Mixed Race Studies

The mulatto is the chief factor in the negro problem; the problem is bound to increase, then, in geographic area, in number of discontented negroes, and in its intensity, hand in hand with the increased flow of Anglo-Saxon blood into the veins of this new American man. All forms of miscegenation between the two races should be made a felony, punishable for one offence; and the father of children born to one white and one negro parent should be held to support and educate such children.

George Grant MacCurdy, “Anthropology at the Washington Meeting for 1911,” Science, Volume 35, Number 904, (April 26, 1912): 665-676. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.35.904.665.

When we see a black body [President Barack Obama] embodying the American state, and particularly a black body that didn’t have to be black—that could have chose some other kind of intersectional identity. And was no, “I’m black.” On his census form, “I’m black.” And then married Michelle who looked black from way over there and got regular hair; and had some little black baby girls and braided their hair up; and then lived on the South Side of Chicago; and hung out with some black people; and just, “black, black, black, black, black.” Over and over again. And so it means something to us…

Melissa Harris-Perry, “Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America,” Walter H. Capps Center Series Lecture,  University of California, Santa Barbara, October 4, 2011: (00:55:20-00:56:00). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blX2YHdqUJA.

While many commentators who supported the approval of BiDil for black patients state that “race” is not a scientifically precise term for identifying relevant genomic or physiological characteristics that differentiate population groups, nevertheless, they argue that “self-identified race” is a useful proxy for those characteristics. However, what is the evidence that the proxy “self-identified race” is a reliable surrogate? The best evidence derives from the fact that genetic variation conferring disease susceptibility is not equally distributed among ancestral populations. For example, sickle cell anaemia is more prevalent in populations whose ancestry can be traced to sub-Saharan Africa. However, “self-identified race” is a subjective term, influenced by cultural factors, and not even grounded in the ancestral genomics of, for example, the International HapMap Project. For the purpose of the clinical trials, “self-identified race” is interpreted as a dichotomous variable (black or non-black). If race were used as a proxy for ancestral African genomics it should be a continuous function (10%, 30%, 70%, etc). It makes no scientific sense to map a continuous function onto a dichotomous variable…

Sheldon Krimsky, “The short life of a race drug,” The Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9811 (2012-01-14 through 2012-01-20): 114. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60052-X/fulltext.

Barack Obama can call himself black, white magenta, green, or whatever he wants, it really does not matter socially. However, genes are genes and his genes are multiracial. Barack Obama has a white mother and a black father, and to categorize him as only one race medically is just wrong, inaccurate, and likely to cost multiracial people their lives.

Susan Graham, “The Obama Racial Identity Factor and Saving Multiracial Lives,” Project Race: From the Director, June 2008.

The number of children born out of the widespread practice of sexual intimacy forced the colonial administration and the Belgian Parliament to debate what they termed the problème des métis, “the mulatto problem.” The issue was the treatment of the mulatto offspring of these unions: whether they should endure the same status as the rest of the Congolese population or whether they should be considered an intermediate group above the latter but beneath the Europeans. Attempts at resolving the dilemma produced a series of contradictory policies, resulting in considerable ambiguity. This ambiguity came to characterize the lives of the growing population of métis throughout the entire colonial period (Jeurissen 1999; Stoler 2002). Usually, the status of the metis depended upon the degree of recognition and acknowledgment of parenthood by their fathers. Those who were not recognized were often abandoned by their mothers because of the ostracism that they faced when returning to their native villages. The abandoned children usually ended up living in Catholic and Protestant missionary boarding schools, which were created for this purpose.

Jean Muteba Rahier, “Métis/Mulâtre, Mulato, Mulatto, Negro, Moreno, Mundele Kaki, Black,… The Wanderings and Meanderings of Identities” in Problematizing Blackness: Self Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States, eds. Jean Muteba Rahier and Percey C. Hintzen, (London: Routledge, 2003): 86.

Although I am representing the reality of black mixed heritage being closely linked, if not almost the same, to the “full black” experience of British footballers, this does not mean that a black mixed heritage player cannot or should not celebrate his multiracial identity. Of course individuals should define themselves how they want to, and many may prefer to lean toward the whiteness of their heritage and even detest the blackness. This is to be comprehended as personal preference over societal, yet while noting that there are also various social pressures that would influence one’s predilections-both consciously and unconsciously. The contention here is that regardless of one’s personal point of view, British society will deem a black mixed heritage person most often as “nonwhite” and therefore the person is automatically subjected to the various caprice forms of racism found in the broader society (Small 1992, Christian 2000).

Mark Christian, “Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football,” in Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, ed. Daniel Burdsey, (London: Routledge, 2011): 139-140.

Consequently, the celebration of “both worlds” in terms of black mixed heritage persons has always been problematic in relation to it being a rather superficial exercise, limited to one’s inner circle of family and friends. It is pretty obvious that most persons of black mixed heritage will hold a deep love for a parent that happens to be white, yet to suggest that having a white parent alone can mean having a stake in whiteness does not hold true with the historical and contemporary experiences of racism. So why is this “best of both worlds” promoted? Maybe because it is a way to bring racialised groups together? Yet often it can actually further divide. For example, it is common knowledge among transracial adoption agencies that children of black mixed heritage are over-populated in the foster care system (McVeigh 2008). Does this not give an indication that black mixed heritage persons are not particularly popular when born? Maybe, or it could be that the experience of some white parents of black mixed heritage children is so difficult that they have no choice but to give them up for adoption. This again leads us to the notion that racialised harmony is a myth when it comes to analysing the growth of black mixed heritage persons as being synonymous with racial progress in society. Somewhere in this espoused perspective lurks an insidious anomaly, especially when we consider the socio-economic plight of black communities throughout the UK as still largely suffering higher levels of unemployment and discrimination compared to their white counterparts.

Mark Christian, “Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football,” in Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, ed. Daniel Burdsey, (London: Routledge, 2011): 140.

The Slavery Democracy prates and chaters about ‘negro equality, ‘Black Republicans,’ and ‘nigger stealing,’ to use its classic phrase and improved orthography. It has or affects to have, a great horror of ‘niggers.’ And any one who advocates the principles of human Freedom, as they were enunciated and laid down in enduring forms by the Fathers of the Republic, is a ‘woolly head,’ and these same Democrats have learned to speak of them with a peculiar nasal twist. You would suppose that these gentlemen, whose olfactories are so sensitive and acute, never saw a nigger except in a menagerie. And yet, would you believe it, the very first service rendered to him on earth is performed by a nigger; as an infant, he draws the milk, which makes his flesh and blood and bones, from the breast of a nigger; looks up in her face and smiles, and calls her by the endearing name of ‘mammy,’ and begs, perhaps, in piteous tones, for the privilege of carrying ‘mammy’ to the Territories; he is undressed and put to bed by a nigger, and nestles during the slumbers of infancy in the bosom of a nigger; he is washed, dressed and taken to the table by a nigger, to eat food prepared by a nigger; he is led to school by a nigger; every service that childhood demands is performed by a nigger, except that of chastisement, which, from the absence of good manners in many cases, it is to be feared is not performed at all. When down appears on his lip, the tonsorial service is performed by a nigger; and when he reaches manhood, he invades the nigger quarters, to place himself in the endearing relation of paternity to half niggers. Finally, if he should be ambitious, it may occur that he will come to congress to represent a constituency, three-fifths of whom are niggers, and talk about ‘Black Republicans,’ ‘amalgamation,’ ‘nigger equality,’ ‘nigger stealing,’ and the offensive odor of niggerism.”

The Honorable Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois (and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad), “The Democracy and ‘Niggers’,” Franklin Repository, April 20, 1859, page 5, column 6. http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/news/fr1859/pa.fr.fr.1859.04.20.xml#05.

I agree that the one drop rule had its origins in racist notions of White purity. However, many scholars have misunderstood the way that this rule has shaped the Black experience in America, and this misunderstanding has distorted their proposals for a new multiracial category on the census forms. As we examine the one drop rule and its importance in the current discourse, we should recall the famous exchange between Faust and Goethe’s Devil:

Faust: Say at least, who you are?

Mephistopheles: I am part of that power which ever wills evil yet ever accomplishes good.

So it was with the one drop rule. The Devil fashioned it out of racism, malice, greed, lust, and ignorance, but in so doing he also accomplished good: His rule created the African-American race as we know it today, and while this race has its origins in the peoples of three continents and its members can look very different from one another, over the centuries the Devil’s one drop rule united this race as a people in the fight against slavery, segregation, and racial injustice.

Christine B. Hickman, “The Devil and the One Drop Rule: Racial Categories, African Americans and the U.S. Census,” Michigan Law Review, Volume 95, Number 5 (March 1997): 1166.

To the whites, all Africans who were not of pure blood were gens de couleur [people of color]. Among themselves, however, there were jealous and fiercely-guarded distinctions: “griffes, briques, mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, each term meaning one degree’s further transfiguration toward the Caucasian standard of physical perfection.”¹

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “People of Color in Lousiana: Part I,” The Journal of Negro History, Volume 1, Number 4 (October 1916): 361.