Mixed Race Studies

Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation

University of North Carolina Press
April 2010
368 pages
6.125 x 9.25
12 illus., 3 tables, 5 genealogical charts, 3 maps, appends., notes, index
Cloth ISBN:  978-0-8078-3368-1
Paper ISBN:  978-0-8078-7111-9

Malinda Maynor Lowery, Assistant Professor of History
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Awards & Distinctions

• 2010 Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award
• 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

With more than 50,000 enrolled members, North Carolina‘s Lumbee Indians are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a Lumbee herself, describes how, between Reconstruction and the 1950s, the Lumbee crafted and maintained a distinct identity in an era defined by racial segregation in the South and paternalistic policies for Indians throughout the nation. They did so against the backdrop of some of the central issues in American history, including race, class, politics, and citizenship.

Lowery argues that “Indian” is a dynamic identity that, for outsiders, sometimes hinged on the presence of “Indian blood” (for federal New Deal policy makers) and sometimes on the absence of “black blood” (for southern white segregationists). Lumbee people themselves have constructed their identity in layers that tie together kin and place, race and class, tribe and nation; however, Indians have not always agreed on how to weave this fabric into a whole. Using photographs, letters, genealogy, federal and state records, and first-person family history, Lowery narrates this compelling conversation between insiders and outsiders, demonstrating how the Lumbee People challenged the boundaries of Indian, southern, and American identities

Table of Contents

• Preface: Telling Our Own Stories
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Terms
• Introduction: Coming Together
• 1 ADAPTING TO SEGREGATION
• 2 MAKING HOME AND MAKING LEADERS
• 3 TAKING SIDES
• 4 CONFRONTING THE NEW DEAL
• 5 Pembroke Farms: Gaining Economic Autonomy
• 6 MEASURING IDENTITY
• 7 RECOGNIZING THE LUMBEE
• Conclusion: Creating a Lumbee and Tuscarora Future
• Appendix
• Notes
• Index

Sugar & Slate

Planet Books
January 2002
192 pages
ISBN-10: 0954088107
ISBN-13: 978-0954088101
8.1 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches

Charlotte Williams, Professor of Social Work
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year, 2003

A mixed-race young woman, the daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and black father from Guyana, grows up in a small town on the coast of north Wales. From there she travels to Africa, the Caribbean and finally back to Wales. What begins as a journey becomes a fascinating confrontation with herself and with the idea of Wales and Welshness.

Sugar and Slate is a remarkable personal memoir that speaks to the wider experience of mixed-race Britons, characterised by its constant pull of to-ing and fro-ing, movement and dislocation, going away and coming back with always a sense of being ‘half home’. It is a story of Welshness and a story of Wales but above all a story for those of us who look over our shoulder across the sea to some other place.

The Attitudes Toward Multiracial Children Scale

Journal of Black Psychology
2001
Vol. 27, No. 1
pages 86-99
DOI: 10.1177/0095798401027001005

Charmain F. Jackman
University of Southern Mississippi

William G. Wagner, Professor
University of Southern Mississippi

J. T. Johnson
University of Southern Mississippi

The Attitudes Toward Multiracial Children Scale (AMCS) was developed to measure adults’ attitudes concerning the psychosocial development of multiracial children. Two separate studies were conducted to evaluate the items devised for the scale. In the first study, an initial version of the AMCS was administered to 250 college students from racially/ethnically diverse backgrounds. Results revealed that scores on the 43-item scale were internally consistent (Cronbach’s alpha = .92) and that four factors (i.e., Multiracial Identity, Multiracial Heritage, General Adjustment, and Social Relationships) could be identified. The AMCS was then revised and administered to a group of 187 participants. Again, factor analysis yielded a four-factor solution (i.e., Psychosocial Adjustment, Self-Esteem, Multiracial Identity, and Multiracial Heritage). The internal consistency for scores on the resulting 23-item scale was good (Cronbach’s alpha = .87) and 3-week test-retest reliability (n = 15) was .77.

Winnefred and Agnes: The Story of Two Women

Independent Publishing Group
September 2002
288 pages, Cloth, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
6 B/W Photos, 1 Chart, 1 Map
ISBN: 9780795701139 (0795701136)

Agnes Lottering

This is a rare, possibly the first, first-person account of being part of the group of mixed-race families who came into existence at Ngome in the province of KwaZulu-Natal when, in the late 19th century, well-to-do British and Irish traders took Zulu wives and adopted Zulu cultural practices, including polygamy. The author recounts her life and that of her mother in this true account of a Zululand family whose lives were touched in equal measure by tribal belief and Christianity, healing herbs, magical birds, and the tokeloshe, a mischievous creature surrounded by myth and sexual innuendo. It is also a tale of betrayal, grand passion, bewitchment, abuse, and the triumph of love. Part love story and family saga, part social history, it is above all a uniquely South African tale.

Agnes Lottering was born in Ngome Forest in 1937. Due to financial and other constraints, she never completed her schooling. Yet she is a gifted storyteller, telling her tale with freshness and authenticity. She lives in Durban, South Africa.

Half-Caste and Other Poems

Hodder Literature
2005-09-15
Paperback: 80 pages
19.4 x 12.2 x 0.8 cm
ISBN-10: 0340893893
ISBN-13: 978-0340893890

John Agard

‘Half-Caste’, the title poem of this collection, is one of the set poems for GCSE English for AQA A, the largest spec with 375,000 candidates. But its influence and presence extends well beyond the ‘AQA’ schools, making John Agard one of the most popular, well-known and respected poet-performers on the schools circuit.

Through his 45 poems, John Agard explores a wide variety of themes: racial harmony, tension and diversity; war and religion; society, patriotism and politics; as well as more personal ideas on relationships, love and attraction. This is all delivered with a range and depth in terms of content, language, poetic form and technique that will engage and motivate KS3 and KS4 pupils while developing their understanding. An ideal collection to sit at the heart of a scheme of work on cross-cultural themes.

Table of Contents

And All Was Good
My Move Your Move
Union Jack and Union Jill
Half-caste [Read here.]
Rainbow
Tongue
A Word
Message From Your Mobile
Right-On Mr Left
Smoke-loving Girl Blues
Angels For Neighbours
Flag
A Vampire’s Priorities
A Hello From Cello
The Hurt Boy and The Birds
Boomerang
That Mouth
Behold My Pen
Punctuating The Silence
Poetry Jump-Up
Follow That Steel Pan
Coal’s Son and Diamond’s Daughter
A Date With Spring
volte For Your Local Shadow
Twins
Quest
Clouds
The Ozone Liar
Cowtalk
Who’ll Sve Dying Man?
For the Record
One Question From A Bullet
A Hand On A Forehead
Not Arms
Checking Out Me History
Toussaint L’Overture Acknowledges Wordsworth’s Sonnet ‘To Toussaint L’Overture’
Windrush Child
Crybaby Prime Minister
Skin
A Social Skeleton
The Giant With A Taste For Mongrel Blood
Behind The Menu
Salt
Coal
Marriage of Opposites
Notes

Hey Mum, What’s a Half-Caste?

Independent Publishing Group
April 2010
316 pages, Trade Paper, 5.75 x 8.25
35 B/W Photos
ISBN: 9781921248030 (1921248033)

Lorraine McGee-Sippel

Compelling and honest, this memoir recounts the diffuse effects of a governmental policy that required the author’s adoptive parents to be informed of her Afro-American ancestry. Chronicling her personal search for cultural identity, this account also delves into indigenous studies, Australian history, and psychology. This remarkable story is simultaneously universal and deeply personal and will educate and inspire readers.

Lorraine McGee-Sippel is a descendent of the Yorta Yorta people from the Murray-Goulburn region on the Victorian-NSW border. She is a contributor to numerous anthologies and publications, and in 2008 she received the Inaugural Yabun Elder of the Year Award for her contribution to reconciliation and community work.

The Identity Development of Biracial Children and Society’s Impact Thereon

Workshop by Francis Wardle
1989-03-04
18 pages

Francis Wardle

This document is taken from a workshop presentation focusing on the identity development of biracial children. The confusion of the academic community concerning this topic is emphasized. Three main aspects are examined: (1) “What is the identity process of any child?”; (2) “What is society?”; and (3) “How does society impact the developmental process?”. The identity process is outlined as beginning at birth, when the infant first develops trust and bonds with his or her parent or caregiver. The developmental levels of infancy, young children from birth to five years of age, and adolescence are highlighted. A question and answer section is included in which the author responds to questions dealing with lack of acceptance of interracial marriages and relationships; biracial children’s identity, development, and attitudes; teachers who are uncomfortable with teaching biracial children; and other children’s reactions to biracial children.

Read the entire paper here.

Fluid…: Identity in the Making

The Vermont Connection Journal
The University of Vermont
2002-07-29

Amiko Matsumoto

I get the “what are you” question a lot. I usually get a warning that the question is coming: a tilt of the head, a squint of the eyes, a puzzled look as the wheels turn in my questioner’s head. She or he will try to figure out where I fit, what possible combination or part of the world looks like me. And when the search of the database ends without a satisfactory answer, my questioner will ask, “What are you?”

For a long time, I didn’t like this question because I didn’t have a neatly packaged answer. “My dad is sansei, a third generation Japanese American, and my mom’s ancestry goes back three generations to France and Switzerland,” I’d respond. Sometimes that answer would be satisfactory, but most often, it was not. “But what are YOU?” or “But you don’t look THAT Japanese” or even “Wow, your English is really good”—that’s what would usually follow.

When it did, I would feel like I had done something wrong, that I had failed, and that I should do more to explain myself. I wanted to be understood so badly that I sometimes tried to deny part of who I was in order to more successfully fit into someone’s perception of who I should be. But a few years ago, all of that changed. It wasn’t an overnight decision for me, but rather a process that was the result of many conversations, confrontations, and tears. At some point during my time in Burlington, I became comfortable with my biracial identity. More than comfortable, I became proud…

…I now see fluid identity as a strength. I like being able to move in and out of different communities, being able to express the cultural characteristics of my surroundings without much thought. Perhaps the best example of this came a few years ago while I was in line at Disneyland with a few friends. The women ahead of us were exchange students from Japan. We talked for the forty-five minutes or so it took to get on the roller coaster, and when we got off the ride, my friends commented on how I “became Japanese” as I talked with the students. “Your sentence structure changed. You bowed your head a lot. It was like you became a different person. Do you always do that around Japanese people?” Their questions truly caught me off guard, not because I felt insecure in who they perceived me to be, but because I really hadn’t noticed I did that. Fluid identity is just as it sounds: the ability to identify in a way that takes into account the cultural currents and adjust accordingly. The issues it raises permeate all aspects of who I am…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race… Mixed Up?

Presentation at the Canadian Critical Race Conference 2003

Charito Gailling

Mee Lain Ling

Our workshop will explore “mixed race experience” by referring to our own experiences as mixed race women. We are particularly interested in fostering discussion that critically examines racial binaries of whiteness vs non-whiteness and how mixed race voices are negotiated and made invisible. Using exercises, discussion and group work, we will invite participants to consider how re-presentations of power and privilege are present in popular and academic discourses on this topic. We hope to challenge participants to become aware of their own specific “lenses” and think through intersections of identity, racialization, gender, etc. which can be highlighted through the experience of being a mixed race person.

View the presentation here.

Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada

Harper Collins Canada
September 2001
256 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780006385080; ISBN10: 0006385087

Lawrence Hill

Lawrence Hill’s remarkable novel, Any Known Blood, a multi-generational story about a Canadian man of mixed race, was met with critical acclaim and it marked the emergence of a powerful new voice in Canadian writing. Now Hill, himself a child of a black father and white mother, brings us Black Berry, Sweet Juice, Hill: On Being Black and White in Canada, a provocative and unprecedented look at a timely and engrossing topic.

In Black Berry, Sweet Juice, Hill movingly reveals his struggle to understand his own personal and racial identity. Raised by human rights activist parents in a predominantly white Ontario suburb, he is imbued with lingering memories and offers a unique perspective. In a satirical yet serious tone, Hill describes the ambiguity involved in searching for his identity – an especially complex and difficult journey in a country that prefers to see him as neither black nor white.

Interspersed with slices of his personal experiences, fascinating family history and the experiences of thirty-six other Canadians of mixed race interviewed for this book, Black Berry, Sweet Juice also examines contemporary racial issues in Canadian society. Hill explores the terms used to describe children of mixed race, the unrelenting hostility towards mix-race couples and the real meaning of the black Canadian experience. It arrives at a critical time when, in the highly publicized and controversial case of Elijah Van de Perre, the son of a white mother and black father [Theodore “Blue” Edwards] in British Columbia, the Supreme Court of Canada has just granted custody to Elijah’s mother, Kimberly Van de Perre.

A reflective, sensitive and often humourous book, Black Berry, Sweet Juice is a thought provoking discourse on the current status of race relations in Canada and it’s a fascinating and important read for us all.