Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

recent posts

about

  • Tragic Mulatto/Mulatta

    From Wikipedia: The Tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries. The “tragic mulatto” is an archetypical mixed race person (a “mulatto”), who is assumed to be sad or even suicidal because he/she fails to completely fit in the “white world” or the “black world”. As such, the “tragic mulatto” is depicted as the victim of the society he/she lives in, a society divided by race. Because of society’s reluctance to acknowledge ambiguity in racial classifications, this character is particularly vulnerable…

    Generally, the tragic mulatta archetype falls into one of three categories:

    • A woman who can “pass” for white attempts to do so, is accepted as white by society and falls in love with a white man. Eventually, her status as a bi-racial person is revealed and the story ends in tragedy.
    • A woman appears to be white. It is believed that she is of Greek or Spanish descent. She has suffered little hardship in her life, but upon the revelation that she is mixed race, she loses her social standing.
    • A woman who has all the social graces that come along with being a middle-class or upper-class white woman is nonetheless subjected to slavery.

    A common objection to this character is that she allows readers to pity the plight of oppressed or enslaved races, but only through a veil of whiteness — that is, instead of sympathizing with a true racial “other,” one is sympathizing with a character who is made as much like one’s own race as possible. The “tragic mulatta” often appeared in novels intended for women, also, and some of the character’s appeal lay in the lurid fantasy of a person just like them suddenly cast into a lower social class after the discovery of a small amount of “black blood” that renders her unfit for proper marriage…

    Wikipedia

    Please visit the Tragic Mulatto Myth site at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University.

    Comentary by Steven F. Riley

    The social stigma of ‘race mixing’ and the social upheaval which it was believed to have caused, was firmly imprinted into the American mindset with the publication of the 1842 anti-slavery short story, The Quadroons by Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880).  Child, a Unitarian abolitionist and women’s rights activist, introduced the world to the archetype that would be known as the ‘Tragic Mulatto’ that would last well into the middle of the 20th century.  There are various trajectories for the ‘Tragic Mulatto’, but generally he (or usually she) is a person of mixed race, who passes for white and in doing so, becomes extremely successful in some endeavor (usually love).  Inevitably, the ‘Tragic Mulatto’ is exposed and rejected by both racial groups, and the story ends — as one might guess — tragically.  Though it was not Child’s intent, the ‘Tragic Mulatto’ archetype was yet another tool (this time literary) used to preserve white hegemony.  It did this by: Firstly reinforcing the notion of  “white purity” that anyone not 100% ‘white’ was not white at all; secondly, further denigrating non-whites by implying that they all somehow secretly wished to be white and escape their lot in life; thirdly, effectively isolating mixed race individuals from both the whites they allegedly “wished to be” and the non-whites they wish to allegedly “wish to flee”; and fourthly, It leveled scorn upon those interracial unions that would bring such “hybrids” into the world.

  • mulatto

    Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent or a person who has both black ancestry and white ancestry.  The term may be perceived as pejorative in some cultures and situations.  Its current usage varies greatly.

    The etymology of the term is uncertain. It may be derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word mulato, which itself is derived from mula, mule; from Old Spanish; from Latin mūlus), by analogy with the mule, which is the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey…

    Wikipedia

  • miscegenation

    Miscegenation (Latin miscere “to mix” + genus “kind”) is the mixing of different racial groups, that is, marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside one’s racially or ethnically defined group.

    The term “miscegenation” has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to interracial marriage and interracial sex, and more generally to the process of racial admixture, which has taken place since ancient history but has become more global through European colonialism since the Age of Discovery.  Historically the term has been used in the context of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws. It is therefore a loaded word and is considered offensive by many.

    Today, the word miscegenation is avoided by many scholars, because the term suggests a distinct biological phenomenon, rather than a categorization imposed on certain relationships. The word is considered offensive by many and other terms such as “interracial,” “interethnic” or “cross-cultural” are more common in contemporary usage. However, the term is still used by scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiraciality, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages…

    Wikipedia

  • DOI (digital object identifier)

    The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System is a managed system for persistent identification of content-related entities on digital networks.  These entities may be content items (digital files, physical objects, abstract works), or any related entities in a content transaction (e.g. licenses, parties, etc.).  “DOI” is sometimes used to mean the identifiers within this system; hence the use of the term alone is deprecated unless the meaning is sufficiently clear from an earlier mention or the specific context: instead it should always be used in conjunction with a specific noun. The DOI name is the identifier string that specifies a unique object (the referent) within the DOI System; the DOI syntax is the form and sequence of characters comprising any DOI name, specifically the prefix element, separator, and suffix element; and the DOI System is the functional deployment of DOI names as identifiers in computer sensible form through assignment, resolution, referent description, administration, etc…

    Wikipedia

  • half-caste

    Half-caste  is a term used to describe people of mixed race or ethnicity. Caste comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race. The term originates from the Indian caste system, where a person of ‘lesser’ or half-caste would be deemed to be of a ‘lower class’. While the origins of the term are derogatory, its usage has evolved to give it the more objective meaning described above.

    Half caste is a term used in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking parts of the world. An example is a child of black African and white European parentage. The term mulatto (from Spanish “Mulato”) has also been used for this particular mixture. Both terms are considered impolite and potentially offensive in the U.S., as the words have been used pejoratively in the past to ostracize and isolate the offspring of such unions. For example, “children of the plantation” (the children of African-American slaves and their European-American masters in the U.S. Southern states) were not accepted as heirs, and in most cases, the relationship was never acknowledged, and “half-caste” conveyed the deliberate exclusion. The term ‘half caste’ was once commonly used in the U.K. and remains in occasional use today.

    Wikipedia

  • Policing the Borderlands: White- and Black-American Newspaper Perceptions of Multiracial Heritage and the Idea of Race, 1996–2006

    Policing the Borderlands: White- and Black-American Newspaper Perceptions of Multiracial Heritage and the Idea of Race, 1996–2006

    Journal of Social Issues
    Volume 65, Number 1 (March 2009)
    pages 105-127
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01590.x

    Michael C. Thornton
    University of Wisconsin-Madison

    By employing a new policy of “check all that apply,” the Census Bureau accommodated a mushrooming multiracial lobby demanding that its members be allowed a right to self-identification. With its implied shifting meaning of race, newspapers portrayed the reaction to this change as a firestorm of debate along racial fault lines, highlighted by Black-American inferences that this was a perilous decision. Using textual analysis, I examine from 1996 to 2006 how five Black-American and three White-American newspapers characterized multiracial people. White-American papers framed the discussion in two ways: (a) multiracial people epitomize a new era in which race has lost its bite, and (b) Black America stands in the way of their gaining their civil rights.  There were also two frames for the Black-American papers: (a) The lobby advocates individual identity and is undergirded by denial or distancing from Blackness, and (b) that focus undermines Black America’s future by playing into the misguided notion that race is socially insignificant.

    Read or purchase the entire article here.

  • When Race Becomes Even More Complex: Toward Understanding the Landscape of Multiracial Identity and Experiences

    When Race Becomes Even More Complex: Toward Understanding the Landscape of Multiracial Identity and Experiences

    Journal of Social Issues
    Volume 65, Number 1 (March 2009)
    pages 1-11
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01584.x

    Margaret Shih
    University of California, Los Angeles

    Diana T. Sanchez
    Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey

    The explosion in the number of people coming from a multiracial heritage has generated an increased need for understanding the experiences and consequences associated with coming from a multiracial background. In addition, the emergence of a multiracial identity challenges current thinking about race, forcing scholars to generate new ideas about intergroup relations, racial stigmatization, social identity, social perception, discrimination, and the intersectionality of race with other social categories such as social class.  The present issue brings together research and theory in psychology, sociology, education, culture studies, and public policy surrounding multiracial identity and introduces new advances in thinking about race, intergroup relations, and racial identity.  In exploring multiracial identity, the issue will reexamine conceptualization of race and racial identification by examining the social experiences of multiracial individuals.

     Read or purchase the article here.

  • Loving v. Virginia

    From Wikipedia: Loving v. (versus) [Commonwealth of] Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court by a [unanimous] 9-0 vote declared [on 1967-06-12] Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924“, unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.


    Source: Talking Points Memo

    The plaintiffs, Mildred Loving (nee Mildred Delores Jeter, a woman of African and Rappahannock Native American descent, July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man, October 29, 1933 – June 1975), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and any non-white person. Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban.

    Comments by Steven F. Riley:

    Read the entire decision here.

    It should be noted that the Loving v. Virginia ruling in 1967 applied to the 16 remaining states that had enacted anti-miscegenation statutes.  Thus it is a fallacy to state that ‘interracial marriage was illegal in the United States until Loving v. Virginia. Most states had in fact, repealed their anti-miscegenation laws and a few never enacted any such laws at all (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, District of Columbia, Hawaii and Alaska).

  • métis

    From Wikipedia: A métis is a person born to parents who belong to different groups defined by visible physical differences, regarded as racial, or the descendant of such persons. The term is of French origin, and also is a cognate of mestizo in Spanish, mestiço in Portuguese, and mestee in English.  In the Western Hemisphere, this term usually is used to describe someone born or descended from the union of a European and an Amerindian.  However, the term was used by other groups around the world, mostly in countries which were under French influence, such as Vietnam. It is still commonly used by Francophones today for any multiracial person…

    Comments by Steven F. Riley:

    Scholar Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, had used the term métis and/or métisse instead of ‘mixed-race’ in her early works as a way of focusing away from ‘race’ as a form of identity.  Her desire was to create a common non-racist, non-sexist term that ‘mixed-race’ individuals could claim as one of their own.  But later she states in Mixed Race Studes: A Reader…

    “…Using a French-African term in an English context, even if simply for discursive analyses, could be percieved as potentially exoticizing and further marginalizing ‘mixed-race’ subjectivities…”

    She goes on to state…

    “…Furthermore, one could argue that partially deflecting the attention away from what I call the popular folk concept of ‘race’ to other forms of identification and stratification diminishes the significant and potent function institutionalized racism plays in the maintenance of privilege and power for some and disadvantage and discrimination for others.  Finally, in attempting to construct a new lexicon, I am perpetuating a fictional history which ignores the ways in which the social processes of ‘racial’ mixing are themselves old.”

  • Mixed-up kids? Race, identity and social order

    Mixed-up kids? Race, identity and social order

    Russell House Publishing
    December 2008
    184 pages
    ISBN: 9781905541386

    Tina G. Patel
    University of Salford

    Transracial adoptees, children of mixed parentage, children of settled immigrant families… more and more children are growing up in mixed-race families and social environments. And there is increasing variety within this mixed-ness. Yet services for them have been bogged down by restrictive policy and practice guidelines based on:

  • outdated and problematic ideas about essentialised racial identities
  • the supposed need for children to commit fully to one of these identities (usually the black minority ethnic one) in order to minimise identity problems and experiences of discrimination.Of great significance to anyone working with such children and young people – in social work, adoption and fostering, education, youth work and youth justice – this book asks:
  • why essentialist ideas about a single identity tend to dominate
  • what the consequences are for those who actively choose not to identify themselves as having a single racial identity
  • how policy and practice can be improved.Patel provides thought provoking analyses of existing literature, and calls for recognition of these individuals, for example those who were transracially adopted as children, and whose reflective narratives form a major part of this book. She offers suggestions on how we can best serve their needs and facilitate their access to racial identity rights. She covers such issues as:
  • racism in a black and white society
  • the implications of assigned binary black or white racial labels
  • the construction of various social relationships, with an insight into the complex issues involved in their racialised negotiations
  • ways of supporting mixed-race people to express multiple identity status.

    • Mixed-up Kids? argues for better and more informed ways of thinking about how racial identity is flexible, diverse, and possesses a multiple status; and how such thinking will progressively lead to an improvement in the child, family and community support services which seek to assist some of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of society, namely black minority ethnic and mixed race children.

    As the book presents the narratives of six adults who had been transracially adopted as children, it is of special interest to anyone working in the field of adoption and fostering. It will also be of compelling interest to academics, researchers and students in the social sciences, especially sociology, social work and family/community studies; and of direct practical value to child, family and community support workers. It can serve both as a handbook on which to base policy and practice, and as a tool for considering key issues in the area.