Mixed Race Studies

Creole Is, Creole Ain’t: Diachronic and Synchronic Attitudes toward Creole Identity in Southern Louisiana

Language in Society
Volume 29, Number 2 (June, 2000)
pages 237-258

Sylvie Dubois, Gabriel Muir Professor of French Studies
Louisiana State University

Megan Melançon, Associate Professor of English
Georgia College

Creole identity in Louisiana acquired diverse meanings for several ethnic groups during the French and Spanish regimes, before and after the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, and through the last part of the 20th century. In spite of a strong shift toward “Black” identity by many African Americans in the state, those who are fluent Creole French speakers now seem to be the repository of Louisiana Creole identity. This article presents a diachronic study of the different meanings applied to Creole identity which resulted from dramatic social, political, and economic changes. It also delimits and defines the actual attributes of Creole identity within two representative African American communities. Because of the historical and political conditions underlying Creole identity, African Americans who still identify as Creoles insist on linguistic attributes, rather than on the criterion of race, as essential characteristics of their ethnic identity.

European colonization during the 17th and 18th centuries gave rise to numerous Creole societies all over the world. In the 1869 edition of the Larousse dictionary, the French term créole referred to those born in, or native to, the local populace; but the 1929 edition depicted Creole as correctly designating only a Caucasian population—further noting that, “by way of analogy, it could be used to refer to non-Caucasian peoples of current or former colonies” (Dominguez 1986:15). A recent English dictionary (American Heritage 1992) gives five definitions of the word créole which pertain to identity: (a) A person of European descent born in the West Indies or Spanish America; (b) a person descended from or culturally related to the original French settlers of the southern US, especially Louisiana; (c) a person descended from or culturally related to the Spanish and Portuguese settlers of the Gulf States; (d) a person of mixed Black and European ancestry who speaks a creolized language; and (e) a Black slave born in the Americas, as opposed to one brought from Africa. In Louisiana, “the term came early to include any native, of French or Spanish descent by either parent, whose non-alliance with the slave race entitled him to social rank. Later, the term was adopted…

Student reflection on the Luther Lecture

Impetus
Luther College at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Fall 2011

Jenna Tickell

Senator Lillian Eva Dyck was the 36th Annual Luther Lecturer.  Senator Dyck presented her personal story in relation to the issues of racism and sexism in Canada.  She began with power-point statistics and ended with a standing ovation from the audience.  Her main point pertaining to statistics was to indicate the reality that statistics can be manipulated in various ways, so we must be cautious of what we take as fact from presumably unbiased numbers.  When looking at statistics, Senator Dyck reminded us not to get overwhelmed with the notion that maybe some race and gender issues are too big to tackle; for one, because statistics can be manipulated in various ways and truth from numbers is always subjective, and two, that the positive changes that have occurred in Canada regarding gender and race equality should be used to empower us to take the next step.  When Senator Dyck began her personal life story, her lecture really blossomed for me.  Through telling her life story, she reinforced what I had learned through my university studies while also educating me on a piece of Canadian history that I had not heard before.  As a Métis woman and as a university student, the value of guest lectures such as this is immense; she educated me regarding her personal history while at the same time empowered my activism and sense of self-discovery.              
 
Senator Dyck comes from a “mixed” racial family; her mother is Cree and her father is Chinese.  Her mother grew up on a reserve where abuse was high and poverty was extreme because of colonialist policies and laws.  During the same time period, there was considerable immigration from China, as workers were first needed to build the railway and then were left to find employment, often resulting in local Chinese cafes scattered throughout the small prairie towns in Saskatchewan.  Due to restrictive immigration policies, Chinese men were forced to leave their families behind but hoped that one day they would have the financial means to bring them to Canada. Unfortunately, immigration laws became even more restrictive, and this created an interesting phenomenon called the Chinese bachelors.  The government allowed their entrepreneurial efforts, but implemented a rule stating that Chinese men could not hire white women to work for them.  Chinese men needed waitresses for their small restaurants and since they could not hire white women it opened the opportunity for Aboriginal women to work with and meet Chinese men.  Thus, the racist laws actually facilitated “mixed” marriages between Chinese men and Aboriginal women within Saskatchewan…

Read the entire article here.

“Miss Eurafrica”: Men, Women’s Sexuality, and Métis Identity in Late Colonial French Africa, 1945-1960

Journal of the History of Sexuality
Volume 20, Number 3, September 2011
pages 568-593

Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Assistant Professor of African History
University of Chicago

The 1960 issue of the magazine L’Eurafricain (The Eurafrican) featured a cover photo of a woman announced as “Miss L’Eurafrique” (figure 1). Edited from Dakar under the auspices of the Union internationale des métis (International Union of Mixed-Race Persons), the magazine was written in French and printed in Paris. The membership of the union consisted of métis primarily from French-ruled sub-Saharan Africa. The primary mandate of the union was to advocate for financial, moral, and educational assistance to métis children. Published once or twice a year between 1945 and 1960, L’Eurafricain was the public face of the organization. The publication was a medium through which contributors sought to cultivate a sense of common identity among métis persons across geographical boundaries, facilitate communication among members, report on various métis social and cultural events, and promote the organization’s lobbying efforts. Contributors to L’Eurafricain included métis across French-speaking Africa as well as some black and white benefactors. It is not clear from extant records whether an actual pageant was held, what the criteria for judging were, who witnessed the pageant, how many contestants competed, and from where in French Africa these contestants hailed. The photo is a headshot of a café au lait-toned woman identified as Miss Marie Céline, a “young métisse (mixed-race woman) of Niger.”

A rather modest photo in comparison to those of post-World War II pageants in the United States, Miss L’Eurafrique looks at the camera in an unprovocative and grave manner. Her long hair is plaited into a single, neat braid without a stray hair in sight. Though her age is not indicated, she appears to be youthful, likely in her mid- to late teens. Her face is devoid of…

Read or purchase the article here.

When It Counts—More On Obama and the Census

InterfaithFamiliy.com
2010-05-03

Ruth Abrams

Elizabeth Chang wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post last week, “Why Obama should not have checked ‘black’ on his census form,”

Although I knew Obama self-identifies as African American, I was disappointed when I read that that’s what he checked on his census form. The federal government, finally heeding the desires of multiracial people to be able to accurately define themselves, had changed the rules in 2000, so he could have also checked white. Or he could have checked “some other race.” Instead, Obama went with black alone.

I understand why Chang wrote this, and even though I’m mostly on the same page with her about a lot of this, I think she’s wrong.

Chang identifies as the mother of biracial children in an interfaith family, and as someone raising biracial Jewish children. The whole Jewish community is behind her in wanting her children to be able identify as more than one thing. Jewish and Chinese and Hawaiian? Beautiful, we are so on board with that.

But on the other hand, I think there is something to Chang’s phrase, “when it counts, he is black.” When it counts, stand up for the people who need you. Based on his experiences, Obama judged this was the time to count as an African American. I read the piece in Newsweek last September on the work ahead of parents who want to raise anti-racist children. Parenting “colorblind”—pretending that racism doesn’t exist and that people aren’t different—doesn’t make racism go away or make your children accept difference. In fact it demonstrably does the opposite…

Read the entire article here.

Tiffany Rae Reid pens first book as a guide for raising biracial children

phillyBurbs.com
2011-12-18

Naila Francis, Staff Writer

At first, there were the looks, brazenly curious, speculative, and in Briety McKeon’s eyes, even judgmental.

Who was the little girl beside her? The one with the warm, honeyed tint to her skin, the darker, curlier hair, the features that didn’t quite match the pretty white woman beside her and the young white girl who was more her mirror image? How did she fit in?

Those implied questions would crush her, though McKeon adored her daughters equally, though she herself yearned for them to be as empowered by their obvious differences as the many bonds they shared.

“Still, to this day, we will walk into a room and get the look,” says McKeon, a single mom to daughters Aurora, 5, whose dad is black, and Lydia, 10, whose father is white. “There is going to be a certain paranoia in your head. It’s not so much that people are going to come out and say something. It’s more the reaction on their face. It’s like, ‘Are both of them yours? Is Aurora adopted?’ Even friends will say, ‘Yeah, it took me a while to figure it out.’”

When Aurora was born, McKeon admits to an initial naïveté: “On the inside, you think, ‘We’re OK with it, so everyone else will be OK with it.’ ”

As she quickly learned otherwise, she struggled with how to handle the blatant stares, the questions, the perceived criticism she encountered whenever she was in public with her girls.

But it wasn’t until Aurora came to her this year asking why she looked different from everybody else in their large Irish-Italian family that McKeon began worrying more about what her daughter was internalizing than the reactions of the world around her.

That’s when she turned to Tiffany Rae Reid…

At 36, the biracial Reid is still coming to terms with who she is. For more than half her life, the Voorhees resident believed she was white. She was raised in rural Ashtabula, Ohio, the daughter of a Hungarian mother and absentee African-American father whom she met for the first time when she was 26. Until that point, Reid, whose sister is also white, had believed her mother’s stories about her permanently tanned complexion. Whenever she dared to ask why she looked so different, her mother would pull out the family albums, pointing to photos of Reid’s dark-skinned Hungarian uncle, whose light green eyes, curly hair and thick lips mimicked her own.

“I would ask my mom, ‘Am I adopted? Why don’t I look like you?’ ” recalls Reid. “She created this whole reality that I was a dark Hungarian.”…

Read the entire article here.

Celtic Tiger, Hidden Dragon: exploring identity among second generation Chinese in Ireland

The Irish Migration, Race and Social Transformation Review
Volume 2, Issue 1 (Summer 2007)
pages 48-69

Nicola Yau, Independent Researcher

Through qualitative interviews, participant observation and an asynchronous group discussion on an Internet forum for second generation Chinese, this article explores identity among the second generation in ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. The Chinese, while being one of the largest minority ethnic groups, are almost invisible in other ways. This article examines how the second generation self-identify by analysing the theory of double consciousness, the significance of experiencing identity in contrast to a search for ‘authentic identities’ and the limitations of an Irish-only identity which questions what it really means to be Irish. The diasporic nature of identity is also explored through a ‘homing desire’ in terms of ties to China and Hong Kong, as is representation due to the changing nature of racialisation in Ireland following the recent arrival of ‘new’ Mainland Chinese immigrants and the addition of an ‘ethnic’ question to the 2006 Census form.

Introduction

Identity in the age of modernity is always in process, leading Stuart Hall (1996a) to pose the question: who needs ‘identity’? Whether we are migrants ourselves or products of migration, identity at home and away is vital in locating ourselves in the world. In the age of migration, identity gains greater saliency. In this article, I explore identity among second generation Chinese in ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. Identity formation has always played a significant part in my own life because my father is ethnic Chinese and I had often wondered who the other members of the second generation were and if they had similar experiences to my own. In my mind there was a ‘felt necessity’ (Stanley 1996: 48, original emphasis) to carry out this research because, while being one of the largest visible minority ethnic groups in Ireland, the Chinese are very much invisible in other ways. I believe it is also important to research self-identification among the second generation which will assist in understanding the wide variety of experiences making up the current ethnic diversity of the country.

I begin by looking at identity as a process, how the second generation self identify and how they feel they are perceived by mainstream Irish society. The diasporic nature of identity is explored through the idea of a ‘homing desire’ (Brah 1996), by examining ties to China and Hong Kong, and finally I use theories of home and belonging to look at how the second generation views Ireland and what it represents for them and their identities…

…When I asked my participants how they would describe their identity, answers varied depending on their own processes of identification. However, the sense of identification being a process, of becoming, of journeying was clear, for example, when Lucy said her identity was fragmented, fractured and belligerent. She explained this by saying:

Because you’re really on your own your parents aren’t really helping you out with that. I don’t think anyone can really help you out with that, you know what I mean…you kind of have to just, yeah, figure it out in your own head. It takes a few years…but then once you figure it out and are happy with what you figured out then it’s fine but up until that point it does give an awful amount of trouble.

It is clear that her identity was individual, that it was her journey and her sense of becoming. Identity to her was the process, not merely the label she chose to go by. It was only when I asked her how she would describe her national identity that she discussed labels, none of which she chose herself:

I think if you’re kind of half and half and in between I don’t know but maybe some people find it very easy in a country where there is a lot of other people like that, then it can be very easy to identify as being like say British or American, but in Ireland I don’t think you’re ever given the facility to do that. There just isn’t the, you know, there isn’t the acceptance here to do that; not that you need people’s acceptance but like that does have an influence on you, you know people’s reactions to you, so it doesn’t really mean that much, it’s a passport and it’s an accent and that’s about it. I think you can be yourself wherever you are, so you know you don’t have to be constantly identifying yourself as Irish to be like a person.

Lucy did not feel a particular affinity to being categorized as Irish. Her sense of becoming enveloped the process of identification as being a person of mixed-race origins. She highlighted the in-between nature of her identity and while her group of friends, all of whom are white Irish, would class her as Irish, she did not. Irish is an identity that is largely symbolic to her, which she reduces to an accent and a passport. Although she may be ethnically Irish and Chinese, she is racialised as Chinese which corresponds to Song’s (2003) statement that very often people are forcefully included in groups and attributed ethnic identities which are not the same as their own sense of identity…

…For those of mixed race origins there were additional elements in their identity processes. This was evident in how my participants reacted to me. When the issue of my visible Chineseness was raised, Ida drew attention to my dual heritage while Catherine, who is also of dual heritage, thought that I looked ‘obviously’ Chinese. This mirrors the idea that monoracial groups often question membership of mixed race people because they are not ‘fully’ of any one heritage (Song 2003). Therefore, self-perception and perception by others plays a significant role in identity formation. In the next section, I examine how the second generation feel they are perceived by mainstream Irish society…

…For some of my participants of mixed race origins the ethnicity question caused confusion. When discussing this with Jessica I asked her if she considered ticking the Other option, since it included those of a mixed race background. She came to the conclusion that:

I was going to tick it but then I thought well you know I do kind of identify as Chinese, so, and Asia is ok for me and it was a difficult one to fill in to be honest. It was the last question I filled in, in the whole census form because it doesn’t allow, I’m not a complicated background, race background and I had a dilemma of which of two to fill in.

Jessica’s decision to choose the Asian Irish option ahead of the Other category highlights her desire to stress both her identities, which the latter did not allow her to do. This reflects the opinions of Darryl Slater who is of dual heritage. He stresses his two ethnic identities, even though mainstream British society sees him only as Black. The mixed race lived experience adds a further dimension to the process of identification. As Song (2003) concludes, it is Slater’s experience of his parents and his family relationships, if nothing else, that is distinct from that of monoracial people.

This reflects Anderson’s (1991: 166) contention that ‘the fiction of the census is that everyone is in it, and that everyone has one—and only one—extremely clear place. No fractions’. On the contrary, there is uncertainty and there are fractions. This sentiment was further conveyed by Lucy:

I think that people who are, you know, mixed race and Chinese and Irish or brought up Irish like, you kind of fall down between the cracks really because you can’t, because you’re asked to identify yourself with one particular group but it’s kind of hard to do it because culturally you might be but racially you’re not really, still you’re not seen as the same, so eh, which is a bit ridiculous really because it doesn’t really matter…that’s Ireland though because in America you wouldn’t have that because it’s all just everyone, whatever, loads of different people you know you can all end up being American although you can have your separate identity but in Ireland it seems you have to be Irish and that’s it and if you don’t fit white Irish then you’re not really Irish…

Read the entire article here.

In My Experience: A Multi-Racial Heritage

Forum: with Michael Kransy
KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2011-12-16

Dave Iverson, Host

As part of our series “In My Experience,” spotlighting the personal stories of our listeners, we talk with a panel of biracial and multi-racial people about race, identity and what it’s like to grow up looking different from your neighbors and even your parents. We listen to their stories, and we welcome yours.

Download the episode (00:51:58) here.

Chinese Caucasian interracial parenting and ethnic identity

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1988
264 pages
Publication Number: AAT 8813254

Jeffrey B. Mar

This exploratory study looks at Chinese-Caucasian interracially married parents’ experience of raising their children. The goal is to characterize these parents’ stances toward their children’s ethnic identity. A semi-structured, clinical interview was developed for the study in order to gather information about the respondent’s family and individual histories, as well as their childrearing practices and beliefs. The sample consisted of 29 interracially married parents who had at least one child older than nine years old. Eight intraracially married Chinese parents were also interviewed for comparison purposes. The interview data was subjected to a content analysis which generated the following six-dimensional conceptual framework of ethnic identity: (1) Group Identification; (2)Ethnic Continuity; (3) Physical Characteristics; (4) Objective Culture; (5) Subjective Culture; (6) Sociopolitical Consciousness.

It was found that parents did not feel that their children’s ethnic identity was the focus of a great deal of concern. Parents also emphasized that it had rarely been a source of psychological or social difficulty for their children. The ethnic identity of the Chinese parent was stressed far more than the ethnic identity of the Caucasian parent. Surprisingly, parents expressed very little concern about their children’s racial marginality or the issue of racial continuity. On a conscious level, parents were more strongly committed to “group identification” and “objective culture.” In actual practice, however, their commitment in these areas carried a great deal of ambivalence. On an unconscious level, parents were most likely to pass down “subjective culture.” This was the one area of regular cultural conflict in these families, particularly around expectations about family roles. These parents’ greatest concern revolved around their children losing their Chinese culture. However, parents were generally unsuccessful when they tried to actively guide their children in an ethnic direction. Parents stressed that their children’s most durable ethnic commitments developed largely independently of their own efforts to influence, emphasizing that their own personal ethnic involvements (modelling) seemed to have the most impact.

The study concludes by offering some integrative comments about the nature of ethnic identity and the forces that propel it across generations. An important area of future research would be to talk with these parents’ biracial children about their ethnic identities.

Purchase the dissertation here.

The making of a middlerace: the social politics surrounding Black-White interracial marriages and Black White biracial identity

Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois
May 2008
253 pages

Yoftahe K. Manna

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Communication Studies

In an attempt to uncover the social politics surrounding Black-White interracial marriages and Black-White biracial identity, this thesis investigates outsiders’ and insiders’ perspectives on the issues. Black and White participants of the study reported positive attitudes toward Black-White interracial marriage, while they reported negative attitudes toward Black-White biracial individuals. No statistically significant differences were found between Blacks and Whites in attitudes toward Black-White interracial marriages and Black-White biracial identity. No statistically significant differences were found between men and women, either. The insiders’ reports, however, contradicted these findings. Both Black-White interracial couple and Black-White biracial adult participants of this study reported that society’s (Blacks’ and Whites’) attitudes toward them were negative. Findings are discussed and ideas for future studies forwarded.

Table of Contents

• Contents page
• Acknowledgments
• Abstract
• Foreword
• Chapter One: Review of the Literature
  • Introduction
  • BIack-White interracial marriage
  • Black-White intermarriages: Historical backgrounds
  • Interracial marriages on the rise
  • Intermarriage motivations
  • Challenges, discrimination, and stereotypes
  • Interracial marriages: Pathological?
  • Attitudes toward, and acceptance of, interracial marriages
  • Attitudes toward biracial identity
  • Black-White interracial marriages: Implications
  • Racial identity and Black-White biracial individuals
  • Implications of biracial identity
  • Role of environment and social support for biracial individuals
  • Implications of biracial identity
  • Social politics surrounding interracial marriage
  • Social politics surrounding biracial identity/Social stigma
  • Role of communication
  • Research importance
  • Symbolic interactionism and social constructionism
• Chapter Two: Attitudes toward Black-White Interracial marriage and Black-White biracial identity
  • Introduction
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • Attitudes toward Black-White interracial marriages
    • Attitudes toward Black-White biracial individuals/identity
  • Discussion
• Chapter Three: The Social Politics Surrounding Black-White Interracial Marriages
  • Introduction
  • Method
  • Findings
    • “Just another marriage”
    • “We are possible because of love”
    • Family’s attitude toward Black-White interracial marriage andrelationship with the interracial couple
    • Social attitudes toward and society’s relationship with Black-White interracial families
    • “Human”
    • “We have differences but not racial ones”
    • “God-centered”
    • “No challenges, but … “
    • Advantages and disadvantages
    • Comfort zone
    • Role of communication
    • “Support matters”
    • Upbringing and environment
    • “Better covered”
    • Race talk
    • “What we mean”
  • Discussion
• Chapter Four: Middlerace: The Social Politics Surrounding Black-White Biracial Identity
  • Introduction
  • Method
  • Findings
    • Racial identity
    • Challenges, advantages, and disadvantages
    • Attitudes toward Black-White interracial marriage
    • Attitudes toward Black-White biracial individuals
    • “Support matters”
    • Environment’s role
    • Middlerace
    • Role of communication
    • Race talk
    • “My box”
  • Discussion
• Chapter Five: General Discussion: The Social Politics Surrounding Black-White Interracial
  • Marriages and Black-White Biracial Identity
    • Introduction
    • Role of communication
    • Conclusion and ideas for future studies
• References
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C

Read the entire thesis here.

The role of the media in influencing social perceptions of racial relations in Brazil

Wayne State University
2006
126 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3243076
ISBN: 9780542982705

Gildasio Mendes Dos Santos

Based on the tenets of Social Identity Theory (SIT), Self-Categorization Theory (SDT), Cross-Group Relations (CGR) and Inter-Group Contact (IGC), this study examined how media programs depiction of Blacks may alter Whites and Morenos¹ self-perceptions of racial/ethnic relations. This exposure may increase or decrease Whites and Morenos prejudice against Blacks and, because of the negative depiction of the Blacks in the media, the likelihood that Morenos will see themselves as more similar to Whites than with Blacks. The factorial design format of the experiment was 2 x 2. Path analytic procedures were employed to test the extent to which the data were consistent with the hypothesized relationships among the variables. Participants were 260 graduate students from a Brazilian Central University (UCDB), who were male and female, Whites and Morenos, aged 18 to 30, enrolled in classes in the morning and evening, and representing low, middle and high economic classes.

The hypothesis tested suggested that video (induction) has a statistically significant effect on White attitudes towards Blacks, and the path model accounts for the variance in the relationship between video portrayal, Attitudes Towards Blacks (ATB), Whites/Morenos Similarities (WMS), and Moreno Single and Dual Identity (MSDI). Implications for the study of the effect of television on racial relations are discussed.

¹ Moreno is a term for a mixed-race Brazilian. In practice, the word refers primarily to Brazilians of mixed Black and White race (Wikipedia).

Purchase the dissertation here.