the author has endeavored to make plain the following propositions, and, as they are the very reverse of those laid down by the author of “Miscegenation”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-10-10 05:55Z by Steven

CONCLUSIONS.

In the preceding pages, the author has endeavored to make plain the following propositions, and, as they are the very reverse of those laid down by the author of “Miscegenation,” he adopts the mode of that writer in summing up, in order the more successfully to present the contrast:

  1. That as by the teachings of science, religion, and democracy the human family is composed of different races or species, distinct in color and other physical as well as mental peculiarities, it follows that there should be distinctions in political and social rights, corresponding with such physical and mental differences.
  2. That the doctrine of human brotherhood should be accepted in its entirety in the United States, and that it implies the equality of all whom God has created equal, and the inequality of all whom He has made unequal.
  3. That a solution of the negro problem will not have been reached in this country until public opinion universally sanctions negro Subgenation.
  4. That, as the negro ought not to be driven out of the country or exterminated, and as for wise purposes he has been placed side by side with the white race, there should be severe laws passed punishing any sexual intercourse between the race.
  5. That the mingling of diverse races, or Miscegenation, is a positive injury to the progeny, producing a weaker and a hybrid race, which rapidly perishes, as proved by the history of all nations, from that of Egypt to this day.
  6. That, as the war has been caused by the Miscegenationists striving to force their revolting and disgusting doctrines on the people of the South, it follows that perfect peace and Union can soonest be restored to our country by the North adopting negro Subgenation at once, by each State amending its Constitution to that effect, and then accepting the Confederate Constitution as the basis of a Federal Government.
  7. That it is the duty of Democrats everywhere to advocate Subgenation, or the normal relation of the races on this continent, as a great humanitarian reform.
  8. That as the last Presidential election was carried by the Miscegenationists, and has brought four years of blood, suffering, and untold taxation upon the country, the next Presidential election should be carried by the Subgenationists, who will thus restore order, peace, and commercial prosperity.
  9. That a society founded on Subgenation produces the highest type of mankind—the most consummate statesmen and generals, the highest type of womanhood, and the most exalted morality and virtue.
  10. That the Millennial future is to be ushered in through a complete understanding of the laws of Subgenation, by which an equality of condition is to become universal—thus realizing the instinct of an equality of creation; and that whoever helps to achieve this result, helps to make the human family the sooner realize its great destiny.

John H. Van Evrie, Subgenation: The Theory of the Normal Relation of the Races; an Answer to “Miscegenation,” (New York: John Bradburn Publishing, 1864): 67-69.

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The statutory mode of expression to cover persons of mixed white and Negro blood is an awkward one and makes doubtful just what proportion of Negro blood will disqualify one from marrying a pure white person or Malayan.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-10-05 02:12Z by Steven

White persons and Malayans are forbidden to intermarry and both are forbidden to marry Negroes or persons of Negro descent to the third generation. The statutory mode of expression to cover persons of mixed white and Negro blood is an awkward one and makes doubtful just what proportion of Negro blood will disqualify one from marrying a pure white person or Malayan. It is suggested that if the person in question has some non-Negro blood and that if all of his parents and grand-parents also had some, he is eligible for purposes of the statute, even though he is predominantly Negro.

John S. Strahorn Jr., “Void and Voidable Marriages in Maryland and Their Annulment,” Maryland Law Review, Volume 2, Issue 3 (1938): 231.

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People are not always what they appear to be. People are sometimes not what they want to be.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-30 03:14Z by Steven

When it comes to race and ethnicity in America, it can all get very complicated depending on who is defining whom, and why. People are not always what they appear to be. People are sometimes not what they want to be. In reality, race is as much a matter of politics as biology; ethnicity as much an expression of fashion as fate. It can be transient, changing from time to time and place to place.

Jonathan Tilove, “Of Susie Guillory Phipps and Chief Redbone: The Mutability of Race,” Newhouse News Service, (July 9, 1992). http://jonathantilove.com/mutability-of-race/

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I’m not about to have my children check more than one box only to be relegated back to the black category…

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-28 02:10Z by Steven

“I’m not about to have my children check more than one box only to be relegated back to the black category,” said [Susan] Graham [of Project RACE]… She left the race question blank.

Jonathan Tilove, “Will new age of mixed-race identities loosen the hold of race or tie it up in tighter knots?” Newhouse News Service, (April 20, 2000). http://jonathantilove.com/mixed-race/

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As has been shown in these pages, the mixed or mongrel people perish, and are blotted from the face of the earth.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-24 02:19Z by Steven

The writer of “Miscegenation” considers it a most providential event, and as one significant of the type-man or miscegens of the future, that the statue on the dome of the Capitol at Washington is of a “bronze tint.” But it is possible that he mistakes its significance. As has been shown in these pages, the mixed or mongrel people perish, and are blotted from the face of the earth. The Egyptians, the Carthagenians, and now the Mexicans, are historical examples of God’s punishment upon those who dare to mar the works of His creation. The dome of the Capitol, therefore, with its mulatto statue, has the symbol of decay upon it, and it would seem to constantly point to the triumph of the Confederate or White Constitution in the place of the mongrelized one which the folly of the hour has deified.

John H. Van Evrie, Subgenation: The Theory of the Normal Relation of the Races; an Answer to “Miscegenation,” (New York: John Bradburn Publishing, 1864): 67.

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I called myself “Czecha Rican,” she jokes.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-22 16:24Z by Steven

Although earlier psychological research focused on those who are biracial or multiracial experiencing a “fractured sense of self,” Sanchez believes the stereotype is unfounded. The multiracial people she has studied are comfortable with who they are.  “They seem to be just as well-adjusted as their monoracial peers,” says [Diana] Sanchez, who is half Puerto Rican and half Czechoslovakian (I called myself “Czecha Rican,” she jokes.)

Carrie Stetler, “Rutgers Group Brings Students Together to Explore the Complexities of Being Multiracial,” Rutgers Focus, (September 2012). http://news.rutgers.edu/issue.2012-08-28.1598204061/article.2012-09-21.6397021568.

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The fact that you can deny white privilege is actually the most incriminating evidence of the fact that you have it.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-21 02:56Z by Steven

She [Susan Graham of Project RACE] cannot claim to be the voice of racial minorities without acknowledging the ways she (as a white person) benefits from the system that makes multiracial advocacy necessary in the first place. As a biracial person, it is completely unacceptable to me that someone who claims to be an advocate for the multiracial community would openly proclaim that she not only doesn’t believe that white privilege even exists but that it is not a necessary part of the conversation in multiracial advocacy. This is the comment this woman wrote back to me when I challenged her about her position:

We can easily have a discussion of multiracial advocacy without a conversation on white privilege if some academic and academic librarians would let it go.

This was part of my response:

The fact that you can deny white privilege is actually the most incriminating evidence of the fact that you have it. You may be able to dismiss it, but for racial minorities we live with the realities of white privilege every day.

Alyssa Bacon-Liu, “The Privilege of Denial,” All Things Beautiful, September 19, 2012. http://www.allthingsbeautifulblog.com/2012/09/the-privilege-of-denial.html

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but her continual reliance on white privileged forms of advocacy and expression were her political undoing.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-21 02:44Z by Steven

In the end, although Project RACE’s political advocacy facilitated other multiracial groups’ participation in the OMB discussions for the 2000 census, [Susan] Graham was eventually shut out of the process. Her position as a white woman campaigning for multiracial interests proved to be unappealing to too many, and her uncompromising stance distanced her from more flexible multiracial groups. The political alliances she made and her unwillingness to sympathize with monoracial civil rights groups’ concerns lost her the support both of monoracial people of color and multiracial activists. Graham’s passion and loyalty to the original racial designation voted upon by her constituents served her well in the public sphere, but her continual reliance on white privileged forms of advocacy and expression were her political undoing. Although Project RACE remains one of the more active inter- or multiracial organizations in the U.S. (many dissipated after the 2000 census victory), it also still remains connected to a white privileged perspective and racially unreflexive forms of advocacy.

Alicia Doo Castagno, “‘Founding Mothers’: White Mothers of Biracial Children in the Multiracial Movement (1979-2000),” (Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2012), 98.

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The demand for multiracial identity for the children of interracial marriage, however, may be explained in terms of a desire for status as long as we live in a society in which there is still a clear racial hierarchy…

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-18 03:14Z by Steven

The demand for multiracial identity for the children of interracial marriage, however, may be explained in terms of a desire for status as long as we live in a society in which there is still a clear racial hierarchy. The demand that multiracial children be recognized as partly white did not come from blacks.  Nor is it surprising that Susan Graham, a major advocate for the multiracial category on the United States Census found an ally in Newt Gingrich, who opined that such a category might “‘be an important step toward transcending racial division.’” The enthusiasm for such alternative classifications leads skeptics to believe that this system of reclassification and the rhetoric of transcendence will make it easy to ignore the reality and the structure of racism.

Deborah W. Post, “Cultural Inversion and the One-Drop Rule: An Essay on Biology, Racial Classification, and the Rhetoric of Racial Transcendence,” Albany Law Review, Volume 72, Issue 4 (2009):925-926.

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By virtue of being African-American, I’m attuned to how throughout this country’s history there have been times when folks have been locked out of opportunity…

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-09-17 01:57Z by Steven

By virtue of being African-American, I’m attuned to how throughout this country’s history there have been times when folks have been locked out of opportunity, and because of the hard work of people of all races, slowly those doors opened to more and more people. —President Barack Obama

Lynn Sherr and Maggie Murphy,“PARADE Exclusive: A Conversation With the Obamas,” Parade Magazine, September 12, 2012. http://parade.com/124838/lynnsherrmaggiemurphy/02-conversation-with-the-obamas/.

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