Mixed Race Studies

Colourism and African-American Wealth: Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century South

Journal of Population Economics
Volume 20, Number 3 (July 2007)
pages 599-620
DOI: 10.1007/s00148-006-0111-x

Howard Bodenhorn, Professor of Economics
Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Christopher S. Ruebeck, Associate Professor of Economics
Lafayette University, Easton, Pennsylvania

Black is not always black. Subtle distinctions in skin tone translate into significant differences in outcomes. Data on more than 15,000 households interviewed during the 1860 US federal census exhibit sharp differences in wealth holdings between white, mulatto, and black households in the urban South. We document these differences, investigate relationships between wealth and recorded household characteristics, and decompose the wealth gaps to examine the returns to racial characteristics. The analysis reveals a distinct racial hierarchy. Black wealth was only 20% of white wealth, but mulattoes held nearly 50% of whites’ wealth. This advantage is consistent with colourism, the favouritism shown to those of lighter complexion.

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Acting White or Acting Black: Mixed-Race Adolescents’ Identity and Behavior

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
Volume 9, Issue 1 (2009)
44 pages
DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.1688

Christopher S. Ruebeck, Associate Professor of Economics
Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania

Susan L. Averett, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics
Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania

Howard N. Bodenhorn, Professor of Economics
Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Although rates of interracial marriage are on the rise, we still know relatively little about the experiences of mixed-race adolescents. In this paper, we examine the identity and behavior of mixed-race (black and white) youth. We find that mixed-race youth adopt both types of behaviors, those that can be empirically characterized as ‘black’ and those that can be characterized as ‘white.’  When we combine both types of behavior, average mixed-race behavior is a combination that is neither white nor black, and the variance in mixed-race behavior is generally greater than the variance in behavior of monoracial adolescents, especially as compared to the black racial group. Adolescence is the time during which there is most pressure to establish an identity, and our results indicate that mixed-race youth are finding their own distinct identities, not necessarily ‘joining’ either monoracial group, but in another sense joining both of them.

Read the entire article here.

Race Mixture in Hawaii

Journal of Heredity
Volume 10, Issue 1 (1919)
pages 41-47

Vaughan MacCaughey
College of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii

THE CHINESE

The   Hawaiian Islands   arc remarkable for the diversity of  races represented and for the varied conjugal race-mingling which has taken place in this tiny island world during the past hundred and fifty years. Excellent general accounts of the nature of Hawaii’s population can be found in W. F. Blackman’s “The Making of Hawaii” (Macmillan, 1906, 266 pp.) and in “Race Mingling in Hawaii” by Ernest J. Reece (American Journal of Sociology, 20:104-16, July. 1914). The present paper is the first of a series of eugenic studies of Hawaii’s polyglot and polychrome population, a series which embodies data not heretofore assembled and made available for students of eugenics.

The population of Hawaii, 1918, in round numbers is as follows:

Asiatics............................153,500
   Japanses..................105,000
   Chinese....................23,000
   Koreans.....................5,000
   Filipinos..................20,000

Polynesians..........................40,000
   Hawaiian...................23,000
   Caucasian-Hawaiians........11,000
   Chinese-Hawaiians...........6,000

Latins...............................31,000
   Portuguese.................23,000
   Spanish.....................2,000
   Porto Rican.................6,000

Americans. Scotch. British, Germans,
Russians, etc........................22,000

The Hawaiians are remnants of the splendid Polynesian stock that formerly solely possessed this lovely mid-Pacific archipelago. The Americans, North Europeans and other “white men” represent the traders, missionaries, beach-combers, sailors, fugitives from justice, merchants, sugar planters, professional, military and capitalistic classes that have completely dominated and exploited the life and resources of the islands. All of the other races—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Spanish, Portuguese, Porto Rican, Russian, Negro, South Sea Islanders, etc.—have been imported wholesale by the agricultural corporations to work in the sugar-cane fields. At present the population of Hawaii is predominantly Asiatic, alien, male, illiterate, non-English-speaking, non-Christian, landless, and homeless.

The Chinese have been associated with Hawaii since very early times The first epoch in Hawaii’s industrial exploitation was the “Sandalwood Period,” during which an active trade was carried on with China. Chinese coolie? began to he imported in small numbers about 1870. The flood of coolie labor swelled rapidly and reached a maximum about 1870. The exclusion law, which went into effect with annexation in 1898, has decreased the number of Chinese immigrants. The immigration of foreign-born Chinese into Hawaii to 1910 has been as follows:

Previous to 1890..............6,580
1891-1895.....................3,340
1898-1900.................... 3,830
1900-1905 ......................445
1905-1910.......................205

The Chinese now number 23,000; the increase during the past decade has been slight. There are now 800 registered Chinese voters in Hawaii. In 1900 there were almost as many Chinese children (1,300) in the public and private…

Read or purchase the article here.

What Are You? Mixed-Heritage Brooklyn

Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, New York
2011-09-26, 19:00 EDT (Local Time)

All events are held at BHS and are free with museum admission ($6 adults, $4 students/teachers/seniors, free for children under 12) unless otherwise noted. Admission is always free for BHS members.

Participate in this discussion at BHS about mixed heritage co-sponsored by Loving Day, a global network fighting racial prejudice through education and building multicultural community. This conversation will be facilitated by Jen Chau of Swirl, a multi-ethnic, anti-racist organization that promotes cross-cultural dialogue, with Suleiman Osman, author of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification, Race, and the Search for Authenticity in Post-War New York; performance artist Judith Sloan, co-author and co-creator with Warren Lehrer of Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America; and writer and actress Katrina Grigg-Saito, whose documentary and installation FishBird is titled for the saying “a fish can love a bird but where would they live?” This event is free and open to the public; light refreshments will be served.

This event is part of Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, a public programming series and oral history project about mixed-heritage families, race, ethnicity, culture, and identity, infused with historical perspective. This project is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York Council for the Humanities, Two Trees Management, Brooklyn Brewery, Sweet’N Low, and Con Edison.

For more information, click here.

Race, Blood, and What the Alligator Knows: A Review of What Blood Won’t Tell

Southern California Law Review
Volume 83, Number 3 (March 2010)
pages 425-440

Jason A. Gillmer, Associate Professor of Law
Texas Wesleyan School of Law

From the opening pages of Ariela J. Gross’s What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, it is clear that the reader is about to embark on something special. The story begins in a Louisiana courthouse in 1857, with an enslaved woman named Alexina Morrison claiming that she is white. For her contemporaries, the assertion no doubt carried troubling implications. James White, the man who insisted Morrison was black, had papers to prove that he paid good money for her and that she was his property. But her “blue eyes and flaxen hair” told a different story, and her recent appearances at public balls in Jefferson Parish had convinced a number of residents that her graceful mannerisms and affectations were those of a white woman rather than slave. The courtroom was soon bombarded with a dizzying array of evidence for such a simple question—was she white or was she black?—with men eventually stripping her to the waist to examine her body for the tiniest signs of her true identity. Three trials later, the community still had not resolved the issue. But more importantly, from Gross‘s view, this case provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine the complex and constantly shifting ground of race and its import for this nation‘s history…

Read the entire essay here.

When Gray Matters More Than Black or White: The Schooling Experiences of Black-White Biracial Students

Education and Urban Society
Volume 45, Number 2 (March 2013)
pages 175-207
DOI: 10.1177/0013124511406917

Rhina Maria Fernandes Williams, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education
Georgia State University, Atlanta

Although research is scant, there is a growing interest in the manifestation of the racial and cultural context on the schooling of biracial students. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the schooling experiences of 10 Black–White biracial students. Specifically, the goals of the study were to (a) identify the factors Black–White biracial students, ages 16 to 22, perceive as influential in their schooling; and (b) identify the factors the students’ parents perceive as influential in their children’s schooling. This study includes a brief review of the literature related to the schooling experiences of Black–White Biracial students. A qualitative phenomenological methodology was used to guide the design, implementation, and analysis of the study. The findings from the interviews with the biracial youth and their parents resulted in five themes, which were (a) region and school diversity; (b) peers; (c) teachers; (d) curriculum; and (e) socioeconomic status. Implications for researchers, policy makers, and teachers are outlined.

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Pio Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California

University of Oklahoma Press
2010
256 pages
5.5″ x 8.5″, Illustrations: 7 B&W Illus.
Hardcover ISBN: 9780806140902
Paperback ISBN: 9780806142371

Carlos Manuel Salomon, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
California State University, East Bay

The first biography of a politically savvy Californio who straddled three eras

Two-time governor of Alta California and prominent businessman after the U.S. annexation, Pío de Jesus Pico was a politically savvy Californio who thrived in both the Mexican and the American periods. This is the first biography of Pico, whose life vibrantly illustrates the opportunities and risks faced by Mexican Americans in those transitional years.

Carlos Manuel Salomon breathes life into the story of Pico, who—despite his mestizo-black heritage—became one of the wealthiest men in California thanks to real estate holdings and who was the last major Californio political figure with economic clout. Salomon traces Pico’s complicated political rise during the Mexican era, leading a revolt against the governor in 1831 that swept him into that office. During his second governorship in 1845 Pico fought in vain to save California from the invading forces of the United States.

Pico faced complex legal and financial problems under the American regime. Salomon argues that it was Pico’s legal struggles with political rivals and land-hungry swindlers that ultimately resulted in the loss of Pico’s entire fortune. Yet as the most litigious Californio of his time, he consistently demonstrated his refusal to become a victim.

Pico is an important transitional figure whose name still resonates in many Southern California locales. His story offers a new view of California history that anticipates a new perspective on the multicultural fabric of the state.

California’s Hispanic Heritage: A View Into the Spanish Myth

The Journal of San Diego History
San Diego Historical Society Quarterly
Volume 19, Number 1 (Winter 1973)

Manuel Patricio Servin, Professor of Southwestern and Mexican-American History
Arizona State University, Tempe

No aspect of Borderlands’ history has been more distorted than that of the Spanish colonization of the Southwest. Despite the writings of eminent historians on the racially mixed background of the Spanish-speaking pioneers, the myth that the early settlers, and consequently the old families, were preponderantly of Spanish stock persists in many quarters.

Members of old families, whose mixed-blood ancestors early adopted the Spanish ideals of success, proudly extol their Spanish lineage and background. Viewing history through special lenses, the descendants of early settlers, as well as their Anglo-American friends and relatives, seem to focus only on the Spanish conquistadores, explorers, and settlers of the Borderlands. Overlooking their unbleached mestizo, mulatto, and Indian ancestors, these anointed Spanish-speaking pioneers see themselves as the descendants of intrepid Castilian gentlemen.

This act of self-deception appears to afflict almost the entire Borderlands’ area. New Mexico, perhaps because of its long history and galaxy of noble-like conquistadores, more than any other area suffers from this Spanish fever. The names of Don Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, Don Antonio de Espejo, and Don Juan de Oñate dominate the history of the state. Consequently, New Mexico is generally considered Spanish and its Spanish-speaking inhabitants are consequently Hispanos—not Mexicans of mixed Spanish, Indian, and African stock. Texas, with its so-called Spanish founders of San Antonio, also suffers from a similar affliction. The Spanish-speaking rico, the person of status, is consequently the descendant of either the notoriously indolent Canary Islander or of an alleged Spaniard or criollo. California, where earlier American historians over glorified the Spanish period of the province as well as the names of Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolá, relishes in its Spanish origins and traditions. Its distinguished families, suffering from an acute case of color blindness, call themselves californios, descendants of supposed Spaniards.

The recognition of the role that colonial Mexicans—that is, the role that the persons of mixed-blood—played in settling the Borderlands and especially California does not reject the essential part that Spaniards performed in the exploration, colonization, and missionization of the Southwest. Spanish peninsulares overwhelmingly were the adelantados, the officials, and the priests who explored, governed, and served settlers. But to claim that the settlers were preponderantly Spaniards—as the Californios assert—must be rejected as historically untenable. These settlers, as the study of California’s settlement shows, were not Spanish, but overwhelmingly mixed-bloods from Indian, Spanish, and also Negro stock…

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The first mixed race student is admitted to Wheaton

Wheaton College History
Wheaton College, Newton, Massachusetts
2011-02-02

Deanna Hauck

The first African-American student to attend Wheaton probably did so unbeknownst to the school. In 1856-57, Mary E. Stafford of Cumberland Island, Georgia attended Wheaton. She was the daughter of a white father [Robert Stafford] and an African-American mother [Elizabeth Bernardey], and seems to have been able to pass as white, since it was not known that she was of mixed race until many years after she had actually attended Wheaton.

Source: General Files: 1856-1857: J. Ehrenhard and M. Bullard, “Stafford Plantations, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia,” p. 16.

Also see: Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island: Growth of a Planter

How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon

Verso Books
October 2008
Hardback, 240 pages
Paperback, 272 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781844672752
Paperback ISBN: 9781844674343

David R. Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History
University of Kansas

An absorbing chronicle of the role of race in US history, by the foremost historian of race and labor.

In this absorbing chronicle of the role of race in US history, David R. Roediger explores how the idea of race was created and recreated from the 1600’s to the present day. From the late seventeenth century—the era in which DuBois located the emergence of “whiteness”—through the American revolution and the emancipatory Civil War, to the civil rights movement and the emergence of the American empire, How Race Survived US History reveals how race did far more than persist as an exception in a progressive national history. Roediger examines how race intersected all that was dynamic and progressive in US history, from democracy and economic development to migration and globalization.

Exploring the evidence that the USA will become a majority “non-white” nation in the next fifty years, this masterful account shows how race remains at the heart of American life in the twenty-first century.