Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Race mixture or miscegenation excited considerable scholarly interest and public indignation in the continental United States during the early twentieth century. According to the 1910 census, the number of self-identifying “mulattoes” in the U.S. population had risen to two million, more than 20% of African Americans. This development prompted concern among some white social theorists. In 1918, Madison Grant (1918) predicted the passing of the great white race: “mongrelization” across the globe was leading to dilution and degeneration. A few years later, Lothrop Stoddard (1921) echoed Grant’s predictions. Through the 1920s and 1930s, marriage between African Americans and European Americans remained illegal in more than 40 states but not in the insular territories (Hollinger 2003; Kennedy 2003; Moran 2001; Pascoe 1996; Sollors 2000; Spickard 1989; Williamson 1980). In 1924, Virginia promulgated the “one-drop” rule to define more rigidly the boundaries of white identity. The following year, Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander scandalized New York when he sued Alice Jones for passing as white and deceptively luring him into marriage. Black men accused of lustful behavior toward white women were still being lynched in the South. In 1935, the African American intellectual W. E. B. DuBois observed that fear of race mixing was “the crux of the so-called Negro problem in the United States” (DuBois 1980 [1935]:99). Nonetheless, in places such as Harlem, New York, a self-conscious and assertive “mulatto” culture emerged during this period (Huggins 1973; Watson 1995).

Warwick Anderson, “Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States,” Current Anthropology, Volume 53, Number S5 (April 2012): S95-S107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/662330.

Mixed: The many faces of the multiracial experience.

Posted in Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Videos on 2016-01-22 23:23Z by Steven

Mixed: The many faces of the multiracial experience.

The Stream
Al Jazeera English
2016-01-20

Femi Oke, Host

“What are you?” is an often used opening question that doesn’t always have a short and simple answer. For people with more than one racial background, identity is a lot more than one word; it’s a sentence, a paragraph or a lived experience. As we become a more and more mixed race population world over, racial identity is also becoming more fluid. On the next Stream we’ll speak to biracial and multiracial people about their mixed race journey.

Joining this conversation:

David Shams, Blogger and Freelance Journalist

Julie Matthews, Associate Professor
University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Naomi Kissiedu-Green and Matthew Green, Authors of Surprise Baby: The Colourful Life!
Australia

Maya McManus, Social Media Consultant

Watch the episode (00:44:04) here.

Tags: Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, David Shams, Femi Oke, Julie Matthews, Matthew Green, Maya McManus, Maya Rachel McManus, Naomi Kissiedu-Green, The Stream

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Mixed Race Studies

Mixed: The many faces of the multiracial experience.

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