Mixed Race Studies

Although the history of racial passing does not evoke the clearcut ethical responses that we have to slavery it is an important part of the larger story of racism and racial repression in this country. The frequency of passing is further evidence of the fraudulence of race as a meaningful construct for other than divisive exploitation. The experiences of the black Creole men and women that I have focused on are examples of the extreme risks African-Americans born at the turn-of-the-century often felt forced to take to circumvent a poverty that was socially engineered by white supremacists who wanted to preserve decent paying jobs for whites. Therefore, to read the history of “passing” as a tragic mulatto story of self-hatred, or as evidence of a “devil may care,” Caribbean-style multiracial identity in South Louisiana is to misread the history of American race relations…

Arthé A. Anthony, “‘Lost Boundaries’: Racial Passing and Poverty in Segregated New Orleans,” The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Volume 36, Number 3 (1995): 310.

When examining the issue of multiracial identity, it is important to understand the legacy of white supremacy.  It is a theory and practice based on the irrational opinion that white Europeans (mainly Anglo-Saxon and Northern European origin) are inherently superior to non-Anglo-Saxon origin peoples—particularly those of African and Asian ancestry.  Moreover, it is also a theory and practice that hover over the subject and analysis of miscegenation.  Absurd as it is, we have an approximate 500-year history of European domination and subjugation of African and Asian peoples, yet wherever Europeans have colonised they have sexually intermingled with the indigenous populations.  Apart from this obvious paradox, it is a taboo subject that should be exposed, yet rarely does this occur in an academic sense.

Mark Christian. Multiracial Identity: An International Perpective (Palgrave: Hampshire, England, 2000), p 105.

We have noted important analytical distinctions that need to be taken into account when addressing the related but separate social phenomena of intermarriage, miscegenation, multiracial identity, multiracial social movements, and race-mixture ideologies. Whereas all these topics deal, on some level, with racial-boundary crossing, the implications for the boundaries themselves and the racialized social structure are not consistent. For example, intermarriage may be an indicator of healthy race relations, but this is certainly not the case with miscegenation, especially in a context of high racial inequality. Whereas intermarriage has the potential to directly challenge, shift, or loosen racial boundaries, the informal practices of miscegenation are less likely to do so.

Edward E. Telles and Christina A. Sue, “Race Mixture: Boundary Crossing in Comparative Perspective,” Annual Revuew of Sociology, Volume 35 (2009): 129-146. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134657.

Half of the loonies in this country don’t think President Obama is American, the other half don’t think he’s Black.

Steven F. Riley, e-mail message to professor, April 30, 2011.

Perhaps the strongest reason to recognize multiethnicity is that self-definition ought to be encouraged. The individual and collective right of ethnic self-identification has been recognized and exercised by other racial and ethnic advocates as they redefined themselves with new terms like Chicano, Xicano, Latino, Asian American, Black, African American, or Native American. Multiethnic people are similarly looking for a way to turn experiences of alienation, racism, and marginalization into positive experiences of shared cultural identity. Giving an official label to those who identify as multiethnic creates a forum in which to discuss the discrimination and marginalization of those experiences. Recognition is the first step toward securing rights.

Kamaria A. Kruckenberg, “Multi-Hued America: The Case for the Civil Rights Movement’s Embrace of Multiethnic Identity,” The Modern American, Volume 4, Issue 1 (Spring 2008): 8 pages.

Because of our nation’s history of slavery, segregation and interment, racism is conflated with physical racial separation. As a consequence racial progress is conflated with racial mixing. Multiracial individuals and interracial families are touted as icons of racial healing because they are thought to have special insights based on what they are—mixed.

 Marcia Alesan Dawkins, “The Coming MiscegeNation?,” Truthdig, February 13, 2011.

My strongest conviction as to the future of the negro therefore is, that he will not be expatriated nor annihilated, nor will he forever remain a separate and distinct race from the people around him, but that he will be absorbed, assimilated, and will only appear finally, as the Phoenicians now appear on the shores of the Shannon, in the features of a blended race…

Frederick Douglass, “The Future of the Colored Race,” North American Review, Number 142 (May 1886): 437-440.

The dangers of insisting on black and white mixed-race political recognition in a system in which blacks are disadvantaged is that a mixed-race group could act as a buffer between blacks and whites and re-inscribe that disadvantage. It is interesting to note that under apartheid in South Africa, there was not only a robust mixed population known as “colored,” but individuals were able to change their race as their life circumstances changed (Goldberg 1995).  From the perspective of mixed-race individuals, this example may seem as though even South Africa was more liberatory on the grounds of race than the one-drop-rule-governed U.S. (This is not to say that South African coloreds had full civil liberties under apartheid, but only that they were better off than many blacks.)  But from a more broad perspective, in terms of white–black relations, recognition of mixed-race identity, while it may advantage mixed-race individuals and add sophistication to a black and white imaginary of race, does little to dislodge white supremacy overall. The public and political recognition of mixed-race identities could be quite dangerous to white–black race relations overall if the position of blacks remained unchanged (Spencer 1999).  But continued obliviousness about mixed-race identities holds the immediate danger of denying the existence of injustice for some presumptively pure blacks who do not have the advantages of white parentage.

Naomi Zack, “The Fluid Symbol of Mixed Race,” Hypatia, Volume 25, Issue 4, (Fall 2010) 875–890. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01121.x.

“A tree, whatever the circumstances, does not become a legume, a vine, or a cow,” explains Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Ethics Of Identity. “The reasonable middle view is that constructing an identity is a good thing (if self-authorship is a good thing) but that the identity must make some kind of sense. And for it to make sense, it must be an identity constructed in response to facts outside oneself, things that are beyond one’s own choices.”

A society in which “Cablinasian” makes sense has yet to be created. Like a Rwanda full of Hutsis [Hutu/Tutsi], it exists only in the imagination. That does not necessarily mean that such a society could not or should not emerge. But “the facts beyond one’s own choice” do not yet allow it. Identities may be constructed and can be built differently. But we can only work with the materials available.

Gary Younge, “Tiger Woods: Black, white, other,” The Guardian. May 29, 2010.

African Americans began to migrate from black to white as soon as slaves arrived on American shores.  In seventeenth-century Virginia, social distinctions such as class and race were fluid, but the consequences of being black or white were enormous.  It often meant the difference between slavery and freedom, poverty and prosperity, persecution and power.  Even so, dozens of European women had children by African men, and together they established the first free black communities in the colonies.  With every incentive to become white—it would give them better land and jobs, lower taxes, and less risk of being enslaved—many free blacks assimilated into white communities over time…

Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. page 3.