Mixed Race Studies

Crimes of Performance

Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society
Volume 13, Issue 1 (2011)
Special Issue: Black Critiques of Capital: Radicalism, Resistance, and Visions of Social Justice
pages 29-45
DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2011.551476

Uri McMillan, Assistant Professor of English
University of California, Los Angeles

In this article, I focus on the intersections between discourses of crime and illegality with modes of performance in the multiple impersonations staged by William and Ellen Craft, two married fugitive slaves who escaped from chattel slavery in the United States in 1848 through a complex set of layered performances. I begin illustrating the linkages between crime and performance by tracing the workings of a dynamic I term “fugitive transvestism” in an aesthetic representation of Ellen Craft, specifically an engraving she posed for in 1851 that was later published in The London Illustrated News. In doing so, I not only reveal the engraving as a site where we can witness Craft’s embodied performances, rather than a seemingly static document, but also focus on the crimes of “being” acted by Craft that surface in the engraving itself. In addition, I further reveal the performative and criminal acts committed by Ellen Craft, by later moving to a discussion of prosthetics, focusing attention on the mechanisms of Craft’s escape costume. Prosthetic performances, as I discuss them, were dramatic and tactical strategies employed by the Crafts that continue to reveal the suturing of crime and performance in Ellen Craft’s counterfeit embodiment of her alter-ego, while taking it further into yet another set of unlawful impersonations. Thus, this essay will evince how the Craft’s multiple crimes of performance enabled their mobility across 19th-century spatial sites and representational spheres.

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Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed-Race Americans

Paradigm Publishers
December 2011
208 pages
6×9
ISBN: 978-1-59451-982-6

Cathy J. Tashiro, PhD, RN, Associate Professor of Nursing
University of Washington, Tacoma

In the first book to focus on the experiences of older American of mixed race identity, Cathy Tashiro explores questions of identity and the significance of family experiences, aging and the life course, class, gender, and nationality. Including African American/White and Asian American/White individuals, the book highlights the poignant voices of people who were among the first generations to transgress the color line. Their very existence violated the deep cultural beliefs in the distinctiveness of the races at the time. Based on extensive interviews, the book offers a unique perspective on the social construction of race and racism in America.

Guess who’s coming to brunch? Dating and the hybrid subject

Race-Talk
2011-10-26

Adebe D. A., Race-Talk Cultural Editor

I don’t have enough hands to count how many times people have asked me if my parents are “still together” and upon hearing that yes, they have been together for over 25 years, expressed sincere surprise at this fact. Interracial marriages are apparently not supposed to work; the miscegenation taboo prevails. I guess whoever says race doesn’t exist is not only color-blind but sleep-walking.
 
I remember reading an article a while ago on how, according to higher education research, mixed-race people are perceived as “more attractive.” Conducted by Dr. Michael Lewis of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology, the research involved a collection of 1205 randomly-chosen black, white, and mixed-race faces (a limited choice of representative faces altogether). Each face was then rated for its perceived attractiveness, and it was found that mixed-race faces took the cake. The findings were then presented to the British Psychological Society…

…Contrary to popular opinion, I am not flattered by the fact that studies are interested in my face, because frankly, they don’t really see me at all. When mixed-race gets talked about in the media, it’s often automatically celebrated as a marker of socio-political progress, completely disconnected from the racial trauma of being deemed inauthentic by others, the wounds of self-questioning, and the reality of racialized violence and fetishization. I have been asked by previous partners if my hair, eyes, and even skin color were “real” as if I were a specimen to be poked and prodded at; as if my personhood were dependent upon the undressing of some enigma. The point was not if I colored my hair or if it were naturally this or that hue; the point lied in the question, the strange liberty people have found in dissecting what I am…

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Bettez to discuss experiences of mixed race women

The Southern Illinoisan
2011-10-28

Christi Mathis, Staff Writer
University Communications at SIU Carbondale

CARBONDALE – Silvia C. Bettez will present “But Don’t Call Me White: Mixed Race Women Exposing Nuances of Privilege and Oppression Politics” on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
 
The guest lecture in Wham Building, Room 219, is set for 3:30 to 5 p.m. and everyone is welcome to attend. Bettez is an assistant professor of cultural foundations of education in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Education.
 
The basis of her presentation is her recently released book of the same title. Bettez extensively interviewed 16 women of mixed race, all having one white parent and one parent of color. She considers the women “secret agent insiders to cultural whiteness,” with the experiences and ability to offer unique insights and perspectives that they see in light of their lives as mixed race individuals. Bettez will discuss “the hidden dynamics of oppression and privilege along the lines of race, class, gender and sexuality.”…

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Multiracial Families: Counted But Still Misunderstood

Racialicious
2011-10-31

Jen Chau, Guest Contributor

In the past couple of years, I have noticed a certain complacency that I never noticed before, in my eleven years of leading Swirl. The same passion and the same excitement around building multiracial communities had faded a bit. In the one year leading up to the Presidential election, we launched five new chapters (the norm had been a chapter every year or every other year). People were excited by the energy created by Obama’s campaign, and they were motivated and eager to be a part of creating supportive and inclusive multiracial communities.

And then once Obama was firmly placed in the White House, something happened. It got quiet…

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Signifying the tragic mulatto: A semiotic analysis of Alex Haley’s Queen

Howard Journal of Communications
Volume 7, Issue 2 (1996)
pages 113-126
DOI: 10.1080/10646179609361718

Mark P. Orbe

Karen E. Strother

Employing a semiotic framework, this article explores the signification process of the lead character in Alex Haley’s Queen. This popular miniseries is significant because a bi‐ethnic person is the focal point of its storyline. However, instead of transcending the traditional stereotypes associated with bi‐ethnicity, the program does little more than portray Queen as a “tragic mulatto.”; Specifically, three signifiers are discussed: bi‐ethnicity as (a) beautiful, yet threatening, (b) inherently problematic, and (c) leading to insanity.

For three days in mid-February 1993, millions of television viewers watched Alex Haley’s Queen, the epic miniseries that follows the life of a woman born in the 1840s of a European master and an enslaved African (Fein, 1993). Promoted as the third and final project featuring the story of Alex Haley’s multi- generational family, Alex Haley’s Queen extends his earlier docudramas. Roots and Roots: The Next Generation (Zoglin, 1993). Described as “Big Event television” (Goldberg, 1993), the miniseries was lauded as compelling and “of uncommon passion and substance” (O’Connor, 1993, p. C34). Each of the three two-hour segments of Queen was rated among Nielsen’s top ten television programs for the week, and the epic garnered an Emmy nomination for best miniseries.

As with Haley’s earlier works, some controversy arose regarding the accuracy…

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The Discourse of Interracial and Multicultural Identity in 19th and 20th Century American Literature

Indiana University of Pennsylvania
May 2007
373 pages
AAT 3257969

Dale M. Taylor

A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

The narratives of and about mixed-race people have provided a varied and rich artistic canvas. Using various literary works as tools for investigation, this project explores a discourse for mixed-race people and determines to what extent that discourse shapes conceptions about them. In addition, it examines to what extent subjects of mixed-racial heritage and identity establish and form new cultures, struggle for the validity of their existence in spite of racial binaries, affirm their experiences and to some degree question the validity of race itself. A discourse of mixed-race subjects is related to a discourse about race. Issues of hybridity, creolization and mestizaje have affected postcolonial subjects and Americans throughout the Diaspora. The project will consider people of mixed Native American, African, Latin, Asian, European descent and others. Literature involving and about mixed-raced subjects is their history—whether fiction or nonfiction—a history that has been silenced by political, economic and racial ideology. Mixed-racial and mixed-cultural subjects exist in the “between” spaces of racial binaries. They are “called into place” by self and others through discourse to define and negotiate power. Among the writers and works used are: Gigantic, by Marc Nesbitt, The Human Stain by Philip Roth, “Désirée’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, “Stones of the Village” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “After Many Days,” by Fannie Barrier Williams, Passing by Nella Larsen, “The Downward Path To Wisdom” by Katherine Anne Porter, “The Displaced Person” by Flannery O’Connor, Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith, “Origami” by Susan K. Ito, and poetry by Derek Walcott, Walt Whitman and others.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• One: THE DISCOURSE OF MIXED-RACE SUBJECTIVITY AND IDENTITY
  • Introduction
• Two: MIXED-RACE DISCOURSE IN “DESIREE’S BABY” BY KATE CHOPIN, “STONES OF THE VILLAGE” BY ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON, AND ‘AFTER MANY DAYS: A CHRISTMAS STORY” BY FANNIE BARRIER WILLIAMS
  • Introduction
  • “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin
  • “Stones of the Village” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
  • “After Many Days: A Christmas Story” by Fannie Barrier Williams
  • Closing Remarks For Chapter Two
• Three: MIXED RACE AND DISCOURSE IN THE WORK OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, NELLA LARSEN AND FLANNERY O’CONNOR
  • Introduction
  • “The Downward Path To Wisdom” by K.A. Porter
  • “The Displaced Person” by Flannery O’Connor
  • Passing by Nella Larsen
  • Closing Remarks For Chapter Three
• Four: YELLOWMAN, THE HUMAN STAIN, GIGANTIC AND THE DISCOURSE OF INTERRACIAL AND INTRARACIAL SUBJECTIVITY
  • Introduction
  • Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith
  • The Human Stain by Philip Roth
  • Gigantic: “The Ones Who May Kill You In The Morning” by Marc Nesbitt
  • Closing Remarks For Chapter Four
• Five: THE FUTURE AND THE DISCOURSE OF MIXED-RACE SUBJECTIVITY
  • Conclusion
• WORKS CITED
• APPENDICES
  • Appendix A – Permissions Letter Professor Natasha Trethewey
  • Appendix B – Permissions Letter Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The New York Public Library

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The Black-and-White World of Walter Ashby Plecker

The Virginian-Pilot
2004-08-18

Warren Fiske

Lacy Branham Hearl closes her eyes and travels eight decades back to what began as a sweet childhood.

There was family everywhere: her parents, five siblings, nine sets of adoring aunts and uncles and more cousins than she could count. They all lived in a Monacan Indian settlement near Amherst, their threadbare homes circling apple orchards at the foot of Tobacco Row Mountain.

As Hearl grew, however, she sensed the adults were engulfed in deepening despair. When she was 12, an uncle gathered his family and left Virginia, never to see her again. Other relatives scattered in rapid succession, some muttering the name “Plecker.”

Soon, only Hearl’s immediate family remained. Then the orchards began to close because there were not enough workers and the townspeople turned their backs and all that was left was prejudice and plight and Plecker.

Hearl shakes her head sadly.

“I thought Plecker was a devil,” she says. “Still do.”

Walter Ashby Plecker was the first registrar of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, which records births, marriages and deaths. He accepted the job in 1912. For the next 34 years, he led the effort to purify the white race in Virginia by forcing Indians and other nonwhites to classify themselves as blacks. It amounted to bureaucratic genocide…

…From the grave, Plecker is frustrating the efforts of Virginia tribes to win federal recognition and a trove of accompanying grants for housing, health care and education. One of the requirements is that the tribes prove their continuous existence since 1900. Plecker, by purging Indians as a race, has made that nearly impossible. Six Virginia tribes are seeking the permission of Congress to bypass the requirement.

“It never seems to end with this guy,” said Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi. “You wonder how anyone could be so consumed with hate.”..

…Plecker’s first 12 years on the job were groundbreaking and marked by goodwill. He educated midwives of all races on modern birthing techniques and cut the 5 percent death rate for black mothers almost in half. He developed an incubator – a combination of a laundry basket, dirt, a thermometer and a kerosene lamp – that anyone could make in an instant. Concerned by a high incidence of syphilitic blindness in black and Indian babies, he distributed silver nitrate to be put in the eyes of newborns…

…Plecker saw everything in black and white. There were no other races. There was no such thing as a Virginia Indian. The tribes, he said, had become a “mongrel” mixture of black and American Indian blood.

Their existence greatly disturbed Plecker. He was convinced that mulatto offspring would slowly seep into the white race. “Like rats when you’re not watching,” they “have been sneaking in their birth certificates through their own midwives, giving either Indian or white racial classification,” Plecker wrote.

He called them “the breach in the dike.” They had to be stopped.

Many who came into Plecker’s cross hairs were acting with pure intentions. They registered as white or Indian because that’s how their parents identified themselves. Plecker seemed to delight in informing them they were “colored,” citing genealogical records dating back to the early 1800s that he said his office possessed. His tone was cold and final.

In one letter, Plecker informed a Pennsylvania woman that the Virginia man about to become her son-in-law had black blood. “You have to set the thing straight now and we hope your daughter can see the seriousness of the whole matter and dismiss this young man without any more ado,” he wrote.

In another missive, he rejected a Lynchburg woman’s claim that her newborn was white. The father, he told her in a letter, had traces of “negro” blood.

“This is to inform you that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white,” he wrote.

“You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.

“It is a horrible thing.”…

…Plecker’s racial records were largely ignored after 1959, when his handpicked successor retired. Virginia schools were fully integrated in 1963 and, four years later, the state’s ban on interracial marriage was ruled unconstitutional. In 1975, the General Assembly repealed the rest of the Racial Integrity Act…

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Health Disparities in the Context of Mixed Race: Challenging the Ideology of Race

Advances in Nursing Science
Volume 28 Number 3 (July/September 2005)
Pages 203-211

Cathy J. Tashiro, PhD, RN, Associate Professor of Nursing
University of Washington, Tacoma

Debates are occurring about the relative contribution of genetic versus social factors to racial health disparities. An ideology of race is manifested in genetic arguments for the etiology of racial health disparities. There is also growing attention to people of mixed race since the 2000 US Census enabled them to be counted. Consideration of the complex issues raised by the existence of people of mixed race may bring clarity to the debates about racial health disparities, offer a challenge to the ideology of race, and afford important insights for the practice of research involving race.

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White Supremacists from 1920s Still Thwarting Virginia Tribes

Indian Country Today Media Network
2011-04-26

Tanya Lee

Congress is once again considering legislation that would grant federal recognition to six of Virginia’s 11 state-recognized American Indian tribes—the Chickahominy, Chickahominy Eastern Division, Nansemond, Rappahannock and Upper Mattaponi tribes and the Monacan Indian Nation. Chief Gene Adkins of the Eastern Chickahominy Tribe said, “We have been working on federal recognition for about 10 years. It is hard for me to understand why it has not gone through like we hoped.”

Virginia Democrat Rep. Jim Moran, sponsor of the House bill that would recognize the tribes, said he introduced the legislation to correct a “travesty of justice. The Virginia Indian tribes have been treated as unjustly as any tribe in the country, and that’s saying a lot. These are the tribes that helped the first English settlers in North America survive. Of all the tribes, they should have been recognized.”

There are three routes to federal recognition—administrative, judicial and legislative, explained Wayne Adkins, president of the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life and second assistant chief of the Chickahominy Tribe. “The administrative route is very expensive. It’s a long process. Tribes gather documents, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) reviews them and tells tribes what other documents they need, then it’s get in line behind all the other tribes seeking recognition. It could take 30 years and cost $1 million per tribe. Most tribes going for recognition just don’t have that kind of money.”

Walter Ashby Plecker, said Wayne Adkins, is another big reason why going through the BIA process would be difficult for the Virginia tribes. “When Native Americans were given the right to vote [in 1924], Virginia adopted racially hostile laws,” Moran explained. The laws targeted blacks—and, by a quirk of logic—American Indians. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was one of the most restrictive in the nation, but it was not the only one—30 states passed similar legislation.

Plecker, registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912-1946, was instrumental in crafting that state’s law. He argued that there were no full-blooded Indians left in the state by the early 20th century; therefore, all who claimed Indian heritage were part something else, and he decided the best thing to do would be to lump them in with blacks, since, by his mandate as registrar, a person could claim only one of two racial backgrounds in Virginia: Caucasian or “Negro.” People claiming to be Indians, Plecker said, were r­eally blacks trying to move their families into a position where they could “pass,” or claim to be Caucasian.

Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 outlawed miscegenation, and its intent, quite simply, was to keep Anglo-Saxon blood pure. Wrote Plecker: “For the purpose of this act, the term ‘white person’ shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian.… The [terms] ‘Mixed,’ ‘Issue,’ and perhaps one or two others, will be understood to mean a mixture of white and black r­aces, with the white predominating. That is the class that should be reported with the greatest care, as many of these are on the borderline, and constitute the real danger of race intermixture.”…

…Though Social Darwinism and eugenics originated in England, their real champions at the beginning of the 20th century were Americans. Plecker was a zealous eugenicist, advocating both a­nti-miscegenation laws and sterilization of the “unfit,” while also proselytizing that Caucasians and non-Caucasians should be kept separated. As part of his work in the Virginia Statistics Office, he eradicated records of Indian births and marriages in order to support his directive that all Indians were to be categorized as blacks. These are the very records that Virginia’s Indian tribes now need in order to receive federal recognition. Other records of tribal significance were destroyed in fires….

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