{"id":54816,"date":"2017-08-16T02:10:35","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T02:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54816"},"modified":"2018-10-22T22:30:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T22:30:49","slug":"felton-is-in-many-ways-a-historical-hiccup-a-throwback-to-a-bygone-racial-trope-the-tragic-mulatto-of-books-like-mark-twains-puddnhead-wilson-and-william-faul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54816","title":{"rendered":"Felton is in many ways a historical hiccup, a throwback to a bygone racial trope: the \u201ctragic mulatto\u201d of books like Mark Twain&#8217;s \u201cPudd&#8217;nhead Wilson\u201d and William Faulkner&#8217;s \u201cLight in August.\u201d Like so many terrorists, he was a man at war not just with the government but with history itself."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leo_Felton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[Leo] Felton\u2019s<\/a> subterranean journey into whiteness came during a historical moment in which many Americans, particularly those of his generation, were redefining their races in a very different way from the way Felton did: identifying themselves, in growing numbers, as multiracial. Multiracial activism flourished during the 90&#8217;s, with marches in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Washington,_D.C.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Washington<\/a>, magazines dedicated to interracial couples and a successful lobbying effort to include more complicated definitions of race on the 2000 Census form. (Seven million Americans ultimately chose to identify themselves by more than one race in that census.) Felton is in many ways a historical hiccup, a throwback to a bygone racial trope: the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=454\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tragic mulatto<\/a>\u201d of books like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mark_Twain\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mark Twain&#8217;s<\/a> \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44888\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pudd&#8217;nhead Wilson<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Faulkner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">William Faulkner&#8217;s<\/a> \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Light_in_August\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Light in August<\/a>.\u201d Like so many terrorists, he was a man at war not just with the government but with history itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Paul Tough, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54812\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Black Supremacist<\/a>,\u201d <em>The New York Times Magazine<\/em>, May 25, 2003. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/05\/25\/magazine\/the-black-supremacist.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/05\/25\/magazine\/the-black-supremacist.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Leo] Felton\u2019s subterranean journey into whiteness came during a historical moment in which many Americans, particularly those of his generation, were redefining their races in a very different way from the way Felton did: identifying themselves, in growing numbers, as multiracial. Multiracial activism flourished during the 90&#8217;s, with marches in Washington, magazines dedicated to interracial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6180,27451,27450,2640,8894,27449,2327,13109],"class_list":["post-54816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-leo-felton","tag-leo-v-felton","tag-leo-vincelette-felton","tag-new-york-times","tag-new-york-times-magazine","tag-paul-tough","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54817,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54816\/revisions\/54817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}