Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The mulatta concubine in diaspora is everywhere. She is in representations of Thomas Jefferson’s long-term “relationship” with the enslaved Sally Hemings, begun when she was fourteen and he forty-four (see Gordon-Reed, American Controversy). She is the protagonist who emblemizes Cuban national identity in Cirilo Villaverde’s 1882 novel, Cecilia Valdes: Novela de costumbres cubanas. She is allusively present in the fantastical and garish transformation of an enslaved black woman to sexually powerful white (by virtue of makeup) mistress in the Brazilian film Xica! She is remembered as the owner of the infamous maison des esclaves (house of slaves) on Gorée Island, the former Senegalese slave entrepôt and now major slavery tour destination. She is the enslaved Joanna, “immortalized in John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1806 [1796])” (Sharpe, Ghosts, 46). She is the commodity that drove the fancy slave trade in the antebellum United States. She is present in travelers’ descriptions of antebellum New Orleans’s free women of color. She is “that seductive mulatto woman” in colonial Saint-Domingue (Moreau de Saint-Méry, Civilization, 81-89).

Lisa Ze Winters, The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic, (Athens: Georgia University Press, 2016), 3.

The half-Chinese children on growing up find little difficulty in obtaining work or in entering into marriage with the surrounding white population…

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2016-05-22 21:34Z by Steven

The half-Chinese children on growing up find little difficulty in obtaining work or in entering into marriage with the surrounding white population. The girls in particular are attractive and good-looking. On the other hand, the Anglo-negroid children when grown up do not easily get work or mix with the ordinary population.

Maurice Broody, “The Social Adjustment of Chinese Immigrants in Liverpool,” The Sociological Review, Volume 3, Issue 1 (July 1955) pages 65-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1955.tb01045.x.

Tags: England, Liverpool, Maurice Broody, Sociological Review, The Sociological Review

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Does ‘race’ matter? A study of ‘mixed race’ siblings’ identifications

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United Kingdom, United States on 2010-04-27 17:53Z by Steven

Does ‘race’ matter? A study of ‘mixed race’ siblings’ identifications

Sociological Review
Volume 58, Issue 2 (May 2010)
Pages 265 – 285
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01903.x

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

‘Mixed’ people comprise one of the fastest growing populations in Britain today, and their growth refutes the idea that there exist distinct, ‘natural’ races among people in multiethnic societies, such as Britain. In recent years, a large body of scholarship, both in the US and Britain, has begun to investigate the diverse social experiences and racial identifications of mixed people. In this article, I investigate the ways in which mixed siblings perceive and think about race and differences in racial, ethnic, and religious identification within their families. What role do race and the recognition of difference play in sibling relationships and in family life more generally? I draw upon a small number of cases to illustrate the diverse ways in which understandings of race, ethnicity, and religion are (or are not) regarded as important in these families. I also consider whether there are group differences in terms of how disparate types of mixed siblings may perceive pressures to identify in particular ways.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: Miri Song, Sociological Review

Mixed Race Studies

The half-Chinese children on growing up find little difficulty in obtaining work or in entering into marriage with the surrounding white population…

Does ‘race’ matter? A study of ‘mixed race’ siblings’ identifications

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