Mixed Race Studies

City of Amalgamation: Race, Marriage, Class and Color in Boston, 1890-1930

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
September 2008
223 pages
Paper AAI3337029

Zebulon V. Miletsky, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Stony Brook University, State University of New York

Submitted to the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation examines the evolution of early race relations in Boston during a period which saw the extinguishing of the progressive abolitionist racial flame and the triumph of Jim Crow in Boston. I argue that this historical moment was a window in which Boston stood at a racial crossroads. The decision to follow the path of disfranchisement of African Americans and racial polarization paved the way for the race relations in Boston we know and recognize today. Documenting the high number of blacks and whites who married in Boston during these years in the face of virulent anti-miscegenation efforts and the context of the intense political fight to keep interracial marriage legal, the dissertation explores the black response to this assault on the dignity and lives of African Americans. At the same time it documents the dilemma that the issue of intermarriage represented for black Bostonians and their leaders. African Americans in Boston cautiously endorsed, but did not actively participate in the Boston N.A.A.C.P.’s campaign against the resurgence of anti-miscegenation laws in the early part of the twentieth century. The lack of direct and substantial participation in this campaign is indicative of the skepticism with which many viewed the largely white organization.

Boston, with its substantial Irish population, had a pattern of Irish, and other immigrant women, taking Negro grooms–perhaps because of the proximity within which they often worked and their differing notions about the taboo of race mixing. Boston was, for example, one of the most tolerant large cities in America with regard to interracial unions by 1900. In the period between 1900 and 1904, about 14 out of every 100 Negro grooms took white wives. Furthermore, black and white Bostonians cooperated politically to ensure that intermarriage remained legal throughout the nation.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Abstract
• Preface
• Introdution
• 1. A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation: Race, Marriage and Freedom in Boston
• 2. Interracial Paradise?: Boston and the Profressive Racial Impulse
• 3. Proving Ground: Boston’s Black Leadership and the Dilemma of Intermarriage
• 4. Breach of Promise: Passing and the Van Houten Case in Boston
• Conclusion
• Bibliograpy

Preface

This dissertation examines the history of mixed race in Boston since 1890. As such, various mixed race “phenomena” are investigated including, but not limited to, interracial marriage, community and settlement patterns, the politics of intermarriage, love and sex across the color line, and racial paranoia surrounding the issue of miscegenation. It also investigates the disastrous implications the one-drop rule has had for virtually every important institution in American life: love, family and kinship patterns, marriage, sex, filial ties, legal and jurisdictional matters, education, community migration and settlement patterns. Furthermore, it tracks the evolution of the assumption of race as a biological reality to its present day manifestation as a socially constructed phenomenon. Finally, it outlines the ways in which the one-drop rule, originally intended to deny the rights of African Americans, came (somewhat ironically) to galvanize the black community.

The Introduction to this study serves as a brief review of the literature on the history of the one-drop rule in America. It is this measure of blackness, which has made racial mixing, miscegenation, and therefore, mixed race identity in the United States, problematic in ways that it did not in other post-slave societies. This literature illuminates the ways in which the one-drop rule came to govern America’s unique binary racial system, beginning with its incarnation as a widespread and complicated system of laws during slavery that decreed slave status was inherited through the mother (also known as hypodescent) to the anti-miscegenation laws that sprang up after the Civil War making it illegal in this country for people of different races to marry one another. A secondary aim of the introduction will be to briefly discuss nineteenth century pseudoscientific theories of race and the mythology of “blood theory”.

Chapter one, A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation, documents the relatively high number of blacks and whites who married in Boston during these years and the fight to keep interracial marriage legal. The politics of interracial marriage with a particular emphasis on the abolitionist legacy in Boston, beginning with the struggle to lift the ban on intermarriage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1843, is the origin from which this study germinates. It was in this radical environment that progressives, radicals and other heirs to the abolitionist legacy formulated a counter-philosophy that attempted to transgress America’s greatest fiction—the notion of the “one-drop” rule. In this way, cities like Boston became havens for interracial marriages and love across the color line, in general.

Chapter two, Interracial Paradise, examines the somewhat idyllic ways in which Boston was portrayed by anti-amalgamationists and southern apologists to the lost cause of the Civil War. It discusses important neighborhoods such as the South End, which was the stage upon which much of this drama took place and was the heart of Boston’s black community after it moved out of the confines of Beacon Hill. African Americans in Boston cautiously endorsed, but did not actively participate in, the campaign against the resurgence of anti-miscegenation laws in the early part of the 20th century. This lack of direct and substantial black participation in this campaign is significant. It is indicative of the dilemma that the issue of intermarriage represented for black Bostonians and their leaders.

Chapter three, Proving Ground, examines the political struggle over the issue of interracial marriage and the dilemma it posed for the Boston branch of the N.A.A.C.P., as well as the national organization, when Congress attempted to pass a national ban on intermarriage in 1915. The N.A.A.C.P. and its Boston branch constituted the principal opposition to the ban. This chapter examines the political struggle over the issue of interracial marriage and the dilemma it posed for leading organizations such as the N.A.A.C.P., not only in Boston but across the nation. That same year, the Boston chapter held several mass meetings to protest the pending anti-miscegenation legislation in Congress. The Boston branch was especially challenged when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts attempted to pass a statewide ban in 1927 in response to the Jack Johnson interracial marriage controversy. I will examine the steps that were taken not only by the Boston N.A.A.C.P. to organize black Bostonians to defeat the bill, but the involvement of William Monroe Trotter’s National Equal Rights League and the dilemma the intermarriage caused for black leadership in general.

Chapter four, Breach of Promise, takes a look at a case of passing which was the Van Houten case in Boston. The case caused quite a stir in the delicate balance of social and racial hierarchy in Boston as well as a reversal of fortune in the courts. The case was watched very closely by the press who fed the public’s appetite for every detail of the story, much like the drama that filled the pages of the romance novels on passing such as Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. Like the protagonist of that story, Anna Van Houten was cursed by her racial betrayal and in the end despised for her deception. Her case was an important turning point in the adjudication of interracial marriage since it necessitated a legal remedy against intermarriage in a state where it was supposedly legal.

Introduction

Race and racial identity are perhaps the single most important social markers of identification in American life and culture. They serve as automatic registers of information about a person—their history, their background, their politics, and even, perhaps, their socioeconomic status—and yet for all the things we ask it to do for us, race falls incredibly wide of the mark. Race cannot, for example, tell us, who we’re going to become in the future, or what we can accomplish, or for that matter who we are. Social scientists, anthropologists, and biological scientists all tell us that race is not real—that there is no biological basis for race in human physiology—and yet, we live and operate on a day-to-day basis as though it were. What is the impact of this enduring paradox—America’s greatest fiction, one that we have lived and propagated now for more than four centuries?

As we have seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whiteness became highly sought after as the preferred status of choice that conferred all the benefits of racial privilege—and until the 1950s, naturalized citizenship. However, it should be mentioned that whiteness as a concept is far more significant for what it is not, then for what it is—namely, not black. Therefore, although America differs in its racial formulas of determining who is white and who is not, the main reason for the invention of whiteness, escape from the racial curse of blackness, remains intact in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Gilberto Freyre’s notion of Brazil as an interracial democracy that is different from a racist United States is a good example of this phenomenon. Their odyssey over the highly contested and often controversial terrain of race and national identity has been a long and difficult journey. Burdened by a dual legacy of colonialism and foreign occupation, many of these republics, with the exception of perhaps Cuba, Haiti and anglophone West Indian countries, have suffered from a seeming inability to use blackness as a collective national organizing principle. Several of these countries have vacillated between ideologies that are based on white supremacy and reinforced by a legacy of historical amnesia. Scholars of race in Latin America have characterized this as an outright state of denial, for some, of their true racial make-up.

It is this unique binary racial system then, which has made racial mixing, miscegenation and a mixed race identity in the United States problematic in ways that it did not in other post-slave societies. It has had disastrous implications for virtually every important institution in American life: family and kinship patterns, marriage, filial ties, legal and jurisdictional matters, education, love, community migration and settlement. Race in the United States, for example, creates the odd and strange phenomenon that a white woman is able to give birth to a black child, but a black woman can never, under any circumstances, give birth to a white child. This was the basis for a widespread and complicated system of laws during slavery that decreed that slave status was passed on by the mother and miscegenation laws that sprang up after the Civil War making it illegal in this country for people of different races to marry one another. Moreover, racial classification in America has created an entire mythology that we still unflinchingly believe is based on the archaic and unsound biological concept of blood theory. It is still commonplace to hear someone characterize a mixed person, for example, as having “mixed-blood” and subscribe to the mythical concept of the one-drop-rule, also known as hypo-descent, meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group in their ancestry.

In the United States, blood theory and pseudo-scientific theories of race reached their pinnacle in the late-nineteenth century with scientists engaged in a constant effort to prove that the Negro was a member of “a separate and permanently inferior species,” and, “not simply a savage or semi-civilized member of the same species.”  The basic assumption was that race was a biological phenomenon and an essential one at that.

It has become common practice of late in scholarship dealing with race and racial identity to point to the phenomenon of race as a socially constructed fallacy that has no basis in biological or scientific fact. Increasingly, terms such as construction, invention, and idea have replaced the once dominant scientific and empirical terminology used to describe race, a phenomenon that had, and still has, profound implications for the stratification of society. However, as eager as anthropologists are to proclaim the premature death of race, it is imperative to acknowledge the powerful and important social role that race still plays in our daily lives, cultures, and lived experiences, not to mention the endless sea of ink that has been spilled over the nature and image of the Negro. The theorem posed by W. I. Thomas in the year 1928, seems applicable here. It states, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Perhaps one of the biggest limitations of these modern approaches is a marked tendency to critique ideas about race by challenging the validity of the concept of race itself. Because the discipline of anthropology has effectively moved to a “color blind” position, one which increasingly views society through the lens of ethnicity rather than race, it has confused the issue by distorting the role that race plays in society. By denying the importance of race and the way in which racial categories are formulated in the first place, it has among other things, opened itself up to a racial discourse that allows conservatives to advance the false ideal of a color-blind society…

Purchase the dissertation here.

Navigating Racial Boundaries: The One-Drop Rule and Mixed-Race Jamaicans in South Florida

Florida International University
2010
343 pages

Sharon E. Placide

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparitive Sociology

Like many West Indians, mixed-race Jamaican immigrants enter the United States with fluid notions about race and racial identifications that reflect socio-political events in their home country and that conflict with the more rigid constructions of race they encounter in the U.S. This dissertation explores the experiences of racially mixed Jamaicans in South Florida and the impact of those experiences on their racial self-characterizations through the boundary-work theoretical framework. Specifically, the study examines the impact of participants’ exposure to the one-drop rule in the U.S., by which racial identification has been historically determined by the existence or non-existence of black forebears. Employing qualitative data collected through both focus group and face-to-face semi-structured interviews, the study analyzes mixed-race Jamaicans’ encounters in the U.S. with racial boundaries, and the boundary-work that reinforces them, as well their response to these encounters. Through their stories, the dissertation examines participants’ efforts to navigate racial boundaries through choices of various racial identifications. Further, it discusses the ways in which structural forces and individual agency have interacted in the formation of these identifications. The study finds that in spite of participants’ expressed preference for non-racialism, and despite their objections to rigid racial categories, in seeking to carve out alternative identities, they are participating in the boundary-making of which they are so critical.

Table of Contents

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Theoretical Framework
  • Rationale for Population and Location of Study
  • Research Methodology and Data Analysis
  • Defining Terms
  • Challenges and Limitations
  • Chapter Descriptions
• II. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF A RACIAL DICHOTOMY IN THE U.S
  • Race as a Social Construction
  • Section 1 Race and Mixed-Race During Slavery: The Social Construction of the One-Drop Rule
    • The Construction of Race During Slavery
    • Miscegenation and the Emergence of the One-Drop Rule
  • Section 2 The Rise and Crystallization of Bright Boundaries
    • Contesting Racial Boundaries: Abolitionists, Free Negroes and Slaves Oppose Slavery
    • White Response: Entrenchment of Racist Ideology
    • Emancipation and Reconstruction Blur Boundaries
    • Southern Whites Defend their Status, Strengthening Racial Divides
    • Crystallization of the Bright Boundary: The One-Drop Rule
    • Mulattoes, Blacks, and Boundary-Work
    • Science Supports the One-Drop Rule
  • Section 3 Blurring Racial Boundaries
    • The Civil Rights Movement and its Impact
    • The Multi-Racial Challenge to the One-Drop Rule
    • Why the One-Drop Rule Persists
    • Chapter Conclusion
• III. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF A COLOR HIERARCHY IN JAMAICA
  • Clarification of Terms: Color and Race
  • Section 1 Construction of Bright Boundaries: Formation of a Tripartite Color Hierarchy During Slavery (1655 to 1834)
    • African Slavery and the Beginnings of Race Ideology
    • The Impact of Demography
    • Miscegenation, Free Browns, and the Status Mixed Progeny (Slave and Free)
    • Free Browns Become Buffer
  • Section 2 Boundary Blurring: Color and Social Status from Abolition to the Independence (1834 to 1962)
    • Loss of Labor and Decline of the White Planting Class
    • Boundary-Blurring Continues: Rise of the Brown Class And Black Social Mobility
    • Complicating the Color Hierarchy: East Indians, Chinese, “Syrian” Immigrants
    • Creole Multiracialism Versus Black Nationalism
    • Persistence of a Color Hierarchy
  • Section 3 Boundary-Shifting: Race, Color and Social Status after Independence (1962 to present)
    • Boundary-Blurring: Race, Color, and Social Location
    • Color as Symbolic and Social Boundary
    • Chapter Conclusion
• IV. OUT OF MANY, ONE PEOPLE: RACE AND COLOR IN JAMAICA
  • Race is Not Important
  • Intersectionality: Class Plus Race
  • Color Draws Boundaries in Jamaica
  • Chapter Conclusion
• V. ENCOUNTERING BOUNDARIES AND BOUNDARY-WORK IN THE U.S
  • Race Draws Bright Boundaries in the U.S.: The Centrality of Race Boundary Maintenance: Two Worlds
  • South Florida: Three Worlds?
  • Theoretical Discussion
  • Chapter Conclusion
• VI. NAVIGATING RACIAL BOUNDARIES IN THE U.S.
  • I am Jamaican – Ethnic (Post-Racial) Identification
  • Racial Identification Choices
  • Factors Affecting Jamaicans’ Immigrants Racial Identifications
  • Choice or No Choice? The Impact of Structure on Agency and Vice Versa
  • Mixed-Race Jamaicans Doing Boundary-Work
  • Chapter Conclusion
• VII. CONCLUSION
  • Findings
  • Limitations and Directions for Future Research
  • REFERENCES
  • APPENDICES
  • VITA

Read the entire dissertation here.

SOC 139C. Betwixt and Between: Multiracial Identity in the United States

University of California, Santa Barbara

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Note from Steven F. Riley [I believe this is the longest actively running university course on multiracial identity in the United States.]

An examination of the factors that have influenced the social location of racially mixed individuals of African and European descent in the United States, in order to provide a context for understanding the complexities surrounding the newly emerging multiracial conciousness.

Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact

Wiley
July 2010
360 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-470-49139-3

Edited By:

Derald Wing Sue, Professor of Psychology and Education
Teachers College, Columbia University

A landmark volume exploring covert bias, prejudice, and discrimination with hopeful solutions for their eventual dissolution

Exploring the psychological dynamics of unconscious and unintentional expressions of bias and prejudice toward socially devalued groups, Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact takes an unflinching look at the numerous manifestations of these subtle biases. It thoroughly deals with the harm engendered by everyday prejudice and discrimination, as well as the concept of microaggressions beyond that of race and expressions of racism.

Edited by a nationally renowned expert in the field of multicultural counseling and ethnic and minority issues, this book features contributions by notable experts presenting original research and scholarly works on a broad spectrum of groups in our society who have traditionally been marginalized and disempowered.

The definitive source on this topic, Microaggressions and Marginality features:

• In-depth chapters on microaggressions towards racial/ethnic, international/cultural, gender, LGBT, religious, social, and disabled groups
• Chapters on racial/ethnic microaggressions devoted to specific populations including African Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, indigenous populations, and biracial/multiracial people
• A look at what society must do if it is to reduce prejudice and discrimination directed at these groups
• Discussion of the common dynamics of covert and unintentional biases
• Coping strategies enabling targets to survive such onslaughts

Timely and thought-provoking, Microaggressions and Marginality is essential reading for any professional dealing with diversity at any level, offering guidance for facing and opposing microaggressions in today’s society.

Table of Contents

• Preface.
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors

PART I: MICROAGGRESSIONS AND MARGINALITY.

• Chapter 1: Microaggressions, Marginality and Oppression: An Introduction (Derald Wing Sue). (Read here.)

PART II: RACIAL/ETHNIC MANIFESTATION OF MICROAGGRESSIONS.

• Chapter 2: Black Undergraduates’ Experience with Perceived Racial Microaggressions in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities (Nicole L. Watkins, Theressa L. LaBarrie, & Lauren M. Appio).
• Chapter 3: Microaggressions and the Life Experience of Latina/o Americans (David P. Rivera, Erin E. Forquer, & Rebecca Rangel).
• Chapter 4: Racial Microaggressions Directed at Asian Americans: Modern Forms of Prejudice and Discrimination (Annie I. Lin).
• Chapter 5: The Context of Racial Microaggressions against Indigenous Peoples: Same Old Racism or Something New? (Jill S. Hill, Suah Kim, & Chantea Williams).
• Chapter 6: Multiracial Microaggressions: Exposing Monoracism in Everyday Life and Clinical Practice (Marc P. Johnston & Kevin L. Nadal).
• Chapter 7: Microaggressions and the Pipeline for Scholars of Color (Fernando Guzman, Jesus Trevino, Fernand Lubuguin, & Bushra Aryan).

PART III: OTHER SOCIALLY DEVALUED GROUP MICROAGGRESSIONS: International/Cultural, Sexual Orientation and Transgender, Disability, Class and Religious.

• Chapter 8: Microaggressions Experienced by International Students Attending U. S. Institutions of Higher Education (Suah Kim & Rachel H. Kim).
• Chapter 9: The Manifestation of Gender Microaggressions (Christina M. Capodilupo, Kevin L. Nadal, Lindsay Corman, Sahran Hamit, Oliver Lyons, & Alexa Weinberg).
• Chapter 10: Sexual Orientation and Transgender Microaggressions: Implications for Mental Health and Counseling (Kevin L. Nadal, David P. Rivera, & Melissa J.H. Corpus).
• Chapter 11: Microaggressive Experiences of People with Disabilities (Richard M. Keller & Corinne E. Galgay).
• Chapter 12: Class Dismissed: Making the Case for the Study of Classist Microaggressions (Laura Smith & Rebecca M. Redington).
• Chapter 13: Religious Microaggressions in the United States: Mental Health Implications for Religious Minority Groups (Kevin L. Nadal, Marie-Anne Issa, Katie E. Griffin, Sahran Hamit, & Oliver B. Lyons).

PART IV: MICROAGGRESSION RESEARCH.

• Chapter 14: Microaggression Research: Methodological Review and Recommendations (Michael Y. Lau & Chantea D. Williams).
• Author Biographies.

Race Mixture: Boundary Crossing in Comparative Perspective

Annual Review of Sociology
August 2009
Volume 35
pages 129-146
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134657
First published online as a Review in Advance on 2009-04-02

Edward E. Telles, Professor of Sociology
Princeton University

Christina A. Sue, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Colorado, Boulder

In this article, we examine a large, interdisciplinary, and somewhat scattered literature, all of which falls under the umbrella term race mixture. We highlight 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. In doing so, we stress a social constructivist approach to race mixture with a focus on boundary crossing. Finally, we also demonstrate how ideologies and practices of race mixture play out quite differently in contexts outside of the United States, particularly in Latin America. Race-mixture ideologies and practices in Latin America have been used to maintain racial inequality in the region, thus challenging recent arguments by U.S. scholars that greater racial mixture leads to a decline in racism, discrimination, and inequality.

INTRODUCTION

We define race mixture as intimate social interaction across racial boundaries, a phenomenon that has generally been analyzed under the rubric of intermarriage or miscegenation. A sociology of race mixture also involves the racial categorization, identity, politics, and social movements surrounding the progeny of race mixture, much of which falls under the subject of multiracialism. A more comprehensive analysis of race mixture also includes an examination of the national ideologies related to the idea of race mixture and the putative consequences that race mixture will destabilize and eventually erase racial boundaries. These topics are often studied as separate processes, but in this article we seek to bring some unity to an area in which these distinct areas of research overlap.

Sociologists often focus on intermarriage, which has been classically seen as indicating a final stage in the assimilation of racial and ethnic groups in that it presumably represents deep erosion of social boundaries (MM Gordon 1964, Lieberson & Waters 1988, Park 1950). Relatedly, multiracialism has become a rapidly growing topic and refers to the children of parents who self-identify in separate racial categories or to individuals who self-identify as multiracial. Some sociological attention has also been paid to miscegenation, which we define as illegitimate or informal sexual unions, although the term has often been used more broadly to include intermarriage as well. Historically, miscegenation involved highly unequal or even forced relationships; thus they were of a nearly opposite character to those involving intermarriage. Anti-miscegenation laws were able to prevent intermarriage in the United States for 300 years, but they generally were unsuccessful in preventing informal black-white sexual unions and the consequent births that followed (Davis 1991, Sollors 2000). Such unions would merely evade the strict racial boundaries of the United States but did little to challenge or erode them and therefore represent a very different social phenomenon than intermarriage.

Informal sexual unions, like intermarriages, produced so-called mixed-race individuals, who themselves have more recently become subjects of much sociological research. Analysts have examined different paths the progeny of these interracial unions have attempted to take or successfully taken; the paths range from willingly or unwillingly accepting placement in their socially assigned category, seeking a particular status without contesting the boundaries themselves, individually skirting the boundaries, or collectively redefining them (Daniel 2002, Nakashima 1992). Scholarly work has also been done on the placement of these mixed-race individuals in the social structure (Davis 1991, Degler 1971, Mörner 1967, Telles 2004).

Before proceeding, we would like to make an important note regarding terminology used in this paper. The term race mixture implies that one is combining two or more substances with distinct and generally fixed properties. In regard to race, this may seem to be especially essentialistic and biological. The very idea of race mixture or multiracialism is premised on the idea that discrete (or even pure) races exist (Goldberg 1997, Nobles 2002). On the other hand, the sociological study of race mixture refers to behaviors that involve crossing racial boundaries (Bost 2003). Our interpretation is socially constructivist and assumes that there is no biological or essentialist basis for race, but rather, race is a concept involving perceptions of reality. Race is of sociological importance because humans are categorized by race, hierarchized according to these categories, and treated accordingly. As a result, humans often create racial boundaries as a form of social closure and erect obstacles to interaction across these boundaries. At other times, they seek to diminish or otherwise change them.We are interested in how race mixture may construct or reconstruct racial boundaries. Although we recognize the conceptual problems implicit in the term race mixture, for lack of a better term and to be consistent with the literature, we continue to use it, along with related terms such as multiracialism. The concept of ethnicity is related to and sometimes overlaps with the concept of race, but the distinctions are often unclear, context-specific, and highly debatable (Cornell & Hartman 2006, Jenkins 1997, Wimmer 2008). Therefore, the extent to which our discussion is applicable to ethnic as well as race mixture would depend on how one distinguishes race from ethnicity…

Read the entire article here.

Crossing Race and Nationality: The Racial Formation of Asian Americans 1852-1965

Monthly Review
December 2005

Bob Wing

Bob Wing was part of the first wave of Asian-American activists in the late 1960s. He was founding editor of the antiwar newspaper, War Times,and of the racial justice magazine, ColorLines, and is one of the national leaders of United for Peace and Justice, a nationwide antiwar coalition of more than 1,200 organizations. This article was edited and slightly updated from a longer essay written in 1995.

The U.S. immigration reform of 1965 produced a tremendous influx of immigrants and refugees from Asia and Latin America that has dramatically altered U.S. race relations. Latinos now outnumber African Americans. It is clearer than ever that race relations in the United States are not limited to the central black/white axis. In fact this has always been true: Indian wars were central to the history of this country since its origins and race relations in the West have always centered on the interactions between whites and natives, Mexicans, and Asians. The “new thinking” about race relations as multipolar is overdue.

However, one cannot simply replace the black/white model with one that merely adds other groups. The reason is that other groups of color have faced discrimination that is quite different both in form and content than that which has characterized black/white relations. The history of many peoples and regions, as well as distinct issues of nationality oppression—U.S. settler colonialism, Indian wars, U.S. foreign relations and foreign policy, immigration, citizenship, the U.S.-Mexico War, language, reservations, treaties, sovereignty issues, etc.—must be analyzed and woven into a considerably more complicated new framework.

In this light, Asian-American history is important because it was precedent-setting in the racialization of nationality and the incorporation of nationality into U.S. race relations. The racial formation of Asian Americans was a key moment in defining the color line among immigrants, extending whiteness to European immigrants, and targeting non-white immigrants for racial oppression. Thus nativism was largely overshadowed by white nativism, and it became an important new form of racism…

…In recent years it has become a progressive mantra that racial categories are “socially constructed,” but it is often forgotten that they only achieve full structural and systemic power when they are legally defined and enforced by state power. In what became the United States, the plethora of both European and African nationalities very early on was subsumed by a legally defined and state sanctioned system of racial categories.

In this unprecedented new system, famously hostile European nationalities (e.g., English, Irish, Germans, and French) were united as whites, and the numerous African nationalities, together with all those who seemed to exhibit the slightest perceptible trace of African ancestry, were categorized as Negro, thus with “no rights that the white man is bound to respect.” This hypodescent (or “one drop”) rule, firmly codified in statute by 1705, was meant to provide crystal clarity to the social status of the numerous racially mixed offspring sired by white planters. This was crucial since unlike other slave societies, the Southern planters depended primarily upon slave reproduction (rather than the African slave trade) to fill its slave supply and were also bound and determined to prevent a substantial free group of mulattos to blur the color line…

Read the entire article here.

Mexipino: A History of Multiethnic Identity and the Formation of the Mexican and Filipino Communities of San Diego, 1900-1965

(From T-RACES: a Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California’s Exclusionary Spaces)

University of California, Santa Barbara
June 2007
488 pages

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Assistant Professor, Asian Pacific American Studies, School of Social Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Arizona State University

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfactions of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History

This dissertation examines how a Mexipino identity was forged through the historical interactions of Mexicans and Filipinos in San Diego, California during the years 1900 to 1965. It traces their initial interactions in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries under Spanish colonialism and the Acapuclo-Manila Galleon trade. This laid the foundations for early cultural exchanges. During the twentieth century, San Diego’s rising industries of agriculture, fish canning, construction, service oriented and defense related work, necessitated the need for cheap labor. Mexicans and Filipinos came in to fill that void.

Central to this study is how race and class were key components in the establishments of the Mexican and Filipino communities. Through racially restrictive covenants and other forms of discrimination, both groups were confined to segregated living spaces along with other racial and ethnic minorities. Within these spaces they built a world of their own through family and kin networks, social organizations, music, and other forms of entertainment. As laborers, race and gender were also central factors to their marginalization in the workforce. Their exploitation fueled their militancy. Both Mexicans and Filipinos formed labor unions, and often in coalition fought their employers for higher wages and better working conditions.

All of these historical conditions fostered the interrelationships between Mexicans and Filipinos. Given their shared historical past and cultural similarities these unions were highly successful. Their children, who I define as Mexipinos and Mexipinas, are the result of this long historical connection and the experiences that they collectively shared as community members, workers, and lovers. Mexipino children have also contributed to San Diego’s multiracial and multiethnic communities by living in two cultures, and in the process, forging a new identity for themselves. Their lives are the lens by which we see these two communities and the ways in which they interacted over generations to produce this distinct multiethnic experience.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Vita
Abstract
List of Tables
Introduction
Chapter 1: Historical Antecedents
Chapter 2: Immigration to a Rising Metropolis
Chapter 3: The Devil Comes to San Diego: Race, Space and the Formation of Multiracial and Multiethnic Communities
Chapter 4: Race, Gender and Labor Activism in San Diego
Chapter 5: Filipino-Mexican Couples and the Forging of a Mexipino Identity
Epilogue
Bibliography

List of Tables

Table 1 Estimated Number of Foreign Born White Mexicans in California Counties as of 1930
Table 2 Total Mexican Population in San Diego, 1900-1970
Table 3 Filipino Population Statistics
Table 4 Comparing the Mexican and Filipino Population in the United States,1925-1929
Table 5 Churches with Large Mexican, Filipino, and Other Nonwhite Parishioners

School Racial Composition and Biracial Adolescents’ School Attachment

Sociological Quarterly
Volume 51, Issue 1 (Winter 2010)
Published Online: 2010-01-15
Pages 150 – 178
DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01166.x

Simon Cheng, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Connecticut

Joshua Klugman, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Psychology
Temple University

Despite extensive research on multiracial youth in recent years, to date, no empirical studies have analyzed how racial context may affect biracial adolescents’ sense of belonging in a social institution beyond families. In this study, we examine how the racial makeup of the student body affects self-identified biracial adolescents’ school attachment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that the proportions of white or black students in school significantly affect the school attachment of Hispanic/black, Asian/black, and American Indian/black biracial adolescents, but school racial composition in general has little influence on biracial adolescents with a partial-white identification (i.e., black/white, Hispanic/white, Asian/white, and American Indian/white). Our analyses also show that on average, students of most biracial groups display lower school attachment than their corresponding monoracial groups, but the differences from the monoracial groups with the lower school attachment are generally small. We discuss the implications of our findings for biracial adolescents’ perceived racial boundaries and contemporary American race relations.

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What’s in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds

The Sociological Review
Volume 56, Issue 1, February 2008
pages 39–60
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.00776.x

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their children’s personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their children’s heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.

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The Geography of a Mixed-Race Society

Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban And Regional Policy
Volume 40, Issue 4 (December 2009)
Pages 565 – 593
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2257.2009.00501.x

William A. V. Clark, Professor of Geography
University of California, Los Angeles

Reagan Maas
University of California, Los Angeles

The pattern and level of separation among ethnic groups continues to change, and there are certainly more mixed neighborhoods both in cities and suburbs than two decades ago. The immigration flows of the past decade have substantially altered the ethnic mix and neighborhood mixing. In addition, multi-ethnic individuals themselves are altering the level of mixing among racial and ethnic groups. The research in this article shows that those who report themselves of more than one race have high levels of residential integration both in central cities and suburbs. These residential patterns can be interpreted as further evidence of tentative steps to a society in which race per se is less critical in residential patterning. The level of integration, for Asian mixed and black mixed is different and substantially higher than for those who report one race alone. The research in this article builds on previous aggregate studies of mixed-race individuals to show substantial patterns of integration in California’s metropolitan areas.

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