Mixed Race Studies

In the Shadow of Her Ancestry: The New Tragic Mulatta

North Carolina State University, Raleigh
2004
60 pages

Vonda Marie Easterling

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

This thesis examines the plight of the infamous tragic mulatta. Because of the mulatta’s lack of black features and her close resemblance to the white race, she was labeled by white society as the privileged of the black race. She was also referred to as the most tragic of all beings and elevated by white society over the darker skinned blacks. Thus, the mulatta found herself in a peculiar position in a race oriented, black-white society. Isolated from the black community and rejected as a part of the white community, the mulatta’s existence was then considered tragic.

Over the years, social and emotional change has occurred within the mulatta community. No longer considered the taboo of transgression, the mulatta still suffers from many of the same injustices as her ancestral mulatta. This research examines the psychological and emotional effects depicted in the 1959 film of Fannie Hurst’s Imitation of Life with sections of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and events from actress Dorothy Dandridge’s life. The research also analyzes Passing, Nella Larsen’s complex novel of the 1920s, to interrogate the strategy that many unidentifiably mulatto people mastered in order to achieve social and financial mobility. Lastly, the research explores the experience of the contemporary mulatta through Rebecca Walker’s memoir, Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, in order to explore the issues of the newly termed bi-racial person. The research explores the lineage between the historical mulatta figure and the new bi-racial persons to defuse the theory of the tragic mulatta as a mythical allusion.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter One: Reel to Real: The Cinematic Mulatta
• Chapter Two: To ‘Pass’ or Not to ‘Pass’: The Multi-Layered Practice of ‘Passing’
• Chapter Three: As Time Goes By: The New Tragic Mulatta
• Conclusion
• Works Cited

Read the entire dissertation here.

The Politics of Multiracialism with Dr. Ralina Joseph

Voxunion
2010-03-23

Jared A. Ball, Host and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Ralina L. Joseph, Associate Professor of Communications
University of Washington

The struggles surrounding the politics of identity seem at new heights these days and to help bring some historical context we spoke with Dr. Ralina Joseph who joined us for a discussion of her recent article for Black Scholar, “Performing the Twenty-first Century Tragic Mulatto: Black, White, And Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, by Rebecca Walker.” We also discussed the politics of multiracial identity in terms of the history of the “tragic mulatto,” the upcoming census and Barack Obama.

Listen to the interview here (00:32:44).

The “inter” land: Mixing autobiography and sociology for a better understanding of twenty-first century mixed-race

Villanova University
October 2009
105 pages
Publication Number: AAT 1462397
ISBN: 9781109073102

Felicia Maria Camacho

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of The Department of English Villanova University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English

In contemporary autobiographies by black/white biracial Americans, personal identity is a major source of conflict. The proposed study will address topics that are key to an understanding of biracial subjectivity and identity as presented in these autobiographies. The first chapter addresses the physicality of biracial people, paying special attention to such topics as family resemblance in interracial families, and the trope of “biracial hair” which is used as a metaphor for a distinct biracial identity that is neither black nor white. The second chapter examines another identity choice for black/white biracial subjects: singular black identity. It shows how biracial individuals can turn on its head the traditional notion of the “tragic mulatto” who is forced by the one-drop rule to accept his/her blackness. By exploring and honestly acknowledging the social experiences of both parents, the biracial individual can come to assert a healthy black identity. The final chapter links black/white biracial identity with intrinsically multiracial Latino identity. Do ethnicity, nationalism, and language suggest a way to avoid the black/white binarism of American society?

While examining these issues of biracial identity, this study will engage in a commentary on the relationships between and among various academic disciplines. When analyzing literature about race, critics often turn to race theory for secondary material. However, contemporary race theory does not do much to engage and illuminate these autobiographies of biracialism. Interestingly, sociological texts speak more directly to the “biracial phenomenon.” Therefore each chapter of this study shows how sociology and autobiography complement one another and provide a fuller, more informed picture of biracial identity.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Roots of Biracialism: Physical Appearance, Inheritance, and Identity in the Autobiographies of Elliott Lewis, Angela Nissel, and June Cross
• Chapter Two: The End of Tragedy: The New Biracial Subject, Self-Exploration, and Singular Black Identity in the Autobiographies of James McBride and Barack Obama
• Chapter Three: Finding the Third Space: Jews, Latinos, and Black/White Biracialism in the Autobiographies of Rebecca Walker, Elliott Lewis, and Angela Nissel
• Conclusion
• Works Cited

Purchase the dissertation here.

Shades of gray: Black-white multiracialism in contemporary American literature

York University (Canada)
2011
294 pages
Publication Number: AAT NR71345
ISBN: 9780494713457

Molly Littlewood McKibbin

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in English in partial fulfillment of the requirments for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Black and White in the United States
• Chapter One: “What are you, anyway?”: Mixture, Identity Formation, and the Social Context of Race Classification
• Chapter Two: Racializin’ and Diversifyin’: Negotiating Whiteness
• Chapter Three: “Black Like Me”: Negotiating Blackness
• Conclusion: The (Continuing) Work of Multiracial Literature
• Bibliography

Purchase the dissertation here.

Being Black and White

The American Prospect
2001-09-09
 
E. J. Graff, Associate Director and Senior Researcher
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

• Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black By Gregory Howard Williams. Plume (1996), 285 pages, paperback
• The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother By James McBride. Riverhead Books (1996), 297 pages, paperback
• Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self By Rebecca Walker. Riverhead Books (2001), 323 pages, hardcover
• Divided to the Vein: A Journey into Race and Family By Scott Minerbrook. Harcourt Brace and Company (1996), 261 pages, hardcover

When I was 18, I learned, quite belatedly, that my father’s brother had married a black woman. The wedding took place in 1958—the year I was born, the year after my parents married. Instantly I knew that racism had kept me from knowing my uncle (by then dead of a heart attack), my aunt, my cousins. Instantly I knew I would have to find them. But it was one thing to discover that the deepest, most volatile division in the country ran right through my family; actually crossing that divide to claim kinship was, for a long time, too daunting for someone whose only experience with “diversity” was being the sole Jewish kid among her semirural Ohio high school’s 2,300 students.

And so it wasn’t until my thirties that I finally met my aunt and cousins. To my surprise, they treated me not just as a cousin but as a living symbol of racial reconciliation. Once we’d met, told stories, and compared features—we share a long jaw and sharp chin—I started to notice how arbitrarily I’d sorted the world around me into “black” or “white.” All around were black people who looked related to me. White friends had color in their families of blood or choice: a stepfather, a spouse, a sister-in-law, a dearest friend. I started to feel that every American whose family has been here more than a few decades is from a mixed-race family, that somewhere out there—however near or far—we all have relatives of the “other” color. African Americans know this, of course, often down to the name of at least one plantation owner in the family tree. But for a white girl in a color-bound world, this was news.

As it happened, the insight that was striking me so personally—that the color line is drawn in shifting sand—would soon strike the culture. In the past few years, the headlines have been full of such things as the 2000 census’s mix-and-match option; genetic evidence that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (his dead wife’s half-sister and slave) left a widening delta of descendants; and the ascending god Tiger Woods’s refusal to reject his plural ethnicity. And since 1995, a number of mixed-race memoirs have hit our shelves, opening discussion of a new identity: biracial writers who have a black parent and a white one. These authors grapple with the sense that they don’t quite belong anywhere, that they aren’t fully claimed by either race. But their wide range of experiences reveals how deeply racial identity, like any identity, is affected not just by society but also by family, character, time, and place…

Read the entire article here.

American Mixed-Race Literature: Cultural History, Precursors, Identities, and Forms of Expression

Purdue University
2004
116 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3166693
ISBN: 9780542022999

Gino Michael Pellegrini, Adjust Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

This dissertation focuses on recent instances of mixed race literature in American culture such as Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia, Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, and Kip Fulbeck’s Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography. This dissertation suggests that these mixed race literary texts, as well as the multiracial experiences, sensibilities, themes, and expressions communicated therein, differ from traditional conceptions and descriptions of race and mixed race in American society, history, and literature that are based on the logic of the binary racial system. Mixed race literature attempts to phrase and communicate suppressed, distorted, and/or neglected multiracial experiences, sensibilities, and possibilities. Mixed race literature is also coextensive with the emergence of the multiracial social formation and movement in the post-civil rights era. “Precursors” to mixed race literature fall short in their attempt to phrase and to communicate complexities and experiences of mixed race lived existence. I read Jean Toomer’s Cane as one of the most significant precursors to mixed race literature in American literature. Mixed race literature also differs from “mixed race in American literature” insofar as the later, in the presentation of mixed race characters and themes, both relies on and validates the categorical, hierarchical, and dichotomous logic of the binary racial system. Notable examples in the canon of American and American Ethnic literature are William Faulkner and Toni Morrison who, from a mixed race perspective, extend and promote in their texts the suppression and distortion of multiracial complexities, possibilities, and lived realities in the service of the binary racial system.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Chapter One: Multiracial Identity in the Post-Civil Rights Era: A Personal Narrative Essay
  • The Summer of 1999
  • Growing up Racially Mixed in the 1970s and 1980s
  • Negotiating Raciated University in the 1990s
  • Conclusion
• Chapter Two: Cane and Jean Toomer: Percursors, American Mixed Race Literature
• Chapter Three: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia: A Novel About Growing Up Racially Mixed and Becoming Multiracial in the Post-Civil Rights Era
• Chapter Four: American Mixed Race Ficiational Autobiographies: Rebecca Walker’s Black, White and Jewish and Kip Fulbeck’s Paper Bullets
• List of References
• Vita

Purchase the dissertation here.

Multiracial Identity Week at Brown University

Multiracial Identity Week
Brown Univeristy
2010-10-24 through 2010-10-31

Featured Event: Convocation with Rebecca Walker

Rebecca Walker, one of Time magazine’s 50 most influential leaders of her generation, will give the opening address for the Third World Center’s Multiracial Identity Week. The author of three anthologies and two memoirs, including Black, White, and Jewish: An Autobiography of a Shifting Self, Walker’s work offers new approaches to ideas about race, class, culture, and the evolution of the human family. Following the address, Walker will sign copies of her books. This event takes place at 7 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Learning, De Ciccio Family Auditorium.

For more information, click here.

Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

W. W. Norton & Company
August 2006
336 pages
5.5 × 8.2 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-32786-1

Edited by Chandra Prasad

With an Introduction by Rebecca Walker

With a roster of acclaimed fiction writers, Mixed shatters expectations of what it means to be multiracial.

Globally, the number of multiracial people is exploding. In 10 US states, the percentage of multiracial residents who are of school age—between 5 and 17—is at least 25 percent. In California alone, it is estimated that 15 percent of all births are multiracial or multiethnic. Despite these numbers, mixed-race people have long struggled for a distinct place on the identity map. It was only as recently as 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau began to allow citizens to check off as many racial categories as are applicable-White, African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, and Alaska Native. Previously, Americans were allowed to check off only one, leaving multiracial people invisible and unaccounted for.

Though multiracialism has recently become a popular aspect of many memoirs and novels, Mixed is the first of its kind: a fiction anthology with racial overlap as its compass. With original pieces by both established and emerging writers, Mixed explores the complexities of identity that come with being a multiracial person. Every story, crafted by authors who are themselves mixed-race, broaches multiracialism through character or theme. With contributors such as Cristina Garcia, Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Mat Johnson, Wayde Compton, Diana Abu-Jaber, Emily Raboteau, Mary Yukari Waters, and Peter Ho Davies, and an illuminating introduction by Rebecca Walker, Mixed gives narrative voice to the multiple identities of the rising generation.

The Politics of Biracialism [Issue]

The Black Scholar
Journal of Black Studies and Research
Fall 2009 (2009-09-22)
Volume 39, No. 3/4

Guest Editors:

Laura Chrisman, Professor of English
University of Washington

Habiba Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of English
University of Washington

Ralina Joseph, Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Washington

Why a biracial issue, and why now? As black Americans we have mixed ancestry; one might ask what is gained by giving this obvious fact the attention of a special issue. Rather than focus on this broad history, however, we instead highlight here the situations of first-generation biracial black people. Perhaps this does not simplify matters. Foregrounding their specific experiences, identities, and concerns may stir up the anger of those who feel judged “not black enough” and the anger of those who feel betrayed and devalued by self-identifying biracial individuals. The politics of biracialism, seen this way, are individualistic, diminishing our community’s cohesion. Yet we feel that the time is right for an exploration of the topic. Biracial or multiracial studies is fast-growing and itself extremely varied in its methods, disciplines, and orientation. Acknowledging the important and interesting work that has been produced in the last two decades, we provide a forum for such work. Another factor in our choice of topic is the emergence, in 2008, of Obama as a presidential candidate. Both his blackness and his first generation biracialism have prompted new consideration, within black communities and within the U.S. population as a whole, of the operations and meanings of race, nation, family and community within the U.S.A. This gives us additional incentive to explore biracialism in the present moment. Our moment differs from the fraught late 1990s when the multiracial social movement campaigned for recognition in the 2000 Census, and was opposed by influential black voices. The present adds some confidence and optimism: to profile biracialism now, we suggest, is not to jeopardize black collectivity so much as it is to recognize and join the healthy debates that are flourishing within and beyond black studies…

Table of Contents

• Introduction to “The Politics of Biracialism” / Laura Chrisman
• Interracial Intimacies, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Multiracialism / Kimberly McClain DaCosta
• Review Essay: Performing the Twenty-first Century Tragic Mulatto: Black, White, and Jewish: Autobioraphy of Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker / Ralina Joseph
• Toward Black and Multiracial “Kinship” After 1997, or How a Race Man Became “Cablinasian” / Habiba Ibrahim
• Poetry: “The Art of Loving” / Madeleine Clifford
• Baby janay and Naomi Pabst: Negotiating Race Mixing, Adoption, and Transnationality / Naomi Pabst
• Reframing the National Family: Race Mixing and Re-telling American History / Catherine Squires
• Race, Multiraciality, and Barack Obama: Toward a More Perfect Union? / G. Reginald Daniel
• Books Reviews
  • Amalgamation Schemes: Anti-blackness and the Critique of Multiracialism by Jared Sexton / LeiLani Nishime
  • Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America  by Catherine R. Squires / Manoucheka Celeste
  • Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon by Jane Rhodes / Madhavi Murty
  • Mixed Race Hollywood Edited by Mary C. Beltrán and Camilla Fojas / Sarita Cannon

‘Toubab La!’ Literary Representations of Mixed-Race Characters in the African Diaspora

Cambridge Scholars Publishing
July 2007
453 pages
ISBN13: 9781847182319
ISBN: 1-84718-231-3

Ginette Curry, Professor of English
Florida International University

The book is an examination of mixed-race characters from writers in the United States, The French and British Caribbean islands (Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and Jamaica), Europe (France and England) and Africa (Burkina Faso, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal). The objective of this study is to capture a realistic view of the literature of the African diaspora as it pertains to biracial and multiracial people. For example, the expression “Toubab La!” as used in the title, is from the Wolof ethnic group in Senegal, West Africa. It means “This is a white person” or “This is a black person who looks or acts white.” It is used as a metaphor to illustrate multiethnic people’s plight in many areas of the African diaspora and how it has evolved. The analysis addresses the different ways multiracial characters look at the world and how the world looks at them. These characters experience historical, economic, sociological and emotional realities in various environments from either white or black people. Their lineage as both white and black determines a new self, making them constantly search for their identity. Each section of the manuscript provides an in-depth analysis of specific authors’ novels that is a window into their true experiences.

The first section is a study of mixed race characters in three acclaimed contemporary novels from the United States. James McBride’s The Color of Water (1996), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998) and Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish (2001) reveal the conflicting dynamics of being biracial in today’s American society. The second section is an examination of mixed-race characters in the following French Caribbean novels: Mayotte Capécia’s I Am a Martinican Woman (1948), Michèle Lacrosil’s Cajou (1961) and Ravines du Devant-Jour (1993) by Raphaël Confiant. Section three is about their literary representations in Derek Walcott’s What the Twilight Says (1970), Another Life (1973), Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) and Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1995) from the British Caribbean islands. Section four is an in-depth analysis of their plight in novels written by contemporary mulatto writers from Europe such as Marie N’Diaye’s Among Family (1997), Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara (1997). Finally, the last section of the book is a study of novels from West African and South African writers. The analysis of Monique Ilboudo’s Le Mal de Peau (2001), Bessie Head’s A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990) and Abdoulaye Sadji’s Nini, Mulâtresse du Sénégal (1947) concludes this literary journey that takes the readers through several continents at different points in time.

Overall, this comprehensive study of mixed-race characters in the literature of the African diaspora reveals not only the old but also the new ways they decline, contest and refuse racial clichés. Likewise, the book unveils how these characters resist, create, reappropriate and revise fixed forms of identity in the African diaspora of the 20th and 21st century. Most importantly, it is also an examination of how the authors themselves deal with the complex reality of a multiracial identity.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I. THE UNITED STATES
  • Chapter 1: James McBride’s The Color of Water (1996): A Journey Beyond Black and White
  • Chapter 2: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998): The Surviving Canary
  • Chapter 3: Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001): The Chameleon Experience
• PART II. THE FRENCH CARIBBEAN ISLANDS
  • Chapter 4: Mayotte Capécia’s I am a Martinican Woman (1948): “My father is Black, My Mother is Brown, and I, Am I White?” (Martinican Riddle)
  • Chapter 5: Michèle Lacrosil’s Cajou (1961): The Anti-Narcissus
  • Chapter 6: Raphaël Confiant’s Ravines du Devant-Jour (1993): Ethnostereotypes in Martinique
• PART III. THE BRITISH CARIBBEAN ISLANDS
  • Chapter 7: The Racial Paradox of Derek Walcott in What the Twilight Says (1970), Derek Walcott: Another life (1973) and Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967)
  • Chapter 8: Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1995): A Near-White Jamaican Woman’s Quest for Identity
• PART IV. EUROPE
  • Chapter 9: Marie N’Diaye’s Among Family (1997): A Desperate Search for Caucasian Identity
  • Chapter 10: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000): The Concept of Englishness in the 21st Century
  • Chapter 11: Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara (1997): Transculturality in England: Oyinbo, Whitey, Morena, Nig Nog, Nigra!
• PART V. AFRICA
  • Chapter 12: Monique Ilboudo’s Le Mal de peau (2001): Colonization and Forced Hybridity
  • Chapter 13: Bessie Head’s A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990): White-on-Black and Black-on-Black Racial Oppression in Southern Africa
  • Chapter 14: Abdoulaye Sadji’s Nini, Mulâtresse du Sénégal (1947): “Toubab La!”
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Primary Sources
• Critical Sources
• Index

Read a preview  here.