Mixed Race Studies

The Place of Miscegenation Laws within Historical Scholarship about Slavery

The Literary Lawyer: A Forum for the Legal and Literary Communities
2011-05-17

Allen Porter Mendenhall

The following post appeared at The Literary Table.

Miscegenation laws, also known as anti-miscegenation laws, increasingly have attracted the attention of scholars of slavery over the last half-century. Scholarship on slavery first achieved eminence with the publication of such texts as Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery (1944), Frank Tannenbaum’s Slave and Citizen (1946), Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution (1956), Stanley Elkins’s Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), and Leon F. Litwack’s North of Slavery (1961). When Winthrop D. Jordan published his landmark study White Over Black in 1968, miscegenation statutes during the era of American slavery were just beginning to fall within historians’ critical purview. The Loving v. Virginia case, initiated in 1959 and resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, no doubt played an important role in activating scholarship on this issue, especially in light of the Civil Rights movement that called attention to various areas of understudied black history.

In Loving, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s miscegenation statutes forbidding marriage between whites and non-whites and ruled that the racial classifications of the statutes restricted the freedom to marry and therefore violated the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the wake of Loving, scholarship on miscegenation laws gained traction, although miscegenation laws during the era of American slavery have yet to receive extensive critical treatment. Several articles and essays have considered miscegenation laws and interracial sex during the era of American slavery, but only a few book-length analyses are devoted to these issues, and of these analyses, most deal with interracial sex and miscegenation laws in the nineteenth-century antebellum period, or from the period of Reconstruction up through the twentieth-century. This historiographical essay explores interracial sex and miscegenation laws in the corpus of historical writing about slavery. It does so by contextualizing interracial sex and miscegenation laws within broader trends in the study of slavery. Placing various historical texts in conversation with one another, this essay speculates about how and why, over time, historians treated interracial sex and miscegenation laws differently and with varying degrees of detail. By no means exhaustive, this essay merely seeks to point out one area of slavery studies that stands for notice, interrogation, and reconsideration. The colonies did not always have miscegenation laws; indeed, miscegenation laws did not spring up in America until the late seventeenth-century, and they remained in effect in various times and regions until just forty-four years ago. The longevity and severity of these laws make them worthy our continued attention, for to understand miscegenation laws is to understand more fully the logic and formal expression of racism…

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Racialised relations in Liverpool: A contemporary anomaly
 
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Volume 17, Issue 4 (1991)
pages 511-537
DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.1991.9976265

Stephen Small, Associate Professor, African American Studies; Associate Director of the Institute of International Studies; Director, The Rotary International Center for Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution
University of California, Berkeley

The city of Liverpool stands out as an anomaly in the mapping of ‘racialised relations’ and the black experience in England. While it shares a number of continuities with other cities, it reveals several structural and cultural features which are absent or significantly at variance with patterns elsewhere. These include extreme residential segregation, a powerful white local sentiment and insular identity, and extremely virulent ‘racialised’ hostility. In addition, the black population is markedly different in its length of residence, its ethnic and national origins, the proportion of mixed parentage and the frequency of mixed dating and marriages. All of this has occurred in the context of regional deprivation scanning four decades.
 
The city of Liverpool stands out as an anomaly in the mapping of ‘racialised relations’ in England with regard to a number of structural, cultural and ideological features. The notion of an anomaly employed here refers to aspects of ‘racialised retations’, the black experience and the characteristics of the black population. In most analyses of the black experience in England, black people are correctly seen as immigrants of recent arrival, primarily Caribbean in origin, with the vast majority of families headed by two parents from the Caribbean (Daniel 1968; Smith 1977). These newcomers arrived almost exclusively to take up work in areas and industries with a demand for labour (Patterson 1963; Peach 1968; Rose et al 1969; pero 1971).

These characteristics simply do not apply to Liverpool. In Liverpool the vast majority of black people are indigenous, with many families resident over several generations (MAPG 1980; Liverpool Black Caucus 1986); it is a population which only a small proportion of West Indians, most being of African origin (Gifford 1989); and it is one characterised by frequent inter-dating with the white majority and a high proportion of mixed couples and marriages (Commission for Racial Equality 1989). In addition, the majority of black people in the city are of mixed origins (Gifford et al 1989; Ben-Tovim 1989). Black people did not settle there in response to a demand for labour, and they have never been the beneficiaries of an expanding economy (Caradog Jones 1940; Meegan 1989; Parkinson et al 1989).

But the city is not an island of activity unto itself and it is important to recognise the common features it shares with the black experience elsewhere in the country, in particular, the unrelenting ‘racialised’ discrimination, the confinement of black people to the most disadvantaged positions, and the hostility, indifference or inability of the majority population to combat this discrimination. Whether in employment or in housing, education or health, the private, voluntary or public sector, and in relations with the police, evidence from across the nation indicates that ‘racialised’ disadvantage is entrenched and discrimination continues unabated (Small 1984; Brown and Gay 1985; Smith 1989a; Rooney and McKain 1990; Interim Background Report 1991). The continuing impact of these obstacles has led to the charge of ‘uniquely horrific racism’ in the city (Gifford et al 1989: 82).

Both the continuities and the discontinuities are important and this combination makes it an aberrant case, an analysis of which has many implications for the study of ‘racialised relations’. The former because they underline the futility of analysing specific contexts in a vacuum; the latter because they belie the view that there are general solutions to general problems, reaffirming instead the need to find specific solutions 10 the particular manifestations of problems. The city is also important because of its symbolic significance as the longest standing black community in the country…

In this article I want to indicate why Liverpool is best considered as an anomaly and explain how it became one. I want to use the black experience in the city to make a broader contribution to theorising about ‘racisms’ and ‘race’. In so doing I will relate a story not previously told in full, or widely disseminated, and link this to broader debates on ‘racialised relations’ in England. This will highlight some of the limitations in general theories of ‘racialised relations’ and facilitate an examination of the interplay of local, regional, national and international contexts. The desirability of this has been emphasised in recent studies (Ouseley 1984; Boddy and Fudge 1984; Reeves 1989; Goldsmith 1989; Taylor 1989; Harloe et al 1990; Solomos and Back 1990; Ball and Solomos 1990), although most of the assumptions upon which these theories are based do not apply to Liverpool (Smith 1989b: 156). This is especially relevant as the pattern in Liverpool is suggestive of future developments elsewhere, as the black population becomes increasingly indigenous, socialised in England and young, and as patterns of inter-dating and inter-marriage increase (Brown 1984; Liverpool Black Caucus 1986; Smith 1989a; Ben-Tovim 1989).

All of this will be achieved in an approach that emphasises the ‘racialisation’ problematic (Banton 1977; Miles 1982; Jackson 1987; Small 1990c). I will argue that there is a need for considerable rethinking of theory about ‘racialised relations’. In particular, there is a need for a reassessment of ‘racial harmony’ and ‘racial parity’. This will also help advance our understanding of the interplay of ‘racisms’ and class relations, and emphasise the need to unravel the intricacies of this relationship empirically. I will address two specific omissions from existing analyses of ‘racisms’ and class relations. The first is a failure to extend detailed consideration to the nature and impact of the complex dynamic of ‘racialised’ attitudes and ideologies which help to structure relations between blacks and whites. A prime example of this dynamic is the matrix of meanings associated with inter-dating, and the pejorative category of ‘half-caste‘ in Liverpool (Fleming 1930; King and King 1938; McNeil 1948; Collins 1951, 1955; Richmond 1954; Manley 1955; Rich 1984a; Gifford ei al 1989; Wilson 1989)…

Liverpool’s black population…

…The majority of the black residents in Liverpool are indigenous while the majority of black people elsewhere in the country are immigrants (Brown 1984; Smith 1989a; Gifford et al 1989). Most studies date the establishment of the black community to the 1700s, though no doubt there were black individuals in the city before that date (Law and Henfry 1981; Fryer 1984). Liverpool thus has the longest standing and largest indigenous black population in the country. For the country as a whole, black people are becoming increasingly indigenous, but Liverpool is the only city with a major indigenous black community that dates back several generations. Even Bristol and Cardiff do not match it (Fryer 1984; Ramdin 1987). The best estimates place the population of the city with origins outside England in the region of 20,000 to 30,000 (4-6 per cent of the city) (Gifford et al 1989: 37). Some have estimated it to be closer to 40,000 (8 per cent) (MCRC 1980; Liverpool Black Caucus 1986: 17; Ben-Tovim 1989: 129). These figures include substantial numbers of Chinese, Arabs and Asians…

…The majority of black people elsewhere in the country have no immediate or apparent European origin and are presumed to be of exclusive African origins (in the sense of having two parents that are defined as ‘black’), while in Liverpool they are ‘Black People of Mixed Origins’. Again, it is currently impossible to say precisely how many are of mixed origins, but in Liverpool the notion of ‘British-born black’ is usually taken as synonymous with mixed origins (Commission for Racial Equality 1986; Gifford et al 1989; Ben-Tovim 1989: 129). This provides for a mixed population in Liverpool of between 7,400-11,100. This amounts to 37 per cent of the total population with origins outside England, and well over 50 per cent of the population of African origins (Commission for Racial Equality 1989; Gifford et al 1989: 37). Again, if we compare this with the nation as a whole we find that the population of mixed origins amounts to a far smaller proportion (Brown 1984).

The majority of black people elsewhere in the country live in households in which both parents are black, while Liverpool’s black population reveals a high incidence of mixed cohabitation and marriages. The majority of such families involves a white mother and a father who is black (or ‘Black of Mixed Origins’), The prima facie evidence for this is striking—it is invariably mentioned in all reports about the black presence in the city and is undisputed conventional wisdom—though again pinpointing numbers with any precision is not possible (Fletcher 1930a; MAPG 1980; Commission for Racial Equality 1986, 1989; Ben-Tovim 1989; Gifford et al 1989). This profile is in stark contrast to the other cities in which black people are to be found, and to the general settlement pattern of black people for the country as a whole (Bagley 1972, 1981). For England and Wales, Brown calculates that around 6 per cent of minority households involve mixed cohabitation or mixed marriages (1984: 21)…

…Historical background to the anomaly

Any explanation of the distinctive black experience in Liverpool must be located in the historical unfolding of migration and shipping, slavery and freedom, economics and employment, competition and conflict, and demography. Much of this has everything to do with ‘racisms’ of various kinds as evidenced in the coercion and exploitation of African people, the growth of the city on the basis of the slave trade, and the constraints imposed on its black residents (Clemens 1976; Ramdin 1987). But much of it has little to do with ‘racisms’, and is more directly impacted by broader structural developments, as in the changing balance of world trade, the establishment and growth of the European Economic Community and the vicissitudes of regional policy (Taylor 1989; Meegan 1989).

The slave trade made many in Liverpool prosperous, and forced the first black people there, as well as white slave owners and ideologies (Anstey and Hair 1976; Law and Henfry 1981). Black men outnumbered black women, which led to mixed relationships, inter-marriage and children (Richmond 1966; Rich 1984a, 1986). Shipping with Africa brought many black sailors there, and continues to do so (Lane 1990). The University and Polytechnic developed strength in maritime studies and continued to attract African students…

Read the entire article here.

Exploring Grays in a Black-and-White World

Miller-McCune
2011-07-19

Julia M. Klein

Two new books explore the intersection of race and identity in America by investigating families whose biracial members might—or might not—“pass” as white.

Defining racial identity in the United States has always been a fraught enterprise, involving shifting intersections of law, custom, class, ancestry and choice. Physical appearance and money have mattered, but so have family history and community attitudes—and not always in the ways we might suspect.

Two intriguing new books—Daniel J. Sharfstein’s The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White and Julie Winch’s The Clamorgans: One Family’s History of Race in America—underline the fluidity of racial categories over nearly three centuries of American history. And, thanks to legal records and other archival evidence, they offer illuminating detail about precisely how—and often why—individuals circumvented or manipulated these categories.

The destabilization of racial identity begins with a fact: Sexual relationships between blacks and whites, both romantic and coercive, have existed since the earliest days of slavery. Edward Ball’s National Book Award-winning 1998 volume, Slaves in the Family, recounted his search for descendants of slaves owned by his family of South Carolina planters—and his discovery that some of them were his cousins. A decade later, Annette Gordon-Reed imaginatively reconstructed the lives of the mixed-race Hemings family and their ties to Thomas Jefferson in her 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family…

Read the entire review of the books here.

Ambiguities of Race: Science on the Reproductive Frontier of Australia and the Pacific Between the Wars

Australian Historical Studies
Volume 40, Issue 2, 2009
pages 143-160
DOI: 10.1080/10314610902849302

Warwick Anderson, Professor of History
University of Sydney

The attitudes of Australian biologists, anthropologists, and historians toward race mixing in the early-twentieth century should be viewed in relation to the investigations of Indigenous depopulation and miscegenation taking place in the Pacific. Those Australian scientists committed to national or continental racial ideals–Cecil Cook and Norman B. Tindale among them–remained resistant to the lessons of the Pacific, favouring ‘half-caste’ absorption. Other scholars such as Stephen Roberts and A. P. Elkin took the oceanic approach, coming to value and harness racial hybridity. This essay shows how much of Australian racial thought drifted in from the Pacific.

In 1925, as he shuttled between Townsville and Rabaul, Raphael Cilento wrote to extol the new tropical white man evolving in North Queensland. A fierce advocate of white racial purity, the director of the Townsville Institute of Tropical Medicine was convinced the peculiar Australian combination of selected European stock, restriction of intercourse with other races, a tropical environment and modern preventive medicine was producing a more virile white man north of Capricorn, not another degenerate type. ‘He is tall and rangy, with somewhat sharp features, and long legs and arms’, Cilento wrote. ‘Inclined to be sparely built, he is not, however, lacking in muscular strength, while his endurance is equal in his own circumstances to that of the temperate dweller in his. This North Queenslander moves slowly, and conserves muscular heat-producing energy in every possible way’. It was as though the Townsville racial visionary was channelling Marcus Clarke, only the Melbourne novelist’s sardonic 1877 prophecy of the coming man now spawned rhapsodies in the tropical heat. The race is in a transition stage’, Cilento continued, ‘and it is very apparent that there is being evolved precisely what one would hope for, namely a distinctive tropical type, adapted to life in the tropical environment in which it
is set’. Cilento was certainly not crying in the wilderness. Ronald Hamlyn-Harris, director of the Queensland Museum and scourge of the mosquito, joined him in trying to cultivate ‘in the rising generation year after year a vision of…

Read or purchase the article here.

Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World

Berg Publishers (an imprint of Macmillan)
October 2001
272 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-85973-531-2, ISBN10: 1-85973-531-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-85973-632-6, ISBN10: 1-85973-632-7

Lionel Caplan, Emeritus Professor and Professorial Research Associate
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London

Among the legacies of the colonial encounter are any number of contemporary ‘mixed-race’ populations, descendants of the offspring of sexual unions involving European men (colonial officials, traders, etc.) and local women. These groups invite serious scholarly attention because they not only challenge notions of a rigid divide between colonizer and colonized, but beg a host of questions about continuities and transformations in the postcolonial world.

This book concerns one such group, the Eurasians of India, or Anglo-Indians as they came to be designated. Caplan presents an historicized ethnography of their contemporary lives as these relate both to the colonial past and to conditions in the present. In particular, he forcefully shows that features which theorists associate with the postcolonial present—blurred boundaries, multiple identities, creolized cultures—have been part of the colonial past as well. Presenting a powerful argument against theoretically essentialized notions of culture, hybridity and postcoloniality, this book is a much-needed contribution to recent debates in cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology, sociology as well as historical studies of colonialism, ‘mixed-race’ populations and cosmopolitan identities.

Victoria Bynum to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Jennifer Frappier
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #220-Victoria Bynum
When: Wednesday, 2011-08-10, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 16:00 CDT, 14:00 PDT)

Victoria E. Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

Professor Victoria Bynum, a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, is a historian of gender, race, and class relations in the Civil War Era South. Her blog, Renegade South, and her numerous publications feature true stories about mixed-race families, anti-Confederate guerrillas, and other unconventional Southerners.

Listen to the episode here or download it here (00:35:59, 14.4 MB).

Selected Bibliography

• The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
• The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War.  The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies.  Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.  xvi + 316 pp. Tables, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. (hardcover).  ISBN 0-878-2636-7.
• “Race and the ‘One Drop Rule’ in the Post-Reconstruction South,” Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners on March 17, 2009, http://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/race-and-the-one-drop-rule-in-the-post-reconstruction-south/.
• “‘White Negroes’ in Segregated Mississippi: Miscegenation, Racial Identity, and the Law,” The Journal of Southern History, Volume 64, Number 2 (May, 1998): 247-276.

Racial attitudes and the Anglo‐Indians perceptions of a community before and after independence

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
Volume 6, Issue 2 (1983)
pages 34-45
DOI: 10.1080/00856408308723045

Coralie Younger
University of Sydney

The question of racial attitudes between the rulers and the ruled, and whites and non-whites has evoked attention from numerous authors. E. Said maintains that ‘the White man was always on the alert to keep the coloured at bay’ while Northrop Frye notes a “garrison mentality” whereby,

‘there is a need for the projection of an unbroken surface, an apparently flawless morale, to be presented not merely to the outside world where the subject races crowd but also to one’s companions’

As Ballhatchet has argued in Race, Sex and Classunder the Rajt ‘the preservation of social distance seemed essential to the maintenance of structures of power and authority.’ Given such attitudes, what was the place of those who were neither black nor white? What, in other words, were attitudes towards Anglo-Indians? British ideas of racial supremacy evolved during the nineteenth century and reached their apotheosis during the imperial heyday of the Victorian age with a belief in white superiority over the inferior coloured races. The British rigidly maintained a distance between themselves and those over whom they ruled. They frowned upon anyone who attempted to bridge the gap.

Anglo-Indians are a minority community in India of mixed European and Indian blood, claiming European descent through the male line. They are legally defined in the Indian Constitution and have concomitant educational and political rights. Economically they are a depressed community, placing little emphasis upon education. Their traditional neglect of education was a result of the paternalistic practice of the British, who gave them preference in upper-subordinate positions in government service regardless of educational attainments. However the reforms that followed the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1919 saw the end of reserved positions for Anglo-Indians and led to the Indianisation of all government departments.

Did the British maintain their distance from Anglo-Indians in quite the same way as they did in regard to Indians? In general it would seem that the British response was complex. Racial attitudes had sexual and class overtones. They were contemptuous of Anglo-Indians because of their “native’* blood. The British felt ashamed of Anglo-Indians because they were the products of sexual relations between themselves and Indian women…

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From Invisible Man to “New People”: The Recent Discovery of American Mulattoes

Phylon (1960-)
Volume 46, Number 2 (2nd Quarter, 1985)
pages 106-122

Patricia Morton

It might well seem obvious what the following persons have in common: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Walter White, Horace Mann Bond, Julian Bond, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chesnutt, and Langston Hughes.

Although such a list could be expanded indefinitely, the point is that most of these are familiar enough names that they will readily be identified as Afro-Americans who have acted in some capacity as spokespeople for black Americans. Therefore, the obvious answer to the question suggested above is that these persons share their racial identity, as black American people. It might also be recognized, however, that this answer is based upon a distinctive North American perspective. In Latin American societies, for example, they would be identified instead as “mulattoes,” and in several cases, on the basis of physical appearance and status, as “white.”

It is essentially only during the last decade that this kind of distinction has been explicitly recognized in the publication of a number of studies which explore the historical experience of Americans of mixed black and white ancestry. It was observed recently that “As a field of enquiry with its own conceptual and methodological concerns, Afro-American history came of age during the past two decades.” In one sense these mulatto studies might be seen as part of that coming of age; however, in another sense they hearken back to what Black History has attempted to do for black Americans until recently, namely, to write the mulatto into American history. What does seem clear is that such studies represent a new direction in American historiography, and that the scholars engaged in this field are far from arriving at any consensus regarding their conceptual and methodological concerns. Indeed, they have remained largely unaware of one another’s work, and have arrived largely independently at conclusions which are sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory. It may be useful at this point, therefore, to compare and contrast their accounts, to offer some tentative suggestions as to their strengths and weaknesses, and where possible, to integrate their conclusions. In addition, this recent upsurge of scholarly interest in Americans of mixed black and white ancestry is a striking phenomenon in itself, which deserves some comment in the context of modern North American attitudes to race and race relations…

…Both miscegenation and mulatto are emotion-charged and value-laden terms, and both have been employed by North American whites in a variety of ways in accordance with their views on race. However, the mulatto figure has also been employed by Afro-Americans as a defense against white racism. Certainly Berzon demonstrates that during the Jim Crow era, Afro-American writers revived the “superior mulatto” for this purpose, consistently and repeatedly portraying the respectable and virtuous character of the person of mixed ancestry to counter the image of Negro degradation. These novels depict exemplary “Victorian” mulatto women, and equally bourgeois mulatto men who are also educated, refined, patriarchal, self-reliant, and devoted to acquiring all the marks of middle-class status. They are race leaders and role models who are both distinct from and an inspiration to the black masses, and particularly during the turn-of-the-century years, Afro-Americans themselves emphasized mulatto distinctiveness, John Mencke’s thesis notwithstanding….

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Mixed Race Season

BBC Press Office
BBC Two Summer & Autumn 2011
Diverse, stimulating and rewarding television on BBC Two
2011-06-22

Mixed-race Britain is put under the spotlight this autumn in a collection of revealing new programmes. With a mix of drama and documentaries, the season provides a window into the varied lives of mixed-race people living in the UK and helps us understand what the increase in mixed-race people means for the way we live in Britain today.

Mixed Britannia

George Alagiah explores the remarkable and untold story of Britain’s mixed-race community in a new three-part series uncovering a tale of illicit love, tragedy and triumph.

With previously unseen material and unheard testimony, charting events from the turn of the 20th century to the present day, George examines the social factors that have influenced the shape of today’s mixed-race Britain. He discovers the love between merchant seamen and liberated female workers; how the British eugenics movement physically examined mixed-race children in the name of science; how pioneering white couples adopted mixed-race babies; and how Britain’s mixed-race population exploded with the arrival of people from all over the globe—making it one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the UK…

…Mixed Race

This documentary explores the historical and contemporary social, sexual and political attitudes to race mixing. From the strict application of “anti-miscegenation” laws in the USA and South Africa to the emergence of Mestizo cultures in the colonies of South America, the programme examines the complex history of interracial relationships around the world…

For more information, click here.

The historical politics of the New Zealand half-caste

MAI Review
Issue 3 (2008)
Article 7
ISSN 1177-5904
11 pages

Gina M. Colvin-McCluskey

The archives of settler journalism provides us with a rich resource for engaging with some of the ‘raced’ discourses in circulation at the commencement of Britain’s colonial project in Āotearoa/New Zealand. From these early literary resources we find chronicled in the settler press evidence of a complex, contradictory and largely imagined relationship with the ‘Natives’. As the colonist confronted the ‘Native’ and authored the encounter in the settler media, he was at the same time working through social hierarchies, resource entitlements, political institutions and the face of a burgeoning indigenous contest.

The Euronesians is a single newspaper article which appeared in 1843 in an Auckland newspaper, The Daily Southern Cross, established in the same year. This article has been analysed using a critical discourse methodology in order to understand the way in which seemingly munificent articles, that appear superficially, at least, to demonstrate a generous disposition toward the ‘Native’, are at the same time wedded to Britain’s colonising project, and work to justify, excuse, and accommodate a hegemonic white presence. At the core of critical discourse methodologies therefore is a desire to understand how language works to normalise social, economic and political domination. The discourse analyst’s methodological tool kit is therefore a set of key questions that are asked of the text. What is the background to the text? What does it say at its surface? What patterns of meaning do we find and what political work is the text doing? What is silenced? Are the patterns of meaning consistent over time? This paper addresses these questions.

An analysis of the text demonstrates that the apparent display of generosity toward those children of mixed racial parentage (Pākehā and Māori) is in fact demonstrative of a complex relationship between the seemingly contradictory discourses of cultural benevolence and appropriation. As will be demonstrated, the appearance of goodwill and concern for the ‘half-caste’, in this article, retreats into a rationale for demonstrating the untenable nature of certain obligations, protection and rights afforded to the Treaty of Waitangi signatories, which effectively precluded the colonist from the purchase of Native lands. The article ‘The Euronesians” is partially reproduced along with the punctuation and editing used in the original publication. The use of ‘native’ using the lower case was standard form of the day.

THE EURONESIANS, Or the Children of European and Native Parents.
Daily Southern Cross
Volume I, Issue 23, (23 September 1843)
Page 2

We have advocated the rights of the European and Native, frequently and fully. We have treated of the effects of British Government, as far as the present and prospective circumstances of both are concerned, but there is another, and a very important portion of our community whose interests we have always had in view, although we have not had an opportunity until now of bringing their case prominently before the public. A class of persons, who appear to have been entirely subjects of treaties and of laws; the privileges of the former have been attempted to be limited and prescribed, and the rights of the latter have been usurped and violated, but there is a class of persons who cannot be affected in their rights, either by the treaty of Waitangi, or the Land Claims Bill. We allude to the descendants of European fathers, and Maorie mothers, commonly called “half casts.” These persons are in many instances, the children of misfortune, and as such, are too often neglected and despised; but they are still our, fellow-creatures, and entitled, under the laws and dispensations of the God of nature, to an equal interest, and an equal participation in the soil on which he has planted them…

Read the entire article here.