Mixed Race Studies

It may seem out of place for three West Indian children, the offspring of an interracial couple, to be living in a small village at Scotland’s northern tip in 1801. Historians tend to think of an Afro-Caribbean presence in Britain as a phenomenon of the last sixty-plus years, and one localized around major urban centers. At the same time, only recently has the topic of inter-racial unions been addressed in the “new” multicultural Britain. The story of the Hay children in Dornoch, however, was not at all unique at the turn of the nineteenth century. Rather, the Hays were members of a regular migration of mixed-race West Indians who arrived in the home country during the period. Facing intense discrimination, few jobs opportunities, and virtually no educational options in the colonies, West Indians of color fled to Britain with their white fathers’ assistance. Once arrived, they encountered myriad responses. While some white relatives accepted them into their homes, others sued to cut them off from the family fortune. Equally, even though a number of fictional and political tracts welcomed their arrival, others condemned their presence and lobbied to ban them from landing on British soil. Regardless of these variable experiences, mixed-race migrants traveled to Britain consistently during the period. The Hay children may have turned heads on the roads of Dornoch, but they would not have been a wholly unfamiliar sight.

Daniel Alan Livesay, “Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Migration from the West Indies to Britain, 1750-1820” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2010).

…I don’t believe multi-racial makes sense by my understanding of race.  Race is socially constructed and “multi-racial” seems to assume that race is biological: if parents are of different then the kid is “mixed”.   But that is not how race works. Race is constructed through law, history, culture, practice, custom, etc.

“Black” does not designate having two parents who are both “un-mixed” descendants of Africa and African diaspora. “Black” [is] derived from society.  There is no “mixed race” history, institutions, cultural practices.  There are mixed race [people] who are part of all these, but no group history.  I believe all people can self-identify themselves in ways that feel comfortable and honest, but the social/political part is bigger. I have a white mother and black father, but this doesn’t make me mixed race.  Race is not biology. In USA this combo makes me black.

My self-designation: Black with Access to Residual White Privilege (BWATRWP)…

Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Eddings, Jeff, “Princeton Professor tweets about her views on mixed-race identity,” Mixed Child: The Pulse of the Mixed Community, (July 27, 2009). http://www.mixedchild.com/NEWS/August2009/Princeton_Professor.htm or http://coleridgehead.blogspot.com/2009/07/melissa-harris-lacewell-on-race.html.

Woman of mixed racial heritage have historically been described as exotic, a term with simultaneously positive and negative connotations. Despite its  various meanings, it always had a sexual connotation to it. On one hand it was a coded term for objectifying and fantasizing what such woman sexually offered that might be different from other women.  On the other hand, it was term that suggested that such a woman was physically attractive in a way that set her apart from other women. This latter issue has made women, more than men of mixed race, the subject of suspicion and jealousy in heterosexually driven relationships in communities of color, because a woman’s social worth has historically been attached to her physical appearance.

Maria P. P. Root, “From Exotic to Dime a Dozen,” In Biracial Women In Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race, edited by Angela R. Gillem, Ph.D., Cathy A. Thompson, Ph.D., (New York, London, Oxford: The Hawford Press, 2004), 20.

He [John C. Minkins] said the Negro need have no objection to absolutely prohibitive laws against miscegenation, as they would give him a far wider range of matrimonial choice than any other race on earth, since he could have all the thirty-second degree Negroes and more than 1,100,000 others, ranging from half white to thirty-one thirty-seconds white, from which to choose, adding, “The range is wide enough and attractive enough to satisfy the most adventurous and exacting among us.” He was not disposed to be disturbed by legitimate miscegenation and its ultimate effects, as they would take care of themselves as they had done ever since the present European Caucasian races sprang from the Negro’s ancestors, the Euro-Africans.

“John C. Minkins on Race Purity,” The Indianapolis Recorder: A Weekly Newspaper Devoted the to Best Interest of the Negroes (May 7, 1910), page 1, columns 4-5. http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/IRecorder/id/18654/rec/1.

To-day there are no half-castes because there are no full-castes.

Cedric Dover. Half-Caste. London, 1937. Secker & Warburg.

Sabrina Jacobucci: “Mixed race children often face the same issues black mono-heritage children face. No matter their skin tone, they are seen as black and therefore it is healthier and more empowering for them to identify as such, without denying their dual heritage at the same time. A racist is not going to ask them whether they are mixed-race.”

Stephen Ogongo, “There are Italians with black skin,” Africa News, May 28, 2010. http://www.africa-news.eu/africans-abroad/africans-in-italy/747-there-are-italians-with-black-skin.html.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that the intellectual superiority of the mulatto over the negro affords no sufficient ground for advocating the amalgamation of the negro and white races. If the mulatto has a better mind than the negro, he is apparently inferior to him in physique and is inferior in every way to the whites. Any system of cross breeding which means the substitution of mulatto for white children cannot be viewed as anything but a serious menace. It is to be condemned, not only from the biological standpoint, but because it would lead to social and moral deterioration. To say that negro-white crosses are undesirable on biological grounds, however, is not to assert that race crossing is bad per se. If races are on the same level of inherent physical and intellectual endowment their fusion may produce a very desirable combination of qualities and might give rise to a diversity of traits which would be socially valuable. We have insufficient grounds for condemning crosses of races or peoples per se but only those crosses which substitute an intermediate product for the most highly endowed stock. It is the very best inheritance that should be conserved at all costs. Out of it come the rare minds that rise like mountain peaks above the general level of humanity. And it is to these minds, small in number, but incalculably great in influence, that advancement in civilization and culture is largely due.

Samuel J. Holmes, The Trend of the Race: A Study of Present Tendencies in the Biological Development of Civilized Mankind (New York: Hourcourt, Brace and Company, 1921), 264-265.

“Sometimes when I am on the bus people will look at me and if they think that I am not Korean they will not sit next to me or they will move when I sit down. This kind of thing is still existent. Also, it can be difficult to get people to stop speaking English with me. Even if I have been speaking in Korean with them for 20 minutes they will still try to speak in English as if they thought I could not understand…”

—African-American Korean Yang Chan-wook (Gregory Diggs)

Kirsty Taylor, “Mixed-race Koreans urge identity rethink,” The Korea Herald, (December 7, 2011). http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20111207000908.

Interracial families face unique challenges because of the historical legacy of white supremacy, the long-standing social barriers against interracial marriage, and the cultural norm of racial homogeneity in marriage patterns.  For interracial families, racial socialization is complicated for important several reasons.  First, parents bring different racial identities, experiences, and ideologies to their relationship that may result in different ideas about how to racially socialize their children.  In addition, the politics of race in our society are such that their mixed-race children exist in a marginal and undefined space.  There is no clear community of mixed-race people or a comprehensive understanding of the mixed-race experience that can be used to guide racial socialization of mixed-race childrenin a positive, cohesive manner.  Unlike white or black children, most multiracial children do not have a parent with whom they can directly identify as a multiracial person.  Unless a parent is also mixed-race, the majority of mixed-race children learn about race from on or more adults who cannot completely understand their racial reality.  This means that most mixed-race children rarely have the luxury of being raised by a parent whose on racial identity and socialization process are relevant to their experience.

Rockquemore, Kerry Ann, Tracey Laszloffy, Julia Noveske. “It All Starts at Home: Racial Socialization in Multiracial Families”, In Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the “Color-Blind” Era, edited by David L. Brunsma, 207.  Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006.

The harder whites made it for blacks to earn a living, educate their children, and just make it through a single day without threat or insult, the greater the incentives grew for light-skinned blacks to leave their communities and establish themselves as white.  If anything, the drumbeat of racial purity, the insistence that any African ancestry—a single drop of blood—tainted a person’s very existence, accelerated the migration to new identities and lives.  The difference between white and black seemed obvious, an iron-clad rule, a biological fact.  But the Walls knew that blacks could be as good as whites and as bad, as smart and as stupid.  Blacks had just as much claim to schooling and jobs and love and family, to common courtesies each day.  The Walls knew that blacks could be every bit the equal to whites—and that their skins could be equally light.  As the United States veered from slavery to Jim Crow, O.S.B. Wall’s children did not stand up and fight. They faded away.

Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 236.