Mixed Race Studies

Antidiscrimination Law and the Multiracial Experience: A Reply to Nancy Leong

Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal
Volume 10, Summer 2013
pages 191-218

Tina F. Botts, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Pre-law Advisor
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Nancy Leong’s thesis, in “Judicial Erasure of Mixed-Race Discrimination,” is that antidiscrimination law should make a switch from defining race “categorically” to defining it in terms of the perception of the would-be discriminator so as to better accommodate claims of multiracial discrimination and so as to better achieve what Leong sees as the goals of antidiscrimination law, i.e., the promotion of racial understanding, and the elimination of racism and racial discrimination. But, while Leong’s goals are admirable, the method she proposes for achieving these goals will not succeed. Antidiscrimination law cannot operate to promote racial understanding, or to eliminate racism and racial discrimination, because it was not designed to achieve these goals. Moreover, a switch in focus on the part of antidiscrimination courts from “categorical” race to “perceived” race will not render antidiscrimination law more accommodating to claims of multiracial discrimination. Such a shift would instead operate to further exclude multiracial plaintiffs from protection against discrimination. A more effective way of modifying antidiscrimination law so as to render it better able to accommodate claims of multiracial discrimination is to call courts (1) to remember that discrimination is something that happens to social groups and not to individuals, and (2) to include multiracial persons among the groups of persons specially protected from discrimination.

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Breeds Are Not Negroes and May Mingle With Whites

The Weekly Messenger
St. Martinville, Louisiana
1910-04-30
page 3, column 2
Source: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

The Daily Picayune

The Supreme Court of Louisiana by a vote of three to two, Justices Nicholls and Land dissenting, has decided that the state law prohibiting concubinage between the races in Louisiana affects only pure-blooded whites and pure-blooded blacks. Where either party is of mixed blood there is no prohibition under the law. It follows under this decision that were persons are charged with concubinage, and either pleads in defense that he or she is of mixed blood, which would bar prosecution, it will be incumbent on the state to prove the purity of the race, a problem vast more difficult than the proving of race mixture.

Justice Land, in his dissenting opinion, declares that under the decision of the court, the Gay-Shattuck law, which forbid whites and negroes to be served with liquors at the same bar, can apply to whites and blacks, and the prohibition does not extend to mulattoes to griffes, who are the offspring of negroes and mulattoes, and they have a right to be served at the same bars and tables with whites. Obviously between whites and griffes is entirely lawful under the decision of the court. Justice Land takes occasion to express bit gratification that the Legislators of Louisiana will be in session in the course of a few days and indulges the hope that the limitations imposed in these laws, which seek to distinguish between the races, will so define and establish the distinguishing terms as that nothing will be left to interference or conjecture.

It is inevitable that confusion must occur when the law forbidding the inter marriage of the races makes use of the terms “white” and “colored” while the statute prohibiting concubinage employs the distinctions “white” and “negro.” There seems to be no agreement by the lexicographers in the matter of distinctions. Webster, edition of 1910, use “negro” and “colored” indifferently, and the Century, while defining the negro race according to specific physical characteristics, uses the word “colored” with apparent indifference, as does also the Standard Dictionary. There are more negroes in the Southern part of the United States than in any other country on the globe which has a propendorating white population, and here, in all political and social distinctions, the negros and the mixed blood have always been reckoned together, and if these conditions are to be changed there should be fixed and definite terms by which these new conditions are to be established, and not left to the inferences and conjectures of a judicial tribunal, do matter how able and learned in the law its members.

My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune: A Memoir of the Civil War Era

LSU Press
April 2001 (Originally published in 1872)
184 pages
5.50 x 9.00 inches
3 halftones
ISBN10: 0807126896, ISBN13: 9780807126899

Jean-Charles Houzeau (1820-1888)

Edited by David C. Rankin
Translated by Gerard F. Denault

When Belgian scientist Jean-Charles Houzeau arrived in New Orleans in 1857, he was disturbed that America, founded on the principle of freedom, still tolerated the institution of slavery. In late 1864, he became managing editor of the New Orleans Tribune, the first black daily newspaper published in the United States. Ardently sympathetic to the plight of Louisiana’s black population and reveling in the fact that his dark complexion led many people to assume he was black himself, Houzeau passionately embraced his role as the Tribune’s editor and principal writer. My Passage at the New Orleans “Tribune,” first published in Belgium in 1872, is Houzeau’s memoir of the four years he spent as both observer and participant in the drama of Reconstruction.

Louisiana’s “Creoles of Color”: Ethnicity, Marginality, and Identity

Social Science Quarterly
Volume 73 Issue 3, September 1992
pages 615-

James H. Dormon, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History and American Studies
University of Southwestern Louisiana

This article traces the ethnohistory of Creoles of color, beginning with an examination of the social-historical order out of which they emerged, and argues the case that Creole marginality has been the major determinant of the Creole ethnic experience. While it is impossible to pinpoint the precise timing of the ethnogenesis of the group, it was certainly in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, during which years the group emerged as part of what the historian Laura Foner has termed a “three-caste social system” in colonial Louisiana. In the eighteenth century the dominant Louisiana population–the “hegemonic” population in current usage–was that of the white European elites (or those descending directly from such elites): large landowners and planter/merchants along with colonial officials, both civil and military. The increasingly large slave population, normally perceived by Europeans as African provided the agricultural labor deemed essential to staple crop production. Within the colonial social order, blacks were separated from the white population by caste lines written into law and generally enforced by social as well as legal sanctions. Yet from the beginning, and despite legal provisions forbidding the practice, whites and blacks established sexual contact, producing offspring that shared the genes of both parents.

The House on Bayou Road: Atlantic Creole Networks in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The Journal of American History
Volume 100, Issue 1 (June 2013)
pages 21-45
DOI: 10.1093/jahist/jat082

Pierre Force, Professor of French and History
Columbia University

n 1813 a free man of color named Charles Decoudreau living in New Orleans went to court to repossess a house on the edge of town he had sold two years before to Charles Lamerenx, a white man from Saint Domingue. Despite being on opposite sides of a racial divide, the men and their families had much in common as “Atlantic creoles.” In this study, I test the meaning and explanatory power of Ira Berlin’s concept of “Atlantic creole” by telling the story of two families, one “black” and one “white,” whose paths briefly crossed in New Orleans in 1811.

Berlin’s work on “Atlantic creoles” is a powerful intervention in this field because it begins by telling a familiar story and proceeds with a much less familiar one. The familiar story is that of Africans being forcibly taken to America and stripped of their African identities, and developing a new creole or African American culture that was the product of their experience as slaves working in the plantations. Important as this story is, it captures “only a portion of the history of black life in colonial North America, and that imperfectly.” The story as usually told begins with an unadulterated “African” identity that was somehow erased or transformed by the experience of slavery and gave way to a creole identity that was a mix of various African, European, and Native American components. Inverting this story of origins, Berlin shows that the Africans of the charter generations were always already creole: their experiences and attitudes “were more akin to that of confident, sophisticated natives than of vulnerable newcomers.” Atlantic creoles originated in the encounters between Europeans and Africans on the western coast of Africa, starting in the fifteenth century, well before Christopher Columbus sailed to America. In a few coastal enclaves, …

Read or purchase the article here.

Pacific Islanders: a Misclassified People

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2013-06-03

Kawika Riley, Chief Executive and Founder
Pacific Islander Access Project
also adjunct lecturer at George Washington University

Imagine that you’re a parent, teacher, or counselor who helped a promising student apply for financial aid. She’s an underrepresented minority, so you encouraged her to apply to several scholarships for minority students. A few weeks later, she receives a wave of responses from them, all saying the same thing: She’s not eligible to apply. Why? Because the colleges have misclassified her; even though she’s an underrepresented minority student, they’ve decided to treat her as if she’s not.

Now imagine that instead of one student’s being misclassified, this is happening to every student who belongs to one of the fastest-growing minority groups in America. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders don’t need to imagine any of this. This is their reality.

For more than 20 years, U.S. Census data have shown that Pacific Islanders are far less likely to graduate from college than is the general population. The statistics have fluctuated slightly over time, but the trend is that Pacific Islanders are about half as likely as the general population to hold bachelor’s degrees, and even less likely to receive advanced degrees.

…Before 1997, the federal standard for racial classification grouped Asians and Pacific Islanders together. But 16 years ago, the standards were updated, and Pacific Islanders and Asians were recognized as two distinct groups. Unfortunately, the myth of a homogeneous “Asian Pacific” race persists, and the use of “API” data suggests that statistics on “Asian Pacific Islanders” reflect the conditions of both Asians and Pacific Islanders.

They don’t….

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Ethnicity, Hidden Identity

The New York Times
2013-05-24

Kathryn Shattuck

With his long-lashed chocolate eyes and inviting lips, used to seductive effect in “Rescue Me,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” Daniel Sunjata has the kind of face not easily forgotten, or so you’d think

“If I’m exposed to crowds repeatedly, I could count on my hands the number of times people are going to say, ‘Hey, aren’t you Adam Rodriguez from “CSI: Miami”?’ ” he said, his laughter tinged with what might have been a touch of ruefulness. Especially since Mr. Sunjata, 41, a high school linebacker in Chicago who traded in dreams of business school for the stage, has supported himself by acting ever since he earned an M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1998. No waiting tables. No tending bar.

He might finally kiss Mr. Rodriguez’s ghost goodbye with “Graceland,” a new series that premieres on June 6 at 10 p.m. on the USA Network. Mr. Sunjata stars as Paul Briggs, a legendary undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation living in a Southern California beach palace with a motley crew from the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Agency and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Then Mike Warren, a rookie played by Aaron Tveit, arrives from Quantico where, like Briggs, he graduated at the top of his class. Soon Mike discovers that his assignment — to infiltrate the local underworld with his housemates — is camouflage for a more important task: to investigate Briggs himself.

Recently Mr. Sunjata — his casual outfit in contrast to his elegant, thinking-man’s demeanor — spoke with Kathryn Shattuck about living large and letting it all hang out. These are excerpts from their conversation…

….With roles ranging from a Nuyorican firefighter on “Rescue Me” to a fashion designer in “The Devil Wears Prada,” you seem to have defied stereotyping.

When I was coming out of graduate school, I wasn’t really sure if my ethnic ambiguity [Irish, German and African-American] was going to be a help or a hindrance, but I think that ultimately it has helped me. It’s set me apart from other guys who might be considered leading-man types in the sense that I don’t necessarily look like everybody else. But a lot of it depends on the open-mindedness of the casting director…

Read the entire interview here.

Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns

Temple University Press
January 2011
272 pages
6 x 9
38 tables, 23 halftones
paper ISBN: 978-1-43990-276-9
cloth: ISBN: 978-1-43990-275-2
e-Book ISBN: 978-1-43990-277-6

Charlton D. McIlwain, Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication
New York University

Stephen M. Caliendo, Professor of Political Science
North Central College in Naperville, Illinois

Why, when, and how often candidates use race appeals, and how the electorate responds

In our evolving American political culture, whites and blacks continue to respond very differently to race-based messages and the candidates who use them. Race Appeal examines the use and influence such appeals have on voters in elections for federal office in which one candidate is a member of a minority group.

Charlton McIlwain and Stephen Caliendo use various analysis methods to examine candidates who play the race card in political advertisements. They offer a compelling analysis of the construction of verbal and visual racial appeals and how the news media covers campaigns involving candidates of color.

Combining rigorous analyses with in-depth case studies-including an examination of race-based appeals in the historic 2008 presidential election—Race Appeal is a groundbreaking work that represents the most extensive and thorough treatment of race-based appeals in American political campaigns to date.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. The Political Landscape of Race-Based Appeals
• Part I The Empirical Evidence on Race Appeals
  • 1. Producing Race Appeal: The Political Ads of White and Minority Candidates
  • 2. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Deploying Racist Appeals among Black and White Voters
  • 3. Neither Black nor White: The Fruitless Appeal to Racial Authenticity
  • 4. Competing Novelties: How Newspapers Frame the Election Campaigns of Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans
• Part II: Case Studies in Race Appeal
  • 5. Racializing Immigration Policy: Issue Ads in the 2006 Election
  • 6. Harold Ford Jr., Mel Martinez, and Artur Davis: Case Studies in Racially Framed News
  • 7. Barack Obama, Race-Based Appeals, and the 2008 Presidential Election
• Epilogue. Racialized Campaigns: What Have We Learned, and Where Do We Go from Here?
• Notes
• References
• Index

OMB’s Preliminary Recommendation & an IV Commentary

Interracial Voice [1995-2003]
July 1997

Charles Michael Byrd

The Office of Management and Budget announced last Wednesday (07-09-97) that Americans could choose more than one racial category on Census and other federal forms but would have no new “multiracial” box to check under new rules the agency proposed. OMB rejected creation of a multiracial category because “there is no general understanding of what the term means,” said the federal task force that made the recommendation in a report being published in last Wednesday’s Federal Register. OMB has also called for a sixty-day public comment period, during which you may voice your support or opposition for this proposal. The OMB website has detailed information concerning email and snail-mail addresses to which you may forward messages.

This is not a multiracial category per se, rather a scheme where the government requires the individual to parcel out portions of his or her identity to two or more of the established racial groups. Not only is there no consideration or understanding that the individual may not recognize these groups as valid in terms of identity and affiliation, there is no symbol or icon—specifically a multiracial header—representative of a self-determined, integral being who self-identifies other than monoracially.

Even for those of mixed-race who do view the current racial groups as valid, there is still no specific multiracial designation. According to OMB, “When the data are reported, counts should be provided of the number of persons who checked two races, three races or four races, and information on the combinations should also be provided.” In other words, the government will effectively disperse the individual’s identity in two or more directions and at day’s end will have reduced it to a mere mathematical computation—a cleverly negotiated line segment along the political color continuum.

To not be totally cynical and negative, let me add that this “check all that apply” format is a step toward a recognition of multiraciality—albeit not a huge one…

Read the entire article here.

Why the multiracial community must march on July 20!

Interracial Voice [1995-2003]
July 1996

Charles Michael Byrd

Any group needs and deserves to know why someone makes a particular decision, especially when that person asks them to act upon that decision, to contribute and participate. So, too, you need to understand the reasons behind the calling for a march—the Multiracial Solidarity March—scheduled for Saturday, July 20, 1996, on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

There has never been an attempt to bring together large numbers of mixed-race individuals to petition the government for anything—in this case, a multiracial Census category that would allow millions of Americans to, for the first time, legally self-identify. This march will be the first ever devoted to multiracial rights and to offering the perspective of racially mixed people on racial issues…

Read the entire article here.