Mixed Race Studies

The Consequence of Race Mixture: Racialised Barriers and the Politics of Desire

Social Identities
Volume 9, Issue 2 (2003)
pages 241-275
DOI: 10.1080/1350463032000101588

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine

The political… is not in itself stable, but is rather conditioned by mutability. Writ large for criticism, this means that a political criticism must not take its object for granted: in a specific sense, the object is not there in the first place, for its condition is that it is marked by an interior historicity which subjects it to constant modification, constant shifting. The proper ‘object’ of the critic who is aware of the materiality of history is, paradoxically, an object conditioned not by its appearance relative to a covert essence, but rather an object conditioned precisely by its temporal disappearance or ‘immaterialization’.

Thomas Docherty, 1996

Reality is not composed of things-in-themselves or things-behind-phenomena, but things-in-phenomena. Because phenomena constitute a non-dualistic whole, it makes no sense to talk about independently existing things as somehow behind or as the causes of phenomena … The referent is… a phenomenon.

Karen Barad, 1998

These epigraphs should be considered heretical to the project of the contemporary multiracial movement in the United States Insofar as its proponents and intellectuals speak of the ‘the end(s) of race’, the concept of multiraciality prides itself on the trouble it supposedly causes to the white supremacist rage for order, that is, its ostensible violation of racial discipline and its alleged threat to spurious notions of racial purity. The multiracial, as it were, cannot be fixed in place; by definition, it eludes the capture of a pernicious schema of racial classification. Nevertheless, this reputed disturbance of the colour line bears a cost.

A self that is internally heterogeneous beyond repair or resolution becomes a candidate for pathology in a society where the integration of self is taken to be necessary for mental health. (Alcoff, 1995, p. 261)

The multiracial is, then, fundamentally convoluted—essentially difficult and complicated without end—yet the seemingly inevitable link between such radical ‘otherness’ (other even to itself) and the pathology of disintegration is, in fact, an effect of the labour of articulation. That is to say, the relation between the terms can be re-inscribed in a gesture of more thoroughgoing…

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Emory and CNN Launch Public Dialogue Series

The Emory Wheel
2011-09-02

Amanda Serfozo

Emory University hosted an inaugural event in partnership with CNN on Wednesday evening that aims to facilitate discourse related to the results of the 2010 Census and its reflection of new population trends in America.
 
CNN Dialogues—an ongoing colloquium with panels scheduled throughout October, November and December—is organized in partnership with Emory University, the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Panelists discussed how popular culture, urban studies and sociology explores the identities behind the 2010 U.S. Census and how people live.
 
Panelists included Heidi W. Durrow, author of the novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky; Edward James Olmos, actor and activist; Yul Kwon, the host of PBS’s “America Revealed”; Kris Marsh, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park; and Dana White, Goodrich C. White professor of Urban Studies at Emory University…

…Panelists discussed the U.S. Census, which the government administers each decade and is federally mandated by the Constitution.

It serves not only as a population marker used to reapportion electoral seats, but also to reassess state funding…
 
Durrow addressed the recent argument over having a one “box” limit for the race category on the Census form, to a multi-choice option for citizens with multiple ethnicities.
 
“As someone with a Danish mother and an African-American father, I struggled with my [Census form] selection,” she said. “I understand that the Census is not exactly the place for self-identification. It’s about reapportionment and money, but it’s also important to know that there’s an evolving mix occurring.”
 
Adding to Durrow’s point, Marsh acknowledged the differences in inner and outer identity in standardized Census data collection.

“I believe that there are two Americas today,” Marsh said. “There’s how we selectively self-identify—for instance, I could claim I’m a white woman all day—and then there’s how the outside world identifies us, where I would be more apt to be seen as a black woman.”…

Read the entire article here.

Pure mixed blood: The multiple identities of Amerasians in South Korea

Indiana University
February 2007
256 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3253643

Sue-Je Lee Gage, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ithaca University

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of  Anthropology, Indiana University

Political and social currents play a role in how identities are ascribed and claimed by Amerasians in South Korea. Amerasians continue to be racialized as “other” within a set of desirable and undesirable qualities. Attitudes are complicated by the effects of globalization, especially the temporary immigration of US military personnel and guest workers, as well as current fashion and aesthetic trends. Within the context of a diversifying Korea, the very nature of “Amerasian” (American and Asian) and “Kosian” (Korean and South Asian) call into question notions of purity and race within the assumed ethnonation of Korea. How “pure” is pure when it comes to people and identity? In what ways do perceived appearances affect experiences?

Many Amerasians subscribe to a presumed racial hierarchy incorporated and contextualized in the countries of their births from a western perspective on “race” in their own identity ascription and claiming. However, this hierarchy is neither simple nor fixed. It is complicated by perceptions and notions of “race” and what it means to be “human.” Class, gender, generation, English-speaking ability, appearance/beauty, parentage, education, and social support networks and organization affiliations also influence attitudes and perceptions. My research examines the local, global, and historical reasons that contribute to the ways Amerasians are perceived, as well as the ways they perceive themselves, including the on-going racial/ethnic/political dialogue within Korea and between Korea, the United States, and the international community.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Abstract
• List of illustrations and appendixes
• Note to Reader
• CHAPTER 1. Introduction
  • Methodology
  • Theory
  • Overview of the Book
• Part I: The Thick and Thin of Blood
  • CHAPTER 2. Minjok and the History of Korean Nationalism
    • Pre-Modern Context and Early Korean Interactions with the West
    • Nationalist Movements and the Articulation of Identities
    • US-ROK Relation
    • The More Recent Period
    • Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 3. Racing Self and Otherness in South Korea
    • Racing the Korean Self
    • Representations
    • Racing the Other in Korea
    • Globalization
    • Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 4. The “Amerasian Problem”: Blood, Duty, and Race
    • Representations of Amerasian Identity in the United States
    • Transnational Advocacy Networks Prior to the 1980s
    • Amerasian Policy Formation
    • Conclusion
• Part II: The Purity of Mixed Blood
  • CHAPTER 5. Living “Amerasian”
    • The Legacy of a Name: Looking “American,” Feeling “Korean”
    • American Names & Korean Names
    • Marriage & Breeding Out Amerasian Blood
    • Amerasian Entertainers & Celebrities
    • “Our Country” & Patriotism
    • Redefining and Claiming Amerasian Identity
    • Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 6. “We Want What Everybody Else Wants, to Live”
    • Human Rights, International Community & Globalization
    • From “other” to “Other
    • Immigrating to the US – Why and Why not?
    • Conclusion
• Part III: Globalizing Blood – Intersections and Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 7. Conclusion: Pure Mixed Blood
  • CHAPTER 8. Afterward: Feeling the Want of Something More – ashwiwŏ hada
• Epilogue
• Appendix A Glossary
• Appendix B Illustrations
• Bibliography
• Curriculum Vitae

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

• Figure 1.1 US Military Map of Korea. Highlights the major US military installations – Camp Casey in Tongduch’on, Osan Airbase near Pyongt’aek.
• Figure 1.2 Kyonggi Province (Gyeonggi-do) – Includes Tongduch’on to the north of Seoul, Seoul, and Pyongt’aek to the south of Seoul.
• Figure 1.3 Shalom House Building
• Figure 3.1 Korea Special Tourism sign – “This Facility is for Foreigners, Tourists, and US Soldiers Stationed in Korea Only.”
• Figure 3.2 Club Proof of Inspection by the Second Infantry, US Army in Tongduch’on – “Cheer” is handwritten on the label on the right corner.
• Figure 3.3 Korea Special Tourism Association Club. Exchange Bank located on the Right Side of the Club.
• Figure 3.4 Tongduch’on’s Kijich’on
• Figure 3.5 Molly Holt
• Figure 3.6 Director Woo, Sun-duk and Two Women Working in the Clubs
• Figure 3.7 Advertisement for Whitening Lotion for Men
• Figure 4.1 St. Vincent’s Home Sign
• Figure 5.1 I am Korean
• Figure 5.2 I am Korean
• Figure 5.3 We are Korean
• Figure 5.4 We are Korean
• Figure 5.5 I am Korean
• Figure 5.6 We are Korean
• Figure 5.7 I am Korean
• Figure 5.8 We are Korean
• Figure 5.9 We are Korean
• Figure 5.10 Pearl S. Buck Summer Camp 2002, Picture Taken at the Blue House
• Figure 5.11 Mrs. Chung Rodrigues
• Figure 5.12 Mrs. and Mr. Kang
• Figure 6.1 ACA Students
• Figure 6.2 Sports Day
• Figure 6.3 Durihana ACA Logo
• Figure 6.4 Marriage and Visa Center in Itaewon
• Figure 7.1 The Right to Experience Life
• Figure 8.1 Dance Therapy at Sunlit Sisters’ Center
• Figure 8.2 Family and Me in Tongduch’on
• Figure 8.3 Family in Tongduch’on
• Figure 8.4 Family in Anjong-ri
• Figure 8.5 Family and Me in Anjong-ri
• Figure 9.1 Baby Buddhas

APPENDIXES

• Appendix A Glossary
• Appendix B Illustrations
• Appendix C Map of Tongduch’on with Legend of Clubs and Shops

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‘Obama’s My Dad’: Mixed Race Suspects, Political Anxiety and the New Imperialism

thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory & culture
Volume 10, Number 1 (2011)

Rachel Gorman, Lecturer
Women and Gender Studies Institute
University of Toronto

In this article I will argue that the ideology of white supremacy is currently being reproduced as an ideology of political supremacy. I explore narratives of Obama and my father, and bring a transnational feminist framework to an examination of ontological and cultural ideologies of mixed race identity.

All my life I have encountered suspicion about my race. As a child in a working class neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada in the 1970s, my mixed race identity seemed to be an ontological threat to my European immigrant and white settler neighbours, and my ‘Mediterranean’ appearance rendered me unintelligible in relation to Blackness As a pre-teen transplanted to Muscat, Oman in the 1980s, I was intelligible as Arab, which, given Oman’s historical and geographical proximity to Eastern Africa, did not preclude African ancestry. While I was unremarkable at the national school, I was questioned by British ‘expats’ when I circulated in the international neighbourhood, despite (or perhaps because of) the presence of several mixed families. Back in Toronto during the aggressive intensification of war and occupation in the Middle East in the 2000s, my racial ambiguity has become suspicious in new ways. I am dating this shift from September 2000, the beginning of the second Intifada, not September 2001, when the New American Century went prime time. Much happened between the two Septembers–mass protests at the summit on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas at Québec City in April 2001; the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in August 2001. In the weeks following Durban, the global struggle to maintain white supremacy was recast as the will to reestablish American political supremacy. It was also during this time that, as an antiwar and anti-occupation organizer, my racial ambiguity was reconstituted through suspicions over whether I harbour dangerous worldviews…

…A phenomenology of race is useful to continue to dispel the illusions of white supremacists who argue that Obama’s presidency means we are living in a post-racist world. Indeed, there are many questions to be asked about how mixed race people are emerging as tropes of the triumph of a liberal brand of diversity—as Kimberley DaCosta argues, the identity ‘multiracial’ emerged in the US context in part through a struggle over racial categories on government forms, and in part through niche market recognition. In order to resist the tendency to analytically collapse antiracism into advocacy for market inclusion, we need a phenomenology of race that allows us to grasp both ontology and culture in relation to political consciousness…

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Race and Genomics. Old Wine in New Bottles? Documents from a Transdisciplinary Discussion

NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin
Volume 16, Number 3 (August 2008)
pages 363-386
DOI 10.1007/S00048-008-0301-6

Staffan Müller-Wille
ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society
University of Exeter

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Berlin, Germany

From July 25 to 29, 2007, the biennial meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology(ISHPSSB) was hosted by the University of Exeter. About 430 papers were submitted, and we had the pleasure to put together a programme as well as a plenary session of invited speakers on a topic of their choice. After some discussion within the programme committee, we decided to organize a session of four speakers who were asked to address, each from a different disciplinary perspective, the recent re-emphasis on racial categories in genomic studies of ancestry, public health, pharmacology, and forensics.

The topic was not only chosen because of its timeliness. It so happened that the ISHPSSB meeting also coincided with the tercentenary of both Georges Buffon and Carl Linnaeus. Both are arguably the founding fathers of modern biology, with the emphasis they put on the reproduction rather than the generation of living beings (Müller-Wille/Rheinberger 2007). But there is also another legacy of these naturalists, one which is more problematic. This is racial anthropology which both Buffon and Linnaeus, almost simultaneously, initiated by their proposals for a universal partitioning of mankind along lines of skin colour, temperament, and descent (Sloan 1995). This original classification of mankind into three or four major ”races”—a white, a black, and a yellow or red one—is still very much in place, even in the high-tech contexts of today’s genomics. According to its own rhetoric, for example, the International Haplotype Map Project studies human genomic variation through four sample populations” (see http://www.hapmap.org/abouthapmap.html). The choice of these sample populations, however, is revealing: the Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese from Tokyo; the Han Chinese from Beijing; Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe. This choice was undoubtedly guided by the colour scheme originally proposed by Linnaeus and Buffon. The history of race in biology and medicine exhibits a curious mixture of archaic and innovative elements.

Until very recently there existed a broad consensus among scientists, as well as students of science, that racial anthropology belonged to a past thoroughly outdated by the combined efforts of mathematical population genetics and molecular biology, a consensus that dates back to the so-called UNESCO Statement on Race from 1951. However, in the wake of the completion of the Human Genome Project, and with projects like the Human Diversity Project, the HapMap Project, various national ‘biobank’ projects, and a diversity of private and public initiatives of ‘ancestry’ research, racial categories appear to have regained significance in recent years again, inside and outside of the biomedical sciences. Human genomic diversity is mapped against grids of racial distinctions, drugs and life-style recommendations target racially defined groups, and genetic tests offer the opportunity to determine ancestry in racial terms. Increasingly, close historical scrutiny also reveals that race was not only put back on the agenda again occasionally by high-profile publications like Richard J. Herrnstein’s and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994), but that it has also formed a persistent thread in medical and population genetics research throughout the post-WWII era (Pogliano 2005, Wailoo/Pemberton 2006).

To set the stage for the plenary session, we included five questions in the letter of invitation that we sent to the four speakers. It may be useful to quote them here, as they were originally formulated: “What is it about racial categories—famously introduced in an ad hoc fashion by Buffon and Linnaeus, and again and again denounced as primitive and untenable by prominent life-scientists in the course of their long history—that lets them persist, even in the high-tech world of present day genomics and systems biology? Or is this resilience just an illusion? Has ‘race’, just like any other scientific concept, acquired very different meanings in different historical settings? In that case: How does ‘race’ in its present usage differ from ‘race’ in the past? And which recent social and political developments have triggered its renewed significance?”

The four statements that were given in front of the delegates of the ISHPSSB meeting on the morning of July 26, 2007, were very different in style and perspective. We will not endeavour to distil a common take-home message from them, but will let each speak for themselves. One common structural element to all of them, however, is probably worth pointing out, as it may reflect the specific historical moment in which the session took place. This is the acknowledgement that “race” is not per se an “irrational” concept, but a highly variable and diverse concept that was and continues to be shaped by the ways in which science and society are articulated.

…Is there a Biological Concept of Race?

Jean Gayon
Université Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne
Institut d’histoire et philosophie des sciences et des techniques

Most contemporary biologists have abandoned the use of the term “race” in scientific discourse. Other words are used to categorise intra-specific taxonomic diversity: sub-species, variety, strain, local population, deme, etc. These words are ideologically more neutral than “race.” Nevertheless, biologists find it difficult when they discuss with a public that continues to use the vocabulary of “race.” For example, when a biologist says “races do not exist”, the exact meaning is generally unclear. Does he or she mean that the notion of race is confused? Or that the term does have a precise meaning, but that what it refers to does not exist, either in nature in general, or among humans in particular? This is the question I want to examine in two steps. First I will consider what the category of race could mean for modern biologists as a whole; then I will examine those aspects that specifically relate to humans…

…To conclude, I would like to relativize the biological approaches to the notion of race in the case of humans, and say that in humans, the most important aspect of race is not the biological aspect, but rather race as a social signifier. In a remarkable book published around 30 years ago, the sociologist Colette Guillaumin argued that we should distinguish two levels of discussion in the question of human races: the “concrete” level which, she argues, is that of biological research, and the “symbolic” level, which relates to the function of the signifier “race” in modern societies. Guillaumin insisted that the question of race as a social signifier is separate from that of the result of scientific debates on races as natural objects. Race as a social operator is not so much a concept as a fetish-notion. What is important is not whether it exists or not, but what it produces in practice. “That [i.e., race] does not exist. That leads to death. It is a murder machine, a technical murder machine. Of proven efficacy. It is a way of rationalising and organising the murderous violence and the domination of some social groups over other social groups that have been rendered powerless.” (Guillaumin 1972: 65)…

…Race in History

Renato G. Mazzolini
Università degli studi di Trento
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali

The only way I may contribute to the issue under discussion is by briefly talking about my own research and then by addressing four of the five questions that have been put on the floor by the organizers of this session (see introduction). Let me also state straight away that I feel more confident with literature published between 1600 and 1850 than in contemporary scientific literature on race and that my knowledge is limited to ideas and theories put forth in western Europe and North America.

It is generally assumed that the term race took on a taxonomic meaning at the very end of the eighteenth century. Many of the authors I studied worked before that date, before the notion of race was solidified, and they investigated skin colour (Mazzolini 1994). It should be noted that in the period running from the early seventeenth century to 1800 human pigmentation…

• was the object of intense anatomical, microscopical, physiological and chemical investigations giving rise to a number of theories which attempted to explain how human differences in skin colour came about;
• was used as the principal marker for classifying human varieties from a zoological point of view;
• was viewed as the main trait indicating interracial crossing and thus provided an element of analysis for what is often called pre-Mendelian genetics;
• stimulated scholars to think about the original colour of mankind by appearing in pathological conditions such as albinism;
• was the cornerstone on which the notion of race was constructed;
• was used to construct powerful models of somatic identities (e.g. white, black, yellow, brown and red) which still have far more devastating effects on human relations than the very notion of race.

Theories of skin colour cannot be understood without considering slavery and colonialism. At the end of the eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century skin colour was linked to history, civilisation and social structure. And so was the notion of race, for which skin colour remained the main marker of racial differences (Mazzolini 2007). For this reason I stress that race is a biopolitical notion, that is, a notion that has been used in daily life as well as by the life sciences and the social sciences, with the result of reciprocal contaminations. At a historical level this is quite evident. Some scholars distinguish four distinct ideas of race: status-race, formal-race, historical-race, and culture-race. From my point of view, it is interesting to note that in all these four ideas of race, colour plays a significant role…

…Race and Biology. Beyond the Perpetual Return of Crisis

Jenny Reardon
University of California, Santa Cruz
Sociology Department

The use of racial categories in biology has once again arisen as a problem in political and scholarly arenas. As the editors of this issue note, “until recently there existed a broad consensus among scientists, as well as students of science, that racial anthropology belonged to a past thoroughly outdated by the combined efforts of mathematical population genetics and molecular biology.” Several other similar moments of consensus preceded this one. In each moment, natural scientists, social scientists and the popular press concurred that a new powerful science had emerged that could reveal the truth, and thus counter social ideologies, about “race”: the science of population genetics in the 1950s, molecular biology in the 1970s, the genome sciences and bioinformatics in the 1990s and today. In each case, a crisis reoccurred as social ideologies of race once again became associated with biological ideas and practices. In the brief space at my disposal here I would like to reflect on what produces this experience of the cyclical return of the problem of race in biology. I would like to then offer a diagnosis of what is unique about the current moment of return, and how we might respond to it…

…An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Impact of Genomics on the Meaning of “Race”, and the Future Role of Racial Categories in Biomedical Research

George T. H. Ellison
St. George’s-University of London

Richard Tutton

Simon M. Outram

Paul Martin

Richard Ashcroft

Andrew Smart

As an interdisciplinary team exploring the use of racial categories in biomedical research from the perspective of epidemiology (GTHE), anthropology (GTHE, SMO), sociology (RT, AS), bioethics (RA) and science and technology studies (RT, PM, AS), what we hope to offer to this trans-disciplinary dialogue on “race and genomics” in the NTM. Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine draws on: our analysis of the longstanding debate within the biomedical literature concerning the meaning and aetiological utility of “race” as well as interviews with 22 geneticists working on the editorial boards of high-impact genetics and biomedical journals and 36 researchers working on UK-based biobanking and pharmacogenetic projects– interviews which examined variation in the conceptualisation and operationalisation of racial categories, and the perceived utility of these categories in the analytical design of research, the interpretation of research findings, and the translation thereof across different research and clinical contexts (see Outram/Ellison 2006a, Martin et al. 2007).

At the outset, however, we feel it is important to acknowledge that much of what we hope to contribute here has already been said, and said more eloquently, by a good many commentators and analysts before us. Not least amongst these is the Loyola University epidemiologist Richard S. Cooper, whose 2003 article in the International Journal of Epidemiology (bearing the uncannily similar title “Race, genes, and health—new wine in old bottles”) addressed many of the questions posed by the organisers of this trans-disciplinary dialogue. Cooper felt that advances in genetic technology should have been able to resolve the contentious and questionable use of racial categories as “surrogates for genetic effects at the population level” (i.e. as markers for potentially important differences in genetic variation amongst human populations) during the important period—what anthropologist Mike Fortun (2007) has called the “meantime”—between the conceptualisation and invention of genomic technologies and their widespread use in biomedical research. Richard Cooper also recognised that there was a “tension between reaffirmation of tradition and transformation of biological concepts” in which the new genomic technologies have, somewhat paradoxically, been used both to confirm that there are measurable differences in genetic variation between traditional “racial” groups and to demonstrate that these differences are far smaller than those found between individuals within such groups (cf. Reardon in this issue). And although Cooper has long questioned the value of using “racial” categories as markers for genetic variation in biomedical research (see also: Cooper 1993, Cooper/Kaufman 1998)—even for the modest “racial” differences in genetic variation that have been confirmed by advances in genomic technology—he accepts that the meaning of these differences in genetic variation remain open to interpretation, and that the claim that “race has little or no biological [i.e. genetic] meaning” has been an unhelpful “irritant to geneticists who see the importance of population variation [in genetics] in an array of conditions.”…

Read the entire article here.

Op-Ed: Moving Beyond Race-Based Health

The Herald-Sun
Durham, North Carolina
2008-08-22

Susanne Haga, IGSP Scholar, Assistant Research Professor
Duke Institute for Genome Science & Policy

At a time when genetics research continues to reveal just how similar we all are, it’s frustrating to see the continued reliance on race as a basis to treat individuals differently when it comes to their health.

I’m not referring to the inequitable treatment experienced by some groups with respect to access to health care services, but rather to the development of race-based products such as vitamins and drugs.

A company called GenSpec is selling vitamins specially formulated for African-Americans, Caucasians, and Hispanics.

While there are some differences in disease prevalence among races, there are no diseases or conditions—and certainly no nutritional requirements—that are exclusive to just one group. If we’ve learned anything from the last decade of genetics research, it’s that our DNA is generally colorblind.

Although genetics is involved in most if not all aspects of our health, the environment plays at least an equal role. Even if we knew which genes played a part in our dietary needs, it’s unlikely those differences would follow perceived racial divides…

…The recent increase in the numbers of people who identify with more than one race would seem to pose a rather large problem to the companies marketing race-based products.

Halle Berry, Tiger Woods, and Barack Obama are some of the more well-known names in this fast-growing group. Or perhaps these companies are smarter than we give them credit for.

One blogger, apparently of mixed heritage, asked if she should take the ‘Caucasian’ vitamins in the morning and the ‘African-American’ ones at night…

…Not only are companies misleading the public to believe that races are biologically distinct, requiring race-specific products, but the basis for their wares flies in the face of science. As we stride toward a more personal approach to health and medicine, we need to look beyond skin color. Population-based health and medicine should be a thing of the past.

Read the entire op-ed here.

The curious case of Barack Obama: A postracial black man in a racialized world

University of Houston, Clear Lake
July 2009
180 pages
Publication Number: AAT 1471005
ISBN: 9781109355192

Joel G. Carter

THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The University of Houston Clear Lake In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-CLEAR LAKE

This thesis discusses the debate over Barack Obama’s race and the role it played in the 2008 presidential election, and analyzes how they expose the mechanisms that operate in a racialized society that still struggles to categorize people into clearly defined and mutually exclusive racial “boxes” and view the categorization as a meaningful basis for social and behavioral analysis, such that after someone has been racially categorized, everything they do can be better understood through a racial lens. This discussion is organized around three racialized storylines: that Obama is (1) not black (enough), (2) black, but not too black, and (3) too black. Obama’s attempts to reshape racial discourse, which were rebuffed by the purveyors of the existing narrative, reveal that he is a postracial black man who exposes the entrenched beliefs about race that belie the notion that the U.S. is close to becoming a postracial nation.

CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION
• ONE: ON THE THEORY OF POSTETHNICITY
  • Postethnic Dreams from My Father
  • Terminology Disclaimers
  • Pre-emptive Pushback
• TWO: HE’S NOT BLACK (ENOUGH)
  • On Growing up White and Deciding to be Black
  • Genetic Authenticity
  • Cultural Authenticity
  • On Shelby Steele, Bound Men, and Unfortunate Subtitles
• THREE: HE’S BLACK (BUT NOT TOO BLACK)
  • Articulate, Bright, and Clean (Oh My)
  • Obama captivates White People, Wins Iowa
  • Those Amazing, Race-Transcending “Iconic Negroes”
  • The Huxtable Effect: Obama as The Cosby Show’s Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable
• FOUR: HE’S TOO BLACK
  • America’s Black Friend Has a Blacker Friend: Jeremiah Wright
  • The Big Speech on Race, or Obama Throws His Grandmother Under the Bus
  • He’s So Well-Spoken: Obama as the Master of Veiled Racial Rhetoric
  • The Bradley Effect and Hard-Working White Americans
• FIVE: THE ELECTION AND THE AFTERMATH
  • The Bradley Effect is a No-Show
  • On the Alleged Declining Significance of Race
  • A Generational Sea-Change?
• CONCLUSION: DEEPER BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story,… and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

—Barack Obama

In the middle of a divisive presidential race, and in front of throngs of supporters in Boston and millions of political voyeurs across the country and around the world, a tall, skinny man with light brown skin and a conspicuously deliberate syntax spoke into the microphone at the 2004 Democratic Party National Convention and declared, “There’s not a Black America and a White America and a Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of  America.” Moments after the speech concluded, the political pundits were pontificating; the blogs were buzzing. Who was he? What was he? Three months later, he became the Junior Senator from Illinois. Two years later, he became a candidate for president, and 16 months after that, he became his party’s nominee. And that fall, in an electoral landslide victory on November 4, 2008, this man—Barack Obama—became the 44th President of the United States of America. The debate over what he is, and what that answer means for the country he was elected to lead, rages on.

The discourse surrounding Obama’s racial identity, deeply rooted in the complicated history of slavery, anti-miscegenation laws, segregation, and black/white relations in this country, exposes how the United States, collectively, still struggles to categorize people into clearly defined and mutually exclusive racial “boxes” and, after this categorization is made, attempts to view it as a meaningful basis for social and behavioral analysis, such that after a person has been racially categorized, everything he does or doesn’t do can be better (or best) understood through a racial lens. This is organized around what I call “the three memes.” …

…In this thesis, I make no attempt to engage in the sort of analysis that debates dueling definitions of blackness and racial authenticity in an attempt to declare that Obama is or isn’t black. My goal here is not to uncover the “actual” truth about Obama’s racial identity and castigate those who have not been able to do so or those who have tried but reached a conclusion different from my own. I am not looking at the inkblot and attempting to describe its “true nature,” instead, I am looking at the people who are. I dissect some of the statements made by the people who insist, suggest, or imply that a person’s race can be determined by an objective framework—say, the same type of framework that would apply to a determination of a person’s height, weight, or age. By analyzing how people respond to Obama’s racial identity, what I intend to show is that people sometimes speak as if Obama is mistaken when he describes his own racial identity—or, as Walter Benn Michaels might say, they speak as if “there is some fact of the matter independent of the perception.” Instead, I attempt to upend the argument that the U.S. is moving beyond race or is already postracial by showing just how large a force racialized thinking was during the campaign, and still is. The existing assumptions and prevailing conventional wisdom about race drown out what Obama actually says about his own identity and the role race plays in his life. A closer look at his statements—particularly Dreams from My Father, but also throughout his political career—reveals that Obama is more than the ultimate racial Rorschach test: he is a postracial black man, rendered invisible by a thoroughly
racialized society…

Purchase the thesis here.

The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny, of the Colored Race

Henry Highland Garnet

Edited by Paul Royster
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Steam press of J. C. Kneeland and Co.
1848
31 pages

The text of this electronic edition is based on the original published at Troy, New York, in 1848. It was transcribed from a facsimile edition—issued on 1969 by Mnemosyne Publishing Inc., Miami, Florida—which was photo-offset from a copy in the Fisk University Library. Except as noted below, the spelling, punctuation, italics, and capitalization of the original have been preserved. Variant nineteenth-century spellings (such as “carcase” or “develope”) have been retained. Some typographical errors have been corrected and re listed below at the end of the text.

A discourse delivered at the fifteenth anniversary of the Female Benevolent Society of Troy, New York, February 14, 1848.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

My theme is the Past and the Present condition, and the Destiny of the Colored race. The path of thought which you are invited to travel, has not as I am aware, been pursued heretofore to any considerable extent. The Present, is the midway between the Past and the Future. Let us ascend that sublime eminence, that we may view the vast empire of ruin that is scarcely discernable through the mists of former ages ; and if, while we are dwelling upon the desolations that meet our eyes, we shall mourn over them, I entreat you to look upward and behold the bright scenery of the future. There we have a clear sky, and from thence are refreshing breezes. The airy plains are radiant with prophetic brightness, and truth, love, and liberty are descending the heavens, bearing the charter of man’s destiny to a waiting world.

All the various forms of truth that are presented to the minds of men, are in perfect harmony with the government of God. Many things that appear to be discordant are not really so ; for when they are understood, and the mind becomes illuminated and informed, the imagined deformities disappear as spectres depart from the vision of one who had been a maniac, when his reason returns. “God is the rock, his work is perfect—a God of truth, and without iniquity. Justice and judgment are the habitations of his throne, and mercy and truth go before his face. His righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and his law is the truth.”…

…This western world is destined to be filled with a mixed race. Statesmen, distinguished for their forecast, have gravely said that the blacks must either be removed, or such as I have stated will be the result. It is a stubborn fact, that it is impossible to separate the pale man and the man of color, and therefore the result which to them is so fearful, is inevitable. All this the wiser portion of the Colonizationists see, and they labor to hinder it. It matters not whether we abhor or desire such a consummation, it is now too late to change the decree of nature and circumstances. As well might we attempt to shake the Alleghanies with our hands, or to burst the rock of Gibralter with our fists. If the colored people should all consent to leave this country, on the day of their departure there would be sore lamentations, the like of which the world has not heard since Rachel wept for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not. We would insist upon taking all who have our generous and prolific blood in their veins. In such an event, the American church and state would be bereaved. The Reverend Francis L. Hawks, D. D., of the Protestant Episcopal Church, a man who is receiving the largest salary of any divine in the country, would be called upon to make the sacrifice of leaving a good living, and to share the fate of his brethren according to the flesh. The Reverend Dr. Murphy, of Herkimer, N. Y., a Presbyterian, would be compelled to leave his beloved flock ; and how could they endure the loss of a shepherd so eloquent, so faithful and so kind. We should be burdened with that renegade negro of the United States Senate, Mr. YULEE, of Florida. We should take one of the wives of Senator Samuel Houston. The consort,—the beautiful Cleopatra of his Excellency, R. M. Johnson, late Democratic Vice President of this great nation,—would be the foremost in the vast company of exiles. After we all should return to tread the golden sands of AFRICA, whether we would add to the morality of our kindred across the deep waters future generations would decide. One thing I am certain of, and that is, many of the slaveholders and lynchers of the South are not very moral now. Our cousins of the tribe of Shem are welcome to our deserters. If they are enriched by them they may be assured that we are not impoverished…

Read the entire paper here.

Identity and Public Policy: Redefining the Concept of Racial Democracy in Brazil

Harvard Journal of African American Policy
2011 Edition

Krystle Norman

Krystle Norman is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received her master’s degree in public policy. In 2008, she received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in Spanish language and literature and a certificate in African American studies. Her research interests include conflict areas, social policy, identity issues, human rights, foreign policy, and parallels between communities within the African diaspora.

In Brazil, the notion that raced-based inequalities have crippled the social, economic, and political progress of Afro-Brazilians is one that is quickly denied by those who are committed to Gilberto Freyre’s concept of racial democracy. However, when disparities between “White” and “Black” Brazilians are noted, it is difficult to attribute them solely to class and not race. By analyzing important concepts coined by two distinguished sociologists, W.E.B. Du Bois and Gilberto Freyre, this article explores the way in which identity affects the ability of public policy to address inequalities in Brazil. From that dialogue, this article develops a normative view of racial democracy and puts forth recommendations that will help facilitate its expansion.

While physically the presence of Afro-Latinos throughout the Latin American diaspora cannot be denied, access to resources, equal protection under the law, and political representation continue to be restricted and, in some countries, justified by law (Cottrol 2007). Essentially, the continuing struggle of Afro-Latinos to obtain these basic rights can be seen as a major pitfall of society, but more generally, it illustrates the degree to which inequality in Latin America still persists today. Since the census is used to determine the allocation of federal funding, provide social services, and guide the creation of infrastructure projects, it serves as a means to not only address inequalities but also understand the implications of identity on public policy. Simply stated, recognition of identity is critical to effective policy making, especially within the context of a country as racially diverse as Brazil.

History of Afro-Latinos

While many Americans have learned about the history of slavery and racial inequality that lies at the very core of the African American struggle in the United States, the experience of Afro-Latinos and their plight for racial equality has not received nearly as much attention (Cottrol 2007). Considering the fact that Latin America is home to the largest population of Africans living outside of Africa itself (Andrews 2004), it is a tragedy that their struggle has been seemingly overlooked…

…Identity Issues in Brazil

Afro-Latinos have struggled to mitigate the tensions that have emerged surrounding their mixed racial heritage. For instance, in the early 1900s Latin America’s response to European pressures to“civilize” was to suppress and/or hide its African heritage, encourage White migration into the region, undergo a “modern European-style” transformation of its urban landscapes, and promote European values and culture in order to “Europeanize Latin American societies” (Andrews 2004, 119).

This strong desire for all the societal gains that were thought to accompany “blanqueamiento” (a term used to describe the Whitening of a region through the settlement of large groups of Europeans) ultimately exacerbated the rate at which Afro-Latinos were marginalized (Cottrol 2007). Psychological remnants from the slavery paradigm continued to perpetuate the problematic notion that, among other things, lighter skin was synonymous with economic and social mobility. This ideology was reinforced when European settlement was encouraged and the White elite began to solidify its influence over the political, economic, and social sectors of society (Andrews 2004). As stated by Robert Cottrol, “If the national ethos dictated that the nation was white, it was all the more prudent, particularly for those of mixed ancestry, not to declare an African heritage. Thus mestizaje [racial mixing] and blanqueamiento [Whitening] both contributed to the pronounced unwillingness of many Afro-Latinos to identify as such, even when phenotype made such identification and the resulting discrimination inescapable” (2007, 4).

Since the combination of Europeans, Native Americans, Spaniards, and Africans created such a hugely multiethnic citizenry in Latin America, this grouping made it all the more difficult to rigidly define class and political status (Andrews 2004). According to Andrews, the Afro-Latino population experienced both “Whitening”and “Blackening” phases because it lacked an appreciation and understanding for its own racial identity (2004, 10). Due to societal pressures, Afro-Latinos were forced to create an identity that was both acceptable to themselves and the larger European diaspora. As a result, social status and economic privilege were determined by one’s light skin color and closeness to a European phenotype. Society would systematically devalue Blackness, which encouraged individuals to disassociate with their African ancestry, even when their phenotype would suggest otherwise (Cottrol 2007). In this way, Brazil was able to maintain a “rigid, racial hierarchy” that reinforced the supremacy of White Brazilians (Telles 2004, 230)…

Read the entire article here.

Race in Brazil: Out of Eden

The Economist
2003-07-03

Brazil used to think it could be colour-blind. Alas, no longer

JOANA, an actress and student, is white, or at least that is what her birth certificate says. She has a white father, a mixed-race mother and skin the colour of cappuccino. But she considers herself to be “more or less black”. Joana’s ambiguity about her race is quintessentially Brazilian. Brazil had slavery, but never apartheid or the formal segregation of the American south. Centuries of interracial coupling have produced a population that is 40% pardo (mixed). But Joana’s description of herself as “black”, or negra, belongs to a new era in Brazil’s racial politics. It implies that racial mixing has done nothing to correct racism, that pardos and pretos (the census term for blacks) are in the same boat and that the solution is not to ignore race but to plant it at the centre of policies to overcome vast social and economic inequalities. Though most people are only dimly aware of it, their idea of what it means to be Brazilian is about to be challenged.

The challenge is coming through racial quotas, which black leaders see as an indispensable corrective to discrimination. They are not widely used yet, but they are spreading. Three federal ministries recently introduced quotas of 20% for blacks in senior jobs. A handful of cities in São Paulo, the industrial heartland, have introduced racial quotas in the past two years. Most contentiously, so have a few public universities, the institutions that decide who will be admitted to Brazil’s elite. Congress is considering a “statute of racial equality” that would give quotas a big extra push. These and other affirmative actions add up to a “revolution” that is “much bigger than people imagine,” says Ivair dos Santos, advisor to the federal secretary for human rights…

Read the entire article here.