Mixed Race Studies

Jackie Kay: a poetic imagining of post-racial (be)longing

darkmatter: in the ruins of imperial culture
ISSN: 2041-3254
Post-Racial Imaginaries [9.2] (2012-11-29)

Katy Massey

Jackie Kay is a prolific and well-loved writer who, though she has written in many forms, is best-known for her poetry. A mixed-race Scot who lives in the north of England, her work frequently utilises the facts of her own life as a means to ponder wider issues of identity, loss and sexual desire. Her approach challenges some of the key categories of social identification such as race, culture and belonging. Her work also spotlights some of the most cherished concepts of post-colonialism, most notably hybridity, plurality and the condition of the ‘in-between’.

In this article I suggest that, as Kay’s work explores the process of racial mixing, a ‘mixed’ reading is required in order to fully expose the subtleties within it. Such a reading is innovative in that it exposes two previously unarticulated ideas. First, the idea that mixedness can form a site of creative production as it is a condition which demands new identifications are continually brought into being. Second, that this process serves as a site of political resistance because it has a destabilising influence on fixed notions of ‘race’ and the operation of racialised thinking. It is exactly such a reading of Kay’s first autobiographical collection, The Adoption Papers, that this article attempts.

In suggesting the existence of a politically-resistant ‘mixed’ perspective, this article utilises ideas around racial mixing which have been developed in the field of in social science and cultural studies but have rarely been applied in literary criticism. For example, in the title of her book Mixed-race, Post-race: Gender, New Ethnicities and Cultural Practices Suki Ali boldly positions the state of mixedness as ‘post-race’. By positioning ‘mixed’ status as sitting outside fixed racial identifiers, and in this sense ‘post’ or beyond established discourses around race, she opens a space for thinking about ‘race’ which leaves room for uncertainty, for a ‘betweeness’ which remains undefined because perpetually in a state of re-creation…

Read the entire article here.

Identity, dislocation and belonging: Chinese/European narratives of mixedness in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Published online: 2012-12-14
DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.752369

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

With over 10% of the population identifying with multiple ethnic groups, identities in New Zealand are increasingly complex. This article explores identifications of individuals of mixed Chinese and European descent: the ways in which personal location, classification and race influence feelings of belonging within and between multiple ethnic groups. The fluidity and diversity of the New Zealand context and the resulting positioning of ‘mixed race’ provide an interesting counterpoint to the comparatively well-studied American and British contexts. Drawing on 20 interviews with individuals of mixed descent, this research highlights how individual identity diverges from official classification and how this dissonance is understood through experiences of dislocation and belonging. ‘Mixedness’ is negotiated and enacted in many ways, as individuals find ways to belong in the face of wider dislocation, intertwining aspects of heritage, experience, community and nation.

Introduction

With over 10% of the New Zealand population identifying with more than one ethnic group (Statistics New Zealand 2006), identities in New Zealand are becoming increasingly complex. Following shifts in immigration policy, the population has become more diverse and understandings of ethnic identity and belonging have developed and changed. Similar changes have occurred in other multicultural societies around the world and as a result, the concepts of ‘mixed race’ and ‘mixed ethnicity’ are of increasing academic and political concern, particularly in the American and British contexts (see Ifekwunigwe 2004, Parker and Song 2001b).

The New Zealand population provides an illuminating case study in this field, highlighting the intersections and divergences between ethnic identifications and systems of ethnic and racial classification. The increasing prominence of ”mixed race’ identities challenges traditional racial categorisation, and changes in the American and British censuses in 2000/2001 allowed respondents to acknowledge ‘mixed race’ in official classification (Aspinall 2009. Perlmann and Waters 2002). New Zealand is important in comparison, as a context where multiple identities have been formally recognised for an extended period of time: both historically in categorisations of ‘half-castes‘ and more recently as multiple, self-ascribed identities in the census since 1991 (Callister and Kukutai 2009. Morning 2008). Despite the official recognition of multiplicity, social conceptions of racial singularity…

Read or purchase the article here.

On adoption, race does matter

The Guardian
2012-12-21

Oona King

Like Michael Gove, I used to believe a loving family was all. But I’ve heard from too many black adoptees who are struggling with their identity

“My social worker is racist,” said a softly-spoken 10-year-old white boy. “She says I shouldn’t stay with my foster carer because my carer is black.” This child was one of 20 in the care system who told the Lords select committee on adoption legislation about their experiences, during a review of proposed changes to the Adoption and Children Act 2002.

The government, spurred on by the education secretary, Michael Gove (himself adopted as a baby), is determined to ensure “race doesn’t matter” when it comes to finding families for children in care. While Gove’s motives are understandable, the Lords committee, on which I sit, decided this week that his main proposal – the end to the obligation on social workers to give “due consideration” to race, religion and ethnicity when assessing adoptions – should be scrapped.

We would all agree with Gove in principle that race shouldn’t matter – and certainly in the specific case of the young boy in foster care it should not. But for many black and mixed-race children, ethnicity shapes their experience. To imagine it doesn’t is to imagine the earth is flat. I’ve lived that experience and I know it’s real…

…The fact that we were – on the surface – separated by race, nagged me as a child. It fed into other vague feelings around being different and “not belonging”. I was the only mixed race child in my class, both in primary and secondary school, although in those days I was often called, at best, half-caste, at worst, mongrel. But it still wasn’t such a terrible thing. After all, I had a loving, capable parent. And that’s what I want for all Britain’s kids languishing in our care system…

Read the entire article here.

What My Mother Gave Me

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2012-09-27

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

“To lose your mother was to be denied your kin, country, and identity. To lose your mother was to forget your past.”
—Dr. Saidiya Hartman

I am the spitting image of my mother.

Three years ago I learned the ‘truth’ about my origin story. The ‘truth’, however, didn’t make the myth of my early life any less real–any less a rooted marker of who I was and who I am or will become. And that, I owe to my mother.

You see, three years ago I was told that I was kinda, sorta adopted– not legally with paperwork and red tape, not brought from some far off place to an entirely different family, but taken in quietly, seamlessly, secretly by the love and determination of a woman who loved my father very much. That woman became the only mother I have ever known.

My father, who I write about in “Native Speaker,” has always been a very strong and visible part of my identity. The Cameroonian name I inherited from him, make my African identity proud and visible against a face that is sometimes hard to place. My Cameroonian family is large and spread all over the world and the blackness I share with them is rooted in a vibrant ancestral past  and a contemporary post-colonial African present.

And yet, in key ways it was my mother who gave me kin, country and identity…

Read the entire article here.

The Mixed Race of India

Sacramento Daily Union
Volume 84, Number 71
1892-11-11
page 4, column 3
Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

Eurasia has no boundaries. It lies, a varying social fact, all over India, thick in the great cities, thickest in Calcutta, where the conditions of climate and bread-wining are most suitable; where, moreover, Eurasian charities are most numerous. Wherever Europeans have come aud gone, these people have sprung up in weedy testimony of them—these people who do not go, who have received somewhat in the feeble inheritance of their blood that makes it possible for them to live and die in India. Nothing will ever exterminate Eurasia; it clings to the sun and the soil, and is marvelously propagative within its own borders. There is no remote chance of its ever being reabsorbed by either of its original elements; the prejudices of both Europeans and natives are tar too vigorous to permit of much intermarriage with a jat of people who are neither the one nor the other. Occasionally an up-country planter, predestined to a remote and “jungly” existence, comes down to Calcutta and draws his bride from the upper circles of Eurasia—this not so often now as formerly. Occasionally, too, a young shopman with the red of Scotland fresh in his cheeks is carried off by his landlady’s daughter; while Tommy Atkins fall a comparatively easy prey. The sight of a native with a half-caste wife is much rarer, for there Eurasian as well as native antipathy comes into operation. The whole conscious inclination of Eurasian life, in habits, tastes, religion, and, most of all in ambition, is toward the European and away from the native standards. —Popular Science Monthly.

A Sad Case of Amalgamation

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Volume 19, Number 211
1860-09-05
page 1, column 6
Source: Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection

The reporter of the Philadelphia Press has been around among the colored folks of Philadelphia, and In the course of his peregrination he met with the following case of practical amalgamation:

We were next gratified with something previously new to us—a case of practical amalgamation. We had wrought up our feelings to such abhorrence of the intermarriage of races, that nothing short of the absolute misery of families so produced was expected. The chronicle, however, must be true to the experience, and we are compelled to state that this single case of wedded amalgamation was not so repulsive in its effects as we bad wished it to be.

Being cautioned by the officer to say nothing of our prejudices, we passed through a cleanly-arched alley, and trod by a row of rear brick buildings. Hastily glancing through an open door, we saw a thin, neat-looking white woman industriously sewing. At her feet a negro child was playing and she stooped to kiss it as the door post hid her from view.  A black man was chopping wood in the yard. Three yellow children clustered around him, and at the moment the child which bad been gambolling at the woman’s feet tottered from the house and called him ‘Pappy!’

The man looked angrily at us, but he said nothing.

‘Do your children still help you at the market, Tom?’ said the officer.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, chopping away at the stick of wood. As he seemed adverse to making any reply, the officer said:

‘Such children as these I never knew—up at 5 o’clock every morning, and wheeling a heavy go-cart through the streets; they are going someday to be richer than their father.’

‘I hope so,’ said the man.  ‘God knows I am poor enough.’ He continued to chop.

‘Nonsense,’ said the officer. ‘Why, Tom, you take care of your money, never drink. How much better off are vou than your neighbors?’

‘I know that,’ said the man, interestedly, leaning upon his axe, ‘but I want to be rich enough to leave this street. I don’t want these boys to grow up with low people or to live in this unhealthy neighborhood. They are good boys, but I don’t like to tell them so. They make—the three of them—as much wages as I do.’

We understood from our guide that the negro and the woman were legally married; that she had been poor, and his attentions to her in poverty had placed her under obligations which ended in wedlock. As we passed out and peeped stealthily again at the woman, fondling her negro babe, she espied us and looked straightforwardly into our faces. There was no shame upon her cheeks.  She seemed to clasp her child still closer, and as we passed out of view we heard her singing.

‘After all,’ said the officer, ‘these children are better off than those miserable mulattoes who have no recognised fathers. If amalgamation is to become an institution, I prefer it sanctioned by marriage.’

We looked forward to that woman’s career. With the existing feelings of society, thrift and integrity will benefit her little; for the life she has chosen will ever cling to her, and every social advance she may make with her dusky husband will make her more opprobrious and abhorred. It is a hard case.

What Are We Coming To, and When Shall We Reach It?

The New York Times
1864-03-26

The pressure on our space of other matter has prevented us from recurring to the serious and important topic of “Miscegenation.” We regret very much, however, having allowed our attention to be even temporarily diverted from it, as we find from the earnest discussion which it is receiving at the hands of our cotemporaries, that it has lost none of its importance. In fact, if we are to believe what we hear, especially from the recognized and authoritative organs of the Democratic party, the rage for marrying black people, which has taken possession of the Republican party, is rather on the increase. It is said, we know not with what truth, that the Union League Club has fitted up a night-bell at its door in Union-square, and keeps a black minister on the premises, who marries all couples of different colors at any hour of the day or night. An effort is said to have been made by the leaders of the party to stave off these alliances until after the meeting of the Convention next July, when the campaign would have fairly commenced; but it was all in vain. The radicals have carried everything before them, and, if things go on at their present rate, it is feared that in three months every white man who is not connected by marriage with a colored family, will be “read out” of the party…

…The question of course which naturally suggests itself to every right-minded white man and woman, is. Where is this thing to end? Whither are we tending? What is to be done to stop this most unnatural and detestable movement. For it is as plain as a pikestaff that if it continues, there will be soon no whites left in this once great and prosperous country. We shall all be mulattoes, and be afflicted with all the peculiarities both mental and physical of that unhappy race. The signs of this great and terrible change already begin to make themselves manifest in our streets; for the most careless observer who walks down Broadway, can hardly fail to observe the appearance on a vast number of faces of the well-known brownish tinge. Let that tinge once become general, and then “farewell, a long farewell to all our whiteness!”…

Read the entire article here.

“Miscegenation” at the North.

The Southern Banner, Athens, Georgia
1864-04-20
Page 4, column 2
Source: Athens Historic Newspapers Archive (Digital Library of Georgia as part of Georgia HomePLACE)

“Miscegenation“—the new term for amalgamation, is the last and newest phase of abolitionism at the North—openly and unblushtngly avowed, and preached even from the pulpit. The New York Times makes the following remarkable confession about the matter:

WHAT ARE WE COMING TO?

A rage for marrying black people has lately taken possession of the Republican party.—The Radicals have carried everything before them and if things go on at their present rate it is feared that, in three months, every white man who is not connected by marriage with a colored family will be “read out” of the party. The gusto with which the abolitionists go into the insane movement is something at once disgusting and alarming.   We shrink from putting on paper the stories which reach us as to the prevalence pf this evil. We will only say that there will very soon be hardly a family in the city belonging to the Republican persuasion which will not be glorying in the possession of a negro son-in-law. It is said, we know not with what truth, that the Union League Club has fitted up a night bell at its door, and keeps a black minister on the premises who marries all couples of different colors at any hour of the day or night. Soon we may expect to hear of duels being fought about some black washer-women, and crowds of white men thronging the basements of those families who have colored servants in their houses for the purpose of soliciting the honor (?) of their hands.

It is with great reluctance that we speak out our minds in this matter.—But we have no hesitation in saying that if we had at the outset conceived it possible that hostility to slavery would ever have led to wholesale intermarriage with negroes, the Republican party should never have received any countenance or support from this journal. We owe it to ourselves and to posterity to say that the thing has taken us by surprise.  It never entered our head. We now see and confess our error and deplore it.

The question which now naturally suggests itself to every right-minded white man and woman is, where is this thing to end? Whither are we tending? What is to be done to stop this unnatural and detestable movement? For it is as plain as a pike staff that if it continues there will be soon no whites left in this once great and prosperous country. We shall all be mulattoes, and be afflicted with all the peculiarities, both mental and physical of that unhappy race. The signs of this great and terrible change already begin to make themselves manifest in our streets; for the most careless observer who walks down Broadway can hardly fail to observe the appearance of a vast number of faces of the well known brownish tinge. Let that tinge once become general, and then farewell, to all our whiteness.

There is but one quarter—and we are not ashamed to own if—in which, in our opinion, we can look for either help or comfort, at this crisis, and that is to the great, old, truly national Democratic party. It has its faults; nobody has been forced to call attention to them oftener than we; but it has never yet proved false to its race, and we are satisfied that whatever can be done by it will be done to preserve the purity of our blood.

Miscegenation

Banner-Watchman, Athens, Georgia
1884-02-26
page 2, column 1
Source: Athens Historic Newspapers Archive (Digital Library of Georgia as part of Georgia HomePLACE)

The New York World, in a recent article upon the marriage of Fred Douglass [to Helen Pits], has this to say upon the subject of miscegenation:

“What offense does a lady commit who marries such a man? She takes a husband with a dark skin and a little negro blood in his veins. That is the head and front of her offending. If she had married one of the many low, ignorant, white scamps who, having been kicked out of all decent circles, have found a resting-place in the public departments, her friends would not have objected. But she has chosen an intelligent, honorable, able colored man and has given a terrible shock to ‘Washington society.’ Is it not time that these prejudices against race should cease? Are they not out of place in a republican government in which all men are now happily considered ‘free and equal?'”

In reply to the World the Mobile Register says:

“If the New York World entertains such ideas as these and proposes to promulgate them, it must not be surprised if it soon comes to be considered an improper paper to be introduced into a Southern family circle. The Southern people can stand much, have stood much, but their very souls within them revolt at the idea of miscegenation. There was no occasion for the World making a comparison between Fred Douglass and ‘ignorant white scamps.’ That has nothing to do with the question involved, which is the preservation of the integrity of the white race. Mr. Pulitzer is entitled to hold whatever view he pleases, but if he seeks to force views favoring miscegenation upon the public, the Southern portion of the public will soon give him to understand that they will have none of them.”

Whereupon the Nashville Banner remarks:

“With the Register we admit that intermarriage between the races would not be endured by Southern people. But, in morals and reason, where is the greater disgrace in intermarriage than in illegitimate intercourse? We scoff and scorn the man who would take a negro woman as his wife, but accept him as a gentleman if he only keeps her as his mistress. To be consistent we should accept both as right, or reject both as wrong and disgraceful.“

In ‘Red Pyramid,’ Kid Heroes Take On Ancient Egypt

Backseat Bookclub
All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2012-12-19

Melissa Block, Host

Robert Siegel, Senior Host

If there was a recipe for the best-selling writer Rick Riordan, it would go something like this — start with a love of storytelling, fold in more than a decade of teaching middle school English, combine that with two sons of his own who don’t quite share their dad’s love of literature, and marinate all of that with a deep passion for mythology.

Riordan has sold tens of millions of kids’ books. He hit pay dirt with the Percy Jackson series — it’s about an everyday kid who has superhero powers because he’s the secret son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea.

Egyptian gods reign supreme in our latest book for NPR’s Backseat Book Club. It’s The Red Pyramid from Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles. It tells the story of a brother and sister — Carter and Sadie Kane — who have lived apart most of their lives. One Christmas Eve, their father brings them both together for a trip to the British Museum, and a terrible, magical accident happens that unleashes the gods of ancient Egypt into the modern world.

Carter and Sadie learn that they are descended from ancient Egyptian magicians. This means they are the only ones who have the magic that might be able to put the gods back where they belong — before the world spirals out of control.

Riordan is an author who knows his audience — and that has influenced his writing. “I imagine myself in front of my own class,” he tells NPR’s Michele Norris. “I don’t teach anymore, but I can still clearly see fifth period after lunch — that’s a real tough time to teach. And I tried to imagine writing a story that would appeal to those kids — even when they’re tired, even when they’re bouncing off the walls. … If I could find a way to tell a story that would resonate with them, then I had something going.”

Carter and Sadie are biracial characters, but Riordan doesn’t dwell on this in the book. He is more interested in the idea of kids being caught between two worlds, a concept to which he says his readers can relate…

Read the entire article here. Read the transcript here. Download the interview here.