Mixed Race Studies

Methodology and Measurement in the Study of Multiracial Americans: Identity, Classification, and Perceptions

Sociology Compass
Volume 5, Issue 7 (July 2011)
pages 607–617
DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00388.x

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

This article lays out some of the methodological issues in doing research on multiracial people (those whose immediate and/or distant ancestors come from different racial or ethnic groups), including how they are counted, how they are perceived, how they identify themselves, what factors affect their self-identifications, and how their identifications change over time.

Read or purchase the article here.

Do You See What I Am? How Observers’ Backgrounds Affect Their Perceptions of Multiracial Faces

Social Psychology Quarterly
Volume 73, Number 1 (March 2010)
pages 58-78
DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361436

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

Although race is one of the most salient status characteristics in American society, many observers cannot distinguish the racial ancestries of multiracial youth. This paper examines how people perceive multiracial adolescents: specifically, I investigate whether observers perceive the adolescents as multiracial and whether these racial perceptions are congruent with the multiracial adolescents’ self-identifications. Results show that 1) observers perceived close to half of multiracial targets as monoracial, 2) multiracial targets who identified themselves as black were nearly always perceived as black but not always as multiracial, and 3) the demographic and environmental characteristics of observers had no bearing on the congruence of their racial perceptions. That is, regardless of their own demographic characteristics or exposure to people of other races, observers were more congruent when examining targets who self-identified as black or white and less congruent when identifying targets from Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, or Middle Eastern backgrounds. Despite the demographic trend toward multiracialism in the United States, observers’ perceptions may maintain the status quo in race relations: a black-white dichotomy where part-blacks remain in the collective black category.

Read the entire article here.

How medicine is advancing beyond race

CNN.com
2011-07-08

Elizabeth Landau, CNN.com Health Writer/Producer

(CNN)—No matter what race you consider yourself to be, you have a unique genetic makeup.

That’s why, as technology improves and researchers explore new implications of the human genome, medicine is going to become more individually tailored in a model called personalized medicine.

Although we’ve been hearing for years that people of particular races are at higher risk for certain illnesses, personalized medicine will (in theory) make better predictions based on actual genetic makeup. And even now, race is less relevant to your own health care than you might think.
 
But doctors say a patient’s culture—the collection of norms, goals, attitudes, values and beliefs—will always be important to health care, no matter how sophisticated genetic technology gets.

Biologically, what is race?

When it comes down to it there’s, no clear-cut way of saying that one person “belongs” to one race or another—in fact, a person who has the skin color and hair type typical of one race may self-identify in a completely different way.

And if you think that race comes from location-based populations, many Americans don’t have a “pure” genetic heritage from only one world region. In fact, 9 million Americans identified as multiracial on the most recent census, so it’s hard to make these distinctions.

You probably have genes that came from several groups of ancestral communities. Based on archaeological evidence, everyone’s earliest ancestors came from Africa more than 2 million years ago, so we’re all descended from the same “race” anyway.

“There are genetic ancestries—markers that you can see—but those don’t necessarily perfectly correlate with what people consider their own race to be, because that’s sort of an artificial construct,” said Dr. Wendy Chung, assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center…

…Sometimes race obscures underlying mechanisms for genetic traits.
 
For decades, doctors thought that sickle cell disease was exclusively African, but some people of Mediterranean and Indian origin also have the genetic trait. We now know that the genetic trait for sickle cell disease protects against malaria, and that it is found among people with ancestry in places where malaria is, or used to be found, biologists Marcus Feldman and Richard Lewontin point out in their essay “Race, Ancestry, and Medicine.”

Race can also hide underlying social issues—namely, poverty.
 
African-American life expectancy at birth is on average, about five fewer years than white Americans, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Dr. Vicente Navarro at Johns Hopkins University has shown in his research that social class is a bigger driver of U.S. life expectancy than race or gender. He points out in a 1990 Lancet study that the United States is the only Western developed nation that does not report health statistics according to class…

Read the entire article here.

Interracialism and Contemporary Religion

Oklahoma State University
2007
105 pages
AAT 1443028

Wayne S. White

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science

The purpose of this study was to examine the myths and theories related to interracial couples regard to contemporary religious institutions. This study is an exploratory in Nature and focused primarily on the acceptance of heterosexual biracial (Black/White) couples within a religious setting. The methodology used for the purpose of this study was content analysis of literature that was important to the framing of topic from a historical perspective to the present. Method techniques were also borrowed from social constructionism and labeling theory when analyzing the literature.

The findings of this research project found that religious mythologies and social theories about the nature of interracial marriage among Black/White couples continues to be problematic for religious mixed race couples. These myths and theories are based on the assumption that biracial couples are a threat to a well established White dominant racial hierarchy. Furthermore, the socially constructed image of interracial couples that emerges from these myths and theories become the basis of racist ideology without hard empirical evidence to support these assertions. Nevertheless, the cultural assumption still exist among the general public and within some religious institutions and have real life consequences for some mixed race couples. Thus the social construction of reality is ongoing for some interracial couples. This research is important because it provides insight into human behavior and actions within an institution whose inner workings are often private while outwardly claiming to be accessible to everyone without prejudice.

Table of Contents

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Definition of Terms
  • Purpose of the Study
  • Contribution to Sociology
  • Preview of the Remaining Chapters
• II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Introduction
  • Religion and Racism
  • Contemporary Myths and Theories
  • Summary
• III. THEORETICAL CONCERNS
  • Introduction
  • Discussion of Social Construction
  • Discussion of Contact Theory
  • Summary
• IV. METHODOLOGY
  • Introduction
  • Content Analysis of Literature
  • Sampling Technique
  • Themes and Classifications
• V. FINDINGS
  • Authors’ Approach & Perspectives
  • Religious Opposition to Interracial Relationships
  • Coping Mechanism of Interracial Couples
  • Interracial Congregations as the Answer to Racism
• VI. CONCLUSION
  • Connecting Theory To Findings
  • Limitation of the Study & Future Implications
• REFERENCES

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

• Tables
  1. Chapter and Subheadings Discussing Myths and Theories about Blacks and Interracial Relationships
  2. Authors’ Approach and Perspectives
  3. Participation in Racially Diverse Worship
  4. Methods of Discouraging Interracial Relationships by Religious Leaders
  5. Coping Mechanisms of Interracial Couples
• Figures
  1. Factors Determining Interracial Contact
  2. Mythologies and Theories Found in Texts
  3. Discussion of Race Relations in Society
  4. Whites Not As Accepting of Interracial Dating

INTRODUCTION

Some contemporary Christian leaders use their pulpits to discourage heterosexual interracial relationships while others use their influence to vocalize support for racial intermarriage. A White pastor of a multiracial church in Tulsa, Oklahoma informed his daughter while she was in kindergarten (when he came home and found a little African American boy there), “Hey look we’re friends, we play, we go together in groups but we do not date one another. We don’t mix our races” (Price 2001:32).

The minister in this example based his objection to mixed race relationships on theological grounds, saying interracial marriages are a direct violation of the Word of God (Price 2001:33-34). But he also argued racial intermarriage ought to be opposed by the Black community as a matter of racial pride and on the basis of racial purity. He said,

“There’s only 13% of the population that is your color. If we continue to mix it (there) ain’t going to be none of you left. There ain’t nobody going to be able to say Black is beautiful; they’re going to have to say mixed is beautiful” (Price 2001:38).

What this example illustrates is that segregationist notions about race are constructed from religious ideology. The construction of separatist ideology is an attempt to dictate what constitute legal and illegal sexual contact between Blacks and Whites. Historically the prohibiting of interracial relationships between Blacks and Whites was presented as being for the good of society (Chappell 1998:237-262; Hughey 1987: 23-34).

For example, Kevin Strom (2000)vargues that race mixing is a crime worse than murder. He wrote:

“When you commit murder you kill one man, you end one life: you tragically injure one family and circle of friends. When you commit murder, if your victim has had no children you do cut off the potential existence of one small branch of the (white) race’s future. But when you commit the crime of racial mixing you are participating in genocide.” (Strom 2000:30-31)

Contrary to Strom’s position scholars like Yancey (2002) and Campolo (2005) come to the defense of racial intermarriage. They do not see society being harmed by race mixing nor do they find any theological grounds for opposing interracial marriage. Rather they suggest there are certain scriptures which actually support heterosexual interracial relationships. Yancey (2002) claims that Christ has removed any racial barrier between ethnic groups (Yancey 2002:16-17)2. Campolo cites Galatians 3:283 as another proof text for support of interracial marriages and integrated congregations (Campolo 2005: vii-xi).

This research project is an exploratory work on the role of Christianity and society in the debate on interracial relationships. The purpose of this research is to examine the formal and informal institutional structures and the social practices that either impede or facilitate biracial couples ability to find a welcoming place to worship despite the fact there is no legal basis for opposing interracial marriages. In examining social interaction between religious biracial couples and the religious world, this paper examines the coping mechanisms of mixed race couples and the effectiveness of contact theory in reducing racial prejudice and discrimination. I expect the literature to show that some biracial couples in the face of religious opposition cease their religious practice, while others may continue their search until they find a congregation where they are accepted or experience a measure of tolerance.

The literature will show that through fear of mixed race relationships between Blacks and White’s monochromatic congregations were formed in an effort to prevent interracial relationships and to promote social segregations. This material will also demonstrate the efforts of those Christian leaders who support racial intermarriage as a way of solving racial problems in American society. It will examine the notion that biracial congregations are one way of obtaining racial reconciliation through social contact because they promote inclusiveness (Becker 1998:451-472; Bryan 2000: 25-27; DeYoung 2004:128-147; Dougherty 2003)…

Read the entire dissertation here.

The Wormiest of Cans: who gets to be “mixed race”?

Racialicious
2011-07-12

Thea Lim

A few days ago on Facebook I watched two community activists have a throwdown over the phrase “mixed race.”

It began when Activist X posted a link to this article about the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival and noted with some irritation that despite the festival’s claims to inclusivity, there were no Latin@s mentioned in the article. X asked: if Latin@ people are the largest group of multiracial people in the Americas and the festival is supposed to be open to everybody, why weren’t Latin@ people included? A few people agreed with X, and some people who had been at the festival said that they thought Heidi Durrow and the festival were great, but that they could see X’s point.

Enter Activist Y: after expressing some trepidation, Y said that the festival was using the term “mixed race” or “multiracial” to refer to people who had parents of two or more different racial categorisations. Activist Y said that if your whole family shared the same ethnic identity, then you were not mixed in the way the festival intended.

Dear Racializens, I am sure you can imagine what happened next: a veritable Facebook wall brawl — albeit one that was highly intellectual and restrained. Most people sided with X (it was X’s wall to begin with) and Y, after making several long attempts to explain themselves, eventually left in a digital huff.

This exchange brought back some of the most difficult writing that I have ever done on Racialicious: where readers challenged my right to call myself, as a mixed race person with parents of two different races, mixed in a separate way from those who are mixed race but share the same identity as their whole family, for e.g. folks who are mestizo, Creole, African American, Metis, Peranakan…

…Using the term “mixed race” in this narrow way is to systematically erase ethnic histories that bear witness to slavery and colonization; or simply, to erase ethnic histories, period. To do so can be read as an act of white supremacy: it covers up the fact that many Americans, regardless of skin colour or the stories elders are willing to tell, have mixed lineages. To do this silences a whole community’s right to express their experience…

Read the entire article here.

The Love Story That Made Marriage a Fundamental Right

Color Lines
2011-04-27

Asraa Mustufa

The Tribeca Film Festival is under way in New York, and one featured documentary delves into the story behind the landmark civil rights case Loving vs. Virginia, which struck down Jim Crow laws meant to prevent people from openly building families across racial lines. 

Mildred and Richard Loving were an interracial couple that married in Washington, D.C., in 1958. Shortly after re-entering their hometown in Virginia, the pair was arrested in their bedroom and banished from the state for 25 years. The Lovings would spend the next nine years in exile, surreptitiously visiting family and friends back home in Virginia—and fighting for the right to return legally. Their case wound its way to the Supreme Court and, in 1967, the Court condemned Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act as a measure “designed to maintain white supremacy” that violated due process and equal protection. The ruling deemed the anti-miscegenation laws in effect in 16 states at the time unconstitutional. However, it took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until the year 2000 to officially remove language prohibiting interracial marriage from their state constitutions.

The landmark case has returned to popular consciousness in recent years as states have debated same-sex marriage rights. Marriage equality advocates have pointed to the Lovings’ fight as a foundational part of American history, establishing marriage as a basic civil right. But for decades it was left to the footnotes of civil rights history, overshadowed by blockbuster cases like Brown vs. Board of Education.

Director Nancy Buirski’s “The Loving Story” aims to deepen public understanding of not just the case but the Loving family itself. The filmmakers recreate their story through interviews with their friends, community members and the attorneys fighting their case. Buirski and her team revived unused footage of the Lovings from 45 years ago, including home movies, and dug up old photographs to bring the couple to life. As a result, the film is as much an engaging love story as it is a history of racist lawmaking. 

“The Loving Story” is making the film festival rounds this year and will air on HBO in February 2012. I spoke with Buirski after the film’s Tribeca screening this week…

Read the entire article here.

The New Face of America: How the Emerging Multiracial, Multiethnic Majority is Changing the United States

Praeger Publishers
May 2013
195 pages
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-313-38569-8
eBook ISBN: 978-0-313-38570-4

Eric J. Bailey, Professor of Anthropology and Public Health
East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina

This unique and important book investigates what it means to be multiracial and/or multiethnic in the United States, examining the issues involved from personal, societal, and cultural perspectives.

The number of Americans who identify themselves as belonging to more than one race has gone up 33 percent since 2000. But what does it mean to identify oneself as multiracial? How does it impact such basics as race relations, health care, and politics? Equally important, what does this burgeoning population mean for U.S. businesses and institutions?

More and more, the idea of America as a melting pot is becoming a reality. Written from the perspective of multiracial citizens, The New Face of America: How the Emerging Multiracial, Multiethnic Majority is Changing the United States brings to light the values, beliefs, opinions, and patterns among these populations. It assesses group identity and social recognition by others, and it communicates how multiracial individuals experience America’s reaction to their increasing numbers.

Comprehensive and far-reaching, this thoughtful compendium covers the cultural history of multiracials in America. It looks at multiracial families today, at rural and urban multiracial populations, and at multiracial physical features, health disparities, bone and marrow transplant issues, adoption matters, as well as multiracial issues in other countries. Multiracial entertainers, athletes, and politicians are considered, as well. Among the book’s most important topics is multiracial health and health care disparity. Finally, the book makes clear how America’s current majority institutions, organizations, and corporations must change their relationship with multiracial and multiethnic populations if they wish to remain viable and competitive.

Rebuilding the Tower of Babel

Pelican Publishing Company, New Orleans
1957
24 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc030

Stuart O. Landry

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; In this pamphlet, Landry asserts that integrationists are trying to reunite the races that God separated in the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. He asserts that new anthropological and psychological theories of racial equality are pseudoscientific and backed by Communist interests. Landry cites some Old Testament quotations that he interprets as implying that segregation is ordered by God, and he asserts that race amalgamation will be lead to the downfall of Christianity. He also compares African Americans’ social condition to that of Jews, Italians, Germans, and Irish in order to support his argument that African Americans’ place at the bottom of the United States’ social structure is a result of their lack of effort.

FOREWORD

This is not an attack upon the Church nor a criticism of Christianity. It is not a message of hate or of intolerance. On the contrary, it is a plea for broad-mindness on the part of many Christian groups who are becoming narrow-minded with respect to the ideas and customs of brother Christians.

It is with reluctance that I emphasize the difference—physical, mental and cultural—between white people and colored people. It looks like I am acting the Pharisee, wearing his phylacteries with an air of “better than thou.” But such is not the case.

My enumeration of racial differences is no more invidious than making a comparison between men and women between whom there are many physical and mental differences. I am simply trying to show the disadvantage of race-mixing.

Above all, I am not trying to close the door of opportunity to anyone, or condemn any individual to failure by making him feel inferior. This he can easily disprove. My generalizations apply to large groups. If any man can rise above his environment, more power to him!

S. O. L.

And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech… And they said Let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach into heaven… And the Lord said Let us go down there and confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech… Therefore is the name called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

—Genesis XI: 1-9.

The good church people of the United States want to rebuild the Tower of Babel. They wish to do away with races and the confusion of tongues. Can they climb to heaven on such a structure?

The building of a new tower reaching to high heaven, even if only figurative, transgresses the will of God, who thousands of years ago destroyed the actual attempt and scattered peoples all over the world, and contravenes the laws that govern human nature.

But most church members seem to have forgotten the story of Babel, and today are much concerned over the alleged discrimination against Negroes and other races.

The thought of the times is, let’s desegregate and integrate. Let’s bring together men of all colors, races and countries—we are all brothers under the skin. Let’s go back to Babel.

The movement to do away with all racial segregation in school, church and social life (which eventually means amalgamation of the races and the mongrelization of the white race) has now found favor with all the leading church groups of America…

…The Presbyterian Church is now taking the lead in the “desegregation revolution.” The 168th General Assembly (Presbyterian Church in the U. S.) in May 1956 called for all-out efforts to end segregation in the fields of education, housing and industry. On June 14th, 1956 the Presbyterian Session of New York unanimously approved a resolution commending the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Only recently a Presbyterain minister told the General Assembly of the Church of Ireland that inter-marriage between black and white “on an immense scale” would solve the color problem.

In Connecticut last year a Presbyterian church with a predominantly white congregation called a Negro pastor. What has this great church come to, once the strict interpreter of the Bible, when it now thinks that the Ethiopian can change his skin!…

The “Scum” Origin Of Integration

The idea of racial equality and integration has come up from the lower orders of the social scale. The underworld knows no class. Prize fighting, not exactly the underworld, but not a very cultural institution, was the first sport to “integrate.” Now we find kindly old ladies all over the land watching Negro brutes fighting white brutes on television and glorying in knockouts.

Night clubs, “hot-spots,” and taverns went for racial equality rapidly. Negroes have preempted this form of enlightened entertainment. With sex, obscenity, jazz, rock-and-roll music, the night life of the country is far from being elevating, yet much of it slops over into radio and television to familiarize us all with the idea of non-segregation…

…There is no Commandment against segregation, no prohibition of it in the Bible nor in any of the great canons of moral law. Segregation was not a sin ten years ago, it was not a sin a hundred years ago, it was not a sin a thousand years ago and it is not a sin now. If right and wrong change with the years then the materialistic philosophy of William Graham Sumner is correct—that is, morals vary with the times and in accordance with the culture of peoples. This is the view of Karl Marx and modern communists. Such a view is against the principles of the Christian religion which believes in the Eternal God and absoluteness of truth. Right does not change with the years. It does not become wrong because of the preaching of false prophets, who, from mistaken or ulterior motives, make the welkin ring with their declamations against what they call injustice and immorality.

A Practical Solution

Segregation is a practical working method whereby large numbers of two race?, differing in customs, culture and intelligence, living in the same area, are in constant contact with each other without trouble or dissension. Under the systems employed in countries and states where the population is bi-racial, segregation has worked successfully. In the Southern states of the United States, in spite of the belief to the contrary, Negroes have had all the opportunity the land afforded…

…The Harm Of Racial Mixing

The question is asked that if the Bible is vague on the question of segregation, wouldn’t we resolve the problem more in keeping with Christian brotherhood if we declared it against the policy of the Church? What is the harm of mixing the races together in churches, schools and social affairs?

Well, the harm in the fraternizing and mixing of white and colored people comes in the breaking down of the social inhibition against the intermarriage between whites and Negroes. Race mixing that leads to racial intermarriage is a crime against the future of the white race. To mix the black and white races is bad science, bad eugenics and bad genetics. It is not a matter of Christianity, it is a matter of common sense, a practical matter that affects the future of all our people.

The Church, in advocating integration or the mixing of the races in schools and social affairs, knows that this will lead to eventual amalgamation and the absorption of the Negro race all to the disadvantage of the race that absorbs them.

On the same theory that all men are brothers we will then begin to mix in with the Chinese, East Indians and more Africans. Soon we will have one race of people. I do not understand why the good Christians of this country cannot see that in the event we absorb all the races of the world, or rather that we are absorbed by them since there are twice as many colored people as there are whites, religion as we know it today will disappear. We will have no more Christianity. We will have some kind of blended belief such as advocated by Arnold Toynbee. Back to Babel again.

Not White Supremacy But White Superiority

No plea is made here for the denial of any of the rights to which the citizens of this country are entitled. The right to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness belongs to everyone. There is no suggestion of a limit on the exercise of political rights, the advocating of economical and educational restrictions, or belittling the dignity of the members of any minority group.

My plea is simply that we recognize in a common sense way that there is a difference between the white race and the Negro race, that sensible white people do not want to become too intimate socially with colored people as that only leads to intermarriage and a mongrelization of the Caucasian race…

…How To Have A Superior People

Up until recently eugenists—now graduated into geneticists and now soft-pedalling the theory of superior peoples or races—were pointing out to Americans as well as the world the necessity for more careful mating on the part of individuals, and the desirability of superior persons choosing their wives or husbands from outstanding families. Taking their cue from stock breeders and dog fanciers they believed that the way to bring about the evolution of a highly intelligent and moral people was to mate together people who possessed these qualities. But modern ethnologists, sociologists and even geneticists wish us to disregard the principles employed by practical breeders of cattle, dogs, birds, flowers and plants when it comes to race mixing.

Influenced by propaganda the doctors of these “sciences,” which are still vague and far from exact, are saying in effect that black is white and there are no racial differences that are consequential. They want us to develop into a hybrid or mongrel race…

Read the entire pamphlet here.

The Missing Bi-racial Child in Hollywood

Canadian Review of American Studies
Volume 37, Number 2 (2007)
pages 239-263
E-ISSN: 1710-114X; Print ISSN: 0007-7720

Naomi Angel

The growing interest in issues pertaining to “mixed-race” identities and communities, as well as a surge in films with “mixed-race” characters has prompted this examination of representations of “mixedrace” characters in film. The research consists of an analysis of selected films, including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Jungle Fever, and situates this analysis within a historical framework based on the particular context in which each film was set and/or made. The value in studying “mixed-race” representations in film lies in the reflection it provides of significant moments in “mixed-race” histories and in the portrayal of cultural imaginings of people of “mixed race.”

Read or purchase the article here.

John Powell: His Racial and Cultural Ideologies

Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online
Volume 5, Issue 1 (2006)
14 pages

David Z. Kushner, Professor Emeritus of Musicology/Music History
University of Florida

The opening of the first movement of the Symphony in A Major “Virginia Symphony” (Allegro non troppo ma con brio). QuickTime-format, WindowsMedia-format

Following John Powell’s death on August 15, 1963, Virginius Dabney closed his editorial comments in the Richmond Times-Dispatch with the following encomium: “Mr. Powell’s passing at 80 removes one of the genuinely great Virginians of modern times. In personality and character he was truly exceptional, and as a pianist and composer he was unique in the annals of the Old Dominion.” Only a dozen years earlier, on November 5, 1951, the then Governor of Virginia, John S. Battle, proclaimed a “John Powell Day,” on which the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Howard Mitchell performed the composer’s Symphony in A major. The Governor went on to state that the state-wide tribute to Powell was only fitting owing to “his many contributions to the cultural life of America….” The irregularity of such an extravagant gesture toward a musician in this country had the effect of rejuvenating interest in the artist both within the borders of Virginia and beyond. The world of academia, for example, contributed three master’s theses and a doctoral dissertation between 1968 and 1973, and Radford College, now Radford University, named its new music building Powell Hall at dedication ceremonies held on May 13, 1968.

By the 1950s and 1960s, Powell’s earlier involvement in contentious issues such as race relations in general, and the incorporation of racial and ethnic elements in the formation of an identifiably American music was conveniently forgotten or, at the least, placed on a back burner…

…Fame and, to some extent, fortune permitted Powell to devote more of his energy toward what became the leit motifs of his life—a preoccupation with racial purity and a conviction that Anglo-Saxon folksong serve as the primary basis for an identifiably American music. During the 1920s, Powell developed a friendship with Daniel Gregory Mason, a relationship that is treated in the latter’s book, Music in My Time.  Both composers held an aversion to the avant-garde music of their day and both supported the idea that an Anglo-Saxon-based musical aesthetic was the best way to establish an identifiably American music. But Powell’s persona is well-illustrated by the following remarks by Mason:

Considering how insatiably social John is, it is strange how hard it is to extract a letter from him. In all our long friendship I have accumulated only about half a dozen. He will gladly sit up all night with you, if you will let him, discussing music, or just gossiping—for he has an unappeasable appetite for personalia, especially when spiced with a little friendly malice—or declaiming on some of his pet fanaticisms such as the horrible dangers of intermarriage between Negroes and whites, or the supreme virtues of Anglo-Saxon folk-songs…

…Where Mason’s biases were slanted toward Jews, Powell’s were directed primarily, but not exclusively, to blacks. And these prejudices were, like Mason’s, intertwined with his views on the state of American music. In September 1922, Powell and several prominent Virginians of like thinking, was a founder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, the purpose of which was to foster “the preservation and maintenance of Anglo-Saxon ideals and civilization in America. This purpose is to be accomplished in three ways: first, by the strengthening of Anglo-Saxon instincts, traditions, and principles among representatives of our original American stock; second, by intelligent selection and exclusion of immigrants; and third, by fundamental and final solutions of our racial problems in general, most especially of the negro (sic) problem.” The pamphlet further enact legislation that will ensure the preservation of the white race:

1. There shall be instituted immediately a system of registration and birth certificates showing the racial composition (white, black, brown, yellow, red) of every resident of this State.
2. No marriage license shall be granted save upon presentation and attestation under oath by both parties of said registration or birth certificates.
3. White persons may marry only whites.
4. For the purposes of this legislation, the term “white persons” shall apply only to individuals who have no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian.

Aligning himself with leaders of the burgeoning eugenics movement, Powell was instrumental in gaining political support for passage of the Racial Integrity Act, which was signed into law on March 20, 1924 by the Governor of Virginia, Elbert Lee Trinkle. This bill also forbade the marriage of Orientals and other non-whites to whites, although the compulsory registration provision was defeated…

…Powell makes clear the direction in which he is heading, by decrying the likelihood of miscegenation and by citing specifically “the negro (sic) problem”:

If the present ratio were to remain permanent, the inevitable product of the melting pot would be approximately an octoroon. It should not be necessary to stress the significance of this point. We know that under Mendelian law the African strain is hereditarily predominant. In other words, one drop of negro (sic) blood makes the negro (sic). We also know that no higher race has ever been able to preserve its culture, to prevent decay and eventual degeneracy when tainted, even slightly, with negro (sic) blood. Sixty centuries of history establish this rule. Since the first page of recorded fact, history can show no exception. Were the American people to become an octoroon race, it would mean their sinking to the level of Haiti and Santo Domingo…

Read the entire article here.