Mixed Race Studies

The Multiracial Epiphany of Loving

Fordham Law Review
May 2008, Volume 76, Number 6
pages 2709-2733

Kevin Noble Maillard, Associate Professor of Law
Syracuse University

The year 1967 becomes the temporal landmark for the beginning of an interracial nation. That year, the United States Supreme Court ruled state antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia. In addition to outlawing interracial marriage, these restrictive laws had created a presumption of illegitimacy for historical claims of racial intermixture. Not all states had antimiscegenation laws, but the sting of restriction extended to other states to forge a collective forgetting of mixed race. Defenders of racial purity could depend on these laws to render interracial relationships illegitimate. Looking back to Loving as the official birth of Multiracial America reinforces the prevailing memory of racial separatism while further underscoring the illegitimacy of miscegenations past. By establishing racial freedom in marriage, Loving also sets a misleading context for the history of mixed race in America. Even though Loving instigates the open acceptance of interracialism, it unintentionally creates a collective memory that mixed race people and relationships did not exist before 1967. To imagine and realize a pre-1967 miscegenated America directly challenges the legal legitimacy of the racial reality that antimiscegenation law attempted to enforce. I approach this subject by examining contemporary claims of mixed race that are rooted in the past. This conflict usually entails opposing narratives: one venerating the involvement of a prominent historical figure as party to an interracial relationship; the other steadfastly holds that such claims are unfounded as specious. Placing miscegenation upon narratives and figures that are faintly characterized and understood as racially white turns private claims of mixed identity into public contemplations of interracial intimacy. To imagine historic figures as “Founding Fathers” of another sort destabilizes an implicit understanding of ingrained racial limitations.

..This essay takes issue with the overemphasis on Loving as the enabler for mixed race in the United States, and concomitantly, its effect on legitimating a varied interracial past. Gary Nash’s thesis demonstrates a notable irony: if our just, democratic system openly permits and justifies the “happening thing” of mixed race, why is this same valorization and recognition not extended to the pre-Loving era? Turning to a single court case to celebrate a social phenomenon that has existed at the margins of American culture mistakenly erases the past of racial amalgamation that preexisted the legality that Loving provided. In the system of the racial binary that has been established in the United States, mixtures that disrupt the notion of racial purity, particularly those that originate in the time period before Loving, are presumed to be deviant and abnormal. The collective racial memory in the United States, unlike that of Mexico or Brazil, operates from an assumption of racial purity and sexual avoidance of miscegenation. This national culture of disbelief of racial intermixture has permeated our views of history and law.

This essay argues that looking to Loving as the birthplace of interracialism reinforces the legal authority and resultant legacy of the antimiscegenation regime that it replaced. In addition to outlawing interracial marriage, these restrictive laws created a lasting presumption of illegitimacy for historical claims of racial intermixture. Defenders of racial purity could depend on these laws to render interracial relationships, whether married or unmarried, improbable and illegitimate. Not all states had antimiscegenation laws, but the sting of restriction extended to other states, forging a collective forgetting and denial of the existence of mixed race. The absence of a national, judicial acceptance of mixed race facilitated a collective belief in racial purity. Because it was illegal and immoral, it could not have occurred. As states were withholding the marital right from biracial couples, they attempted to deny and erase the intimate reality of persons, like Richard and Mildred Loving,who would have sought alternatives to the prohibitive law…

Read the entire article here.

Finding culture in ‘poetic’ structures: The case of a ‘racially-mixed’ Japanese/New Zealander

Journal of Multicultural Discourses
Online Before Print: 2012-01-18
19 pages
DOI: 10.1080/17447143.2011.610507

Masataka Yamaguchi, Professor of Japanese Studies
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

In this article, I analyze discourse taken from my interviews with a ‘racially-mixed’ Japanese/New Zealander in which he represents his ethno-national identities to me in New Zealand. Drawing on the concept of ‘poetic’ structure, I reveal implicit assumptions in the patternings of discourse. Specifically, he discursively constructs his ‘racially-mixed’ identities by presupposing ‘pure race’ as a social fact. It is also shown that a powerful implicit assumption is the hegemony of whiteness, to which he responds in the construction of New Zealander identities. For comparative purposes, I further analyze interview data taken from another Japanese-heritage participant. Based on the analyses, I discuss implications for the analysis of multicultural discourses, and suggest that the reproduction of hegemonic values deserves more attention.

Read or purchase the article here.

Schooling, Blackness and national identity in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Race Ethnicity and Education
Volume 10, Issue 1, (March 2007)
pages 47-70
DOI: 10.1080/13613320601100377

Ethan Allen Johnson, Assistant Professor of Black Studies
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

In Esmeraldas, Ecuador, students of African descent make sense of racial identity and discrimination in multiple and contradictory ways as they negotiate the dominant discourse of national identity. In Ecuador two simultaneous processes shape the dominant discourse of national identity: racial mixture and the movement towards Whiteness. This study is based primarily on formal interviews and classroom and school site observations. In this article I focus on the relationship between educational practices at the national and local level and the perceptions and negotiations of students of African descent concerning racial identity and discrimination. I show that the racial and spatial topography of the nation of Ecuador is transposed onto the cultural landscape of the city of Esmeraldas. I show that the formal curriculum attempts to erase the significance of Black people and Blackness from the economic and social development of the nation, while racial discrimination is pervasive inside and outside of the classroom at the research site. Finally, I show that students of African descent often attempt to move towards Whiteness as they negotiate the dominant discourse of national identity. I conclude with a summary of my findings and suggest what the implications are for schooling in Esmeraldas, Ecuador and more broadly.

Read or purchase the article here.

Student and teacher negotiations of racial identity in an Afro-Ecuadorian region

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Volume 22, Issue 5 (September-October 2009)
pages 563-584
DOI: 10.1080/09518390902915439

Ethan Allen Johnson, Assistant Professor of Black Studies
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

In this article, using data collected primarily through interviews and observations the researcher explores how students and teachers of African descent at the Jaime Hurtado Academy understand and interpret race and racism in the city and province of Esmeraldas, which is the only region of the country where Afro-Ecuadorians comprise the largest proportion of the population. The findings reveal that students often distanced themselves from their Blackness through racial mixture, and that parents played a critical socializing role in their students’ negotiations of racial identity. Additionally, it was found that teachers universally embraced their Blackness, although they simultaneously acknowledged their mixed racial ancestry. These findings contest literate understandings of race and ideological attempts by elites to exclude Afro‐Ecuadorians within the dominant discourse of national identity.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial meditations

The Portland State Vanguard
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
2012-02-13

Jeoffry Ray

PSU panel to discuss growing up biracial in context of novel The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

How does one begin to discuss the experience of belonging to more than one “race”?

It’s really up to the participants,” said Dr. Maude Hines, organizer of the Portland State and Multnomah County Libraries’ 2012 Everybody Reads project, which will hold a panel discussion titled “Growing Up Biracial” Thursday, Feb. 16, at the university’s Millar Library.

The discussion will focus on the panel members’ experiences growing up as multiracial individuals and will be presented in the context of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (Algonquin, 2008) by Heidi Durrow, the novel that is the focus of this year’s Everybody Reads program.

The panel will include associate professor of the PSU Black Studies Department Dr. Ethan Johnson, graduate student Adrienne Croskey and undergraduate Kevin Thomas…

Read the entire article here.

MFNW 2010: We are all MOsley WOtta

Oregon Music News
2010-09-09

Aaron Brandt

Jason Graham is MOsley WOtta. So are you, and so am I. That core message of commonality is one good reason why MOWO is quickly gaining such a vast following–that, and tracks full of realistic humor, a bit of brain, and some rump-shakin’ beats.
 
Fresh from achieving local greatness by winning Last Band Standing and being voted the Best Local Band in Bend, MOsley WOtta will join an all-star lineup of Pacific Northwest acts–Shabazz Palaces, Champagne Champagne, Cloudy October, and THEESatisfaction–at MFNW on September 11th at Jimmy Mak’s. As if that pace weren’t hectic enough, he’s somehow found time to release Wake, a compilation that features the song “Boom For Real”–if you haven’t heard this one yet, check out the video below.

Let’s dive into the world of Wake and MOWO with a little Q & A, shall we?

Wake is chock-full of diverse material. We hear everything from party beats to nasal solos to interlude comedy skits–if you were given only two choices, which two “popular” artists does your music sound like a mix of?

MOWO: Somewhere between Saul Williams and Weird Al, or maybe Spearhead and Aesop Rock…

Read the entire interview here.

Loving Prize Presentation Honors: Scholar G. Reginald Daniel, Actor/Writers Kevin Knotts and Kim Wayans

Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival
2012-02-02

(Los Angeles, CA) The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival will present the 5th Annual Loving Prizes to community leaders on June 16, 2012 at 7pm at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles (369 East First Street). The Festival, which takes place June 16-17, celebrates stories of the Mixed experience and stories of multiracial Americans, the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. A free two-day public event, the Festival brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial families and individuals for workshops, readings, and film screenings.

The Loving Prizes are awarded each year to artists who have shown a dedication to celebrating and illuminating the Mixed experience. Past recipients include best-selling writer James McBride, NFL star Hines Ward, Hapa artist Kip Fulbeck, scholar Dr. Maria P. P. Root, writer and educator Maya Soetoro-Ng, and writer and TV producer Angela Nissel.

The 2012 Loving Prize recipients are:

Dr. G. Reginald Daniel is a leading scholar on issues of multiracial identity and teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since 1989, he has taught “Betwixt and Between,” which is one of the first and the longest-standing university courses to deal specifically with the question of multiracial identity comparing the U.S. with various parts of the world…

Read the entire press release here.

“I now harbor more pride in my race”: The Educational Benefits of Inter- and Intraracial Dialogues on the Experiences of Students of Color and Multiracial Students

Equity & Excellence in Education
Volume 45, Issue 1 (2012)
pages 14-35
DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2012.643180

Kristie A. Ford, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York

Victoria K. Malaney
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York

How do students of color and multiracial students learn to make sense of and navigate race within historically white institutions (HWIs)? And, what pedagogies and inter-/intragroup dynamics facilitate increased understanding of issues of race, racial identity development, and racism in the U.S.? This project examines students’ of color (SOC) and multiracial students’ learning in the Intergroup People of Color–White People Dialogues and Intragroup Multiracial Identity Dialogues at a small private liberal arts college in the Northeast. Through qualitative, inductively-derived analyses of student papers, this study advances understanding of how SOC/multiracial students make sense of their own racial group membership and how they navigate raced interactions in college. It also continues and extends national efforts to conduct and disseminate research on both the substantive nature and process of the Inter-/Intragroup Dialogues and their impact on students.

Read or purchase the article here.

The First American Freedom Fighter

William Loren Katz
2012-02-02

William Loren Katz

This February 2nd stands as the 500th anniversary of the death of Hatuey, an Indigenous American fighter for independence from colonialism not mentioned in the same breath as Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. However, Hatuey deserves recognition as their earliest ideological ancestor and great forerunner.
 
Little is known about Hatuey, a Taino Cacique [leader], not his date of birth, nor exactly when he first led his forces into battle. But key elements of his story have come down to us from Bishop Las Casas, the Dominican Priest, who became Spain’s “Defender of the Indians.” On February 2, 1512, Las Casas was in Cuba when Hatuey died at the hands of the European invaders.
 
Hatuey’s armed resistance began on the island of Hispaniola [today Haiti and the Dominican Republic] during the age of Columbus. It probably increased after 1502 when a fleet of 30 Spanish ships brought over the new Governor Nicolás de Ovando, hundreds of Spanish settlers and a number of enslaved Africans to pursue Spain’s search for gold.
 
But oppression rarely goes as planned. Before the year was over Governor Ovando complained to King Ferdinand that the enslaved Africans “fled among the Indians, taught them bad customs, and could not be captured.” The last four words reveal more than his problem with disobedient servants or his difficulty of retrieving runaways in a rainforest. Ovando is probably describing the formation of the first American rainbow coalition: Hatuey and his followers are greeting and embracing the runaway Africans as allies…

Read the entire essay here.

‘Town Secret’: Race of Famous Carthaginian Embraced

The Pilot
Southern Pines, North Carolina
2012-02-11

John Chappell

Every year with its Buggy Festival, Carthage celebrates the achievements of a former slave, though until recently few knew it.

William T. Jones — born a slave, and the son of a slave and her owner — ran the famed Tyson & Jones Buggy Co., the biggest business around.

Though he was an African-American described in census records as “a mulatto gentleman” and a former slave, Jones nevertheless became a leading businessman and industrialist, recognized and honored, his color the best kept secret in Carthage history.

His elaborate 1880s Queen Anne Victorian mansion stands at the entrance to the town’s historic district. Now a bed-and-breakfast inn lovingly restored with wraparound porch and fanciful gingerbread trimmed in elegant Painted Lady fashion, the Jones house evokes the lavishness of a bygone era.

Few in Carthage today realize its builder and former owner was a black man of mixed race who lived openly with his white wife, operated one of the biggest factories in the South, taught Sunday School in the Methodist Church, served on national and local boards, and was admired and loved without any mention of race.

Today, the fact that Jones was an African-American is something the town history committee’s present Chairwoman Carol Steed thinks the town can take pride in — though for years nobody spoke of it…

Read the entire article here.