Mixed Race Studies

The Roanes of Virginia: 2 families with the same surname. Are they related or not?

Genealogy Adventures
2015-09-20

Brian Sheffey

What could possible be confusing about two immigrant families coming from the same region in Europe and landing in the US around the same time? When it comes to pre-Revolutionary War Era Roane family…there’s plenty.

One group of early 18th Century Roanes were Scots-Irish in their origins, descendants of the northern Irish landowner of Scottish origins, Archibald Gilbert Roane. The other Roane family hailed from England, descendants of Charles “The Immigrant” Roane.

As I’ve previously written, these two men were not directly related to one another. If I had the power to correct every single Roane family tree that shows Charles as being the father of Archibald, I would do it in a heartbeat :o)…

Read the entire article here.

The 1965 Act at 50

Adam S.I. Goodman
2015-09-24

Adam Goodman

President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Hart-Celler Act, 3 October 1965, Liberty Island, NY, NY. (Photo credit: LBJ Presidential Library/Yoichi Okamoto)

Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1965 Immigration Act. By eliminating the discriminatory national-origins quota system, the Act created new opportunities for people from across the world to migrate to the United States. But it also restricted immigration from the Western Hemisphere for the first time, contributing to the subsequent growth of undocumented migration in the decades to come.

Understanding the 1965 Act and its consequences is essential to understanding the history of the United States during the last half century…

Read the entire article here.

Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Singular Colonial Mexican Painting

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
Volume 31, Number 2
pages 218-247
DOI: 10.1525/mex.2015.31.2.218

Sarah Cline, Research Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

A mid-eighteenth-century casta painting by Luis de Mena uniquely unites the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and casta (mixed-race) groupings, along with scenes of everyday life in Mexico, and the natural abundance of New Spain. Reproduced multiple times, the painting has not been systematically analyzed. This article explores individual elements in their colonial context and the potential meanings of the painting in the modern era.

Una pintura de Luis de Mena sobre las castas, de mediados del siglo xviii, reúne de manera singular la imagen de la Virgen de Guadalupe, los agrupamientos de castas y escenas de la vida cotidiana en México, junto con la abundancia natural de Nueva España. Aunque reproducida en múltiples ocasiones, la pintura no ha sido analizada sistemáticamente. Este artículo explora sus elementos individuales en el contexto colonial y los significados potenciales de la pintura en la época moderna.

Read or purchase the article here.

Race: An Introduction

Cambridge University Press
August 2015
272 pages
13 b/w illus. 4 tables
245 x 190 x 12 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781107034112
Paperback ISBN: 9781107652286

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

Taking a comparative approach, this textbook is a concise introduction to race. Illustrated with detailed examples from around the world, it is organised into two parts. Part One explores the historical changes in ideas about race from the ancient world to the present day, in different corners of the globe. Part Two outlines ways in which racial difference and inequality are perceived and enacted in selected regions of the world. Examining how humans have used ideas of physical appearance, heredity and behaviour as criteria for categorising others, the text guides students through provocative questions such as: what is race? Does studying race reinforce racism? Does a colour-blind approach dismantle, or merely mask, racism? How does biology feed into concepts of race? Numerous case studies, photos, figures and tables help students to appreciate the different meanings of race in varied contexts, and end-of-chapter research tasks provide further support for student learning.

• Combines a broad historical overview (from the ancient world to the present day) with wide geographical and comparative coverage to show that race means different things in different contexts
• Detailed historical and ethnographic material in textboxes, figures, photos and tables demonstrates the operation of race in everyday life
• Offers an up-to-date, critical overview of a fast-changing field

Contents

• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Knowing ‘race’
  • 1.1 Chronology of race
  • 1.2 Is race defined by appearance, biology and nature?
  • 1.3 Culture, appearance and biology revisited
  • 1.4 Race, comparatively and historically
  • 1.5 Comparisons
  • 1.6 Race in the history of Western modernity
  • Conclusion: so what is race?
  • Further research
• Part I race in time
  • 2 Early approaches to understanding human variation
    • 2.1 Nature and culture
    • 2.2 Ancient Greece and Rome
    • 2.3 Medieval and early modern Europe
    • 2.4 New World colonisation
    • Conclusion
    • Further research
  • 3 From Enlightenment to eugenics
    • 3.1 Transitions
    • 3.2 Changing racial theories
    • 3.3 The spread of racial theory: nation, class, gender and religion
    • 3.4 Nature, culture and race
    • 3.5 Black reaction
    • Conclusion
    • Further research
  • 4 Biology, culture and genomics
    • 4.1 Darwin (again), genetics and the concept of population
    • 4.2 Boas and the separation of biology and culture
    • 4.3 Nazism, World War II and decolonisation
    • 4.4 UNESCO and after
    • 4.5 The persistence of race in science
    • 4.6 Race and IQ
    • 4.7 Race and sport
    • 4.8 Race, genomics and medicine: does race have a genetic basis?
    • 4.9 Race, genomics and medicine: racialising populations
    • Conclusion
    • Further activities
  • 5 Race in the era of cultural racism: politics and the everyday
    • 5.1 Introduction
    • 5.2 The institutional presence of race
    • 5.3 Race, nature and biology in the everyday world of culture
    • Conclusion
    • Further research
• Part II Race in practice
  • 6 Latin America: mixture and racism
    • 6.1 Introduction
    • 6.2 Latin America and mestizaje
    • 6.3 Colombia: racial discrimination and social movements
    • 6.4 Structural disadvantage, region and mestizaje: lessons from Colombia
    • 6.5 Brazil: variations on a theme
    • 6.6 Guatemala: racial ambivalence
    • 6.7 Performing and embodying race in the Andes
    • Conclusion
    • Further research
  • 7 The United States and South Africa: segregation and desegregation
    • 7.1 Changing US demographics
    • 7.2 Caste and class in segregated Southern towns
    • 7.3 Black reaction and ‘desegregation’
    • 7.4 Segregation in practice: ‘the ghetto’
    • 7.5 Latinos and brownness
    • 7.6 South Africa
    • Conclusion
    • Further activities
  • 8 Race in Europe: immigration and nation
    • 8.1 European histories of race
    • 8.2 Issues in post-colonial migration in Europe
    • 8.3 White Britons in Leicestershire
    • 8.4 Asian Leicester
    • 8.5 The Asian gang in London
    • 8.6 Geographies of race in black Liverpool
    • 8.7 Algerians in France
    • Conclusion
    • Further activities
  • 9 Conclusion
    • 9.1 Theorising race
    • 9.2 Globalising race
    • 9.3 The future of race
  • References
  • Index

‘Remnants of Slavery’ column shows racial ignorance

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
2015-09-20

Rebecca Keller
O’Hara Township, Pennsylvania

I’m greatly troubled by Jack Kelly’s historically flawed column “Remnants of Slavery” (Sept. 13) because it falsely enables an often unhearing percentage of the white majority to tell people of color that our modern-day experiences with racism are an illusion.

As a biracial woman who was adopted into a white family and has been raised in white-dominant environments, I have a unique perspective on both racism and white privilege: two things that undeniably exist…

Read the entire letter here.

Difference of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race During the Long Eighteenth Century

University of Pennsylvania Press
2014
280 pages
6 x 9
12 illus.
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8122-4609-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8122-0970-9

Iris Idelson-Shein, Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow
Martin Buber Professur für Jüdische Religionsphilosophie
Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

European Jews, argues Iris Idelson-Shein, occupied a particular place in the development of modern racial discourse during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Simultaneously inhabitants and outsiders in Europe, considered both foreign and familiar, Jews adopted a complex perspective on otherness and race. Often themselves the objects of anthropological scrutiny, they internalized, adapted, and revised the emerging discourse of racial difference to meet their own ends.

Difference of a Different Kind explores Jewish perceptions and representations of otherness during the formative period in the history of racial thought. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including philosophical and scientific works, halakhic literature, and folktales, Idelson-Shein unfolds the myriad ways in which eighteenth-century Jews imagined the “exotic Other” and how the evolving discourse of racial difference played into the construction of their own identities. Difference of a Different Kind offers an invaluable view into the ways new religious, cultural, and racial identities were imagined and formed at the outset of modernity.

Table of Contents

• Note on Translations and Transliterations
• Introduction
• 1. An East Indian Encounter: Rape and Infanticide in the Memoirs of Glikl Bas Leib
• 2. “And Let him Speak”: Noble and Ignoble Savages in Yehudah Horowitz’s Amudey beyt Yehudah
• 3. Whitewashing Jewish Darkness: Baruch Lindau and the “Species” of Man
• 4. Fantasies of Acculturation: Campe’s Savages in the Service of the Haskalah
• Epilogue. A Terrible Tale: Some Final Thoughts on Jews and Race
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments

One Drop of Love at Smith College

Smith College
Hallie Flanagan Theater, Theatre Green Room
122 Green Street
Northampton, Massachusetts 01063
Friday, 2015-09-18 and Saturday, 2015-09-19 (Two Performances!)
19:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, incorporating filmed images, photographs and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the United States and how it affects our most intimate relationships.

Performance followed by a Q & A.

Co-sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Smith College Theater Department, and the Wurtele Center for Work and Life.

A Company of Authors: Allyson Hobbs

Stanford University
2015-09-18

Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs discusses the inspiration for her award-winning book, “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.” She spoke at the 12th Annual “A Company of Authors” event held at the Stanford Humanities Center on April 25, 2015.

Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa

New York University Press
July 2013
254 pages
4 halftones
Hardcover ISBN: 9780814762646
Paper ISBN: 9781479897322

Yuichiro Onishi, Assistant Professor of African American & African Studies and Asian American Studies
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Transpacific Antiracism introduces the dynamic process out of which social movements in Black America, Japan, and Okinawa formed Afro-Asian solidarities against the practice of white supremacy in the twentieth century. Yuichiro Onishi argues that in the context of forging Afro-Asian solidarities, race emerged as a political category of struggle with a distinct moral quality and vitality.

This book explores the work of Black intellectual-activists of the first half of the twentieth century, including Hubert Harrison and W. E. B. Du Bois, that took a pro-Japan stance to articulate the connection between local and global dimensions of antiracism. Turning to two places rarely seen as a part of the Black experience, Japan and Okinawa, the book also presents the accounts of a group of Japanese scholars shaping the Black studies movement in post-surrender Japan and multiracial coalition-building in U.S.-occupied Okinawa during the height of the Vietnam War which brought together local activists, peace activists, and antiracist and antiwar GIs. Together these cases of Afro-Asian solidarity make known political discourses and projects that reworked the concept of race to become a wellspring of aspiration for a new society.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Japanese Sources and Names
• Introduction: Du Bois’s Challenge
• Part I: Discourses
  • 1. New Negro Radicalism and Pro-Japan Provocation
  • 2. W. E. B. Du Bois’s Afro-Asian Philosophy of World History
• Part II: Collectives
  • 3. The Making of “Colored-Internationalism” in Postwar Japan
  • 4. The Presence of (Black) Liberation in Occupied Okinawa
• Conclusion: We Who Become Together
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author

Is Hawaii a Racial Paradise?

Zócalo Public Square
2015-09-15

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Associate Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

Nitasha Sharma, Associate Professor of African-American Studies and Asian-American Studies
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

David A. Swanson, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Riverside

Lee A. Tonouchi (“Da Pidgin Guerilla”)
Hawaii

Roderick Labrador, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
University of Hawaii, Mānoa (also Director of the UCLA Hawaii Travel Study Program)

Maile Arvin, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies
University of California, Riverside

Races, Ethnicities, and Cultures Mix More Freely Than Elsewhere in the U.S., But There Are Limits to the Aloha Spirit

Early in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jason Segal, playing a guy who travels to Hawaii to get over a breakup, drunkenly pours out his feelings to two people in his hotel, a newlywed man and a bartender. The new husband encourages Segal to think there’s still hope for the relationship, but the bartender, Dwayne, has no sympathy for Segal’s sadness.

“You’ve gotta move on,” Dwayne says. “It’s that easy, I promise you it is. I lived in South Central. South Central. And I hated it. So I moved to Oahu. Now I can name you over 200 different kinds of fish!” He starts naming them.

The scene is hilarious, but it also hints at one of America’s fundamental Gordian knots—race—and the various ways we’ve tried to untie it. The story uses Los Angeles’ “South Central” neighborhood as a code word for a place where gangs are divided along color lines, racial tensions can erupt in violence, and residents feel stuck in the cycle. The implication is that Dwayne, who’s black, escaped all that by coming to Hawaii. He puts forth Hawaii as a paradise—a place where the only thing he has to worry about is learning how to pronounce Humuhumunukunukuapua`a.

Hawaii is one of America’s most diverse and happiest states. Some would contend people get along better here than almost anywhere else. But tossing different groups together also means there are frictions—ones that perhaps are too often are obscured by the sunshine and ukuleles in tourist guides.

So what’s the actual nature of racial relations in Hawaii? And what can the rest of us learn from it? In advance of the “What It Means to Be American” event “What Can Hawaii Teach America About Race?,” we asked a variety of experts on and off the islands that same question…

Read the entire article here.