While others may see me as “half,” I know that I am whole.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-30 03:31Z by Steven

As the child of a native Japanese woman and an Irish American father, a salient feature of my life has been this ethnic heritage and the circumstances into which I was born in post—World War II Tokyo. My life, between Japan and the United States, has been marked heavily by my connections to these diverse roots. I have found meaning in my life through learning to accept and appreciate these roots, to balance their influences and blend them into a synergistic whole. While others may see me as “half,” I know that I am whole. This whole me is greater than the sum of its parts and connects me to something beyond my self, to communities of others and to a collective self.

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, When Half Is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities, (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012), 2.

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Native American people is the only race in America that has to prove that they’re Indian…

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-26 20:51Z by Steven

“Native American people is the only race in America that has to prove that they’re Indian,” she [Dwanna L. Robertson] quoted one study participant. “If you’re black and you say, ‘I’m black,’ and nobody will question it. If you’re white, you say, ‘I’m white” and nobody questions it, but if you’re Indian they want to see your CDIB [Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood] card. ‘Well, you say you’re Indian (but) let’s see your card.”…

Carol Berry, “Dwanna L. Robertson: Indian Identity Still Controversial,” Indian Country Today Media Network, (August 28, 2012). http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/08/21/dwanna-l-robertson-indian-identity-still-controversial-130176.

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The church exists in the wake of this racial world, and for this rea­son mixed bodies still trouble the waters.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-25 04:43Z by Steven

The church exists in the wake of this racial world, and for this rea­son mixed bodies still trouble the waters. Mulattos were bodies that troubled the waters for all of us because they existed on both sides in a space that could not sustain such a possibility. That we no longer char­acterize mixed-race children as mulatto does not mitigate the growing fact of these interracial children. But perhaps even more important, these children continue to pose a problem because the patterns of faith, educa­tion, and marriage still flow along the trenches of a world forged by race. The ambivalence of our racial condition is no clearer than in both the election of a mixed-race president, Barack Obama, as well as in the vehe­ment questioning of his faith, birth, and citizenship. Just as darker and lighter Americans alike are reimagining the possibility of political life in the United States, so too are the numbers of militias swelling, and chants of “we want our country back” growing. The possibility of post-racial is only an illusory bridge. To enter into such divisions we must recognize interracial children and their perpetuation in our own lives in the subtle and glaring ways we seek to reinforce our difference and refuse the pos­sibility of becoming something different.

Brian Bantum, Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity, (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010), 9-10.

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Yet, a number of the assumptions adopted by these advocates end up relying, unwittingly, on the same discredited science, one of the main assertions of which was that race and racial categories were based on blood or genes.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-21 03:10Z by Steven

The multiracial idea has at least two versions. One is that multiracial people are of mixed blood or mixed genetic material. The other is that multiracial people are those with parents of different recognizable races. On examination, both of these positions present problems. The first is most blatantly tied to the racist science of the nineteenth century. It suggests that a person with both black and white ancestry is not adequately or accurately described as black (or white). This assertion rests on the discredited biological model. To sustain this position, one would have to show not only that bloodlines or genes are the appropriate foundations upon which to classify races, but also that bloodlines or genetic indicators are clear. Stated more strongly, this view implies that pure blood-lines—people who are uniracial—define the current racial categories.

Many of the proponents of new multiracial categories are politically left of center and reject the overt racism of nineteenth-century biology. Yet, a number of the assumptions adopted by these advocates end up relying, unwittingly, on the same discredited science, one of the main assertions of which was that race and racial categories were based on blood or genes. Supposed racial difference cannot be sustained on this basis, however; the majority of white Americans have African ancestry, the majority of blacks have white ancestry, and a substantial number of each have American Indian ancestry. Indeed, under the old hypodescent or “one drop” rule, which asserts that “white blood” is pure and therefore contaminated by even one drop of “black blood,” most white Americans are, in fact, African American.

john a. powell, Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 39.

The most striking characteristic of the free Negro communities was the prominence of the mulatto element.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-05 22:40Z by Steven

The most striking characteristic of the free Negro communities was the prominence of the mulatto element.  About thirty-seven per cent of the free Negroes in the United States in 1850 were classed as mulattoes, while only about a twelfth of the slave population was regarded as of mixed blood. Although no definite information exists concerning the number of mulattoes during the colonial period, we find that in 1752 in Baltimore County, Maryland, 196 of the 312 mulattoes were free, while all of the 4,035 Negroes except eight were slaves. Early in the settlement of Virginia doubt concerning the status of mulatto children was the occasion for special legislation which determined that mulatto children should have the status of their mother. In Maryland, by an act in 1681, children born of white servant women and Negroes were free. By another act in 1692 mulatto children through such unions lost their free status and became servants for a long term.  In Pennsylvania the mulattoes followed the status of their mothers, and when the offspring of a free mother became a servant for a term of years.

The conspicuousness of the mulatto element in the free Negro population was not due, therefore, to any legal presumption in its favor. The accessions to the free Negro class through unions of free white women and Negro men, and free colored women and white men was kept at a minimum by the drastic laws against such unions. Nor can the enormous increase in the free mulattoes be accounted for by natural increase from their own numbers. The increase in the number of free mulattoes came chiefly from the offspring of slave women and white masters, who manumitted their mulatto children. Russell says concerning the free mulattoes of Virginia: “The free mulatto class, which numbered 23,500 by 1860, was of course the result of illegal relations of white persons with Negroes; but, excepting those born of mulatto parents, most persons of the free class were not born of free Negro or free white mothers, but of slave mothers, and were set free because of their kinship to their master and owner.” Snydor in showing how the sex relations existing between masters and slaves were responsible for the free class in Mississippi, cites the fact that “Of the 773 free persons of color in Mississippi in the year 1860, 601 were of mixed blood, and only 172 were black. Among the slaves this condition was entirely reversed. In this same year there were 400,013 slaves who were classed as blacks and only 36,618 who were mulattoes.” In regard to the mulatto character of the free Negro population, it should be noted that the association between the Indians and the Negro was responsible for mulatto communities of free Negroes in Virginia and elsewhere. In Florida the Seminoles were mixed with the Negroes to such an extent that the conflict with the United States was due in part to the attempt of Indian fathers to prevent their Indian-Negro children from being enslaved. There was also considerable interbreeding between the Indians and Negroes in Massachusetts. Many of the offsprings of these relations passed into the colored community as mulattoes. The predominance of the mulattoes among free Negroes was most marked in Louisiana, where 15,158 of the 18,647 free Negroes were mulattoes.

E. Franklin Frazier, The Free Negro Family: A Study of Family Origins Before the Civil War, (Nashville: Fisk University Press, 1932): 12-13.

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But the primary reason these ancestry stories entrance us is because they bring us face-to-face with our national fascination with and anxieties about racial miscegenation.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-05 03:47Z by Steven

We have a high threshold for political gossip and, in the digital age, genealogy is a fast fad that shows no sign of passing out of vogue. But the primary reason these ancestry stories entrance us is because they bring us face-to-face with our national fascination with and anxieties about racial miscegenation.

Alondra Nelson, “Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti & Confucius Too,” Dominion of New York, July 31, 2012. http://www.dominionofnewyork.com/2012/07/31/obama-is-a-descendant-of-nefertiti-confucius-too/

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Are You Positively Sure That You Are Not Part Negro? Read This.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-04 04:52Z by Steven

Are You Positively Sure That You Are Not Part Negro? Read This.

The discovery recently, that a presumably white soldier was part Negro, brought forth the following comment, as to the facts portrayed in this little volume, from Mr. John D. Barry, in a recent article of the San Francisco News:—

“The case of the army officer whose death has been the means of apparently revealing him as legally a Negro wasn’t wholly astonishing. It astonished only those unfamiliar with the extent of the blood mixture in this country. The book published a few years ago by Louis Fremont Baldwin. “From Negro to Caucassian.” showed that the mixture had been going on for a long time and that a good many people who passed as white were Negroes. According to our law anyone who has any Negro blood is a Negro.

Most Negroes understand the situation. Among them the word “passing” is commonly used. It refers to those who have succeeded in crossing the color line without detection. Though they don’t admire the resorters to “passing,” though they consider “passing” a repudiation of sacred ties, a denial of loyalty, they know only too well the motive behind it, the natural longing to escape from discriminations and penalties. Louis Fremont Baldwin says there are thousands in this country who are accepted as white and know they are Negroes. He also says there are still more thousands who are Negroes and believe themselves to be white.

As black blood is absorbed into the white stream he claims that it tends to disappear.”

Louis Fremont Baldwin, From Negro to Caucasian: or, How the Ethiopian is Changing His Skin, (San Francisco: Pilot Publishing Company, 1929): i.

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No feature of the race problem throughout the Americas is more important, or more insistent, than is that of racial intermixture.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-04 04:36Z by Steven

No feature of the race problem throughout the Americas is more important, or more insistent, than is that of racial intermixture. Notwithstanding its vital importance to, each of the three races primarily involved—the Indian, the Negro, and the Caucasian—there has been no persistent and no effective effort to cause these races either to understand what is actually occurring or to comprehend its significance. Without such understanding, constructive action is improbable, if not impossible.

A. H. Shannon, The Negro in Washington: A Study in Race Amalgamation, (New York: Walter Neale, 1930): 38.

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Daniel was puzzled. He raised his hand and asked the teacher who “colored” people were.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-04 03:24Z by Steven

[G. Reginald] Daniel, who grew up black in Kentucky, said he has been thinking about his racial identity since Dec. 2, 1955, when his first-grade teacher reported that Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to let a white passenger have her seat on the bus. “It’s time we colored people stood up for our rights,” the teacher told her students.

Daniel was puzzled. He raised his hand and asked the teacher who “colored” people were. “Everyone in this school,” the teacher, startled, replied. But, Daniel persisted, what color are they? “We’re brown! We’re Negroes!” the teacher replied.

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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Race mixing was here from the beginning.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-01 01:05Z by Steven

“It’s absolutely poetic,” [Sheryll] Cashin said of the discovery. “Race mixing was here from the beginning.”

Krissah Thompson, “Obama’s purported link to early American slave is latest twist in family tree,” The Washington Post, July 30, 2012.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/purported-obama-link-to-first-american-slave-is-latest-twist-in-presidents-family-tree/2012/07/30/gJQAYuG1KX_story.html

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