Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family

    Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family

    Cambridge University Press
    November 2011
    286 pages
    6 b/w illus. 3 maps
    228 x 152 mm; 0.51kg
    Hardback ISBN: 9781107012615
    Adobe eBook ISBN: 9781139181242
    Mobipocket eBook: ISBN:9781139184861

    Chandra Mallampalli, Associate Professor of History
    Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California

    How did British rule in India transform persons from lower social classes? Could Indians from such classes rise in the world by marrying Europeans and embracing their religion and customs? This book explores such questions by examining the intriguing story of an interracial family who lived in southern India in the mid-nineteenth century. The family, which consisted of two untouchable brothers, both of whom married Eurasian women, became wealthy as distillers in the local community. When one brother died, a dispute arose between his wife and brother over family assets, which resulted in a landmark court case, Abraham v. Abraham. It is this case which is at the center of this book, and which Chandra Mallampalli uses to examine the lives of those involved and, by extension, of those – 271 witnesses in all – who testified. In its multilayered approach, the book sheds light not only on interracial marriage, class, religious allegiance, and gender, but also on the British encounter with Indian society. It shows that far from being products of a “civilizing mission” who embraced the ways of Englishmen, the Abrahams were ultimately – when faced with the strictures of the colonial legal system – obliged to contend with hierarchy and racial difference.

    Features

    • A singular court case from the nineteenth century is at the heart of this intriguing book on race and hierarchy in colonial India
    • A rich and engaging multi-layered approach which interrogates legal documents and interviews with witnesses to unveil social history of the period
    • For students and scholars of colonial India, and legal and social historians

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • 1. Remembering family
    • 2. Embodying ‘Dora-hood’: the brothers and their business
    • 3. A crisis of trust: sedition and the sale of arms in Kurnool
    • 4. Letters from Cambridge
    • 5. The path to litigation
    • 6. Litigating gender and race: Charlotte sues at Bellary
    • 7. Francis appeals: the case for continuity
    • 8. Choice, identity, and law: the decision of London’s Privy Council.

  • Multiracial youths show similar vulnerability to peer pressure as whites

    Multiracial youths show similar vulnerability to peer pressure as whites

    University of Washington News
    2012-07-10

    Molly McElroy

    Researchers who studied a large sample of middle- and high-school students in Washington state found that mixed-race adolescents are more similar to their white counterparts than previously believed.
     
    Experts have thought that multiracial adolescents, the fastest growing youth group in the United States, use drugs and engage in violence more than their single-race peers. Racial discrimination and greater vulnerability to peer pressure have been blamed for these problems, due to the belief that as mixed-race youngsters struggle to fit in they become more likely to fall in with bad crowds.
     
    Multiracial youth in the new study, by researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Chicago, reported fewer behavioral problems than seen in previous studies. The findings are published in the July issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
     
    Youth who reported greater use of alcohol and instances of violent fights also reported having friends with similar problem behaviors. But when asked how likely they would be to cave to peer pressure, multi- and single-race participants did not differ.
     
    Family background, including income level and parental marital status, also had a role. Multiracial youths who reported higher rates of problem behaviors were more likely to come from poor families.
     
    “People usually portray multiracial children as facing greater challenges growing up than single-race children,” said Yoonsun Choi, lead author and associate professor at the UChicago’s School of Social Service Administration…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Long Walk to Freedom: Runaway Slave Narratives

    The Long Walk to Freedom: Runaway Slave Narratives

    Beacon Press
    2012-08-21
    288 pages
    6″ x 9″
    Cloth ISBN: 978-080706912-7

    Devon W. Carbado, Professor of Law and African American Studies
    University of California, Los Angeles

    Donald Weise, Independent Scholar in African American history

    The first book about the runaway slave phenomenon written by fugitive slaves themselves.

    In this groundbreaking compilation of first-person accounts of the runaway slave phenomenon, editors Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise have recovered twelve narratives spanning eight decades-more than half of which have been long out of print. Told in the voices of the runaway slaves themselves, these narratives reveal the extraordinary and often innovative ways that these men and women sought freedom and demanded citizenship. Also included is an essay by UCLA history professor Brenda Stevenson that contextualizes these narratives, providing a brief yet comprehensive history of slavery, as well as a look into the daily life of a slave. Divided into four categories-running away for family, running inspired by religion, running by any means necessary, and running to be free-these stories are a testament to the indelible spirit of these remarkable survivors.

    The Long Walk to Freedom presents excerpts from the narratives of well-known runaway slaves, like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as from the narratives of lesser-known and virtually unknown people. Several of these excerpts have not been published for more than a hundred years. But they all portray the courageous and sometimes shocking ways that these men and women sought their freedom and asserted power, often challenging many of the common assumptions about slaves’ lack of agency.

    Among the remarkable and inspiring stories is the tense but triumphant tale of Henry Box Brown, who, with a white abolitionist’s help, shipped himself in a box-over a twenty-seven-hour train ride, part of which he spent standing on his head-to freedom in Philadelphia. And there’s the story of William and Ellen Craft, who fled across thousands of miles, with Ellen, who was light-skinned, disguised as a white male slave-owner so she and her husband could achieve their dream of raising their children as free people.

    Gripping, inspiring, and captivating, The Long Walk to Freedom is a remarkable collection that celebrates those who risked their lives in pursuit of basic human rights.

    Read the Introduction here.

  • Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895

    Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895

    University of Pennsylvania Press
    2005
    288 pages
    6 x 9
    Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8122-3867-9

    Jill Lane, Associate Professor of  Theater and Performance Studies
    New York University

    Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895 offers a critical history of the relation between racial impersonation, national sentiment, and the emergence of an anticolonial public sphere in nineteenth-century Cuba. Through a study of Cuba’s vernacular theatre, the teatro bufo, and of related forms of music, dance, and literature, Lane argues that blackface performance was a primary site for the development of mestizaje, Cuba’s racialized national ideology, in which African and Cuban become simultaneously mutually exclusive and mutually formative.

    Popular with white Cuban-born audiences during the period of Cuba’s anticolonial wars, the teatro bufo was celebrated for combining Spanish elements with supposedly African rhythms and choreography. Its wealth of short comic plays developed a well-loved repertory of blackface stock characters, from the negrito to the mulata, played by white actors in blackface. Lane contends that these practices were embraced by white audiences as especially national forms that helped define Cuba’s opposition to Spain, at the same time that they secured prevailing racial hierarchies for a future Cuban nation. Comparing the teatro bufo to related forms of racial representation, particularly those created by black Cubans in theatres and in the press, Lane analyzes performance as a form of social contestation through which an emergent Cuban national community struggled over conflicting visions of race and nation.

    Table of Contents

    • Preface. On the Translation of Race
    • Introduction. ImpersoNation in Our America
    • Chapter 1. Blackface Costumbrismo, 1840-1860
    • Chapter 2. Anticolonial Blackface, 1868
    • Chapter 3. Black(face) Public Spheres, 1880-1895
    • Chapter 4. National Rhythm, Racial Adulteration, and the Danzón, 1881-82
    • Chapter 5. Racial Ethnography and Literate Sex, 1888
    • Conclusion. Cubans on the Moon, and Other Imagined Communities
    • Notes
    • Bibliography
    • Index
    • Acknowledgments

  • Lecture: Unbearable Blackness

    Lecture: Unbearable Blackness

    Terror and the Inhuman (2012-10-25 through 2012-10-27)
    Brown University
    Sidney Frank Hall, Room 220
    185 Meeting St.
    2012-10-25, 18:30 EDT (Local Time)

    Jared Sexton, Associate Professor, African American Studies; Associate Professor, Film & Media Studies
    University of California, Irvine

    The Department of Modern Culture and Media presents a lecture by Jared Sexton titled “Unbearable Blackness,” as part of a conference called “Terror and the Inhuman.” In this lecture, Sexton will address the psychic life struggles of black freedom within the political culture and cultural politics. Sexton, associate professor of African American studies and film and media studies at the University of California, is the author of Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (2008) and is the editor of Racial Theories in Context (2013).

    For more information, click here.

  • I think it would be wise for people who are biracial and multiracial to never forget that this is a system of formal historical and institutional white supremacy.

    I think it would be wise for people who are biracial and multiracial to never forget that this is a system of formal historical and institutional white supremacy. And I’m afraid sometimes, there are a lot incentives that the culture puts out there to biracial and multiracial people to forget that… …Because they’re not quite as Black, or they’re not quite as Brown. And so there is a tendency for people to think that they really escape that system… …That they’re not really in that system… …So, multiracial, biracial folks: claim all of, claim every piece of it. Do not forget where one still sits on the trajectory of white supremacy. Because when once you forget that, there is real danger, real danger.

    Tim Wise, “Racism, White Supremacy and Biracial/Multiraciality (2011),” Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator, Talk at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, (September, 2011). http://www.timwise.org/2012/09/insights-and-outbursts-volume-2/.

  • What explains the rise of Intermarriage?

    What explains the rise of Intermarriage?

    • The US had a big immigration reform in 1965, which led to a sharp rise in immigration from Asia and Latin America. As the US population became more racially diverse, there was more opportunity for Americans to meet (and fall in love with) people from other races. Immigrant destinations like New York City tend to have more intermarriage as a result of having more racial diversity.
    • The age at first marriage has been steadily rising since the 1960s. Age at first marriage in the US is now 27 or 28 years of age. In the past, age of first marriage was typically about 21 years. The later age at first marriage means that young people are more likely to travel away from home before they marry. Travel away from home increases the chances of meeting (and falling in love with) someone who is different from you.
    • Attitudes have changed. Interracial marriage is not very controversial for people who were raised in the post- Civil Rights and post- Loving v. Virginia era. As interracial marriage has become more common and more visible, more Americans have gotten used to the idea that interracial couples are part of the panorama of American families. Opposition within families to intermarriage has declined, but has not disappeared.

    Michael J. Rosenfeld, “Interracial Brooklyn,” Brooklyn Historical Society: Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, (September 2012).

  • To succeed, the intermarriage of the white race with mixed stock must be made impossible.

    Unless radical measures are used to prevent it, Virginia and other parts of the Nation must surely in time go the way of all other countries in which people of two or more races have lived in close contact. With the exception of the Hebrew race, complete intermixture or amalgamation has been the inevitable result.

    To succeed, the intermarriage of the white race with mixed stock must be made impossible. But that is not sufficient, public sentiment must be so aroused that intermixture out of wedlock will cease.

    The public must be led to look with scorn and contempt upon the man who will degrade himself and do harm to society by such abhorrent deeds.

    W. A. Plecker, “The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity,” Virginia Health Bulletin,Volume XVI, Extra Number 2 (March 1924): 2. http://lva.omeka.net/items/show/62.

  • Students more likely to identify as multiracial

    Students more likely to identify as multiracial

    The Stanford Daily: Breaking News from the Farm Since 1892
    Stanford University
    2012-10-24

    Taylor Chambers

    Erika Roach ’13 identifies herself as “Blasian,” while Marcus Montanez-Leaks ’13 says he’s “Blexican.”

    These terms and others used to describe mixed race individuals are becoming more common in conversation and student groups focused on mixed race issues have begun popping up on campus, a trend mirroring the rise in applications.

    Mixed race applicants to Stanford are “one of the fastest growing groups,” according to Dean of Admissions Richard Shaw.

    During the 2011-12 academic year, 11.6 percent of undergraduates identified their racial/ethnic category as “two or more races,” up from 8.4 percent the previous year. 2010-11 was the first year the University began collecting data on mixed race individuals.

    In 2011, the Department of Education started requiring universities to collect more information about applicants’ race and ethnicity. Many college applications, including the Common Application that Stanford uses, now allow students to check multiple boxes when it comes to describing their racial and ethnic identities.

    “Students [telling] us exactly what their racial background is … not a mandatory request. It is optional,” Shaw said. He added that the ability to self-identify accurately is a crucial part of the college admissions process.

    For students who identify with more than one heritage, the ability to check all that apply on the racial background section of college admissions proves crucial to establishing their identity…

    …Michele Elam, English professor and author of a 2011 book on mixed race, The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics and Aesthetics in the New Millennium, argues that diversity remains an important consideration among many others in college admissions, but does not believe that students are simply “cynically trying to game the system by checking as many boxes as possible.”
     
    “A lot of young high school students when doing college admissions are just coming of age politically and racially,” Elam said. “Some may not have thought of themselves as having a distinct mixed identity before being asked to check multiple boxes.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Against Black-Face Roles in German Theatre

    Against Black-Face Roles in German Theatre

    Avaaz: Community Petitions
    2012-10-14

    Gyavira Lasana

    Last January Schlosspark Theatre in Berlin opened “I’m Not Rappaport” by Herb Gardner. The production featured a white actor in black-face in the role of Midge Carter, portrayed in New York by Ossie Davis. When concerned theatre professionals complained on the website of Schlosspark, they were blocked; yet neo-Nazis, who charged that the “niggers should go back to Africa,” were allowed access. Schlosspark insisted the production was not “racist,” that they cast a white actor because they could not find a “qualified black actor.” The widow of Herb Gardner has deflected inquiries about the rights to “Rapport” to the agent in Germany. And she points to a 1986 conversation in which Gardner agreed to black-face “if a suitable black actor could not be found.” That time and circumstance have passed. I am asking Actors Equity and the Dramatists Guild to decline participation in productions featuring black-face and condemn its use in Germany.

    Why this is important

    The German theatre use of “black-faced” white actors in roles written and designed for blacks subverts the intentions of the dramatists and denies work to black actors. On a broader scale, black-face demeans black Germans and reinforces racist societal and political positions of power.

    For more information, click here.