Mixed Race Studies

‘Twisting herself into all shapes’: blackface minstrelsy and comic performance in Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig

European Journal of American Studies
9-1 | 2014 : Spring 2014

Elizabeth Boyle, Lecturer
Department of English
University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom

Figure 1: Caroline Fox Howard as ‘Topsy’ in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, c. 1854.

This article argues that the practical jokes running throughout Wilson’s novel Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859) are evidence of a deliberate and sophisticated comic strategy that exploits the spectacular body’s potential for subversive performance and works against the alienating conditions of social and political marginalisation experienced by African Americans in the antebellum period. Initially utilising the crude humour of minstrelsy, Wilson deliberately capitalised on her readers’ laughter in order to defamiliarise the ‘spectacle’ of blackness in both popular performance culture and indentured servitude. Using movement, costume and material props, Wilson imagines new ways to present her protagonist’s body through the minstrel stereotypes of Topsy, Jim Crow, Zip Coon and Jasper Jack. Wilson then turns the joke on her white readers, ultimately demonstrating that whiteness, like blackness, is a performative identity. Taken as a whole, Wilson’s comic strategy, with its ‘embodied insurgency’, aligns her with the period’s most politically racial African American performers.

1. Introduction

The idea for this article sprang from a seemingly simple question: why are there so many practical jokes played in Harriet Wilson’s novel, Our Nig (1859)? Although the novel—generally recognised as the first to be published in the United States by an African American—centres on the tragic story of a young, mulatto indentured servant mistreated by her Northern mistress, the narrative consistently undermines its mid-nineteenth century sentimental framework by including short comic sketches performed by the supposedly tragic protagonist, who nevertheless ‘was ever at some sly prank’, and would often ‘venture far beyond propriety’ in entertaining herself and those around her (Wilson 38). Are these comic interruptions evidence of narrative inconsistency? Or, is Wilson’s persistent inclusion of the figure of the black comic performer in fact a shrewd exploration of a powerfully resonant theatrical tradition and its manifold racial discourses? And what does it mean for a female African American author writing at the crux of the ‘slavery question’ in the run-up to the Civil War—and near the peak of blackface minstrel popularity—to delve into the complex social meanings behind popular comic performances of blackness? Why these pranks, in this manner, at this time?…

Read the entire article here.

One of the most stubborn aspects of America’s racial imagination is the insistence on having a term to separate and identify people of Latin American descent.

It’s a minefield of geography, color and language since we can be of any race and have few things in common beyond some degree of adherence to the Spanish tongue. This is why U.S. Latinos generally prefer to self-identify by their family’s country of origin — Mexican, Colombian, Salvadoran, etc.

Non-Latinos, though, have always needed an umbrella term for labeling us as one. It was French colonists who first dubbed us “Latin” Americans, as a way of distinguishing their colonial project from Anglo colonization in the Western Hemisphere.

Daniel Hernandez, “The case against ‘Latinx’,” The Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2017. http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hernandez-the-case-against-latinx-20171217-story.html.

The case against ‘Latinx’

The Los Angeles Times
2017-12-17

Daniel Hernandez

“Latinx,” is has been argued, is a less determinist and more inclusive term than “Latino” for males and “Latina” for females. (Illustration by Wes Bausmith / For The Times)

This year, Fusion and MiTú each posted videos earnestly explaining to their millennial viewers why “Latinx” is the new term everyone should use to refer to people of Latin American descent.

The argument is that “Latinx” is a less determinist, more inclusive form of the words it replaces — “Latino” for males and “Latina” for females. These gendered identifiers, the thinking goes, impose a binary, give preference to the male over the female, and leave out those who don’t consider themselves either.

Although the target audiences for the MiTú and Fusion videos were mainstream consumers in their 20s — a demographic thought to be on board with “Latinx” — the comment sections of both videos were flooded with negative reactions, with some calling the term “ridiculous,” “stupid” and “offensive” to the Spanish language. “Please stop trying to force feed some millennials hipster buzzword,” one commenter said.

Not everyone is on board with the term. And yet “Latinx” — pronounced “La-teen-ex” in English — continues its march into more news outlets and magazines amid our growing public awareness of transgender and non-binary gender identities. The term is even used officially at some UC campuses and is being considered for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Like many of its awkward predecessors, “Latinx” does not work. Its experimental “x” opens too many linguistic floodgates. And why is this kind of label necessary at all?…

Read the entire article here.

Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile : A History of Racial Passing in American Life

Transatlantica
2 | 2016 : Ordinary Chronicles of the End of the World

Lawrence Aje
Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, Béziers, France

Hobbs, Allyson, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2014, 382 pp. , € 27.00, ISBN 9780674368101

The last two decades have seen a considerable increase of publications on the issue of racial passing in the United States. Some studies have examined racial passing through personal or family stories (O’Toole ; Sharfstein ; Williams). Others have sought to adopt a quantitative and synchronic approach to the phenomenon (Nix & Qian ; Mill & Stein) or to analyze how cases of racial passing were litigated in courts (Kennedy ; Gross). A number of edited volumes have recently focused on the cinematic and literary representations of racial passing in American popular culture, whereas some studies have been keen on expanding the notion by examining instances of ethnic or gender passing (Dawkins ; Gayle ; Ginsberg ; Wald ; Nerad).

Yet, in this flurry of publications, Allyson Hobbs’s A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, is a valuable contribution that distinguishes itself as the first full-length historical monograph to comprehensively tackle and complicate this sensitive and emotionally charged topic. This ambitious study is a revised version of Hobbs’s 2009 dissertation in history which she defended at the University of Chicago.

A Chosen Exile historicizes the practice of racial passing in the United States, by outlining, from the period of slavery to the early 1970s, how fair-skinned Blacks, whom the author designates as “racially ambiguous individuals”, managed to navigate the troubled waters of race undetected. In keeping with the findings of her predecessors, Hobbs confirms that the main reason that motivated racial passing was social advancement. Hobbs however differentiates herself from other scholars who have, according to her, paid far more attention to the benefits derived from passing as White instead of focusing on what she deems is a more fundamental and hitherto neglected aspect of the practice, namely, that by leaving their colored relatives or friends behind, passing translated into a loss of intra-racial sociability and, to some extent, the loss of one’s self. A Chosen Exile is underpinned by two intertwined objectives : a historical examination of the personal motivations behind racial passing and a simultaneous assessment of the consequences of rejecting one’s “black racial identity” (11) ­— an act Hobbs qualifies as being tantamount to a racial exile.

Hobbs dismisses our commonly held assumptions about a lack of archival evidence that would limit our understanding of the phenomenon of racial passing. She manages to piece together a general history of racial passing in the United States by relying on a set of disparate primary and secondary sources such as private letters, family histories, newspaper advertisements, novels, as well as correspondence between authors and their publishers. By mining such a wide array of sources, Hobbs successfully manages to shed light on a practice that was meant to remain hidden…

Read the entire review here.

“Black Matters”: Race and Literary History in Mat Johnson’s Pym

European Journal of American Studies
11-1 | 2016 : Special Issue: Intimate Frictions: History and Literature in the United States from the 19th to the 21st Century

Jennifer M. Wilks, Associate Professor of English
University of Texas, Austin

After being denied tenure for expanding his teaching of race and literary history beyond exclusively African American texts, Chris Jaynes, the protagonist of Mat Johnson’s novel Pym (2011), sets out to retrace the voyage from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. This essay examines how Johnson uses Jaynes’ own shipwreck—he and his crew are stranded in Antarctica—to posit the history of race in the United States as a national disaster that overdetermines contemporary social dynamics. Using intertextuality and satire, Johnson follows Toni Morrison’s precedent in depicting blackness and whiteness as constructs that are inextricably bound and that cannot be understood one without the other. Central to this claim are Johnson’s mirroring of the progressive, 21st-century African American Jaynes with his narrative foil: the pickled, ancient Anglo American Arthur Gordon Pym. I contend that Johnson not only revisits Morrison’s argument but also expands upon it; for, as Jaynes and his fellow characters confront the thorny legacy of race and racism in the United States, they must also face a future in which the country’s changing demographics will render questions of identity more, rather than less, complicated.

Read the entire article here.

“The Lost Apostrophe”?: Race, the roots journey and the “Rose of Tralee” pageant

Irish Studies Review
Published online: 2017-12-06
17 pages
DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2017.1412099

Sinéad Moynihan, Senior Lecturer of English
University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

Building on recent scholarship on discourses of race in twentieth-century and contemporary Ireland, this article examines the racialised nature of the “roots journey”, in which subjects of Irish descent – typically white Irish Americans – travel back to Ireland to trace their roots. Outlining arguments that have emphasised both the reactionary and radical potential of the practices of genealogy and the search for roots, the article focuses on recent developments in the Rose of Tralee contest, an annual beauty pageant in which women of Irish descent compete for the title “Rose of Tralee”. Noting that three winners since 1998 (and several other competitors since 1994) have been of mixed race ancestry, and emphasising the subsequent roots journeys undertaken by two of these winners to the Philippines and India, respectively, the article questions whether these roots journey, taking non-white subjects of Irish descent out of Ireland rather than into it, may offer the potential of decoupling “Irishness” and “whiteness” in radical new ways.

Read or purchase the entire article here.

Posthistorical fiction and postracial passing in James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
Published online: 2017-12-15
9 pages
DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2017.1381068

Gerald David Naughton, Associate Professor of American Literature
Gulf University for Science & Technology (GUST), Kuwait

This article examines James McBride’s National Book Award–winning novel The Good Lord Bird (2013) as an example of both posthistorical fiction and postracial passing. These twin ambiguities, the article argues, structure McBride’s neo-slave narrative, pointing toward the inherent ironies of racial, gender, and historical construction, both in the era of the novel’s historical setting (the 1850s) and in the age of the novel’s critical reception (the twenty-first century). Ultimately, the essay suggests, McBride’s novel plays within these ironies, rather than attempting to unravel them. Identity and history in the text exist only as models of performativity, and constructs of essence or authenticity are eschewed.

Read or purchase the article here.

uncovering the “privilege” of being a white passing person of colour

i-D
VICE
2016-02-02

Niloufar Haidari

Photography Khashayar Elyassi

Why we shouldn’t let white people police who gets to be “white”.

I am a ‘white-passing’ person of colour; a white-passing British-Iranian woman of colour to be exact. I am in no way ignorant as to the privilege this gives me in a still very much racialised world in which the after-effects of colonialism and imperialism are all too evident and dark skin is seen as anything from unattractive to a reason to kill. I am aware that in a culture in which fair skin is still valued higher than those of brown people whether in the fashion industry, on the internet or just at family gatherings, I am lucky. I am white-passing, and I have white-passing privilege. In short, this means that I am not necessarily immediately recognisable as a ‘brown person’, an ‘other’. Make-up companies cater to my concealer and lipstick needs, ‘flesh-coloured’ plasters and crayons are roughly the right shade. Due to the fact that I have spent my whole life living in the UK, I suffer from Vitamin D deficiency and am therefore more likely to be mistaken for Italian/Spanish rather than Middle Eastern for 9 months of the year. I would like to make it very clear that I am in no way trying to claim I suffer the same kind of discrimination based on skin that black or dark-skinned Asian women do; I don’t even suffer the same kind of discrimination as other Iranian women who are darker than I do.

But I do suffer discrimination. I am white-passing, not white. And interestingly, it often seems to be white people rather than other people of colour who are darker than me who are quick to announce my non-eligibility for discrimination and to tell me I’m white. I have experienced a long and varied history of this from both white friends and anonymous white strangers on the internet…

Read the entire article here.

Feminism 101: What is White Passing Privilege?

FEM Magazine
University of California, Los Angeles
2017-12-16

Catherine Pham

Design by Jennifer Dodge

Racial passing is when someone’s features cause them to be mistaken for another racial or ethnic group. Depend on what race or ethnicity people pass as, they can experience different treatment which can be advantageous or detrimental. White passing privilege is the additional privilege some people of color (POC) are afforded when their features, such as skin color or hair texture, cause them to be mistaken as white. For instance, white passing Latinx people will most likely avoid being racially profiled, questioned about their citizenship or lack thereof, or doubted for their English-speaking skills or education status. Prominent actors of color like Rashida Jones, and Keanu Reeves tend to be white passing — because their white appearances allow them to get larger, more multidimensional roles rather than being typecast…

Read the entire article here.

Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant Connections Fall Away

Pew Research Center
Washington, D.C.
2017-12-20
34 pages

Mark Hugo Lopez, Director of Hispanic Research

Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Senior Researcher

Gustavo López, Research Analyst

11% of American adults with Hispanic ancestry do not identify as Hispanic

More than 18% of Americans identify as Hispanic or Latino, the nation’s second largest racial or ethnic group. But two trends – a long-standing high intermarriage rate and a decade of declining Latin American immigration – are distancing some Americans with Hispanic ancestry from the life experiences of earlier generations, reducing the likelihood they call themselves Hispanic or Latino.

Among the estimated 42.7 million U.S. adults with Hispanic ancestry in 2015, nine-in-ten (89%), or about 37.8 million, self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. But another 5 million (11%) do not consider themselves Hispanic or Latino, according to Pew Research Center estimates. The closer they are to their immigrant roots, the more likely Americans with Hispanic ancestry are to identify as Hispanic. Nearly all immigrant adults from Latin America or Spain (97%) say they are Hispanic. Similarly, second-generation adults with Hispanic ancestry (the U.S.-born children of at least one immigrant parent) have nearly as high a Hispanic self-identification rate (92%), according to Pew Research Center estimates…

Read the entire report here.