Mixed Race Studies

Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold

WMPG-FM (Portland, Maine) and The Salt Institute
2009

Rob Rosenthal, Radio Producer

Kate Philbrick, Photographer

WMPG-FM, in collaboration with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, announces the premier of “Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold”, a radio and photo documentary recounting this infamous event and its impact on several generations of descendants. The documentary is produced by Kate Philbrick, photographer, and Rob Rosenthal, radio producer.

On July 1st, 1912, George Pease took a short boat ride over to Malaga Island, just off the coast of Phippsburg, Maine. Pease landed the boat then probably stood on the shell-covered beach at the north end of the island. What he found may have surprised him.

Pease went to Malaga that day as an agent of the state of Maine. It was his job to carry out the final steps of a state-sponsored eviction. Pease was there to clean out the island – to make sure everyone who lived there was gone and to burn down their houses. But there was no one there. Malaga was empty.

Malaga is a small island, about 40 acres. It’s covered with tall pine and spruce trees, the shores are rocky – it’s really a “textbook” Maine island. No one lives on Malaga today but, in 1912, there was a village of about 45 people. A few of the families had lived on the island for decades raising children and scraping a living from the ocean. Malaga was home.

The settlement was poor and families struggled – like most fishing communities on the Maine coast one hundred years ago. What made Malaga different was the people. Black, white, and mixed-race families lived on the island. And that set them apart. Far apart…

…And, descendants of the evicted islanders have largely remained silent, too. The local stigma of mixed-blood and “feeblemindedness” attached to the island and descendents is still present – even today. In fact, some say Malaga is a story best left untold…

Read the entire article here.
View a short video here.

…Like many families of mixed ancestry and interracial families in the Northeast, the Joneses seemed to live in an ambiguous space in the American system of racial classification.  They seemed to be neither denying nor actively claiming a black racial identity.  Sociologists of the time and current historians have documented a number of cases—indeed a pattern—of mixed-race or mixed-marriage families living quietly in small “white” towns.  Unlike the model of “passing,” in with formerly black-identified individuals or families would become white-identified, many of these individuals and families simply lived in the spaces between absolutes.  Less consciously a political act of affirmation or denial of self, racial ambiguity enabled such individuals and families to embrace the multiple histories that constituted them.  They were black and white and other.  They understood that American society lacked a suitably dexterous category for those who defied the conventions of perception and boundary.  Former Kentucky politician Mae Street Kidd, born to a black mother and white father in 1904, summarized the sentiment of many when she wrote, “I never made an issue of my race.  I let people think or believe what they wanted to.  If it was ever a problem, then it was their problem, not mine.”…

Lewis, Earl and Heidi Adrizzone. Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White.  New York: W. W. Norton. 2002. Pages 36-37.

A Question of Blood, Race, and Politics

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Volume 61, Number 4 (2006)
pages 456-491
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrl003

Michael G. Kenny, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia

This article explores the political and intellectual context of a controversy arising from a proposal made at the 1959 meetings of the American Society of Blood Banks to divide the blood supply by race. The authors, a group of blood-bankers and surgeons in New York, outlined difficulties in finding compatible blood for transfusion during open-heart surgery, which they attributed to prior sensitization of their patient, a Caucasian, by a previous transfusion from an African American donor. Examining the statistical distribution of blood-group antigens among the various races, they concluded that risk of adverse hemolytic reactions and the cost of testing could be reduced by establishing separate donor pools. The media reported the suggestion, which, given the political climate of the day, rapidly became a public issue involving geneticists, blood-bankers, physical anthropologists, and the African American medical community. Liberals condemned it, whereas eugenically inclined segregationists used the finding to support their views concerning evolutionary distance between the races and the dangers of miscegenation. Here we examine the contribution of comparative racial serology to this affair, the arguments and background of the main players, and the relevance of the debate to discussions about the role of “race” in post-genomic medicine.

Read or purchase the article here.

Two or Three Spectacular Mulatas and the Queer Pleasures of Overidentification

Camera Obscura
Volume 23, Number 1 67 (2008)
pages 113-143
DOI: 10.1215/02705346-2007-026

Hiram Perez, Assistant professor of English
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Building on feminist and queer scholarship on the relationship of film spectatorship to subjectivity, this essay conjectures subaltern spectatorships of the two US film adaptations of Fannie Hurst‘s 1933 novel Imitation of Life as a means of tracing the impossibly entangled discourses of race and sexuality, as well as of formulating “queer of color” as a kind of critical modality. Much like Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin functions, according to Sigmund Freud, as a cultural artifact prized in the form of an idealized beating fantasy by the Victorian (white) child, Imitation of Life stages for black and queer of color spectators originary traumas, in particular the formative (and compounded) experiences of racial and sexual shame. This essay seeks to reconcile the dissonant emotions evoked by Imitation of Life by reading the overidentifications of subaltern spectators with the figure of the tragic mulatto as instances of queer pleasure, both self-shattering and subject forming. In so doing, the essay pays tribute to that tragic mulatto as a spectacular mulata and diva. The spectacular mulata diva summons queer subjectivities; furthermore, she betrays larger national and colonial secrets, locating the racially hybrid genealogies of the classic diva and the universalized subject of psychoanalysis, heretofore presumably white (European).

Read or purchase the article here.

Race representation in this year’s Common Book

University of Washington News Laboratory
Department of Communication
December 2009

Kaetlyn Cordingley
UW News Lab

Each year, First Year Programs chooses a book as a means to bind the incoming freshman class together. This year’s book was Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father.”

Coincidentally, on the same evening that President Obama addressed a sea of gray-clad cadets at Westpoint, three members of the UW faculty discussed Obama’s candor and his struggles with multiraciality in his autobiography with hundreds of UW freshmen who had read the book.

The book demands introspection from its readers and frames the “freshman experience” in a whole new way, said University of Washington faculty member Ralina Joseph Dec. 1.

Panelists were Communication Professor Dr. Joseph and Drs. Luis Fraga and Christopher Parker, of the Political Science Department.

The professors spoke candidly about their own experiences with multiculturalism and minority identification…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

W. W. Norton & Company
August 2006
336 pages
5.5 × 8.2 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-32786-1

Edited by Chandra Prasad

With an Introduction by Rebecca Walker

With a roster of acclaimed fiction writers, Mixed shatters expectations of what it means to be multiracial.

Globally, the number of multiracial people is exploding. In 10 US states, the percentage of multiracial residents who are of school age—between 5 and 17—is at least 25 percent. In California alone, it is estimated that 15 percent of all births are multiracial or multiethnic. Despite these numbers, mixed-race people have long struggled for a distinct place on the identity map. It was only as recently as 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau began to allow citizens to check off as many racial categories as are applicable-White, African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, and Alaska Native. Previously, Americans were allowed to check off only one, leaving multiracial people invisible and unaccounted for.

Though multiracialism has recently become a popular aspect of many memoirs and novels, Mixed is the first of its kind: a fiction anthology with racial overlap as its compass. With original pieces by both established and emerging writers, Mixed explores the complexities of identity that come with being a multiracial person. Every story, crafted by authors who are themselves mixed-race, broaches multiracialism through character or theme. With contributors such as Cristina Garcia, Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Mat Johnson, Wayde Compton, Diana Abu-Jaber, Emily Raboteau, Mary Yukari Waters, and Peter Ho Davies, and an illuminating introduction by Rebecca Walker, Mixed gives narrative voice to the multiple identities of the rising generation.

“There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama”: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Harvard University
February 2010
Working Paper
68 pages

Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies
Harvard University

Vesla Weaver, Assistant Professor
The Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics
University of Virginia

Forthcoming publication in Perspectives on Politics, June 2010.

For the first time in American history, the United States’ 2000 census allowed individuals to choose more than one race. That new policy sets up our exploration of whether and how multiracialism is entering Americans’ understanding and practice of race. By analyzing briefly earlier cases of racial construction, we uncover three factors important to understanding if and how intensely a feedback effect for racial classification will be generated. Using this framework, we find that multiracialism has been institutionalized in the federal government, and is moving toward institutionalization in the private sector and other governmental units. In addition, the small proportion of Americans who now define themselves as multiracial is growing absolutely and relatively, and evidence suggests a continued rise. Increasing multiracial identification is made more likely by racial mixture’s growing prominence in American society – demographically, culturally, economically, and psychologically. However, the politics side of the feedback loop is complicated by the fact that identification is not identity. Traditional racial or ethnic loyalties and understandings remain strong, including among potential multiracial identifiers. Therefore, if mixed race identification is to evolve into a multiracial identity, it may not be at the expense of existing group consciousness. Instead, we expect mixed race identity to be contextual, fluid, and additive, so that it can be layered onto rather than substituted for traditional monoracial commitments. If the multiracial movement successfully challenges the longstanding understanding and practice of “one drop of blood” racial groups, it has the potential to change much of the politics and policy of American race relations.

O’Leary, O’Riley, O’Hare, and O’Hara
There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama.
His mam’s daddy’s grandaddy was one Fulmuth Kearney
He’s as Irish as any from the lakes of Killarney
His mam’s from a long line of great Irish mamas;
There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama.

–“There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama“, Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys (Corrigan Brothers)

Read the entire paper here.

Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census

USA Today
2010-03-02

Haya El Nasser

Jennifer Harvey was raised by her white mother and white stepfather in what she calls “a Caucasian world.” Harvey never met her father but she knew he was black and Cuban. That made her Hispanic, white and black.

“Blacks think I’m black,” she says. “Hispanics think I’m Hispanic. Honestly, I don’t identify with either bucket wholeheartedly — Caucasian, black or Hispanic.”…

…When Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president in 2008, some academics and political analysts suggested the watershed event could represent the dawning of a post-racial era in a land that has struggled over race relations for four centuries.

At the same time, growing ethnic and racial diversity fueled by record immigration and rates of interracial marriages have made the USA’s demographics far more complex. By 2050, there will be no racial or ethnic majority as the share of non-Hispanic whites slips below 50%, according to Census projections.

“It’s showing that tomorrow’s children and their children will in fact be multiracial, leading to a potential post-racial society,” says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.

“The issue isn’t just multirace,” says Census historian Margo Anderson, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “It’s the blurring of the very traditional black vs. white. Categories that held until about 1980 are shifting in large numbers. … The clarity is breaking down.”…

…Why does the government ask about race and ethnicity?

Federal agencies need the information to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws such as the Voting Right Act and the Civil Rights Act, fair employment practices and affirmative action mandates…

…”For some, the multirace response option represented an opportunity to acknowledge both parents,” says Roderick Harrison, a demographer at Howard University and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “But for a lot of others, it’s like, ‘OK, are you going to turn your back on the rest of us?’ … A lot of the racial and ethnic politics of the Census are that we want the biggest numbers possible for our groups.”..

Read the entire article here.
View the photo gallery from the article here.

Reimagining The ‘Tragic Mulatto’ [Interview with Author Heidi W. Durrow]

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-03-02

Michele Norris, Host
All Things Considered

Like so many children of mixed marriages, the author Heidi Durrow has often felt like she’s had to straddle two worlds.

She is the daughter of a black serviceman and a white Danish mother.

Her own personal search for identity inspired her debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky. The story revolves around a girl who moves across the country to live with her grandmother after surviving a family tragedy.

The book has received breathless critical acclaim, and it was awarded the Bellwether Prize for fiction that addresses issues of social justice…

Read the entire story and an excerpt from the book here.  Listen to the interview here.

NPR’s All Things Considered Interview with Heidi W. Durrow

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-03-02, 21:00 to 23:00Z

Heidi W. Durrow

Heidi W. Durrow, author of the new Bellwether Prize winning novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, is scheduled to be interviewed on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered today (Tuesday, March 2, 2010 between 16:00 and 18:00 EST).  Please check your local NPR affiliate for actual broadcast times.