Mixed Race Studies

Outside the box: The multiracial/multiethnic student experience

University of Colorado, Boulder
Main Campus – University Memorial Center (UMC)
1669 Euclid Avenue
Boulder, Colorado
Room: 415
2011-11-08, 15:30-16:45 MST (Local Time)

For the multiracial student, college is often a time of consolidating and exploring identity. Through a combination of research, personal stories, and facilitated discussion, this session offers models of multiracial and multiethnic identity development, and explores the unique challenges and strengths of multiracial students at CU. One of the goals of this session is to develop strategies for improving the climate for multiracial students at CU.

For more information, click here.

The Physical Form and Growth of the American Negro

Anthropologischer Anzeiger
Volume 4, Number 4 (1927)
pages 293-316

Melville J. Herskovits

(With 17 Tables and 17 Figures)

The series which is represented in this paper is made up of 5,539 American Negroes, comprising individuals of both sexes and all ages from one year to adult-hood, (this latter class including all persons who are twenty-years of age and above). The measurements, the averages and variabilities of which are given below in the tables, were taken, with the exception of one group, during the past three years in New York City; in Washington, D.C.; among the rural population of eastern West Virginia; at Nashville, Tenn.; and at Tuskegee, Ala. The exception which may be noted is a series of 351 individuals, measured by the late Professor [Felix] von Luschan in eight cities of the south of the United States, during the year 1915. This series is also composed of persons of both sexes and all ages, and, for the purpose in hand, is incorporated with the other series mentioned above.

It is important, in any consideration of the American Negro, to understand the use of the term. The word “Negro” is, biologically, a misnomer, for the African Negroes, brought to the United States as slaves, have crossed in breeding with the dominant White population, as well as with the aboriginal American Indian types with whom they came into contact, so that there is today only a small percentage of the American Negroes who may be considered Negro in the ordinary sense of the term. I have  discussed the extent to which this crossing has occurred, and the consequent hybrid character of the American Negro people of today, elsewhere, and it is therefore only necessary…

Login to read the entire article here.

Melville Jean Herskovits

American Anthropologist
Volume 66, Issue 1 (February 1964)
pages 83-109
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1964.66.1.02a00080

Alan P. Merriam

Melville Jean Herskovits (1895-1963)

Melville Jean Herskovits was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, September 10, 1895, and spent his childhood there and in Texas. In 1920 he took his Ph.B. at the University of Chicago, and later came under the influence of Franz Boas, then at Columbia University, where he took an M.A. in 1921 and his doctorate in 1923. In 1924 he married Frances Shapiro, and their daughter, Jean, was born in 1935. He held the post of lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University from 1924 to 1927, and was at Howard University in 1925. In 1927 he moved to Northwestern University where he remained, as full professor since 1935, until his death February 25, 1963.

Facts of this nature tell us but little about a man who gave his intellectual life to anthropology, of his devotion to his field of study, or of the enormous integrity he brought to it. It is, rather, in looking at the fruits of his devotion that we see the scope and brilliance of his productivity and the constant theme of humanitarianism, based always on the facts of research, that marked his work.

From 1923-1927 Herskovits carried out his first major series of studies as Fellow of the Board of the Biological Sciences of the National Research Council; this was a detailed program of physical anthropology titled “Variability under Radical Crossing.” The project came to be centered about variability, homogeneity and heterogeneity, and the problem of Mendelian inheritance in race crossing; it began with early anthropometric studies of Negro boys in New York City and Riverdale, New York (#28, 37). In 1925, Herskovits pointed out the importance of the range of variability in studying a mixed racial grouping (#31: 70), and suggested that a significant means of understanding heredity in racial crossing could be achieved through the study of genealogies of individuals concerned (#121, 61). This led immediately to the question of homogeneity and heterogeneity (#39) in the American Negro population, and Herskovits concluded:

That the variability of family strains can be utilized as an indication of the homogeneity or heterogeneity of a population; that the Negro-White population of New York is of surprisingly great homogeneity of type; that in this instance, at least, the result may be taken as an indication of the heterogeneity of racial origin; and that there is not in this population great variation between families, but rather within them. (#43 : 12)

The concept of low variability in family lines and high variability within families of New York Negroes was so different from that generally prevailing that Herskovits sought a further explanation which he found in the element of social selection (#35, 63, 100)…

Read the entire article here.

Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix [Review: Glazier]

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries
Volume 49, Number 2 (October 2011)

Steven D. Glazier, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Spencer, Rainier. Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix. L. Rienner, 2011. 355p bibl index afp ISBN 9781588267511.

Spencer’s insightful analysis and critique of ideologies surrounding “multiracialism” in the 21st-century US highlights the “multiracial identity movement” and “generation mix” (young adults who see themselves as the first generation of Americans with parents of different races). As he correctly points out, this self-portrayal is false, since most black and white Americans are racially mixed. Part 1 (“The Mulatto Past”) offers a succinct overview of white American ideas about mulattoes—notably, the incorrect views of Chicago sociologists Robert Park, Everett Stonequist, and Edward Reuter, who depicted mulattoes as conflicted and psychologically flawed… …Containing both careful philosophical arguments and unsubstantiated pronouncements, Spencer’s presentation is highly repetitious, but nevertheless an important, innovative study. Summing Up: Recommended.

Read the entire review in the October 2011 issue of Choice.

School for Tricksters: A Novel in Stories

Texas A&M University Press Consortium (Southern Methodist University Press)
2011-01-11
248 pages
6×9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-87074-563-8

Chris Gavaler, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Virginia

This is a novel in stories depicting radical incidents of racial crossing in the early twentieth century. The alternating chapters are closely based on two real-life students, Ivy Miller, a semi-orphaned white girl seeking a free education, and Sylvester Long, a black youth escaping the Jim Crow South. Both passed illegally as Indians while attending the U.S. government’s most prestigious Indian boarding school.

Crimes of Performance

Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society
Volume 13, Issue 1 (2011)
Special Issue: Black Critiques of Capital: Radicalism, Resistance, and Visions of Social Justice
pages 29-45
DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2011.551476

Uri McMillan, Assistant Professor of English
University of California, Los Angeles

In this article, I focus on the intersections between discourses of crime and illegality with modes of performance in the multiple impersonations staged by William and Ellen Craft, two married fugitive slaves who escaped from chattel slavery in the United States in 1848 through a complex set of layered performances. I begin illustrating the linkages between crime and performance by tracing the workings of a dynamic I term “fugitive transvestism” in an aesthetic representation of Ellen Craft, specifically an engraving she posed for in 1851 that was later published in The London Illustrated News. In doing so, I not only reveal the engraving as a site where we can witness Craft’s embodied performances, rather than a seemingly static document, but also focus on the crimes of “being” acted by Craft that surface in the engraving itself. In addition, I further reveal the performative and criminal acts committed by Ellen Craft, by later moving to a discussion of prosthetics, focusing attention on the mechanisms of Craft’s escape costume. Prosthetic performances, as I discuss them, were dramatic and tactical strategies employed by the Crafts that continue to reveal the suturing of crime and performance in Ellen Craft’s counterfeit embodiment of her alter-ego, while taking it further into yet another set of unlawful impersonations. Thus, this essay will evince how the Craft’s multiple crimes of performance enabled their mobility across 19th-century spatial sites and representational spheres.

Read or purchase the article here.

Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed-Race Americans

Paradigm Publishers
December 2011
208 pages
6×9
ISBN: 978-1-59451-982-6

Cathy J. Tashiro, PhD, RN, Associate Professor of Nursing
University of Washington, Tacoma

In the first book to focus on the experiences of older American of mixed race identity, Cathy Tashiro explores questions of identity and the significance of family experiences, aging and the life course, class, gender, and nationality. Including African American/White and Asian American/White individuals, the book highlights the poignant voices of people who were among the first generations to transgress the color line. Their very existence violated the deep cultural beliefs in the distinctiveness of the races at the time. Based on extensive interviews, the book offers a unique perspective on the social construction of race and racism in America.

Bettez to discuss experiences of mixed race women

The Southern Illinoisan
2011-10-28

Christi Mathis, Staff Writer
University Communications at SIU Carbondale

CARBONDALE – Silvia C. Bettez will present “But Don’t Call Me White: Mixed Race Women Exposing Nuances of Privilege and Oppression Politics” on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
 
The guest lecture in Wham Building, Room 219, is set for 3:30 to 5 p.m. and everyone is welcome to attend. Bettez is an assistant professor of cultural foundations of education in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Education.
 
The basis of her presentation is her recently released book of the same title. Bettez extensively interviewed 16 women of mixed race, all having one white parent and one parent of color. She considers the women “secret agent insiders to cultural whiteness,” with the experiences and ability to offer unique insights and perspectives that they see in light of their lives as mixed race individuals. Bettez will discuss “the hidden dynamics of oppression and privilege along the lines of race, class, gender and sexuality.”…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Families: Counted But Still Misunderstood

Racialicious
2011-10-31

Jen Chau, Guest Contributor

In the past couple of years, I have noticed a certain complacency that I never noticed before, in my eleven years of leading Swirl. The same passion and the same excitement around building multiracial communities had faded a bit. In the one year leading up to the Presidential election, we launched five new chapters (the norm had been a chapter every year or every other year). People were excited by the energy created by Obama’s campaign, and they were motivated and eager to be a part of creating supportive and inclusive multiracial communities.

And then once Obama was firmly placed in the White House, something happened. It got quiet…

Read the entire article here.

The Black-and-White World of Walter Ashby Plecker

The Virginian-Pilot
2004-08-18

Warren Fiske

Lacy Branham Hearl closes her eyes and travels eight decades back to what began as a sweet childhood.

There was family everywhere: her parents, five siblings, nine sets of adoring aunts and uncles and more cousins than she could count. They all lived in a Monacan Indian settlement near Amherst, their threadbare homes circling apple orchards at the foot of Tobacco Row Mountain.

As Hearl grew, however, she sensed the adults were engulfed in deepening despair. When she was 12, an uncle gathered his family and left Virginia, never to see her again. Other relatives scattered in rapid succession, some muttering the name “Plecker.”

Soon, only Hearl’s immediate family remained. Then the orchards began to close because there were not enough workers and the townspeople turned their backs and all that was left was prejudice and plight and Plecker.

Hearl shakes her head sadly.

“I thought Plecker was a devil,” she says. “Still do.”

Walter Ashby Plecker was the first registrar of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, which records births, marriages and deaths. He accepted the job in 1912. For the next 34 years, he led the effort to purify the white race in Virginia by forcing Indians and other nonwhites to classify themselves as blacks. It amounted to bureaucratic genocide…

…From the grave, Plecker is frustrating the efforts of Virginia tribes to win federal recognition and a trove of accompanying grants for housing, health care and education. One of the requirements is that the tribes prove their continuous existence since 1900. Plecker, by purging Indians as a race, has made that nearly impossible. Six Virginia tribes are seeking the permission of Congress to bypass the requirement.

“It never seems to end with this guy,” said Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi. “You wonder how anyone could be so consumed with hate.”..

…Plecker’s first 12 years on the job were groundbreaking and marked by goodwill. He educated midwives of all races on modern birthing techniques and cut the 5 percent death rate for black mothers almost in half. He developed an incubator – a combination of a laundry basket, dirt, a thermometer and a kerosene lamp – that anyone could make in an instant. Concerned by a high incidence of syphilitic blindness in black and Indian babies, he distributed silver nitrate to be put in the eyes of newborns…

…Plecker saw everything in black and white. There were no other races. There was no such thing as a Virginia Indian. The tribes, he said, had become a “mongrel” mixture of black and American Indian blood.

Their existence greatly disturbed Plecker. He was convinced that mulatto offspring would slowly seep into the white race. “Like rats when you’re not watching,” they “have been sneaking in their birth certificates through their own midwives, giving either Indian or white racial classification,” Plecker wrote.

He called them “the breach in the dike.” They had to be stopped.

Many who came into Plecker’s cross hairs were acting with pure intentions. They registered as white or Indian because that’s how their parents identified themselves. Plecker seemed to delight in informing them they were “colored,” citing genealogical records dating back to the early 1800s that he said his office possessed. His tone was cold and final.

In one letter, Plecker informed a Pennsylvania woman that the Virginia man about to become her son-in-law had black blood. “You have to set the thing straight now and we hope your daughter can see the seriousness of the whole matter and dismiss this young man without any more ado,” he wrote.

In another missive, he rejected a Lynchburg woman’s claim that her newborn was white. The father, he told her in a letter, had traces of “negro” blood.

“This is to inform you that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white,” he wrote.

“You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.

“It is a horrible thing.”…

…Plecker’s racial records were largely ignored after 1959, when his handpicked successor retired. Virginia schools were fully integrated in 1963 and, four years later, the state’s ban on interracial marriage was ruled unconstitutional. In 1975, the General Assembly repealed the rest of the Racial Integrity Act…

Read the entire article here.