Mixed Race Studies

(Mixed) Racial formation in Aotearoa/New Zealand: framing biculturalism and ‘mixed race’ through categorisation

Kotuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online
Volume 7, Issue 1, (May 2012)
DOI: 10.1080/1177083X.2012.670650
pages 1-13

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

This paper explores racial formation in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the impacts of state categorisation on understandings of ‘mixed race’. Processes of racial formation have undergone significant shifts over time, from initial colonial understandings of racialised domination and hierarchy, to present-day narratives of a multicultural society within a bicultural national framework. Connecting these narratives is a constant thread of racial differentiation, framing inter-group relations within society and underpinning contemporary state and social understandings of (mixed) race. Although New Zealand maintains an innovative method of measuring ethnic (self) identification, this fluid categorisation is constrained by existing classification structures and dominant racial narratives. ‘Mixed race’ identity is thus firmly positioned within the bicultural/multicultural tension, which characterises ‘race relations’ in New Zealand. Mixed identities for the individual can be seen as reflecting the ‘mixed’ nature of the state and society, with the narrative of a bicultural nation providing a macro level depiction of personal mixedness.

Introduction

Omi and Winant’s theory of racial formation (1986, 1994) provides a lucid and grounded framework to explore and analyse the politics of race and ethnicity. The term racial formation describes the complex interrelationship between social, economic and political forces, the creation of racialised categories and hierarchies, and the content and influence of racial meanings (Omi & Winant 1986:61). Placing race at the heart of social analysis, racial formation theory emphasises the centrality of race in social structures, as well as its socially constructed, politically contested and historically flexible nature. Racial categories, historically created and embedded, both dictate and reflect individual understandings of race, where micro understandings meet macro structures (Omi & Winant 1994, 2009; Winant 2000:182).

Processes of racial formation in New Zealand have undergone significant shifts across different stages of nation-building, moving from colonial understandings of racialised hierarchy, to the present-day complex narrative of a multicultural society within a bicultural national framework. Connecting these narratives over time is a constant thread of differentiation along racial and ethnic lines, framing inter-group relations and underpinning understandings of race and ‘mixed race’. Despite a shift towards conceptions of ethnicity, the country’s racialised colonial past continues to influence social policy and popular understandings of identity and belonging. This article illustrates the temporal continuities and changes in macro narratives of race and ethnicity, exploring historical processes of racial formation through colonisation and categorisation, with a focus on how ‘mixed race’ has been understood in policy and practice.

As a lingering colonial legacy, the idea of ‘race’ in New Zealand as a means to structure and understand society remains pervasive and powerful, for the state and the individual (Spoonley 1993:2). As racial narratives have shifted over time, from colonialisation and amalgamation, through assimilation, and towards biculturalism (Bozic-Vrbancic 2005:518), state, social and individual understandings of what it means to be ‘mixed race’ in the New Zealand context have also developed and changed. Although 90% of the population reports a single ethnic group (Statistics New Zealand 2009), these groups are complex and fluid, representing a multiplicity of understandings and practices. Within the contemporary overarching binary narrative (potentially illustrating a ‘mixed’ identity at the state level), individual mixed identities have been simultaneously acknowledged and ignored – recognised officially through categorisation, but practically subsumed under the broader categories of Māori, Pākehā, Asian and Pacific Peoples, which structure institutional and everyday interactions. This article traces the origins of this dissonance and complexity, looking primarily at the Māori and Pākehā populations, and changing constructions of race and ethnicity in New Zealand…

…Race, ethnicity and projects of categorisation…

…Further complicating understandings of race, the concept of ‘mixed race’ has been the subject of increasing interest over the past two decades (Parker & Song 2001; Ifekwunigwe 2004). In multicultural societies, greater numbers of individuals of mixed ancestry are identifying outside of traditional racial categories, posing a challenge to existing systems of classification, and to sociological understandings of the significance of ‘race’. Highlighting wider questions about the consequences of and motivations for identification, ‘mixed race’ identities were recognised by the American and British censuses in 2000/2001. New Zealand provides a particularly interesting contrast, highlighting policy and individual outcomes in a context where multiplicity has been formally recognised for an extended period of time. Applying racial formation theory to ‘mixed race’ illuminates new ways of understanding both racial formation processes, and what it means to be ‘mixed’. More broadly, placing ‘mixed race’ at the centre of racial formation theory, this paper illustrates the shifting and problematic concept of race in New Zealand, and the ‘crisis of racial meaning’ that is posited to occur when racial categorisation is not possible (Omi & Winant 1994:59)…

…Racial formation in New Zealand…

…New Zealand’s first national census in 1851 included only the European population, providing a clear message as to which population counted (literally) in the nation-building process. A partial census of Māori was carried out in 1857–1858, before full and regular censuses of Māori became institutionalised from 1867, with this separation in measurement continuing until 1951 (Statistics New Zealand 2004:21). This delimiting of the Māori population combined ideas of race and culture, measuring those identified as Māori, but also, interestingly, those who lived as Māori, highlighting the importance of the practice of racial identities for the state (Callister et al. 2006:5; Howard & Didham 2007:2). The application of race as practice was directed particularly at those who were classified as ‘half-castes’. After 1916, data on race was systematically collected, and those in the middle, the ‘half-caste’ population, were classified by their modes of living (Statistics New Zealand 2009:11).

In contrast to many other colonial societies, the New Zealand state closely monitored racial mixing and attempted to structure private lives through colonial policy, but never prohibited miscegenation, intertwining racial identities, gender roles and empire building (Wanhalla 2004:39, 2009:15). The Māori population were viewed as biologically ‘close’ to the European settlers, and intermarriage was seen as a viable method of social and biological assimilation, as well as of appropriation of land (Freeman 2005). Intermarriage generally occurred between Māori women and European men—initially due to the population of single European men involved in early trade, and later continuing a pattern of gendered power imbalances. Inter-racial unions, as gendered crossings of racial boundaries, represented an important point of contact between the colonisers and the colonised, and a disruption of the racial hierarchy, particularly if they produced biological evidence—the ‘half-caste’ (Grimshaw 2002:12; Wanhalla 2004:28).

‘Half-caste’ children were viewed as in-between the two populations in terms of traits and worth, and were practically included as Māori or Pākehā, depending on the cultural associations of the parents (A. Anderson 1991; Meredith 2000:11). However, despite the lack of legal prohibition, neither group viewed mixed children positively, particularly as they disrupted popular settler notions of a ‘white New Zealand’. Differential understandings of land and inheritance also highlighted how colonial ‘mixed race’ differed significantly from Māori understandings of belonging. Traditionally, measurements of ‘blood’ were not used to defined ‘Māoriness’: rather, being born with links to other Māori made an individual a grandchild of the tribe, regardless of blood percentage (Jackson 2003:62; Howard & Didham 2007).

Official understandings and measurements of ‘mixed race’ were complex and often inconsistent—based on biological understandings, but tempered by the realities of cultural practice. The concept of ‘half-caste’ both described and dictated relationships between racialised groups, acting as a means to promote certain processes of land acquisition and cultural dominance, in favour of the British settlers (Wanhalla 2004:9; Kukutai 2007:1151). By troubling the binary mode of Māori/non-Māori for the census enumerators, and often relying on subjective judgements of living conditions or skin colour rather than ‘scientific’ measures of blood, the category of ‘half-caste’ ‘continued to defy categorisation and instead occupied an ambivalent and unstable position in the national census’ (Wanhalla 2004:296–297)….

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The Bone People: A Novel (Hardcover Reissue)

LSU Press
April 2005
464 pages
6.00 x 9.00 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9780807130728

Keri Hulme

• Winner of The Booker Prize
• The Pegasus Prize for Literature
• The New Zealand Book Award for Fiction

Integrating both Māori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984. Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts of mixed European and Māori heritage. Kerewin Holmes is a painter and a loner, convinced that “to care for anything is to invite disaster.” Her isolation is disrupted one day when a six-year-old mute boy, Simon, breaks into her house. The sole survivor of a mysterious shipwreck, Simon has been adopted by a widower Māori factory worker, Joe Gillayley, who is both tender and horribly brutal toward the boy. Through shifting points of view, the novel reveals each character’s thoughts and feelings as they struggle with the desire to connect and the fear of attachment.

Compared to the works of James Joyce in its use of indigenous language and portrayal of consciousness,The Bone People captures the soul of New Zealand. After twenty years, it continues to astonish and enrich readers around the world.

The Manifestation of Race in Everyday Communication Interactions in New Zealand

Unitec New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand
October 2012
281 pages

Elizabeth S. Revell

A thesis submitted to the Department of Communication Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Communication

This thesis examines the manifestation of race in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand using an unconventional, experimental methodology. Experimenting with a partial collaborative autoethnographic approach that involved reflexive diaries, interviews, and focus groups as data collection methods, the author and nine other co-participants took part in a collaborative autoethnographic exercise, that required them to focus, reflect on, and discuss together their perceptions of the way race was manifested in their day-to-day experiences, over the period of a month. Co-participants were encouraged to write evocatively of their experiences. The author used her mixed-race identity as an autoethnographic analytical tool as a measure towards resolving her ‘double consciousness’ (Du Bois, 1903). Her own voice, thoughts, and stories of her lived experiences are woven into the study, alongside more traditional analysis. In carrying out this investigation, the author sought not only to generate knowledge in the traditional academic sense, but to facilitate a disruptive, emancipative and emotionally engaging conversation on racism in New Zealand, between herself, her co-participants, and readers.

In answering the main research question about the manifestation of race in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand, the author found that in public contexts in New Zealand, race as a topic is taboo and racists are social pariahs amongst Western, educated, middle-class members of society. Consequentially, race is often manifested in a variety of subtle ways in everyday communication interactions, and is difficult to identify and challenge. The subtle way in which race is manifested in everyday settings masks an undercurrent of prejudice and hostility. Whether or not these hidden tensions will emerge problematically in the future remains to be seen, as New Zealanders negotiate and manage their biculturalism and multiculturalism.

In terms of the significance of race in New Zealand, the author concluded that New Zealand’s racial and ethnic identity is changing (browning), and that the longstanding New Zealand European (White) majority is decreasing in proportion and dominance. Some New Zealand Europeans are consciously and subconsciously trying to assert their authority, refusing to let the idea that a ‘true’ New Zealander is ‘White’ go because of a) a subconscious belief in the superiority of White skin and/or Western culture, and b) insecurity around what will happen to them and their lifestyle, if non-White ethnic and non-Western cultural groups continue to gain in proportion to White, Western groups. As a result, some non-White individuals are experiencing being subtly and overtly ‘othered’, excluded, disrespected, and negatively stereotyped. Being subjected to everyday racism has resulted in some non-White New Zealanders having a fractured sense of identity, and others having adopted the racist worldview of Whites.

In terms of resolving the dialectic of her mixed-race identity, the closure the author had hoped for was not achieved. Instead, she became more conscious of her own racist beliefs and actions, and convinced of the importance of continuing to challenge them.

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• DECLARATION
• CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
  • MY “DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS”: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE
    • First thing’s first: Who I am
    • But: The dreaded question
    • Fleshing out the issue
    • Defining my research topic
  • WIDER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
  • RESEARCH PURPOSE
  • CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS
    • “Race”
    • “Everyday communication interaction”
  • METHODOLOGY: A PARTIAL COLLABORATIVE AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH
  • THESIS OUTLINE
• CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXT
  • CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS
    • Concept 1: ‘Race’
    • Concept 2: ‘Everyday communication interaction’
  • CONTEXT
    • Multiculturalism and biculturalism in New Zealand
    • Recent signs of ethnic ‘unease’ in multicultural New Zealand
    • Use of the term ‘race’ in New Zealand
• CHAPTER 3– LITERATURE REVIEW
  • RACE IN COMMUNICATION STUDIES
    • The critical turn in communication studies
  • THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
    • Critical Theory
    • General theories of race and racism
    • Theories and concepts from sociology (on the everyday social construction of race)
    • Theories and concepts from social psychology (on contemporary racism)
  • A REVIEW OF RELEVANT RESEARCH
    • …on race and the everyday
    • …on race and the everyday in New Zealand
• CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN
  • SITUATING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ONTOLOGICALLY AND EPISTEMOLOGICALLY
  • METHODOLOGY
    • A qualitative approach
    • Ethnography
    • Autoethnography
    • Partial collaborative autoethnography
    • Co-participant selection
  • DATA COLLECTION METHODS
    • Solicited reflexive diaries
    • Semi-structured interviews
    • Semi-structured focus groups (briefing and debriefing sessions)
  • METHODS OF ANALYSIS
    • Thematic analysis
    • Analysis and discussion in autoethnography
    • ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
• CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS
  • PARTICIPANT POSITIONALITIES
    • Liz:
    • Ameera:
    • Yasmin:
    • Rachel:
    • Timothy:
    • Heather:
    • Lana:
    • Luke:
    • Zane:
    • Natalie:
  • EMERGENT THEMES
    • Theme 1: Everyday living in a multicultural society
      • 1a. NZ European dominance is eroding
      • 1b. New Zealanders are managing this change well
      • 1c. New Zealanders are not managing this change well
      • Concluding notes for theme one
    • Theme 2: References to ‘racisms’ past
      • 2a. Ethnic inequality and redistribution
      • 2b. Crying race
      • 2c. Old racist attitudes
      • 2d. The declining significance of race?
      • Concluding notes for theme two
    • Theme 3: Everyday awareness and negotiation of social hierarchy
      • 3a. White superiority
      • 3b. Negotiating the social ladder
      • 3c. Legitimacy
      • Concluding notes for theme three
    • Theme 4: Conversational tact – Everyday speech conventions
      • 4a. Racialised ‘neutral’ terms
      • 4b. Racial stereotyping
      • 4c. Censoring
      • Concluding notes for theme four
    • Theme 5: Everyday emotional reactions to races
      • 5a. Anger/cumulative anger towards a race
      • 5b. Disgust
      • 5c. Instant connection
      • 5d. Comfort/discomfort
      • 5e. Fear
      • 5f. Romantic attraction/indifference/repulsion
      • Concluding notes for theme five
    • Theme 6: Reacting to everyday racism
      • 6a. Emotional reactions to everyday racism
      • 6b. Dealing with everyday racism
      • Concluding notes for theme six
    • Theme 7: “Race matters to me because I look different”
      • Concluding notes for chapter seven
  • OVERALL CONCLUSION
• CHAPTER 6 – DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
  • THEMATIC DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
    • Theme 1: Everyday living in a multicultural society
    • Theme 2: References to ‘racisms’ past
    • Theme 3: Social status
    • Theme 4: Conversational tact – Everyday speech conventions
    • Theme 5: Emotional reactions to races
    • Theme 6: Reacting to everyday racism
    • Theme 7: “Race matters to me because I look different”
  • HOW IS RACE MANIFESTED IN EVERYDAY COMMUNICATION INTERACTIONS IN NEW ZEALAND?
  • THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE IN NEW ZEALAND
• CHAPTER 7: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
  • RESOLVING MY MIXED-RACE DIALECTIC
  • LIMITATIONS
  • RECOMMENDATIONS
  • SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION FORM
  • APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM
  • APPENDIX C: PROCEDURAL EXPLANATIONS
  • APPENDIX D: GUIDELINE SHEET FOR DIARIES
  • APPENDIX E: EXTRACT FROM A PARTICIPANT’S REFLEXIVE RESEARCH DIARY
  • APPENDIX F: DEBRIEFING SESSION MAIN CO-PARTICIPANT SHEET
  • APPENDIX G: DEBRIEFING SESSION CO-PARTICIPANT SHEET

Read the entire thesis here.

Matters of the Heart: A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand

Auckland University Press
July 2013
312 pages approx
240 x 170 mm, illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-86940-731-5

Angela Wanhalla, Senior Lecturer in History
University of Otago, New Zealand

A history of the intimate relations between Māori and Pākehā, and the intersections of public policy and private life.

Philip Soutar died at Ypres in 1917. Before becoming a soldier, Soutar’s life revolved around his farm at Whakatāne, where he lived with his Māori wife Kathleen Pine in an ‘as-you-please marriage, uncelebrated by a clergyman’. Matters of the Heart introduces us to couples like Philip and Kathleen to unravel the long history of interracial relationships in New Zealand.

That history runs from whalers and traders marrying into Māori families in the early nineteenth century through to the growth of interracial marriages in the later twentieth. It stretches from common law marriages and Māori customary marriages to formal arrangements recognised by church and state. And that history runs the gamut of official reactions—from condemnation of interracial immorality or racial treason to celebration of New Zealand’s unique intermarriage patterns as a sign of us being ‘one people’ with the ‘best race relations in the world’.

In the history of intimate relations between Māori and Pākehā, public policy and private life were woven together. Matters of the Heart reveals much about how Māori and Pākehā have lived together in this country and our changing attitudes to race, marriage and intimacy.

Race and Indigeneity in the Life of Elisha Apes

Ethnohistory
Volume 60, Number 1 (Winter 2013)
pages 27-50
DOI: 10.1215/00141801-1816166

Nancy Shoemaker, Professor of History
University of Connecticut

This essay examines cultures of racial categorization in New England and New Zealand through the life of one migrant, Elisha Apes, the younger half-brother of the radical Pequot Indian writer William Apess, who preferred to spell the family name with a second s. Elisha Apes settled in New Zealand in 1839 and married a Māori woman of the South Island. Their six children came to be labeled “half-castes” in the language of the nineteenth-century New Zealand state. If half-caste had been a term in New England, it would have been applied to Elisha Apes, for he was indeed of mixed descent. However, in New Zealand, where native referred to the Māori only, Apes’s native origins elsewhere had no bearing. His status as a foreigner who came to settle in New Zealand cast him into the same category as New Zealand’s European/white population.

Read or purchase the article here.

Why Do Pacific People with Multiple Ethnic Affiliations Have Poorer Subjective Wellbeing? Negative Ingroup Affect Mediates the Identity Tension Effect

Social Indicators Research
Published online: December 2012
18 pages
DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0220-8

Sam Manuela
Department of Psychology
University of Auckland

Chris G. Sibley, Senior Lecturer in Psychology
University of Auckland

We argue that multi-ethnic affiliation as a member of both the Pacific and majority (European) group creates tension in psychological wellbeing for Pacific peoples of mixed ancestry. Study 1 showed that multi-ethnic Pacific/non-Pacific people were lower in Pacific Familial Wellbeing relative to mono-ethnic Pacific and multi-ethnic Pacific/Pacific people (n = 586). Study 2 replicated this effect in a New Zealand (NZ) national probability sample using a measure of self-esteem (n = 276). Study 2 also modelled the mechanism driving the identity tension effect, and showed that group differences in negative affect toward Pacific peoples fully mediated the effect of ethnic mixed or mono-ethnic group affiliation on self-esteem. This currently affects the one-third of Pacific people who identify as Pacific/non-Pacific in NZ and occurs because multi-ethnic identification promotes the endorsement of negative societal attitudes toward Pacific peoples. Our model indicates that endorsement of such attitudes produces a more negative self-evaluation and generally corrodes subjective wellbeing and family integration. Population projections indicate that this potentially at-risk Pacific/non-Pacific group may increase dramatically in subsequent generations (upwards of 3.3% of the population by 2026). Implications for the study of Pacific wellbeing, and avenues for applied research targeting this newly-identified emerging social problem are discussed.

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Identity, dislocation and belonging: Chinese/European narratives of mixedness in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Published online: 2012-12-14
DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.752369

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

With over 10% of the population identifying with multiple ethnic groups, identities in New Zealand are increasingly complex. This article explores identifications of individuals of mixed Chinese and European descent: the ways in which personal location, classification and race influence feelings of belonging within and between multiple ethnic groups. The fluidity and diversity of the New Zealand context and the resulting positioning of ‘mixed race’ provide an interesting counterpoint to the comparatively well-studied American and British contexts. Drawing on 20 interviews with individuals of mixed descent, this research highlights how individual identity diverges from official classification and how this dissonance is understood through experiences of dislocation and belonging. ‘Mixedness’ is negotiated and enacted in many ways, as individuals find ways to belong in the face of wider dislocation, intertwining aspects of heritage, experience, community and nation.

Introduction

With over 10% of the New Zealand population identifying with more than one ethnic group (Statistics New Zealand 2006), identities in New Zealand are becoming increasingly complex. Following shifts in immigration policy, the population has become more diverse and understandings of ethnic identity and belonging have developed and changed. Similar changes have occurred in other multicultural societies around the world and as a result, the concepts of ‘mixed race’ and ‘mixed ethnicity’ are of increasing academic and political concern, particularly in the American and British contexts (see Ifekwunigwe 2004, Parker and Song 2001b).

The New Zealand population provides an illuminating case study in this field, highlighting the intersections and divergences between ethnic identifications and systems of ethnic and racial classification. The increasing prominence of ”mixed race’ identities challenges traditional racial categorisation, and changes in the American and British censuses in 2000/2001 allowed respondents to acknowledge ‘mixed race’ in official classification (Aspinall 2009. Perlmann and Waters 2002). New Zealand is important in comparison, as a context where multiple identities have been formally recognised for an extended period of time: both historically in categorisations of ‘half-castes‘ and more recently as multiple, self-ascribed identities in the census since 1991 (Callister and Kukutai 2009. Morning 2008). Despite the official recognition of multiplicity, social conceptions of racial singularity…

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Curious Studies of Mixed Bloods in the West Indies

Timaru Herald
Timaru, New Zealand
Volume XXXVI, Issue 2366
1882-04-22
page 3
Source: Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa

The following is contributed by the Paris correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune—There has been an interesting diicussion on the negro question m the French West Indies, carried on in two of our newspapers. An argument in one of them presents views which are so new to me that I have thought they may be novel to you, and so I translate the rejoinder. It was made to an article written to break down the prejudice of color, which keeps wide apart in Martinique white men and negroes. It ways “Unfortunately, the separation of whites and blacks is not caused by a mere prejudice. It is not a vain, stupid pride which leads whites to exclude negroes from their society. Our opponent imagines that ’emancipation, taking their privilege from whites, led the latter to make more of point of pride than ever to keep from confounding with people whom the law had as their equals.’ We must tell our opponent that pride had nothing to do with the separation of color. If the whites kept aloof from the negroes it was because equality made marriages possible socially, alliances which, unfortunately, considered anthropologically, would lead to the most disastrous consequences. There is a physiological law which must be deplored, for negros often deserve great sympathy; but this law must be brought to the knowledge of France, because Frenchmen are ignorant of it, and because this law explains the greater part of these differences which are wrongly attributed to politics. A great many observations have demonstrated that it is, so to say, impossible for a negro family, even after an infinite series of marriages with whites, to change completely the nature of their blood, while if a white family do but once marry with a negro, they lose for ever the purity of their race. In France we call mulatto all persons who are neither black nor white. In the colonies mulatto is applied only to tho offspring of a white man and a negress. After the first cross the children are classed by a scale whose degrees are very numerous, and depends whether the mulattress allies herself to blacks or whites. The first, second, third, or fourth degrees especially have distinct names; two mark the preponderance of white blood, two of negro. If the mulattress ally herself to a negro, the child is called a cafres; if the cafresse ally herself also to a negro, the child is called a griffe. On the contrary, if the mulattress ally herself to a white, the child is called mestif: if the mestive, too, ally herself to a white the child is called quadroon. The terrible consequences of the physiological law mentioned is this:—If the woman be of a more swarthy color than the man to whom she allies herself, the child’s color is like the mother’s color. If the father’s color be the blackest, the child’s color is like the father’s color. When two portons of tho same color are allied, their children are blacker than their parents, and curiously enough the second child is blacker than the first, the third blacker than the second, and so on. In fine, it is beyond doubt that a mixed population, left to themselves, are fatally destined to become negroes in a very few generations. We must add another and still more deplorable fact. It will explain the causes which have compelled the separation between whites and negroes, which cannot possibly be removed. On a plantation in one of the Lesser Antilles une mestive was born of a mulattress mother and a white father. This mestive became the mother of a quadroon. All the daughters of the successive alliances were for six generations allied to white men. Only boys issued from the seventh alliance. At the same time similar phenomena were observed on a neighboring plantation, but here only girls issued from the seventh alliance. The two last children of these seven alliances were married to whites. They were of remarkable beauty; their hair was of the lighter blond nothing about them retained anything of the African race; their skin was so white that they would easily hive been taken, not only for children of northern climes, but even for Albinos, had they not been so graceful and vigorous, so intellectual, nay, so brilliant. Well, their children were more than swarthy, and their grandchildren very dark mulattos. After these indisputable facts, we may well ask how many successive alliances with whites would be necessary to make all trace of black blood disappear? Could the result ever be attained? It may. From these facts, easily be seen why Creole females of pure while blood are averse to ever allying themselves with persons whose veins contain the least drop of negro blood. After a first marriage with this tainted blood, a second fault of that same sort would transform that white family that is to say, this European family, able at any time to return to Europe, to France, and reassume the social position it had before immigration—a second fault would transform it into a family of mulattos, and from mulatto to negro the road is short. We would be of the opinion of our opponent, and would hold with him, that we should lift up completely negroes to the level of whites, to make of them real Frenchmen, to subject them to the military draft, and make them serve in the garrisons of France as well aa of the colonies. Alas! a serious objection to this scheme exists—an objection whose importance Napoleon I saw, eager as he was to aeek soldiers everywhere. He said: “French blood would be soon tainted, and France would be menaced with possessing in a few years a great many persons of mixed blood.”

Heredity in Color

Hawke’s Bay Herald
New Zealand
Volume XXIII, Issue 7956
1888-01-21
Page 2
Source: Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa

If a white man marries a negro, their children, boys and girls alike, are all mulattos. Lot us make to ourselves no allusions or mistakes upon this score—each one is simply and solely a pure mulatto, exactly half-way in color, feature, hair, and statue, between his father’s face and his mother’s. People who have not lived in a mixed community of blacks and whites often ignore or misunderstand this fundamental fact of hereditary philosophy; they imagine that one of the children of such a marriage may be light brown, and another dark brown; one almost white, and one almost black; that the resulting strains may to a great extent be mingled indefinitely and in varying proportions. Not a bit of it. A mulatto is a mulatto, and a quadroon is a quadroon, with just one-half and one-fourth of negro blood respectively; and anyone who has once lived in an ox-slave-owning country can pick out the proportion of black or white elements in any particular brown person he meets with as much accuracy as the stud-book shows in recording the pedigree of famous racehorses. Black and white produce mulattos — all mulattos alike to a shade of identity; mulatto and white produce quadroon, and no mistake about it; mulatto and black produce sambo; quadroon and white octoroon—and so forth ad infinitum. After the third cross persistently in either direction, the strain of which less than one-eighth persists becomes at last practically indistinguishable, and the child is ” white by law ” or ” black by law,” as the case may be, without the faintest mark of its slight opposite intermixture. I speak hero of facts which I have carefully examined at firsthand; all the nonsensical talk about finger-nails and knuckles, and persistence of the negro type for ever, is pure unmitigated slave-owning prejudice. The child of an octoroon by a white man is simply white; and no acuteness on earth, no scrutiny conceivable would ever discover the one-sixteenth share of black blood by any possible test save documentary evidence. Here, then, we have a clear, physical, and almost mathematically demonstrable case, showing that, so far as regards bodily peculiarities at least, the child is on the average just equally compounded of traits derived from both its parents. Among hundreds and hundreds of mulatto and quadroon children whom I have observed, I have never known a single genuine instance to the contrary. Heredity comes out exactly true; you get just as much of each color in every case as you would naturally expect to do from a mixture of given proportions. In other words, all mulattos are recognisably different from all quadroons, and all quadroons from all octoroons or all sambos.—From “The Cause of Character,” in the Cornhill Magazine.

Aliens Admitted Here!

Evening Post
Wellington, New Zealand
Volume LVI, Issue 96
1898-10-20
Page 4
Source: Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa

The House cannot be congratulated on the treatment it meted out last night to the Immigration Restriction Bill, and the Premier showed a lamentable lack of power or of sincerity in allowing the debate to be shelved in the way it was. Doubtless some of the obstruction the measure experienced was prompted by the Premier’s arbitrary efforts to force Estimates through at the previous sitting. Such despotic procedure always has a bad effect upon members, and almost invariably leads to the delay of public business. Admitting this, however, we are still unable to understand the position taken up by the Opposition. It was so nearly one of factious disputation that it was calculated to play into the hand of an astute manoeuvrer like the present head of the Government. The whole point of the Bill was lost by the members who attacked it last night. In ignorance or of malice prepense they ignored for the most part the real nature of the measure, and devoted all their energies to the castigation of a more or less bogus side-issue. From the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition and some of hie followers it might have been supposed that the object of the Bill was to limit the immigration of Europeans who could not read or write. This view is an obvious distortion of the clause containing the so-called “educational test.” The history of the measure sufficiently disproves the erroneous assumption. Since the House has, as we believe, with quite inadequate reason blocked the passage of the Bill, it will be as well to give a short sketch of the events that led up to its introduction into our Parliament.

Considerable popular feeling has been displayed against the importation of Asiatics and other undesirable immigrants into the colony, and, however much one may honour the humanity of those who feel a distaste for the arbitrary exclusion of any particular race, it is undeniable that the evil effects of racial, mixing have again and again been exhibited in various parts of the world. The colour question in the United States is one of the most serious problems the American Republic has to face. South Africa is doubly troubled by native questions and Indian coolie difficulties, while, nearer home, Queensland has its Kanaka embarrassment, and in common with other parts of Northern Australia feels the danger of an influx of Japanese and Chinese. In matters of this kind the natural impulse of the generous minded is to give free access to the stranger, and to let him prove his right to settlement by his obedience to the local laws. But the hard facts of history and experience are against the sentiment. If we wish to make the future nation of New Zealand fit to hold its own in the world, we must preserve the integrity of our race. An influx of Asiatics might also at any time disorganise the labour market and throw back for years the good work done by trade combinations…

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