Mixed Race Studies

The challenges of being multiracial

The Santa Fe New Mexican
2015-11-16

Sakara Griffith, Sophomore
Santa Fe High School, Santa Fe, New Mexico

There is a photo of a black family featuring smiling faces of joy, with some of the participants wearing ugly, matching sweaters that grandma knitted and a brother and sister caught on camera fighting over who gets to sit in the front.

And in the center of the photo is a girl with green eyes, tan skin and blond curly hair. She is Santa Fe High School sophomore Irie Charity, whose racial background is a mix of African, Hawaiian and German.

“Yup, I’m the white words on the chalkboard in that picture,” Charity said. She said everyone knows she is of “mixed” race.

Brandi Wells, program adviser for the African American Student Services program at The University of New Mexico, said coming from two different racial backgrounds impacts even the most minute details of your home life.

She should know, as she is a mix of African-American and Hispanic.

“Even your menu at home becomes huge, like I grew up eating fried chicken and enchiladas. I was eating jambalaya one day and beans and chile the next,” Wells said.

Is growing up with a mix of two (or more) racial and cultural backgrounds difficult? Wells thinks so.

“America’s not ready to handle mixed people,” she said…

Read the entire article here.

The Global African – Mexican Afro-descendants

The Global African
2014-12-03

Bill Fletcher, Host

Randal Archibold, Bureau Chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean
The New York Times (Author of the article “Negro? Prieto? Moreno? A Question of Identity for Black Mexicans”)

William Loren Katz
Author of: Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

Each week on “The Global African” host Bill Fletcher, Jr. addresses issues facing Africa and the African Diasporas.

Mexico’s Afro-descendant population for years has been virtually invisible; now, for the first time ever, the next national census will include the category of Afro-Mexican. Fletcher interviews NY Times Bureau Chief for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean Randal Archibold about Mexico’s Afro-descendant population. The next segment of the program deals with a fascinating yet virtually unknown chapter of US history, the biological and cultural bonds established between African slaves and Native Americans. Professor William Loren Katz, author of Black Indians-A Hidden Heritage and 40 other books on African-Americans and Native Americans, describes his research on relations between Africans and Afro-descendants and Native Americans.

SML 63: Black Indians: Phil Wilkes Fixico, William Katz

Blogtalk Radio
SundayMorning Live
2012-02-19

Guests:

Phil Wilkes Fixico—African-Native American activist, is a Seminole Maroon Descendant, Creek and Cherokee Freedmen descendant, Honorary Heniha for the Wildcat/John Horse Band of the Texas Seminoles, California Semiroon Mico, Member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers 9th & 10th (horse) Cavalry and the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts of Brackettville, Texas.

William Katz is the author of “Black Indians” and over 40 books on history.  He specializes in the history of Black Indians and the relationships between the two groups.

Download the episode here. (02:00:14)

The First American Freedom Fighter

William Loren Katz
2012-02-02

William Loren Katz

This February 2nd stands as the 500th anniversary of the death of Hatuey, an Indigenous American fighter for independence from colonialism not mentioned in the same breath as Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. However, Hatuey deserves recognition as their earliest ideological ancestor and great forerunner.
 
Little is known about Hatuey, a Taino Cacique [leader], not his date of birth, nor exactly when he first led his forces into battle. But key elements of his story have come down to us from Bishop Las Casas, the Dominican Priest, who became Spain’s “Defender of the Indians.” On February 2, 1512, Las Casas was in Cuba when Hatuey died at the hands of the European invaders.
 
Hatuey’s armed resistance began on the island of Hispaniola [today Haiti and the Dominican Republic] during the age of Columbus. It probably increased after 1502 when a fleet of 30 Spanish ships brought over the new Governor Nicolás de Ovando, hundreds of Spanish settlers and a number of enslaved Africans to pursue Spain’s search for gold.
 
But oppression rarely goes as planned. Before the year was over Governor Ovando complained to King Ferdinand that the enslaved Africans “fled among the Indians, taught them bad customs, and could not be captured.” The last four words reveal more than his problem with disobedient servants or his difficulty of retrieving runaways in a rainforest. Ovando is probably describing the formation of the first American rainbow coalition: Hatuey and his followers are greeting and embracing the runaway Africans as allies…

Read the entire essay here.

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

Atheneum Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Simon and Schuster)
January 2012
272 pages
Reissue Hardcover ISBN-10: 1442446366; ISBN-13: 9781442446366
Reissue Paperback ISBN-10: 1442446374; ISBN-13: 9781442446373

William Loren Katz

CBC/NCSS Notable Children’s Book in Social Studies

The compelling account of how two heritages united in their struggle to gain freedom and equality in America—now updated with new content!

The first paths to freedom taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages. There, black men and women found acceptance and friendship among our country’s original inhabitants. Though they seldom appear in textbooks and movies, the children of Native- and African-American marriages helped shape the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and made a daring contribution to the fight for American liberty.

Since its original publication, William Loren Katz’s Black Indians has remained the definitive work on a long, arduous quest for freedom and equality. This new edition features a new cover and includes updated information about a neglected chapter in American history.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. If You Know I Have a History
• 2. They Fled Amongst the Indians
• 3. Between the Races We Cannot Dig Too Deep a Gulf
• 4. The Finest Looking People I Have Ever Seen
• 5. We Are All Living as in One House
• 6. That You Know Who We Are
• 7. He Was Our Go-Between
• 8. Their Mixing is to be Prevented
• 9. Like the Indians Themselves
• 10. Blood So Largely Mingled
• 11. The Finest Specimens of Mankind
• 12. No Bars Can Hold Cherokee Bill
• 13. The Greatest Sweat and Dirt Cowboy That Ever Lived
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index