Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Race Crossing in Man (Eugenics Lab. Mem. XXXVI) [Review]

    Race Crossing in Man (Eugenics Lab. Mem. XXXVI) [Review]

    American Journal of Human Genetics
    Volume 6, Number 1 (March 1954)
    pages 195–196

    Kenneth S. Brown
    University of Chicago

    By J. C. Trevor, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953, Pp. 45

    This brief monograph is a mixed blessing. On one hand it demonstrates what a wealth of metrical material has been collected on human hybrid populations, while on the other it presents methods of analysis which are both inefficient and ineptly applied.

    In his preferatory note, Dr. L. S. Penrose points out that this work was done prior to the start of hostilities in 1939, but that the value of the data presented is timeless. This is very true, however the analysis made of the data is rapidly showing signs of age. The data are a compilation of published records of nine outstanding cases of biracial crossing; Hybrid American Negroes, Jamaican ‘Browns’, Half-Blood Sioux, Ojibwa-Whites, Yucatecans, Rehoboth Bastaards, Kisar Mestizos, Norfolk Islanders, and Anglo-Indians. The mean and standard error are recorded for stature and seven cranial measures for most of these populations. Additional measurements are noted for many. In each population studied the sample includes 25 or more adult (20 years or over) individuals of each sex. The values for each sex are recorded separately.

    The mean of the hybrid population is compared with that of each of its propositus population groups by the use of Student’s t test. Unfortunately this test requires the assumption that the variances of the populations being compared be the same. Nowhere in the presentation is this recognized. It would have been eminently desirable to determine the significance of the variance ratio for each parameter for each pair of populations compared before the t test was applied. For cases of significant difference in variance between the populations the Fisher-Behrens method for the use of t with samples of unequal variance would be applicable.

    The variability of the propositus and hybrid populations is considered separately by the method of Mourant in which the variance ratio of each character for each population pair is found and then the mean variance ratio for each pair determined. This analysis indicated that the variance of the hybrid population is greater, but was found, by a t test, to be significantly greater in only two cases. Here it would have seemed desirable to look up the values in a table of F to get a more powerful estimate of the difference between these populations.

    The material presented in this monograph provides a good addition to the blood group, dermatoglyphic, and taster frequency data which are currently used in the analysis of population dynamics, and should serve to attract the attention of interested workers to this relatively undeveloped body of information.

  • (1) Man and His Forerunners (2) The Origin and Antiquity of Man (3) L’Uomo Attuale una Specie Collettiva (4) Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen

    (1) Man and His Forerunners (2) The Origin and Antiquity of Man (3) L’Uomo Attuale una Specie Collettiva (4) Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen

    Nature
    Volume 92, Number 2293 (1913-10-09)
    pages 160-162
    DOI: 10.1038/092160a0

    (1) Man and His Forerunners. By Prof. H. v. Buttel-Reepen. Incorporating Accounts of Recent Discoveries in Suffolk and Sussex. Authorised Translation by A. G. Thacker. Pp. 96. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913.) Price 2s. 6d. net.

    (2) The Origins and Antiquity of Man. By Dr. G. Frederick Wright. Pp. xx + 547. (London: John Murray, 1913.) Price 8s. net.

    (3) L’Uomo Attuale una Specie Collettiva. By V. Giuffrida-Ruggeri. Pp. viiii + 192 + xiii plates. (Milano: Albright, Segati e C., 1913.) Price 6 lire.

    (4) Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen. Dr. Eugen Fischer. Pp. vii + 327 + 19 plates. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1913.) Price 16 marks.

    (1) In this excellent translation of Prof. Buttel-Reepen’s little book, with the German title altered to “Man and His Forerunners,” the statement occurs that “general treatises on Pleistocene man published before 1908 are now almost valueless.” Such a statement implies that our knowledge regarding the ancestry and evolution of man has been revolutionised in the last five years–a statement which no one familiar with the subject could support for a moment. Yet in that space of time certain events have occurred which do materially alter our conception of how and when mankind came by its present estate…

    …(4) We have kept the most important of the four books here reviewed to the last–for there can be no doubt, from every point of view, that Prof. Eugen Fischer’s book merits such commendation. What happens when two diverse races of mankind interbreed throughout a long series of generations? Is a new race of mankind thus produced—a race which will continue to reproduce characters intermediate to those of the parent stocks? At the present time such an opinion is tacitly accepted by most anthropologists. It was to test the truth of such an opinion that Dr. Eugen Fischer, professor of anthropology at Freiburg, with financial assistance from the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, set out to investigate the Bastard people in the Rehoboth district of German South-West Africa. The Rehoboth Bastards form a community of 2500-3000 souls, and are the result of intermarriage between early Boer farmers and Hottentot women–an intermixture which began more than a century ago.

    This book contains the results of Prof. Fischer’s investigations and is a model for those who will follow in his footsteps. His observations have convinced him that a new and permanent human race cannot be formed by the amalgamation of two diverse forms of man–not from any want of fertility—for amongst the Bastards there is an average of 7.4 children to each family—but because certain characters are recessive, others are dominant, and the original types tend to re-assert themselves in the course of generations, according to Mendel’s law. Although the mean head-form of the Bastards is intermediate to those of the two parent races—Hottentot and Boer—yet in each generation a definite number of the Bastards tend to assume the head-form of the one or of the other of the parent races. There are certain facts relating to head-form known to English anthropologists which can be explained only on a Mendelian basis and are in harmony with Dr. Fischer’s observations. Between three and four thousand years ago England was invaded by a race with peculiarly formed, short and high heads. During those thousands of years the Bronze age invaders have been mingling their blood with that of the older and newer residents of England. Yet in every gathering of modern Englishmen—especially of the middle classes—one can see a number of pure examples of the Bronze age head-form. On the Mendelian hypothesis the persistence of such a head-form is explicable.

    Dr. Eugen Fischer’s study of the Rehoboth Bastards will be welcomed by all students of heredity. No race has so many peculiar human traits as the Hottentots, and hence the laws of human inheritance—as Prof. Fischer was the first to recognise—can be advantageously studied in their hybrid progeny.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Accounting for the Audience in Historical Reconstruction: Martin Jones’s Production of Langston Hughes’s Mulatto

    Accounting for the Audience in Historical Reconstruction: Martin Jones’s Production of Langston Hughes’s Mulatto

    Theatre Survey
    Number 36, Issue 1 (1995)
    pages 5-19
    DOI: 10.1017/S0040557400006451

    Jay Plum, Ph.D.

    Although Langston Hughes’s Mulatto holds the record as the second longest Broadway production of a play by an African American playwright (surpassed only by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun), the reasons behind its commercial success have been virtually ignored. This oversight in part reflects a tendency among theatre scholars to treat the dramatic text as the primary (if not the only) source of a play’s meaning. In the case of Mulatto, academic critics have debated its literary merit according to questions of form and genre. Webster Smalley, in his introduction to the collected plays of Langston Hughes, for instance, defends Mulatto as a tragedy, arguing that the play avoids the tendency of social dramas of the 1930s “to oversimplify moral issues as in melodrama” because of the recognition of Bert’s “tragic situation” (he must kill himself or be killed by an angry lynch mob). For those critics who insist that Mulatto is melodramatic, Smalley advises, “let [them] look to the racial situation in the deep South as it is even today [i.e., 1963]: it is melodramatic.” Smalley presupposes a dichotomous relationship between fiction and reality, advancing a mimetic theory in which representation directly corresponds to the real. Rather than answering specific charges, he defines contemporary race relations as melodrama, implying that Mulatto, even if melodramatic, is “natural” and “accurate.”

    Read the entire article here.

  • Liminality and Transgression in Langston Hughes’ “Mulatto”

    Liminality and Transgression in Langston Hughes’ “Mulatto”

    Cuadernos de investigación filológica (C.I.F.)
    Number 26 (2000)
    pages 263-271
    ISSN: 0211-0547

    Isabel Soto
    Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

    This essay explores societal fear of the mulatto as charted by Langston Hughes’ play “Mulatto” (1931).  “Mulatto” dramatizes the demand for social incorporation by a mixed-race young man, Robert Norwood, who suffers a double exclusion: from a white body politic, and from the black community, by virtue of his claim to a white heritage.  I make extensive use of the terms ‘liminal’ and ‘liminality’ (taken from the work of anthropologist Victor Turner) to refer to Robert’s status, his attempts to redraw that status, and the representation of space in the play.  I argue that white characters’, and hence white society’s, refusal to grant Robert access their power structures reveals a complex anxiety or fear of the borderland or liminal creature that is the mulatto, born of transgression (and, in Robert’s case, ultimately a transgressor himself).  I will argue that the play is as much about female agency as it about the danger attendant on the (non-white) exercise of power.

    Read the entire article here.

  • “Race Crossing in Man: The Analysis of Metrical Characters” [Review by L. C. Dunn]

    “Race Crossing in Man: The Analysis of Metrical Characters” [Review by L. C. Dunn]

    Race Crossing in Man: The Analysis of Metrical Characters. J. C. Trevor (“Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs,” XXXVI.) London: Cambridge University Press, 1953. 45 pp., 1 plate.

    American Anthropologist
    Volume 56, Issue 5     (October 1954)
    pages 923-924
    DOI: 10.1525/aa.1954.56.5.02a00490

    L. C. Dunn
    Columbia University

    This is a review and analysis of nine selected sets of data published before 1938. Those cases were chosen in which anthropological measurements of living “hybrid” subjects were available, together with measurements of known or assumed parent racial groups. All involved marriage between European and non-European parents. Trevor’s chief interest was to test by existing data two opinions frequently held by anthropologists: first, that the average values of physical characters of hybrid groups are intermediate between those of the parent races; and second, that populations derived from crosses of distinct races are highly variable and often show bimodal or multimodal frequency distributions. By use of adequate biometrical methods the first opinion is sustained; the second clearly is not. The absence of the anticipated high variability of hybrids was a surprise to the author, who asks whether variability might have been reduced by the tendency of hybrid groups to be inbred. He considers this possible. The reviewer would suggest that inbreeding has two effects relevant to this question: first, reduction of heterozygosity within each related group; second, a tendency toward divergence between different family or clan groups leading toward increased variance of the total population which is so divided. Much would depend on whether the hybrid population was dispersed as in the case of American Negroes, or concentrated and localized as in the case of the Norfolk Islanders. It is doubtful whether any data now exist by which such questions can be adequately tested for human groups. The variability of mensurable traits in all human populations may be such as to render imperceptible the differences due to differing degrees of “hybridity” within and between races. Trevor’s paper is a contribution to the methodology of analysis of such difficult questions as those mentioned, and a challenge to anthropologists to produce more and better data to which the methods can be applied.

  • Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiah [Amaye Review]

    Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiah [Amaye Review]

    New Black Arts Alliance
    2011-02-18

    Muli Amaye, Part 1 Tutor, Creative Writing
    Lancaster University

    Daniel R. McNeil. Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic: Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiahs. London: Routledge, 2009, 186 pp. Hardback ISBN 978-0-415-87226-3, Paperback ISBN 978-0-415-89391-6, eBook ISBN 978-0-203-85736-6.

    As a part of the Routledge Studies on African and Black Diaspora this book is a necessary and useful addition. The fact that it brings a lot of research and theory together makes it a good starting point for information on an important part of the Diaspora that is often overlooked, other than with curiosity or somewhat derogatory terms.

    Overall the book is informative and provides the reader with extensive notes at the end broken down by chapters and a thorough bibliography. McNeil has linked theories and philosophies to literature and contemporary TV/film in a way that provides the reader with understandable examples and brings the text to life. The writing is accessible and readable using language in a way that opens the book up from pure academia and puts it into the public sphere.

    The book is split into 6 main chapters plus a preface and a conclusion. The headings for the chapters do not give a lot on information for the reader looking for specific information, however, the short preface deals with this. Each chapter draws on what has been written previously i.e. Schulyer, Rank and Du Bois are used comparatively throughout, which gives the book coherence.

    Overall this book is a comprehensive look at the mixed race population bringing the debate right up to date and offering a fresh look at theories and philosophies by introducing creative expression into the forum. By challenging what has been written and debated before McNeil encourages the reader to think beyond what has always been on offer by leading theorists and to question whether it is time for a fresh look.

    The following is a very brief overview of each chapter.

    Preface

    The preface introduces the book immediately by offering opening literary credits followed by a personal anecdote. This promises a fresh look at theory and literature offering grounded in reality. It gives a brief outline of each chapter, which is a useful for research purposes, although the length and accessibility of the text makes reading the whole book easy.

    McNeil begins his acknowledgement outlining his reasons for writing this book, which once more added a personal touch for the reader particularly when he explains that the text was born from anger. The reading belies this emotion because it is offered as a scholarly text and fits well within that remit.

    Chapter 1 – New People?

    Starting with a quote from Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden (1899) ending with the line ‘Half devil and half child’ McNeill sets up the tone of the chapter and alerts the reader to his critique of what has gone before. The title indicates that McNeill is not making a judgment with what is to come but is questioning and enquiring through the literature that has gone before.

    This chapter, as expected, is a literature review and offers the reader an in depth insight into the literature that has gone before and gives a historical account of the ‘half-caste’ and ‘mulatto’ from colonization onwards. This is very informative and gives the reader the opportunity to research further from Du Bois, Schulyer and Rogers to the novel Quicksand by Nella Larsen. McNeill refers to philosophers such as Rank and Freud, Fanon and introduces lesser-known theorists as well as making reference to modern day mixed race celebrities.

    This chapter is American-centric although there are a few references to the UK. What stands out immediately is the reference to female writers and actors, which makes a welcome change.

    Chapter 2 – An Individualistic Age?

    This chapter begins with a quote from Otto Rank making reference to Freud and opens with a reference to both Marx and Freud dreaming about ‘grotesque racial hybrids’. This sets the tone for the chapter, which then goes on to give a brief history of Otto Rank and his ‘psychoanalytic study of the artist’. McNeil covers Du Bois and Fanon in separate headed sections that are informative and turns up some little known information that questions the male orientated view of these well-known philosophers, particularly around light skinned females.

    What is interesting is the references McNeil makes throughout to females rather than males, which is a refreshing change.

    Chapter 3 – Je suis metisse

    This chapter begins with two quotes, one from The Diary of Anais Nin 1934-1939 and one from Nancy Cunard’s Negro (1970) both of which make reference to Harlem.

    The chapter focuses on the female and American culture. It gives an insight into the life of concert pianist and composer, Philippa Schuyler and her denial of her racial background in the 1950s.

    McNeil explores this fully with referencing and quotes that shows his extensive research. He offers a fully complex character who does not conform to what is expected either of a female or a person of colour and it is this thorough investigation and reference to the philosophies that have gone before that make it interesting and thought provoking.

    Chapter 4 – “I. Am. A Light Grey Canadian.”

    This chapter begins with quotes by Marx and Rank. As the title suggests it is an exploration of the mixed race Canadian and introduces the work of Lawrence Hill who is also a novelist and is described by McNeil as ‘probably the most famous name in Canadian Studies of mixed race.’

    The chapter quickly moves on to Dr Daniel Hill’s studies and after thorough and comparative investigation concludes that the writer does not necessarily agree with other scholars who claim his work updates Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, but as his final sentence in this chapter states it is about adding ‘context and understanding…in the study of mixed-race identities.’

    Chapter 5 “I’m Black. Not Mixed. Not Canadian. Not African. Just Black.”

    This chapter begins with quotes from Fanon and Rosa Emilia Warder.

    The focus is once more on Canada and the ‘Altantic thinkers’ but is informative and explores Fanon and James then moves onto Merseyside, which brings the text to the UK and McNeil’s personal interest. This is once more well researched and is thorough in its approach looking at both male and female perspectives as it moves from Nova Scotia to Merseyside and incorporates Hollywood stars and TV personalities.

    Chapter 6 “Yes, We’re All Individuals!” “I’m Not.”

    This chapter begins with a long quote from Maria P. Root, “Multiracial Bill of Rights” and a further quote from Siobhan Somerville.

    The whole chapter is dedicated to mixed race celebrities and explores and examines through film and books and reference to philosophies and theories. This chapter incorporates sexuality, which the quote from Somerville suggests. McNeil uses contemporary films such as “Walking Tall” (2004) which stars ‘The Rock’ to illustrate his points. He ends the chapter in discussion of footballs Stan Collymore and referring to Rank and bringing the discussion back to Liverpool and the UK.

    Conclusion

    The short conclusion starts with a quote by SuAndi and a short paragraph outlines her stance with regard to Gilroy’s Black Atlantic.

    McNeil does not offer the usual summing up within his conclusion but offers an in-depth look into the British comedy, The Office and makes reference to Star Trek. This does not detract from the book as an excellent source of information but reiterates the fresh eye with which he has surveyed the literature and film that has gone before and offered it to the reader with a new and clear perspective.

  • Critical Mixed Race Studies 2010 Event Report

    Critical Mixed Race Studies 2010 Event Report

    2011-02-17

    Wei Ming Dariotis, Associate Professor Asian American Studies
    San Francisco State University, IPride Board
    dariotis@sfsu.edu

    Camilla Fojas, Associate Professor and Chair
    Latin American and Latino Studies
    DePaul University

    Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
    DePaul University

    Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference
    DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus
    2250 N. Sheffield
    Chicago, Illinois USA 60614
    2010-11-05 through 2010-11-06

    For the inaugural CMRS 2010 conference, we had over 450 people registered and 430 people actually showed up from all over the U.S. from Hawaii to Tennessee to New York as well as scholars from Canada, Korea, and the UK. The programming included 62 sessions of panels, round tables, and seminars; multiple film screenings, keynote addresses by leading scholars Mary Beltrán from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Andrew Jolivette from San Francisco State University, and community activist and artist Louie Gong from MAVIN and Eighth Generation; a Mixed Mixer social event with live jazz music; a performance by comedian Kate Rigg; an Informational Fair; a Book Table; Caucus and Business meetings.

    We sold out three boutique hotels with CMRS attendees and many panels were standing room only or at capacity. We were honored to have many senior scholars present at CMRS 2010 as well as a strong contingent of undergraduate and graduate students from area colleges, community members, and a surprisingly high number of graduate students and junior colleagues from across the country. A critical mass of new media artists (podcasters, bloggers, film and video) including bloggers Steven F. Riley from MixedRaceStudies.org and Fanshen Cox from the Mixed Chicks Chat podcast joined us as well. Representatives from community organizations came out in full force from: MAVIN, SWIRL Inc., Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, Multiracial Americans of Southern California, LovingDay.org, and the Biracial Family Network.

    You can find links to download the conference poster and a PDF of the schedule as well as the video of the welcoming address and the three keynote addresses and audio recordings from 18 sessions via iTunes U on the CMRS 2010 website: http://las.depaul.edu/aas/About/CMRSConference/index.asp

    Outcomes and Future Goals
    We can’t express how grateful we are to all the attendees, participants, volunteers, hosts and co-sponsors for making this event happen.

    Following the 2010 CMRS conference, we were able to establish the following Tangible Outcomes:

    • DePaul’s Media Production & Training (Wen Der Lin and Greg Barker) video recorded, edited, and posted video from the welcoming address and the three keynote addresses on iTunes U.
    • DePaul’s Media Production & Training (Wen Der Lin and Russ Patterson) worked with the organizers and participants to audio record conference sessions. 18 conference sessions were edited and MP3 audio was posted on iTunes U.
    • DePaul’s Linda Greco created updated the conference website under the Global Asian Studies URL (http://las.depaul.edu/cmrs).
    • Laura Kina started a Google group “criticalmixedracestudies” which participants are using to continue to stay in touch. If you haven’t joined yet, please do so at: criticalmixedracestudies@googlegroups.com!
    • CMRS participants are also using our “Critical Mixed Race Studies” facebook page to stay in touch. Friend us! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13919553099.
    • Chris Paredes, a student at the University of Washington, organized a network of mixed race student organizations from across the country to stay in touch on a regular basis. If you would like to join this discussion, please contact Chris at: paredc@gmail.com.
    • Amanda Erekson, President of MAVIN, is coordinating monthly call ins for the community orgs. If your mixed race community organization would like to participate, contact Amanda for details at: amanda.erekson@gmail.com.
    • DePaul LA&S undergrad student, Erin Kushino, would like to start a mixed race student org at DePaul. If you know DePaul students who might want to help her with these efforts, please contact her at: erincaitlink@sbcglobal.net.

    Goals in progress and/or that we need help with still:

    • Next CMRS conference – Camilla Fojas and the DePaul University Department of Latin American and Latino Studies will host the second CMRS conference in November 2012. Be on the look out for the call for papers shortly. Please direct all conference questions to Camilla Fojas at: cfojas@depaul.edu.
    • G. Reginald Daniel and Paul Spickard (University of California, Santa Barbara), Laura Kina (DePaul University), Wei Ming Dariotis (San Francisco State University) plan to launch an online peer reviewed CMRS journal. We are in the process of reviewing digital platforms for the online journal and drafting a list of CMRS journal advisory board members. We will be sending out invitations to senior scholars shortly. We will be looking for additional junior and senior scholars to be blind reviewers and guest editors. Please direct all questions about the journal to G. Reginald Daniel at: rdaniel@soc.ucsb.edu.
    • Plans are in the works to found an association for CMRS. If you are interested in volunteering for a leadership role, please contact Laura Kina at: cmrs@depaul.edu. Our immediate needs are for a volunteer lawyer to review our by-laws and help us apply for non-profit status.

    Thank you for supporting the inaugural CMRS 2010 conference!

  • The Advantage Of Dual-Identities (A Case Study of Nabokov)

    The Advantage Of Dual-Identities (A Case Study of Nabokov)

    Wired Magazine
    2011-01-31

    Jonah Lehrer, Contributing Editor

    Vladimir Nabokov was a lepidopterist. No, really. While Proust wasn’t actually a neuroscientist—just an extremely intuitive novelist—Nabokov spent six years as a research fellow at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, obsessing over the details of the Polyommatus blues. Furthermore, his speculative hunch about the evolution of these blue butterfly turns out to have been exactly right. Here’s Carl Zimmer:

    In a speculative moment in 1945, Nabokov came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves.

    Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.

    “It’s really quite a marvel,” said Naomi Pierce of Harvard, a co-author of the paper…

    …For Nabokov, the entire universe was just an elaborate puzzle waiting to be figured out. It didn’t matter if one was talking about a novel or the evolution of an insect or a chess problem: Nabokov knew that the way to solve the puzzle was to focus on the little things, to begin at the beginning and inductively work your way upwards. While Gould saw his dappling in science as a diffusion of his genius, Nabokov (convincingly) argued that his genius was actually a merger of these two distinct disciplines: “I think that in a work of art there is a kind of merging between the two things, between the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science.”

    It’s also important to note that the advantage of having a “dual-identity”—being both a novelist and a scientist, for instance—isn’t limited to Nabokov. According to a study led by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, people who describe themselves as both Asian and American, or see themselves as a female engineer (and not just an engineer), consistently display higher levels of creativity. In the first experiment, the researchers gathered together a large group of Asian Americans and asked them to design a dish containing both Asian and American ingredients. In the second study, they asked female engineers to design a new mobile communication device.

    In both cases, subjects who are better able to draw on their mixed backgrounds at the same time were more creative than those who could only draw on one of their backgrounds. They designed tastier dishes and came up with much better communication devices. Because their different social identities were associated with different problem-solving approaches, their minds remained more flexible, better able to experiment with multiple creative strategies.In contrast, Asian Americans who felt that they had to “turn off” their Asian background in an American setting – this is an example of “low identity integration” – or female engineers who believed that they had to be less feminine to be effective at work, had a harder time drawing on their wealth of background knowledge. Such research makes me particularly hopeful in light of this news on the surge of people who identify as “mixed-race”:

    The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage.

    One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend continuing or accelerating…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Identitarian Discourses

    I read the identitarian discourses surrounding Obama differently. The posing of these questions around identity betrays our subconscious recognition that we are not there yet—we remain burdened by a default racial calculus. Even the semantics of being post-racial reveals the persistence of race and racial constructions. We do not even have terminology, let alone the ideological substance, to take us beyond racial fixity. These questions further indicate our quest for a racial healing that we know has not yet been achieved. Hence the racial schizophrenia. We aredeeply conflicted. It is unclear what is reality versus what is merely our distorted perception. It is my ultimate conclusion that our distorted racial perception is our reality.

    Camille A. Nelson, “Racial Paradox and Eclipse: Obama as a Balm for What Ails Us,” Denver University Law Review, Volume 86, Obama Phenomena: A Special Issue on the Election of President Barack Obama (2009): pages 743-783.

  • Racial Paradox and Eclipse: Obama as a Balm for What Ails Us

    Racial Paradox and Eclipse: Obama as a Balm for What Ails Us

    Denver University Law Review
    Volume 86, Special Issue (Obama Phenomena: A Special Issue on the Election of President Barack Obama (2009)
    pages 743-783

    Camille A. Nelson, Dean and Professor of Law
    Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts

    I. Introduction

    The 2008 political season provided us with sublime political spectacle. The contest for presidential nominee of the Democratic National party was an exciting and historic race. The subsequent presidential race whipped Americans, and indeed many throughout the world, into a frenzy. Never before did two white women and a black man exemplify the dreams and aspirations of so many. People the world over hoped and sought to change the course of history through the selection of the President and Vice President of the United States of America. There appearedto be a captivating yet ironic handwringing around identitarian politics at the same time that this elephant in the room was downplayed. The contest elevated, yet simultaneously sublimated, Americans’ struggle with race, gender, religion and national origin. As everyone was well aware of the monumental contests for symbolic firsts1 the 2008 Presidential race took on added momentum. With the designation of “First black President of the United States of America” looming within sight, supporters and detractors of Barack Obama were plagued by the weighty history of America. This racist history was cast as both past and prologue. With so many “firsts” at stake—either the potential for the first woman President and Vice President or the first black President—both crude and subtle identity politics were revealed which challenged claims that the citizenry of the United States had moved beyond identity politics, or race more specifically.

    However, transcendent colorblind theories have been echoed in recent U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence—they buttress a disconnect from our racialized past and present. In 2003, Justice O’Connor in Grutter v. Bollinger remarked that in twenty-five years we should no longer require affirmative action initiatives, presumably because we will have reached a post-racial epoch of cultural colorblindness. A few years later Chief Justice Roberts in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 15—a case addressing affirmative action initiatives undertaken by school districts—similarly asserted that the best way to stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating. Cases such as these encode a normative boundary between public and private. They establish a terrain of identity schizophrenia on which we are often deluded by our perceptions of reality—no longer can we tell what is real from what is fiction.

    This is the terrain on which I would like to examine the Obama phenomenon to reveal Barack Obama as somewhat of a paradox, black but white, manly but feminist, alien yet familiar, foreign but quintessentially American, and of course dubiously Christian. Accordingly, this essay will explore what might be described as the disordered identity politics revealed at the site of Obama’s ascendance. I will focus largely upon racial dynamics while recognizing the work of other identity constructs in constituting and reinforcing each other. Admittedly, race and racial politicking are the focus of this essay, but gender (specifically masculinity), religion, class and national origin also occupied the political landscape in meaningful ways. Essential to this exploration, therefore, is the intersecting identity of Barack Obama as not only a man, but a heterosexual black man of mixed racial, cultural and religious heritage. This multifaceted identity nexus carries incredible baggage in America—it complicates the desire for simplified identitarian politics but does not eliminate its force.

    While to some people Barack Obama, as a mixed-race man who is Black identified, holds within him the specter of a post-racial America, it is my sense that we have not yet achieved this lofty goal, despite his election. Instead, America remains deeply invested in identitarian politics and race more specifically. No doubt some citizens cast a vote for Obama because of his race and others refused to do so for the same reason.  Rather than being irrelevant, the visibility and salience of race in America is starkly demonstrated by Obama mania—Obamania—the frenzy, excitement and furor surrounding his candidacy for President of the United States. Obama supporters and detractors alike have seized specifically upon race, consciously or unconsciously, to reveal deepseated identity-based paranoia. Thus, contrary to what the Supreme Court of the United States proclaims, race is not irrelevant in America, especially when politics and power are concerned.

    This essay will explore some of the disordered permutations of race, specifically racial construction and deconstruction, as publicly demonstrated through Obamania. In Part I, particular emphasis will be placed upon the mixed-race rhetoric surrounding Obama—this framework casts Obama as racially transcendent and celebrates public American postracialism.  Curiously, though, despite this philosophy that dismisses the centrality of race in America, Obama himself acknowledges that he has had to make private race-based identity choices. Obama asserts that he is a black man in America—it is unlikely that he could assert that he is a white man and be legitimated and embraced as such. U.S. Representative G. K. Butterfield states, “Obama has chosen the heritage he feels comfortable with. His physical appearance is black. I don’t know how he could have chosen to be any other race. Let’s just say [if] he decided to be white people would have laughed at him.” Indeed, it is folly to believe that those who see him in dark, distrustful hues would embrace his white-half identity thereby seeing themselves in him to overcome their perception of his troublesome blackness. American public progressivity is out of step with our private racial ordering. Ironically, many in America can publicly celebrate the incredible reality of our first black President, yet self-righteously return to markedly and intentionally segregated private lives.

    Part II will explore the racial tightrope that Obama skillfully crossed. Of all the major political candidates, only Obama was asked to be all things to all people. At times, he was not seen as black enough. At other times, Obama was too black. Yet on other occasions, Obama’s Christianity was questioned with the post-9/11 weightiness of an ascribed Muslim identity. There were other occasions on which his masculinity was questioned, even as he undoubtedly felt the historical burden of hyper-masculinized black manhood. Identity politics were cast upon Obama with a furor seldom demonstrated in national politics. Skillful as ever, however, Obama emerged victorious and relatively unscathed. To my mind, navigating the swath of identitarian complaints and politics thrown only his way was one of his greatest accomplishments.

    Ultimately, Part III will conclude with an exploration of the ways in which the political contest for the Democratic Party nominee exposed the primacy of identitarian politics, specifically of race, in America. In conclusion, this essay will assert that, in keeping with America’s schizophrenic socio-legal history, race remains a challenging concept and its persistent relevance indicates that we have not yet achieved the racial healing or transcendence which Obama’s public ascendancy proclaims. Obama, therefore, is not the balm for our racial ailments. Instead, Obama’s ascendancy reveals our racial disorder. At the same time that Obama’s eclipsing blackness comforts many of us in the knowledge that we have finally elected a black President, others are equally disappointed by this fact. Moreover, Obama’s public trajectory to the forefront of the political super strata eclipses the pervasive reality that private prejudices remain steadfast throughout the social landscape and we remain more racially segregated than ever…

    …To many people Obama’s mixed-race heritage indicates the triumph of colorblindness over racism. That colorblindness, as opposed to colorconsciousness without negative ascription, is seen as the sine qua non of racial progress is itself revealing of our racial disorder. For many in America the only way to overcome racism is to deny the consequences of race and colorism. Instead I suggest that we think about eliminating the negative connotations and consequences tethered to racialization rather than seeking to avoid any recognition of the socio-cultural concept of race itself. In the political landscape Obama was paradoxically wedged between these two competing viewpoints. [Shelby] Steele summarized these perspectives as follows:

    There is the unspoken hope that his mixed-race freshness carries a broader political originality. And, in fact, he does embody something that no other presidential candidate possibly can: the idealism that race is but a negligible human difference. Here is the radicalism, innate to his pedigree, which automatically casts him as the perfect antidote to America’s exhausted racial politics. This is the radicalism by which Martin Luther King Jr. put Americans in touch—if only briefly—with their human universality. Barack Obama is the progeny of this idealism. As such, he is a living rebuke to both racism and racialism, to both segregation and identity politics—any form of collective chauvinism.

    I read the identitarian discourses surrounding Obama differently. The posing of these questions around identity betrays our subconscious recognition that we are not there yet—we remain burdened by a default racial calculus. Even the semantics of being post-racial reveals the persistence of race and racial constructions. We do not even have terminology, let alone the ideological substance, to take us beyond racial fixity. These questions further indicate our quest for a racial healing that we know has not yet been achieved. Hence the racial schizophrenia. We aredeeply conflicted. It is unclear what is reality versus what is merely our distorted perception. It is my ultimate conclusion that our distorted racial perception is our reality…

    Read the entire article here.