Mixed Race Studies

Tale of a ‘Seditionist’–The Lawrence Dennis Story

AntiWar.com
2000-04-29

Justin Raimondo

War infects and weakens our republican form of government, spreads social and political diseases throughout the body politic—but is, as Randolph Bourne put it, “the health of the State.” The State, in wartime, is glorified and empowered: the militarization of society means that all resources are mobilized and placed at the disposal of government, and all dissent, however meek and mild, must be utterly discredited if not entirely snuffed out. In wartime the benevolent mask of the “democratic” state invariably slips, and the true face of repression is revealed in all its leering ugliness…

…WORLD WAR II AND THE HIGH ART OF DEMONIZATION

The infamous Moscow Trials of the 1930s, staged by Stalin to cement his hold on absolute power, were the model for the effort undertaken by the US government during the war years to not only discredit its opponents but also to jail them, if at all possible. The massive roundup of Japanese, German, and Italian-Americans was a corollary to the relentless propaganda campaign that singled them out as a “fifth column” coiled and ready to strike. This massive smear campaign was also directed at the large and combative antiwar movement of the time, the America First Committee, as well as its leading spokesmen: Charles A. Lindbergh, John T. Flynn, and “isolationists” in every walk of life were singled out by the War Party and viciously attacked—and this was true especially in the arts, from the actress Lillian Gish to the poet Robinson Jeffers, and in publishing, where the editorial staffs of the major American newspapers and magazines were purged of virtually all “isolationists.” When war finally came, the War Party took its terrible revenge on all who had held out the hope of peace—and none suffered more than Lawrence Dennis, who has yet to finally receive the honor that is his due.

THE OUTSIDER

Lawrence Dennis was an outsider in a movement of outsiders, a unique and largely solitary figure whose career as a writer and notorious “seditionist” embodies the tragedy and bravery of the Old Right, the pre-World War II “America First” generation of conservative intellectuals and activists. In many important ways, Dennis is the prototype of modern “paleo-conservatives.” His career as a controversialist and the leading American nationalist intellectual of his time charts the rise and fall of the Old Right – and, perhaps, holds a lesson for us today. Born in Atlanta in 1893, Dennis had what historian Justus Doenecke describes as “a varied career,” which included a stint as a “boy evangelist.” A recent article on Dennis in The Baffler—in which the author, transcending his own leftist politics, seems to appreciate if not fully understand his subject—informs us that he was born Lonnie Lawrence Dennis, adopted by a mulatto couple, and was undoubtedly of mixed race: his mother was black, but his father was in all probability white. To say that young Lonnie was a precocious kid is a definite understatement: by the age of five he was preaching before large audiences in Atlanta, and was soon bringing the Word to congregations around the country as “The Mulatto Boy Evangelist,” and taking his road show as far as England. He published his autobiography at the ripe old age of ten.

…THE BLACKEST IRONY

For Dennis to be anointed leader of a racist fifth column in America was just another irony in a life rich with them. For a supposed fellow-traveler of Hitler, Dennis hardly fit the Aryan mold. Charles A. Lindbergh, for whom Dennis is said to have written a few speeches, described him as having a “rugged,” dark-complexioned look that made him seem as if he would be more “at home at a frontier trading post.” Dennis’s archenemy, the notorious agent provocateur John Roy Carlson, noted that “Dennis’ hair is woolly, dark and kinky. The texture of his skin is unusually dark and the eyes of Hitler’s intellectual keynoter of ‘Aryanism’ are a rich deep brown, his lips fleshy.” This is the measure of what Lawrence had to endure: the man Life magazine called, in a picture caption, “America’s No. 1 intellectual Fascist . . . brain-truster for the forces of appeasement” and Hitler’s alleged pawn was almost certainly an African-American….

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Racial/Ethnic Categories: Do They Matter?

Poverty & Race
November/December 1994

Lawrence Wright

Chester Hartman, Director of Research
Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Last fall, the House Subcommittee on Census, Statistics and Postal Personnel, chaired by Rep. Thomas Sawyer (D-OH), held a series of hearings on modification of the existing racial categories used by the Census and on the larger question of whether it is proper for the government to classify people according to arbitrary distinctions of skin color and ancestry. The issue is of deep interest to scientists, government agencies that collect data, and, of course, to advocacy groups in the various minority communities concerned with group entitlements.
 
Census statistics are crucial for so many reasons. “Congressional districts rise and fall with the shifting demographics of the country,” as Wright notes. And program funding of all sorts is a function of how many people are placed in each category—”the numbers drive the dollars,” as Sawyer puts it.
 
The government agency responsible for determining standard classifications of racial and ethnic data is the Office of Management & Budget. OMB’s 1977 Statistical Directive 15, which controls these categories for all federal forms and statistics, recognizes four general racial groups in the US: American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Black; and White. With regard to ethnicity, Directive 15 also recognizes Hispanic Origin and Not of Hispanic Origin. “The categories,” as Wright notes, “ask that every American fit himself or herself into one racial and one ethnic box.”…

…Multiracialism

One obvious problem with the existing classification system is mixed-race persons, whose numbers are vast but not precisely known. There have been proposals to add a “Multiracial” category to the Census. The proportion of people who now check the Black box but could, because of mixed genetic heritage, check Multiracial, is at least 75% and may be as high as 90%. This proposed new category, Wright observes, “threatens to undermine the concept of racial classification altogether.”
 
Some, of course, argue that would be no “threat” at all. “Multiracialism has the potential for undermining the very basis of racism, which is its categories,” asserts G. Reginald Daniel of UCLA. But the impact on present programs could be catastrophic. School desegregation plans would be thrown into the air. Legislative districts would have to be redrawn. “The entire civil rights regulatory program concerning housing, employment and education,” Wright notes, “would have to be reassessed . . . Those who are charged with enforcing civil rights laws see the Multiracial box as a wrecking ball aimed at affirmative action.” While no one knows how many multiracial persons in fact would opt for that new category, “merely placing such an option on the Census invites people to consider choosing it,” says Wright. He notes that when the Census listed “Cajun” as one of several examples under the ancestry question, the number of Cajuns jumped nearly 2,000%.
 
Multiracialism, of course, is the story of America ever since Columbus and his men stepped on our shores. Clearly, slavery fueled the process, as white slave-owners, in order to enlarge the slave population (as well as gratify their own lust) fathered tens of thousands of mixed-race “Negroes.”
 
Census categories have constantly confused and been confused about race. “How unsettled this country has always been about its racial categories is evident in that fact that nearly every census since [the original 1790 Census] has measured race differently. “With regard to the most volatile racial category, until recently we had “that peculiar American institution known informally as the ‘one-drop rule‘,” which defined as Black a person who had as little as a single drop of that mythical substance, “Black blood.” The measure applied only to people of African descent. And it is, of course, a racist rule, two-way street: one did not jump over the white community by virtue of having’ “white blood.” (Wright notes that the rule may still be the law of the land, according to a 1986 Supreme Court decision.)
 
America, to be sure, has always had “Black” leaders who were to some extent “white”—Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Lani Guinier, Douglas Wilder and Louis Farrakhan are a few of the more prominent names. Both whites and Blacks acceded in defining such persons as Black…

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Mixing it up: Multiracialism redefines Asian American identity

San Francisco Chronicle
2011-02-11

Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate

How the mainstreaming of multiracialism is forcing a more fluid definition of Asian American identity
 
Like many immigrants, my parents see identity as a bucket. My mother and father had come to America carefully bearing a pail of old-world traditions, cherished customs, shining morals and rock-ribbed ethics; they’d worked hard and sacrificed greatly to give me and my sister the things they never had. And then, they handed us the bucket—knowing that in the transfer, a little bit of culture would inevitably slosh out over the side…

…Going fourth

It’s something that needs to be considered. As multiracial identity becomes the Asian American mainstream—by 2020, it’s projected that one out of five Asians in the U.S. will be multiracial; by 2050, that ratio will exceed one in three—the population of persons with one-fourth Asian heritage or less is poised to spike.
 
“I’m half Japanese, and my husband is all Irish,” says sociologist Dr. Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain. “Our kids have very Celtic coloration—pale skin and fair hair. They’re not obviously Asian in appearance at all, and yet they still feel very connected with that part of their heritage. And that’s becoming more common, particularly among Japanese Americans, where multiracial identity is so common. There’s even a term for it I heard in California: ‘Quapa.’ If hapas are half Asians, quapas—like my kids—are quarter-Asians.”
 
Quapas have an overwhelmingly non-Asian ancestry; many don’t look Asian and don’t have Asian surnames. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that as Asian America becomes more multiracial, a growing number of quapa Asians are affirmatively reconnecting with their Asian heritage, and actively embracing a sense of Asian American identity—challenging society’s conventional means of defining race in the process…

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For black Americans, multi-racialism is not new

The Daily Voice
2008-12-17

Sitafa Harden

Clearly President-elect Barack Obama, the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, is multi-racial. The only question is what’s so new about that?

In a recent article, AP race and ethnicity writer Jesse Washington explored the issue of multi-racialism brought to a head by this year’s presidential election.
 
He wrote, “The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black.”
 
But the story of the existence of multi-racial Americans is a story as old as the country itself.  The saga is particularly poignant for black Americans whose mixed-race heritage often harkens back to slavery times…

…”Today, the spectrum of skin tones among African-Americans—even those with two black parents—is evidence of widespread white ancestry. Also, since blacks were sometimes light enough to pass for white, unknown numbers of white Americans today have blacks hidden in their family trees,” Washington acknowledged.
 
My own family is no exception. My great-grandmother Flora was born to a black mother and a Cherokee Native American father.  My great-grandfather’s mom was also black. His father was white.
 
So far I could check at least three boxes on a U.S. Census form.  And that’s just based on the three generations of family history I know about. The injustices of slavery obliterated the rest…

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HLA class I variation controlled for genetic admixture in the Gila River Indian Community of Arizona: A model for the Paleo-Indians

Human Immunology
Volume 33, Issue 1 (January 1992)
Pages 39–46
DOI: 10.1016/0198-8859(92)90050-W

Robert C. Williams
Histocompatibility Laboratory, Blood Systems, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona
Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University

Joan E. McAuley
Histocompatibility Laboratory, Blood Systems, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona

The genetic distribution of the HLA class I loci is presented for 619 “full blooded” Pima and Tohono O’odham Native Americans (Pimans) in the Gila River Indian Community. Variation in the Pimans is highly restricted. There are only three polymorphic alleles at the HLA-A locus, ^∗A2, ^∗A24, and ^∗A31, and only 10 alleles with a frequency greater than 0.01 at HLA-B where ^∗Bw48 (0.187), ^∗B35 (0.173), and the new epitope ^∗BN21 (0.143) have the highest frequencies. Two and three locus disequilibria values and haplotype frequencies are presented. Ten three-locus haplotypes account for more than 50% of the class I variation, with ^∗A24 ^∗BN21 ^∗Cw3 (0.085) having the highest frequency. Gm allotypes demonstrate that little admixture from non-Indian populations has entered the Community since the 17th century when Europeans first came to this area. As a consequence many alleles commonly found in Europeans and European Americans are efficient markers for Caucasian admixture, while the “private” Indian alleles, ^∗BN21 and ^∗Bw48, can be used to measure Native American admixture in Caucasian populations. It is suggested that this distribution in “full blooded” Pimans approximates that of the Paleo-Indian migrants who first entered the Americas between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago.

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Rethinking Race History: The Role of the Albino in the Frence Enlightenment Life Sciences

History and Theory
Volume 48, Issue 3 (October 2009)
pages 151–179
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00502.x

Andrew Curran, Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures
Wesleyan University

The scholarly quest to recover the construction of racial difference in the Enlightenment-era life sciences generally overlooks a singular fact: the vast majority of eighteenth-century thinkers who were engaged in theorizing the human were often far more preoccupied with preserving a belief in an essential human sameness than they were in creating categories of essential difference. This article charts the problem of a potential human sameness as it related to questions of category, biological processes, and the human and non-human through an examination of a neglected and key construct in the eighteenth-century life sciences, the albino. The albino was absorbed into a scientific narrative in 1744 when Maupertuis used the concept to put forward a theory of shared origins or monogenesis. Positing that the nègre blanc—quite literally a “white Negro”—was a racial throwback, a reversion to a primitive whiteness, Maupertuis inspired a new generation of thinkers, most notably the great French naturalist Buffon, to assert categorically that blacks had degenerated from a prototype white variety. The significance of the concept nègre blanc, which has not been studied sufficiently, cannot be overestimated. In addition to the fact that the new role of the nègre blanc clearly said as much about whiteness as it did about blackness, the albino generated a new diagnostic chronology of the human species.

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Anthropology at the Washington Meeting for 1911

Science Magazine
Volume 35, Number 904 (1912-04-26)
pages 665-676
DOI: 10.1126/science.35.904.665

George Grant MacCurdy (1863-1947), Assistant Professor of Archæology
Yale University

The annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association was held in the United States National Museum, Washington, D. C., December 27-30, 1911, in affiliation with Section H of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Folk-Lore Society. The attendance was good and the program exceptionally long and interesting. The most important features were the two symposia: (1) “The Problems of the Unity or Plurality and the Probable Place of Origin of the American Aborigines, ” discussed by J. W. Fewkes, A. Hrdlieka, W. H. Dall, J. W. Gidley, A. H. Clark, W. H. Holmes, Alice C. Fletcher, Walter Hough, Stansbury Hagar, A. F. Chamberlain and R. B. Dixon; and (2) “Culture and Environment,” discussed by J. W. Fewkes, Clark Wissler, Edward Sapir and Robert H. Lowie. The first of these two discussions is printed in full in the January-March issue of the Anthropologist, and the second will appear in the April-June issue. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes presided at the six sessions in charge of the American Anthropological Association; also at the single session of the American Folk-Lore Society, in the absence of Professor Henry M. Belden, president of that society. Professor George T. Ladd, vice president of Section H, was chairman of the single session in charge of the section. The social functions to which members of the affiliated societies were invited included: a reception by Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Woodward at the Carnegie Institution, a reception at the New National Museum, and the opening of the Corcoran Gallery of Art…

…Some Aspects of the Negro Problem: ALBERT ERNEST JENKS, University of Minnesota.

Immigration.—Since we have a serious negro problem is it reasonable that this problem be made more difficult by admission into the United States each year of an increasing number of un-Americanized immigrant alien negroes.

There are no United States laws against such immigration. Just short of 40,000 such persons have come to this country in the last ten years; in 1911 we received 6,721. They come from near at hand-three fourths coming from the West Indies. The West Indies have nearly 6,000,000 negroes, any of whom may come to the United States. America debars oriental peoples, not because they are inferior, but because they and their culture are so different from American people and culture. For the same reason we should exclude the “African black.” He should also be excluded because his admission is unfair to the white and also to the negro American-since he makes even more difficult one of America’s most perplexing problems.

Miscegenation.—There are two forms of negro-white miscegenation: (1) Legal marriage, permitted permitted in twenty-three states where the unions are largely between negro men and white women; (2) illegal, more or less temporary unions, usually between white men and negro women. Investigation in a certain area shows that 65 per cent. of the white wives of negro men are foreign born girls—usually of Teutonic peoples. Over two per cent. of children are born to these marriages. The result of both these forms of miscegenation is an increasing number of mulattoes cemented by color and prejudice to the negro race, while by inheritance they are endowed to a considerable degree with Anglo-Saxon initiative, will, ideals and desire for a square-deal—which, because of their color, they can seldom get. These mulattoes are the migrants in the north and west of the United States; they are more migrant than the restless, foot-free white American. The mulatto is the chief factor in the negro problem; the problem is bound to increase, then, in geographic area, in number of discontented negroes, and in its intensity, hand in hand with the increased flow of Anglo-Saxon blood into the veins of this new American man. All forms of miscegenation between the two races should be made a felony, punishable for one offence; and the father of children born to one white and one negro parent should be held to support and educate such children.

Who is a Negro?—The negro should be defined uniformly, so that there would be no question of the legal and racial status of any given person, no matter in what commonwealth he may be. To-day there is no such uniformity of laws.

Murderous Race Riots.—The white man ‘s passion against the offending, or suspected, negro is often nothing short of blood vengeance against the negro race. This is seen in the fact that assault against the virtue of a white woman is only one of some three dozen offences for which negroes are annually lynched. In many of these lynchings and burnings murder is not committed in the frenzy of the moment; the mob starts out to lynch or burn-the crime is premeditated. If America is to train her annual armies of immigrant recruits into law-respecting and law-abiding citizens, she must punish to the limit necessary all participants in murderous race riots.

Education.—Each negro child should have, so far as public and private schools are concerned, an equal opportunity with the white child to make of himself all that he is capable of being.

Investigation.—A commission should be selected to study every aspect of the negro problem. This commission might well be financed by private funds so as to keep it from the almost certain bias of politics and sectionalism…

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Johnny Otis, ‘Godfather of Rhythm and Blues,’ Dies at 90

New York Times
2012-01-19

Ihsan Taylor

Johnny Otis, the musician, bandleader, songwriter, impresario, disc jockey and talent scout often called “the godfather of rhythm and blues,” died on Tuesday at his home in Altadena, Calif. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his manager, Terry Gould.

Leading a band in the late 1940s that combined the high musical standards of big-band jazz with the raw urgency of gospel music and the blues, Mr. Otis played a key role in creating a new sound for a new audience of young urban blacks, a sound that within a few years would form the foundation of rock ’n’ roll.

With his uncanny ear for talent, he helped steer a long list of performers to stardom, among them Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Esther Phillips and Big Mama Thornton — whose hit recording of “Hound Dog,” made in 1952, four years before Elvis Presley’s, was produced by Mr. Otis and featured him on drums.

…Despite being a mover and shaker in the world of black music, Mr. Otis was not black, a fact that as far as he was concerned was simply an accident of birth. He was immersed in African-American culture from an early age and considered himself, he said, “black by persuasion.”

“Genetically, I’m pure Greek,” he told The San Jose Mercury News in 1994. “Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I’m a member of the black community.”…

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Science in the Service of the Far Right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Liberty Lobby

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 54, Issue 1 (Spring 1998)
pages 179–210
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1998.tb01212.x

Andrew S. Winston, Professor of Psychology
University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Henry E. Garrett (1894–1973) was the President of the American Psychological Association in 1946 and Chair of Psychology at Columbia University from 1941 to 1955. In the 1950s Garrett helped organize an international group of scholars dedicated to preventing race mixing, preserving segregation, and promoting the principles of early 20th century eugenics and “race hygiene.” Garrett became a leader in the fight against integration and collaborated with those who sought to revitalize the ideology of National Socialism. I discuss the intertwined history the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), the journal Mankind Quarterly, the neofascist Northern League, and the ultra-right-wing political group, the Liberty Lobby. The use of psychological research and expertise in the promotion of neofascism is examined.

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Racial Differences and Witch Hunting

Science Magazine
Volume 135, Number 3507 (1962-03-16)
pages 982-984
DOI: 10.1126/science.135.3507.982-a

Henry E. Garrett

In a recent issue of Science (1), Santiago Genovés of the University of Mexico discourses at some length concerning a paper of mine published in the Mankind Quarterly last year (2). Genovés objects to my criticism of Klineberg’s chapter “Race and psychology,” included in the UNESCO publication The Race Quesion in Modern Science (ed. 2, 1956). He confuses the issues through bad logic and too much vehemence What I actually did in my paper was to show, I think conclusively, that the evidence for no race differences presented by Klineberg is far too meager, too ambiguous, and too inconclusive to justify his sweeping assertion that “the scientist knows of no relation between race and psychology ” My paper would have been “unscientific racism” (Genovés’s term) only if its main purpose had been to support the doctrines of a “master race” or “chosen people.” As its aim was simply to point out the flimsy nature of Klineberg’s data, it is a legitimate enterprise,  unless one considers any criticism of equalitarianism to be morally untenable.

Genovés is critical of my view that widespread Negro-white hybridization has in the past led to illiteracy, social and economic backwardness, and degeneracy. He assumes that I condemn all race mixing, which is untrue. Most racial hybrids are viable, and many are successful people, as witness the Hawaiian-Chinese and Japanese-American crosses in Hawaii. But one need go no farther afield than the West Indies. Central America, and parts of South America to be convinced of the bad effects of Negro-white crosses when these are numerous. My concern was…

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