Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

While literary scholars have long mined the “tragic mulatto” theme, until recently US historians have rarely explored and barely acknowledged the clandestine world of the tens of thousands of black people, across many generations, who masqueraded as white. Here, Allyson Hobbs provides fresh analysis of an oft-ignored phenomenon, and the result is as fascinating as it is innovative. She foregrounds the sense of loss that passing inflicted, and argues that many of those who were left behind were just as wounded and traumatised as those who departed. Those who passed may have had much to gain, but what were the hidden costs, the invisible scars of enforced patterns of subversion and suppression? She suggests that the core issue of passing is not what an individual becomes, but rather “losing what you pass away from”

Catherine Clinton, “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, by Allyson Hobbs,” Times Higher Education, (October 30, 2014). http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/a-chosen-exile-a-history-of-racial-passing-in-american-life-by-allyson-hobbs/2016548.article.

Ushering children away from a “light grey world”: Dr. Daniel Hill III and his pursuit of a respectable Black Canadian community.

Posted in Articles, Canada, Media Archive, Social Science on 2010-06-06 02:59Z by Steven

Ushering children away from a “light grey world”: Dr. Daniel Hill III and his pursuit of a respectable Black Canadian community.

Ontario History
2007-03-22

Daniel R. McNeil, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
Newcastle University, United Kingdom

This paper is about Dr. Daniel Hill III, the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Agency. Paying particular attention to Dr Hill’s work with the Committee for the Adoption of Coloured Youngsters and the Ontario Black History Society, I argue that he fashioned himself as “Negro race man”, a masculinist term assigned to people who sought to lead a Black community in North America and lay to rest the infantilised and feminized image of the “tragic mulatto” trapped in a “light grey world”.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: Daniel G. Hill, Daniel McNeil, Daniel R. McNeil, Ontario History

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Mixed Race Studies

Ushering children away from a “light grey world”: Dr. Daniel Hill III and his pursuit of a respectable Black Canadian community.

Pages

Categories

Calendar of Posts

Links

Meta