Mixed Race Studies

A Beautiful Lie: Exploring Rhinelander v. Rhinelander as a Formative Lesson on Race, Marriage, Identity, and Family

California Law Review
Volume 95, Issue 6 (2007)
pages 2393-2458

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Professor of Law and Charles M. and Marion J. Kierscht Scholar
University of Iowa College of Law

During the mid-1920s, the story of the courtship, marriage, and separation of Alice Beatrice Jones and Leonard Kip Rhinelander astounded the American public, especially the citizens of New York and black Americans across the country.  Alice, a chambermaid and the racially mixed daughter of English immigrants who had worked as servants on a large estate in Bradford, England, had committed the social faux pas of falling in love with and marrying Leonard Kip Rhinelander, the son of a white multi-millionaire who descended from the French Huguenots.  Or rather, as certain arguments from Leonard’s trial attorney Isaac Mills and later the jury’s verdict would together suggest, Leonard had committed a social offense by “knowingly” loving and marrying Alice, a colored woman.

Scandal arose about the marriage of Alice and Leonard when a story with the title “Rhinelanders’ Son Marries Daughter of a Colored Man” ran in the Standard Star of New Rochelle on November 13, 1924.  Two weeks later, on November 26, 1924, Leonard filed for an annulment of his marriage to Alice. In his Complaint, Leonard alleged that Alice had misrepresented her race to him by improperly leading him to believe that she was white, “not colored,” before their nuptials. New York law did not ban interracial marriages between Blacks and Whites at the time; thus, Alice and Leonard’s marriage was not automatically void.  In the state of New York, the law did not identify interracial marriages as so odious to public policy that they were legally impossible; however, fraud as to a spouse’s race before marriage signaled that there had been no meeting of the minds between husband and wife. Given the importance of racial classifications and their corresponding status in society, New York courts readily accepted knowledge about a spouse’s race to be a factor so crucial to the understanding of the marital contract that fraud about it rendered the marriage voidable and thus eligible to be annulled from its start.  In other words, the primary basis for recognizing knowledge of a spouse’s race as a material fact that went to the essence of marriage, a requirement for annulling voidable marriages based on fraud after consummation, was racial prejudice and social opprobrium of intermixing. Additionally, although New York had not followed many southern states in adopting the “one drop rule,” many Whites in New York agreed that any taint of colored blood removed a person from the class of white citizens. In essence, because of long-held beliefs about racial genetics and community expectations about social barriers of race in 1920s New York, knowledge of a spouse’s race was considered to be as central to marriage as the ability to consummate it.  Thus, no question was ever raised about whether Leonard’s alleged basis for annulment, racial fraud, could legitimately serve as a reason for legally declaring his marriage to Alice to be void…

Read the entire article here.

Is Parental Love Colorblind? Allocation of Resources within Mixed-Race Families (Preliminary Version)

Prepared for the Labor and Population Workshop,
Department of Economics, Yale University
May, 2007
53 pages

Marcos A. Rangel, Assistant Professor
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
University of Chicago

Recent studies have shown that differences in wage-determinant skills between blacks and whites are likely to emerge during a child’s infancy. These findings highlight the role of parental investment decisions and suggest that differences in labor income tend to persist across generations, either because minority parents are limited in their choices, or because they have relatively negative expectations regarding the rewards attached to investments in skills. Exploring the genetics of skin-color determination and the widespread incidence of mixed-race families in Brazil, I present evidence that, controlling for observed and unobserved parental characteristics, light-skinned children are more likely to receive investments in formal education than their dark-skinned siblings. Even though not denying the importance of borrowing constraints (or other ancestry effects), this suggests that parental expectations regarding differences in the return to human capital investments may play an independent role on the persistence of earnings differentials.

Read the entire working paper here or here.

A Feminist Critique of Research on Interracial Family Identity: Implications for Family Health

Journal of Family Nursing
2004
Vol. 10, No. 3
pp. 302-322
DOI: 10.1177/1074840704267189

Marcia M. Byrd, Assistant Professor of Nursing
College of St. Catherine

Ann W. Garwick, Associate Dean for Research, Professor and Director of Center for Child and Family Health Promotion Research
University of Minnesota

The focus of this literature review is on family identity formation within a social cultural context for families, couples, and women who are in committed Black-White interracial relationships that include biracial children. This review and synthesis of interdisciplinary literature was limited to U.S. research studies completed between 1990 and 2002. The American racial lens represented the environmental context that this article seeks to capture. Health care providers lack knowledge of this complex mixed-race family identity formation and its implications for healthy interracial families. Family nurses who can assess and intervene in a culturally competent manner will be essential to promoting health and eliminating health disparities for these interracial families of color.

A New Multicultural Population: Creating Effective Partnerships With Multiracial Families

Intervention in School and Clinic
Published: 2009-11-01
Vol. 45, No. 2,
pp. 124-131
DOI: 10.1177/1053451209340217

Monica R. Brown, Assistant Professor (mobrown@nmsu.edu)
Department of Special Education/Communication Disorders
New Mexico State University

Multiracial families make up the fastest growing demographic in the United States.  Approximately 9% of the U.S. population is multiracial, and it is estimated that the numbers will climb to 21% by 2050. With this increasing population, educators have a new responsibility to meet the needs of these families. Education must begin to form partnerships with families to increase the social and academic achievement of children from multiracial backgrounds. The purpose of this article is to (a) identify the uniqueness of multiracial students and families, (b) provide recommendations regarding improving multiracial family partnerships, and (c) offer best practices and strategies for working effectively with multiracial children and youth in schools.

Multiracial America: A Resource Guide on the History and Literature of Interracial Issues

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
March 2005
264 pages
Paper ISBN: 0-8108-5199-7; ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5199-3

Edited by

Karen Downing, Foundation and Grants Librarian
Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan

Darlene Nichols, Psychology Librarian and Coordinator of Instruction
Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan

Kelly Webster, Associate Librarian
Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan

Multiracial America addresses a growing interest in interracial people and relationships in America. Over the past decade, there have been numerous books and articles written on interracial issues. Despite the rampant growth in publishing, locating these often-scattered and inaccessible materials remains a challenge. This resource guide provides easy access to the available literature. Topical chapters on the most often researched themes are included, such as core historical literature, books for children and young adults, hot-button issues (passing, identification, appearance, fitting in, and blood quantification), interracial dating and marriage, families, adoption, and issues pertaining to race and queer sexuality. Each chapter includes a brief discussion of the literature on the topic, including historical context and comments on the breadth and depth of the available literature, and followed by annotations of books, popular and scholarly journals, magazines, and newspaper articles, videos/films, and websites. Other useful sections include a chapter on the depiction of interracial relationships in film, teaching an interracial issues course, and how to search for materials given changing terminology and classification issues. Indexes by race and non-print media are included.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction

1. Accessing the Literature by Karen Downing
2. Teaching an Interracial Issues Course by David Schoem
3. Hot Button Issues by Karen Downing and Kelly Webster
4. Core Historical Literature by Chuck Ransom
5. The Politics of Being Interracial by Karen Downing
6. Interracial Dating and Marriage by Alysse Jordan
7. Interracial Families by Renoir Gaither
8. Transracial Adoption by Darlene Nichols
9. Books for Children and Young Adults by Darlene Nichols
10. Multiracial Identity Development by Kelly Webster
11. The Intersection of Race and Queer Sexuality by Joseph Diaz
12. Representations of Interracial Relationships and Multiracial Identity on the American Screen by Helen Look and Martin Knott

• Appendix I. Subject Heading/Descriptor Vocabularly to Assist in Searching by Karen Downing
• Appendix II. Definitions of Terms Used in Interracial Literature by Karen Downing
• Appendix III. Sociology 412 — Ethnic Identity and Intergroup Relations Syllabus by David Schoem
• Appendix IV. OMB Directive 15
• Appendix V. Resources by Race
• Index
• About the Contributors

Reading the Dougla Body: Mixed-race, Post-race, and Other Narratives of What it Means to be Mixed in Trinidad

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies
Volume 3, Issue 1 (March 2008)
pages 1-31
DOI: 10.1080/17442220701865820

Sarah England, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, California

In recent years there has been a great deal of scholarship addressing the ‘mixed-race’ question in the Americas. Much of this literature is concerned with documenting the experiences of mixed-race peoples and exploring how their existence alters racial ideologies and racial formations in their respective societies. This essay contributes to that literature through an analysis of the experience of mixed-race peoples in Trinidad and Tobago. Through interviews with people of Indo-Trinidadian and Afro-Trinidadian parentage (douglas) I show how the dougla experience both challenges traditional ways that race is understood ontologically, and is shaped by those same ideologies. I further examine the place that douglas see themselves as occupying in a society where racial mixing is both heralded as the essence of the national character and seen as threatening to the traditional division between Indo-Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadians.

Read or purchase the article here.

White Mothers Negotiating Race and Ethnicity in the Mothering of Biracial, Black-White Adolescents

Journal of Ethnic And Cultural Diversity in Social Work
Volume 14, Issue 3 & 4
June 2006
pages 125 – 156
DOI: 10.1300/J051v14n03_07

Margaret O’Donoghue, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Work
School of Social Work, New York University

Eleven White mothers of biracial, Black/White adolescents were interviewed in a qualitative study to determine whether and how these mothers socialize their children to issues of race and ethnicity. The majority of the women were raising their children with a focus exclusively on an African American culture and not including elements of an ethnicity germane to the mother. Their children identified as biracial privately and Black publicly. The specific strategies utilized by the women to foster ecological competence are discussed.

Tripping on the Color Line: Black-White Multiracial Families in a Racially Divided World

Rutgers University Press
October 2000
192 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-8135-2843-7
Paper ISBN: 0-8135-2844-5

Heather M. Dalmage, Professor of Sociology and Director
Mansfield Institute for Social Justice
Roosevelt University

A sociological analysis of the experiences and challenges faced by black-white multiracial families

At the beginning of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois predicted that the central problem facing the United States in the new century would be that of the “color line.” Now, with another century upon us, many people are found straddling the color line. They come from the growing number of multiracial families in America, families seeking their places in a racially polarized society.

In interviews with individuals from black/white multiracial families, Heather M. Dalmage examines the challenges they face and explores how their experiences demonstrate the need for rethinking race in America. She examines the lived reality of race in the ways multiracial families construct their identities and sense of community and politics. The lack of language to describe multiracial experiences, along with the methods of negotiating racial ambiguity in a racially divided, racist society are central themes of Tripping on the Color Line. By connecting her interviewees stories to specific issues, such as census categories, transracial adoption, and intermarriage, Dalmage raises the debate to a broad discussion of the idea of race and its impact on social justice.

Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption

Vintage an imprint of Random House, Inc. Academic Resources
2003
688 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-375-70264-8 (0-375-70264-4)

Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law
Harvard Law School

From the author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word and Race, Crime, and the Law—a tour de force about the controversial issue of personal interracial intimacy as it exists within ever-changing American social mores and within the rule of law.

Fears of transgressive interracial relationships, informed over the centuries by ugly racial biases and fantasies, still linger in American society today. This brilliant study—ranging from plantation days to the present—explores the historical, sociological, legal, and moral issues that continue to feed and complicate that fear.

In chapters filled with provocative and cleanly stated logic and enhanced by intriguing historical anecdotes, Randall Kennedy tackles such subjects as the presence of sex in racial politics and of race in sexual politics, the prominence of legal institutions in defining racial distinction and policing racial boundaries, the imagined and real pleasures that have attended interracial intimacy, and the competing arguments around interracial romance, sex, and family life throughout American history.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• One – In the Age of Slavery
• Two – From Reconstruction to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
• Three – From Black-Power Backlash to the New Amalgamationism
• Four – Race, Racism, and Sexual Coercion
• Five – The Enforcement of Antimiscegenation Laws
• Six – Fighting Antimiscegenation Laws
• Seven – Racial Passing
• Eight – Passing the the Schuyler Family
• Nine – Racial Conflict and the Parenting of Children: A Survey of Competing Approaches
• Ten – The Tragedy of Race Marching in Black and White
• Eleven – White Parents and the Black Children in Adoptive Families
• Twelve – Race, Children, and Custody Battles: The Special Status of Native Americans
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index

Read an excerpt of the book here.

Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line

Stanford University Press
2007
280 pages
3 tables, 2 figures, 4 illustrations.
Cloth ISBN-10: 0804755450; ISBN-13: 9780804755450
Paper ISBN-10: 0804755469; ISBN-13: 9780804755467

Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Associate Professor
Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University

When in 1997 golfer Tiger Woods described his racial identity on Oprah as “cablinasian,” it struck many as idiosyncratic. But by 2003, a New York Times article declared the arrival of “Generation E.A.”—the ethnically ambiguous. Multiracial had become a recognizable social category for a large group of Americans.

Making Multiracials tells the story of the social movement that emerged around mixed race identity in the 1990s. Organizations for interracial families and mixed race people—groups once loosely organized and only partially aware of each other—proliferated. What was once ignored, treated as taboo, or just thought not to exist quickly became part of the cultural mainstream.

How did this category of people come together? Why did the movement develop when it did? What is it about “being mixed” that constitutes a compelling basis for activism? Drawing on extensive interviews and fieldwork, the author answers these questions to show how multiracials have been “made” through state policy, family organizations, and market forces.

Table of Contents

• Tables, Figures and Photos
• Acknowledgements
• The Making of a Category
• Becoming a Multiracial Entrepreneur: Four Stories
• Making Multiracial Families
• Creating Multiracial Identity and Community
• Consuming Multiracials
• Redrawing the Color Line?: The Problems and Possibilities of Multiracial Families and Group Making
• Appendix A: List of Respondents
• Appendix B: Methodology
• Appendix C: Situating Multiracial Group Making in the Literature on Social Movements, Race, and the Work of Pierre Bourdieu
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

For the press release, click here.
For an excerpt of chapter 2, click here.