.” In Alabama, however, Indians are mulattoes, according to the courts, and therefore cannot marry whites. Filipinos in Louisiana must be able to prove that they are “not basically negroid” before they can marry whites. Indiana courts have revealed that “all Mexicans are not white persons and some of them are negroes,” and therefore non-Negro Mexicans can marry either Negroes or whites.

Peter Cumminos, “Race, Marriage, and Law,” The Harvard Crimson, December 17, 1963. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/12/17/race-marriage-and-law-pamerican-racism/

Lone Mothers of Children from Mixed Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds: A Case Study

Lone Mothers of Children from Mixed Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds: A Case Study

Single Parent Action Network (SPAN)
January 2010
41 pages

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
London South Bank University

This report draws on case study findings with 10 lone mothers of mixed racial and ethnic children to look at their everyday experiences of raising their children, particularly the ways in which they seek to give their children a sense of identity and belonging and what support or challenges they face in doing so.

Read the entire report here.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 04:40Z and is filed under Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Reports, Social Work, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Lone Mothers of Children from Mixed Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds: A Case Study

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