Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865

Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Mississippi, Monographs, Slavery, United States on 2022-03-21 15:54Z by Steven

Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865

University of Georgia Press
2021-03-31
Illustrations: 13 b&w images
Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in
Hardcover ISBN: 9-780-8203-6012-6

Nik Ribianszky, Lecturer in History
Queen’s University, Belfast, United Kingdom

In Generations of Freedom Nik Ribianszky employs the lenses of gender and violence to examine family, community, and the tenacious struggles by which free blacks claimed and maintained their freedom under shifting international governance from Spanish colonial rule (1779-95), through American acquisition (1795) and eventual statehood (established in 1817), and finally to slavery’s legal demise in 1865.

Freedom was not necessarily a permanent condition, but one separated from racial slavery by a permeable and highly unstable boundary. This book explicates how the interlocking categories of race, class, and gender shaped Natchez, Mississippi’s free community of color and how implicit and explicit violence carried down from one generation to another. To demonstrate this, Ribianszky introduces the concept of generational freedom. Inspired by the work of Ira Berlin, who focused on the complex process through which free Africans and their descendants came to experience enslavement, generational freedom is an analytical tool that employs this same idea in reverse to trace how various generations of free people of color embraced, navigated, and protected their tenuous freedom. This approach allows for the identification of a foundational generation of free people of color, those who were born into slavery but later freed. The generations that followed, the conditional generations, were those who were born free and without the experience of and socialization into North America’s system of chattel, racial slavery. Notwithstanding one’s status at birth as legally free or unfree, though, each individual’s continued freedom was based on compliance with a demanding and often unfair system.

Generations of Freedom tells the stories of people who collectively inhabited an uncertain world of qualified freedom. Taken together-by exploring the themes of movement, gendered violence, and threats to their property and, indeed, their very bodies-these accounts argue that free blacks were active in shaping their own freedom and that of generations thereafter. Their successful navigation of the shifting ground of freedom was dependent on their utilization of all available tools at their disposal: securing reliable and influential allies, maintaining their independence, and using the legal system to protect their property-including that most precious, themselves.

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Theorizing People of Mixed Race in the Pacific and the Atlantic

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Social Science on 2022-03-21 02:04Z by Steven

Theorizing People of Mixed Race in the Pacific and the Atlantic

Social Sciences
Volume 11, Issue 3 (Published 2022-03-14)
14 pages
DOI: 10.3390/socsci11030124

Yasuko Takezawa, Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology
Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University, Kyoto

Stephen Small, Professor
Department of African Diaspora Studies
University of California, Berkeley

The most extensive theoretic and empirical studies of people of mixed racial descent extant today have addressed nations across the Atlantic. This article reveals how this literature on people of mixed racial descent is limited in its claims to represent a “global model”. In contrast, we argue that by juxtaposing institutional factors in the Atlantic region and Japan we can expand our understanding of people of mixed racial descent across a far wider range of social and political terrains. A consideration of Japan uncovers a fascinating combination of factors impactful in the emergence of populations of mixed origins in the Pacific region more generally. By identifying this range of variables, we believe this analysis can be instructive for scholars of race focusing on the Atlantic and can contribute to a more encompassing approach for theorizing people of mixed racial descent.

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The dream of creating a mixed super-race

Posted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Philosophy, United States on 2022-03-21 01:40Z by Steven

The dream of creating a mixed super-race

Spiritual Eugenics: Exploring the overlap between eugenics and New Age spirituality, from 1880 to the present day
2022-03-19

Jules Evans, Honorary Research Fellow
Centre for the History of Emotions
Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom

Eugenics often overlapped (and still overlaps) with scientific racism and white supremacy, leading many people to confuse the two. It’s true that in the United States and Germany, the two countries which most enthusiastically embraced eugenics in the 1920s-1940s, eugenics did very often overlap with an ideology of white supremacy and scientific racism. However, as I’ve explored throughout this project, there were several different varieties of eugenics, including versions which promoted using selective breeding to encourage inter-racial mingling, thereby creating a spiritual master-race.

In this chapter, we’re going to examine four figures who promoted inter-racial forms of spiritual eugenics — ie they explored the idea that inter-racial breeding can help to create spiritually gifted individuals or even a new race of superbeings. They didn’t all necessarily believe in the state saying who can and can’t reproduce — but they did explore ideas of selective inter-racial breeding towards the goal of creating more spiritually advanced humans…

Read the entire article here.

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Who is Afro-Latin@? Examining the Social Construction of Race and Négritude in Latin America and the Caribbean

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Passing, Politics/Public Policy on 2022-03-20 21:08Z by Steven

Who is Afro-Latin@? Examining the Social Construction of Race and Négritude in Latin America and the Caribbean

Social Education
Volume 81, January/February (2017)
pages 37-42

Christopher L. Busey, Associate Professor
School of Teaching and Learning
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

Bárbara C. Cruz, Professor of Social Education
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

By the 1930s the négritude ideological movement, which fostered a pride and consciousness of African heritage, gained prominence and acceptance among black intellectuals in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. While embraced by many, some of African descent rejected the philosophy, despite evident historical and cultural markers. Such was the case of Rafael Trujillo, who had assumed power in the Dominican Republic in 1930. Trujillo, a dark-skinned Dominican whose grandmother was Haitian, used light-colored pancake make-up to appear whiter. He literally had his family history rewritten and “whitewashed,” once he took power of the island nation. Beyond efforts to alter his personal appearance and recast his own history, Trujillo also took extreme measures to erase blackness in Dominican society during his 31 years of dictatorial rule. On a national level, Trujillo promoted blanqueamiento (whitening), encouraging the immigration of single Europeans to the island and offering refuge to Jews during World War II because they were considered white—thus attempting to mejorar la raza or “improve [whiten] the race” of the Dominican Republic.

Read the entire article here.

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“Suspect-Proof”? Paranoia, Suspicious Reading, and the Racial Passing Narrative

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing on 2022-03-20 02:02Z by Steven

“Suspect-Proof”? Paranoia, Suspicious Reading, and the Racial Passing Narrative

American Literary History
Volume 34, Issue 1, Spring 2022
pages 272–282
DOI: 10.1093/alh/ajab089

Sinéad Moynihan, Associate Professor of English
University of Exeter

This short essay considers racial passing narratives in relation to the “postcritical turn,” highlighting the proliferating reappraisals of the practices of “suspicious” or “symptomatic” reading in literary studies and the extent to which passing narratives offer an opportunity to test some of the claims of this body of scholarship. The utility of the passing narrative for this critical project lies in its persistent, self-conscious foregrounding of reading practices. Revisiting passing narratives in light of postcritique reveals that symptomatic reading is not a monolithic practice; rather, there are multiple ways of reading suspiciously. Moreover, and more importantly, passing narratives disclose that what has now become an orthodoxy in postcritique—that attitudes such as “paranoia,” “suspicion,” and “vigilance” profoundly limit “the thickness and richness of our aesthetic attachments”—ignores contexts, like that of a passer in a white supremacist society, in which such strategies are not a choice but are essential for survival (Felski 17). The key question posed herein is: What forms of privilege enable a reader to relinquish her attachment to paranoia, suspicion, and vigilance; to opt for openness rather than guardedness, submission rather than aggression (21)? Narratives of racial passing provide one answer to that question.

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These experiences show that, while we as monoracial Black parents can socialize our mixed-race children to represent themselves to society as being part of the larger African American community, their individual traits, aptitudes, and personality differences as mixed-race children are also influential in the racial identity process.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2022-03-17 20:29Z by Steven

These experiences show that, while we as monoracial Black parents can socialize our mixed-race children to represent themselves to society as being part of the larger African American community, their individual traits, aptitudes, and personality differences as mixed-race children are also influential in the racial identity process. These personal factors may be strongly tied to a mixed-race child’s authentic view of themselves (their identity versus how they are identified by others), making parenting concerns such as understanding African American heritage more difficult. Unfortunately, in an effort to help our multiracial daughters understand their Black heritage, we as parents dismissed their experiences by noting that a “brown” identity is not satisfactory. I will also note here that this feeling towards a brown identity was most deeply expressed by fathers; each of us as stepmothers—without a direct biological tie to our daughters—were more open to the idea of our stepdaughters labeling and developing a self-defined identity. This could be influenced by our location as stepparents, as well as the fact that we all hold advanced degrees in social science fields. Critical race theory (CRT) challenges traditional claims that uphold the status quo (Ladson-Billings, 1998, Yosso et al., 2009). It is a form of oppositional scholarship, with a framework grounded in the experiences of Black Americans, meant to challenge the experiences of White people which are considered normative and standard in the U.S (Taylor, 1998). MultiCrit (Harris, 2016) is an offshoot of CRT that aims to challenge dominant monoracial ideologies by utilizing the experiences of multiracial individuals to deconstruct monoracial ideas about race. Based on the experiences of the case study families, I find that, essentially, during socialization, monoracial parents should be centering the experiences of their mixed-race child in an effort to not perpetuate monoracial ideas about race. Centering “communicates the lived experience of marginalized groups so that the understanding of the problem and its response is more likely to be impactful to the community in the ways the community itself would want” (Doucet, 2019, pg. 3).

Yolanda T. Mitchell, “She’s Biracial, but She’s Still Black: Reflections from Monoracial African American Parents Raising Biracial Children,” Journal of Child and Family Studies, Volume 31, Issue 3 (March 2022) (Special Issue on Multiracial Families). https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02263-8.

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So now I’m going to focus on that character and tell this personal story. Then to have white people tell me that I can’t tell my own story . . . It is traumatizing. That shit hurts. But I have to think that had to have been a part of what pushed me to keep going.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2022-03-17 20:01Z by Steven

Early in your career you were working on a TV show and pitched an episode about a white family trying to adopt a Black child, and it was rejected. Why did you never pursue adoption as subject matter again?

That was my third show on television. I had written the script and loved it. It was so personal, as you know. And to have the network come back and say, “We’re not shooting this because it’s too controversial”—that was the beginning of the end for me on that show. Imagine writing something that means so much to you, and you’re the only Black writer on this show. Most of my time was spent trying to give agency to the one Black character, and to call out atrocious dialogue and story lines connected to that character—when they decided to write for that character at all. So now I’m going to focus on that character and tell this personal story. Then to have white people tell me that I can’t tell my own story . . . It is traumatizing. That shit hurts. But I have to think that had to have been a part of what pushed me to keep going.

Rebecca Carroll, “Beyond Visible: Gina Prince-Bythewood on the Necessity of Black Women’s Cinema,” The Criterion Collection, October 15, 2021. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7567-beyond-visible-gina-prince-bythewood-on-the-necessity-of-black-women-s-cinema.

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Genevieve Gaignard’s new exhibit ‘This is America’ on view at Atlanta Contemporary

Posted in Articles, Arts, Audio, Interviews, Media Archive, United States on 2022-03-17 19:49Z by Steven

Genevieve Gaignard’s new exhibit ‘This is America’ on view at Atlanta Contemporary

WABE (WABE 90.1 FM, WABE TV)
Atlanta, Georgia
2022-02-10

Adron McCann

Genevieve Gaignard’s print “I Wear A Thousand Faces, All To Hide My Own, 2018.” (Image courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Gallery Los Angeles)

In 2018, Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, released the viral hit song “This is America,” a razor-sharp commentary on contemporary society. In a nod to his incisive work, artist Genevieve Gaignard presents a new exhibition, “This is America: The Unsettling Contradictions in American Identity,” at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center from Feb. 12 – May 15. It’s the first solo exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist’s photography and installation work, through which she unravels the ongoing issues complicating the identities and representations of Americans. Gaignard joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom and curator Karen Comer Lowe to talk about the artist’s new contributions to Atlanta Contemporary.

How race informs the artwork of Gaignard, who is biracial:

“Once you look at it, I think it’s everything. I’m really interested in owning both sides of my story, and so I don’t really tiptoe around those things,” said Gaignard…

Read the entire article here.

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A Daughter’s Quest: On Anne Liu Kellor’s “Heart Radical”

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2022-03-17 19:13Z by Steven

A Daughter’s Quest: On Anne Liu Kellor’s “Heart Radical”

Los Angeles Review of Books
2021-11-12

Amy Reardon

Anne Liu Kellor, Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging (Berkeley, California: She Writes Press, 2021)

GROWING UP ASIAN AMERICAN in Seattle, Anne Liu Kellor struggled to understand the ache she carried inside. Her debut memoir, Heart Radical, tracks the author’s journeys to China and back home again in the late ’90s and early 2000s in search of her true self.

We meet Kellor after college, having become consumed with the need to learn the Chinese language and live in China. What she can’t seem to get her hands around is why. “All I knew was — I was filled with an intense longing and sorrow. Sorrow for the magnitude of suffering in the world, in China and Tibet, and within myself. Sorrow which I felt so clearly, but couldn’t understand why I felt so deep.”

There are clues. First among them, a general sense of opacity in her relationship with her mother, who immigrated from China as a girl, married a white man, and had two daughters. Also, there is this: “[N]or had anyone ever talked to me about what it was like to grow up multiracial — neither white nor fully Chinese, nor yet invited into a wider inclusivity as a person of color. Instead, everywhere I went, even at family reunions, I was simply reminded of my difference.”…

Read the entire review here.

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Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio serves as a brown face of white supremacy

Posted in Articles, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2022-03-17 16:34Z by Steven

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio serves as a brown face of white supremacy

MSNBC
2022-03-15

Julio Ricardo Varela, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

White supremacy will always attract nonwhite believers.

It should come as no surprise that there are several Latino male white nationalists who have gotten disproportionate attention in recent years, but in a country that keeps misunderstanding why the U.S. Latino community is nowhere near close to being a monolith, it is critical to examine how this notion of Latino white nationalists still feels strange to some.

Last week’s news that Enrique Tarrio, the former Afro-Cuban leader of the Proud Boys, was arrested on federal charges surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has sparked some interest in an apparently paradoxical reality: nonwhite Latino men worshiping at the altar of American white supremacy and providing cover to ensure that white nationalists stay mainstream.

As a journalist who’s been covering Latino communities for years, I know that this supposed paradox has never existed and that the country’s estimated 62.1 million Latinos have ideologies from one extreme to the other. American whiteness is a prize; it is where the power lies, and people like Tarrio would rather bask in that whiteness than fight against it and appear too “woke,” even it means tearing down democracy.

Non-Latino media have long been obsessed with proving the claim that more and more Latinos are longing to become white, which ignores the fact that being Latino is not just a sole racial construct but more of a messy combination with ethnicity. Voices from within the U.S. Latino community have responded by diving into the complexities of what it is to be Latino in modern-day America. While it is apparent that the country has become more multiethnic and multiracial, the quest for what Cristina Beltrán calls “multiracial whiteness” will always have an appeal in our community…

Read the entire article here.

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