Mixed Race Studies

The Politics of “Passing”: American Indians and Racial “Passing”

University of Arizona
2004
80 pages

Veronica R. Hirsch

Introduction

How is the racial “passing” behavioral concept applicable to American Indians, and what political forces created the socio-cultural circumstances that prompted this behavior? Beyond these immediate, sociologically-focused questions, what generational impacts does racial “passing” have upon tribal sovereignty and how does tribal sovereignty effect certain forms of racial “passing?” Until now, racial “passing” has been oversimplified as an exclusively Black/White social phenomenon, given the term “passing” was originally coined to describe an African-American’s attempts to identify him/herself, or to accept identification as a white person (Caughie 1999, p. 20). However, racial “passing” is neither historically nor contemporarily unique to the African-American community, since racial “passing” is facilitated by any social organization, such as the United States, that holds certain “subordinate” groups in disesteem (Sollors 1997, p. 248). Taking the United States’ “trust responsibility,” American Indian nations’ “domestic dependent” statuses, and documented history of Indian-specific, institutionalized racism together, one readily witnesses that the societal “disesteem” to which American Indians are and were subjected also positions and positioned them as both participants in and subjects of racial “passing.”…

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Black and White Both Cast Shadows: Unconventional Permutations of Racial Passing in African American and American Literature

University of Arizona
2012
220 pages

Derek Adams

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

This dissertation proposes to build upon a critical tradition that explores the formation of racial subjectivity in narratives of passing in African-American and American literature. It adds to recent scholarship on passing narratives which seeks a more comprehensive understanding of the connections between the performance of racial norms and contemporary conceptions of “race” and racial categorization. But rather than focusing entirely on the conventional mulatta/o performs whiteness plot device at work in passing literature, a device that reinforces the desirability of heteronormative whiteness, I am interested in assessing how performances of a variety of racial norms challenges this desirability. Selected literary fiction from Herman Melville, Mary White Ovington, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and ZZ Packer provides a rich opportunity for analyzing these unconventional performances. Formulating a theory of “black-passing” that decenters whiteness as the passer’s object of desire, this project assesses how the works of these authors broadens the framework of the discourse on racial performance in revelatory ways. Racial passing will get measured in relation to the political consequences engendered by the transgression of racial boundaries, emphasizing how the nature of acts of passing varies according to the way hegemonic society dictates racial enfranchisement. Passing will be situated in the context of various modes of literary representation—realism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism—that register subjectivity. The project will also explore in greater detail the changing nature of acts of passing across gendered, spatial, and temporal boundaries.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ABSTRACT
• INTRODUCTION: FOR COLOREDS ONLY?: RACIAL PASSING AND A REGIME OF LOOKING
• CHAPTER ONE: AS BLACK AS IT GETS: PERFORMING BLACKNESS IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
• CHAPTER TWO: THIS AIN’T BLACKFACE: WHITE PERFORMANCES OF BLACK AUTHENTICITY IN MARY WHITE OVINGTON’S THE SHADOW
• CHAPTER THREE: IMAGINING BLACK AND WHITE OTHERS: BLACK PASSING IN POST-RACIAL AMEICAN LITERATURE
• CONCLUSION: RACIAL PASSING LITERATURE AND AN AMERICAN USEABLE PAST
• WORKS CITED

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Crossing borders, erasing boundaries: Interethnic marriages in Tucson, 1854-1930

University of Arizona
392 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3398995
ISBN: 9781109735864

Salvador Acosta

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate College The University of Arizona

This dissertation examines the interethnic marriages of Mexicans in Tucson, Arizona, between 1854 and 1930. Arizona’s miscegenation law (1864-1962) prohibited the marriages of whites with blacks, Chinese, and Indians—and eventually those with Asian Indians and Filipinos. Mexicans, legally white, could intermarry with whites, but the anti-Mexican rhetoric of manifest destiny suggests that these unions represented social transgressions. Opponents and proponents of expansionism frequently warned against the purported dangers of racial amalgamation with Mexicans. The explanation to the apparent disjuncture between this rhetoric and the high incidence of Mexican-white marriages in Tucson lies in the difference between two groups: the men who denigrated Mexicans were usually middle- and upper-class men who never visited Mexico or the American Southwest, while those who married Mexicans were primarily working-class westering men. The typical American man chose to pursue his own happiness rather than adhere to a national, racial project.

This study provides the largest quantitative analysis of intermarriages in the West. The great majority of these intermarriages occurred between whites and Mexicans. Though significantly lower in total numbers, Mexican women accounted for large percentages of all marriages for black and Chinese men. The children of these couples almost always married Mexicans. All of these marriages were illegal in Arizona, but local officials frequently disregarded the law. Their passive acceptance underscores their racial ambiguity of Mexicans. Their legal whiteness allowed them to marry whites, and their social non-whiteness facilitated their marriages with blacks and Chinese.

The dissertation suggests the need to reassess two predominant claims in American historiography: first, that Mexican-white intermarriages in the nineteenth-century Southwest occurred primarily between the daughters of Mexican elites and enterprising white men; and second, that the arrival of white women led to decreases in intermarriages. Working-class whites and Mexicans in fact accounted for the majority of intermarriages between 1860 and 1930. The number of intermarriages as total numbers always increased, and the percentage of white men who had the option to marry—i.e., those who lived in Arizona as bachelors—continued to intermarry at rates that rivaled the high percentages of the 1860s and 1870s.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• LIST OF FIGURES
• LIST OF TABLES
• ABSTRACT
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1: ARIZONA’S MISCEGENATION LAW AND THE VULNERABILITY OF ILLICIT MARRIAGES
• CHAPTER 2: THE DISCOURSE OF MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE MEXICAN QUESTION
• CHAPTER 3: UNDERMINING MANIFEST DESTINY: AMERICAN TRAVEL NARRATIVES
• CHAPTER 4: THE MEXICAN QUESTION REACHES ARIZONA
• CHAPTER 5: INTERMARRIAGES IN TUCSON, 1860-1930
• CHAPTER 6: MARRIAGES BETWEEN MEXICANS AND NON-WHITES
• CHAPTER 7: MARITAL EXPECTATIONS: PROPERTY, NETWORKS, AND VIOLENCE AMONG INTERETHNIC COUPLES
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX A
• APPENDIX B
• REFERENCES

LIST OF FIGURES

• Figure 5.1. Interethnic unions for men and women of white ancestry and men and women of Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.2. Average number of years by which men were older than their interethnic partners, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.3. Occupations of men involved in interethnic relationships, excluding those listed as retired or with no occupation, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.4. White man-Mexican woman couples versus other kinds of interethnic unions between whites and Mexicans, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.5. Interethnic unions involving white, Mexican, and mixed (white-Mexican) men and women, 1930. N=279
• Figure 5.6. Ethnic background of the spouses of men of white-Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1900-1930
• Figure 5.7. Ethnic background of the spouses of women of white-Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1900-1930
• Figure 5.8. Mexican (M) and white (W) households as a percentage of total households in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: white 53.6%, Mexican 36.7%)
• Figure 5.9. Interethnic couples as a percentage of all couples in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: 7%; 228 of the 236 couples were between Mexicans and whites)
• Figure 5.10. Mexican-white couples as a percentage of all couples involving people of white ancestry in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: 12%)
• Figure 5.11. Mexican-white couples as a percentage of all couples involving people of Mexican ancestry in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: 18.2%)
• Figure 5.12. Geographic distribution of Mexican households, 1930. N=2304
• Figure 5.13. Single white women as percentage of the total population, United States and Tucson, 1870-1930
• Figure 5.14. Single white women sixteen years and over as a percentage of the total population in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: n=574 or 2.8%, average age=26.6 years; nationwide for whites: 4.9%)
• Figure 5.15. Probable marital status of white men in endogamous relationships, Tucson, 1910. N=927
• Figure 5.16. Percentage of interethnic unions for white men according to probable marital status when residing in Arizona, Tucson, 1910
• Figure 5.17. Probable marital status of foreign white men involved in endogamous relationships, Tucson, 1910. N=166
• Figure 5.18. Percentage of interethnic unions for foreign white men according to probable marital status when residing in Arizona, Tucson, 1910
• Figure 6.1. Distribution of black and Chinese residents per census district, Tucson, 1930. Citywide: 484 black men (BM), 477 black women (BW), 152 Chinese men (CM), and 60 Chinese women (CW)
• Figure 7.1. Charges cited in divorce petitions of intermarried couples, Pima County, 1873-1930

LIST OF TABLES

• Table 1.1 Interethnic unions involving blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, and descendants of these combinations, Pima County, 1860-1930
• Table 5.1. Population, couples, and single men and women, Tucson, 1860-1880
• Table 5.2. Interethnic couples as percentages of all couples, Tucson, 1860-1880
• Table 5.3. Population, households, and single white women, Tucson, 1900-1930
• Table 6.1. Black men and women and interethnic couples, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Table 6.2. Chinese immigrants to the United States by decade, and Chinese residents in Tucson by census year, 1870-1930
• Table 6.3. Chinese adult residents and interethnic couples, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Table 6.4. Chinese men sixteen years old and over, Tucson, 1880-1930
• Table 6.5. Racial classification for people of Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1930
• Table 7.1. Intermarriages and divorce cases among intermarried couples, Pima County, 1873-1930

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