Mixed Race Studies

A Review of “Mixed Race Hollywood”

Quarterly Review of Film and Video
Volume 28, Issue 5 (2011)
pages 428-433
DOI: 10.1080/10509200902820589

Delia Konzett, Associate Professor of English
University of New Hampshire

Mixed Race Hollywood, edited by Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas. New York: New York University Press, 2008

The problem of the 20th century, W. E. B. Dubois would famously write in 1903, is that of the color line. Over 100 years later, we can unfortunately still say the problem of the 21st century is the color line, particularly our inability to move beyond entrenched binary conceptions of race (white/black or white/nonwhite) and acknowledge the new multiracial contexts that inform our present global, multicultural, and multimedia era. Mixed Race Hollywood is a timely and extremely valuable collection of essays that explores the various facets of the history of mixed race representation in mainstream American film and media.

Such representation has a long and complex tradition in Hollywood, ranging from the notorious depiction of the treacherous mulatto in Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915) and the non-threatening interracial pairing of Shirley Temple and Bojangles Robinson in The Little Colonel (David Butler, 1935) and The Littlest Rebel (David Butler, 1935) to the mixed race love affair in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967) that symbolically announced the arrival proper of civil rights. Since the mid 1990s, as the anthology’s editors Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas note, there has been a significant cultural shift in mixed race representation as seen in the “veritable explosion of multiracial imagery in…

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The colour line and the colour scale in the twentieth century

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Issue 7, 2012
pages 1109-1131
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.605902

Michael Banton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology
University of Bristol

Some more recent evidence supports Du Bois’ prediction that the twentieth century would prove the century of the colour line. It indicates that men have always and everywhere shown a preference for fair complexioned women as sexual partners, whereas males seeking a mate are rarely disadvantaged by a dark complexion. In the employment market in the USA, a dark complexion is a significant disadvantage for both males and females. Though there is no properly comparable evidence from other countries, there appears to be a widespread tendency for any negative valuation of darker skin colour to be incorporated into a scale of socio-economic status. In some situations a colour scale is replacing the colour line.

Du Bois’ reference to differences of colour has been largely superseded in English-speaking countries by references to differences of race. From a policy standpoint, the switch from colour to race has had both positive and negative consequences. From a sociological standpoint, it has made it more difficult to disaggregate the dimensions of social difference and to dispel the confusions engendered by ideas of racial difference.

Introduction

In the first year of the century, and then again three years later, W. E. B. Du Bois (2005:x, 10) wrote that ‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line
the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and in the islands of the sea’. His prediction was only partially borne out, for the main problems of the twentieth century were the militarism that stimulated the slaughter of World War I, the dictatorships that led to World War II, the armaments race of the Cold War, the decolonization process, and the problems that the international political system could not grasp, particularly those of population growth and climate change. Colour-consciousness contributed to the fourth of these.

The expression, ‘a colour line’, was a metaphor drawing on Du Bois’ experiences in North America that was very effective for the designation of a political problem. Yet if a name chosen to designate a political problem conveys a thesis about the source, or cause, of the thing in question, it also poses an intellectual problem. In this case the expression ‘colour line’ grasped only one facet of the relations between humans of different colour…

…In the early years of the century there appeared to be a scientific justification for racial classification, even if there was no agreement upon quite which classification to employ, or for what purpose. That is no longer the case, and the educated public is now aware that there is no close correspondence between the social categories identified as races and the classes that assemble genetic similarities and dissimilarities. For example, it has been known for a long time that the social classification of persons in the USA as black or white is biologically misleading. A statistical analysis using historical census data and historical data on immigration and birth rates concluded in 1958 that twenty-one per cent of the white population had black ancestors, and that the majority of the persons with some African ancestry were classified as white (Stuckert 1958). In the aftermath of World War II, and in the international revulsion from the use made of racial doctrines by Nazi Germany, the idiom of race was used, in both international and national laws, to prohibit discrimination on grounds of race, colour, descent, and national or ethnic origin. Racial classifications have since been used in population censuses, in programmes for the promotion of  equality, and, at times, but in a different way, in medical research. The use of the word race in the law will continue, as it may in other parts of the everyday world of practical affairs…

…Though variations in skin colour can be measured objectively by use of a photospectrometer, these measures provide only approximate indications of a person’s genotype. Better indications can be taken from work in molecular anthropology. Such research has found that six genetic loci are involved in the determination of a person’s skin colour, so it is possible for a person to have a fifteen
-twenty per cent African component in his or her genotype without possessing any of the alleles that code for dark skin (Sweet 2004). This makes it easier, in a country like the USA, for a person with African ancestry to ‘pass for white’. For the same genetic reasons, African admixture amongst white Americans can increase without any significant change in skin tone. Conversely, amongst African-Americans, an amount of African admixture is directly correlated with darker skin since no selective pressure is applied; as a result, African-Americans may have a very wide range of African admixture (
>0-
100%), whereas European-Americans have a lower range (2
-20%). As there is a small overlap, it is possible that a man who identifies himself as white may have more African admixture than a man who identifies himself as black…

…This essay reviews the political problems of the twentieth century, at the same time calling attention to the intellectual problem posed by the multidimensionality of difference. Why is it that, in given circumstances, certain dimensions acquire a particular significance? This is the explanandum that has to be approached step by step. Starting from Du Bois’ prediction, it is argued here, firstly, that use of the word colour concentrates attention upon what serves as a visible sign of a social difference; secondly, that sociologists have to account for how it comes to be used as such a sign; and thirdly, that when sociologists use race as if it were a synonym for colour (as English-speaking sociologists often do) they make it more difficult to identify what has to be explained. As the essay’s title suggests, it also contends that the notion of a colour scale helps consideration of the function of colour as a social sign…

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Black and white twins

The Guardian
2011-09-23

Joanna Moorhead

James and Daniel are twins. What sets them apart is that one is white and one is black—and the differences don’t end there, as Joanna Moorhead discovers

The two teenage boys sitting on the sofa opposite are different in almost every way. On the left is James: he’s black, he’s gay, he’s gregarious, and he’s academic. He’s taking three A-levels next summer, and wants to go to university. Daniel, sitting beside him, is white. He’s straight, he’s shy, and he didn’t enjoy school at all. He left after taking GCSEs, and hopes that his next move will be an apprenticeship in engineering.

So, given that they are diametrically opposed, there is one truly surprising thing about James and Daniel. They are twins. They were born on 27 March 1993, the sons of Alyson and Errol Kelly, who live in south-east London. And from the start, it was obvious to everyone that they were the complete flipside of identical. “They were chalk and cheese, right from the word go,” says Alyson. “It was hard to believe they were even brothers, let alone twins.”…

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Germany’s ‘Brown Babies’: The Difficult Identities of Post-War Black Children of GIs

Speigel Online International
2009-10-13

Stephanie Siek

Rosemarie Pena’s identity document after her adoption. “Many of us never knew we were adopted, and many of us thought we were the only one,” Pena said. Her adoptive parents changed her name to Wanda Lynn Haymon. After discovering she was adopted, she reclaimed her birth name.

For many of the now-adult children of white German women and African-American GIs, adopted by families in the United States after World War II, the search for the truth has been difficult. Online communities are helping.

Rudi Richardson knew something about what it meant to be a black man in the United States. But after being deported to Germany, the country where he was born, shortly before his 47th birthday, he had to start figuring out what it meant to be black and German—in a land he barely remembered and whose language he didn’t speak.

He started life as Udo Ackermann, born in a Bavarian women’s prison in 1955. His mother, a Jewish woman named Liesolette, was serving a prison term for prostitution. His father, whom he never met, was an African-American serviceman named George. Rudi was given up for adoption.

Like thousands of other postwar children with black GI fathers and white German mothers, Richardson was raised by an African-American military family in the US. He has spent his life trying to find where he fits in.

Born in an era when Germany was still grappling with its responsibility for the Holocaust and when the US Army had a policy of not acknowledging paternity claims brought against its soldiers stationed abroad, some of these children were put up for adoption in the United States. At the time, Germany judged itself incapable of absorbing these “brown babies”—as they have come to call themselves. In the late 1940s and 1950s, efforts were made to match them with African-American military families, many of whom were stationed around Germany at the time…

…But Cardwell, who is writing a book about his experiences, has learned that his own story is not that simple. Brought to the United States as a four-year-old and adopted by an African-American couple in Washington D.C., he was raised believing that he was a very light-skinned black man. It was not until he began trying to find his biological parents as an adult that he discovered his mother was a half-German refugee from Poland, and his father was native Hawaiian who was classified as “colored” by the military because of his skin color.

“I’ve been run out of white people’s houses: ‘Who’s this black person you’re bringing in here?’ I’ve been run out of black people’s houses: ‘Who’s this white person you’re bringing in here?'” Cardwell said of his adolescence and early adulthood. “There is no belonging, which is what brown babies sought most.”…

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The “Common Sense” of Race

Southern California Law Review
Volume 83, Number 3 (March 2010)
pages 441-452

Neil Gotanda, Professor of Law
Western State University College of Law, Fullerton California

In What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, Ariela J. Gross provides a compelling and nuanced account of race in America. Through her examination of “racial trials”—litigation in which racial identification plays a crucial role—Gross ties together the personal, social, and political dimensions of racial identity and classification. This discussion provides an important new perspective on the study of race in this country.

Earlier studies of racial classification have focused on the meanings of statutory racial categories. Gross, however, centers her analysis on the formation and reaffirmation of racial categories as a primarily social process. Gross draws from numerous racial trials—spanning slavery in the antebellum South to modern-day Mexican Americans grappling with “whiteness”—in order to survey the origins and history of “black” and “white” as categories in American life.

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Colourism and African-American Wealth: Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century South

Journal of Population Economics
Volume 20, Number 3 (July 2007)
pages 599-620
DOI: 10.1007/s00148-006-0111-x

Howard Bodenhorn, Professor of Economics
Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Christopher S. Ruebeck, Associate Professor of Economics
Lafayette University, Easton, Pennsylvania

Black is not always black. Subtle distinctions in skin tone translate into significant differences in outcomes. Data on more than 15,000 households interviewed during the 1860 US federal census exhibit sharp differences in wealth holdings between white, mulatto, and black households in the urban South. We document these differences, investigate relationships between wealth and recorded household characteristics, and decompose the wealth gaps to examine the returns to racial characteristics. The analysis reveals a distinct racial hierarchy. Black wealth was only 20% of white wealth, but mulattoes held nearly 50% of whites’ wealth. This advantage is consistent with colourism, the favouritism shown to those of lighter complexion.

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Acting White or Acting Black: Mixed-Race Adolescents’ Identity and Behavior

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
Volume 9, Issue 1 (2009)
44 pages
DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.1688

Christopher S. Ruebeck, Associate Professor of Economics
Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania

Susan L. Averett, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics
Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania

Howard N. Bodenhorn, Professor of Economics
Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Although rates of interracial marriage are on the rise, we still know relatively little about the experiences of mixed-race adolescents. In this paper, we examine the identity and behavior of mixed-race (black and white) youth. We find that mixed-race youth adopt both types of behaviors, those that can be empirically characterized as ‘black’ and those that can be characterized as ‘white.’  When we combine both types of behavior, average mixed-race behavior is a combination that is neither white nor black, and the variance in mixed-race behavior is generally greater than the variance in behavior of monoracial adolescents, especially as compared to the black racial group. Adolescence is the time during which there is most pressure to establish an identity, and our results indicate that mixed-race youth are finding their own distinct identities, not necessarily ‘joining’ either monoracial group, but in another sense joining both of them.

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The Revitalization of Eurasian Identity in Singapore

Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science
Volume 25, Number 2 (1997)
pages 7-24
DOI: 10.1163/030382497X00149

Alexius Pereira

This paper accounts for the revitalization of Eurasian identity in the 1990s. The revitalization was instrumental, as Eurasians had found themselves socially marginalized, particularly since the other ethnic groups were becoming more assertive about their respective ethnic identities since the 1980s. To counter this, the Eurasians selectively constructed a set of cultural practices and outlooks which were unique to the group, but not necessarily reviving practices that were “lost”. The revitalization was therefore not a deep-seated emotional or primordial attachment to their identity; instead, it was used to improve the position of the community in Singapore.

Holistic processing for own-, other- and mixed-race faces is modulated by awareness of race category

Journal of Vision
Volume 11, Number 11 (September 23, 2011)
Article 670
DOI: 10.1167/11.11.670

Rachel Robbins, Research Lecturer
University of Western Sydney
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

Dilan Perera
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

People are worse at recognising, and show less holistic integration, for other-race faces. Debate continues on how much this is based on perceptual experience versus other factors such as motivation to individuate members of another race. Here we tested integration, using the part-whole task, and racial classification for four faces types matched on basic skin tone: white faces with white features, black faces with black features, white faces with black features and black faces with white features. Task order was manipulated between participants, with both Caucasians and Non-Caucasians tested. If experience is the key factor, integration should be stronger for more experienced faces, regardless of task order (WW>BB>WB = BW, both groups). If motivation or awareness of race is key, then task order should influence the results such that completing the categorisation task first leads to more integration for faces more like one’s in-group (C: WW>WB>BW>BB; Non-C: WW = WB = BW = BB). Race categorisation in mixed-race faces was most affected by changes to the eyes for both Caucasian and non-Caucasian participants. Caucasian participants who completed the part-whole task first showed significant advantages for wholes over parts for all four faces types. However, Caucasian participants who completed the race categorisation task first showed a significant part-whole effect only for black faces with white features, with reduced accuracy on most whole conditions. Non-Caucasian participants showed an overall similar pattern of results, although those who did the part-whole task first only showed significant part-whole effects for black faces with black features and black faces with white features. Caucasian and non-Caucasian groups were closely matched on experience with black faces, but Caucasian participants had higher levels of experience with white faces. This experiment suggests that experience and awareness of race both affect the level of holistic processing for faces, but awareness of race has more influence on integration.

Race Mixture in Hawaii

Journal of Heredity
Volume 10, Issue 1 (1919)
pages 41-47

Vaughan MacCaughey
College of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii

THE CHINESE

The   Hawaiian Islands   arc remarkable for the diversity of  races represented and for the varied conjugal race-mingling which has taken place in this tiny island world during the past hundred and fifty years. Excellent general accounts of the nature of Hawaii’s population can be found in W. F. Blackman’s “The Making of Hawaii” (Macmillan, 1906, 266 pp.) and in “Race Mingling in Hawaii” by Ernest J. Reece (American Journal of Sociology, 20:104-16, July. 1914). The present paper is the first of a series of eugenic studies of Hawaii’s polyglot and polychrome population, a series which embodies data not heretofore assembled and made available for students of eugenics.

The population of Hawaii, 1918, in round numbers is as follows:

Asiatics............................153,500
   Japanses..................105,000
   Chinese....................23,000
   Koreans.....................5,000
   Filipinos..................20,000

Polynesians..........................40,000
   Hawaiian...................23,000
   Caucasian-Hawaiians........11,000
   Chinese-Hawaiians...........6,000

Latins...............................31,000
   Portuguese.................23,000
   Spanish.....................2,000
   Porto Rican.................6,000

Americans. Scotch. British, Germans,
Russians, etc........................22,000

The Hawaiians are remnants of the splendid Polynesian stock that formerly solely possessed this lovely mid-Pacific archipelago. The Americans, North Europeans and other “white men” represent the traders, missionaries, beach-combers, sailors, fugitives from justice, merchants, sugar planters, professional, military and capitalistic classes that have completely dominated and exploited the life and resources of the islands. All of the other races—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Spanish, Portuguese, Porto Rican, Russian, Negro, South Sea Islanders, etc.—have been imported wholesale by the agricultural corporations to work in the sugar-cane fields. At present the population of Hawaii is predominantly Asiatic, alien, male, illiterate, non-English-speaking, non-Christian, landless, and homeless.

The Chinese have been associated with Hawaii since very early times The first epoch in Hawaii’s industrial exploitation was the “Sandalwood Period,” during which an active trade was carried on with China. Chinese coolie? began to he imported in small numbers about 1870. The flood of coolie labor swelled rapidly and reached a maximum about 1870. The exclusion law, which went into effect with annexation in 1898, has decreased the number of Chinese immigrants. The immigration of foreign-born Chinese into Hawaii to 1910 has been as follows:

Previous to 1890..............6,580
1891-1895.....................3,340
1898-1900.................... 3,830
1900-1905 ......................445
1905-1910.......................205

The Chinese now number 23,000; the increase during the past decade has been slight. There are now 800 registered Chinese voters in Hawaii. In 1900 there were almost as many Chinese children (1,300) in the public and private…

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