Mixed Race Studies

Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race

University of Illinois Press
2014
288 pages
6.125 x 9.25 in.
5 black & white photographs
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-252-03811-2
Paper ISBN: 978-0-252-07959-7

Wanda A. Hendricks, Associate Professor of History
University of South Carolina

The biography of a key activist of the Progressive Era

Born shortly before the Civil War, activist and reformer Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944) became one of the most prominent educated African American women of her generation. In this first biography of Williams, Wanda A. Hendricks focuses on the critical role of geography and social position in Williams’s life, illustrating how the reform activism of Williams and other black women was bound up with place and space.

Growing up in Brockport, New York, a mostly white society that encouraged social equality and embraced her and her family, Williams was insulated from the political turmoil surrounding the debates about slavery and black rights. Hendricks shows how Williams became “raced” for the first time in early adulthood, when she became a teacher in Missouri and Washington, D.C., and faced the injustices of racism and the stark contrast between the lives of freed slaves and her own privileged upbringing. She carried this new awareness with her to Chicago, where she joined forces with women’s clubs, the Unitarian church, and various other interracial social justice organizations to become a prominent spokesperson for Progressive economic, racial, and gender reforms.

By highlighting how Williams experienced a set of freedoms in the North that were not imaginable in the South, this clearly-written, widely accessible biography expands how we understand intellectual possibilities, economic success, and social mobility in post-Reconstruction America.

Seeing Race in Modern America

University of North Carolina Press
November 2013
Approx. 264 pages
6.125 x 9.25
10 color plates., 97 halftones, notes, index
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4696-1068-9

Matthew Pratt Guterl, Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies
Brown University

In this fiercely urgent book, Matthew Pratt Guterl focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things possible? Drawing creatively from advertisements, YouTube videos, and everything in between, Guterl redirects our understanding of racial sight away from the dominant categories of color–away from brown and yellow and black and white–and instead insists that we confront the visual practices that make those same categories seem so irrefutably important.

Zooming out for the bigger picture, Guterl illuminates the long history of the practice of seeing—and believing in—race, and reveals that our troublesome faith in the details discerned by the discriminating glance is widespread and very popular. In so doing, he upends the possibility of a postracial society by revealing how deeply race is embedded in our culture, with implications that are often matters of life and death.

A “Mulatto Escape Hatch” in the United States? Examining Evidence of Racial and Social Mobility During the Jim Crow Era

Demography
Published Online: 2013-04-20
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-013-0210-8

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Aaron Gullickson, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

Racial distinctions in the United States have long been characterized as uniquely rigid and governed by strict rules of descent, particularly along the black-white boundary. This is often contrasted with countries, such as Brazil, that recognize “mixed” or intermediate racial categories and allow for more fluidity or ambiguity in racial classification. Recently released longitudinal data from the IPUMS Linked Representative Samples, and the brief inclusion of a “mulatto” category in the U.S. Census, allow us to subject this generally accepted wisdom to empirical test for the 1870–1920 period. We find substantial fluidity in black-mulatto classification between censuses—including notable “downward” racial mobility. Using person fixed-effects models, we also find evidence that among Southern men, the likelihood of being classified as mulatto was related to intercensal changes in occupational status. These findings have implications for studies of race and inequality in the United States, cross-national research on racial classification schemes in the Americas, and for how demographers collect and interpret racial data.

Introduction

More than 40 years ago. historian Carl Degler outlined a provocative comparison of race relations in Brazil and the United States. The crux of his argument about then-contemporary differences between the two countries rested on the relative status of “mulattos.” Specifically, Degler claimed that the progeny of unions between black and white Brazilians were accorded an intermediate position in the social and racial hierarchy: “The mulatto in Brazil represents an escape hatch for the Negro, so to speak, which is unavailable in the United States” (Degler 1971:107). More controversial, still, is the related and oft-repeated assertion that Afro-Brazilians can avail themselves of this “escape hatch” not only across generations by marrying lighter-skinned spouses but thanks to “the ability of wealth and education to whiten” within a single generation. As Degler put it: “Once ‘whitened’ by money, a ‘Negro’ becomes a ‘mulato’ or ‘pardo’ regardless of his actual color” (Degler 1971:107-08; emphasis in the original).

The ensuing scholarly debate has focused on whether Degler’s notion of an escape hatch was an accurate description of the Brazilian racial hierarchy, with its absence in the United States largely taken for granted. Researchers have come to varying conclusions regarding whether the situation of lighter-skinned or mixed-race Afro-Brazilians represents a meaningful improvement, materially or otherwise, compared with that of their darker-skinned counterparts (Loveman et al. 2012; Sheriff 2001; Idles 2004). Consensus regarding the claim that “money whitens” has also been elusive because of the lack of nationally representative, longitudinal data on race and socioeconomic status (SES) in Brazil (although, sec Schwartzman 2007). In the United States, some “passing“—that is, when people with African ancestry hide their full family history to take advantage of their “white” appearance—was and is publicly acknowledged (e.g.. Gates 1997; Johnson 1925), but it has generally been considered the exception rather than the rule of racial classification and social mobility. Yet, nationally representative, longitudinal data on the racial classification and SES of individuals do exist in the United States that could provide direct, systematic evidence on these issues. Research using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) shows that social status and racial fluidity are linked in contemporary America: increases in status increase the odds of being classified as white and decrease the odds of being classified as black, and decreases in status decrease the odds of being classified as white and increase the odds of being classified as black (Saperstein and Penner 2012). Thus, regardless of whether the “mulatto escape hatch” is—or ever was—an accurate description of racial stratification in Brazil, it has become pertinent to ask whether increases in social position ever led to increases in racial position among Americans of African ancestry.

Recently released historical linked census samples from the Minnesota Population Center allow us to answer this question. These data provide fresh insight into the era of racial retrenchment following the Civil War and Reconstruction, and bracketing the turn of the twentieth century—a period when “Jim Crow” laws and the “one-drop rule” dictating racial classification were slowly building up steam in the South, even as the U.S. Census was going to great lengths to count the mixed ancestries of Americans. In this context, we find substantial fluidity in mulatto classification between censuses. We also find evidence for a recursive relationship between racial…

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Looking the Part: Social Status Cues Shape Race Perception

PLoS ONE
Volume 6, Issue 9: e25107
Published: 2011-09-26
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025107

Jonathan B. Freemam,  Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Andrew M. Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Matthias Scheutz, Associate Professor of Computer Science
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Nalini Ambady, Professor of Psychology
Stanford University

It is commonly believed that race is perceived through another’s facial features, such as skin color. In the present research, we demonstrate that cues to social status that often surround a face systematically change the perception of its race. Participants categorized the race of faces that varied along White–Black morph continua and that were presented with high-status or low-status attire. Low-status attire increased the likelihood of categorization as Black, whereas high-status attire increased the likelihood of categorization as White; and this influence grew stronger as race became more ambiguous (Experiment 1). When faces with high-status attire were categorized as Black or faces with low-status attire were categorized as White, participants’ hand movements nevertheless revealed a simultaneous attraction to select the other race-category response (stereotypically tied to the status cue) before arriving at a final categorization. Further, this attraction effect grew as race became more ambiguous (Experiment 2). Computational simulations then demonstrated that these effects may be accounted for by a neurally plausible person categorization system, in which contextual cues come to trigger stereotypes that in turn influence race perception. Together, the findings show how stereotypes interact with physical cues to shape person categorization, and suggest that social and contextual factors guide the perception of race.

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Remembering Crispus Attucks and the forgotten black soldiers of the American Revolution

The Grio
2013-05-27

Ronda Racha Penrice

Crispus Attucks. (Library of Congress)

Memorial Day may be more about barbecues and blowout sales than honoring our deceased veterans these days, but there are many reasons for African-Americans in particular to take pause.

Starting with the Civil War, on through World Wars I and II, moving into the Vietnam War, the Korean War and, most recently, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, African-Americans have had a strong and active military presence dating back to this country’s founding.

In fact, many credit the onset of the American Revolutionary War to the Boston Massacre that occurred on March 5, 1770 when Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave of African and Native American heritage, fell to his death while standing up to the British. Some may even consider him to be the first American, of any color, to fall in defense of what would come to be seen as our American ideals.

Centuries later, much is still unknown about Crispus Attucks, who has widely been credited as the first to die that fateful day in March. Born in either Framingham or Natick in Massachusetts, Attucks worked on a whaling crew that sailed out of Boston Harbor. Thanks to what the Massachusetts colonists believed were unfair taxation policies from the British Parliament, starting with the Stamp Act of 1765 and continuing with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767 (which mainly placed import taxes on goods from England), tensions were high in the colony; so much so that the British began to increase their military presence in 1768…

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The Forgotten Amerasians

The New York Times
2013-05-27

Christopher M. Lapinig
Yale University

NEW HAVEN — THE Senate Judiciary Committee approved an immigration reform bill last week that would gradually make citizenship possible for as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants. The bill is widely described as sweeping in scope. In fact, it is not quite sweeping enough, as it leaves the plight of another group of would-be Americans unaddressed.

Take Pinky. In 1974, her father, Jimmy Edwards, was a 22-year-old sailor aboard a United States Navy ship visiting the Philippines, 9,000 miles away from his hometown, Kinston, N.C. He fell in love with a Filipina named Merlie Daet, who gave birth to their daughter, Pinky. Mr. Edwards had hoped to marry Merlie, but as a sailor, he could not marry a foreigner without his captain’s consent. The captain refused. Despite his best efforts over the years, Mr. Edwards was unable to find Pinky (or Merlie).

Until 2005, that is. USA Bound, a now defunct nonprofit organization that reconnected Filipino children with their American fathers, told Mr. Edwards that it had found Pinky. He flew to the Philippines, only to find her living in poverty in a cinder-block hut in the mountains with her husband and five children. Determined to give her a better life, he sought United States citizenship for her.

To his surprise, it was too late. Although by birthright, children born out of wedlock to an American father and a foreign mother are entitled to United States citizenship, they must file paternity certifications no later than their 18th birthday to get it. But since the military bases in the Philippines have been closed for over 20 years, virtually all Filipino “Amerasians” — a term coined by the author and activist Pearl S. Buck to describe children of American servicemen and Asian mothers — have passed that age…

…In a Catholic society that stigmatizes illegitimate children, Filipinos deploy an arsenal of slurs against Amerasians: iniwan ng barko (“left by the ship”) and babay sa daddy (“goodbye to Daddy”) among them. Black Amerasians are often called “charcoal,” or worse…

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US Census: Rationalizing Race in US History

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Brooklyn Historical Society, Othmer Library
Brooklyn, New York
2013-04-18, 19:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)
View the full video of the event here.

What boxes do you mark on the U.S. Census to describe your heritage?

Prior to the year 2000, multiracial people could only check one box in the Race category of the U.S. Census. Now, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, multiracial Americans are the fastest growing demographic group.

Speakers

• Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch in the Population Division
• Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University, author of The Nature of Race and “Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century”
• Josh Begley, creator of Racebox.org, an online archive of U.S. Census forms from 1790 to the present
• Jonathan Soma, creator of A Handsome Atlas, a new digital way to explore US Statistical Atlases of the 19th Century

Moderated by Eric Hamako, doctoral candidate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

This event is part of Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, an oral history project and public programming series, which examines the history and experiences of mixed-heritage people and families, cultural hybridity, race, ethnicity, and identity.

View the full video of the event here. View photographs from the event here.

‘Las Caras Lindas’: To Be Black And Puerto Rican In 2013

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2013-05-25

Jasmine Garsd

I am a black man
Who was born café con leche
I sneaked into a party, to which I had not been invited.
And I got kicked out. They threw me out.
When I went back to have fun with the black girls
All together they said ‘Maelo, go back to your white girls’
And they kicked me out. They threw me out.”

– Ismael Rivera, “Niche“

In “Niche” (“Black Man”), iconic Puerto Rican singer Ismael Rivera navigates the labyrinth of race and ethnicity in the Caribbean. A light-skinned “café con leche” black man, he wanders through his island like a ghost of a colonial Spanish past, shooed off by both blacks and whites uncomfortable with his presence and what he represents.

In another iconic and deeply melancholy song, “Las Caras Lindas” (or “The Beautiful Faces”), Rivera sets aside the discomfort and pens an ode to his people: “The beautiful faces of my black race, so much crying, pain and suffering, they are the challenges of life, but inside we carry so much love.”

I was recently in Puerto Rico reporting on the island’s troubled economy and reignited diaspora. During that time, I had the chance to visit legendary rapper Tego Calderón. In his studio in Santurce, Puerto Rico, I found the entire place wallpapered with photographs of Ismael Rivera…

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The Joys and Challenges of Becoming a Transracial Family Through Adoption

Your Adoption Coach with Kelly Ellison
2013-04-20

Kelly Ellison, Host

If you are considering adopting a child of a different culture or race than your family, or you are already a transracial family formed through adoption, don’t miss this show. Our host this week is Amanda Grant, President of USAdopt, and an adoptive mother in a transracial family, who is joined by guest Tiffany Rae Reid, expert in a racial identity development and host of Mixed Race Radio. Contemplating the adoption of any child takes courage and honesty. The adoption of a child of a different cultural or racial heritage adds another layer of both complexity and celebrations. Learn the realities of transracial adoption, how to prepare your family for the change in its composition, what to do to support the healthy development of your child’s identity and what resources are available to support your child and your family in every aspect of living as a transracial family.

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

Differences give mixed-heritage students a common bond

The Los Angeles Times
2013-05-27

Larry Gordon

Increasing numbers of college campus clubs give voice to those who don’t fit into the traditional perceptions of race.

No matter what their ancestry or their skin color, many members of UCLA’s Mixed Student Union say they have repeatedly been asked the same question by classmates and strangers curious about an ambiguous racial appearance: “What are you?”
And that shared experience, they say, helps to bond the otherwise extremely diverse group, which is devoted to the rising numbers of students who are biracial and from mixed ethnic heritages.

Jenifer Logia, 20, a UCLA sophomore who is one of the Mixed Student Union’s directors, said much of campus life is defined by distinct ethnic, religious or social groupings. But none comfortably fits someone like her — from a family that blends Nicaraguan, Filipino and Guamanian heritages…

Read the entire article here.