Mixed Race Studies

The Flemish Bastard and the Former Indians: Métis and Identity in Seventeenth-Century New York

The American Indian Quarterly
Volume 34, Number 1 (Winter 2010)
pages 83-108
E-ISSN: 1534-1828 Print ISSN: 0095-182X
DOI: 10.1353/aiq.0.0087

Tom Arne Midtrød, Professor of History
University of Iowa

In 1709 the English Board of Trade recommended the settlement of three thousand Palatine migrants on the Hudson and Mohawk rivers in New York. The officials expressed confidence that these colonists would not only produce naval stores for the fleet but also intermarry with the Indians “as the French do” and lay the foundation for an expanding fur trade. They knew well that French Canadians had long mingled with Indians and produced children of mixed ancestry, or métis. What they perhaps did not know was that New York had long had métis of its own.

Compared to Canada, New York never had a large métis population, and some historians have commented upon the social distance between Dutch and Indians. Nevertheless, intimacy resulting in métis children does not seem to have been uncommon in this colony. Dutch observers charged Indians with lack of sexual restraint, and liaisons between Dutch men and Native women sometimes worried the authorities. In 1638 the Dutch council prohibited adultery with blacks and Indians and at least occasionally took legal action. Manor lord and patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer warned his nephew Arent van Curler and forbade his tenants from sleeping with Indian females. Sexual promiscuity with Indian women was among the charges levied against provincial secretary Cornelis van Tiehnoven by his political enemies in the 1640s. Prosecutions of colonists impregnating Indian women are known from the early English period.

Native people probably thought these relations should involve a degree of reciprocity and mutual obligation. Historians have stressed that many Native peoples saw marriage and other intimate relations as means of incorporating outsiders, and an early Dutch observer alluded to the existence of this practice among Native traders in New Netherland…

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Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture

University of Massachusetts Press
November 2008
224 pages
paper ISBN 978-1-55849-675-0; cloth ISBN 978-1-55849-674-3

Baz Dreisinger, Associate Professor of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

A provocative look at the shifting contours of racial identity in America

In the United States, the notion of racial “passing” is usually associated with blacks and other minorities who seek to present themselves as part of the white majority. Yet as Baz Dreisinger demonstrates in this fascinating study, another form of this phenomenon also occurs, if less frequently, in American culture: cases in which legally white individuals are imagined, by themselves or by others, as passing for black.

In Near Black, Dreisinger explores the oft-ignored history of what she calls “reverse racial passing” by looking at a broad spectrum of short stories, novels, films, autobiographies, and pop-culture discourse that depict whites passing for black. The protagonists of these narratives, she shows, span centuries and cross contexts, from slavery to civil rights, jazz to rock to hip-hop. Tracing their role from the 1830s to the present day, Dreisinger argues that central to the enterprise of reverse passing are ideas about proximity. Because “blackness,” so to speak, is imagined as transmittable, proximity to blackness is invested with the power to turn whites black: those who are literally “near black” become metaphorically “near black.” While this concept first arose during Reconstruction in the context of white anxieties about miscegenation, it was revised by later white passers for whom proximity to blackness became an authenticating badge.

As Dreisinger shows, some white-to-black passers pass via self-identification. Jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow, for example, claimed that living among blacks and playing jazz had literally darkened his skin. Others are taken for black by a given community for a period of time. This was the experience of Jewish critic Waldo Frank during his travels with Jean Toomer, as well as that of disc jockey Hoss Allen, master of R&B slang at Nashville’s famed WLAC radio. For journalists John Howard Griffin and Grace Halsell, passing was a deliberate and fleeting experiment, while for Mark Twain’s fictional white slave in Pudd’nhead Wilson, it is a near-permanent and accidental occurrence.

Whether understood as a function of proximity or behavior, skin color or cultural heritage, self-definition or the perception of others, what all these variants of “reverse passing” demonstrate, according to Dreisinger, is that the lines defining racial identity in American culture are not only blurred but subject to change.

“… But … But I am Brown.” The Ascribed Categories of Identity: Children and Young People of Mixed Parentage

Child Care in Practice
Volume 13, Issue 2 (April 2007)
pages 83 – 94
DOI: 10.1080/13575270701201169

Annabel Goodyer, Principal Lecturer in Social Work
London South Bank University

Toyin Okitikpi

This paper explores the concept of the categorisation of social groups by looking at the issue of ascribed categories of identity for children and young people of mixed parentage. Our exploration of the knowledge-base in this area reveals that children and young people have clearly expressed views about their racial identity and that these views are broadly consistent across research studies. In essence, children and young people’s expressed views are that they are not mixed-race, black or white, but are in fact brown. The emerging sociology of childhood and the government’s current child participation agenda emphasise the centrality of children and young peoples’ perspectives on the provision of services that seek to support them. Through this perception, which places children and young people’s own understandings of their racial identity at the forefront of the analysis, we added fresh understandings to the existing data concerning ascribed categories of identity for children and young people of mixed parentage.

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Biracial Identity Development and Recommendations in Therapy

Psychiatry (Edgemont)
Volume 5, Number 11 (November 2008)
pages 37-44

Raushanah Hud-Aleem, DO
Department of Psychiatry
Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio

Jacqueline Countryman, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Department of Psychiatry
Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio

Identity development is an important area with which therapists who work with children should be familiar. The number of biracial children in the United States is increasing, and although this may not be the reason that a child presents for therapy, it is an area that often should be explored. This article will review the similarities and differences between Black and White racial identity development in the United States and address special challenges for the biracial child. Recommendations for treatment in therapy are reviewed.

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Multiracial versus Collective Black Categories: Examining Census Classification Debates in Brazil

Ethnicities
Volume 6, Number 1 (2006)
pages 74-101
DOI: 10.1177/1468796806061080

Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Edward E. Telles, Professor of Sociology
Princeton University

Current census debates in Brazil surrounding Brazilian race categories center on two contrasting proposals: the adoption of the multiracial moreno term vs. the use of the collective black classification negro. Those proposing the former base their argument on the right to self-classify according to one’s own sense of identity. Proponents of the negro category contend that it would be most efficient for redressing racial discrimination. We examine the meaning and saliency of these categories and explore the possible consequences of their adoption. Using national survey data, we demonstrate how education, age, color, sex and local racial composition structure the choices of moreno and negro over official census terms. Findings include a negative correlation between education and the choice of moreno, while the opposite is true for negro. In addition, an age effect on both categories suggests a popular shift in racial labeling away from official census terms. We note that similar issues structure current census debates in the USA.

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Biracial Youth and Their Parents: Counseling Considerations for Family Therapists

The Family Journal
Volume 12, Number 2 (2004)
pages 170-173
DOI: 10.1177/1066480703261977

Laurie McClurg
University of Virginia

In spite of recent developments in the area of multicultural family therapy, interracial families and their biracial children remain a neglected population in the mental health field. Very little research exists, and few suggestions have been made for working with this unique population. This article addresses the developmental needs of such families and provides suggestions for family counselors and therapists.

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Crises of Whiteness and Empire in Colonial Indochina: The Removal of Abandoned Eurasian Children From the Vietnamese Milieu, 1890–1956

Journal of Social History
Volume 43, Number 3 (Spring 2010)
pages 587-613
E-ISSN: 1527-1897 Print ISSN: 0022-4529
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.0.0304

Christina Firpo, Assistant Professor of History
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

From 1890–1956, non-governmental welfare agencies worked with the French colonial government in Indochina to remove Eurasian children, who had been abandoned by their French fathers, from their Vietnamese mothers and the Vietnamese cultural environment. In an era marked by historical exigencies, perceived threats to white prestige, and inherent challenges to the colonial patriarchy, such children were believed to be a threat to colonial security and white prestige. The racial formations of abandoned Eurasian children in colonial Indochina changed repeatedly in response to these threats. Drawing from the rhetoric of racial sciences and led by anxieties over changes colonial security, French civilians increasingly and colonial government administrators increasingly made the case that these children where white and must be removed from their Vietnamese mothers’ care, using force if necessary.

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Indians and Mestizos: Identity and Urban Popular Culture in Andean Peru

Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume 26, Issue 2 (June 2000)
pages 239 – 253
DOI: 10.1080/03057070050010093

Fiona Wilson

The article begins with a discussion of the chronology of conquest and liberation in Peru and reflects on the changing meanings given to the racial categories of Indian and mestizo (half-caste) in colonial and post-colonial periods. Using popular culture as a lens, the transformations taking place in images of race and urban social identities are analysed, using as a case study a provincial town in the Andean highlands in the course of the twentieth century. Through changing forms of street theatre urban groups worked out new identities by weaving together, juxtaposing and contesting different cultural forms. The article explores in detail two manifestations of street theatre that predominated. These are the Dance of the Inca in the 1900s that addressed Indian/white relations, and carnaval where relations between mestizo and white were played out for much of the twentieth century.

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Biracial (Black/White) Women: A Qualitative Study of Racial Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for Therapy

Women & Therapy
Volume 27, Issue 1 & 2 (January 2004)
pages 45 – 64
DOI: 10.1300/J015v27n01_04

Tamara R. Buckley, Associate Professor of Counseling
Hunter College, City University of New York

Carter T. Robert, Professor of Psychology and Education
Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology
Teachers College, Columbia University

This study examined racial attitudes and beliefs in five biracial (Black/White) women. Participants completed three one-hour semistructured interviews designed to explore the impact of race on psychosocial development and psychological functioning from early childhood through the adult years. Results of thematic analyses and implications for clinical practice are presented.

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Assessing Shifting Racial Boundaries: Racial Classification of Biracial Asian Children in the 2000 Census

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
2009-12-07
77 pages

Sara Megan McDonough

Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Sociology.

This study examined the racial identification of biracial Asian children by their parents, in a sample (n=9,513) drawn from 2000 Public Use Microdata Series Census data (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series 2009). I used competing theories of Asian assimilation to examine how characteristics of the child, the Asian parent, the non-Asian parent, and the local Asian community influenced the likelihood of a child′s being identified as Asian, non-Asian, or biracial. Findings showed that child′s, both parents′, and community characteristics significantly influenced the child′s racial classification. While the effects of greater assimilation significantly increased the likelihood of an Asian classification for third-generation children, in contrast, it decreased the likelihood of an Asian identification for first- and second-generation children. Findings showed that children with a black parent were less likely than children with a white parent to be identified as Asian instead of non-Asian. However, inconsistent with past findings, children with a Hispanic parent were more likely than those with a white parent to be identified as Asian rather than non-Asian. Exploratory analyses concerning a biracial classification indicate significant relationships with factors previously found to increase the likelihood of an Asian identification, including the effects of greater Asian assimilation and size of the local Asian community. Moreover, the relationship between parent‟s and child′s gender on the child‟s racial classification may be more complicated than previously theorized, as I found evidence of “gender-matching” which meant that boys were more likely to be identified like their fathers, and girls more like their mothers.

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