Mixed Race Studies

Slaves in the Family

Farrar Straus & Giroux
1998
505 pages
Paperback ISBN-10: 0345431057; ISBN-13: 978-0345431059

Edward Ball, Lecturer in English
Yale University

Edward Ball tells the story of southern slavery through tracking the history of the Balls, prominent landowners, rice-planters, one or two of them slave traders, and big slave owners in a southern family in dispersal and decline. In 1698, a planter named Elias Ball arrived in South Carolina from Devon, England, to claim an inheritance to one half of a plantation. By 1865, the Ball family of South Carolina owned over a dozen plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston. The crop was Carolina Gold—rice. The empire was grown with seeds from Madagascar and slave labour purchased on the Charleston Docks. By the time the Civil War ended, nearly 4,000 people had been enslaved by the Balls. Descendents of the Ball slaves may number as high as 11,000 today.

Namako: Sea Cucumber

Coffee House Press
September 1998
256 pages
Paperback ISBN-10: 1566890756; ISBN-13: 978-1566890755

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

“McFerrin’s first novel paints a portrait of a truly multicultural family—a Scottish father, a half-British and half-Japanese mother, and four children… McFerrin’s writing is thoughtful and smooth as she captures ever-changing images of the world around Ellen and her family, successfully filtering those images through the eyes of her youthful characters”-Library Journal. McFerrin writes: “I came at last to namako, a word that in the Japanese combination of characters means both ‘sea cucumber’ and ‘raw child,’ a symbol for the simplicity and vulnerability that I feel is at the root of the Japanese and perhaps all psyches.” The end result is, according to Publishers Weekly, “a vivid, often humorous novel” that “offers a winning young heroine, a complex family and memorable vignettes of a year spent betwixt and between.”

Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama

City Lights Books
2009-01-15
120 pages
Paperback ISBN-10 0872865002; ISBN-13 9780872865006

Tim Wise

Race is, and always has been, an explosive issue in the United States. In this timely new book, Tim Wise explores how Barack Obama’s emergence as a political force is taking the race debate to new levels. According to Wise, for many whites, Obama’s rise signifies the end of racism as a pervasive social force; they point to Obama as a validation of the American ideology that anyone can make it if they work hard, and an example of how institutional barriers against people of color have all but vanished. But is this true? And does a reinforced white belief in color-blind meritocracy potentially make it harder to address ongoing institutional racism? After all, in housing, employment, the justice system and education, the evidence is clear: white privilege and discrimination against people of color are still operative and actively thwarting opportunities, despite the success of individuals like Obama.

Is black success making it harder for whites to see the problem of racism, thereby further straining race relations, or will it challenge anti-black stereotypes to such an extent that racism will diminish and race relations improve? Will blacks in power continue to be seen as an “exception” in white eyes? Is Obama “acceptable” because he seems “different than most blacks,” who are still viewed too often as the dangerous and inferior “other?”

All of these possibilities are explored in Between Barack and a Hard Place, by Tim Wise, one of the nation’s most prominent antiracist activists and educators and author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, White Like Me.

Contents

• Preface
• Barack Obama, White Denial and the Reality of Racism
• The Audacity of Truth: A Call for White Responsibility
• Endnotes
• About the Author

The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War

University of North Carolina Press
2001
336 pages
6.125 x 9.25
32 illus., 9 genealogical charts, 10 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index
Paper ISBN:  978-0-8078-5467-9

Victoria E. Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

Between late 1863 and mid-1864, an armed band of Confederate deserters battled Confederate cavalry in the Piney Woods region of Jones County, Mississippi. Calling themselves the Knight Company after their captain, Newton Knight, they set up headquarters in the swamps of the Leaf River, where, legend has it, they declared the Free State of Jones.

The story of the Jones County rebellion is well known among Mississippians, and debate over whether the county actually seceded from the state during the war has smoldered for more than a century. Adding further controversy to the legend is the story of Newt Knight’s interracial romance with his wartime accomplice, Rachel, a slave. From their relationship there developed a mixed-race community that endured long after the Civil War had ended, and the ambiguous racial identity of their descendants confounded the rules of segregated Mississippi well into the twentieth century.

Victoria Bynum traces the origins and legacy of the Jones County uprising from the American Revolution to the modern civil rights movement. In bridging the gap between the legendary and the real Free State of Jones, she shows how the legend–what was told, what was embellished, and what was left out–reveals a great deal about the South’s transition from slavery to segregation; the racial, gender, and class politics of the period; and the contingent nature of history and memory.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Sacred Wars: Race and the Ongoing Battle over the Free State of Jones
• Part One: The Origins of Mississippi’s Piney Woods People
  • 1. Jones County’s Carolina Connection: Class and Race in Revolutionary America
  • 2. The Quest of Land: Yeoman Republicans on the Southwestern Frontier
  • 3. Piney Woods Patriarchs: Class Relations and the Growth of Slavery
  • 4. Antebellum Life on the Leaf River: Gender, Violence, and Religious Strife
  • 5. Piney Woods Patriarchs: Class Relations and the Growth of Slavery
• Part Two: Civil War, Reconstruction and the Struggle for Power
  • 6. The Inner Civil War: Birth of the Free State of Jones
  • 7. The Free State Turned Upside Down: Colonel Lowry’s Confederate Raid on Jones County
  • 8. Reconstruction and Redemption: The Politics of Race, Class and Manhood in Jones County
  • 9. Defiance and Domination “White Negroes” in the Piney Woods New South
• Epilogue. The Free State of Jones Revisited: Davis Knight’s Miscegenation Trial
• Appendixes with (Selected Descendants of the Knight, Coleman, Welborn, Bynum, Collings, Sumrall, Welch, Valentine families, and The “White Negro” Community, 1880-1920.
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Visit Victoria Bynum’s interactive site for the book here.

African Americans and the Presidency: The Road to the White House

Routledge
2009-11-25
256 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-80392-2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-80391-5
eBook ISBN: 978-0-203-86433-3

Edited by:

Bruce A. Glasrud, Professor Emeritus of History
California State University, East Bay

Cary D. Wintz, Distinguished Professor of History and Geography
Texas Southern University

African Americans and the Presidency explores the long history of African American candidates for President and Vice President, examining the impact of each candidate on the American public, as well as the contribution they all made toward advancing racial equality in America. Each chapter takes the story one step further in time, through original essays written by top experts, giving depth to these inspiring candidates, some of whom are familiar to everyone, and some whose stories may be new.

Presented with illustrations and a detailed timeline, African Americans and the Presidency provides anyone interested in African American history and politics with a unique perspective on the path carved by the predecessors of Barack Obama, and the meaning their efforts had for the United States.

Contents

• Introduction: The African American Quest for the Presidency / Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz
• 1. Beginning the Trek—Douglass, Bruce, Black Conventions, Independent Political Parties / Bruce A. Glasrud
• 2. The Communist Party of the United States and African American Political Candidates / David Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison
• 3. Charlotta A. Bass—Win Or Lose, We Win / Carolyn Wedin
• 4. Shirley Chisholm—A Catalyst for Change / Maxine D. Jones
• 5. The Socialist Workers Party and African Americans / Dwonna Naomi Goldstone
• 6. Civil Rights Activists and the Reach for Political Power / Jean Van Delinder
• 7. Jesse Jackson—Run, Jesse, Run! / James M. Smallwood
• 8. Lenora Branch Fulani—Challenging the Rules of the Game / Omar H. Ali
• 9. Race Activists and Fringe Parties with a Message / Charles Orson Cook
• 10. Black Politicians—Paving the Way / Hanes Walton, Jr., Josephine A. V. Allen, Sherman C. Puckett, and Donald R. Deskins, Jr.
• 11. Colin Powell—The Candidate Who wasn’t / Cary D. Wintz
• 12. Barack Hussein Obama—An Inspiration of Hope, an Agent for Change / Paul Finkelman
• Blacks and the Presidency: A Selected Bibliography

Introduction: The African American Quest for the Presidency

Forty years ago (1968), the African American political scene began to change dramatically, the culmination of Supreme Court decisions such as Smith vs. Allwright, Baker vs. Carr, and Terry vs. Adams; amendments to the United States Constitution including the fourteenth, fifteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-fourth; federal legislation, especially the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965); and determined black leaders and voters. African Americans as never before voted and contended for national office. Some white liberals abetted and encouraged the metamorphoses. All was not well, however. Civil rights leader and black activist Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while leading a reform effort in Memphis, Tennessee. Two months later, while completing a primary election victory in California, Democratic senator Robert F. Kennedy, a white proponent of black rights, was assassinated. Perhaps propelled by these losses on the national scene, African American men and women participated in the national political process as delegates and voters, both vital steps, and also as nominees and candidates.

A few years before, while serving as Attorney General of the United States for his brother, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy asserted that the United States could have a black president within forty years. As Kennedy phrased it, “in the next forty years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.” From the perspective of 2008 Kennedy’s prescience is remarkable. Forty years after the assassinations of King and Kennedy, an African American, Senator Barack Obama, was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency. By mid-September most polls suggested that he was the front-runner to be elected president of the United States, and in November Obama was elected the forty-fourth president of the United States. President Obama was not the first African American to seriously pursue the presidency. In fact, more than forty black men and women candidates paved the way for a black president; Obama stands on the shoulders of those other black leaders and politicians…

Read the entire Introduction here.

The Race Conflict in Southern States: An Ethnological Study of the Original Types and the Effects of Hybridity

Savannah, Georgia
1899
4 pages
Source: Open Library OL23367995M

Jos. A. Roberts

Far back in the dim vista of ages, anterior to the current ideas of Noah or Adam, Egyptian records show that there were four great race types, or groups; and clear and distinct as they were orginally portrayed, so have they come down to this our day. Not one has ever been merged into another. Indeed, it seems to be a natural instinct, that like seeks like. Of these race types three have sent down to us their separate records, each in its special symbolic mode; and from these it appears that at some time each as held a ruling place among the races or nations. Of the fourth type (the negro) there is no record. Even at this late date he has not invented an alphabet; he has made no history, has discovered nothing, conquered nothing, invented nothing, produced nothing.

The only instance in which he has moved out of his original bounds is when he was forcibly (and let us admit, wickedly), carried off by other races and enslaved. And it is the only race that has ever submitted to permanent servitude, and that has never shown itself capable of ruling. In “darkest Africa” what has it done? In Hayti and Santo Domingo, abandoned to negro and hybrid domination, what has been the outcome? A retrogression into the original state of barbarism.   Such was and is the record of the negro, lowest of all other races.

The Anglo-Saxon variety of the original Japhetic or Aryan type is at present foremost among all the world’s people. In intelligence and enterprise it has no compeer. No other race has ever had dominion over it since the days of Caesar. The people of these United States, children of the Anglo-Saxon, came to this country to escape a rule of superstition and fanaticism. The Puritan, the Quaker and the Huguenot were all actuated by the same motive. Such was the original element in the settlement of North America, and such is today the ruling power over all this continent. Thus, we have the highest and the lowest of all the race types contrasted, and on this showing what claim has the negro to rule the Anglo-Saxon race? The one came here of his own volition to escape an odious rule; the other was brought here forcibly to be a slave. And now the slave sets up to rule the master. Is it not a case of “Physician, heal thyself” before attempting to control and lead others?

Of the Hybrid—that is a mixture of two or more of these original types—the record is worse than of the originals. The most striking example of this fact is to be found among those Autochthones upon whom the Spaniard, in his piratical, buccaneer-fashion, came. He seems to have had an especial proclivity for miscegenation, and wherever he went he left a debased breed behind him in every instance…

…The Mulatto (hybrid) is in thirty states of this union, an illegitimate product. And, to the honest student of ethnology, this restriction is a wise one, for it is in accordance with a great law of nature, which cannot be violated with impunity. The tendency of this hybrid is to run out unless crossed with the parent stock on either side, and there is high authority for a belief that “inter se” the mulattos are not fertile beyond the third generation. At best their children are less able to resist disease than those of either pure type. Thus, indeed, are the sins of the parent visited upon the children unto the third generation…

Read the entire book here.

Matters of the Heart: A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand

Auckland University Press
July 2013
312 pages approx
240 x 170 mm, illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-86940-731-5

Angela Wanhalla, Senior Lecturer in History
University of Otago, New Zealand

A history of the intimate relations between Māori and Pākehā, and the intersections of public policy and private life.

Philip Soutar died at Ypres in 1917. Before becoming a soldier, Soutar’s life revolved around his farm at Whakatāne, where he lived with his Māori wife Kathleen Pine in an ‘as-you-please marriage, uncelebrated by a clergyman’. Matters of the Heart introduces us to couples like Philip and Kathleen to unravel the long history of interracial relationships in New Zealand.

That history runs from whalers and traders marrying into Māori families in the early nineteenth century through to the growth of interracial marriages in the later twentieth. It stretches from common law marriages and Māori customary marriages to formal arrangements recognised by church and state. And that history runs the gamut of official reactions—from condemnation of interracial immorality or racial treason to celebration of New Zealand’s unique intermarriage patterns as a sign of us being ‘one people’ with the ‘best race relations in the world’.

In the history of intimate relations between Māori and Pākehā, public policy and private life were woven together. Matters of the Heart reveals much about how Māori and Pākehā have lived together in this country and our changing attitudes to race, marriage and intimacy.

The Race Talk: Multiracialism, White Hegemony, and Identity Politics

Information Age Publishing
2012-10-25
144 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61735-912-5
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61735-913-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61735-914-9

Pierre W. Orelus, Assistant Professor of Education
New Mexico State University

Drawing on critical race theory, this book critically examines race through a mosaic lens pointing out various issues directly connected to it, such as racial identity politics, racism, multiracialism, interracial relationships, and the hegemony of whiteness. This book goes further to analyze the manner in which socially constructed racial stereotypes contribute to and are used to justify the poor socio-economic situation and marginalization of People of Color, particularly the poor ones. Designed for a broad range of readers, this book aims to open up democratic spaces for genuine discussions about racial issues.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Race Talk
• 2. Asserting Multiracialism: Beyond the Hegemony of Whiteness
• 3. Racial Identity Politics and Class Divide in The Age of Obamerica
• 4. Unpacking [Inter] Racial Relationships between Whites and People of Color
• 5. Examining the Intricacies of Interracial Relationships
• 6. Being Blacks and Browns in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges and Possibilities
• 7. On Being a Professor of Color: Battling Invisibility and Microaggression
• 8. Black Skin Could Speak: Resistant Narratives for Racial Justice
• 9. The Sociopolitical Weight of Race: A Critical Analysis of President Obama, Professor Gates, and Sgt. Crowley’s Racial Controversy
• References
• About the Author
• Index

Equivocal Subjects: Between Italy and Africa—Constructions of Racial and National Identity in the Italian Cinema

Bloomsbury Continuum
2012-05-10
328 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781441190437

Shelleen Greene, Assistant Professor of Digital Studio Practice and Theory
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

A thorough study of the portrayal of race in Italian cinema, from the silent era to the present, illuminating issues in contemporary Italian society.

Equivocal Subjects puts forth an innovative reading of the Italian national cinema. Shelleen Greene argues that from the silent era to the present, the cinematic representation of the “mixed-race” or interracial subject has served as a means by which Italian racial and national identity have been negotiated and re-defined. She examines Italy’s colonial legacy, histories of immigration and emigration, and contemporary politics of multiculturalism through its cultural production, providing new insights into its traditional film canon.

Analysing the depiction of mixed-race subjects from the historical epics of the Italian silent “golden” era to the contemporary period, this enlightening book engages the history of Italian nationalism and colonialism through theories of subject formation, ideologies of race, and postcolonial theory. Greene’s approach also provides a novel interpretation of recent developments surrounding Italy’s status as a major passage for immigrants seeking to enter the European Union. This book provides an original theoretical approach to the Italian cinema that speaks to the nation’s current political and social climate.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: From “Making Italians” to Envisioning Postcolonial Italy
• Chapter 2: From Meticci and the “Challenging Realisms” of the Colonial Melodrama to a Postcolonial Consciousness
• Chapter 3: The Negotiation of Interracial Identity, Citizenship and Belonging in the Post-War Narrative Film and Beyond
• Chapter 4: Transatlantic Crossings: Re-encountering Blackness in the Cinema of the “Economic Miracle”
• Chapter 5: Zummurud in her Camera: Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Global South in Contemporary Italian Film
• Conclusion
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index

The New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes That Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South

University of North Carolina Press
September 2011
320 pages
7.625 x 8.375, 20 color illus., bibl., index
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8078-3494-7

Sandra A. Gutierrez

In this splendid cookbook, bicultural cook Sandra Gutierrez blends ingredients, traditions, and culinary techniques, creatively marrying the diverse and delicious cuisines of more than twenty Latin American countries with the beloved food of the American South.

 The New Southern-Latino Table features 150 original and delightfully tasty recipes that combine the best of both culinary cultures. 

Gutierrez, who has taught thousands of people how to cook, highlights the surprising affinities between the foodways of the Latin and Southern regions—including a wide variety of ethnic roots in each tradition and many shared basic ingredients—while embracing their flavorful contrasts and fascinating histories.

These lively dishes—including Jalapeño Deviled Eggs, Cocktail Chiles Rellenos with Latin Pimiento Cheese, Two-Corn Summer Salad, Latin Fried Chicken with Smoky Ketchup, Macaroni con Queso, and Chile Chocolate Brownies—promise to spark the imaginations and the meals of home cooks, seasoned or novice, and of food lovers everywhere. Along with delectable appetizers, salads, entrées, side dishes, and desserts, Gutierrez also provides a handy glossary, a section on how to navigate a Latin tienda, and a guide to ingredient sources. The New Southern-Latino Table brings to your home innovative, vibrant dishes that meld Latin American and Southern palates.