Mixed Race Studies

AfroPoP – A Lot Like You

AfroPoP
PBS Video
Duration: (00:56:59)
Premiere Date: 2013-01-22
Episode Expires: 2013-02-22

Eliaichi Kimaro, Director

A bi-racial filmmaker returns to her father’s home tribe on Mount Kilomanjaro.

Premieres January 22nd on the WORLD Channel. In this award-winning and very personal documentary a young woman probes her interracial roots to find some difficult truths about her own past and her father’s male-dominated East African culture.

For more information, click here.

A Code To Live By In Appalachia

Transom
2013-01-30

Mary Helen Miller, Producer/Reporter
WUTC, 88.1 FM
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

with help from:
Viki Merrick, Editor

There may come a day when races are so blended as to be irrelevant, but not yet. For our first 2012 Transom Donor Fund piece, producer Mary Helen Miller explores the racial identity of Melungeons in Appalachia. It’s not an easy task to come up with a definition, as it turns out, even in the age of DNA. The truth of heritage can be tough to admit for some. Mary Helen’s piece will clear things up for you, as clear as possible anyway, and includes a trip to the 16th annual Melungeon Reunion in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. –Jay Allison, Producer/Editor/Founder

About A Code To Live By In Appalachia
 
“Mysterious” is probably the first word most people associate with the Melungeons. They were a mixed race group that settled in southern Appalachia in the late 1700s. They lived in their own communities, separate from their white neighbors. Some stayed in those communities as late as the mid-20th century.

The oldest generations of Melungeons had a striking look: dark skin, straight black hair, blue eyes. Nobody knew where they had come from or how, exactly, they ended up in the mountains along the Tennessee-Virginia border. Melungeons themselves often explained their distinct looks by claiming Native American or Portuguese ancestry. But their white neighbors would sometimes claim they had African heritage.

The mystery of the Melungeon people drew me in, just like it’s drawn in so many others. Growing up in Tennessee, I remember my mom occasionally mentioning the Melungeons. Whatever remarks she made always seemed to end with: “… and nobody knows where they’re from. Isn’t that something?”
 
Recently, a little googling led me to Jack Goins, the force behind the Melungeon DNA Project. Jack is a retired TV salesman in Hawkins County, Tennessee, who is descended from Melungeons. He’s been gathering DNA samples from other descendants to try to get some answers about Melungeon ancestry…

Read the entire article here. Download/Listen to the episode (00:16:56)  here.

The Silly Debate Over Whether Obama is Black or Mixed-Race

The Huffington Post
2008-06-14

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Political Analyst and Social Issues Commentator

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama gave the best answer to the question whether he’s black, mixed race or something in between. He recently told a Chicago fundraiser crowd that to some he wasn’t black enough, and he then promptly added that others say he might be too black. He’s right; the knock against him has either been that he is too black or not black enough, not that he is too mixed race or not mixed race enough. Despite his occasional references to his white mother and grandmother, Obama by his own admission has never seen himself as anything other than being black. He says that’s it been that way since he was 12. It’s that way for those whites who flatly say that they won’t vote for him because he’s black. His Democratic primary losses to Hillary Clinton in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky showed there are legions of white voters who feel that race does matter to them. Few have said that they oppose him because he’s mixed race.

Yet, the silly debate continues to rage over whether Obama is the black presidential candidate or the multi-racial candidate. The debate is even sillier when one considers that science has long since debunked the notion of a pure racial type. In America, race has never been a scientific or genealogical designation, but a political and social designation. Put bluntly, anyone with the faintest trace of African ancestry was and still is considered black, and treated accordingly. Their part-white ancestry doesn’t give them a pass from taxis refusing to stop for them, clerks following them in department stores, from being racial-profiled by police on street corner stops, from landlords refusing to show them an apartment, or being denied a promotion. The mixed race designation doesn’t magically make disappear the countless other racial sleights and indignities that are tormenting reminders that race still does matter, and matter a lot to many Americans…

Read the entire article here.

Hafu: The Film

Hafu: The Film
2013-01-30

Megumi Nishikura, Director, Producer and Cinematographer

Lara Perez Takagi, Director, Producer and Cinematographer

Marcia Yumi Lise, Thematic Advisor

Jilann Spitzmiller, Executive Producer

Aika Miyake, Editor

Winton White, Music

Dear Friends,

A belated happy new years to you! We have been quietly busy these past few months but have many great announcements to share with you.

Our first screening date has been set! On April 5th we will be screening at the Japan American National Museum in Los Angeles. Filmmakers Lara and Megumi will be present at the post-screening discussion afterwards. Seats are limited so RSVP your spot today.

The screening is part of the 5-day Hapa Japan Festival, which celebrates the stories of the growing number of mixed-Japanese in the US. For those in Los Angeles area this event is not to be missed!…

For more information, click here.

Race Relations in Virginia & Miscegenation in the South, 1776-1860

University of Massachusetts Press
1970
362 pages
ISBN-10: 0870230506; ISBN-13: 978-0870230509

James Hugo Johnston (1891-1974), Professor of History
University of Virginia

Contents

• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• PART I. THE RELATION OF THE NEGRO TO THE WHITE MAN IN VIRGINIA
  • 1. Friendly Relations
  • 2. Violent Relations
  • 3. Free Negro Relations
• PART II. THE RELATION OF THE WHITE MAN TO THE NEGRO IN VIRGINIA
  • 4. The Humanitarians
  • 5. The Growth of Antislavery
  • 6. The Convention of 1829 and Nat Turner’s Insurrection
• PART III. MISCEGENATION
  • 7. The Intermixture of Races in the Colonial Period
  • 8. The Problem of Racial Identity
  • 9. The White Man and His Negro Relations
  • 10. The Status of the White Woman in the Slave States
  • 11. Indian Relations
  • 12. Mulatto Life in the Slave Period
• APPENDIX
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX

Recent Decisions: Constitutional Law: Miscegenation Laws

Marquette Law Review
Volume 48, Issue 4 (Spring 1965)
pages 616-620

C. Michael Conter

Constitutional Law: Miscegenation Laws: The defendants were convicted under section 798.05 of the Florida statutes, which prohibited nighttime cohabitation of the same room by a Negro and a white of different sexes.

On appeal, their conviction was affirmed by the Florida Supreme Court in McLaughlin v. Florida because it felt bound by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Pace v. Alabama and the decisions of many state courts upholding similar statutes. Both Pace and McLaughlin involve nearly corresponding statutory schemes. The Alabama statutes applicable in the Pace decision not only contained a statute which prohibited fornication by persons of different races, but also a general non-racial fornication statute. Similarly, the Florida statutes, aside from prohibiting interracial cohabitation, held adultery and fornication by people of the same race a crime.

Due to the established precedent and the similarities of the two situations, the Florida court adopted the Pace reasoning that the statute, although it contained racial classifications, was not discriminatory because both the Negro and the white received the same punishment. Secondly, the court viewed the offense committed by persons of different racial descent as an entirely distinct offense from one committed by persons of the same race, and one to which the general sections of the statutes are applicable. Therefore, the Florida court found that both the statutes are necessary in order to enforce the legislative purposes involved…

..The validity of the antimiscegenation law itself could also be questioned under the fourteenth amendment by requiring the showing of a reasonable legislative purpose for its enactment. There is serious doubt that any valid reason could be shown for this type of statute. In fact, the three basic arguments which are often advanced to support these statutes; namely, that the children of these marriages would be inferior, that social tensions and domestic problems are lessened, and that psychological hardships to the offspring are avoided, have been discredited. Therefore the application of a reasonable legislative purpose test would most likely lead to a finding of unconstitutionality under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, especially since the usual presumption of a valid legislative purpose is not applied to cases dealing with racial classifications.

However, a better approach might be to recognize that the right of the individual to marry is a fundamental right, protected under the clear and present danger test. Surely it is a right which can be considered as important to the individual as is his right to own property or his freedom of speech. The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race.

This test has been applied to the right of the individual to own property, mentioned in the first part of the fourteenth amendment. Another right mentioned in this part of the amendment is the right to liberty, to which the clear and present danger test has also been applied. The right to marry has been recognized as being embodied in the concept of liberty under the fourteenth amendment…

Read the entire article here.

Race and Indigeneity in the Life of Elisha Apes

Ethnohistory
Volume 60, Number 1 (Winter 2013)
pages 27-50
DOI: 10.1215/00141801-1816166

Nancy Shoemaker, Professor of History
University of Connecticut

This essay examines cultures of racial categorization in New England and New Zealand through the life of one migrant, Elisha Apes, the younger half-brother of the radical Pequot Indian writer William Apess, who preferred to spell the family name with a second s. Elisha Apes settled in New Zealand in 1839 and married a Māori woman of the South Island. Their six children came to be labeled “half-castes” in the language of the nineteenth-century New Zealand state. If half-caste had been a term in New England, it would have been applied to Elisha Apes, for he was indeed of mixed descent. However, in New Zealand, where native referred to the Māori only, Apes’s native origins elsewhere had no bearing. His status as a foreigner who came to settle in New Zealand cast him into the same category as New Zealand’s European/white population.

Read or purchase the article here.

Miscegenation Illustrated

Columbus Daily Enquirer
Columbus, Georgia
1865-10-27
page 2, column 3

Source: Digital Library of Georgia

Extracts from a new Book of Travel, by an American Physician.

The Mixture of Race in Peru.

The aboriginal race was the Indian; and subsequently there came into the country the Spaniard, the negro, and more recently the Chinaman; to enable one to come to tolerably correct conclusions as to results, when it is addded that the proposal of North American miscegenation has in South America been practically applied. To wit:

• The white and Indian have given to Peru to mestizo.
• White and negro, the mulatto.
• White and Chinese, the chino-blando.
• Indian and Chinese, the chino cholo.
• Negro and Chinese, the zamto-chino.
• Indian and negro, the chino.
• White and mulatto, the courteron.
• White and mestiza, the creole—so called here, but altogether different from the creole of the Southern States of North America.
• Indian and mulatto, the chino-oscuro.
• Indian and mestiza, the zambo-negro.
• Negro and mulatto, the zambo-negro.
• Negro and mestiza, the mulatto oscuro.

With these data, and knowing that the created distinctions of the primary races have been shamelessly disregarded by man, and that the baser passions have subverted reason, sentiment and sympathy, the many modifications of admixture and relative proportions of blood may be surmised which characterize a population presenting a greater variety of tints, of physical and mental endowments, than can be found probably elsewhere in the world.

Harry L. Carrico, Virginia Supreme Court justice, dies at 96

The Washington Post
2013-01-28

Martin Weil

Harry L. Carrico, who sat for 42 years on the Virginia Supreme Court and wrote a decision on interracial marriage that was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in what was regarded as a civil rights milestone, died Sunday in Richmond. He was 96.

A family spokeswoman said his health had declined after a fall while on a cruise in December. He was a Richmond resident and died at the Virginia Commonwealth University medical center.

His tenure as a justice was among the longest in the history of the state. Even after he formally retired, he continued to hear cases as a senior judge and had been on the bench as recently as December…

…Justice Carrico’s best known opinion came in 1966. He wrote the ruling by which the Virginia Supreme Court unanimously upheld the state law against interracial marriage. The case became known as Loving v. Virginia and was named for the mixed-race couple, Richard and Mildred Jeter Loving.

The Lovings had married in Washington in June 1958 but soon returned to their native Caroline County, a rural area between Richmond and Fredericksburg. At the time, about two dozen states, including Virginia, prohibited interracial marriage.

The Caroline County sheriff burst into the Lovings’ home that July, roused the couple from their bed and told them the District’s marriage certificate was invalid in Virginia. The Lovings were subsequently charged and prosecuted…

Read the entire obituary here.

When Half is Whole: Understanding Mixed Race Identities

Stanford University, Cypress North
Tresidder Union
459 Lagunita
2013-02-01, 12:00 PST (Local Time)

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, Consulting Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine & Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity will discuss identity development in persons of mixed racial and national backgrounds.  This topic has particular appeal to those who are interracially married and have children who are racially mixed, as well as people of mixed race heritage or for parents who are raising children who are ethnically different from them.

Free and open to all faculty, staff, retirees, postdocs and their eligible dependents who are part of the Stanford University, SLAC, Stanford hospital and clinics, LPCH.

For more information, click here.