Mixed Race Studies

Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone

Routledge
2005-06-23
160 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-94607-0
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-94608-7

Margaret L. Hunter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Mills College, Oakland, California

Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone tackles the hidden yet painful issue of colorism in the African American and Mexican American communities. Beginning with a historical discussion of slavery and colonization in the Americas, the book quickly moves forward to a contemporary analysis of how skin tone continues to plague people of color today. This is the first book to explore this well-known, yet rarely discussed phenomenon.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Colorstruck
• Chapter 2: The Color of Slavery and Conquest
• Chapter 3: Learning, Earning, and Marrying More
• Chapter 4: Black and Brown Bodies Under the Knife
• Chapter 5: The Beauty Queue: Advantages of Light Skin
• Chapter 6: The Blacker the Berry: Ethnic Legitimacy and Skin Tone
• Chapter 7: Color and the Changing Racial Landscape
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Heredity and Racial Science for Elementary and Secondary Schools (Erblehre und Rassenkunde für die Grund- und Hauptschule) 2nd edition

Verlag Konkordia
Bühl-Baden, Germany
1937

Karl Bareth, Author

Alfred Vogel, Author

Source: German Propaganda Archive, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Archived and Translated by:

Randall Bytwerk, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Background: This is a teacher’s guide to racial instruction, covering the 4th through the 8th grades. I provide a translation of sections that strike me as particularly interesting. Bareth was an experienced teacher, and Vogel’s title is Rektor. Vogel also produced a set of posters to be used in classroom instruction. Published in 1937, before the alliance with Japan, there is some material on the “Yellow Peril.” Such material disappeared later.

…b) Race mixing among humans.

We have already spoken about one racial mixing. That had to do with the racial development of the German people. May we also speak of it as bastardization? If we look into the face of the German people, peering deeply into its spiritual life, we are absolutely convinced that the joining of these six races into one whole people was not a bastardization. Their genetic traits joined in a wonderful and harmonious way to form the German people, from which our German culture sprang.

We speak of bastardization in the case of a mixed race (Mischlinge) that develops from fundamentally different races or racial mixtures, as, for example, one between Europeans and Negroes, Europeans and Asians, Europeans and Indians, Europeans and Jews, etc. Such mixed race individuals carry the contradictory trains of both races, resulting in a confusion. Bastards are unhappy people. A bastard of European and Negroid decent has some of the characteristics of the white race, and some characteristics of the black race. He unsuited both for the jungles and hot sun of the south, but also for the north. Two souls live and compete within the breast of the bastard. He never finds peace and a harmonious, balanced life. The hard laws of blood force him to live a life of racial confusion and fragmentation…

Read the entire guide here.

Beyond Blood Identities: Posthumanity in the Twenty-First Century

Lexington Books: an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield
October 2009
262 pages
6 1/2 x 9 1/2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7391-3842-7
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7391-3843-4
eBook ISBN: 978-0-7391-3844-1

Jason D. Hill, Professor of Philosophy
DePaul University

Beyond Blood Identities uncovers the social psychology of those who hold strong blood identities. In this highly original work, Jason D. Hill argues that strong racial, ethnic and national identities, which he refers to as “tribal identities,” function according to a separatist logic that does irreparable damage to our moral lives. Drawing on scholarship in philosophy, sociology, and cultural anthropology, Hill contends that strong tribalism is a form of pathology.

Beyond Blood Identities shows how a particular understanding of culture could lead to a new theoretical approach to enriched human living. Hill develops a new version of cosmopolitanism that he calls post-human cosmopolitanism to solve a number of challenges in contemporary society. From the problem of defining culture, the failure of multiculturalism, the question of who owns native culture, the identification of Jews as post-human people and the problem of their status as “chosen people” in a modern world, the author applies a cosmopolitan analysis to some of the major problems in our global and interdependent world. He posits a world in which community has been dispensed with and replaced by its successor term sociality—the broad unmarked space in which creative social intercourse takes place. Hill applies a new cosmopolitanism to ideate a new post-humanity for the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Moral Reasoning From a Cosmopolitan Perspective: The Problem of Culture
• Chapter 3. Who Owns Culture: A Moral Cosmopolitan Inquiry
• Chapter 4. Moral Culture is Public Culture: Cosmopolitanism and Culture Warfare
• Chapter 5. Theorizing Post Humanity: Radical Inclusion; Jews as the Chosen People; and the Identity Politics of St. Paul
• Chapter 6. The Psychopathology of Tribalism: An Exposé
• Chapter 7. Appendix: Conscientious Objections to Cosmopolitanism: A Response

Quiting India: the Anglo-Indian Culture of Migration

sites: a Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies
Volume 4, Number 2 (2007)
pages 32-56
DOI: 10.11157/sites-vol4iss2id73

Robyn Andrews, Lecturer, Social Anthropology Programme
Massey University

In my work with the Anglo-Indians in Calcutta I was reminded of Caplan’s (1995) comment that Anglo-Indians had a ‘culture of emigration’, as I observed a steady stream of Anglo-Indians leaving India. Even though destination opportunities are being eroded, the Anglo-Indians I spoke with regularly referred to relatives living abroad, and in the main wanted to emulate this pattern of migration.

In this paper I draw particularly on case study material collected in India and Australia over the past five years. I explore the nexus between Anglo-Indian identity, which they often regarded as more Western than Indian, and their migration patterns. Concentrating on their reasons for leaving, I contribute to the ‘culture of migration’ literature through this analysis of the migration culture of an ethnic group which exhibits variations on the set of reasonably distinct characteristics associated with groups having a ‘culture of migration’.

Read the entire article here.

Anglo-Indians: Is their culture dying out?

BBC News Magazine
2013-01-03

Kris Griffiths

A product of the British Empire, with a mixture of Western and Indian names, customs and complexions, 2,000 Anglo-Indians are to attend a reunion in Calcutta. But their communities in both the UK and the subcontinent are disappearing, writes Anglo-Indian Kris Griffiths.

Southall in west London is home to Britain’s first pub accepting rupees, railway station signs in English and Punjabi, and main thoroughfares alive all year with street food stalls, colourful saris and Bhangra music.

It’s my hometown, where I spent my first 20 years among the country’s most concentrated population of Indians, but as one of the minority 10% white British inhabitants. Indeed, I was the only white person on my avenue in the years before I left.

My mother is Anglo-Indian, raised in Jamshedpur, near Calcutta, before moving eventually to London’s own “Little India”. After she married a Welshman, I and my siblings were born fair with blue eyes.

We are symptomatic of the biggest problem facing the global Anglo-Indian community – it is dying out. In the UK and the Commonwealth, it is losing its “Indianness”, while back home in India its “Anglo” element is fading…

…The definition of Anglo-Indian has become looser in recent decades. It can now denote any mixed British-Indian parentage, but for many its primary meaning refers to people of longstanding mixed lineage, dating back up to 300 years into the subcontinent’s colonial past.

In the 18th Century, the British East India Company followed previous Dutch and Portuguese settlers in encouraging employees to marry native women and plant roots. The company would even pay a sum for every child born of these cross-cultural unions.

By the late 19th Century, however, after the Suez Canal’s construction had made the long journey shorter, British women were arriving in greater numbers, mixed marriages dwindled and their offspring came to be stigmatised by many Indians as “Kutcha-Butcha” (half-baked bread).

When the British finally departed in 1947 they left behind a Westernised mixed-race subpopulation about 300,000-strong who weren’t necessarily glad to see them leave…

Read the entire article here.

Census report shows multiracial and minority population growing fastest

PoliticsNation with Rev. Al Sharpton
NBC News
2013-06-13

Morgan Whitaker, Producer

As white birth rates declined, Asian-American and Hispanic populations grew significantly, but the latest Census Report shows that multiracial populations grew fastest.

America’s young children are more racially diverse than ever before, according to a Census report released Thursday morning, which finds that approximately half of all children under five are racial minorities.

Additionally, the fastest percentage of population growth is among self-identified multiracial Americans—especially fascinating in a time when ads featuring interracial families still spark controversy…

Read the entire article here.

Letter to Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. and Lieutenant Governor Carroll Gartin

University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
Special Collections: Exhibits and Events
1964-02-14

Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission
New Capitol Building
Jackson, Mississippi

Erle Johnston, Jr., Director
Governor Ross R. Barnett, Chairman

Phones: FL 4-3218; FL 2-1022

MEMORANDUM

TO: Honorable Paul B. Johnson, Governor; Honorable Carroll Gartin, Lieutenant Governor

FROM: Director, Sovereignty Commission

SUBJECT: Louvenia Knight (Williamson) and her two sons, Edgar Williamson, born May 1, 1954, and Randy Williamson, born October 10, 1955

1. This a condensation of a very voluminous file in the Sovereignty Commission on the two Williamson boys, shown on their birth certificates to be white males, sons of white parents, but possessing an amount of Negro blood believed to be between 1/16 and 1/32.
2. This family lives in the Stringer community of Jasper County. A school bus from Stringer white attendance center passes in front of their home and also a school bus from the white attendance center at Soso in Jones County. The School Board in Jasper County will not permit them to go to the white school and the School Board in Jones County will not take them on transfer. They cannot and will not attend the Negro schools because they are white and because this would be violating Mississippi law. They are now eight and nine years old respectively and have never attended school one day.
3. The State Department of Education asked the Sovereignty Commission to investigate and try to work out a solution to this problem. The Sovereignty Commission has made every attempt, through investigation and meeting with the school board personnel, to get these boys into a white school. We have even advised the officials involved that we can expect a lot of bad publicity on Mississippi if the boys are not admitted to a school. As of now, the newspapers, who know about the case, are withholding publication at the request of the Sovereignty Commission Director. We cannot maintain this black-out indefinitely.
4. Unless the influence of the Governor’s office and/or the Lieutenant Governor’s office can be of some assistance in solving this problem, the Sovereignty Commission must close its files with the situation remaining status quo. When we close our files without progress we are afraid the news media will begin to publicize this case as two white boys who cannot go to school in Mississippi. As a newspaper man myself, I realize this story would make national headlines and we hare attempted to avoid it.
5. The Sovereignty Commission Director will be happy to hear any recommendations from the Governor or Lieutenant Governor. The Commission file on this case is available if you wish to study it in detail.

Erle Johnston, Jr.
EJ/ea

View the letter here.

Label me American

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian
University of Massachusetts
2008-03-24

John Gruenenfelder

I come to you today as the son of a mixed race couple, of a white father and a Hispanic mother. And yet, I feel allegiance to neither. I look at my father and say, yes, he is white. And I look upon my mother and say, yes, she is Hispanic.

Yet I, the child of both, am neither. I am not white, nor am I Hispanic. I am both. I am not a Mexican-American, nor a white-American. Rather, I am just an American.

This is, I believe, something rather unique to our nation. If I had to assign a label, I suppose I would be a Mexican-American, but that does not begin to tell the whole truth…

…To be honest, I have never felt like an outcast. Though my last name of Gruenenfelder might lead you to think otherwise, I am indeed half Hispanic, or Mexican, or Latino or whatever. I look at my father and he is most definitely white. I look at my mother and she is most definitely Hispanic. Yet I am neither.

Of course, I grew up and spent my first 25 years in the Southwest. Surely this will color my opinion. Arizona has, especially of late, not looked fondly at its mixed heritage, but it is there nonetheless.

I do not feel put off by this. Rather, I consider myself an American. I am a product of those who came before me. I read the Constitution and wholeheartedly believe that our forefathers had remarkably forward thinking ideals – ideals which I believe in and wish to uphold.

I am not white, nor am I Hispanic. I am both, and I am an American. A wholly unique demographic shared by those people who are children of this land, half native, half immigrant or otherwise. I feel no less American than those who have lived here for five generations. Indeed, my Hispanic grandmother has just become a great-great grandmother. Is she no less American than I?…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Mississippi rebel’s descendants seek family facts

The Jackson Sun
2013-07-04

Laura Tillman, Associated Press

SOSO, MISS. — One hundred and fifty years have passed since the Civil War, but in Mississippi, the descendants of a legendary rebel are still separating the facts of his life from fiction.

Newton Knight, a white farmer from central Mississippi’s Jones County, rebelled against the Confederate Army. He spent years evading capture, living in swamps and the Piney Woods. He married a white woman named Serena and later moved in with a former slave named Rachel. She was owned by Knight’s family and carried their surname, and she had helped him during his days dodging the Confederate Army.

He shared his life with both women.

Today, Florence Knight Blaylock, 81, and her sister, Dorothy Knight Marsh, 69, are among those fascinated with the family legend. The sisters — who live in Soso — consider Newton and Rachel Knight their great-grandparents…

…According to historian Victoria Bynum, the county first acquired a reputation as the “Free State of Jones” because of the plentiful land that could be claimed by squatters. The title gained new significance after Knight’s rebellion against the Confederate Army.

Some say Rachel was of African descent, while others say she was an American Indian. Still others say she had a mixture of African, American Indian and white ancestry. Confusion is increased by the existence of several photographs purporting to show Rachel — all of different women.

The popular narrative holds that Serena, Newton’s wife, was white, but others say she also had American Indian ancestry…

…Davis Knight, a great-grandson of Newton Knight, Serena Knight and Rachel Knight, was tried in court on charges of illegal interracial marriage in 1948. Edgar and Randy Williamson, Newton Knight’s great-great-grandchildren, went to court in the 1960s after they were banned from a white school.

Blaylock recalls her family being called names such as “half-breed” and “white negro,” or worse, in the 1930s or ’40s. She remembers being stared at and whispered about as a child, and watching a band of rowdy white men pull her father and brother out of the house to beat them…

…Bynum, whose family also descends from Jones County, has written about the complicated social and legal terrain Knight’s descendants were forced to negotiate. Her work has been made more challenging by conflicting stories passed down by different branches of the Knight family…

Read the entire article here.

Has ‘Caucasian’ Lost Its Meaning?

The New York Times
2013-07-06

Shaila Dewan, Economics Reporter

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As a racial classification, the term Caucasian has many flaws, dating as it does from a time when the study of race was based on skull measurements and travel diaries. It has long been entirely unmoored from its geographical reference point, the Caucasus region. Its equivalents from that era are obsolete — nobody refers to Asians as “Mongolian” or blacks as “Negroid.”

And yet, there it was in the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. The plaintiff, noted Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in his majority opinion, was Caucasian.

To me, having covered the South for many years, the term seems like one of those polite euphemisms that hides more than it reveals. There is no legal reason to use it. It rarely appears in federal statutes, and the Census Bureau has never put a checkbox by the word Caucasian. (White is an option.)…

…The use of Caucasian to mean white was popularized in the late 18th century by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German anthropologist, who decreed that it encompassed Europeans and the inhabitants of a region reaching from the Obi River in Russia to the Ganges to the Caspian Sea, plus northern Africans. He chose it because the Caucasus was home to “the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgians,” and because among his collection of 245 human skulls, the Georgian one was his favorite wrote Nell Irvin Painter, a historian who explored the term’s origins in her book “The History of White People.”…

…Susan Glisson, who as the executive director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation in Oxford, Miss., regularly witnesses Southerners sorting through their racial vocabulary, said she rarely hears “Caucasian.” “Most of the folks who work in this field know that it’s a completely ridiculous term to assign to whites,” she said. “I think it’s a term of last resort for people who are really uncomfortable talking about race. They use the term that’s going to make them be as distant from it as possible.”

There is another reason to use it, said Jennifer L. Hochschild, a professor of government and African-American studies at Harvard. “The court, or some clever clerk, doesn’t really want to use the word white in part because roughly half of Hispanics consider themselves white.” She added, “White turns out to be a much more ambiguous term now than we used to think it was.”

There are a number of terms that refer to various degrees of blackness, both current and out of favor: African-American, mulatto, Negro, colored, octaroon. There are not a lot of options for whites. In Texas, they say Anglo. And there is the pejorative we were so pithily reminded of when a witness in the racially charged George Zimmerman trial said the victim, Trayvon Martin, had called Mr. Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker.”…

Read the entire article here.