Mixed Race Studies

Shades of Fraternity: Creolization and the Making of Citizenship in French India, 1790–1792

French Historical Studies
Volume 31, Number 4 (2008)
pages 581-607
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-2008-007

Adrian Carton
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney, Australia

On October 16, 1790, a group of topas men wrote a petition to the Colonial Assembly at Pondichéry, protesting the decision of September that year to exclude them from the electoral list of active citizens on the basis of “race.” These propertied, free men of color demanded to have the same rights as Europeans and the métis. While historians of the French empire have long considered how mulatto and creole people in the French Caribbean negotiated the boundaries of citizenship after the Revolution, the debate that emerged in India offers a different view. This essay argues that the topas drew on precedents from other French colonies, as well as on the status of foreigners in France itself, to argue that domicile (ius solis) rather than bloodline (ius sanguinis) formed the basis of what it meant to be French. Hence skin color could not be a barrier to citizenship rights.

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Historicizing Hybridity and the Politics of Location: Three Early Colonial Indian Narratives

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (2007)
pages 143-155
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082996

Adrian Carton
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney, Australia

From White Mughals to Vikram Seth, novels, historical blockbusters and more nuanced anthropological and postcolonial critiques have exposed the fiction of fixed notions of “race” through sensitive understandings of the liminal space of the “inter-racial” relationship and the “mixed-race” experience. In an era where the textual and cultural production of hybridity has become a new form of cultural capital, articulations of racial “inbetween-ness” have also become somewhat universalised and romanticised. While acknowledging the radical potential of these new paradigms of transnational slippage and métissage as an affront to the old narratives of racial certainty, this article challenges the universalization of the term “mixed-race” in the context of colonial India, both ontologically and historically. By historicising cultural difference according to the social syntax that gives it meaning, it asks whether the term “mixed race” has political relevance in all colonial spaces and across time and culture or whether it needs to be interrogated as an historical product in itself. Finallly, this article turns to the politics of location in a global context to illustrate the limits of Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “third space” by moving beyond celebratory and static notions of the “mixed-race” experience.

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The Social Adjustment of Chinese Immigrants in Liverpool

The Sociological Review
Volume 3, Issue 1 (July 1955)
pages 65-75
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.1955.tb01045.x

Maurice Broody

Some of the most urgent social problems of a cosmopolitan seaport city like Liverpool are problems of adjustment between ethnic minorities and the indigenous society into which they have migrated. This adjustment is often very difficult, and many immigrant communities suffer acutely as a result of prejudice and discrimination. Their problems have been the concern of both administrators and sociologists, and the research which has hitherto been undertaken in Liverpool into problems of race-relations has been related to the Negro communities, since it is they which are most adversely affected by racial discrimination.

The Chinese community, on the other hand, it interesting precisely because its adjustment is not regarded as a problem. In a report, which was published in 1930, Miss M.[uriel] Fletcher came to the conclusion that the Chinese, unlike the West African community, did not present a serious social problem. That judgment was confirmed four years later by Caradog Jones, whose comment on the Negro and Chinese communities still appears to be substantially true: Each community comprises about 500 adult males. In both cases, there has been widespread inter-marriage and cohabitation with white women. Here the resemblance between the two groups ceases. The Chinese appear to make excellent husbands and there is little evidence of any of their families falling into poverty, but the same cannot be said of the negroes and their families. The half-Chinese children on growing up find little difficulty in obtaining work or in entering into marriage with the surrounding white population. The girls in particular are attractive and good-looking. On the other hand, the Anglo-negroid children when grown up do not easily get work or mix with the ordinary population.

The comparatively untroubled adjustment of the Chinese may be explained partly by the fact, that local residents do not discriminate…

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The Fear of Colonial Miscegenation in the British Colonies of Southeast Asia

The Forum: Cal Poly’s Journal of History
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Volume 1, Issue 1, Article 8 (2009)
pages 54-64

Katrina Chludzinski, Co-Editor

Between 1820 and 1923, European and American travelogue writers in the Southeast Asian British Colonies looked down upon Europeans participating in miscegenation with local women. They felt that it was a “barbaric” institution, and if Europeans participated in miscegenation, they were destroying the racial hierarchy that had been established during colonialism. They feared miscegenation would blur the racial lines that had been used as the basis for control over the colonies. Miscegenation also produced children of mixed races, called Eurasians. Eurasians became a separate class, however, the British and Southeast Asians did not know how to classify and treat them. Eurasians were not accepted by Europeans or Southeast Asians, they were a group of people not even recognized as a class. Why did the European and American travelogue writers fear miscegenation between Europeans and Southeast Asians? By examining European and American travelogues, I will argue that in the Southeast Asian British Colonies between the years 1820-1923, British and American travelogue writers feared miscegenation between Europeans and Southeast Asians because it challenged the existing racial structures.

For this paper I will rely exclusively on the Travelogues of Europeans and Americans. They provide a window into the culture of Southeast Asia which Southeast Asians themselves did not write about. Southeast Asian culture was new and different to European and American travelogue writers, however. As such, they documented extensively what which was foreign or strange to them. Though relying exclusively on travelogues limits this paper by excluding the Southeast Asian perspective, my purpose is to analyze the European and American perspective on Southeast Asian culture. Travelogues proved the best source for such analysis.

For the history of miscegenation in Southeast Asia, I will mainly rely on John G. Butler’s The British in Malaya 1880-1941: The Social History 0f a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia. According to Butler, colonial miscegenation came about due to the necessity for female companionship. He goes on to speculate that concubinage occurred mainly in rural settings, and that these woman not only provided companionship, but they also helped acclimate European men to their new Southeast Asian settings. Later in his book, Butler describes how concubinage began to decline in the early twentieth century as Europeans in Southeast Asia began to make more money and were able to afford to bring European wives over…

…The British saw miscegenation as dangerous to the colonial structure because it contradicted the belief that Southeast Asians were inferior to Europeans. In one American travelogue from the Philippines, the writer compared the way that the British and the Spanish treated the natives. He commented that the British ridiculed the Portuguese and the Spanish for allowing interracial marriage. The British felt that miscegenation would result in the decline of the colonial government and even the decline of home government of the colonizing power, even though they did not explain how.  The conclusion that interracial marriage would lead to the decline of the colonial structure could only result from the fear that interracial marriage blurred the lines of the racial hierarchy that the British had established. According to the same American travelogue writer, the British believed that interracial marriage produced “mongrel,” “inferior” and “renegade” Eurasian children. The British did not know how to classify Eurasians and did not want to recognize their European descent. In order to maintain their racial hierarchy, the British needed to establish the inferiority of Eurasians in any way possible, including the use of derogatory words to describe them. Ann Stoler explains that miscegenation presented questions that Europeans were not ready to answer. One 0f those questions was how to maintain white supremacy when their racial purity was threatened by miscegenation. The British response to this question was to classify Eurasians as inferior and employed derogatory language to make them social outcasts and discourage others from participating in miscegenation.

European travelogue writers dismissed concubinage between Europeans and Southeast Asians because they did not want to admit that European men were part of the problem to the degradation of their racial structures. A British travelogue writer in Burma made excuses for British men falling into concubinage. He claimed that Burmese women had sweeter and more affectionate personalities, therefore British men could not help themselves. Ann Stoler remarks that Europeans also felt by keeping the race pure and abstaining from promiscuity, they were establishing their superiority over Southeast Asians. But concubinage would make the established racial structures harder to define, thereby making it harder to maintain their racial superiority. An interracial couple threatened the Caucasian racial purity. But they feared that if they admitted that British men were willing participants in miscegenation it would encourage other British men to do it as well. In an attempt to deter other British men from it, travelogue writers refused to admit that British men were consciously able to consent to concubinage.

To establish that British were not at fault for participating in miscegenation, other excuses were made by travelogue writers. For example, one writer claimed that Europeans could not help themselves. The climate of Southeast Asia weakened their strength to stand by their British morals. These outrageous claims were only used to remove all blame from Europeans and place it on the natives, or the climate of the colony itself…

…Miscegenation produced Eurasian children that were not European or Asian; they were a people without an identity that had the ability to change the European established racial hierarchy. Christina Firpo mentions that in Vietnam, Eurasians were clearly recognizable as being of French descent. But the French viewed this as a threat to their racial purity and superiority. A British travelogue writer noticed that Eurasians were divided amongst themselves based on how closely they resembled Europeans. The Eurasians with the skin tones and facial features that more closely resembled those of Europeans had higher social statuses than those that had features that more closely resembled Southeast Asians. ‘This made it seem like there were several racial categories within the Eurasian community. This confusion over racial hierarchies within the Eurasian community created confusion among the British. The British were confused as to how to categorize Eurasians racially. The British had established a strict racial hierarchy. They were also convinced that they would be able to maintain a racial purity amongst the Europeans. So they were not prepared when British men began to participate in miscegenation and producing another race. As Ann Stoler put it, Eurasians “straddled the divide” between colonizers and colonized. This “divide” blurred some of the racial lines between Europeans and Southeast Asians, which terrified the British.

Travelogue writers also noticed that Eurasians were disliked by both Europeans and Asians. Not only were they despised by the Europeans, but since they despised their Southeast Asian heritage, they alienated themselves even further by rejecting the Southeast Asian community. This left Eurasians isolated and alone. The British feared Eurasians because they did not know what Eurasians would do, since they were not accepted by either community. Eurasians were also alienated in their own families. One travelogue writer wrote that in Eurasian families, the lighter skinned children had more privileges than the darker skinned ones. The British feared that unrest in the Eurasian community for not having a place in the previously established racial structure might lead to political unrest. Eurasians did not belong to European or Asian societies and they suffer disadvantages for it.  They were rejected from some jobs and events because they were Eurasian. The British would not allow them access to all European events or to high ranking European jobs. Furthermore, Southeast Asians would not accept them into the Southeast Asian community. In most cases, the European father left and the family was financially cut off and without a father. Having their European fathers leave lead to feelings of abandonment and alienation as well. In some cases, when the European father left, the family became poor. So not only were the Eurasian children alienated from most communities, they were left with no means to support themselves….

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AAS 310: Constructing and Negotiating Multiracial Identity

University of Texas, Austin
Center for Asian American Studies
Fall 2008

This course serves as an introduction to the experiences of biracial and multiracial people, specifically with a focus on “mixed”/hapa Asian American, African American and Latino people in the U.S., concentrating on theories of race, racial identity formation, culture, media, and social justice struggles. As such, it presents the major themes and issues in a new and growing interdisciplinary field of scholarly research and cultural production.

Throughout the semester, the goal is to foster a classroom environment which will become a community space in which the beliefs and attitudes of all participants are respectfully considered.

For more information, click here.

The presence of Eurasian images in fashion representations and their absence from finance representations draw attention to the historical origins, cultural trajectories and ambivalence of meaning associated with ‘raced’ and sexed representations. Although the inclusion of Asian and Eurasian women may be intended to offset their previous absence and secure a wider multicultural appeal, they inadvertently replay processes of racialisation and sexualization. This is because they incite desires for, and identifications with, White/Western/Anglo identities authorised by essentialist and quasi-biological discourses of racialisation and sexualization.

Julie Matthews, “Deconstructing the Visual: The Diasporic Hybridity of Asian and Eurasian Female Images,” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 8, October 2002.

Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World

Berg Publishers (an imprint of Macmillan)
October 2001
272 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-85973-531-2, ISBN10: 1-85973-531-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-85973-632-6, ISBN10: 1-85973-632-7

Lionel Caplan, Emeritus Professor and Professorial Research Associate
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London

Among the legacies of the colonial encounter are any number of contemporary ‘mixed-race’ populations, descendants of the offspring of sexual unions involving European men (colonial officials, traders, etc.) and local women. These groups invite serious scholarly attention because they not only challenge notions of a rigid divide between colonizer and colonized, but beg a host of questions about continuities and transformations in the postcolonial world.

This book concerns one such group, the Eurasians of India, or Anglo-Indians as they came to be designated. Caplan presents an historicized ethnography of their contemporary lives as these relate both to the colonial past and to conditions in the present. In particular, he forcefully shows that features which theorists associate with the postcolonial present—blurred boundaries, multiple identities, creolized cultures—have been part of the colonial past as well. Presenting a powerful argument against theoretically essentialized notions of culture, hybridity and postcoloniality, this book is a much-needed contribution to recent debates in cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology, sociology as well as historical studies of colonialism, ‘mixed-race’ populations and cosmopolitan identities.

San Francisco State Journalism Professor Yumi Wilson’s Multicultural Heritage Helps Connect People

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
2011-08-11

Lydia Lum

San Francisco State Journalism Professor Yumi Wilson’s Multicultural Heritage Helps Connect People

Yumi Wilson teaches news writing, opinion and literary journalism at San Francisco State University where she’s an associate professor of journalism. Formerly a reporter for The Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle, Wilson covered hundreds of major stories. They included the 1992 Los Angeles race riots after the acquittal of White police officers in the beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the controversial, voter-approved Proposition 209, which banned California’s public universities and agencies from considering race in admissions, contracting and employment. A Fulbright scholarship enabled Wilson to travel to Japan in 2001 and research military marriages, conduct interviews about interracial identities there and, with the help of translators, ask her relatives about her mother’s early life. Wilson holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of San Francisco.

DI: What are your observations about diversity in the news industry today?

YW: I’m really worried. Fewer people of color are choosing journalism careers. Entry-level jobs are scarce. The pay is often so low that it seems only people whose families can afford a financial hit can get into journalism. Internships are excellent to gain experience, but nowadays they seem to last much longer than a summer and, at some point, a paying job really should kick in. I would not have been able to get into journalism if these cutbacks had occurred when I was in college. It’s disappointing that young minorities studying journalism are choosing other careers or going to graduate school without working in the field because even if they work in journalism for only five years, they would still make an impact with their energy and ideas. We’re fast losing an important voice of conscience…

…DI: As the daughter of a Black U.S. Army soldier and a woman from northern Japan, what have you written connected to your heritage?

YW: I wrote an essay exploring the shifting meaning of multiracial identity, which was published in a Loyola Marymount University literary journal a few years ago. And this year, I presented a paper about Black Amerasians at the Association for Asian American Studies conference. It’s reassuring to know it connects with people helping to spread knowledge.

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Racial attitudes and the Anglo‐Indians perceptions of a community before and after independence

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
Volume 6, Issue 2 (1983)
pages 34-45
DOI: 10.1080/00856408308723045

Coralie Younger
University of Sydney

The question of racial attitudes between the rulers and the ruled, and whites and non-whites has evoked attention from numerous authors. E. Said maintains that ‘the White man was always on the alert to keep the coloured at bay’ while Northrop Frye notes a “garrison mentality” whereby,

‘there is a need for the projection of an unbroken surface, an apparently flawless morale, to be presented not merely to the outside world where the subject races crowd but also to one’s companions’

As Ballhatchet has argued in Race, Sex and Classunder the Rajt ‘the preservation of social distance seemed essential to the maintenance of structures of power and authority.’ Given such attitudes, what was the place of those who were neither black nor white? What, in other words, were attitudes towards Anglo-Indians? British ideas of racial supremacy evolved during the nineteenth century and reached their apotheosis during the imperial heyday of the Victorian age with a belief in white superiority over the inferior coloured races. The British rigidly maintained a distance between themselves and those over whom they ruled. They frowned upon anyone who attempted to bridge the gap.

Anglo-Indians are a minority community in India of mixed European and Indian blood, claiming European descent through the male line. They are legally defined in the Indian Constitution and have concomitant educational and political rights. Economically they are a depressed community, placing little emphasis upon education. Their traditional neglect of education was a result of the paternalistic practice of the British, who gave them preference in upper-subordinate positions in government service regardless of educational attainments. However the reforms that followed the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1919 saw the end of reserved positions for Anglo-Indians and led to the Indianisation of all government departments.

Did the British maintain their distance from Anglo-Indians in quite the same way as they did in regard to Indians? In general it would seem that the British response was complex. Racial attitudes had sexual and class overtones. They were contemptuous of Anglo-Indians because of their “native’* blood. The British felt ashamed of Anglo-Indians because they were the products of sexual relations between themselves and Indian women…

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Creating Frames and Crossing Borders: An Autobiographical Exploration of Race and Identity

University of New Brunswick
July 1998
131+ pages

Diane Ho-Fatt

This study is an exploration of the cultural constructions of race using theoretical perspectives of postmodernism through the methodology of autobiography. I explore the constructions of race and identity in my own life by deconstructing the stories of mixed-race that have been applied to me and posing an alternative to the construction of identity. The discourse of race, I argue, fits a modernist notion of self and identity which reduces and frames identity in terms of race. I propose a postmodern definition of identity which provokes difference rather than fixes it and which views identity as multiple and fluid, a notion which makes sense to me and my experiences. Important to this study is the dominance of whiteness in marginalizing others, like myself, who do not fit that norm. Racial discourse has silenced me as mixed-woman, and a critical notion underscores the need and the fruitfulness of self-empowerment and voice.

The study raises questions about deconstructing race, multiculturalism, identity, politics, curriculum and instruction, and the use of autobiography as a research methodology. It makes no claims to have definitive answers but hopefully provides some insight for parents, teachers, and others who are in pedagogical relationships in the context of a white world.

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Education in the Graduate Academic Unit of Curriculum and Instruction

Table of Contents

• 1. Breaking My Silence
• 2. Constructing Identity
  • The Dilemma of Difference
  • A Modernist Discourse Constructs Identity
  • Postmodern Discourse Constructs (and Deconstructs) Identity
  • Reading and Writing My Life
  • Politicizing The Personal
  • A Critical Narratology
• 3. Mixed Messages: What the Literature Says About Mixed-Race
  • A Name to Call Myself
  • Mixed Messages
  • The “Tragic Mulatto“
  • Hybrid Vigour and the “Tragic Mulatto”
  • Sexuality
  • The “Exotic”
  • “The Hope of the Future”: Do Mixed-Race Subjects Really Challenge Race?
  • The Politics of Representation
• 4. The Stories I Live By
  • Childhood
  • Pieces of the Past
    • Fragments: Memory and the Imagination
    • Constructing Reality: A Child Interprets
    • Grandma’s Shadow
    • Little China Girl
    • Growing up “Chinese”
    • Getting An Education: School Constructs Identity
  • Another World
    • Leaving Home
    • This Isn’t New England!: Whiteness
    • Making Friends: School/Community/Nationality Construct Identity
    • The Seduction of Whiteness
  • Higher Learning: My Education Continues
  • A Piece of the Puzzling: Finding Others Like Me
  • Having Many Homes
• 5. Crossing Borders
  • Frames of Identity
  • Recommendations
• Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.