Mixed Race Studies

The construction of ethnoracial identity within situational contexts: A study of triracial family histories

University of Pennsylvania
2007
263 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3270863
ISBN: 9780549087526

Samuel M. Lemon, Director of Master of Science in Strategic Leadership Program
Division of Continuing Adult and Professional Studies
Neumann University, Aston, Pennsylvania

Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education

Based largely on data collected from oral history interviews, this study examines the construction of triracial ethnoracial identities (African American-Caucasian-American Indian). Here in-depth narratives and analyses of two triracial family histories surface the complex, dynamic, and interactional social contingencies that act on individual and family psychologies to share ethnic identity; these processes are illustrative of the anthropological construct of situationality. In the role of a participant observer, the author reports the history of his own family, the Ridleys of Media, Pennsylvania, which he compiled from the family’s oral tradition, genealogies and archival documents, and the U.S. Census. His narrative revolves around three prominent family members on his mother’s side: Cornelius, a venerated, light-complexioned ancestor who escaped from slavery on an antebellum plantation in southeastern Virginia, and “passing” as white fled north to Pennsylvania on the Underground Railroad in the 1860s; Josefa, a mysterious, legendarily clairvoyant woman from the Danish West Indies, who married into the Ridley family in the 1880s; and Maud, the author’s remarkable maternal grandmother, whose story begins in Media, Pennsylvania, in the 1890s. The author’s narrative history of the Harveys, another triracial family of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, well known to the author, offers illuminating points of comparison and contrast with the Ridleys. Concepts and arguments drawn from the fields of cultural theory, social history, and Southern literature provide the theoretical framework for the study.*

*This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Photoshop; Roxio; CD Now.

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Background of the researcher
  • 1.2 Mulatto identity versus Native American identity
  • 1.3 The Original Impetus to Construct a Family History:
  • A Grandmother’s Inspiration
  • 1.4 Purpose, Significance, and Conceptualization of the Study
  • 1.5 Research questions
  • 1.6 Families selected for the study
  • 1.7 The Harvey Family
  • 1.8 The Ridley Family
  • 1.9 Supporting Families Tangentially Included in this Study
  • 1.10 Notes for Chapter One
• 2 The Nexus of Ethnoracial Identity and Culture
  • 2.1 Etymological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
  • 2.2 Difficulties in Discerning Ethnic and Cultural Differences
  • 2.3 Methods Used in the Study
  • 2.4 Interview Script
  • 2.5 Notes for Chapter Two
• 3 Culture, Ethnicity, and Assimilation: A Literature Review
  • 3.1 Historical and contemporary examples of the construction of culture
  • 3.2 The Great Melding Pot: Perspectives on Immigration and Globalization
  • 3.3 New country, new culture, new people
  • 3.4 Notes for Chapter Three
• 4 New People: Triracial Families and Their Traditions
  • 4.1 The Harvey Family: background
    • 4.1a Mrs. Lee Ethel Gregory Harvey
    • 4.1b Life in the North for the Harvey Family
    • 4.1c The Children of Dr. Reginald and Mrs. Lee Harvey
    • 4.1d LeRoy Harvey
    • 4.1e Reginald Olive Harvey, II
    • 4.1f Robert Bruce Harvey
    • 4.1g Bonnie Lee Harvey Elliot
  • 4.2 The Ridley Family
  • 4.3 Situational Variables in the Construction of Ethnoracial Identity
  • 4.4 A Gift and a Curse
  • 4.5 Ridley Family Belief System
  • 4.6 Experientially Based Beliefs
    • 4.6a Helena Ortiga Miller
    • 4.6b Tomas Ridley Ortiga, Sr.
    • 4.6c Josepha Ortiga Allen
  • 4.7 Samuel M. Lemon
  • 4.8 Notes for Chapter Four
• 5 The Self-Determination of Ethnoracial Identity: Findings
  • 5.1 Importance of Oral Tradition
  • 5.2 Ethnoracial identities are constructed within situational contexts
  • 5.3 Conflicts in Cultural Perspectives
  • 5.4 Self-determination of ethnoracial identity
  • 5.5 Crossing Ethnic Boundaries
  • 5.6 Conclusion
  • 5.7 Notes for Chapter Five
• Index to Photographic Appendices
• Bibliography
• Appendices (on compact disc)
  • Ridley Family Photographs and Documents
  • Harvey Family Photographs
  • Oye Family Information
  • Genograms: Ridley and Harvey Families

Introduction

In late July 2006, my next-door neighbor, Gilbert, a quiet and dignified black man with graying hair and a large and spirited extended family, invited me to his backyard barbecue to celebrate his sixty-first birthday. Although I had made a prior commitment for that same evening to attend another barbecue (an asada, in Portuguese) at the home of my Brazilian neighbors across the street, I felt that it would be rude of me not to stop at least briefly at Gilbert’s house for a spare rib or bottle of beer. Although we are acquaintances rather than friends, I have known Gilbert’s family since they moved to my hometown of Media, PA, from the nearby city of Chester, about forty years ago. They are one branch of a larger family that includes cousins who live in Media who were among my childhood friends and classmates. And because my family has lived on the same block where I currently reside for over eighty years and on the same street for over one hundred and thirty years, we have strong communal ties and have always felt a social obligation to attend community events whenever we are invited. However, this invitation gave me some vague sense of trepidation, the reasons for which I could not pinpoint. My neighbor, Gilbert, although a man of very few words, has always been polite to me. But he readily admits that some of the members of his extended family who still reside in Chester are often ill-mannered, and he refers to them disdainfully as “Chester niggers”

As I walked around the side of Gilbert’s house and approached the gathering, I heard the quiet rumblings of imaginary thunder in the distant regions of my mind. I chided myself for having qualms, and reassured myself that this was just a party I was visiting briefly. But I sensed that something unpleasant was about to happen. Upon entering Gilbert’s back yard, I spoke to several individuals sitting under a canopy that shaded them from the still hot, late afternoon summer sun. I recognized a few of his guests as members of his family, and another as a neighbor who lives two doors down from me. By virtue of their cool stares and lack of an audible greeting, the rest of the group seemed to view me as an uninvited guest. I also noticed that there were no white people present. As a person of color, I immediately notice the racial or ethnic composition of any large group, as it gives me clues about the nature of the event and the social and cultural dynamics at work—all of which are helpful in assessing and navigating an unfamiliar social situation.

Normally, there would be one or two white people—often, one male and one female, though not necessarily related—conspicuously present at Gilbert’s parties. But on this occasion, they were conspicuous by their absence. I didn’t see Gilbert in the crowd, so I asked his daughter if he was around. When she called for him, he came out of the house and we exchanged pleasantries. He then invited me to sample some of his array of could still hear that quiet, distant, imaginary thunder.

Gilbert’s daughter, a tall, slightly muscular, dark brown woman in her late thirties with a charming smile, led the way. As I stepped into the house, she introduced me to a group of mostly middle-aged black women who were enjoying the air conditioner on this steamy ninety-five degree day. I recognized one woman as Gilbert’s girlfriend—a stocky, serious, street-tough woman in her late fifties, from Chester. His girlfriend and I exchanged casual hellos. Next, Gilbert’s daughter introduced me to another woman who looked resembled the girlfriend enough for me to assume that they were sisters, explaining to the woman that my brothers and I had grown up in this neighborhood. She exclaimed in a very loud voice tinged with derision, “Oh you mean, them ‘yallow’ [sic] brothers who used to live up the street?”

I was taken aback by her verbal slap and had a visceral reaction to it. I punctured the sudden pregnant pause in the room with an assertive, visibly annoyed and equally voluminous, “Yeah, that’s right.” I shot a glance at Gilbert’s brown-skinned daughter across the room, who was smiling an uncomfortable smile of embarrassment. I replied to her smile with a classic rolling of my eyes, which she appeared to enjoy and gestured to me that it was the appropriate response to the offensive remark. Though it was difficult, out of respect for my host, I succeeded in controlling my anger. But I was seething as I exited the room with the racial insult still stuck in my craw. Passing by the food table, I picked up a massive beef rib and moments later found myself absent-mindedly gnawing on it—sitting at a table under the canopy, chatting with my host, who was unaware that anything awkward had just occurred. After making customary small talk, I excused myself, wished Gilbert a happy birthday, and headed for the cultural comfort of my Brazilian friends, in whose multiracial culture of origin, or so they tell me, this incident would probably never have occurred—because most people in Brazil consider themselves mixed-race. As I crossed the street, still seeing only the ignorant woman’s face in my crosshairs, I muttered quietly to myself: “It never ends. It just never f— ends!”

This incident was just the most recent in a lifetime of similar disquieting experiences—actually, many lifetimes of such experiences—in the history of my family, always posing the same question: “Why? Why do they say these things to us?” This deeply personal and perennial question has in large part prompted my interest in the construction of ethnoracial identity within situational contexts. Why have so many of our African American neighbors routinely treated us with such disdain? This vexing question once inspired me to write the following poem entitled, Who Am I? during my early teenage years—circa 1963.

Who am I?
My skin is light,
Why not black
Why not white?

Where are my roots?
And were they born,
To hold African spear
Or English horn?

Perhaps I am,
The bubbling foam,
Some inward ocean
Washes home.

The quandary and frustration regarding the challenges of racial hybridity are palpable in this poem. The last three lines of verse may at first blush seem simplistic. However, the metaphor refers to the desire to be genetically restored to one original racial identity prior to miscegenation—i.e. either black or white—rather than to be forever condemned to the racial limbo inhabited by mixed-race people in America. Regarding the personal construction of ethnoracial identity, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed this very query when he stated “Every man must ultimately confront the question of ‘Who am I?’ and seek to answer it honestly. One of the first principles of personal adjustment is the principle of self-acceptance. The Negro’s greatest dilemma is that in order to be healthy he must accept his ambivalence. The Negro is the child of two cultures—Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures… The old Hegelian synthesis still offers the best answer to many of life’s dilemmas. The American Negro is neither totally African nor totally Western. He is Afro-American, a true hybrid, a combination of two cultures.”…

Purchase the dissertation here.

Black People in Britain: Response and Reaction, 1945-62

History Today
Volume 36, Issue 1 (January 1986)

Paul B. Rich

Paul Rich argues that while the official response to post-war immigration was slow to develop, the tensions and white backlash of the late fifties marked its emergence as a national political issue.

The Settlers from the West Indies and South Asia who arrived in Britain from the late 1940s up to the 1960s found a society remarkably unprepared for their incorporation into its elaborate class and cultural networks. Almost from the very start of this post-war migration, when the SS Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in June 1948 with 492 passengers from the West Indies, there was a mixture in governmental circles of either panic and fear of impending racial conflict or a more detached dismissal of the whole issue as a storm in a teacup. One Home Office civil servant minuted for example that ‘sooner or later action must be taken to keep out the undesirable elements of our colonial population’, for otherwise their presence in Britain would present ‘a formidable problem’ to the various government departments concerned, such as the Home Office, the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Labour. Some government ministers, including the Prime Minister Clement Attlee, refused to take the ‘Jamaican party’ to the United Kingdom ‘too seriously’, though the worry in official circles continued to increase over the following years. It was pointed out, however, to the Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, as early as 1948 that any attempt by legislation to restrict this immigration would have to come from Britain itself rather than in the Colonial context, since otherwise there would be massive opportunities for evasion. ‘In the case of Jamaica’, some ministerial notes pointed out, ‘the next country would be Cuba, and obviously we cannot control the Government of Cuba’…

…The local councils of social service up and down the country approached the area of black immigration with a very limited fund of experience. The ideal of ‘social service’ had quite a long tradition in British philanthropy and can be traced to the rise of a secularised Anglican conscience at the end of the nineteenth century centred around the notion of ‘duty’. The National Council of Social Service was established in 1919 and had developed the notion of ‘community service’ in the inter-war years in response to growing patterns of sub-urbanisation around housing estates. Local councils of social service had concerned themselves with local community centres, clubs for the unemployed and rural community councils in villages. They had not been concerned with ‘multi-racial” issues, which had been mainly confined to the seaport towns where, in Liverpool for example, the local university settlement had got involved in the issue in the late 1920s and 1930s through the Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children. Other issues surrounding colour like the problems confronting black students in Britain, had been taken up either by activist bodies like the West African Students Union (WASU) in London, run by a Nigerian, Ladipo Solanke, or the various universities concerned. In addition, the Colonial Office had taken a welfare interest in students during the war years through fear of rising colonial nationalism, but by the early 1950s had devolved its responsibility in this sphere to the British Council. In the early 1950s, therefore, the councils of social service approached the issue of post-war black immigration with few clear guidelines and tended to resort to whatever ‘expert’ advice there was available – whether from missionaries with a colonial experience of race, a small number of interested social workers or social anthropologists and sociologists who were by this time becoming interested in the new subject area of ‘race relations’…

…This association of the black presence with moral decline became to some extent popularised through the popular media, such as the 1959 film Sapphire which still linked the mixed race ‘half-caste’ with prostitution and the underworld (though the film did contain many useful documentary aspects which pointed out the social diversity of the immigrants and the problems of white racism). The National Council of Social Service tried to defend the immigrants, especially the West Indians, from charges of ‘loose living’ in its circular, Nacoss News, but nevertheless admitted ‘of all the possible causes of difficulty and tension… differences of outlook and ways of living remain the most intractable’, and noted the charges of some whites of ‘the noisy social habits’ of some immigrants. ‘Race relations’ began to become a serious industry as growing ties were forged with the newly established Institute of Race Relations in London, which had hived off from the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1958 under the Directorship of Philip Mason and developed a British interest as well as a wider international one. The recognition, though, that social work and the easing of racial tensions in many inner cities required increasingly specialised expertise which the older generation of voluntary workers in the local councils of social service did not possess, encouraged a climate favouring immigration control in order that resources could be geared to coping with those immigrants who had already settled in Britain. There was, therefore, a concern about the ability of the social services to maintain an adequate level of social control in the inner city areas which enhanced the back-bench Conservative and constituency pressure by 1960 in favour of legislative restriction. After years of resisting these appeals through fear of antagonising opinion in the West Indies and India, the Conservative government finally decided to introduce a bill in the Autumn of 1961. Speaking in support of the measure, the Home Secretary, R.A. Butler, noted that the essence of the bill was ‘control’, for the voluntary sector could ‘deal with limited numbers only, and, if the numbers of new entrants are excessive, their assimilation into our society presents the gravest difficulty’.

The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act thus reflected an important new government determination to intervene in the area of Commonwealth immigration and initiate a measure of restriction on the numbers of black immigrants. There had been previous measures before the First World War to control alien immigration through the 1905 and 1914 Alien Acts, and in 1925 the Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order had been passed to restrict the entry of black ‘alien’ seamen, some of whom claimed British citizenship but were unable to produce the necessary documentation. But there had traditionally been powerful political pressures inhibiting the restriction of Commonwealth immigrants, and it was this concern for the Commonwealth connection which the 1962 Act overrode. Initiating a new pattern of restriction of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, the legislation in some respects brought Britain, as the former imperial mother country, into line with her more racially conscious colonial daughters. Restriction of black immigration had first been initiated in Australia and New Zealand in 1901 to exclude Asian and Chinese immigrants and prevent competition with white labour. Based on an education test developed in Natal, these restrictions had been initiated in a militant climate of racial Anglo-Saxonism and belief in the inherent superiority of white racial stocks. The supporters of the 1962 legislation (apart from an extreme right-wing fringe) desisted from justifying it in such terms, but the measure did nevertheless echo some of the previous patterns of restriction in the white dominions, even though the criterion of admittance was through a voucher system gearing the numbers of likely ‘newcomers’ to the likely number of jobs available for them…

Read the entire article here.

Philanthropic racism in Britain: The Liverpool university settlement, the anti-slavery society and the issue of ‘half-caste’ children, 1919-51

Immigrants & Minorities
Volume 3, Issue 1 (1984)
Pages 69-88
DOI: 10.1080/02619288.1984.9974570

Paul B. Rich

The history of racial ideology in Britain has focused mainly on extreme groups of the political right. Less attention has been paid to more ‘respectable’ forms of racism. This paper attempts to redress the balance. It concentrates upon two groups, the Anti-Slavery Society and the Settlement Movement and, with particular reference to Liverpool and Cardiff between 1919 and 1951, examines their attitudes towards Britain’s ‘half-caste’ population.

The history of racial ideology in Britain has tended mostly to focus upongroups on the extreme right-wing fringe to the exclusion of what may be termed ‘middle opinion’. This rather narrow range of analysis, centred around the yardstick of fascism and its political variants, can lead to the downplaying in certain aspects of British racial attitudes which can be seen to represent a continuation, in a somewhat different guise, of Victorian racial ideas. It was Hugh Tinker who originally suggested this possible linkage between more modern British race attitudes and what he termed ‘neo-Victorianism’, though the thesis has been given no substantial institutional anchorage. This article, therefore, proposes to look at one particular set of institutional links between the Victorian era and the more modern arena of race relations in the 1920s and 1930s by looking at the role of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Settlement Movement in the debate on ‘half-castes’ in the seaport towns of Liverpool, and to a lesser degree Cardiff, between the wars.

This issue is of importance to students of race in Britain for a number of reasons. Both the Anti-Slavery Society and the Settlement Movement had roots in the Victorian philanthropic concern with the lower social orders and the less privileged. Though the anti-slavery movement had its heyday during the middle of the nineteenth century before and after the American Civil War of 1861-5, it left a strong legacy in middle-class liberal thought in Britain which was to enjoy a renewed upsurge on the issue of ‘forced labour’ in the Belgian Congo during the Edwardian years through the campaign of E.D. Morel and the Congo Reform Association. Similarly, the university settlement movement was a product of middle-class concern with the lower class—especially in London—in the 1880s as rising class consciousness and residential separation between classes made older and more paternalistic methods of social control increasingly ineffective. Both these Victorian movements carried on in…

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Mixed Dreams: Exploring “Multi” Experiences in the U.S.

EXCO (Experimental College)
Spring 2011
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

The experiences and identities of mixed-race people in the United States have often been marginalized if not rendered invisible, silenced and subsumed under the dominant black-white binary. While mixed identities have been part of U.S. history since the nation’s birth, the year 2010 marked only the second time in U.S. history that Americans will be able to check more than one racial/ethnic category in the census. From the overwhelming 6.8 million individuals who checked “more than one box” in the 2000 U.S. Census to the election of President Barack Obama (a self-proclaimed “mutt”)—“multi”* Americans are gaining unprecedented visibility in the 21st century. With this visibility, however comes inevitable scrutiny and ambivalence as evidenced by debates over Obama’s racial identity as well as the mixed racial ancestry of the growing number of U.S-born Latino/as who are gaining considerable social and political ground. With a nation so obsessed with race and yet as intent on hastening a post-racial era on the backs of Americans of color, re-imagining conceptions of race and mixed identities has never been more important.

This course will provide an introduction to contemporary discussions, debates and narratives surrounding multi America. By reading and discussing scholarly, literary, editorial, and visual texts we will critically examine the spaces multi people occupy in the U.S. as well as the identity politics and perspectives that mark these experiences. We will also explore the growing narratives and spaces being created to build communities and express multi subjectivities. Through class discussions, assignments and a final project, students will also be encouraged to explore their own identities and subjectivities as they relate to larger discourses and narratives around race and intersecting identities.

Oberlin’s Experimental College (ExCo) is a student-run initiative that allows all members of the Oberlin community to teach and take courses outside the scope of the college’s traditional curriculum. With its flexible nature, the program reflects the current intellectual, social, and aesthetic trends of the Oberlin community, providing opportunities to explore or expand upon subject matter beyond the usual course offerings.

For more information, click here.

Undermining Race: Ethnic Identities in Arizona Copper Camps, 1880-1920

University of Arizona Press
2009
240 pages
6.0 x 9.0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2745-8

Phylis Cancilla Martinelli, Professor of Sociology
Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, California

Undermining Race rewrites the history of race, immigration, and labor in the copper industry in Arizona. The book focuses on the case of Italian immigrants in their relationships with Anglo, Mexican, and Spanish miners (and at times with blacks, Asian Americans, and Native Americans), requiring a reinterpretation of the way race was formed and figured across place and time.

Phylis Martinelli argues that the case of Italians in Arizona provides insight into “in between” racial and ethnic categories, demonstrating that the categorizing of Italians varied from camp to camp depending on local conditions—such as management practices in structuring labor markets and workers’ housing, and the choices made by immigrants in forging communities of language and mutual support. Italians—even light-skinned northern Italians—were not considered completely “white” in Arizona at this historical moment, yet neither were they consistently racialized as non-white, and tactics used to control them ranged from micro to macro level violence.

To make her argument, Martinelli looks closely at two “white camps” in Globe and Bisbee and at the Mexican camp of Clifton-Morenci. Comparing and contrasting the placement of Italians in these three camps shows how the usual binary system of race relations became complicated, which in turn affected the existing race-based labor hierarchy, especially during strikes. The book provides additional case studies to argue that the biracial stratification system in the United States was in fact triracial at times. According to Martinelli, this system determined the nature of the associations among laborers as well as the way Americans came to construct “whiteness.”

Half-Breed Citizenship Bill, 1857

Oregon State Archives
Echoes of Oregon History Learning Guide

A Bill
 
To enable certain Half Breeds to acquire the rights of citizenship within this Territory.Section1. Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon. That any person, being the child of a white father and an Indian mother, and therefore disfranchised by existing laws, may be admitted to the privileges of citizenship, by the District Court, upon satisfactory proof that he is a permanent resident and land owner of the county or district, and can speak read and write the English language, and has in all respects the educatio habits and associations of a white person, and would, if he were a white person, be a citizen of the United States or entitled to admission as such, and is a person of good moral character and in all respects worthy to enjoy the said privileges. The District Court shall make a record of such admission and grant to the applicant a certificate thereof which shall entitle him to enjoy, during the pleasure of the Legislative Assembly, all the rights privileges and immunities of a citizen of the United States within this Territory as fully as it is competent for the Territory to grant the same.

Sec. 2. This act shall take affect from the time of its passage.

Background

American immigrants in Oregon Territory disliked people of mixed Indian-white parentage. In 1855, the territorial government passed a law which prevented mixed race men from becoming citizens. This bill is an attempt to gain these rights for the children of white fathers and Indian mothers, subject to the satisfaction of certain requirements. Many white citizens would have been unable to satisfy these requirements, which included proof of literacy and good moral character. This bill did not pass.

“Abominable Mixture”: Toward the Repudiation of Anglo-Indian Intermarriage in Seventeenth-Century Virginia

The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
Volume 95, Number 2 (April, 1987)
pages 157-192

David D. Smits, Professor of History
The College of New Jersey

Students of Amerindian-white relations have long ascribed to the English colonists an aversion to race mixing, especially through intermarriage, with the North American natives. To be sure, it is recognized that there was some Indian-white interbreeding, and even marriage, on all Anglo-American frontiers, but proportionately less than in Franco- and Hispanic-America. Virginia’s well-known marriage of John Rolfe to Pocahontas did not establish a widely imitated precedent for Anglo-Indian matrimony in the colony. A 1691 Virginia law prohibiting Anglo-Indian marriage and informal sexual unions surely indicates that they occurred; with a few notable exceptions, however, the Englishman who took a native wife, concubine, or mistress violated the colony’s mores…

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Black, White, Light, and Bright: A Narrative of Creole Color

Past Narratives/Narratives Past Graduate Conference
Stanford University, Stanford, California
2001-02-16 through 2001-02-18
20 pages

Christopher N. Matthews, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Hofstra University

Much of the world of life is made real through the symbolic application of color, shade, hue, and other features of visual meaning to the physical matter around us. This interplay of light and dark gives shape to form and place to space. This same mode also works discursively allowing forms and spaces to be recognized not only physically but culturally as representations of the social construction of reality. This paper explores this issue by seeing color both in fact and symbol in the development of the Creole cultures of New Orleans. A city steeped in multiple traditions, New Orleans is a spectrum of colors which act out the tensions of past and present. At the root is a conflict between that which is Creole and that which is not. The archaeology here is a story about this story.

Race cannot allow ambiguity, fluidity, or mixture, for it then ceases to refer to something pure, something distinct. The absolute strength of mestizaje is the power it has—by its even being able to be thought—of dissolving race and everything associated with it, ultimately dissolving even itself.

Rainier Spencer, Race and Mixed-Race: A Personal Tour

Introduction: race and color

The discussion of color is simultaneously at the heart of American historical archaeology and left out altogether. Without doubt archaeologies of race and racism, of cultures of alterity framed by these social issues, and the relatively new yet established sub-field of African-American Archaeology are a center of concern and productivity for the field. It goes without saying that these archaeologies are concerned with exploring the dimensions of social life driven by color and the implied social and cultural differences that existed among past people. It is also agreed that because color continues to elicit deep social significance in contemporary society that the search through archaeology for its constructions and expressions carries some extra special resonance for archaeology today.

I contend, however, that historical archaeologists have yet to reveal the depth of meaning behind color differences that their subjects, collaborators, colleagues, institutions, and living social formations represent, struggle with and against, and perhaps too quickly assume. The historical archaeology of race and racism in particular has yet to explicitly consider how race becomes identity, choosing instead to employ racial identities as givens and produce archaeologies of their expression rather than their construction. To work against this, we must not produce archaeologies about race which assume its existence, but archaeologies that explain the material of racing and the materialities of racism (see also Orser 1998, Mullins 1999, Epperson 1999, Matthews et al n.d.)…

…Culture to Race

During this era of Creolization, however, the undoing of Louisiana’s Creole culture was literally born. Issued from the union of natives, settlers, and slaves, “mixedrace” children were regularly born in New Orleans after 1730. Their numbers were not large and to be sure they were not always planned, chosen, nor welcome. Nevertheless, throughout the 18th century their population grew with each decade (Hanger 1997, Bell 1997). A growing population, however, was not their problem. Rather, new influences emerged in Louisiana towards the end of the century that challenged the Creole tradition by redefining Creole in the terms of race….

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Midday with Dan Rodricks 3-8-11 Hour 2 [The Invisible Line: Daniel Sharfstein]

WYPR 88.1 FM
Baltimore, Maryland
2011-03-08

Dan Rodricks, Host

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University

The Invisible Line: Daniel Sharfstein, a Vanderbilt law professor visiting Baltimore for an engagement at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, followed three families, from the Revolutionary Era up to the Civil Rights movement, as they straddled the color line and changed their racial identification from black to white. While previous stories of “passing” have focused on individuals’ struggles to redefine themselves, Sharfstein’s subjects managed to defy the legal definitions of race within their own communities. For members of the Gibson, Spencer, and Wall families, what mattered most was the ways that their neighbors treated them in spite of their racial differences.

Listen to the entire interview here. (00:41:06, 28.2 MB)

The Guineas of West Virginia

Ohio State University
1952
139 pages

John P. Burnell, Jr.

A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirments for the Degree Master of Arts.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Methodology
2. Geographical and Social Setting
3. History and Origin
4. Who Is A Guinea?
5. Social Participation
6. Attitudes and Beliefs
7. Summary and Conclusions

Bibliography
Map (See back folder)

Sociologists are becoming increasingly aware that there exists in the United States an “outcast element” the study of which has been neglected. This element is comprised of groups of people who are generally thought to be of tri-racial origin, that is, Negro, Indian and white. The whites tend to relegate these people to the status of Negroes, a status which most of them resent.

To mention but a few of these hybrid groups which have been reported on to date, there are those in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky referred to as “Melungeons“; in North Carolina, “Indiana of Robeson County” in the southern part of Ohio, “Carmel Indians”.  Dr. Brewton Berry has applied the generic term “mestizos” to the racial hybrids of South Carolina, who are known there by various opprobrious names such as, “Brass Ankles”, “Red Legs”, “Buckheads”, and “Turks”.  In Delaware the hybrids are known as “Moors” and “Hantichokes”; in Alabama, Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi, “Creoles” and “Cajuns“, and in Virginia, “Issues”.

The writer1s interest in the racial hybrid grew out of a general interest In race relations per se, and a firm conviction that only as these various, often socially and geographically isolated, groups are investigated and reported upon will the sociologist be in a position validly to generalize about them.

The purpose of this study was to observe and describe one of these groups, thereby contributing to the knowledge of racial hybrids which is being amassed.   The group chosen for this purpose resides in the state of West Virginia, more specifically in the northeastern part of this state In Barbour and Taylor counties.

The people who constitute this group are generally considered by the white population as being a mixture of white, Negro, and Indian ancestry. Locally, they are referred to as “Guineas“, or “Guinea niggers”, both terms being of a derogatory nature.  Although the Guineas are for the most part very white in appearance, as will be noted in a later chapter devoted to a description of their physical characteristics, the whites in the area resist accepting them as social equals largely on the basis that “one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro“.   In spite of a substantial number of whites acknowledging “Indian blood”, and many more, not being quite certain as to what racial strains have gone into the make-up of these people, it seems to matter very little, for as one white Informant summed it up: “That one drop of nigger blood never washes away” The Guineas then, are referred to as “colored people.” In the areas where they reside and by virtue of this classification are subject to differential treatment by white society.

This particular group of people was chosen for study because: (1) they were conveniently located to the writer’s home; (2) the writer is a resident of the state in which they are located, and therefore it was felt that rapport could be more easily attained; and (3) only a modicum of information concerning these people Is to be found in the literature.

It must be pointed out from the very beginning that the primary object of going out into the field was to observe these people In their real life situation with a view toward describing that situation.

Lack of time and finances acted as definite limiting factors to the scope and comprehensiveness of the field work and largely contributed to limiting this study to a descriptive level.   It is hoped, however, that a more extensive and comprehensive piece of work, free from such limitations, will soon be forthcoming.   Moreover, it must be emphasized that the foregoing limitations, especially lack of finances, restricted most of the data gathered to Barbour County, even though many Guineas are to be found scattered throughout the southern part of Taylor County. To defray the expenses of the writer it was necessary for him to procure employment, and a position which permitted freedom of movement during daylight hours was found in Phillppi, the county seat of Barbour County thereby making this community a convenient center of operation.  It was felt by the writer that the latter limitation was not as much a hindrance to the study as It may at first appear because: first, there seem to. be more Guineas, or at least more people who are defined by the local populace as “Guineas”, residing in Barbour than in Taylor county; and second, they are more concentrated within specific areas in Arbour county.  Since several trips were made into Taylor county, some data which were gathered there pertaining to the Guineas has been utilized within the text. However, wherever any of these data appear, specific reference to Taylor county has been made.

It will be noted by the reader that the terms “white” and “Guinea” appear throughout the text. The writer uses the term “Guinea” as a means of identifying the people who are the aubject of this paper, but does not wish to convey the derogatory connotations generally associated with this term. In some cases the term “hybrid” is used interchangeably with Guinea. The term white applies to all of those people who are not considered either Negro or Guinea.

The methodology utilized in this study is explained in the following chapter…

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