Mixed Race Studies

Identifying with Multiple Races: A Social Movement that Succeeded but Failed?

PSC Research Report (Report No. 01-491)
The Population Studies Center (PSC) at the University of Michigan
2004
33 pages

Reynolds Farley, Research Professor Emeritus
University of Michigan
Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research

Prior to the 1960s, civil rights organizations sought to minimize the collecting of racial information since such data were often employed to deny opportunities to minorities. By 1970, federal agencies and courts frequently used racial information to enforce civil rights laws by ensuring the minorities were appropriately represented in jobs or in schools and that equitable electoral districts were drawn. In the 1970s, advocacy groups struggled over racial definitions. In 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defined official races and mandated the gathering of data about them. A decade later a small but highly effective multiracial movement emerged. They contended that many Americans come from several racial backgrounds and should be permitted to identify with a multiracial category. OMB, in 1997, altered the federal regulations, recognized five major races and gave everyone the option to identify with as many races as the wish.

The Census of 2000 adopted the principle that persons could identify with more than one race. About 2.4 percent–or one in 40–did so. Approximately one-third of these were multiracial because they wrote a Spanish-term for their second race. That is, 1.6 percent of the population or 4.5 million marked two or more of the five major races defined by OMB. White/Other, and White/Indian were the only multiracial groups marked by one million or more.

These innovative multiracial data have not provoked litigation nor bitter controversies as legislatures analyzed census information to reapportion electoral districts. Before to the enumeration, advocacy groups strongly endorsed the use of a multiracial category but they have not highlighted this issue now that data are becoming available from the Census. The multiracial movement succeeded in fundamentally changing the way the government collects racial data but, thus far, there are no great changes in outcomes nor are there prominent pending lawsuit focused on the rights of multiracial.

Read the entire report here.

Race or mongrel: a brief history of the rise and fall of the ancient races of earth: a theory that the fall of nations is due to intermarriage with alien stocks: a demonstration that a nation’s strength is due to racial purity: a prophecy that America will sink to early decay unless immigration is rigorously restricted

L. C. Page and Company
1908
399 pages

Alfred P. Shultz

Table of Contents

I. The Mongrel in Nature
II.  The Mongrel in History
III. The Hamites in India
IV. The Chaldeans
V.  The Phoenicians
VI.  The Carthaginians
VII.  The Egyptians
VIII. The Jews
IX.  The Gipsies
X.  The Hindoos
XI.  Hellas
XII. The Greeks
XIII. The Pan-European Mongrel in Rome
XIV. Sicily
XV. The Lombards in Italy
XVI.  Heredity and Language
XVII. Race Problems in German Lands
XVIII. The South American Mongrel
XIX.  The Monroe Doctrine
XX.  The Yellow Races
XXI.  The Anglo-Saxons
XXII. The Anglo-Saxons in America
XXIII. Immigration: Who in America?
XXIV. Immigration: Men or the Balance-sheet?
XXV. Immigration: Anglo-Saxons and Germans
XXVI. Immigration: The German-Americans
XXVII.   Immigration: The Pan-European in America
XXVIII.  The American Negro
XXIX.  Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Sometimes there is a physical impossibility preventing the male clement from reaching the female ovule, as is the case with a plant having a pistil too long for the pollen tubes to reach the ovarium. It has also been observed that, when the pollen of one species is placed on the stigma of another species, though the pollen tubes protrude, they do not penetrate the stigmatic surface.

The male element may reach the female element, but be incapable of causing an embryo to be developed. A great many of the few embryos which develop after crossing perish at a very early period. The early death of the embryo is a frequent cause of the sterility of first crosses.

Of the very few embryos that are normal at delivery a great many die within the first days of their life. Darwin writes: 11 Mr. Salter has given the result of an examination of about five hundred eggs produced from various crosses between three species of Gallus and their hybrids; the majority of these eggs had been fertilized, and in the majority of the fertilized eggs the embryos had either been partially developed and had then perished, or had become nearly mature; but the young chickens had been unable to break through the shell. Of the chickens which were born, more than four-fifths died within the first few days or, at latest, weeks, without any obvious cause, apparently from mere inability to live; so that from five hundred eggs only twelve chickens were reared.”

???own. Turn the domestic animals loose, leave them to nature, and in ten years no mongrel will exist. From the foregoing considerations we derive this conclusion:

Nature prevents the development of the mongrel; in the few cases in which nature has for the time being successfully been outraged and a mongrel produced, nature degrades that mongrel mercilessly and in time stamps it out.

Nature suffers no mongrel to live.

Read “The Origin of Species,” by Charles Darwin…

The intermarriage of people of one colour with people” of another colour always leads to deterioration. Prof. Agassiz says, ” Let any one who doubts the evil of the mixture of races, and is inclined from a mistaken philanthropy to break down all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the deterioration consequent upon an amalgamation of races, more widespread here than in any country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a mongrel nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy.

The most favourable opinion held in regard to the white-Indian half-breeds in Brazil is very poor. They are a lazy and a troublesome class, and much inferior to the original stock. (From ” Brazil,” by C. C. Andrews.)

Darwin notes in half-breeds a return toward the habits of savage life. He says: ” Many years ago, before I thought of the present subject, I was struck with the fact that in South America men of complicated descent between negroes, Indians, and Spaniards rarely had, whatever the cause might be, a good expression.” Livingstone, after speaking of a half-caste man on the Zambesi, described as a rare monster of inhumanity, remarks: “It is unaccountable why half-castes such as he are so much more cruel than the Portuguese; but such is undoubtedly the case.” Humboldt speaks in strong terms of the bad character of the Zambos, or half-castes between Indians and negroes, and this conclusion has been arrived at by various observers. An inhabitant of Africa remarked to Livingstone, that God made the white man, God made the black man, but the devil made the half-castes…

Read the entire book here.

Meridians: Mapping Metaphors of Mixed Race Indentity

University of Florida
August 2004
238 pages

Shane Willow Trudell

A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in partial fulfullment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

Although mixed race identity traditionally has been equated with conflict, the conflict is not necessarily lived but may be more accurately viewed as a conflict of language, a conflict of metaphors. Traditionally, metaphors of mixed race identity have reflected notions of opposition and hierarchy; at the same time, mixed race individuals have searched for Utopian spaces in which conflict and tragedy are alleviated and race is imagined as a unifying, rather than divisive, idea. This study looks at the treatment of mixed race women in twentieth century novels, beginning with Jean Toomer’s Cane (1925) and then jumping to the end of the century—to Fran Ross’s Oreo (1975), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), and Jenoyne Adams’s Resurrecting Mingus (2001)—to study texts written during and after the Black Power Movement. It begins with an analysis of metaphors of blackness and whiteness that developed in the nineteenth century and then questions the ways these metaphors have traditionally complicated possibilities for mixed race identity, resulting in replications of the tragic mulatto and adherence to the one-drop rule. Subsequently, the analysis moves to contemporary metaphors of mixed race identity to explore their limits and possibilities and the ways in which these metaphors are implicated by questions of gender. The texts under analysis respond to the same set of problems, including the longing for Utopian spaces of wholeness and harmony within mixed race identities and non-traditional families. Additionally, these texts contain a latent struggle over questions of history, family, and racial identity. They long to articulate Utopian visions while they are confined within the historical moments and literary formulas in which they were written, and they struggle to negotiate postmodern questions of identity, self, wholeness, and harmony—both individual and communal—while bound by literary and social conventions that resist the Utopian visions they hope to articulate. Each text attempts to envision Utopian social, political, familial and individual spaces where the “play” of identity—the possibility of negotiation and individualization—may be manifested, Utopian visions of harmony may be realized, and new metaphors may be articulated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PREFACE
• ABSTRACT
• CHAPTER
• 1. CARTOGRAPHIES OF RACIAL IDENTITY
  • Intimate Cartography
  • Mapping Past Paths and New Directions
  • Mapping the Contemporary Landscape
  • Mapping Metaphors
  • Mixed Metaphors
  • Playing With the Map
  • Mapping the Path Ahead
• 2. THE IVORY TOWER AND THE KETTLE BLACK: NINETEENTH CENTURY METAPHORS OF RACE
  • Race Crystallized
  • Climbing the Ivory Tower
  • Climbing into the Kettle Black
  • Continued Crystallization
• 3. LINES OF CONTACT AND COHERENCE: MERIDIANS IN THE WORK OF JEAN TOOMER
  • Points of Departure
  • Dividing Lines
  • Transcending the Divide
  • Points of Contact
• 4. TRAVELING THROUGH FRAN ROSS’S OREO, NO ORDINARY COOKIE
  • The Frontier: Where Two Come Together
  • TraveHng Beyond the Boundaries
  • “She Got Womb”
  • Travelers, Questers, and Cookies
  • Traveling in/as Twos
• 5. RE-VISIONS OF DIFFERENCE IN DANZY SENNA’S CAUCASIA
  • Disappearing: The Skin We’re In
  • Bodies at Play: Performing (and Being) Race(d)
  • Appearing in the Mirroring
  • Longing and Belonging
  • Appearing in Motion and Blurring the Lines
  • Reappearing beyond Recognition
• 6. HOME LIFE: CONFLICTED DOMESTICITY IN JENOYNE ADAMS’S RESURRECTING MINGUS
  • Home Bound
  • Divided Houses
  • Cracking the Mirror
  • Coming Home
• 7. MERIDIANS ON THE MAP OF IDENTITY
• WORKS CITED
• BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Read the entire dissertation here.

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…

Read the entire thesis here.

Hybrid Hotties: Intersections of Gender and Race in Multiracial Bodies

Rhode Island School of Design
55 Angel Street, MET Room A
Providence, Rhode Island
Monday, 2011-03-21, 19:00-20:30 EDT (Local Time)
(free and open to the public)
Information: 401-277-4957

Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
Brown University

This lecture and discussion will explore the supposed beauty of mixed race faces and bodies. According to a recent poll in Allure Magazine, most people believe mixed race faces are the most beautiful. Mix-d:UK (based in Manchester, England) is currently casting for their second “Mixed Face” modeling contest. Marketing firms are cashing in on the “mixed race wave” and have begun marketing products using racially ambiguous actors and actresses. While it seems like these are markers of racial progress, we need to question the reality of this supposition. Perceptions of mixed race attractiveness are dependent on a number of factors such as the racial mixture and gender of the individual being viewed. Which mixed race people are “beautiful”? Are some multiracials more attractive than others? Does any of this change or dismantle long-standing notions of beauty based on Western European ideals? And does “beauty” inevitably lead to political or social equality?

Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D. is an award-winning educator, consultant, writer, editor and thinker. She facilitates discussions of race, ethnicity, identity formation and media to foster diversity and create open dialogue.

Her expertise has been sought by institutions such as the University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University, University of Rhode Island, Simmons College, Emerson College, and Brown University. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Brown University since 2009 where she has taught courses on ethnic Los Angeles history and multiracial identities as well as acted as advisor and Senior Thesis Editor for Ethnic Studies majors.

In addition to teaching, Dr. Ryder is an expert on diversity outreach and was selected as the Graduate Student in Residence for Diversity Outreach by the University of Southern California’s Graduate School and was Program Coordinator for the Summer Humanities Institute at UCLA.

Dr. Ryder earned her Ph.D. in American Studies & Ethnicity from the University of Southern California, where she was named a Top Graduate for 2008. She also holds a Master of Professional Writing (USC), a Master of Afro-American Studies (UCLA) and BA from Simmons College in English and African American Studies. Take a workshop or class with Dr. Ryder, or invite her to your college or corporate campus.

Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

Demography
Volume 48, Number 1
pages 127-152
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-010-0005-0

Jenifer L. Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

Bridget K. Gorman, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001–2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported “best race” category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single “best race” category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Creolisation of London Kinship: Mixed African-Caribbean and White British Extended Families, 1950-2003

Amsterdam University Press
November 2010
282 pages
paperback ISBN: 978 90 8964 235 6

Elaine Bauer, Fellow at the Young Foundation; Associate Fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London

In the last 50 years, the United Kingdom has witnessed a growing proportion of mixed African-Caribbean and white British families. With rich new primary evidence of mixed-race in the capital city, The Creolisation of London Kinship thoughtfully explores this population. Making an indelible contribution to both kinship research and wider social debates, the book emphasises a long-term evolution of family relationships across generations. Individuals are followed through changing social and historical contexts, seeking to understand in how far many of these transformations may be interpreted as creolisation. Examined, too, are strategies and innovations in relationship construction, the social constraints put upon them, the special significance of women and children in kinship work and the importance of non-biological as well as biological notions of family relatedness.

Lone Mothers of Children from Mixed Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds: A Case Study

Single Parent Action Network (SPAN)
January 2010
41 pages

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
London South Bank University

This report draws on case study findings with 10 lone mothers of mixed racial and ethnic children to look at their everyday experiences of raising their children, particularly the ways in which they seek to give their children a sense of identity and belonging and what support or challenges they face in doing so.

Read the entire report here.

Love in black and white

Electronic Precinct
University of Liverpool
August 1998

Muriel Fletcher and Margaret Todd, (second and third from left, middle row) with students and staff of the School of Social Science 1926-27
Source: University of Liverpool

Two students who graduated from this University in 1927 play important roles in the film ‘Love in black and white’, which will be broadcast as part of the “Windrush” series. One graduate, Muriel Fletcher, wrote a report about mixed marriages in dockland Liverpool which laid the foundation for 50 years of stigmatisation. The other, Margaret Todd, later Simey, spent time in the Caribbean and, on her return to Liverpool, became a champion of the black community.

The programme was made by Liverpool producer/director Bea Freeman, who is herself a Liverpool graduate and one of the University’s first ‘Second Chance’ students.

‘Fifty years ago, the Fletcher report stigmatised white women who married black men. Now, white women who have been happily married to black men for half a century get their chance to tell their story. It is a story of the stigma and discrimination which they, their partners and their children suffered’, she said…

Read the entire article here.

Race and Mixed Race (LS 355)

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Fall 2011

Explores the history of racial classification in the U.S. with special attention to the census and the role of the state more generally in defining race. Emphasis on how race-mixing has been understood in American culture, and on the current literature on “multiracials” and the future of “race” in the U.S. Readings are drawn from interdisciplinary sources, but examined from a sociological perspective. Same as AAS 355 and SOC 355.