Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Regulating Race: Interracial Relationships, Community, and Law in Jim Crow Alabama

    Regulating Race: Interracial Relationships, Community, and Law in Jim Crow Alabama

    University of Georgia
    2008
    96 pages

    L. Kathryn Tucker

    A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS

    This thesis, based largely on legal cases concerning miscegenation in Alabama, argues that legal efforts to impose social control by prohibiting interracial marriages and relationships proved ineffective due to the efforts of defendants to find legal loopholes, the racial ambiguity of a tri-racial society, and the reluctance of many communities to prosecute offenders. Nationwide interest in matters of race fueled the passage of one-drop laws in the 1920s, but also provided defendants with ways to claim racial backgrounds that fell outside the scope of the laws. Concurrently, local communities proved disinclined to prosecute interracial relationships unless individuals felt personally involved through desires for revenge or monetary gain. This often long-term toleration of interracial relationships, along with interracial couples’ own efforts to escape prosecution, proves that southern race relations were often more flexible and accommodating than harsh laws and the attitudes behind them would suggest.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    • INTRODUCTION
    • CHAPTER
      • 1. Miscegenation and the Law
      • 2. Patterns of Defense
      • 3. Defining Race
      • 4. Community Toleration
    • CONCLUSION
    • APPENDICES
      • A. Map of Alabama Counties
      • B. Alabama Miscegenation Cases, 1883-1938
      • C. Alabama Appellate Miscegenation Cases 1865-1970
    • BIBLIOGRAPHY

    …Much of the difficulties that the courts faced in determining race, even by physical means, stemmed from the defendants’ own attempts at muddling the issues. By the 1920s, most blacks came from families that at some point had experienced racial mixture—whether by choice or by force—and many white families, contrary to their fervent beliefs, also had racially mixed forebears. Savvy defendants in miscegenation cases used this fact to their benefit, claiming ancestors who variously possessed Spanish, Indian, or the ambiguous “Creole” or “Cajun” blood in order to explain dark skin tones. This defense proved particularly valuable in states such as Alabama, where the legislatures never outlawed marriage between Indians and whites. Closely linked to attempts to define race based on physical characteristics of both defendants and families, attempts to explain away ambiguous features based on Indian heritage often proved successful….

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • The Antisocial Escape of William Faulkner’s Tragic Mulattoes

    The Antisocial Escape of William Faulkner’s Tragic Mulattoes

    University of Georgia
    2008
    34 pages

    Courtney Thomas

    A Thesis Submitted to the Honors Council of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree BACHELOR OF ARTS in ENGLISH with HONORS

    With the characters of Charles Bon in Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and Joe Christmas in Light in August (1932), William Faulkner constructs two masculine versions of the traditionally female tragic mulatto narrative concerning the plight of a mixed-race individual. Ostensibly, the philandering Charles Bon and the violent Joe Christmas exemplify the “strong and silent” ultra-masculine stereotype and thus have no connection with the vulnerable and sensitive tragic mulatto female. However, Bon and Christmas are connected to this usually female archetype because both men are troubled by the internal conflict of identity that is central to the tragic mulatto myth. The men likewise fear the tragic mulatto’s fates of societal isolation and loneliness. Yet unlike the passive female who exercises little to no agency in preventing her tragic fate, Bon and Joe actively resist their prescribed fates through the manifestation of qualities indicative of antisocial personality disorder. In this thesis, I will explore the factors that lead to the development of antisocial qualities in these two characters, how the men utilize these qualities as methods of combating the confinements of the tragic mulatto myth, and how the two characters’ attempts to escape their stereotypical fates ultimately prove to be futile.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    • CHAPTERS
      • 1. INTRODUCTION
      • 2. THE ABANDONED
        • The Elusive Father
        • A Life Without Connection
      • 3. THE TRANSFERRAL OF HURT
        • The Seduction of the Sutpens
        • The Two Joes
        • Male Revenge
      • 4. THE FEAR OF THE FATHER
        • The Sutpen Curse
        • The Fear of Family
      • 5. WALKING INTO DEATH
        • The Failure to Escape the Myth
    • WORKS CITED

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • Biracial Student Voices

    Biracial Student Voices

    University of Georgia
    2008
    140 pages

    Willie L. Banks Jr., Associate Dean of Student Life
    Cleveland State University

    A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILISOPHY

    The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of biracial students with one parent of African American heritage attending Predominantly White Institutions (PWI) in the South. This study utilized a basic qualitative research design and was comprised of three phases: semi-structured individual interviews, responses to written prompts and a photo elicitation project. Twelve participants from two southern institutions participated in this study.

    Through an analysis of data four themes emerged that encapsulated the experiences of the students in this study: 1) The Search – the pre-collegiate experience, 2) Finding a Voice – the collegiate experience, 3) Breaking Free – dealing with labels from society, and 4) Here’s Where I am for Now – the evolving identity of biracial students. These themes illustrated how complex and personal biracial student development can be. The biracial students in this study used their experiences with family and friends to define their identity. Once they reached college, their circle of friends, involvement in student organizations, and finding safe spaces on campus all contributed to the students defining and redefining their biracial identity. These experiences all contributed to a generally positive experience for students in this study. Additionally, participants in this study were able to define their place in society as a biracial individual and what role society should or should not play in their identity choices. Results from this study showed that biracial identity was a complex process that started before college and that continued through college.

    The findings in this study have implications for student affairs professionals. The implications include: understanding that biracial identity is complex and situational, programs and services for students of color are needed and can be beneficial for biracial students, spaces on campus need to be welcoming to all students and student affairs professionals need to structure and provide spaces that welcome and support all students, student affairs professionals need to be cognizant of the different experiences biracial students have from other students of color and will need to ensure that biracial students are provided with the options and choices provided to all students.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    • LIST OF TABLES
    • LIST OF FIGURES
    • CHAPTER
      • 1. INTRODUCTION
        • Statement of the Problem
        • Theoretical Framework
        • Research Questions and Methodology
        • Limitations of the Study
        • Significance of the Study
        • Definition of Terms
        • Summary
      • 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
        • Race
        • Biracial Identity Development
        • Bases, Borders, Identities, Patterns and Quadrants
        • Factors Influencing Racial Identity Choices
        • Multiracial Students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs)
        • Recommendations from the Research
        • Summary
      • 3. METHODOLOGY
        • Design
        • Sample Selection
        • Site Selections
        • Ethical Considerations
        • Data Collection
        • Data Analysis
        • Validity and Reliability
        • Researcher Bias and Assumptions
        • Summary
      • 4. SEARCHING, FINDING A VOICE, BREAKING FREE AND HERE’S WHERE I AM FOR NOW
        • Participants
        • Presentation of Data
        • The Search
        • Finding a Voice
        • Breaking Free
        • Here’s Where I am for Now
        • Summary
      • 5. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
        • Analysis of Findings
        • Implications for Practice
        • Limitations of the Study
        • Recommendations for Future Research
        • Conclusion
    • REFERENCES
    • APPENDICES
      • A. Student Solicitation Email
      • B. Consent Form
      • C. Participation Information
      • D. Individual Interview Protocol
      • E. Directions for Written Prompt
      • F. Directions for Photo Elicitation

    LIST OF TABLES

    1. Five Patterns of Multiracial Identity
    2. Placement of Participants in the Five Patterns of Multiracial Identity
    3. Detailed Participant Information

    LIST OF FIGURES

    1. Representation of my Parents
    2. Basil
    3. My bedroom
    4. BAM
    5. The Black Hole
    6. UoS Hall
    7. Theater
    8. UoS Stadium
    9. Holding Hands
    10. An Unquiet Mind
    11. Camouflage

    Read the entire dissertation here.

  • Towards a Dialogic Understanding of Print Media Stories About Black/White Interracial Families

    Towards a Dialogic Understanding of Print Media Stories About Black/White Interracial Families

    University of Georgia
    2003
    160 pages

    Victor Kulkosky

    A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS

    This thesis examines print media news stories about Black/White interracial families from 1990-2003. Using the concept of dialogism, I conduct a textual analysis of selected newspaper and news magazine stories to examine the dialogic interaction between dominant and resistant discourses of racial identity. My findings suggest that a multiracial identity project can be seen emerging in print media stories about interracial families, but the degree to which this project is visible depends on each journalist’s placement of individual voices and discourses within the narrative of each story. I find some evidence of a move from placing interracial families within narratives of conflict toward a more optimistic view of such families’ position in society.

    Multiracial People’s Quest for Voice

    People in interracial/multiracial families are engaged in a struggle to find their voice. More accurately, they are trying to establish both an inner voice, to talk about themselves to themselves; and a public voice, to tell their stories to anyone who will listen. Dalmage (2000, p. 20) describes the search for the inner multiracial voice: “Because they do not quite fit into the historically created, officially named, and socially recognized categories, members of multiracial families are constantly fighting to identify themselves for themselves. A difficulty they face is the lack of language available to address their experiences.” This story is my story. I am White (Lithuanian, German, Irish, born in New Jersey, raised in New York City) and married to a Black woman (African, English, Cherokee, born and raised in Georgia). We have a son (born and raised in other parts of Georgia). My wife has a “white looking” half sister, who has seven nieces and nephews, some of whom add Dutch to the family tree. Finding answers to the question, “What are we?” is a family affair. Answering the question “What are you?” is a public matter…

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • Shaping a Symbol: Schwarz-Bart’s Visions and Revisions of His Guadeloupian Heroine in La mulâtresse Solitude

    Shaping a Symbol: Schwarz-Bart’s Visions and Revisions of His Guadeloupian Heroine in La mulâtresse Solitude

    Sargasso: Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture
    Volume II (2002)
    pages 31-43

    Aaron C. Eastley, Associate Professor of English
    Brigham Young University

    Much has been made by critics of André Schwarz-Bart’s singular portrayal of his historical heroine in La mulâtresse Solitude (1972), translated from the French By Ralph Manheim as A Woman Named Solitude (1973, 2001). Solitude, a mulatta slave conceived in rape during the Middle Passage, lived to become one of the most famous maroons in Guadeloupean history. As rendered by Schwarz-Bart, however, Solitude becomes a marginally sane ‘zombie-corne,’ whose documented acts of violent resistance to slavery are presented as little more than the haphazard forays of a woman acutely distracted—one who in moments of crisis often thinks she is a dog. and whose success in fighting and eluding her enemies can only reasonably be attributed to incredible good fortune…

    …I would suggest, however, that there is considerably more to Andre’s interpretive vision of Solitude than is revealed by a narrow analysis focusing only on her apparent apathy in the novel. A careful examination of the text demonstrates that Schwarz-Bart did indeed work from local legend in his depiction of Solitudes life, and that his portrayal of her dementia roots that condition in the traumatic alienation which she experiences as a result of her mixed-race identity. Furthermore, the condition of madness or zombie-ism in the text is consistently portrayed as a common form of resistance resorted to by slaves in extremity—not merely as the result ot personal weakness or of any singular, “exemplary martyrdom.” Schwarz-Bart, I would suggest, demonstrates integrity in his novel by creating a complex, credible and sympathetic portrayal of his historical heroine, while working within the confines of an oral tradition which he questions but does not contravene.

    In his novel, Schwarz-Bart’s lays the foundation for his portrayal of his heroine by framing very carefully the race-based rejection of Solitude by her mother, who chooses to run away without her, and by other blacks. Solitude, we are shown, is specifically left behind because of her mixed race origin and identity, and once she comes to understand this fully (as she gets older and is rejected again and again by other blacks [89, 108]), her sense of racial alienation becomes acute—for Solitude, as Schwarz-Bart sympathetically fashions her. is an individual who identifies intensely with both her mother as a person and with her mother’s race…

    Read the entire article here.

  • “A new American comes ‘home’”: Race, nation, and the immigration of Korean War adoptees, “GI babies,” and brides

    “A new American comes ‘home’”: Race, nation, and the immigration of Korean War adoptees, “GI babies,” and brides

    Yale University
    May 2010
    355 pages
    Publication Number: AAT 3395980
    ISBN: 9781109588873

    Susie Woo

    A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University
    in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

    Between 1950 and 1965, an estimated 2000 Korean children, 3500 mixed-race “GI babies,” and 7700 military brides entered the United States as the sons, daughters and wives of predominantly white, middle-class families. Together, they signaled the corporeal return of U.S. neocolonial endeavors in South Korea stateside, and embodied the possibilities and limits of Cold War liberalism. Through analysis of U.S. and South Korean government records, archival documents, mainstream and minority press, and interviews with Korean wartime orphanage employees, this dissertation focuses on the living legacies of a “forgotten war.” It traces the roots and routes of Korean and mixed-race adoptee and war bride immigration that were intimately shaped by ordinary Americans at work in South Korea between 1950 and 1965, and the complex political, social, and legal effects that this gendered and raced immigrant group had upon both countries.

    This dissertation argues that the U.S. servicemen, missionaries, social workers, and voluntary aid workers, the latter three that flooded South Korea to spearhead the postwar recovery campaign, advocated for the legal and binding formation of mixed Korean/American families and brought empire home. Ironically, by adhering to its government’s cultural policy of integration intended to bolster U.S. expansionist and Cold War efforts, enthusiastic internationalist citizens tethered Americans at home to South Koreans in sentimental, material, and, eventually, familial ways that unraveled the government’s ability to contain its neocolonial objectives “over there.” Thus, by being American, U.S. citizens profoundly affected both sides of the Pacific—they forever changed the lives of thousands of Korean women and children, permanently shaped South Korea’s child welfare system, and unexpectedly forced openings in U.S. national and familial borders subsequently challenging Americans at home to broaden their conceptions of race, kinship, gender, sexuality, and national belonging during the tumultuous Cold War/civil rights era.

    Table of Contents

    • TABLE OF CONTENTS
    • ILLUSTRATIONS
    • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    • INTRODUCTION: On Being American
    • CHAPTER ONE: Wartime Sentiment: American GI’s and the Militarization of Korean Women and Children
    • CHAPTER TWO: Picturing the Korean “Waif: American Campaigns of Rescue
    • CHAPTER THREE: Private Matters of Public Concern: U.S. Social and Legal Management of Korean Adoptee Immigrants
    • CHAPTER FOUR: A “Pre”-History of Korean War Adoptions: Racial and Institutional Legacies of Neocolonial Care in South Korea
    • CHAPTER FIVE: Model Minority or Miscegenation Threat?: The Cultural Domestication of Korean War Immigrants
    • CONCLUSION: Mixed Kin: U.S. Neocolonial Legacies at Home and Abroad
    • BIBLIOGRAPHY

    Purchase the dissertation here.

  • Professor Michele Elam to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

    Professor Michelle Elam to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

    Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
    Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
    Episode: #227 – Professor Michele Elam
    When: Wednesday, 2011-09-28, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

    Michele Elam, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of English and Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
    Stanford University

    Mixed Chicks Chat will be talking with Michele Elam about her work on mixed-race identity and her new book, The Souls of Mixed Folks: Race, Aesthetics & Politics in the New Millenium which examines representations of mixed race in literature and the arts that redefine new millennial aesthetics and politics. Focusing on black-white mixes, Elam analyzes expressive works—novels, drama, graphic narrative, late-night television, art installations—as artistic rejoinders to the perception that post-Civil Rights politics are bereft and post-Black art is apolitical. Reorienting attention to the cultural invention of mixed race from the social sciences to the humanities, Elam considers the creative work of Lezley Saar, Aaron McGruder, Nate Creekmore, Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, Emily Raboteau, Carl Hancock Rux, and Dave Chappelle. All these writers and artists address mixed race as both an aesthetic challenge and a social concern, and together, they gesture toward a poetics of social justice for the “mulatto millennium.”

    Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

  • The Politics of Mothering in a “Mixed” Family: An Autoethnographic Exploration

    The Politics of Mothering in a “Mixed” Family: An Autoethnographic Exploration

    Identities
    Volume 12, Issue 4, 2005
    pages 479-503
    DOI: 10.1080/10702890500332642

    Nora Lester Murad, Founder and Executive Director
    Dalia Association

    Interweaving excerpts from her personal journal with research and literature about mixed race, interfaith, and bicultural experience, Nora Lester Murad uses autoethnographic methods to explore the experience of mothering in an American–Jewish and Palestinian–Muslim family. She pushes theoretical discussion beyond the experiences of “mixed” people to consider how the identity of otherwise monoracial/ monocultural parents may be transformed through the experience of parenting across socially/politically significant differences, particularly, national origin, culture, and faith. She also extends theoretical discussion beyond the confines of identity to consider parenting as a political process with an impact within and beyond families.

    Perhaps there is a place I have not yet imagined where exiles and strangers gather, racial hybrids of consciousness which can run as thick as blood, who out of necessity make the effort to rename what it means to belong (Lazarre 1996: 51).

    Family politics

    My eldest daughter. Serene, met her grandparents on her father’s side for the first time in 1997, when she was one year old. It was her first trip outside of the United States to visit my husband Hani’s village in the Arab sector of Northern Israel. It was her first time being surrounded by Palestinian Muslims.

    I vividly remember watching my little angel standing on the balcony off the sitting room. She was so focused, so grounded, so totally at home as she stared toward the olive-tree-covered mountain behind the house. I remember my own amazement—and fear—as I realized that this is…

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Brown Bag: Mixed-race tension in early America

    Brown Bag: Mixed-race tension in early America

    The Daily Campus: The Independent Voice of Southern Methodist University Since 1915
    Dallas, Texas
    2011-09-21

    Logan May

    The struggle of mixed race families in Southwest America was a daunting issue in the early 19th century.

    As part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series of the Southwest, SMU Director of Southwest Studies Andrew Graybill shared a detailed account of a mixed White-Native American family from Montana who faced an exponential amount of racial discrimination.

    In the Texana Room of DeGolyer Library Wednesday afternoon, listeners gathered and silently snacked on their lunches as Graybill spoke of the Clarke family.

    “To walk in two worlds was impossible,” Graybill said, “whites looked at mixed blood with repulsion.”

    His book, entitled A Mixture of So Many Bloods, recalled the life of Helen Clarke and the backlash she received for being the daughter of a white man and a Native American woman. At this time in the early 1800s, marriage within the two races was common, and children served as brokers between the two groups. Helen’s father had a prominent role as a fur trader; therefore, the family was often the talk of the town…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Genetic Counseling: For children of mixed racial ancestry

    Genetic Counseling: For children of mixed racial ancestry

    Biodemography and Social Biology
    Volume 8, Issue 3, 1961
    pages 157-163
    DOI: 10.1080/19485565.1961.9987478

    Sheldon C. Reed, Director
    Dight Institute for Human Genetics
    University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

    Esther B. Nordlie
    Dight Institute for Human Genetics
    University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

    INTRODUCTION

    The editors of this journal have been interested in genetic counseling because it is a major practical application of the results of research in human genetics. It is reasonable to assume that genetic counseling may also have some relationship to eugenics, though there is nothing known as to exactly what this relationship may be.

    Genetic counseling should be helpful to those who ask for it. The understanding of any problem is the first step toward its solution. Understanding of the problem removes some of the attendant anxiety, even if the solution is unpleasant. There should be less anxiety after genetic counseling than before it has occurred, and the clients indicate in many ways that it is useful to them. The relationship between genetic counseling and eugenics is certainly ambiguous. It is my impression that the relief of anxiety concerning the likelihood of a repetition of an abnormality results in increased reproduction of the parents of the affected children. If this is true, the frequency of any genes responsible for the abnormality would be increased, though slightly, in the population, which would be a dysgenic process. The increased reproduction of the parents of the anomalous children should also increase the frequency of any genes related to the attributes of responsible parenthood which should have positive eugenic benefits. It is not clear to me whether the net result of these opposing tendencies is eugenic or dysgenic. The dysgenic effect is to increase slightly the pool of rare genes for abnormalities which are infrequent, while the slight increase in the supply of genes related to responsible parenthood would be less significant percentage-wise because such genes arc presumed to be more frequent in the population. If genes related to responsible parenthood do not exist, one can only conclude that genetic counseling may well be dysgenic Genetic counseling at present would seem to be liable to the suspicion that it is dysgenic. This effect may be too trivial to warrant consideration. Hopefully, the obvious benefits to the parents who come for counseling outweigh the possible dysgenic costs to society as a whole. The only alternative to genetic counseling is the refusal to impart whatever information research in human genetics has discovered; such a philosophy would be deplorable. Genetic counseling has a function and is here to stay. It is the intention of the editors to present articles by other genetic counselors from time to time. Presumably these articles will cover particular areas of counseling with which they have had extensive experience.

    BACKGROUND OF STUDY

    Wc have had considerable experience at the Dight Institute in working with adoption agencies in the placement of children of mixed racial ancestry. Mrs. Esther Nordlie (1961) and I have just completed a follow-up of the results of the placement of such children and will summarize the results here, as this is the first study of its kind. It is probable that genetic counselors will be increasingly occupied with this topic as interracial unions are likely to continue in the United States. The casual unions often result in children who become available for adoption. . . .

    The problem of placing “pure” Negro, Indian or Mexican children is difficult only because few families of these minority groups request children for adoption. Ordinarily, no attempt would be made to place these babies in Caucasian families as the child or the adoptive parents would probably find social adjustment too difficult. However, children of mixed racial origin may “pass for white” or resemble the Caucasian adoptive parents sufficiently so that placement in a white family is feasible. Such placement is desirable for the child as the socioeconomic environment is assumed to be more favorable there. This would be true only if the racial appearance of the child would permit acceptance in the white community. Many white couples are desperately anxious to adopt children. Some are sufficiently free from racial prejudices to be able to adopt children of mixed racial ancestry, if a reasonable “match” between child and adoptive parents can be made. The critical prediction rests with the geneticist (or anthropologist) who must project the appearance of a small baby ahead to the child of five or six when entering school…

    One would suppose that predicting the chances for a child to “pass for white” would be quite simple. Such, however, is not the case. The main difficulty is that these traits, when present in the racial hybrid, may not be apparent in an infant but develop over the years. Hair texture and skin color are the most important traits and at the same time the most difficult to predict. The baby may have no hair; it is well known that babies with considerable Negro ancestry may look quite light at birth and darken considerably during childhood. The geneticist is thus vulnerable to mistakes in his predictions as to the future appearance of the baby. One could take the attitude that unless the geneticist can make his prediction with certainty he should not enter the picture at all. Such reasoning is absurd. The baby is in the custody of the adoption agency and the agency must make some provision for this child.

    Read or purchase the article here.