Mixed Race Studies

President Alexandre Pétion: Founder of Agrarian Democracy in Haiti and Pioneer of Pan-Americanism

Phylon (1940-1956)
Volume 2, Number 3 (Third Quarter, 1941)
pages 205-213

Dantès Bellegarde (1877-1966) [Biography in French]

The history of Haiti is dominated by four great men who fought and worked for its independence: Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, Christophe and Pétion. Toussaint is the best known of them all because his extraordinary genius and spectacular career have engaged the attention of numerous authors. From a variety of angles they have related the story of this one-time slave who became the governor-general of the French colony of Santo Domingo only to die a captive in a dungeon of the Jura Mountains.

The career of Dessalines was scarcely less dramatic than that of Toussaint, for it was he who led to decisive victory the Negroes and mulattoes, united in the sacred struggle for freedom. Christophe, who became King of Haiti and revealed great administrative powers, is principally known in the United States by the public works which he constructed in the Northern Kingdom. The most remarkable of these is the Citadelle Laferrière, which has justly been called one of the wonders of America.

Of these four remarkable men Alexandre Pétion is the least known in the United States, but his name is revered in Latin America. In fact, he has played a role of first importance in the history of the New World, as I hope to demonstrate in this short biography, which I am writing for Phylon.

Alexandre Pétion was born at Port-au-Prince, April 2, 1770, the son of a mulatto woman and a white man, Pascal Sabès, who, considering his son too dark of skin, refused to recognize him. His elementary education was very inadequate because the whites had not established schools in the colony of Saint Domingue. He learned the trade of silversmith from one of his father’s old friends, M. Guiole, a native of Bordeaux, whose wife showed much solicitude for the young boy. She called him Pichoun, which in her southern patois meant mon petit, “my little one,” whence the name Pétion, by which he continued to be known and which he finally adopted as his own…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-race Rose contestant snubs racist websites

Sunday Tribune, Dublin, Ireland
2008-08-03

Ken Sweeney

A mixed-race contestant who is competing in this year’s Rose of Tralee says she has no fears about travelling to Ireland to take part in the contest despite a series of racist remarks made against her on a website.

London Rose Belinda Brown (25) has been targeted by users of race hate website Stormfront.org since being selected in Cricklewood last month.

Born in Jamaica but raised in Ahoghill, Co Antrim, Irish-based racists have questioned Brown’s right to compete in the beauty pageant because of her mixed-race parentage.

“This mixed female is indeed no Rose of Tralee,” posted one member, War Maiden, on the site. “Last time I checked our women were pale-skinned maidens from our Emerald Isle, not some mud from London.”

Another, with the name White Patriot, wrote: “The London entrant for this year’s Rose of Tralee is a half caste mongrel. What the hell are the organisers thinking of? Whites who mix with blacks shouldn’t be surprised when they get treated like animals themselves. They are traitors to their race, culture and family. We have no sympathy for them.”

However in an interview with the Sunday Tribune, Belinda Brown said she was proud of her mixed-race ancestry and said she had no fears about travelling to Tralee for the contest which takes place in Kerry from 22-26 August…

Read the entire article here.

With DNA Testing, Suddenly They Are Family

The New York Times
2011-01-24

Rachel L. Swarns

ST. LOUIS — Growing up, Khrys Vaughan always believed that she had inherited her looks and mannerisms from her father, and that her appreciation for tradition and old-fashioned gentility stemmed from her parents’ Southern roots. But those facets of her self-image crumbled when she was told, at age 42, that she had been adopted.

She began searching for her origins, only to find out that her adoption records had been sealed, a common practice in the 1960s. Then Mrs. Vaughan stumbled across an ad from a DNA testing company offering to help people who had been adopted find clues to their ancestry and connections to blood relatives.

About five weeks after shipping off two tiny vials of her cells from a swab of her cheek, Mrs. Vaughan received an e-mail informing her that her bloodlines extended to France, Romania and West Africa. She was also given the names and e-mail addresses of a dozen distant cousins. This month, she drove 208 miles from her hometown here to Evansville, Ind., to meet her third cousin, the first relative to respond to her e-mails. Mrs. Vaughan is black and her cousin is white, and they have yet to find their common ancestor. But Mrs. Vaughan says that does not matter…

…Within minutes of receiving the names of her distant relatives, Mrs. Vaughan, a freelance project manager, was admiring their photographs on Facebook. Another adoptee who found family through DNA testing, Kathy Borgmann, a 49-year-old corn farmer in New Palestine, Ind., exchanged e-mails with cousins who delighted her by saying, “Welcome to the family.”…

…Not everyone is hoping to find new relatives. Some adoptees who have found genetic matches have been rebuffed by their distant kin. Most people take genealogical DNA tests to fill gaps in their family trees, not to find new members of their clans. Mr. Bogner said several cousins identified through DNA testing stopped communicating once they learned he was adopted. “It was horribly disappointing,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

Developing identity formation and self-concept in preschool-aged biracial children

Early Child Development and Care
Volume 111, Issue 1, 1995 (Special Issue: Focus on Caregivers)
pages 141-152
DOI: 10.1080/0300443951110110

Johnetta Wade Morrison, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

Eleven mothers of biracial preschool-aged children were interviewed regarding identity formation, self-concept development, developmental issues and problems for their children. The racial attitude levels of their children were ascertained using PRAM II. Analysis includes the presentation of variables the mothers identified as a part of the child rearing practices to promote the dual heritages of their biracial children. Results indicate these mothers form two perspectives in promoting identity development. Self‐concept was viewed as a paramount issue for development. These findings have implications for practitioners.

Read or purchase the article here.

Study provides first genetic evidence of long-lived African presence within Britain

University of Leicester
Press Release
2007-01-24

Research reveals African origins in the UK and US

New research has identified the first genetic evidence of Africans having lived amongst “indigenous” British people for centuries. Their descendants, living across the UK today, were unaware of their black ancestry.

The University of Leicester study, funded by the Wellcome Trust and published today in the journal European Journal of Human Genetics, found that one third of men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a rare Y chromosome type previously found only amongst people of West African origin.

The researchers, led by Professor Mark Jobling, of the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester, first spotted the rare Y chromosome type, known as hgA1, in one individual, Mr. X. This happened whilst PhD student Ms. Turi King was sampling a larger group in a study to explore the association between surnames and the Y chromosome, both inherited from father to son. Mr. X, a white Caucasian living in Leicester, was unaware of having any African ancestors.

“As you can imagine, we were pretty amazed to find this result in someone unaware of having any African roots,” explains Professor Jobling, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. “The Y chromosome is passed down from father to son, so this suggested that Mr. X must have had African ancestry somewhere down the line. Our study suggests that this must have happened some time ago.”

Although most of Britain’s one million people who define themselves as “Black or Black British” owe their origins to immigration from the Caribbean and Africa from the mid-twentieth century onwards, in reality, there has been a long history of contact with Africa. Africans were first recorded in the north 1800 years ago, as Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall…

…“This study shows that what it means to be British is complicated and always has been,” says Professor Jobling. “Human migration history is clearly very complex, particularly for an island nation such as ours, and this study further debunks the idea that there are simple and distinct populations or ‘races’.”…

Read the entire press release here.

Racial Socialization in Cross-Racial Families

Journal of Black Psychology
Published Online: 2011-08-03
DOI: 10.1177/0095798411416457

Cyndy R. Snyder
University of California, Berkeley

The purpose of this study was to investigate how multiracial people of African descent experience racism in schools and to understand how their parents or guardians prepare them to cope with incidents of racism in school. Through qualitative in-depth interviews with multiracial and transracially adopted adults of African descent, this study seeks to raise awareness regarding the complexity of family racial dynamics and how family racial socialization processes affect students’ ability to navigate racism. Findings suggested that racial socialization processes varied by the racial composition of the family, that is, families in which there was at least one Black parent or guardian present tended to more openly address issues of race and racism in comparison with families in which there was no Black parent or guardian present. Findings from this study hold theoretical implications for how racial socialization is conceptualized and practical implications for programs and policies designed to support families raising children of African descent.

Read or purchase the article here.

Don’t box us in

Focus
Rutgers University
2008-04-09

Ashanti M. Alvarez

Prompted by Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, The New York Times recently tackled the issue of mixed-race Americans, and did so by profiling a group of students from Rutgers. I read with interest, as I myself am mixed.
 
Common constructs abound in this article, and in most discussions of multiethnic and multiracial individuals. Invariably, these articles and discussions are about identity and the struggle to find one. What box do we check? Which cultural customs do we adopt? Who will accept us? How do we deal with rejection?
 
These inquiries and expositions almost always echo, however subtly, the persistent “tragic mulatto” meme transmitted through the decades from antebellum United States. The person born to parents of African and European ancestry (usually a woman, more easily portrayed as a sympathetic victim) struggles to navigate the fine line between a predictably privileged life and one relegated to the underclass. Her inability to find acceptance from others or from herself leads to self-undoing through alcoholism, insanity, or suicide.
 
But for me, being multicultural has brought great personal freedom. After all, who wants to be confined to a box? Not me. At times I wonder how it feels to grow up as part of a cohesive community, one with strong religious, culinary, and family customs. That must provide a distinct sense of security, belonging, and identity that I am missing…

Read the entire essay here.

African and American: The Contact of Negro and Indian

Science Magazine
Volume 17, Number 419 (1891-02-13)
pages 85-90
DOI: 10.1126/science.ns-17.419.85

The history of the negro on the continent of America has been studied from various points of view, but id every instance with regard alone to his contact with the white race. It must be, therefore, a new. its well as an interesting, inquiry, when we endeavor to ascertain what has been the effect of the contact of the foreign African with the native American stocks. Such an investigation, to be of great scientific value, in the highest sense, must extend its lines of research into questions of physical anthropology, philology, mythology, sociology, and lay before us tbe facts which alone can be of use. S0 little attention has been paid to our subject, in all its branches, that it is to be feared that very much of great importance can never he ascertained; but it is the object of this essay to indicate what we already know, and to point out some questions concerning which, with the exercise of proper care, valuable data may even yet be obtained.

It is believed that the first African negro was introduced to the West Indies between the years 1501 and 1503; and since that time, according to Professor N. S. Shaler, there have been brought across the Atlantic not more than “three million souls, of whom the greater part were doubtless taken to the West Indies and Brazil.” Professor Shaler goes on to say, ”It seems tolerably certain that into the region north of the Gulf of Mexico not more than half a million were imported. We are even more at a loss to ascertain the present number of negroes in these continents: in fact, this point is probably indeterminable, for the reason that the African blood has commingled with that of the European settlers and the aborigines in an incalculable manner. Counting as negroes, however, all who share in the proportion of more than one-half the African blood, there are probably not less than thirty million people who may be regarded as of this race between Canada and Patagonia.” Such being the case, the importance of the question included in the programme of investigation of the Congrés das Américanistes— “Pénétration des races africaines en Amérique, et specialetnent dans l’Amérique du Sud”—becomes apparent, and no insignificant part of it is concerned with the relations of the African and the native American…

Read the entire article here.

Conversation Of The Week XXII: Mixed-Race Students and The College Experience

USARiseUp
2011-04-18

Amy O’Loughlin

In January, The New York Times published “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above,” a provocative and widely circulated article about college students of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as the rise in population of a multiracial America.

As the article states, since 2000, when the U.S. Census Bureau allowed Americans to identify themselves in more than one race category, the number of mixed-race Americans grew by approximately 35 percent. Seven million people reported being of mixed race, making multiracials “one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups.”

In turn, the enrollment of multiracial students at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. is also swiftly expanding. In 2004, University of California, Berkeley conducted the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, and found that 22.9 percent of UC Berkeley respondents identified themselves as multiracial or multiethnic, while throughout the UC system, the total averaged 25.8 percent. “The crop of students moving through college right now,” The New York Times article affirms, “includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States.”

Are U.S. institutions of higher learning adapting adequately to this upsurge in student population? Are a representative number of faculty and policy makers mixed-race? Are schools offering curricula relevant to multiracial and multiethnic students?

A look into course offerings at various universities reveals that higher education does in fact provide a framework for the comprehensive understanding of mixed-race heritage in America. The UC Berkeley’s “People of Mixed Racial Descent” class began in 1980, it was the first of its kind in the nation, and is still offered as part of the school’s Ethnic Studies program with between 150 to 250 students attending. The University of Washington in Seattle offers the course “Mixed Identities and Racialized Bodies,” Chicago’s DePaul University lists “Mixed Race America” in its course catalog, and “Mixed Race in the New Millennium” is part of Stanford University’s curriculum.

But even if multiracialism is addressed academically, how do students of mixed race “negotiate the racialized landscape of higher education?” asks Kristen A. Renn, associate professor at Michigan State University (MSU), and author of Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus (2004). What does being multiracial mean to today’s mixed-race student?…

Read the entire article here.

Racing ahead, going nowhere

Very Fine Commentary
2011-04-17

Yoong Ren Yan, Editor

Are we running around in circles with our policies on race?

Racism is bad. What more is there to say?”

It may not have been the case just 50 years ago in the time of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but in today’s world, being against racism is rather unremarkable. Part of the reason Nelson Mandela is such a universally revered figure is because his cause is no longer controversial. Those that are the least bit racist are promptly and collectively refuted, and with good reason: racism is not only astoundingly irrational, but also one of the worst forms of injustice humans have ever inflicted on others.

Yet there is more to the issue of race. Our insistence that people not be judged based on their skin has not extended to consensus on how to achieve that end. While we all agree that racial discrimination, exploitation and conflict should be things of the past, there are, broadly, two contradictory visions for the future. Which of these should be pursued, and by what means, are sources of unrecognised controversy, and therefore deserve further debate.

More is not better

Singapore represents one of these cases. The Singaporean model is encapsulated in our national obsession with ‘multi-’: we are taught that our nation is multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual. We present ourselves as a rojak society, a mix of different cultures and ethnicities whose flavours blend into a single dish. Our government is committed to ‘racial harmony’, and envisages Singapore’s four races coexisting peacefully, accepting one another’s differences and working together to build a nation.

For a country that not so long ago was mired in communal violence, division and mutual mistrust, Singapore has made notable progress. It is a prime example of multi-racialism. It has succeeded with two parallel strategies: firstly, to group the population into CMIO (Chinese Malay Indian Others); and secondly, to encourage, and where necessary enforce, cohesion amongst these four races. This approach has manifested itself in our policies on language (English first, no dialects), education (English-medium schools), housing (the Ethnic Integration Policy), social security (ethnic self-help groups) and even the media (censorship, the Sedition Act).

Yet, as Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew constantly reminds us, our multi-racial society is still fragile and vulnerable, and could just unravel if we become complacent. In a world stricken with ethnic conflict, his words resonate. But in some senses, Singapore’s drive to become multi-racial has sown the seeds of subterranean tension by continuing to entrench notions of race in society, just at a time when such notions are gradually fading away. Instead of allowing the winds to blow over our divisions, multi-racialism deepens the lines in the sand and widens our already narrowing differences.

This is exemplified by Racial Harmony Day, an attempt to promote cohesion by showcasing the four nationally-sanctioned cultures. Exposure to cultural differences may have been useful in our formative years, but today, a day that celebrates differences rather than similarities and inculcates the notion of race in our children from a young age seems rather anachronistic. Worse yet, divergent racial identities are enforced even when these identities have become far fainter over the years. The result is a farce where Singaporeans put in the special effort to buy cheongsams or learn how to play the angklung on Racial Harmony Day to fit into the race and culture of which they are supposedly a part…

…In concentrating on multi-racialism, our strategies have obstructed society from becoming less race-conscious, which has artificially perpetuated the existence of race in Singapore, with its attendant tensions and clashes. It is difficult enough to encourage integration. If society spontaneously turns away from race, why should the government stick obsessively to its multi-racial stance?…

Read the entire article here.