&#8230;﻿Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored.

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

As we attempt to imagine our American future, an eventual postracial future in which racelessness is the norm and anyone advocating the assignation of racial identities is considered as strange and as beyond the fringe as someone today would be in asserting that some people are broom-riding witches and that others are animals who have been turned into people and given the power of speech, we must accept responsibility for bringing that dream to fruition. If we say that we desire a nonracial future, then we should be willing to do the work needed to bring it about, rather than pretend that incorporation of a new biological (multi)racial category will destroy the present system of racial categorization. We must become racial assassins, beginning with our own racial suicides, in order to bring a true postracial future into reality, a future in which “‘racial’ identities—hegemonic or oppositional—are no longer thought useful or appealing, even to those who have historically been most disadvantaged by racism.” Part of being a racial revolutionary is refusing to accept a biological racial identity; that part of the revolution is internal and quite simple once one makes the mental commitment.

Rainier Spencer, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner, 2011), 324.

…Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored.

In the many conversations with her since her story has been made public Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored. She takes the ground that she was not under moral obligations to announce her origin. She says she entered college as any student would enter, purely on her merits and ability to pay the tuition demanded.

“BEAUTIFUL ANITA HEMMING. STORY OF THE VASSAR GRADUATE BORN OF NEGROES.” The Sacramento Daily Record-Union, September 24, 1897, page 6, columns 1-4. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015104/1897-09-24/ed-1/seq-6/. (Source: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress)

Tags: Anita Florence Hemmings, Anita Hemming, Anita Hemmings, Sacramento Daily Record-Union, The Sacramento Daily Record-Union

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Mixed Race Studies

…Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored.

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Mixed Race Studies

…﻿Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored.

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Calendar of Posts

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…Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored.