Mixed Race Studies

Passing, Performance, and Perversity: Rewriting Bodies in the Works of Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, and Danzy Senna

49th Parallel: An interdisciplinary journal of North American studies
Issue 26: Autumn 2011
ISSN: 1753-5794
19 pages

Natalie Wall
University of Calgary

This paper examines the function of passing in the works of Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, and Danzy Senna. It traces the historical use of the term passing, following its development from a static conception of the black person passing for white to a theoretical practice of acting out any/every race, in order to open the term up and explore why passing is considered perverse by so many and enlightened by a few. Passing, the essay suggests, exposes the dual nature of race – a construct that is arbitrary and fictional but which also possesses immense social and material power. Finally, by juxtaposing the works of these three authors, the essay argues for a conception of passing as an intersectional phenomenon, defined not only by race but also by its interactions with class, gender, and sexuality.

Read the entire article here.

Canada’s famous first black doctor

National Review of Medicine
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Volume 1, Number 4 (2004-02-28)

Marvin Ross

Born in Toronto in 1837, Dr Anderson Abbott was a close friend of Abe Lincoln but refused to serve in the US Colored Troops

Not only was Anderson Ruffin Abbott the first black man to graduate from medical school in Canada (University of Toronto, 1861), he is described in a US history textbook as “probably the most famous British North American-born surgeon to serve coloured soldiers during the Civil War.” He was also a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, whose widow presented him with the shawl Lincoln wore to his first inauguration.

Dr Abbott’s father, Wilson, was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1801 to free parents but he eventually moved to Canada in 1835 to escape prejudice in the US. Wilson prospered in Toronto where he became an influential real estate dealer and city alderman. Anderson, who was born in 1837, studied medicine at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1861. While working as an intern, or medical licentiate as it was then known, in 1863 he petitioned President Lincoln to be allowed to join the Union Army.

He became one of only eight black surgeons serving, which brought him to the president’s attention and led to their friendship. Dr Abbott, however, refused to serve in the United States Colored Troops—a segregated unit. Instead, he opted to work as a contract surgeon. He explained why in a 1907 letter, writing that he felt equal to operating on any man and that having been born in a land where all men are free, he was not going to submit to government-endorsed segregation. His heroic act had a negative side effect, though: because of his refusal to serve in the segregated regiment, his widow was denied a Civil War Widow’s Pension…

…His son, Wilson R. Abbott, also became a doctor and practised as a lung and heart surgeon in Chicago. But unlike his father, he wasn’t relegated to a segregated black hospital—not because the laws had changed, but because he worked at a white hospital by passing. Anderson Abbott had married a woman from St Catharines, Ontario who was of mixed racial background. His son, Wilson, married a white woman and they and their descendents began to live as whites. Ms Slaney only learned that she was part black in 1975 at age 24 when she was approached by the Ontario Black History Society to ask about her great-great grandfather. No one had ever told her that half her family was black and, as she pointed out that at the time, “I didn’t even know any black people.” Her story and that of her black ancestor is the subject of her book Family Secrets: Crossing the Colour Line.

Read the entire article here.

“If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black”: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule

Sociological Quarterly
Volume 51 Issue 1 (Winter 2010)
Pages 96 – 121
Published Online: 2010-01-15
DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01162.x

Nikki Khanna, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Despite growing interest in multiracial identity, much of the research remains atheoretical and limited in its approach to measuring identity. Taking a multidimensional approach to identity and drawing on reflected appraisals (how they think others see them), I examine racial identity among black-white adults in the South and the lingering influence of the one-drop rule. Most respondents internally identify as black and when asked to explain these black identities, they describe how both blacks and whites see them as black. I argue that the one-drop rule still shapes racial identity, namely through the process of reflected appraisals.

…To address this gap in the literature, I draw on interview data with 40 black-white biracial adults currently living in the South and examine how reflected appraisals shape their racial identities. Because I am looking at racial identity among people with black ancestry, I also look at how the one-drop rule influences the reflected appraisal process (and hence identity). Few studies seriously engage reflected appraisals as a determinant of racial identity, and none examine the way in which the one-drop rule affects reflected appraisals. Additionally, I interview black-white biracial people who are currently living in the South for two reasons. First, the one-drop rule is historically rooted in Southern slavery and the Jim Crow segregation in the South, and recent empirical research suggests that the one-drop rule continues to shape black identities in the South (Harris and Sim 2002; Brunsma 2005, 2006).  Second, little attention has been given to this region in previous studies. While quantitative studies suggest that the one-drop rule still impacts identity in the South, little qualitative work examines black-white identity within this context (see Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002a for an exception)….

Read the entire article here.

Narrative Order, Racial Hierarchy, and “White” Discourse in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Along This Way

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.
Volume 36, Number 3, Fall 2011
page 37-62
DOI: 10.1353/mel.2011.0041

Masami Sugimori, Instructor of English
University of South Alabama

African Americans became increasingly mobile during the early twentieth century, as exemplified by the Great Migration that began around 1910. Reflecting the general anxiety about such racial mobility, the March 2, 1911, issue of The Independent included an article about racial passing, “When Is a Caucasian Not a Caucasian?” Referring to the downfall of a “white” family whose part-black ancestry, unknown even to themselves, accidentally became public, the anonymous author discusses the “stupidity” and “cruelty” of the one-drop law and advises “all white negroes” to leave the South and live as “white people” so that, “as the bleaching process goes on, the conundrum will cease to concern them, When is a Caucasian not a Caucasian?” Despite the author’s insight into the precarious nature of racial categories, the article’s logic is predicated on the assumption of stable whiteness. On the one hand, along with its title, the article’s rhetorical question “Who knows where . . . it [the family’s tragedy] may strike next?” emphasizes that any white person can really be nonwhite. On the other hand, to highlight the “stupidity” and “cruelty” of white supremacy, the writer must posit an unquestionably pure-white man as the society’s representative. Thus, concerning the husband who annulled his marriage to an unwitting passer under Louisiana’s “infamous law against intermarriage,” the article states that “[t]here was no question that he was a full Caucasian” (479) despite its ongoing claim of the endless questionability of pure whiteness.

One finds such simultaneous refutation and affirmation of clear-cut racial classification in James Weldon Johnson’s novel about passing published a year later, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). As Samira Kawash points out. the novel’s scrutiny of the racial binary even problematizes “the simple black passing for white’ logic of passing . . . and its attendant model of race as the expression of a prior, embodied identity,” so that the “Ex-Coloured Man’s relation to blackness is shown…

Black & White: Search for roots uncovers forgotten family secret

National Post
Toronto, Canada
2012-02-17

Sarah Boesveld, General Assignment Writer

About 20 years ago, David Dossett watched his grandfather politely shut down a woman who called to say she was a relative and that their family had come to Canada from Jamaica and that they were black. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Dossett said to his granddad, businessman John B. Sampson, who seemed amused by this idea. Their family — Mr. Dossett’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side — had come to Canada from Scotland in 1907 and settled in Toronto. No one disputed that. But while doing some casual family tree sleuthing online a few years ago, Mr. Dossett, an IT manager and father of four, stumbled upon a tree that looked a lot like his. As it turns out, it belonged to the woman who called his grandfather that day — Jenny Sampson from Illinois. And so began Mr. Dossett’s “obsessive” hunt for a family’s past that had remained a secret for over 100 years. In the end, he discovered his family is not Protestant and Scottish, but Jamaican and Jewish. Not everyone is pleased about the discovery — much of which was broadcast last week on an episode of The Generations Project on Brigham Young University TV. Mr. Dossett spoke with the Post’s Sarah Boesveld from his hometown of Kingston, Ont.:

Q Jenny Sampson had been doing research independently before you began to question your family’s roots and identity. What had she found?

A When I was looking at her family tree, it was describing my family, it was describing me. And the tree said the family was Jewish, that they lived on an estate in Jamaica called Gaza. The name “Gaza” sounds very Jewish, so I’m thinking “Wow.” I contacted the person whose name was on the website — it ended up being her husband — and Jenny emailed back, explained the whole thing — that her family had come to Toronto in 1907, that they came as mulatto Hebrews. When it really sank into me that this was true I started thinking “What are the odds that my family is from Jamaica?” The odds turned out to be pretty good…

…Q Why do you think your family kept their heritage a secret even years after they immigrated?

A Deep down inside I think people [in my family] are concerned about having Jewish or black heritage. My mother’s cousin was concerned her father, my great-uncle the decorated war hero [and top-ranked army official] Franklin Augustus Sampson, would be looked down on if it was revealed our family lied about their heritage. But what are they going to do? Yank medals away from people? He’s dead. My grandfather lied about his heritage because he said he was born in Toronto, not Jamaica. A lot of people lied when they enlisted in WWI, lied about their age, lied about their ethnicity. One of my cousins found out many years ago through a blood test that there was either Asian or African blood in her system. When she took the blood test, she went into grandfather’s office, she threw it down on his desk in front of him and said “Explain this.”

Q How did your mother react?

A She doesn’t believe it. She says we’re from Scotland, but doesn’t provide details. She’s going through stages of dementia, but even without that she wouldn’t believe it. Jenny told me her mother is no longer speaking to her. If this had happened maybe 20 years earlier, I could have been a little concerned about it too.

Q Did you feel betrayed at all that your family kept this from you?

A Initially I was, but then I became aware of why this was done. I think what I find most discouraging is the way people were treated when they came to the country, if they weren’t from this white background. We have a past we don’t like to talk about. It’s too bad that Canada wasn’t as open a country as it could have been…

…Q You say there are likely thousands of other families out there who may actually be of black heritage despite their families’ white complexions.

A In the late 1800s there was a mass exodus of Jews from Jamaica. The perception was that they were becoming too powerful, so laws were passed to limit what they could own and how much they could acquire. I bet there are a lot of people out there that aren’t searching because they just don’t know. Maybe they just assume they’re from Scotland. Other than myself going to Queen’s University, no one in my family has a kilt, I don’t like bagpipes, I don’t eat oatmeal, I don’t like haggis. Nothing about me would indicate I’m Scottish except for my appearance — I have reddish hair because my grandfather married an Irish woman. They were very pale and I burn quite easily…

Read the entire article here.

The Ordinary Conception of Race in the United States and Its Relation to Racial Attitudes: A New Approach

Journal of Cognition and Culture
Volume 9, Issue 1 (2009)
pages 15-38
DOI: 10.1163/156853709X414610

Joshua Glasgow, Lecturer of Philosophy
Sonoma State University
also Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington.

Julie L. Shulman, Assistant Professor of Pyschology
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California

Enrique G. Covarrubias

Many hold that ordinary race-thinking in the USA is committed to the ‘one-drop rule‘, that race is ordinarily represented in terms of essences, and that race is ordinarily represented as a biological (phenotype- and/or ancestry-based, non-social) kind. This study investigated the extent to which ordinary race-thinking subscribes to these commitments. It also investigated the relationship between different conceptions of race and racial attitudes. Participants included 449 USA adults who completed an Internet survey. Unlike previous research, conceptions of race were assessed using concrete vignettes. Results indicate widespread rejection of the one-drop rule, as well as the use of a complex combination of ancestral, phenotypic, and social (and, therefore, non-essentialist) criteria for racial classification. No relationship was found between racial attitudes and essentialism, the one-drop rule, or social race-thinking; however, ancestry-based and phenotype-based classification criteria were associated with racial attitudes. These results suggest a complicated relationship between conceptions of race and racial attitudes.

Nharas and Morenas Horras: A Luso-African Model for the Social History of the Spanish Caribbean, c. 1570-1640

Journal of Early Modern History
Volume 14, Issue 1 (2010)
pages 119-150
DOI: 10.1163/138537810X12632734397061

David Wheat, Assistant Professor of History
Michigan State University

Drawing on little-used archival materials held in Seville’s Archive of the Indies and ecclesiastical records from the Cathedral of Havana, this article argues that free African and African-descended women participated in Spain’s colonization of the Caribbean to a degree that has not been fully recognized. Regularly described as vecinas (heads of household) and as spouses to Iberian men in key port cities, free women of color played active roles in the formation and maintenance of Spanish Caribbean society during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not as peripheral or marginalized figures, but as non-elite insiders who pursued their own best interests and those of their families and associates.

City’s black founding father

Decator Daily
Decatur, Alabama
2010-04-19

Deangelo McDaniel, Staff Writer

Minister, historian reconstructing life of ex-slave who became successful farmer

First in a two-part series

The Rev. Wylheme Ragland would like to spend one day with Robert Murphy.

So would local historian Peggy Allen Towns.

“Just one day,” Ragland said emphatically. “Just one day.”

Murphy, who died June 8, 1918, is one of Decatur’s black founding fathers, Towns and Ragland proclaim.

The former slave is buried in the Cowan section of Decatur City Cemetery and so are many of the secrets that would reveal the River City’s pre-Civil War and Reconstruction history.

Ragland, a United Methodist pastor at the church where Murphy was a trustee, and Towns are determined to reconstruct his life.

Doing so, they say, would fill significant gaps in Decatur’s history and dispel myths about the role of blacks and what happened here in 1864…

…But to understand and appreciate Murphy’s journey you have to go back to Virginia in 1795 when Mary, a slave, was born to the Kimble family.

Mary was his mother.

Traveling from Virginia through North Carolina, she arrived in the Tennessee Valley with the Kimble clan before 1820.

The slave-owning family purchased land in Trinity that extended to the Tennessee River.

In 1831, Murphy was born to Mary and his mother’s owner.

The Kimble family intermarried with the Murphys, who also owned a plantation on the Tennessee River. At some point before the Civil War, Mary and her son became the property of James Murphy

“Where was your home before and during the Civil War?” a government lawyer asked Murphy in 1906.

“About six miles from Decatur,” Murphy answered. “I belonged to James Murphy.”

As was the case for some mulatto (mixed-race) slaves, Murphy had extraordinary privileges for a slave, especially in 1864 when the Union Army fortified Decatur. He told the government he was able to travel between Decatur and Athens where his wife, Harriett, lived.

“My master did not care where I went so long as I did not go to be a soldier,” Murphy said in 1906…

Read the entire article here.

“Our Ancestors came from many Bloods”. Gendered Narrations of a Hybrid Nation

Lusotopie
Volume 12, Issue 1 (2005)
pages 217-232
DOI: 10.1163/176830805774719728

Isabel P.B. Fêo Rodrigues, Professor of Anthropology
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Narratives of mixed ancestry in Cape Verde use gender as common denominator in the weaving of a Creole nation. These narratives may hide tensions, conflicts, and adversities, but they also contain elements of fusion and national cohesion. They are and have been gendered narratives, partial and selective of the elements of fusion substantiating and sustaining a Cape Verdean identity vis-à-vis the multiple symbolic and material challenges faced by this young post-colonial nation-state. In them, Cape Verde is portrayed as an exceptional African case with boundaries carved by the ocean, free from ethnic conflict, and without a pre-colonial past through which to filter present realities.

Black Czech writer Zmeškal won EU Prize for Literature in 2011

Afro-Europe
2012-04-08

Czech writer Tomáš Zmeškal, who was born as the son of a Congolese father and a Czech mother in Prague, won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2011 for his debut novel “Love Letter in Cuneiform Script” (Milostný Dopis Klínovým Písmem) set in post-war Czechoslovakia through the collapse of communism.

He was one of 12 winners of the prize, which recognizes the best new or emerging authors in the European Union.

Zmeškal’s novel “Životopis černobílého jehněte”  (“The Biography of the Black and White Lamb”) of 2009, written long before his debut was published, is the first novel in Czech language dealing with the experience of Africans in the communist countries in Eastern Europe. It is the childhood and youth story of twins, who do not know their ethnically mixed parents and grow in their grandmother’s house. In spite of her attempts to protect them, they suffer from the racism and hostility that surrounds them. Which is all the more absurd since the society, in which they live, officially encourages internationalist attitudes and an understanding among nations…

Read the entire article here.