Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

    Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

    Oxford University Press
    2010-02-16
    352 Pages
    15 b/w photos
    6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780195379792
    Paperback ISBN: 9780199794454

    Sharon Davies, Professor of Law; Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
    Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law

    It was among the most notorious criminal cases of its day. On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer’s motive? The priest had married Stephenson’s eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic.

    Sharon Davies’s Rising Road resurrects the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of his killer. As Davies reveals with novelistic richness, Stephenson’s crime laid bare the most potent bigotries of the age: a hatred not only of blacks, but of Catholics and “foreigners” as well. In one of the case’s most unexpected turns, the minister hired future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to lead his defense. Though regarded later in life as a civil rights champion, in 1921 Black was just months away from donning the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret order that financed Stephenson’s defense. Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black defended the minister on claims that the Catholics had robbed Ruth away from her true Protestant faith, and that her Puerto Rican husband was actually black.

    Placing the story in social and historical context, Davies brings this heinous crime and its aftermath back to life, in a brilliant and engrossing examination of the wages of prejudice and a trial that shook the nation at the height of Jim Crow.

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • 1. The Best Laid Plans
    • 2. A Parish to Run
    • 3. Until Death Do Us Part
    • 4. A City Reacts
    • 5. A Killer Speaks
    • 6. The Building of a Defense
    • 7. The Engines of Justice Turn
    • 8. Black Robes, White Robes
    • 9. Trials and Tribulations
    • 10. A Jury’s Verdict
    • Epilogue

  • The Construction of Racial Identity in Children of Mixed Parentage: Mixed Metaphors

    The Construction of Racial Identity in Children of Mixed Parentage: Mixed Metaphors

    Jessica Kingsley Publishers
    1996
    224 pages
    234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in
    Paperback ISBN: 978-1-85302-376-7

    Ilan Katz, Professor
    Social Policy Research Center
    University of New South Wales, Australia

    For several decades the issues of race, identity and child development have been of major concern to policy makers and practitioners in social services. This book is a major contribution to this literature, and offers a radically new way of looking at some of these issues. Based on intensive research on interracial families with young children, the book reviews the previous literature relating to racial identity development, especially relating to biracial children, and shows it to be based on flawed assumptions.

    Using intensive observations and in-depth interviews with parents of biracial children the author shows the many ways in which inter-racial families deal with issues of identity and difference. He concludes with a discussion of alternative conceptions of identity, race and development which will provide both practitioners and policy makers with new ways to think about these issues.

    Contents

    • Chapter 1: Introduction
    • Chapter 2: The Interracial Debate
    • Chapter 3: Racial Attitudes and Marginality
    • Chapter 4: Theories of Identity Development
    • Chapter 5: Methodology
    • Chapter 6: The A Family
    • Chapter 7: The B Family
    • Chapter 8: The First Set of Interviews
    • Chapter 9: Second Set of Interviews
    • Chapter 10: Conclusions
    • Chapter 11: Revisiting the Theory
    • Appendix One: Mother’s Interviews
    • Appendix Two: Interview Transcript

  • Creole Culture: Identity and Race in the Bayou Country

    Creole Culture: Identity and Race in the Bayou Country

    Kreol Magazine
    October-December 2013, Issue 7
    pages 42-45

    Christophe Landry

    Louisiana is what many have come to refer to as the northern-most point of Latin America, where créolité, a Latin-based people, culture and consciousness, emerged early in the 1700s. From its earliest stages, the international melting pot of cultures that came to simmer along Louisiana’s bayous linked Louisiana Creoles with three continents in a global market economy including the Indian Ocean.

    When the French crown ceded Louisiana to the Company of the Indies in 1717, Nantes (France), Goree (Senegal), Port-Louis (Mauritius), Saint-Denis (La Reunion) and New Orleans, became intimately related. For instance, between 1721 and 1745, 3,818 slaves were transported from Senegambia to Louisiana with roughly equal numbers destined for the Mascareigne Islands. In addition, Bretons, Picards and Normands came to represent the largest Francophone elements in early French Louisiana and in the French Indian Ocean islands. Not surprisingly, in Louisiana and in the Mascareignes, virtually the same Creole language developed, the first lengthy written examples of which date back to 1745 in Mauritius and 1748 in Louisiana.

    As early as 1710, native-born Louisianians of Latin culture self-identified as Créole. Slave and free, tan, brown, yellow and fair have used Creole to differentiate themselves from Anglophones in North America. Where Spanish, Creole, and French languages were spoken and Catholicism practiced in Colonial Louisiana, people were sure to define themselves as Creole. This distinction between Américain and Créole became more pronounced after 1812 when Louisiana officially became an American state, and continued after the Civil War when Anglophone America’s binary racial system came to play a more immediate role in the socioeconomic destiny of Louisianians…

    Read the entire article here or here.

  • ‘Making a Non-White America’

    ‘Making a Non-White America’

    inside: CSUF News
    California State University, Fullerton
    2009-08-18

    Mimi Ko Cruz

    Allison Varzally’s Book About California’s Ethnic History Wins National Award

    Interracial marriages and other ties in diverse communities throughout California during the formative years of the 20th century are explored in Allison Varzally’s book, “Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955.”

    Published by University of California Press, Varzally’s book has won the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s 2009 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award in American Immigration History.

    The award, which comes with $1,000, is presented for the book judged best on any aspect of the immigration history of the United States.

    Varzally, assistant professor of history, said the honor “is exciting recognition from an organization that I admire.

    “Some of my favorite books in the field have won this award,” she said.

    Varzally, of Los Angeles, uses the voices from oral histories she conducted to weave a scholarly interpretation on the state’s history. She touches on World War II, the Zoot suit riots, discriminatory laws, segregation, class, politics, religion, work and education.

    The book’s cover features a picture of Sugar Pie De Santo, a Filipina-black woman who grew up in San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the 1940s.

    De Santo, Varzally said, “creatively and selectively borrowed from her parents’ cultures, enjoyed her blended family background and became a famous musician.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • In a black-and-white society, I am the grey; I am other; I am what cannot be clearly defined.

    “I always joked with my friends that I was ‘light’ not ‘white.’ Half Latino and half white. Just what does that mean? When the name Bengochea precedes me, I am always asked to explain. You don’t necessarily guess my Cuban roots by looking at me, but maybe you should look harder. As a person of mixed race/ethnicity, I have always wrestled with my identity. In certain contexts I feel that I am not Hispanic enough, and in others I feel like I am not expressing myself completely unless I reference my mixed ethnicity. As I get older, I become more comfortable in these situations and learn to embrace the fullness of who I am. In a black-and-white society, I am the grey; I am other; I am what cannot be clearly defined.” —Matt Bengochea, Project Coordinator, President’s Office

    “RISDiversity: Community Narratives Project: 2013 Participants,” Rhode Island School of Design, (Providence, Rhode Island, 2013). http://diversity.risd.edu/participants2013.php.

  • Sugar Pie DeSanto: After 50 Years, ‘Go Going’ Strong

    Sugar Pie DeSanto: After 50 Years, ‘Go Going’ Strong

    Fresh Air from WHYY [Philadelphia]
    National Public Radio
    2010-07-29

    Terry Gross, Host

    Ed Ward, Rock Music Commentator


    Ace Records

    Sugar Pie DeSanto was born in Brooklyn in October 1935, and was christened Umpeleya Marsema Balinton. Her father was Filipino, her mother African-American. Her mother had been a concert pianist, but DeSanto says her father couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. He moved the family to San Francisco when Peliya, as they called her, was 4, and soon enough, the young girl discovered dancing and singing and made a fast friend with a neighbor named Jamesetta Hawkins, who was a member of a girl gang called the Lucky 20’s.

    Hawkins wound up in jail for her gang activities, and when she got out, she formed a singing group with one of Peliya’s younger sisters. Peliya looked on in envy as Hawkins was discovered by bandleader Johnny Otis and re-christened Etta James. She started entering talent contests in San Francisco, and won so often, they told her to stop entering. At another talent contest in L.A., Otis saw her again and offered to record her. He made good on his offer, and gave her a stage name, too: Little Miss Sugar Pie…

    Read the story here. Listen to the story here. Read the transcript here.

  • Cane River: A Novel

    Cane River: A Novel

    Grand Central Publishing
    2001
    560 pages
    5-1/4″ x 8″
    Paperback ISBN-13: 9780446678452

    Lalita Tademy

    The “New York Times” bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club Pick—the unique and deeply moving epic of four generations of African-American women based on one family’s ancestral past.

  • Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955

    Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955

    University of California Press
    April 2008
    318 pages
    Paperback ISBN: 9780520253452
    E-Book ISBN: 9780520941274

    Allison Varzally, Associate Professor of History
    California State University, Fullerton


    On the cover: Future R&B singer Sugar Pie DeSanto in San Francisco’s Fillmore District (circa 1940s)

    Winner of the 2009 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society

    What happens in a society so diverse that no ethnic group can call itself the majority? Exploring a question that has profound relevance for the nation as a whole, this study looks closely at eclectic neighborhoods in California where multiple minorities constituted the majority during formative years of the twentieth century. In a lively account, woven throughout with vivid voices and experiences drawn from interviews, ethnic newspapers, and memoirs, Allison Varzally examines everyday interactions among the Asian, Mexican, African, Native, and Jewish Americans, and others who lived side by side. What she finds is that in shared city spaces across California, these diverse groups mixed and mingled as students, lovers, worshippers, workers, and family members and, along the way, expanded and reconfigured ethnic and racial categories in new directions.

    Contents

    • Illustrations
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
    • 1. California Crossroads
    • 2. Young Travelers
    • 3. Guess Who’s Joining Us for Dinner?
    • 4. Banding Together in Crisis
    • 5. Minority Brothers in Arms
    • 6. Panethnic Politics Arising from the Everyday
    • Conclusion
    • Notes
    • Bibliography
    • Index

  • Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change

    Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change

    Proof
    National Geographic
    2013-09-17

    Michele Norris, Guest Contributor

    Proof is National Geographic’s new online photography experience. It was launched to engage ongoing conversations about photography, art, and journalism. In addition to featuring selections from the magazine and other publications, books, and galleries, this site will offer new avenues for our audience to get a behind-the-scenes look at the National Geographic storytelling process. We view this as a work in progress and welcome feedback as the site evolves. We can be reached at proof@ngs.org.

    A feature in National Geographic‘s October 125th anniversary issue looks at the changing face of America in an article by Lise Funderburg, with portraits of multiracial families by Martin Schoeller, that celebrates the beauty of multiracial diversity and shows the limitations around our current categories when talking about race.

    In many ways race is about difference and how those differences are codified through language, categories, boxes, segmentation, and even the implicit sorting that goes on in our heads in terms of the way we label others and even ourselves.

    Appearance and identity are most certainly linked when it comes to racial categories, but there is another important ingredient in that stew: Experience. There is no room for that on those official census forms, but when a person picks up a writing instrument to choose which box they check, experience most certainly helps guide their hand…

    Read the article and view the photographs here.

  • Chinese Mixed Race in Transnational Comparison (Sawyer Seminar IV)

    Chinese Mixed Race in Transnational Comparison (Sawyer Seminar IV)

    University of Southern California
    Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
    Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
    University Park Campus
    Doheny Memorial Library (DML), Room: 110C
    2013-09-27, 13:00-17:00 PDT (Local Time)

    USC Conference Convenors:

    Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion
    University of Southern California

    Brian C. Bernards, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
    University of Southern California

    Velina Hasu Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty Recognition and Development, Director of Dramatic Writing and Professor
    University of Southern California

    PRESENTERS:

    “At the Fringes of the Color Line: Re-Examining the One-Drop Rule Through the Transpacific Crossings of Chinese-White Biracials, 1912-1942”

    Emma J. Teng, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations and Associate Professor of Chinese Studies
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    “Crossing Boundaries, Claiming a Homeland: Chinese Mexicans’ Transpacific Journeys and the Quest to Belong”

    Julia María Schiavone-Camacho, Assistant Professor of History
    University of Texas, El Paso

    “Sino-Tibetan Hybridity and Ethnic Identity Perception in China”

    Patricia Schiaffini, Assistant Professor of Chinese
    Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas

    Presented by the Center for Japanese Religions and Culture’s “Critical Mixed-Race Studies: A Transpacific Approach” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminars Series at the University of Southern California.

    For more information, click here.