Mixed Race Studies

Being Black

The Barry Morgan Show
CJAD, 800 AM
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
2012-02-10

Barry Morgan, Host

Yaba Blay, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Lafayette College

Have you ever heard of the (1)ne Drop Project? I never had until I spoke with its pioneer, Yaba Blay, visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Lafayette College.
 
Blay studied people who identify as black but don’t who don’t exactly look black (many are often mistaken for Latino) to find out how they define their ‘blackness.’
 
She uses portrait documentaries (book and film), photography exhibitions, and public programming for the purpose of raising social awareness and sparking community dialogue about the complexities of Blackness as both an identity and a lived reality.
 
The (1)ne Drop effectively seeks to challenge narrow, yet popular perceptions of what “Blackness” is and what “Blackness” looks like.
 
(1)ne Drop basically hopes to awaken a long-overdue and much needed dialogue about racial identity and skin color politics.

Listen to the interview here.

Charles Marsh recounts the formation and activities of The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.

The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama
The Project on Lived Theology
University of Virginia

Charles Marsh

In 1956, a new organization appeared, predisposed to the same political concerns articulated by the Citizen’s Council, but now underwritten by the state legislature.  The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was formed to broaden the scope of protecting “the Southern Way of Life.”  The commission expressed purpose was “to do and perform any and all acts and things deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi, and her sister states, from encroachment thereon by the Federal Government”; nevertheless, it operated as “something akin to NKVD among the cotton patches,” as journalist Wilson Minor put it.  With an extensive surveillance network solidly in place, the Sovereignty Commission vigilantly monitored civil rights activists and any Mississippi citizens suspected of heterodoxy–“persons whose utterances or actions indicate they should be watched with suspicion on future racial attitudes.”  The commission pursued its ordained work by dispatching investigators and spies to gather information on civil rights workers, white liberals, and anyone else suspected of racial indiscretion.  By 1967, the commission had amassed an archive of more than ten thousand reports on people who worked for or represented “subversive, militant, or revolutionary groups.”  (By 1974, the files would grow to 87,000 names.)
 
Although the Sovereignty Commission’s principal motivation was “to prevent encroachment upon the rights of this and other states by the Federal Government” (as the charter stated), its obsession with racial purity could not be entirely explained by state’s rights fervor.  The commission’s agents seemed to spend as much energy tracking down reports of mixed-race babies and children as it did investigating the activities of subversive, militant and revolutionary groups.  Sadly, a reading of the available Sovereignty Commission files regarding rumors of interracial sex show us (in Adam Nossiter’s words) “cool accounts of lives damaged, destroyed, or threatened because black men were suspected of consorting with white women.”

Then there are reports that are stranger than fiction.  In , the director of the commission himself, Erle Johnston, Jr., wrote an eight page, single spaced report in December of 1963 explorinthe case of the woman Louvenia K. and her two sons, Edgar and Randy Edg the racial composition of the boys and their mother…

Read the entire article here.

Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860

McFarland
2012 [Originally Published by University of South Carolina press in 1985]
300 pages
6 x 9
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-7864-6931-4

Larry Koger, Historian

Most Americans, both black and white, believe that slavery was a system maintained by whites to exploit blacks, but this authoritative study reveals the extent to which African Americans played a significant role as slave masters. Examining South Carolina’s diverse population of African-American slaveowners, the book demonstrates that free African Americans widely embraced slavery as a viable economic system and that they—like their white counterparts—exploited the labor of slaves on their farms and in their businesses.

Drawing on the federal census, wills, mortgage bills of sale, tax returns, and newspaper advertisements, the author reveals the nature of African-American slaveholding, its complexity, and its rationales. He describes how some African-American slave masters had earned their freedom but how many others—primarily mulattoes born of free parents—were unfamiliar with slavery’s dehumanization.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Free Black Slaveholding and the Federal Census
• 2. The Numbers and Distribution of Black Slaveholding
• 3. From Slavery to Freedom to Slaveownership
• 4. “Buying My Chidrum from Ole Massa”
• 5. Neither a Slave Nor a Free Person
• 6. The Woodson Thesis: Fact or Fiction?
• 7. White Rice, White Cotton, Brown Planters, Black Slaves
• 8. Free Black Artisans: A Need for Labor
• 9. The Denmark Vesey Conspiracy: Brown Masters vs. Black Slaves
• 10. No More Black Massa
• Appendix A. Tables for Chapter One
• Appendix B. Table for Chapter Two
• Appendix C. Tables for Chapter Six
• Notes
• Index

A Critical Discussion of the “Mulatto Hypothesis”

The Journal of Negro Education
Volume 3, Number 3, The Physical and Mental Abilities of the American Negro (July, 1934)
pages 389-402

Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963)

The Two “Mulatto Hypotheses”

What is the “mulatto hypothesis?” The phrase may be used to indicate a point of view concerning the desirability or undesirability  of racial crossing, wherever this has occurred, and between whatever peoples it has taken place. The question as to the character of the hypothesis itself, however,  is somewhat difficult to answer, for there is not one position but two taken on the matter. Since each of these two positions, which are diametrically opposed, claim support from the findings of studies made on human and animal populations, it is important that they be differentiated at the outset of our discussion. The first of them holds that racial crossing is pernicious in its effects; the second maintains that inbreeding is inadvisable, since new strains must be introduced into a population if fertile, virile offspring are to be assured. Any consideration of these two “mulatto hypotheses,” then, must range beyond the confines which would be set if The Two “Mulatto Hypotheses” What is the “mulatto hypothesis?” The phrase may be used to indicate a point of view concerning the desirability or  undesirability  of racial crossing, wherever this has occurred, and between whatever peoples it has taken place. The question as to the character of the hypothesis itself, however,  is somewhat difficult to answer, for there is not one position but two taken on the matter. Since each of these two positions, which are diametrically opposed, claim support from the findings of studies made on human and animal populations, it is important that they be differentiated at the outset of our discussion. The first of them holds that racial crossing is pernicious in its effects; the second maintains that inbreeding is inadvisable, since new strains must be introduced into a population if fertile, virile offspring are to be assured. Any consideration of these two “mulatto hypotheses,” then, must range beyond the confines which would be set if only Negro-white crossing were studied, while such a consideration must similarly include not only a discussion of the results of crossing on the intellectual capabilities of mixed-bloods, but also on their physical potency and social efficiency.

The first of the two positions has perhaps been best phrased by Gates, who is one of its strongest proponents:

Crossing in mankind may be regarded as of three types: (1) Between individuals of the same race. (2) Between different, but nearly related, races; e.g., between the Nordic, Mediterranean and Alpine or East Baltic races, or between different African tribes, or Chinese and Japanese stocks. Such intercrossing goes on continually without causing comment or raising serious problems. (3) Between more distantly related races. Here we might again distinguish (a) crosses between two primitive or two advanced races from (b) crosses between an advanced and a primitive stock. It is only the last type which raises serious difficulties, and is probably undesirable from every point of view. Of course there is no sharp line between the most advanced and the most primitive races, but all intergrades occur. Nevertheless, the distinction I have drawn is certainly an important one.

This author there upon devotes some pages to a discussion of the studies that have been made on human crossed groups. Thus a study made by MacCaughey is quoted concerning the results of mixture in the “microcosmic melting-pot” of Hawaii, with the conclusion

…that such racial intermingling is usually undesirable in its results. Most of the Hawaiian-white hybrids seem to combine the least desirable traits of both parents, and intermarriages of North European and American stocks with dark-skinned races are considered biologically wasteful.

Lundborn is similarly quoted as concluding, on the basis of studies made in Sweden, “that the crossing of races degenerates the constitution and increases degradation.” After considering such studies, Gates summarizes….

Purchase the article here.

American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies

The William and Mary Quarterly
Third Series, Volume 19, Number 2 (April, 1962)
pages 183-200

Winthrop D. Jordan (1931-2007)

The word mulatto is not frequently used in the United States. Americans generally reserve it for biological contexts, because for social purposes a mulatto is termed a Negro. Americans lump together both socially and legally all persons with perceptible admixture of Negro ancestry, thus making social definition without reference to genetic logic; white blood becomes socially advantageous only in overwhelming proportion. The dynamic underlying the peculiar bifurcation of American society into only two color groups can perhaps be better understood if some attempt is made to describe its origin, for the content of social definitions may remain long after the impulses to their formation have gone.

After only one generation of European experience in America, colonists faced the problem of dealing with racially mixed offspring, a problem handled rather differently by the several nations involved. It is well known that the Latin countries, especially Portugal and Spain, rapidly developed a social hierarchy structured according to degrees of intermixture of Negro and European blood, complete with a complicated system of terminology to facilitate definition. The English in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, on the other hand, seem to have created no such system of ranking. To explain this difference merely by comparing the different cultural backgrounds involved is to risk extending generalizations far beyond possible factual support. Study is still needed of the specific factors affecting each nation’s colonies, for there is evidence with some nations that the same cultural heritage was spent in different ways by the colonial heirs,..

Purchase the article here.

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

Atheneum Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Simon and Schuster)
January 2012
272 pages
Reissue Hardcover ISBN-10: 1442446366; ISBN-13: 9781442446366
Reissue Paperback ISBN-10: 1442446374; ISBN-13: 9781442446373

William Loren Katz

CBC/NCSS Notable Children’s Book in Social Studies

The compelling account of how two heritages united in their struggle to gain freedom and equality in America—now updated with new content!

The first paths to freedom taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages. There, black men and women found acceptance and friendship among our country’s original inhabitants. Though they seldom appear in textbooks and movies, the children of Native- and African-American marriages helped shape the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and made a daring contribution to the fight for American liberty.

Since its original publication, William Loren Katz’s Black Indians has remained the definitive work on a long, arduous quest for freedom and equality. This new edition features a new cover and includes updated information about a neglected chapter in American history.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. If You Know I Have a History
• 2. They Fled Amongst the Indians
• 3. Between the Races We Cannot Dig Too Deep a Gulf
• 4. The Finest Looking People I Have Ever Seen
• 5. We Are All Living as in One House
• 6. That You Know Who We Are
• 7. He Was Our Go-Between
• 8. Their Mixing is to be Prevented
• 9. Like the Indians Themselves
• 10. Blood So Largely Mingled
• 11. The Finest Specimens of Mankind
• 12. No Bars Can Hold Cherokee Bill
• 13. The Greatest Sweat and Dirt Cowboy That Ever Lived
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index

Call for Papers: Association for Feminist Anthropology Sessions

American Anthropological Association
2012-02-07

Posted by Josyln O.

The Association for Feminist Anthropology welcomes sessions to be considered for inclusion in AFA’s programming for the 111^th AAA Annual Meeting, to be held November 14-18, 2012 in San Francisco. The AAA meeting theme this year is “Borders,” so AFA particularly welcomes panels that take up “borders” from a feminist anthropological perspective. Various approaches to the theme include papers and sessions that might explore:

• Borders/collaborations/intersections between feminist anthropology and other scholarly spaces from within and beyond anthropology: critical race studies, queer studies, and/or women’s studies; linguistics and genetics; political science, geography, environmental, and/or policy studies; migration and immigration studies and/or economics and archaeology and/or ethnography; biology/history/cultural studies; masculinity and/or gender studies; educational psychologies and social work; etc., etc., etc.
• Existing or potential conversations/alliances/engagements between scholarly anthropology and everyday activism
• Geographical, political, and ecological borders and the people who move across and re-define them: histories/archaeologies/economies of trade, trafficking, and/or transnationalism; refugees, resettlements, and asylum seekers; multiple and multiplying citizenships; migration, immigration, and diasporas; etc.
• “Borders” and “borderlands” in terms of identities: liminal; queer; mestizaje; mixed-race; transgender
• The “in between” scholar working across/between/among disciplines; conducting research and participating within communities; “insider anthropology”; Lorde’s concept and Harrison’s theorizing of the “outsider within”

We are especially interested in sessions that take advantage of the meeting site of San Francisco by involving local activists, practitioners, and policy makers, whether they are anthropologists or not. If you have questions about the details of registration for non-anthropologists, please let us know…

For more information, click here.

The color of Black: Professor explores racial identity in college students

Scope: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education
Stanford University
2011-10-10

Barbara McKenna

There are lots of different ways to be Black and to have a strong Black identity,” says Camille Charles. But, she adds, research and social definitions of Black identity don’t generally consider those multi-faceted dimensions.
 
Charles discussed her research on identity in Black college students on October 3 in a talk titled, “Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud?): Understanding the Racial Identities of Upwardly Mobile Black College Students.” The talk was the first SCOPE Brown Bag Seminar of the 2011-12 year.
 
Charles, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Center for Africana Studies, says that traditional academic theories on Black identity have changed in the face of shifting demographics and politics. Throughout the 20th century, the one drop rule was the measure of race; any person with one drop of Black blood was socially and legally Black. More recently, Black racial identity was generally based on one’s political views. Black individuals were labeled as either assimilationist (for those who valued integration into the larger American society) or nationalist (for those who renounced efforts to integrate with white peers or institutions). “When, in fact,” Charles says, “one can hold aspects of both at the same time.”
 
Ironically, she notes, in recent times the one drop rule has been flipped to bring into question the authenticity of mixed-race people identifying as Blacks—a conversation heard often during the 2008 presidential campaign.

But this “unidimensional” definition is out of step with both current demographics and mindsets, she says. According to the 2010 Census, 10 percent of the Black U.S. population was immigrant and there was an increase as well in those identifying as mixed-race Black. “Two fields of study challenge the traditional unidimensional definition of Black identity: studies of multiraciality and of Black ethnic identity,” Charles says. These changes have helped broaden definitions of identity somewhat, but both academic and lay depictions of black identity continue to apply outdated unidimensional definitions of black identity…

Read the entire article here.  View the slideshow presentation here. View the video of the lecture here.

The Souls of Mixed Folk [Review: Samatar]

Sofia Samatar
2012-02-05

Sofia Samatar

This book, by Stanford professor Michele Elam, comes at you with a provocative title and a provocative cover.

The title, a reference to the brilliant and still relevant 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois, is provocative because it could be read as trivializing a classic of African-American literature and cultural theory. The cover, which shows an image of “Baby Halfie Brown Head” by artist Lezley Saar, is provocative because of the way it presents a mixed-race body as a creepy, freakish-looking doll.

If you are bothered by these things, you should keep reading Elam’s book. She explains very quickly that she doesn’t mean to trivialize Du Bois: her title comes from a frame in Nate Creekmore’s comic strip, Maintaining, and she chose it for a number of good reasons, among them a wish “to both evoke and unsettle expectations, to prepare the reader for examples of art, literature, comics, and drama that collectively reframe…conversations about the ‘spiritual strivings’ of mixed race people.” The disturbing doll on the cover is meant to play a similar role. Elam writes: “Politically incorrect in an age seeking to answer ever more earnestly the philosophical and democratic problem of ‘the one and the many,’ its body will not deliver the desired whole.”…

Read the entire review here.

Film retells Lovings’ love story

The Free Lance-Star
Fredericksburg, Virginia
2012-02-06

Jonas Beals

Mildred and Richard Loving were probably the last people you would expect to make legal history, but in 1967 they won a U.S. Supreme Court case that nullified laws against interracial marriage in Virginia and the 15 other states that still banned miscegenation. And it happened in Caroline County.

Their story has become legend in certain legal and civil rights circles, but their historic ordeal is less well known to younger generations and people in other areas of the country. That’s about to change.

HBO will première “The Loving Story” on Valentine’s Day—Feb. 14.

The producers have been screening the film across the country, and on Saturday they brought it home. Friends, family and admirers packed the auditorium of the Caroline County Community Services Center. The screening ended with a standing ovation.

The documentary, directed by Nancy Buirski, is mostly made up of black-and-white footage shot by Hope Ryden in 1965 and black-and-white photos taken by Life magazine photographer Grey Villet, also in 1965…

Read the entire article here.