Mixed Race Studies

My People Will Sleep for One Hundred Years: Story of a Métis Self

University of Victoria
2004
106 pages

Sylvia Rae Cottell, B.F.A.
Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies at the University of Victoria.

“My people will sleep for one hundred years when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.”
Louis Riel

As a result of the current political debate that surrounds the definition of Métis, the issue of Métis identity on both community and individual levels is often challenged in a public forum. Metis people outside of the areas considered the main hubs of Metis culture are likely to be faced with a myriad of different factors that impact their identity, including lack of community connections and limited contact with Métis cultural influences. There is a need to openly voice the diverse experiences of being Métis in order to affirm the experiences of many Métis people. This autoethnographic study aims to provide an account of an experience of being Métis and to salvage a sense of identity after many generations of assimilation. Autoethnography provides the freedom necessary for the representation of cultural values that are beyond the traditional assumptions of academic discourse (Spry, 2001) and aims to engage the reader on an emotional level. A purpose of this study is to validate the experience of many Métis readers and to enhance the level of culturally relevant practice provided to Métis individuals and communities by counsellors.

Read the entire thesis here.

Metis Identity Creation and Tactical Responses to Oppression and Racism

Variegations Journal
University of Victoria, Canada
Volume 2 (2005)
ISSN: 1708-9840

Cathy Richardson
Indigenous Governance
University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

As one of Canada’s founding Aboriginal people (Department of Justice Canada, 1982), the Metis exist at the periphery of the Canadian historical, cultural and social landscape. Today, the Metis are starting to write themselves into larger historical and social sciences narratives, reclaiming their right to inclusion and belonging after generations of living “underground” without public cultural expression. The Canadian Metis are an Aboriginal group who celebrate their mixed ancestry and identify with a unique Metis culture.  This culture evolved and crystallized after the Metis lived together for generations, mixing and mingling with other Metis of both English and French-speaking origins. Due to the forces of colonization, the Metis exist as marginalized Aboriginal people living between a number of cultural worlds within the larger Euro-Canadian society. In “Becoming Metis: The Relationship Between The Sense of Metis Self and Cultural Stories” (Richardson, 2004), I elucidate various tactics used by Metis people to create a personal and cultural identity. In this paper, I draw on this work to present some of the socio-political conditions that set the context for a Metis tactical identity development.

I present and discuss some of the responses enacted by key Metis interview participants in the process of creating a “sense of Metis self.” These tactical responses were, and are, performed by Metis people who are trying to balance their need for safety and inclusion with a need to live as cultural beings in a European Canada. I term the responses “tactical,” as opposed to “strategic,” in response to an important distinction between oppressor and oppressed in colonial societies. Political strategies and strategic responses tend to be developed for long-term use by those in political positions of relative power, on secure ground whereas tactical responses tend to be developed “on the move,” as short-term acts to attack political oppression. For example, General [Frederick Dobson] Middleton implemented strategic military plans to defeat the Metis, while Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont employed tactical acts in response to Middleton’s attacks. Finally, after discussing various tactical responses, I close with some explanations about how Metis people have developed a third space to create a Metis cultural identity…

Read the entire article here.

Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950

Berkeley Asian Law Journal
Volume 9, Number 1 (2002)
pages 1-40

Gabriel J. Chin
University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law; University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy

Hrishi Karthikeyan
New York University School of Law

This essay explores the relationship between Asian American population and applicability of anti-miscegenation laws to that group in the first half of the 20th Century, testing legal scholar Gilbert Thomas Stephenson‘s theory that racial restrictions would arise whenever non-whites of any race exist in considerable numbers. Several states prohibited Asian-white intermarriage even though the Asian American numbers failed even remotely to approach those of the white population in those states. These anti-miscegenation statutes were unique in the Jim Crow regime in the degree of specificity with which they defined the racial categories subject to the restrictions, using precise terms like Japanese or Mongolians, rather than broad terms like colored. Further, the number of statutes applicable to Asians more than doubled between 1910 and 1950, even though census data shows that the proportion of Asian population was stable or declining in these states, and in any event tiny.

The proliferation of anti-Asian miscegenation laws raises important questions about the racial landscape of our country during this period. Correlating census data with the development of anti-miscegenation statutes suggests that population does have an impact on whether states would restrict Asian marriage, but in a more complex way than Stephenson proposed. In all states in which Asian-white marriage was restricted by race, so too was African American-white intermarriage; no statutes targeted Asians alone. But in virtually all states restricting African American intermarriage where there was a discernable Asian population – 1/2000th or more – Asian intermarriage was also regulated. The combination of a state’s inclination to segregate, plus a visible Asian population, reliably predicts when Asians would be covered by a statute. This suggests that in the states where racially diverse populations were seen as threats appropriately subject to legal regulation, the nature of the problems presented by the various races was the same.

Read the entire article here.

Mixing Bodies and Beliefs: The Predicament of Tribes

Columbia Law Review
Volume 101, Number 4 (May 2001)

L. Scott Gould

This Article considers a dilemma faced by tribes in a post-inherent sovereignty world. Tribes have increasingly come to be defined through the use of blood quanta as racial entities. This practice raises the legal question whether and to what extent Congress can confer benefits on tribes pursuant to the Indian Commerce Clause without violating the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause. Professor Gould explores the current dilemma from legal, historical, and demographic perspectives. He concludes that a recent Supreme Court decision involving Native Hawaiians portends growing judicial hostility to groups that base their memberships on common ancestry. Based on recent demographic trends, the Article observes that tribes are already multi-racially diverse. In conclusion, Professor Gould urges tribes to redefine their membership criteria, risking change in order to regain sovereignty and ultimately preserve tribal cultures.

Miscegenation, Eugenics, and Racism: Historical Footnotes to Loving v. Virginia

University of California, Davis Law Review
Volume 21, Number 2 (1988)
pages 421-452

Paul A. Lombardo, Bobby Lee Cook Professor of Law
Georgia State University

This Essay explores private correspondence contained in a restricted manuscript collection along with contemporary news accounts and government documents to explain how eugenics—a popular “scientific” movement during the 1920’s—was used to bolster the arguments in favor of the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924 that was struck down in Loving v. Virginia.  The genesis of the Act is described with reference to the private correspondence of the two Virginians [Walter Plecker and John Powell] who lobbied for its passage.  Their involvement with the white supremacist Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America is revealed as an aid to understanding the true motives behind the anti-miscegenation law.

Read the entire article here.

Race – The Power of an Illusion

California Newsreel – Film and video for social change since 1968
2003
3 Episodes, 56 minutes each
DVD and VHS

The division of the world’s peoples into distinct groups – “red,” “black,” “white” or “yellow” peoples – has became so deeply imbedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet, that’s exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by California Newsreel claims. Race – The Power of an Illusion questions the very idea of race as biology, suggesting that a belief in race is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth.

Yet race still matters. Just because race doesn’t exist in biology doesn’t mean it isn’t very real, helping shape life chances and opportunities.

Episode 1– The Difference Between Us [transcript] examines the contemporary science – including genetics – that challenges our common sense assumptions that human beings can be bundled into three or four fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.

Episode 2– The Story We Tell [transcript] uncovers the roots of the race concept in North America, the 19th century science that legitimated it, and how it came to be held so fiercely in the western imagination. The episode is an eye-opening tale of how race served to rationalize, even justify, American social inequalities as “natural.”

Episode 3– The House We Live [transcript] In asks, If race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but in politics, economics and culture. It reveals how our social institutions “make” race by disproportionately channeling resources, power, status and wealth to white people.

By asking, What is this thing called ‘race’?, a question so basic it is rarely asked, Race – The Power of an Illusion helps set the terms that any further discussion of race must first take into account. Ideal for human biology, anthropology, sociology, American studies, and cultural studies.

Read the online transcript here.
Visit the facilitator guide website here.

The End of Black History: A Postscript to My Son

Newsweek.com
2010-02-28
00:13:57

Raina Kelley, Weekly Columnist

In trying to understand what black history will mean to my son when he’s old enough to wonder, I went in search of the purpose of Black History Month. (Video: Raina Kelly, Jon Groat; Additional material courtesy Angelique Kidjo, Penn Museum)

Marcia Dawkins to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #153 – Marcia Dawkins
When: Wednesday, 2010-05-19 22:00Z (18:00 EDT, 15:00 PDT)

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Assistant Professor of Human Communication
California State University, Fullerton

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D., is a blogger, professor and communication researcher in Los Angeles. Her interests are mixed race identification, politics, popular culture and new media. Her new book, Clearly Invisible:  Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity, looks at racial passing as a viable form of communication. She lectures and consults on these issues at conferences worldwide.

The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940

University of Texas Press
1990
143 pages
10 b&w illus.
6 x 9 in.
ISBN: 978-0-292-73857-7

Edited by

Richard Graham, Emeritus Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor of History
University of Texas, Austin

With chapters by Thomas E. Skidmore, Aline Helg, and Alan Knight

From the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s, many Latin American leaders faced a difficult dilemma regarding the idea of race. On the one hand, they aspired to an ever-closer connection to Europe and North America, where, during much of this period, “scientific” thought condemned nonwhite races to an inferior category. Yet, with the heterogeneous racial makeup of their societies clearly before them and a growing sense of national identity impelling consideration of national futures, Latin American leaders hesitated. What to do? Whom to believe?

Latin American political and intellectual leaders’ sometimes anguished responses to these dilemmas form the subject of The Idea of Race in Latin America. Thomas Skidmore, Aline Helg, and Alan Knight have each contributed chapters that succinctly explore various aspects of the story in Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico. While keenly alert to the social and economic differences that distinguish one Latin American society from another, each author has also addressed common issues that Richard Graham ably draws together in a brief introduction. Written in a style that will make it accessible to the undergraduate, this book will appeal as well to the sophisticated scholar.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• 1. Introduction (Richard Graham)
• 2. Racial Ideas and Social Policy in Brazil, 1870-1940 (Thomas E. Skidmore)
• 3. Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880-1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction (Aline Helg)
• 4. Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940 (Alan Knight)
• Bibliography
• Index

Read the intrduction here.

Myth of Post-Racial America: Biracial novelist says America still has a long way to go

Northwestern University
News Center
2010-03-08

Wendy Leopold, Education Editor

EVANSTON, Illinois — In a speech titled “The Myth of Post-Racial America,” writer Danzy Senna warned members of the packed audience in Fisk Hall against the urge to view America as having moved past issues of privilege, race and class.

Delivering the annual Leon Forrest Lecture last week, Senna, who is biracial, called such thinking “a dangerous impulse” that seeks to “stop conversation” about racism and genocide that are at the very heart of American history and culture…

…Senna, whose novels and memoirs address biracial and multiracial identity, is the daughter of a Boston blue-blood mother and a black father who grew up “dirt-poor” in the Deep South. She won acclaim for her debut novel, “Caucasia,” which told the story of biracial sisters growing up in the 1970s in racially charged Boston…

Read the entire article here.