Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Building the “Blue” Race: Miscegenation, Mysticism, and the Language of Cognitive Evolution in Jean Toomer’s “The Blue Meridian”

    Building the “Blue” Race: Miscegenation, Mysticism, and the Language of Cognitive Evolution in Jean Toomer’s “The Blue Meridian”

    Texas Studies in Literature and Language
    Volume 46, Number 2, Summer 2004
    pages 149-180
    E-ISSN: 1534-7303
    Print ISSN: 0040-4691
    DOI: 10.1353/tsl.2004.0008

    Stephanie L. Hawkins, Assistant Professor of English
    University of North Texas

    Toomer’s vision of psychological evolution later realized and racialized in “The Blue Meridian” (1936) has its precursor in Cane’s closing chapter, the short drama “Kabnis,” and in the figure of Kabnis as a biracial subject struggling to find speech representative of his psychological experience. Kabnis’s ambivalence toward his black ancestry manifests in blood rhetoric that both highlights and undermines the purity of the plantation aristocracy that has contributed to his making. He declares, “My ancestors were Southern blue-bloods—”; “And black,” retorts Lewis, another educated black Northerner. Recognizing the pervasiveness of the one-drop rule for determining African descent—and the fact that Southerners frequently purged traces of black blood from their genealogical records—Kabnis argues that there “Aint much difference between blue and black” (108). There is a double recognition here: first, that black ancestry is inherent in the bodies of many who pass for white; and second, that as a…

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  • Stalking the Biracial Hidden Self in Henry James’s The Sense of the Past and “The Jolly Corner”

    Stalking the Biracial Hidden Self in Henry James’s The Sense of the Past and “The Jolly Corner”

    The Henry James Review
    Volume 25, Number 3, Fall 2004
    pages 276-284
    E-ISSN: 1080-6555,
    Print ISSN: 0273-0340
    DOI: 10.1353/hjr.2004.0027

    Stephanie L. Hawkins, Assistant Professor of English
    University of North Texas

    This essay argues that, for James, the visible face and body conceal some genetic “reality” or heritage, which he figures in both The Sense of the Past and “The Jolly Corner” as the specter of unacknowledged racial difference. In both works, James fuses evolutionary biology and the ghostly, thematizing turn-of-the-century anxieties regarding miscegenation. By transforming a narrative of time travel into one of racial passing, James both literalizes the psychological phenomenon of a “hidden self” and exposes the central paradox of double-consciousness: the simultaneous recognition and rejection of one’s “hidden” racial differences and sense of estrangement from the national family.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Variablity in Race Hybrids

    Variablity in Race Hybrids

    American Anthropologist
    Volume 40, Issue 4 (October-December 1938)
    pages 680–697
    DOI: 10.1525/aa.1938.40.4.02a00090

    Wilson D. Wallis (1886-1970)

    In his revised edition of The Mind of Primitive Man [Read here], Professor [Franz] Boas warns against assuming “on the basis of a low variability that a type is pure, for we know that some mixed types are remarkably uniform. This has been shown for American Mulattoes, Dakota Indians, and made probable for the city population of Italy.” In a footnote to that passage he refers to the studies of Herskovits, Sullivan, and Boas, respectively, presumably in support of this position. Inasmuch as the test of variability used in those studies is the standard deviation of dimensions, and, for reasons which I shall indicate, this is not an acceptable test of variability for this purpose, it seems proper to reexamine the data on variability of race hybrids.

    Although several studies have been devoted to the results of race crossing, there are few definitive results. Some studies suggest hybrid vigor, that is, increase in dimensions over one or both parental strains. Other studies indicate that race hybrids are inferior to one or both parental strains. Some indicate that hybrids are less variable than parental strains; others, that they are more variable. The character of the results may, of course, depend upon the races crossed and upon proximity to original crossing; but on these matters there is little well attested information. Sullivan and Boas find half-breeds among Sioux and other groups taller than pure bloods among each sex. Wissler, in a series of Oglala Dakota, finds half bloods slightly shorter than full bloods. As Sullivan remarks: “NO satisfactory solution of these contradictory results can be given so long as our series are incomplete in lacking the measurements on the whites with whom the Indians have mixed.” When all the data are considered, it is not clear that in race crossing any physical trait behaves as a Mendelian recessive or dominant-despite portrayals in fiction. In Hawaiian-European hybrids in Hawaii, however, Dunn finds evidence that the brachycephaly of Hawaiians is inherited as a dominant, and the European type of head (? dolchocephaly) reappears as a recessive in later hybrid generations. Hawaiians are said to contribute to the cross relatively more dominant factors than do Europeans.  He finds evidence, also, of “segregation of ‘racial’ characters such as nose form, hair form, hair and skin color in diverse combinations in the F and backcross generation.” There is, however, no evidence of Mendelian inheritance in the ratios with which these traits occur, and no evidence of Mendelian inheritance of a cluster of traits…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Biological and Social Consequences of Race-Crossing

    Biological and Social Consequences of Race-Crossing

    American Journal of Physical Anthropology
    Volume 9, Issue 2 (April/June 1926)
    pages 145–156
    DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330090212

    W. E. Castle (1867-1962)
    Bussey Institution, Harvard University

    What constitute the essential differences between human races seems to be a question difficult for anthropologists to agree upon but from a biologist’s point of view those appear to be on safe ground who base racial distinctions on easily recognizable and measurable differences perpetuated by heredity irrespective of the environment.  See Hooton, 1926.  It is still a moot question how races originate, not merely in man, but also among lower animals and plants.  At one time natural selection was thought to be an all-sufficient explanation of the matter, but the more carefully the question is studied and the more exact and experimental in character the data which enter into its solution, the more fully we become convinced that forms of life are rarely static, that organic is the rule rather than the exception. Change is inevitable and is not limited to useful or adaptive variations.  Natural selection undoubtedly determines the survival of decidedly useful variations, which arise for any reason, and also the extinction of those which are positively harmful, but a host of there variations fall in neither of these categories and survive among the descendants as a matter of course, quite unaffected by natural selection.

    The experimental study of evolution indicates that genetic (hereditary) variations are all the time arising, and with especial frequency in such organism are bisexual and cross-fertilized.

    In a state of nature no species can long be separated by geographical barriers into  non-interbreeding groups, without the origins of specific or racial differences between such groups…

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  • hyperdescent

    Hyperdescent is the practice of classifying a child of mixed race ancestry in the more socially dominant of the parents’ races.

    Hyperdescent is the opposite of hypodescent (the practice of classifying a child of mixed race ancestry in the more socially subordinate parental race). Both hyperdescent and hypodescent vary from other methods of determining lineage, such as patrilineality and matrilineality.

    Wikipedia

  • honhyeol…

    …The Korean word for a bi or multiracial person, despite the composition of their mixture, is honhyeol (in), which literally translates into impure blood. There has been a “pride” instilled in Koreans for their “ethnic homogeneity” which has resulted in “fear and distrust of outsiders” (The Economist, 2006). The connotation for Korea, which bases its national identity upon the notion of Koreans descending from one common ancestor and speaking one language, is that these offspring of interracial relationships are not Korean, because they have more than Korean blood coursing through their veins. It makes sense then that the oppositional identity of these “pure blooded” Koreans came about as a sort of resistance to the first Chinese invasion, then Japanese imperialism, and then finally Western imperialism in the form of American occupation after the Korean War. Korean nationalism was wrapped up in the idea of “consanguinity” to link “ethnic homogeneity” to a “profound sense of cultural distinctiveness and superiority.” (Kim, 2007) As these countries made their presence known, Korea began to rely on internal colonialism, which economically exploited and political excluded groups different from the dominant group, becoming a reminder there can be “colonial subjects – on the national soil.” (Gordon, 2006; Blauner 1972, p. 52) For many then, international marriages were “associated with the invasion of Korea by other countries” and were subsequently seen as “betrayals of nationalism” where the children resulting from those unions became physical reminders of that betrayal (Lee). Kim Sok-soo believes that the coupling of nationalism with ethnic homogeneity ultimately has became a “useful tool for the South Korean government when the country was embroiled in ideological turmoil. It was used as an effective tool to make its people obedient and easy to govern” (Park, 2006). The way the bodies of these bi and multiracial Koreans are, in both social and political realms, recognized, regulated, and ultimately utilized through relationships maintained by various institutions of the state is essential to a particular form of governmentality…

    Washington, Myra. “More than a Metaphor: Blood as Boundary for Korean Biracial Identity” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 95th Annual Convention, Chicago Hilton & Towers, Chicago, IL, Nov 11, 2009 Online <PDF>. 2010-08-09 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p368501_index.html>

  • Institutions, Inculcation, and Black Racial Identity: Pigmentocracy vs. the Rule of Hypodescent

    Institutions, Inculcation, and Black Racial Identity: Pigmentocracy vs. the Rule of Hypodescent

    Social Identities
    Volume 14, Issue 5 (September 2008)
    pages 567-585
    DOI: 10.1080/13504630802343390

    Richard T. Middleton IV, Associate Professor of Political Science
    University of Missouri, St. Louis

    This research paper investigates the effect political institutions have on black racial identity. In particular, I study individual inculcation in contexts where political institutions institutionalize either of two forms of racial social structures—a pigmentocracy (the Dominican Republic), or the rule of hypodescent (the US South), and the effect such inculcation has on black racial identity. I sampled 101 respondents from the Dominican Republic and 102 from the state of Mississippi, USA. Consistent with the basic assumptions of my hypotheses, respondents in the Dominican Republic study sites showed a weaker degree of identification with blackness vis—vis something ‘whiter’. Nevertheless, respondents in the Dominican Republic sites demonstrated a stronger identification with blackness than what most conventional observers would have anticipated. Respondents in the Mississippi study sites showed a stronger sense of identification with blackness. Surprisingly, however, Mississippi respondents demonstrated a larger degree of neutrality than expected in their belief of being of a mixed racial heritage rather than just a black African heritage.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico

    Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico

    University of Oklahoma Press
    December 2010
    400 pages
    30 B&W Illus., 2 Maps
    6.125″ x 9.25″
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780806140537
    Paperback ISBN: 9780806168920

    Shirley Boteler Mock, Research Fellow
    Mesoamerican Archaeological Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin

    Explores a unique and eclectic culture rooted in African traditions

    Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women’s roles have largely been absent from that discussion. Now a scholar who gained an insider’s perspective into the Black Seminole community in Texas and Mexico offers a rare and vivid picture of these women and their contributions. In Dreaming with the Ancestors, Shirley Boteler Mock explores the role that Black Seminole women have played in shaping and perpetuating a culture born of African roots and shaped by southeastern Native American and Mexican influences.

    Mock reveals a unique maroon culture, forged from an eclectic mixture of religious beliefs and social practices. At its core is an amalgam of African-derived traditions kept alive by women. The author interweaves documentary research with extensive interviews she conducted with leading Black Seminole women to uncover their remarkable history. She tells how these women nourished their families and held fast to their Afro-Seminole language—even as they fled slavery, endured relocation, and eventually sought new lives in new lands. Of key importance were the “warrior women”—keepers of dreams and visions that bring to life age-old African customs.

    Featuring more than thirty illustrations and maps, including historic photographs never before published, Dreaming with the Ancestors combines scholarly analysis with human interest to open a new window on both African American and American Indian history and culture.

  • Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook about Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff that Matters

    Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook about Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff that Matter

    AltaMira Press
    February 2010
    228 pages
    Cloth ISBN: 0-7591-1176-6 / 978-0-7591-1176-9  

    James Haywood Rolling, Jr., Associate Professor of Art Education
    Syracuse University

    Cinderella Story is an experimental autoethnography that explores critical racial issues in America through the media of language and images. Rolling asks, How do words and images-involving stories and paradigms, past and future, perceptions of beauty and ugliness-become flesh? How are they done and undone? In this supple and complex narrative, the author peers deeply into his own life and attitudes, and into the racial images and ideas made explicit by American history as a whole, to sort out fact from fiction in new and ingenious ways.

    Table of Contents

    Prologue: An Old Story
    Episode One: Borderlines
    Episode Two: Homelessness
    Episode Three: Origins
    Episode Four: Breech Births and Cinderella Endings
    Episode Five: Monsters Deconstructed
    Episode Six: Figuring Myself Out
    Episode Seven: Messing around with Identity Constructs
    Episode Eight: Disruptions
    Episode Nine: Secular Blasphemy
    Episode Ten: Propaganda
    Episode Eleven: Invisibility and In/di/visuality
    Episode Twelve: The Meeting
    Episode Thirteen: Self-Portrait, with Stern Resistance
    Episode Fourteen: (Re)Appearances
    Episode Fifteen: Self Portrait, with Backlighting
    Episode Sixteen: The One-Drop Rule
    Episode Seventeen: Self-Portrait, with Possibilities
    Episode Eighteen: Epilogue, with New Story Values

  • Europe’s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900

    Europe’s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900

    Duke University Press
    2010
    296 pages
    Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4745-3
    Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-4764-4

    Vanita Seth, Associate Professor of Politics
    University of California, Santa Cruz

    Europe’s Indians forces a rethinking of key assumptions regarding difference—particularly racial difference—and its centrality to contemporary social and political theory. Tracing shifts in European representations of two different colonial spaces, the New World and India, from the late fifteenth century through the late nineteenth, Vanita Seth demonstrates that the classification of humans into racial categories or binaries of self-other is a product of modernity. Part historical, part philosophical, and part a history of science, her account exposes the epistemic conditions that enabled the thinking of difference at distinct historical junctures. Seth’s examination of Renaissance, Classical Age, and nineteenth-century representations of difference reveals radically diverging forms of knowing, reasoning, organizing thought, and authorizing truth. It encompasses stories of monsters, new worlds, and ancient lands; the theories of individual agency expounded by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; and the physiological sciences of the nineteenth century. European knowledge, she argues, does not reflect a singular history of Reason, but rather multiple traditions of reasoning, of historically bounded and contingent forms of knowledge. Europe’s Indians shows that a history of colonialism and racism must also be an investigation into the historical production of subjectivity, agency, epistemology, and the body.

    Table of Contents

    Acknowledgments
    Introduction
    1. Self and Similitude: Renaissance Representations of the New World
    2. “Constructing” Individuals and “Creating” History: Subjectivity in Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau
    3. Traditions of History: Mapping India’s Past
    4. Of Monsters and Man: The Peculiar History of Race
    Epilogue
    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index