Mixed Race Studies

New Orleans and the African Diaspora

American Historical Association
From the Suppliment to the 127th Annual Meeting
2012-12-23

Laura Rosanne Adderley, Associate Professor of History
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

Many people conceptualize the study of the “African diaspora” as focused on black experience beyond or separate from “African American” experience in the United States. But black experience in the United States fits fully within the wider African diaspora. Similarly, while black populations in New Orleans shared many—perhaps even most—of their experiences with the rest of the United States, they also lived through distinctive waves of multiple European colonizers and black and white emigration, with the concomitant rise of locally specific cultural production, social experience, and racial norms.

Africans in Early New Orleans

The city’s distinctive place in the development of African diaspora history and culture in the Americas began with the arrival of over 5,000 enslaved Africans in the first decade after the city’s founding in 1718. Legal enslavement of Africans and their descendants would continue in the city until the Civil War a century and a half later. Over the course of that period, people of African descent, both free and enslaved, regularly made up one third or more of the city’s population. A second large influx of new African arrivals came in the 1780s, halfway through the period from 1763 to 1802 when the city fell under Spanish rule. The relatively high percentage of enslaved people of African descent in the city and its environs, their critical role in building many of the city’s oldest neighborhoods (including the French Quarter), and generally making colonial life and commerce possible, has led historian Larry Powell to note that “France may have founded Louisiana as we know it, but it was [enslaved people] from Senegal and Congo who laid the foundation.” The legacy of the labor of enslaved Africans literally surrounds every visitor to the city…

…Racial Patterns and Racial Politics

Another distinctive aspect of New Orleans’s black diaspora developed in the late 18th century as Spanish legal practices increased the population of free people of color through much more liberal rules allowing masters to manumit or free enslaved people. Many, although by no means all, of those manumitted were people of mixed race. The presence of this large population of sometimes white-appearing mulattoes, looked similar to patterns in parts of the Caribbean, and contributed to New Orleans’s often-exaggerated reputation as a city of widespread racial mixture and greater racial tolerance than elsewhere in the United States. As several scholars have noted, ideas about what the mulattoes and quadroons of New Orleans signified were much more powerful in shaping perceptions of the city than knowledge of the day-to-day lives of people of mixed race, which could be alternately prosperous or relatively impoverished, comparatively privileged or fraught with racial and social uncertainty, and many steps in between. For all the significance of the large population of people of mixed race, most residents of the city continued to fit generally into communities defined largely as black or white, in ways similar to racial experience elsewhere in North America. Also, for all the comparisons with Caribbean slave societies, most parts of Louisiana—with notable exceptions in some sugar plantation areas in the 19th century—did not have slavery-era population ratios comparable to the overwhelming black majorities that existed in many Caribbean islands…

Read the entire article here.

Black in America: It’s not just about the color of your skin

In America: You define America. What defines you?
Cable News Network
2012-12-15

Moni Basu

(CNN) – What is black? Race. Culture. Consciousness. History. Heritage.
 
A shade darker than brown? The opposite of white?
 
Who is black? In America, being black has meant having African ancestry.
 
But not everyone fits neatly into a prototypical model of “blackness.”
 
Scholar Yaba Blay explores the nuances of racial identity and the influences of skin color in a project called (1)ne Drop, named after a rule in the United States that once mandated that any person with “one drop of Negro blood” was black. Based on assumptions of white purity, it reflects a history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
 
In its colloquial definition, the rule meant that a person with a black relative from five generations ago was also considered black.

Your take on black in America
 
One drop was codified in the 1920 Census and became pervasive as courts ruled on it as a principle of law. It was not deemed unconstitutional until 1967.
 
Blay, a dark-skinned daughter of Ghanian immigrants, had always been able to clearly communicate her racial identity. But she was intrigued by those whose identity was not always apparent. Her project focuses on a diverse group of people—many of whom are mixed race—who claim blackness as their identity.
 
That identity is expanding in America every day. Blay’s intent was to spark dialogue and see the idea of being black through a whole new lens…

…Black and white
 
California author Kathleen Cross, 50, remembers taking a public bus ride with her father when she was 8. Her father was noticeably uncomfortable that black kids in the back were acting rowdy. He muttered under his breath: “Making us look bad.”
 
She understood her father was ashamed of those black kids, that he fancied himself not one of them.
 
“My father was escaping blackness,” she says. “He didn’t like for me to have dark-skinned friends. He never said it. But I know.”
 
She asked him once if she had ancestors from Africa. He got quiet. Then, he said: “Maybe, Northern Africa.”
 
“He wasn’t proud of being black,” she says.
 
Cross’ black father and her white mother never married. Fair-skinned, blue-eyed Cross was raised in a diverse community.
 
Later, she found herself in situations where she felt shunned by black people. Even light-skinned black people thought she was white.
 
“Those who relate to the term ‘black’ as a descriptor of color are unlikely to accept me as black,” she says. “If they relate to the term ‘black’ as a descriptor of culture, history and ancestry, they have no difficulty seeing me as black.”
 
At one time in her life, she wished she were darker—she might have even swallowed a pill to give her instant pigment if there were such a thing. She even wrote about being “trapped in the body of a white woman.” She didn’t want to “represent the oppressor.”
 
She no longer thinks that way.
 
She doesn’t like to check the multiracial box. “It erases everything,” she says.
 
She doesn’t like biracial, either. Or mixed. It’s not her identity.
 
“There’s only one race,” she says, “and that’s the human race.”
 
“I am a descendant of a stolen African and Irish and English immigrants. That makes me black—and white—in America…

Read the entire article here.

‘Searching for Zion’: Emily Raboteau’s Hunt for the Promised Land

The Daily Beast
2013-01-13

Mindy Farabee

A writer set out around the world to find the mythical ‘promised land’ of the African diaspora. Emily Raboteau speaks about the Jewish search for the same, African-American tourism to Ghana, and Barack Obama’s ties to this search.

Mention the notion of Zion, author Emily Raboteau notes, and most people will think almost automatically of Israel. But for citizens of the African diaspora, Zion, with its promised land of abundance and freedom from oppression, has carried profound cultural significance since the days of slavery, when the saga of Hebrew slaves fleeing Egyptian captors served as a galvanizing narrative.

In Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Raboteau’s self-described “strange admixture” of travelogue, cultural anthropology, and historical study, the author uses this promised land as a point of departure, lighting out for Israel, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Ghana, and the post-Katrina American South to talk to immigrants and others who have wrestled with displacement.

Her new book likewise stumbles across complications everywhere. In this edited interview below, she talks about family ghosts, the other side of heritage tourism, and the state of Zion today…

Read the entire interview here.

You Have No Right: Jane Webb’s Story

Out of the Box: Notes for the Archives @ Library of Virginia
Virginia Memory: Library of Virginia
2012-11-14

Greg Crawford, Local Records Coordinator

The colonial era Northampton County court records tell a fascinating story of a woman named Jane Webb. Born of a white mother, she was a free mulatto, formerly called Jane Williams. In 1704, Jane Webb had “a strong desire to intermarry with a certain negro slave … commonly called and known by the name of Left.” Webb informed Left’s owner Thomas Savage, a gentleman of Northampton County, of her desire to marry Left and made an offer to Savage. She would be a servant of Savage’s for seven years and would let Savage “have all the children that should be bornd [sic] upon her body during the time of [Jane’s] servitude,” but for how long the children were to be bound is not clear. In return, Savage would allow Jane Webb to marry his slave, and after Jane’s period of servitude ended, Savage would free Left. Also, neither Savage nor his heirs could claim any child born to Jane Webb and Left after her period of servitude. Savage agreed to Jane Webb’s offer, and an agreement was written and signed by both parties.

Jane Webb fulfilled her part of the agreement and served Savage for seven years. During that time, she had three children by her husband Left—Diana or Dinah Webb, Daniel Webb, and Francis Webb. After she completed her term of service in 1711, Jane Webb “in a kindly manner” demanded her husband from Savage as well as her children. Apparently, Jane Webb and Savage were at odds on how long the children she bore during her servitude were supposed to be bound to him, and Savage refused to free Left and the children. In April 1711, Savage submitted a letter to the county court of Northampton requesting that Jane Webb’s children be bound to him and his heirs, to which the court agreed…

Read the entire article here.

The End of Race History? Not Yet

Center for Genetics and Society
2012-12-14

Osagie K. Obasogie, Associate Professor of Law
University of California, Hastings

Have we gone beyond race? Many argue society has now overcome centuries of strife to become “post-racial”—a moment that law professor Sumi Cho of DePaul University in Chicago refers to as “the end of race history”.

Two seemingly disparate developments have been used to lend support to this claim. In politics, Barack Obama’s 2008 election as the first racial minority-member to become US president has been lauded as a racially transcendent moment. In science, the completion of the Human Genome Project’s first draft in June 2000 offered seemingly definitive evidence that race is not real. As geneticist Craig Venter noted at the HGP announcement, “the concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis”…

…Two recent books by legal scholars address these issues. Jonathan Kahn’s Race in a Bottle provides a stunning case study of BiDil, the first drug to receive approval by the US Food and Drug Administration as a race-specific therapy. It was designed to treat African-Americans suffering from heart failure—based mainly on a mistaken belief that there are meaningful disparities in heart failure outcomes between blacks and whites caused by biological differences. Although BiDil was initially created as a race-neutral drug, Kahn offers a compelling account of the many influences that turned what is in essence a combination therapy of two widely available generic treatments into a pill “for black people only”…

…Dorothy Roberts’s Fatal Invention, now out in paperback, extends this insight to examine how the re-emergence of biological race is having a broader impact—not only on innovations such as genetic ancestry-testing and racialised aspects of DNA forensics, but also on how we think about basic notions of racial difference. Advocates of biological race argue that today’s use of race in biomedicine is different from past usages within science that supported racism, eugenics and questionable research practices…

Read the entire article here.

Census Race Change For Hispanics Sparks Criticism

The Huffington Post
2013-01-09

Tony Castro

Some Latino civil rights groups are questioning the U.S. Census consideration of designating Hispanics a race of their own, fearing the loss of national original designations.

The change, making “Hispanic” a racial instead of an ethnic category, would eliminate the check-off boxes for national origins such as Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican.

“There is no unanimity on what any of this stuff means,” says Angelo Falcón, director of the National Institute for Latino Policy and co-chair of a coalition of Latino advocacy groups that recently met with Census officials.

“Right now, we’re very comfortable with having the Hispanic (origin) question… Hispanic as a race category? I don’t think there’s any consensus on that.”

Scholars oppose “Hispanic” being considered a race

Fordham University law professor Tanya Hernández, author of the new book Racial Subordination in Latin America, is among the scholars opposing the proposal to join race and ethnicity as a “Hispanic” category.

“Census data is used in very important ways, for example to monitor compliance regarding civil rights and racial disparities,” says Hernandez, who fears that eliminating existing racial categories would have a negative impact…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial women pushed to undergo genetic screeening: Cobble Hill hospital focuses on mixed race

New York Daily News
2013-01-13

Simone Weichselbaum

As interracial families become more common, LICH docs quiz women on ethnicity

Doctors are pushing biracial Brooklyn women to undergo genetic counseling to learn if their racial mix makes them more prone to disease.
 
As interracial families have beome more common, Dr. Millicent Comrie, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Downstate Long Island College Hospital, has urged her staff of about 40 physicians to quiz patients about their ethnic backgrounds.
 
Those from multicultural backgrounds are are sent to talk with a DNA expert who maps out how their heritage could make them sick.
 
“Ethnicity plays a big part in your healthcare,” said Comrie naming a slew of hereditary diseases such as sickle cell anemia which plagues the black community and Tay-Sachs disease found in many Jewish families.
 
“We can’t worry about sensitivity when it comes to race. What you see isn’t always what you get,” Comrie said. “If we don’t ask the right questions. We will come up We will come up short.”…

Read the entire article here.

For the Movement: Community Education Supporting Multiracial Organizing

Equity & Excellence in Education
Volume 38, Issue 2, 2005
pages 145-154
DOI: 10.1080/10665680590935124

Eric Hamako
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The multiracial people’s movement in the United States has expanded significantly in the last 10 years (Douglass, 2003). Historically, community-based education programs have supported social movements in the United States (Collins & Yeskel, 2000; Sarachild, 1974/1978), yet little has been written about how educational programs might serve the social and political movements of mixed-race people. This case study describes two community-based multiracial education programs by and for mixed-race people and suggests ways that each supports multiracial community organizing. The conclusion offers recommendations for shaping future multiracial education programs for multiracial people.

The 2000 United States Census revealed numerous demography surprises, among them, that there are seven million multiracial people—almost 3% of the total U.S. population (Jones & Smith, 2001). Never before had the Census allowed multiracial people to check one or more boxes to indicate their multiple racial heritages. The Census results also indicate clearly that multiraciality is an issue relevant to educators, as almost half of the multiracial population are of school age (Lopez, 2003). While the U.S. Census Bureau has found ways to account for multiracial people In allowing the option of checking one or more races, multicultural educational efforts continue to flounder when attempting to educate multiracial people or address multiracial issues in school and community settings (Williams, Nakashima, Kich, & Daniel 1996).

In institutional curricula and pedagogy, multicultural educators have given little attention to the existence and needs of multiracial people (Chiong, 1995; Glass & Wallace, 1996, Scholl, 2001; Wardle, 1996). Worse, multicultural education has sometimes distorted, invalidated, or demonized the existence of multiracial people (Wardle, 2000; Williams et. al., 1996). The small amount of literature that exists about teaching to or about multiracial people has been written primanly by and for monoracial educators, often with an inappropriate monoracial bias (Pao, Wong. & Teuben-Rowe, 1997; Schwartz, 1998), while the voices and insights of multiracial people have largely been absent. Recent community organizing and community-based education efforts by multiracial people and multiracial organizations may change this trend of silencing and marginalization. In this article, I examine some ways that community-based multiracial education may support multiracial community organizing.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Historically, community-based education has served an important role in numerous political movements. During the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Schools supported community organizing efforts by bringing community members together, helping them name then social problems, and teaching literacy and organizing skills (Howe, 1964/1984; Rachal, 1998). Similarly, consciousness raising groups supported second wave US. feminism, bringing women together to process the systemic nature of sexism and to begin organizing to take action (Evans, 1979; Sarachild, 1974/1978). Internationally, Paolo Freire’s (1970/2003) community-based popular education pedagogy has expanded far beyond its initial application to poor peoples movements in Brazil. As a model for community education, Freirean popular education suggests a series of steps through which community organizers can help community members recognize their common experiences, codify them, analyze their root causes, and take action to resolve common problems (Ferreira & Ferreira, 1997). Community education may support community organizing by politicizing and mobilizing community members, developing analyses and a sense of purpose, and helping to steer political movement (Collins & Yeskel, 2000; Williams et al., 1996)…

Read or purchase the article here.

Race as International Identity? ‘Miscegenation’ in the U.S. Occupation of Japan and Beyond

Amerikastudien / American Studies
Volume 48, Number 1, Internationalizing U.S. History (2003)
pages 61-77

Yukiko Koshiro

The article attempts to retrieve the story of the little-known fate of so-called mixed-blood children, those born to American GIs and Japanese women in the aftermath of World War II, which had long vanished in a confluence of American and Japanese historical narratives. By shedding new light on the convergence of American and Japanese racisms and especially their mutual taboo on miscegenation, the article chronicles American and Japanese obsessions with “racial purity” as a national ideology during and after the U.S. Occupation of Japan. While the article highlights the adverse impact of racist thinking, its primary attempt is to break the silence on the mutual issue of miscegenation and provide a prelude to the story as part of a mainstream narrative of both nations. Only by internationalizing history is it possible to trace a nation’s trans-national Odysseys and relate them to American and Japanese postwar history. Furthermore, the article refers to cases of bi-racial children born in West Germany during and after U.S. Occupation, thus suggesting the extension of the study on the basis of empirical sources from Europe.

The Negro Race and European Civilization

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 11, Number 2 (September 1905)
pages 145-167

Paul S. Reinsch  (1869-1923), Professor
University of Wisconsin

While in the past century populations and racial elements which had formerly been far distant from each other have been brought into intimate contact, the twentieth century will witness the formation of new mixed races and the attempt to adjust the mutual relations of all the various peoples that inhabit the globe. The recent great advance in the safeness and rapidity of communication has made the whole world into a community whose solidarity of interests becomes more apparent day by day. Closer contact with the more advanced nations of the Orient will have a profound influence upon European civilization, because these nations, though ready to adopt our industrial methods, are determined to maintain their national beliefs and customs. Though from the races that stand on a lower level of civilization no such deep-going influence upon European and American life is to be expected, their relations to the peoples of more advanced culture will nevertheless be a matter of great moment. Some of them, the weakest and lowest in organization, may indeed continue to fade away before the advance of European power; but this is not likely to be the fate of the negro race. The negroes have come in contact with the worst side of European civilization; yet their buoyant, vigorous constitution and their fundamental common sense carry them safely through dangers which have proved fatal to other races. They are therefore destined to be a permanent element in the composite population of the future, and when we consider the extent and fertility of the regions which they hold, the necessity of their ever-increasing co-operation in the economic life of the world becomes apparent…

…The physiological aspects of race-mixture have lately attracted much attention. Mr. James Bryce, in his recent lecture on “The Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races,” carefully reviews the experience of mankind in this matter, and adds his support to the current assumption that mixed breeds are morally and physically weak when the parents belong to widely disparate races and civilizations. However, it would seem that this assumption is true only in cases where the two societies to which the parents respectively belong maintain a repugnant attitude to each other, so that the mestizos form an outcast class and suffer a total loss of morale. Where friendly relations exist, the mixed races produced by Europeans and negroes exhibit some very fine qualities. The rich yet delicate beauty of the mulatto women in Martinique, their sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, so excited the admiration of visitors that they all, lay and clerical, French and British, join in the chorus of admiration and declare the women of Martinique the most charming in the world. Intellectually, the mulatto race has produced a number of remarkable men, and the liberality of mind among the leaders of this class in Martinique is certainly most noteworthy. Still it is generally true that the men of a mixed race will exhibit fewer pleasing qualities of character than the women: they must make themselves useful often by activities not conducive to sweetness of temper and honesty of mind; while the women naturally develop more gentle and attractive characteristics…

Read the entire article here.