Mixed Race Studies

Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism and the Legal Prohibition Against Miscegenation

Michigan Journal of Race & Law
University of Michigan Law School
Volume 5, Issue 2 (Spring 2000)
pages 560-609

Keith Edward Sealing, Dean of Students
Widener Law School, Widener University

Laws banning miscegenation endured in the colonies and the United States for more than 300 years. When the Supreme Court declared all such laws unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, sixteen such statutes and constitutional provisions were still in effect. Scientific racism determined a hierarchy within the White race that placed the Teutonic at the top, the Anglo-Saxon as the heir to the Teuton, and the American as the current leading branch of that line. Prior to the Darwinian revolution, two competing scientific theories, monogenism and polygenism, were applied to justify miscegenation statutes. The “monogenists” believed that all men descended from a single ancestor and were of the same species. This theory comported with the Bible and the story of Ham, as interpreted literally by the fundamentalists. The “polygenists” saw Blacks as a separate and inferior species descended from a different “Adam,” and, thus, saw slavery as qualitatively no different from the ownership of a horse, and miscegenation as approaching bestiality. These beliefs and attitudes endured well into the Twentieth Century, supported after 1900 by the eugenics movement. This article focuses on anti-miscegenation statutes as applied to former slaves and others of African descent, particularly in the South. This article first examines the miscegenation paradigm in terms of a seven-point conceptual framework that not merely allowed but practically demanded anti-miscegenation laws, then looks at the legal arguments state courts used to justify the constitutionality of such laws through 1967. Next, it analyzes the Biblical argument, which in its own right justified miscegenation, but also had a major influence on the development of the three major strands of scientific racism: monogenism, polygenism and Darwinian theory. It then probes the concept upon which the entire edifice is constructed—race—and discusses the continuing vitality of this construct. Next, this article turns to the major strands of scientific racism and briefly develops more modern theories that continued the racist tradition well into the Twentieth Century. The article then looks at the effects of scientific racism on the thoughts and actions of the founding fathers and the Reconstruction-era Congress before turning to the long line of state cases upholding miscegenation statutes, in part by relying on scientific racism. Finally, it discusses the cases that questioned the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation statutes, Perez v. Lippold and Loving v. Virginia.

Read the entire article here.

Exploring the Experiences of First-Generation, Multiethnic Undergraduate College Students

The Journal of Student Affairs
Student Affairs in Higher Education
Colorado State University
Volume 14, 2004-2005

Jody Donovan and Lehala Johnson

This qualitative research paper investigates the experiences of first-generation, multiethnic undergraduate students at two public, four-year universities in the Rocky Mountain region. The existing research paints a negative picture in regard to multiethnic students and first-generation students deciding to go to college, enrolling, and then rarely persisting to earn a degree. This study found that, converse to noted literature, the multiethnic, first-generation students are proud of their multiple heritages and did not encounter exceptional difficulty entering or studying at college. This article presents specific issues faced by multiethnic, first-generation students, discusses emergent themes from individual interviews and focus groups, and provides recommendations for higher education leaders.

By the year 2010, it is estimated that students of color at institutions of higher education will rise to 24% of total enrollment (Ortiz, 2002). Many of the incoming multiethnic, first-year students will be the first of their family to pursue higher education (Ortiz). Colleges and universities must acknowledge and prepare for the integration and adaptation of these firstgeneration, multiethnic students to help them adjust to an academic lifestyle and to improve “the retention rates of an increasingly diverse student body” (Gonzales, 1999, p. 5). The purpose of this paper is to discuss exploratory constructivist research on first-generation, multiethnic students enrolled at two public, four-year universities in the Rocky Mountain region.

Read the entire article here.

Natasha Trethewey Reads at ECU

The Common Reader
Newsletter of the ECU Department of English
Eastern Carolina University
Volume 26, Number 6: May 2008

Lisa DeVries

On April 2, Natasha Trethewey visited East Carolina University for a public reading and book signing organized by fellow poet and friend John Hoppenthaler.  She won the Pulitizer Prize for her 2006 book of poetry, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin), the third African American woman to win the award, following in the tradition of Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove.  Trethewey is also a professor of poetry at Emory University and holds the Phyllis Wheatley Distinguished Chair.  She Has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Her previous works include Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000) and Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf Press, 2002).  Her most recent work deals with telling the untold stories of history, identity politics, racism, and miscegenation. She claims that she writes only what she is given, “a violent history and the terrible beauty of my South, my Mississippi.”  [Interview and photos by Lisa DeVries.]

Read the entire interview here.

My Bones Are Red: A Spiritual Journey With A Triracial People In The Americas

Mercer University Press
2005
192 pages
8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
ISBN-10: 0865549176; ISBN-13: 978-0865549173

Patricia Ann Waak

In the late 1700s the roots of cowboy culture arose out of the Carolinas. These men and women were not the typical white ranchers that would be depicted in later stories and films. Instead they were a group of “tri-racial isolates.” While much is now being published about Melungeons, little has been written about the cowboy Redbones. The Redbones followed Reverend Joseph Willis to Louisiana in the early 1800s. He was the patriarch of the group and con-tributed his Baptist ministry to the spiritual composite that would make up their religious heritage.

My Bones Are Red primarily tells the stories of the Perkins family. They would stay in Louisiana for at least four decades before crossing the border into Texas. For the first time this book tracks family members who would be sequentially classified by the U.S. census as black, “free people of color,” mulatto, Indian, and white over a period of one hundred years. Historical evidence suggests the Perkins family and the families they married into were a combination of Native American, African, and British.

What started out as a quest to find the mother of her beloved grandfather, became for Patricia Waak a revelation about the diversity of her family. It became, in fact, a spiritual journey as she visited cemeteries, courthouses, and archives from Accomack County, Virginia, to Goliad, Texas. Filled with translations of old court cases, accounts from oral history, and the results of countless hours of research, she also invites us to participate in her own discovery through original poetry which introduces each chapter. Included are photographs, genealogical charts, maps, and copies of old documents.

The journey to discover the story of one line of her family, becomes for the author a farewell to her mother and an honoring of the people who contributed to who she is today. Patricia Waak’s career in the United States and overseas has dealt with population dynamics and their effect on human and environmental health. Most recently she has been the director of human population and environment programs and a senior advisor for the National Audubon Society. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Planet Awakening. She lives in Colorado with her husband and two dogs.

Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt

University Press of Mississippi
March 2010
160 pages (approx.)
6 x 9 inches, introduction, index
Printed casebinding: 978-1-60473-416-4
Ebook: 978-1-60473-418-8

Edited by:

Susan Prothro Wright, Associate Professor of American and British Literature
Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia

Ernestine Pickens Glass, Professor Emerita of English
Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia

An exploration of a great American writer’s abiding concern with the color line

Essays by Margaret D. Bauer, Keith Byerman, Martha J. Cutter, SallyAnn H. Ferguson, Donald B. Gibson, Scott Thomas Gibson, Aaron Ritzenberg,Werner Sollors, and Susan Prothro Wright.

Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt is a collection that reevaluates Chesnutt‘s deft manipulation of the “passing” theme to expand understanding of the author’s fiction and nonfiction. Nine contributors apply a variety of theories–including intertextual, signifying/discourse analysis, narratological, formal, psychoanalytical, new historical, reader response, and performative frameworks–to add richness to readings of Chesnutt’s works. Together the essays provide convincing evidence that “passing” is an intricate, essential part of Chesnutt’s writing, and that it appears in all the genres he wielded: journal entries, speeches, essays, and short and long fiction.

The essays engage with each other to display the continuum in Chesnutt’s thinking as he began his writing career and established his sense of social activism, as evidenced in his early journal entries. Collectively, the essays follow Chesnutt’s works as he proceeded through the Jim Crow era, honing his ability to manipulate his mostly white audience through the astute, though apparently self-effacing, narrator, Uncle Julius, of his popular conjure tales. Chesnutt’s ability to subvert audience expectations is equally noticeable in the subtle irony of his short stories. Several of the collection’s essays address Chesnutt’s novels, including Paul Marchand, F.M.C., Mandy Oxendine, The House Behind the Cedars, and Evelyn’s Husband. The volume opens up new paths of inquiry into a major African American writer’s oeuvre.

Representing gods in a mixed-race society: Images, rituals and politics in María Lionza’s cult (Venezuela)

University of St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom
Centre for Amerindian, Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CAS)
Social Anthropology Seminar Room (Room 50, St Salvator’s Building)
2010-03-17, 15:00Z to 17:00Z

Roger Canals
University of Barcelona

Roger Canals, University of Barcelona, will speak on ‘Representing gods in a mixed-race society. Images, rituals and politics in María Lionza‘s cult (Venezuela)’.

Written Out of History

Pomona College Magazine
Pomona College, Claremont, California
Fall 2002
Volume 39, Number 1

Michael Balchunas

Spurred by a glimpse of family history, Professor Sid Lemelle is bringing to light a little-known aspect of the African Diaspora.

When the new people moved in, all eyes were upon them. There were comments about the way they looked, how much money they might have, what kind of work they did, their morals, their customs and their character. At first, it was all good. The newcomers, who were farmers, engineers, mechanics and other workers, wrote to friends left behind and extolled the virtues of their new home. That stirred pangs of fear among some residents, and a newspaper ran an editorial. More of these people might come, it said, and “since the Negro is a creature of imitation and not invention…they will degenerate…and [become] vicious…a nuisance and pest to society.”

The year was 1857, and the newcomers, from Louisiana, had settled near Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, about 50 miles inland from the Caribbean port of Veracruz. Their history, like much of the history of the African Diaspora, is virtually unknown.

Sidney Lemelle is working to change that…

…Another misperception is that the U.S. South was a strictly bipolar society of white masters and black slaves, he says. In antebellum Louisiana, a significant number of white planters, businessmen and government officials fathered mixed-race offspring, who became part of a stratum more privileged than slaves, other free blacks or poorer white residents, according to Lemelle. He is particularly intrigued by how race and racial identity issues were connected to property rights and ownership in Louisiana and Mexico in the 19th century. Building on the theories of UCLA legal scholar Cheryl Harris, he believes that “whiteness” was constructed by mixed-blood people and became the basis of racialized privilege; that “whiteness” was legitimized as a form of status property, which gave some individuals rights over others, even though both possessed African blood…

Read the entire article here.

Investigations: Problem behavior

University of Chicago Magazine
October 2006
Volume 99, Issue 1

Lydialyle Gibson

For American children, says Yoonsun Choi, assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration, early adolescence isn’t getting any simpler. Besides the awkwardness and looming angst, there’s this: more and more youth now find themselves navigating the uncertain territory of multiracial heritage. (Even the term is ambiguous; it can refer to having parents of different races or to generations-old diversity.) The multiracial experience frequently corresponds, Choi says, with higher rates of violence and substance use. “Consistently multiracial youth show, in almost all behavior problems—alcohol, smoking, marijuana, fighting—more problems than other children.”…

…“However, there is some indication that a strong ethnic identity” with at least one race—a sense of racial or cultural pride, belonging, and confidence—“helps protect kids from these behaviors,” Choi says. But youths must strike a sometimes difficult balance. “This research is just emerging, but it is saying that ethnic identity for multiracial children is unique. They need to endorse every part of who they are, and for children of combinations from conflicting groups”—for instance, black and white or, Choi says, Asian and black—“that will be hard.”…

Read the entire article here.

Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico

Stanford University Press
2008
424 pages
13 illustrations, 2 maps.
ISBN-10: 0804756481; ISBN-13: 9780804756488

María Elena Martínez (1966-2014), Associate Professor of History and American Studies and Ethnicity
University of Southern California

María Elena Martínez’s Genealogical Fictions is the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) and colonial Mexico’s sistema de castas, a hierarchical system of social classification based primarily on ancestry. Specifically, it explains how this notion surfaced amid socio-religious tensions in early modern Spain, and was initially used against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. It was then transplanted to the Americas, adapted to colonial conditions, and employed to create and reproduce identity categories according to descent. Martínez also examines how the state, church, Inquisition, and other institutions in colonial Mexico used the notion of purity of blood over time, arguing that the concept’s enduring religious, genealogical, and gendered meanings and the archival practices it promoted came to shape the region’s patriotic and racial ideologies.

Ethnic Identity among Monoracial and Multiracial Early Adolescents

The Journal of Early Adolescence
Vol. 20, No. 4 (2000)
pages 365-387
DOI: 10.1177/0272431600020004001

Michael S. Spencer, Associate Dean for Educational Programs and Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Michigan

Larry D. Icard, Professor of Social Work
Temple University

Tracy W. Harachi, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Washington

Richard F. Catalano, Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Director, Social Development Research Group
University of Washington

Monica Oxford, Research Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Washington

A measure of ethnic identity, the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), was examined in this study with a sample of 2,184 early adolescents who self-identified with a single race or ethnicity (monoracial, n = 1,812) or with two or more racial or ethnic groups (multiracial, n = 372). Principal components and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis were used to explore and confirm the factor structure of the MEIM items. Two factors were identified: (a) identification and (b) exploration. Identification was represented by items that reflect a sense of belonging and pride in an individual’s ethnic group. Exploration was represented by items that characterize a search for ethnic group identity and participation in ethnic practices. Reliabilities were adequate for the two subscales (= .84, identification; = .76, exploration). Also, the results indicated that most individuals from monoracial minority groups and multiracial subgroups scored similarly on overall ethnic identity.

Read or purchase the article here.