Mixed Race Studies

White Without Soap: Philanthropy, Caste and Exclusion in Colonial Victoria 1835-1888, A Political Economy of Race

University of Melbourne
November 2003
328 pages

Marguerita Stephens

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History

The thesis explores the connections between nineteenth century imperial anthropology, racial ‘science’, and the imposition of colonising governance on the Aborigines of Port Phillip/Victoria between 1835 and 1888. It explores the way that particular, albeit contested, images of Aborigines ‘became legislative’. It surveys the declining influence of liberal and Evangelical ‘philanthropy’ at the end of the 1830s, the pragmatic moral slippages that transformed humanitarian gestures into colonial terror, and the part played by the Australians in the emergence of the concept of race as the chief vector of colonial power. The thesis contrasts the rhetoric of the British Evangelicals with governmental rationalisations in connection with Major Lettsom’s murderous raid on the Kulin on the outskirts of Melbourne. It then probes two mid century ‘scientific’ discourses – one concerning the purported infertility of Aboriginal women in connection with white men (a thesis that captivated Social Darwinists but was belied by the ubiquitous presence of children of mixed descent); the other concerning the purported propensity of the Australians to wantonly destroy their own offspring – to illustrate how self-serving misinterpretations of the effects of colonisation, and of Aboriginal cultural practices, presented the Kulin as less than human and underwrote the removal of their children into ‘protective’ incarceration. It explores how a policy originally intended to ‘domesticate’ and transform the children of the Kulin into model citizens turned into a project designed to eradicate the Aborigines of Victoria by ‘breeding them out’. It considers the contestations between humanitarians and racialists at the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines and how, in the 1870s, an arcane theory that the Aborigines were of Caucasian origins came to underwrite an intentionally genocidal ‘absorption’ policy that deployed the arithmetics of caste. Throughout the thesis, the determination of the Kulin survivors to adapt to the new circumstances, their efforts to farm the Coranderrk station lands as independent, free farmer-citizens, their resistance to the Board’s efforts to ‘board out’ their children and dispossess them of every acre of land in the colony, is juxtaposed against representations of the Aborigines as primitives, savages, as less than human and inherently bound for extinction on the one hand, and as a people passively awaiting the remedy of being made ‘white without soap’ on the other.

Read the entire dissertation here.

“Representing” Anglo-Indians: A Genealogical Study

University of Melbourne
1999
350 pages

Glenn D’Cruz, Senior Lecturer
School of Communication and Creative Arts
Deakin University, Australia

Thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of English with Cultural Studies

The ‘mixed-race’ Anglo-Indian (Eurasian) community was born of the European colonisation of India some four hundred years ago. This dissertation examines how historians, writers, colonial administrators, social scientists and immigration officials represented Anglo-Indians between 1850 and 1998. Traditionally, Anglo-Indians have sought to correct perceived distortions or misrepresentations of their community by disputing the accuracy of deprecatory stereotypes produced by ‘prejudicial’ writers. While the need to contest disparaging representations is not in dispute here, the present study finds its own point of departure by questioning the possibility of (re)presenting an undistorted Anglo-Indian identity.

The dissertation functions at three levels. First, it examines the construction of Anglo-Indian stereotypes in various discursive practices, offering a critique of the knowledges and images produced within specific literary and non-literary texts. Second, it retrieves the ‘buried’ texts of the Anglo-Indian community, which have been ‘disqualified’ by official discourses. Third, drawing on postcolonialism and poststructuralism, it mounts a practical argument against mimeticism or image analysis by demonstrating how complex discursive and ideological currents mediate stereotypical representations. More specifically, it enumerates the ‘conditions of possibility’ for the production of Anglo-Indian stereotypes, arguing that such figures are historically variable and internally contradictory. Using Foucault’s genealogical method as a starting point, the dissertation examines (mis)representations of Anglo-Indians as they meet and disperse within an interactive network of power/knowledge relations.

This strategy not only accounts for the emergence of pejorative stereotypes, but encourages the articulation of Anglo-Indian identities in their diversity. This contrasts with the impractical compulsion, articulated by Anglo-Indian image critics, to build a homogeneous community.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Contents
• Acknowledegments
• Introduction
• 1 (Mis)representing Anglo-Indian History
• 2 ‘Pangs of Nature and Taints of Blood’: The Anglo-Indian ‘Stereotype’ in Raj Literature
• 3 Sexual Relations, Colonial Governmentality and Anglo-Indian Stereotypes
• 4 Imperial Power and Regimes of Truth: Racial Science and Anglo-Indian Stereotypes
• 5 ‘Poor Relations’: Social Science and ‘The Eurasian Problem’
• 6 Ambivalent Stereotypes: Kipling, Rushdie, Chandra and Sealy
• 7 ‘The Good Australians’: Multiculturalism and the Anglo-Indian Diaspora
• 8 Conclusion: ‘Bringing it All Back Home’
• Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.

Lest we forget: the children they left behind: the life experience of adults born to black GIs and British women during the Second World War

The University of Melbourne
1999
177 pages

Janet Baker

An estimated 22,000 children were born in England during the Second World War as a result of relationships between British women and American GIs. Of these children, around 1,200-1,700 were born to African American servicemen. These figures are estimates only; the actual number of births will never be known.

The research study is based on personal interviews with eleven members of this cohort. The interviews explore their life experience and examines their sense of identity as ex-nuptial children, of mixed-race parentage, who had no contact with and usually little information about their GI fathers. Of the eleven mothers, over half were married with at least one other child at the time of the birth. Nine participants/respondents were raised by their mother or her extended family. Two were institutionalised. At the time of the interviews all of the respondents were either searching for, or had found, their black GI fathers.

This is a qualitative study which aims to bear witness to the lived experience of this cohort and to analyse the meaning individuals gave to their experience. Data collection involved personal interviews with the eleven participants. The data was then subject to a thematic analysis and the major themes and issues identified. Content analysis was undertaken using a constructivist approach.

The interviews are presented as elicited narrative relayed through an interpretive summary. Consistency was maintained by using common questions organised within a loose interview framework. The findings were organised around the major conceptual issues and themes that emerged from the case summaries. Common themes, including resilience, racial identity, self esteem and stress were identified.

The researcher has professional qualifications as a social worker and clinical family therapist. She has ten years experience in the field of adoption, including the transracial placement of Aboriginal and overseas children in Australian families. She is also a member of the researched cohort. Issues arising when the researcher is also a member of the researched cohort are discussed in the methodology.

The experience of this cohort suggests that despite the disadvantages of their birth, they fared better than expected. The majority demonstrated high levels of resilience, successfully developing a sense of identity that incorporated both the black and white aspects of their racial heritage. However, for some this success was only achieved at considerable personal cost, with several participants reporting relatively high levels of stress and/or stress related symptoms, such as anxiety, mental illness and heart disease.

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work in the School of Social Work, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne

Table of Contents

• Declaration of Authorship
• Acknowledgments
• Some Wartime Quotations
• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Historical Context
    • 1.1.1 Segregation
    • 1.1.2 Tensions Between Black and White Americans
    • 1.1.3 Sex between Black and White
    • 1.1.4 ‘Brown babies’
  • 1.2 Links to Contemporary Welfare Issues
    • 1.2.1 Transracial Child Placement
    • 1.2.2 Rights of Access to Birth Information
  • 1.3 Aims of the Research
• 2. Research Design and Methodology
  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 Logic of the Approach
  • 2.3 The participants
  • 2.4 Data Collection
  • 2.5 Analysis and Interpretation of the Data
    • 2.5.1 Analysis
    • 2.5.2 The place of the literature review
  • 2.6 Role of the Researcher
  • 2.7 Validity
  • 2.8 Ethical Issues
    • 2.8.1 Assistance with Searches
• 3. Review of the Literature
  • 3.1 Introduction
    • 3.1.1 Sexual relationships between black men and white women
    • 3.1.2 Race and illegitimacy as stigma
    • 3.1.3 Identity Formation
    • 3.1.4 Stress, resilience and coping
  • 3.2 Conclusion
• 4. Findings
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 Case studies
    • 4.2.1 Participant 1
    • 4.2.2 Participant 2
    • 4.2.3 Participant 3
    • 4.2.4 Participant 4
    • 4.2.5 Participant 5
    • 4.2.6 Participant 6
  • 4.3 Participant Summaries
• 5. Summary and Discussion of Findings
  • 5.1 Themes and Issues:
    • 5.1.1 Sex between black and white
    • 5.1.2 Race and Illegitimacy as Stigma
    • 5.1.3 Identity Formation and Children of Mixed-race
    • 5.1.4 Grief and Loss
    • 5.1.5 Stress, Resilience and Coping
    • 5.1.6 Impact of search for birth father on identity formation
  • 5.2 Implications for Social Work Practice
  • 5.3 Conclusion
• 6. Bibliography
  • Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms
  • Appendix 2: Participant’s Stories (continued)
    • 6.1.1 Participant 7
    • 6.1.2 Participant 8
    • 6.1.3 Participant 9
    • 6.1.4 Participant 10
    • 6.1.5 Participant 11
  • 6.2 Summary
• Appendix 3: Interview Schedule
• Appendix 4: Letter to Tracing Services
• Appendix 5: Letter of Support from TRACE.
• Appendix 6: Letter of Support From ‘War Babes’ (UK)
• Appendix 7: Letter to Participants (1)
• Appendix 8: Letter to Participants (2)
• Appendix 9: Letter to Participants (3)
• Appendix 10: Consent to Take Part in Research Project
• Appendix 11: Letter to Post Adoption Resource Centre
• Appendix 12: Response from Post Adoption Resource Centre

Introduction

The following study provides an account of the lived experience of the adult children of wartime relationships between British women and African American servicemen during the Second World War. It is a qualitative study that seeks to explore the meaning of that experience and in particular how the research participants see themselves—as black, white or mixed-race.

The exploration of these issues took place in the context of a personal interview with each of eleven respondents, which explored the meaning they gave to their life experience as children of black GI fathers raised with no contact, until they reached middle-age, with their birth fathers or their African American heritage. A particular focus of the interviews was the extent to which this experience impacted on their sense of self-identity as children of mixed British and African American parentage. As all of the participants were searching for, or had found their birth fathers the significance of their search, in terms of its impact on their sense of personal identity, was also explored.

The experience of this cohort can only be clearly understood in the historical context of the Second World War and in particular the impact of the decision by America to send black troops to England. An overview of the major social and historical issues impacting on the life experience of this cohort follows…

Read the entire dissertation here.

Playful ambiguities: racial and literary hybridity in the novels of Brian Castro

University of Melbourne
Université Toulouse-le Mirail
2010

Marilyne Brun

PhD thesis, Arts – School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne and Université Toulouse-le Mirail.

This thesis studies eight of the nine novels of Brian Castro, a contemporary Australian writer born in Hong Kong in 1950, and focuses on the theme of hybridity in his work. Starting with the observation that many of Castro’s characters are mixed-race, the thesis reflects on his suggestion, in his critical essays, that hybridity is deployed at a literary level in his fiction. It seeks to answer three major questions: how is racial hybridity represented in the novels? Why does Castro use a form of literary hybridity in his fiction? And what connections can be established between racial and literary hybridity in his work? The present study argues that hybridity is a useful concept which can be productively applied to literary studies and is particularly appropriate to discuss Castro’s novels. It focuses on two aspects of his literary practice: his use of hybridity as a literary device and his ambiguous representation of the mixed-race body. It argues that racial and literary hybridity are uniquely complementary in the novels and that Castro’s playful resort to hybridity represents a form of resistance to literary canons, racial categorisation and national politics. In this sense, the thesis not only extends the study of Brian Castro’s novels, it also brings new insights to hybridity theory, thus contributing to postcolonial, literary and critical race studies.