Mixed Race Studies

Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico

Oxford University Press
January 2013
256 pages
2 photographs; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Hardback ISBN13: 978-0-19-992548-3; ISBN10: 0-19-992548-8
Paperback ISBN13: 978-0-19-992550-6; ISBN10: 0-19-992550-X

Christina A. Sue, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Colorado, Boulder

Land of the Cosmic Race is a richly-detailed ethnographic account of the powerful role that race and color play in organizing the lives and thoughts of ordinary Mexicans. It presents a previously untold story of how individuals in contemporary urban Mexico construct their identities, attitudes, and practices in the context of a dominant national belief system. The book centers around Mexicans’ engagement with three racialized pillars of Mexican national ideology – the promotion of race mixture, the assertion of an absence of racism in the country, and the marginalization of blackness in Mexico.

The subjects of this book are mestizos—the mixed-race people of Mexico who are of Indigenous, African, and European ancestry and the intended consumers of this national ideology. Land of the Cosmic Race illustrates how Mexican mestizos navigate the sea of contradictions that arise when their everyday lived experiences conflict with the national stance and how they manage these paradoxes in a way that upholds, protects, and reproduces the national ideology. Drawing on a year of participant observation, over 110 interviews, and focus-groups from Veracruz, Mexico, Christina A. Sue offers rich insight into the relationship between race-based national ideology and the attitudes and behaviors of mixed-race Mexicans. Most importantly, she theorizes as to why elite-based ideology not only survives but actually thrives within the popular understandings and discourse of those over whom it is designed to govern.

Features

• The first serious study to address how race functions among Mexican mestizos

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Mapping the Veracruz Race-Color Terminological Terrain
• Chapter 3: Beneath the Surface of Mixed-Race Identities
• Chapter 4: Mestizos’ Attitudes on Race Mixture
• Chapter 5: Inter-Color Couples and Mixed-Color Families in a Mixed-Race Society
• Chapter 6: Situating Blackness in a Mestizo Nation
• Chapter 7: Silencing and Explaining Away Racial Discrimination
• Chapter 8: What’s at Stake? Racial Common Sense and Securing a Mexican National Identity
• Epilogue: The Turn of the Twenty-First Century: An Ideological Shift?
• Appendix
• References
• Index

Chick

Bloodaxe Books
2013-01-24
64 pages
Paperback ISBN-10: 1852249609; ISBN-13: 978-1852249601

Hannah Lowe

Hannah Lowe’s first book of poems takes you on a journey round her father, a Chinese-black Jamaican migrant who disappeared at night to play cards or dice in London’s old East End to support his family, an unstable and dangerous existence that took its toll on his physical and mental health. ‘Chick’ was his gambling nickname. A shadowy figure in her childhood, Chick was only half known to her until she entered the night world of the old man as a young woman. The name is the key to poems concerned with Chick’s death, the secret history of his life in London, and her perceptions of him as a father. With London as their backdrop, Hannah Lowe’s deeply personal narrative poems are often filmic in effect and brimming with sensory detail in their evocations of childhood and coming-of-age, love and loss of love, grief and regret.

Passing: A Strategy to Dissolve Identities and Revamp Differences

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
January 2008
142 pages
ISBN: 9780838641255

Anna Camaiti Hostert, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Studies Program and Philosophy
Florida Atlantic University

This book takes its title from the homonymous novel by Nella Larsen who, during the Harlem Renaissance, posed the question of what it means to be black in a racist country. The practice of passing was in fact used by African Americans to escape discrimination during the time of segregation. Nella Larsen condemns this practice, but also shows its potential, defining it as “not entirely strange perhaps… but certainly not entirely friendly.”

Starting from this consideration, Camaiti Hostert’s book turns the meaning of the social practice of passing upside down and makes it become a universal tool to redefine any social, ethnic, gender, and religious identity. Based on the Foucauldian consideration that total visibility is a “trap,” the author focuses her attention on the interstices, on the spaces off and on the narratives between the lines. The emphasis is on the transitional moment, in a Gramscian sense: the fluid state flowing between the starting and ending points becomes the place of a counter-hegemony, which helps not only to rewrite history but also to change the political status quo. More interesting than the departure or arrival point is the phase any individual has to go through in order to redefine his/her own self and his/her position in society. It is a deterritorialization of the self and of social practices. It is a way to oppose any form of binary thinking and particularly cultural barriers. Post-colonial literatures, cinema, and new communication technologies that shape the many forms of popular culture are the common ground on which passing relies. From there, from the different conditions of in betweeness, stems the possibility of change.

Beyond Loving: Intimate Racework in Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Relationships

Oxford University Press
2012-08-07
240 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4
ISBN13: 9780199743568; ISBN10: 0199743568

Amy C. Steinbugler, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Beyond Loving provides a critical examination of interracial intimacy in the beginning decades of the twenty-first century—an era rife with racial contradictions, where interracial relationships are increasingly seen as symbols of racial progress even as old stereotypes about illicit eroticism persist. Drawing on extensive qualitative research, Amy Steinbugler examines the racial dynamics of everyday life for lesbian, gay, and heterosexual Black/White couples. She disputes the notion that interracial partners are enlightened subjects who have somehow managed to “get beyond” race. Instead, for many partners, interracial intimacy represents not the end, but the beginning of a sustained process of negotiating racial differences. Her research reveals the ordinary challenges that partners frequently face and the myriad ways that race shapes their interactions with each other as well as with neighbors, family members, co-workers and strangers. Steinbugler analyzes the everyday actions and strategies through which individuals maintain close relationships in a society with deeply-rooted racial inequalities-what she calls “racework.” Beyond Loving reveals interracial intimacy as an ongoing process rather than a singular accomplishment. This analytic shift helps us reach a new understanding of how race “works” – not just in intimate spheres, but across all facets of contemporary social life.

Features

• Interviews with same-sex interracial couples–a topic on which there is very little research—allow Steinbugler to examine for the first time how everyday racial practices are shaped by sexuality and gender.
• Amy Steinbugler challenges the widespread assumption that interracial intimacy represents the ultimate erasure of racial differences.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Historical Roots of Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Black/White Intimacy
• Chapter 2: Public Interraciality: Navigating Racially Homogeneous Social Spaces
• Chapter 3: Public Interraciality: Managing Visibility
• Chapter 4: Intimate Interactions: Racework as Emotional Labor
• Chapter 5: Interracial Identities: Racework as Boundary Work
• Chapter 6: White Racial Identities Through the Lens of Interracial Intimacy
• Conclusion: The Intimate Politics of Interraciality
• Appendix A. Research Methods
• Appendix B. Respondent Characteristics
• Table 1. Design of Interview Sample
• Table 2. Sample Details by Group

Crossing B(l)ack: Mixed-Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture

University of Tennessee Press
2013-01-11
150 pages
Cloth ISBN-10: 1572339322; ISBN-13: 978-1572339323

Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins, Associate Professor of English
Florida Atlantic University

The past two decades have seen a growing influx of biracial discourse in fiction, memoir, and theory, and since the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the presidency, debates over whether America has entered a “post-racial” phase have set the media abuzz. In this penetrating and provocative study, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins adds a new dimension to this dialogue as she investigates the ways in which various mixed-race writers and public figures have redefined both “blackness” and “whiteness” by invoking multiple racial identities.

Focusing on several key novels—Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), Lucinda Roy’s Lady Moses (1998), and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998)—as well as memoirs by Obama, James McBride, and Rebecca Walker and the personae of singer Mariah Carey and actress Halle Berry, Dagbovie-Mullins challenges conventional claims about biracial identification with a concept she calls “black-sentient mixed-race identity.” Whereas some multiracial organizations can diminish blackness by, for example, championing the inclusion of multiple-race options on census forms and similar documents, a black-sentient consciousness stresses a perception rooted in blackness—“a connection to a black consciousness,” writes the author, “that does not overdetermine but still plays a large role in one’s racial identification.” By examining the nuances of this concept through close readings of fiction, memoir, and the public images of mixed-race celebrities, Dagbovie-Mullins demonstrates how a “black-sentient mixed-race identity reconciles the widening separation between black/white mixed race and blackness that has been encouraged by contemporary mixed-race politics and popular culture.”

A book that promises to spark new debate and thoughtful reconsiderations of an especially timely topic, Crossing B(l)ack recognizes and investigates assertions of a black-centered mixed-race identity that does not divorce a premodern racial identity from a postmodern racial fluidity.

Genetic Explanations: Sense and Nonsense

Harvard University Press
February 2013
384 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
2 graphs, 4 tables
Hardcover ISBN: 9780674064461

Edited by

Sheldon Krimsky, Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning in the School of Arts; Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Public Health & Community Medicine in the School of Medicine
Tufts University

Jeremy Gruber, President and Executive Director
Council for Responsible Genetics

Can genes determine which fifty-year-old will succumb to Alzheimer’s, which citizen will turn out on voting day, and which child will be marked for a life of crime? Yes, according to the Internet, a few scientific studies, and some in the biotechnology industry who should know better. Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber gather a team of genetic experts to argue that treating genes as the holy grail of our physical being is a patently unscientific endeavor. Genetic Explanations urges us to replace our faith in genetic determinism with scientific knowledge about how DNA actually contributes to human development.

The concept of the gene has been steadily revised since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. No longer viewed by scientists as the cell’s fixed set of master molecules, genes and DNA are seen as a dynamic script that is ad-libbed at each stage of development. Rather than an autonomous predictor of disease, the DNA we inherit interacts continuously with the environment and functions differently as we age. What our parents hand down to us is just the beginning. Emphasizing relatively new understandings of genetic plasticity and epigenetic inheritance, the authors put into a broad developmental context the role genes are known to play in disease, behavior, evolution, and cognition.

Rather than dismissing genetic reductionism out of hand, Krimsky and Gruber ask why it persists despite opposing scientific evidence, how it influences attitudes about human behavior, and how it figures in the politics of research funding.

Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond

HarperCollins
2005
240 pages
Trimsize: 6 x 9
Trade Paperback ISBN: 9780060761424; ISBN10: 0060761423

Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem

Breaking nearly eight decades of silence, Essie Mae Washington-Williams comes forward with a story of unique historical magnitude and incredible human drama. Her father, the late Strom Thurmond, was once the nation’s leading voice for racial segregation (one of his signature political achievements was his 24-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, done in the name of saving the South from “mongrelization”). Her mother, however, was a black teenager named Carrie Butler who worked as a maid on the Thurmond family’s South Carolina plantation.

Set against the explosively changing times of the civil rights movement, this poignant memoir recalls how she struggled with the discrepancy between the father she knew—one who was financially generous, supportive of her education, even affectionate—and the Old Southern politician, railing against greater racial equality, who refused to acknowledge her publicly. From her richly told narrative, as well as the letters she and Thurmond wrote to each other over the years, emerges a nuanced, fascinating portrait of a father who counseled his daughter about her dreams and goals, and supported her in reaching them–but who was unwilling to break with the values of his Dixiecrat constituents.

With elegance, dignity, and candor, Washington-Williams gives us a chapter of American history as it has never been written before—told in a voice that will be heard and cherished by future generations.

Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism

University of Minnesota Press
2008
328 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-5105-4; ISBN-10: 0-8166-5105-1
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-5104-7; ISBN-10: 0-8166-5104-3

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine

Questions the ramifications of multiracialism for progressive social change.

Despite being heralded as the answer to racial conflict in the post–civil rights United States, the principal political effect of multiracialism is neither a challenge to the ideology of white supremacy nor a defiance of sexual racism. More accurately, Jared Sexton argues in Amalgamation Schemes, multiracialism displaces both by evoking long-standing tenets of antiblackness and prescriptions for normative sexuality.

In this timely and penetrating analysis, Sexton pursues a critique of contemporary multiracialism, from the splintered political initiatives of the multiracial movement to the academic field of multiracial studies, to the melodramatic media declarations about “the browning of America.” He contests the rationales of colorblindness and multiracial exceptionalism and the promotion of a repackaged family values platform in order to demonstrate that the true target of multiracialism is the singularity of blackness as a social identity, a political organizing principle, and an object of desire. From this vantage, Sexton interrogates the trivialization of sexual violence under chattel slavery and the convoluted relationship between racial and sexual politics in the new multiracial consciousness.

An original and challenging intervention, Amalgamation Schemes posits that multiracialism stems from the conservative and reactionary forces determined to undo the gains of the modern civil rights movement and dismantle radical black and feminist politics.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: On the Verge of Race
• 1. Beyond the Event Horizon: The Multiracial Project
• 2. Scales of Coercion and Consent: Sexual Violence, Antimiscegenation, and the Limits of Multiracial America
• 3. There Is No (Interracial) Sexual Relationship
• 4. The Consequence of Race Mixture
• 5. The True Names of Race: Blackness and Antiblackness in Global Contexts
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

The Biracial and Multiracial Student Experience: A Journey to Racial Literacy

SAGE Publications
2009-06-30
168 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781412975063
Hardcover ISBN: 9781412975056

Bonnie M. Davis

What does it mean to be “in between”?

As more biracial and multiracial students enter the classroom, educators have begun to critically examine the concept of race. Through compelling student and teacher narratives, best-selling author Bonnie M. Davis gives voice to a frequently mislabeled and misunderstood segment of the population. Filled with research-based instructional strategies and reflective questions, the book supports readers in examining:

• The meaning of race, difference, and ethnicity
• How mixed-identity students develop racial identities
• How to adjust instruction to demonstrate cultural proficiency
• Complex questions to help deepen understanding of bi- and multiracial experiences, white privilege, and the history of race in the U.S.

This sensitively written yet practical guide fills a gap in the professional literature by examining the experiences of biracial/multiracial students in the context of today’s classrooms. The author calls upon readers to take a transformational journey toward racial literacy and, ultimately, become empowered by a real understanding of what it means to be biracial or multiracial and enable all students to experience increased self-confidence and believe in their ability to succeed.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Prologue
• 1. Beginning the Journey
• 2. What Is Race?
• 3. What Are You?
• 4. What Are the Challenges for Multiracial Students?
• 5. How Mixed Identity Students Develop Racial Identities
• 6. Outside the School Walls
• 7. The Impact of Skin Color
• 8. Listening to Parents
• 9. Taking It All to the Classroom: Culturally Proficient Instruction
• 10. Future Voices
• 11. The Journey’s End
• References
• Index

The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization

The Gorham Press
1907
281 pages
Library of Congress: E185.61 .S38

R. W. Shufeldt, M.D. (1850-1934)

Contents

• I. Man’s Place in Nature from a Biological Standpoint.
• II. The Ethnological Status of the Negro.
• III. The Introduction of the Negro into the United States.—The African Slave Trade.
• IV. Biological Principles of Interbreeding in Man and Other Animals.
• V. Halfbreeds, Hybridization, Atavism, Heredity, Mental and Physical Characters of Race Hybrids.
• VI. The Effects of Fraternization between the Ethiopian and Anglo-Saxon Paces upon Morals, upon Ethics, and upon the Material Progress of Mankind.
• VII. Passion and Criminality in the Negro: Lynch Law and other Questions.
• APPENDIX

Read the entire book here.