Mixed Race Studies

He speaks in your voice: American.

arts & sciences
Boston College
Fall 2009

Tricia Brick

Gene Andrew Jarrett began his 2006 book Deans and Truants with a deceptively simple question: What is African American literature? The term, after all, refers not merely to the subject matter of the works it describes but to literature that both represents the African American experience and is written by authors who are themselves black. But what, then, of black authors who have written works without black characters? Or of those who are of mixed race? “You can’t take this question for granted, because it’s at the heart of so many questions of human identity and, in particular, race,” says Jarrett, an associate professor of English.

The editor of such books as African American Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader and The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892–1938 (with Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), Jarrett has spent his career studying racial representation in American literature—in particular, how African Americans have been understood both as characters in and as authors of literary works over the last two centuries. His Deans and Truants looks at black authors throughout American history who have used literature to challenge beliefs about race that were accepted as truths in their day.

And in his forthcoming book Representing the Race: The Politics of African American Literature from Jefferson to Obama, Jarrett examines the political implications of African American literature—from the role that Phillis Wheatley’s poetry played in Thomas Jefferson’s disparagement of African American political unity to the role that Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father has had in shaping the bipartisan, pragmatic political culture of his presidency…

Read the entire article here.

Being Brown (episode 22)

Hapa Happy Hour: A lively discussion and celebration of the mixed heritage experience.
2011-07-22

The ladies discuss standards of beauty and “white” privilege.

Download the episode (00:22:28) here.

TV Review: Mixed Race Britain – Mixed Britannia

BioNews
Number 630 (2011-10-24)

Anoushka Shepherd

Mixed Race Britain: Mixed Britannia, BBC2, 6-20 October 2011, Presented by George Alagiah

I am mixed race, and thereby a member the fastest growing ethnic minority in the UK. My British dad met my Sri Lankan mum while travelling in the 1970s. They married and settled in Manchester where I grew up. And although I was definitely alive to the fact that their marriage was a joining of two very different cultures, I had no idea of the deep and contentious history of mixed relationships in this country.

In this three-part documentary, George Alagiah recounts the largely untold story of mixed race Britain and the many love stories that overcame extreme social hardship to create it…

…In summary, all three programmes are packed with interviews and are rich in photographs and footage from the archives. This is a very real and intimate recollection of the history of this country told in the refreshingly honest words of those who were there. All the stories told are different, interesting and moving in their own ways…

Read the entire review here.

Book review: What’s the use of race? Modern governance and the biology of difference

BioNews
Number 634 (2011-11-21)

Dr. Rachael Panizzo

Decoding the human genome has revealed details of our evolution and patterns of migration across the world. The study of genetic diversity between ethnic groups can help explain the ways in which race influences our biology and susceptibility to disease. It promises to deliver a new era of personalised medicine, where an individual’s unique DNA profile is used to make predictions about their future health; where specialised drugs are tailored to individual patients, based in part on their genetic ancestry.

But what do we mean by ‘race’, exactly? Is race a relevant biological or medical category, and how is it defined in practice?

These issues are considered in the collection of essays What’s the use of race? Modern governance and the biology of difference, edited by Dr Ian Whitmarsh of the University of California San Francisco, and Dr David Jones at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The contributors explore the use of race in biomedical research and some of the emerging practical applications in medicine and forensic science. Their diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives result in an engaging book that highlights the complexity of the issue.
 
Genetics has become the foundation of a new ‘biocitizenship’, where it is our civic duty to know and share our own genetic information and engage with our health at a molecular level. Common genetic make-up replaces common social experience, and group identities are carved along lines of shared genetic traits, ‘reinterpreting existing political identities and creating new ones’, says Professor Dorothy Roberts, from Northwestern University. Social and political categories of difference—such as gender or race…

…In the medical setting, subtle statistical differences are often interpreted as blanket differences between races, and individual patients are assumed to reflect the average characteristics of their race. But Jay Kaufman, associate professor of epidemiology at McGill University, and Professor Richard Cooper, of Loyola University, Chicago, demonstrate that in practice, a patient’s ethnic identity adds little to the diagnosis or prognosis of disease and is rarely medically relevant.

The essays of Professor Jonathan Kahn (Hamline University), and Pamela Sankar, associate professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania emphasise how embedded racial categories are in forensic science, giving examples of DNA fingerprinting and phenotyping. Originally, racial information was used in DNA fingerprinting technology to improve accuracy, but as it has improved substantially, Professor Kahn argues it is now superfluous, irrelevant, and risks perpetuating racial stereotypes – ‘conflating race, genes and violent crime’…

…Should race be used at all in medical research? Many authors argue that its inclusion reifies the concept of race as a fundamental human characteristic. But Dr Kaufmann, Professor Cooper, and Harvard School of Public Health Professor Nancy Krieger suggest race does have a place in biomedical research, as a social category—including information about race or ethnicity is a way of documenting health inequalities, which would otherwise be invisible and ignored….

Read the entire review here.

James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex–Colored Man: A Century Later (Session 529)

Modern Language Association
127th MLA Annual Convention
2012-01-05 through 2012-01-05
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, Washingon

Program arranged by the Division on Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century American Literature

Presiding

Gene Andrew Jarrett, Associate Professor of English
Boston University

Speakers

1. “Music, Race, and Nation in Johnson’s Autobiography”

Erich Nunn, Assistant Professor of English
Auburn University
 
2. “An Old Negro in a New Century: Locating the Southern Slave in Johnson’s Autobiography”

Adena Spingarn
Harvard University
 
3. “The Ex-Colored among Us: Johnson’s Autobiography and the New Millennial Multiracialism”

Michele Elam, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of English and Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Stanford University

4. “Pragmatic Nationalism in Johnson’s Autobiography”

Michael Clay Hooper, Assistant Professor of English
Prairie View A&M University 

For more information, click here.

Dreams of a Life

The Arts Desk
2011-12-14

Nick Hasted

Carol Morley’s moving documentary brings a dead woman lost in London back to life

The decontamination squad scraped the remains of 38-year-old ex-City professional Joyce Vincent from her seat, in front of a TV which had flickered unseen for three years. They took her wrapped Christmas presents too, and left unsolvable mysteries. How did she die? And how does someone become so alone that they’re left in a north-London flat above a busy shopping centre till their body melts into it?

When director Carol Morley read a Sun headline announcing the macabre discovery in 2006, she pined for those answers, putting ads in the London press, the internet and even a black cab, and working obsessively towards this documentary. It gives feature-length attention to an unknown soldier of 21st-century urban life: a woman who was ignored till she disappeared.

…Death’s tragedy, of course, is often worse for the living. From a primary schoolfriend to work colleagues, Morley’s interviewees show genuine affection, puzzlement and shock as Vincent’s jigsaw is pieced incompletely together. The most heartbreaking figure in her film, though, isn’t Vincent, but Martin, that old boyfriend, who she once asked to marry, and always dropped everything for her. Parental disapproval at her mixed race stymied the wedding but, as he finally breaks down on camera and wails, she was the love of his life. He is bereft for himself that they didn’t stick together, that he didn’t help her even more, that she’s gone…

Read the entire article here.

An art history mystery at Worcester Art Museum

Metrowest Daily News
Framingham, Massachusetts
2011-12-12

Chris Bergeron, Daily News Staff

WORCESTER—Forget the da Vinci Code. There’s no Knight Templars or murderous albinos, but the life and death of Julien Hudson and the whereabouts of his paintings is a fascinating “art historical mystery’’ waiting to be solved.

The second-earliest documented painter of African descent in the U.S. [after Joshua Johnson (see article “The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson”)], Hudson was making his mark as a portraitist in New Orleans in the early 1800s before dying of unknown causes, leaving behind just six canvases.

Who was the man with searching eyes in one of his remaining paintings? Did he kill himself, as some suspect? With his sixth painting discovered by a New England collector, can more of Hudson’s valuable works be found in area shops, flea markets or your attic?

An intriguing exhibit, “In Search of Julien Hudson,” at the Worcester Art Museum, offers the first retrospective about the man and the artist whose enigmatic career casts light on the lives of free blacks and mixed race people in Louisiana before the Civil War?

Organizer William Keyse Rudolph said, “The search for Julien Hudson isn’t over.”…

…For many New Englanders, “In Search of Julien Hudson’’ will provide an exciting opportunity to learn about a vital subculture of the pre-Civil War South that belies some stereotypes and confirms others.

Rudolph explained that Hudson was the mixed-race grandson of a woman who been freed from slavery and the oldest of four children born from the union of Desiree Marcos and Thomas Hudson, an English merchant and ship’s chandler.

From its founding in 1718 to its sale in 1803 to the U.S. as part of the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans maintained a class of free people of color who were regarded as a “third caste,’’ with a legal and social status that positioned them between the enslaved and free whites.

Hudson’s life reveals many of the possibilities and limitations experienced by free blacks in New Orleans…

Read the entire article here.

Jean Toomer and Politics (Session 465)

Modern Language Association
127th MLA Annual Convention
2012-01-05 through 2012-01-08
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, Washington

A Special Session
Saturday, 2012-01-07, 12:00-13:15 PST (Local Time)
Room 6A, WSCC

Presiding:

Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

Speakers:

Barbara Clare Foley, Professor of English and American Studies
Rutgers University, Newark

Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

Charles Scruggs, Professor of English
University of Arizona

Belinda Wheeler, Assistant Professor of English
Paine  College, Augusta, Georgia

This roundtable will focus on the 2011 edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane, edited by Rudolph Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and in particular on the editors’ provocative new thesis that Toomer was a Negro who chose to pass for white. Presenters will confront, examine, and discuss Byrd and Gates’s thesis.

For more information, click here.

Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian

Purdue University Press
1994-06-01
248 pages
6 x 9
Hardback ISBN 10: 1557530513; ISBN 13: 9781557530516
eBook ISBN 10: 1612490948; ISBN 13: 9781612490946

José Raimundo Maia Neto, Professor of the Philosophy
Federal University of Minas Gerais

Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian examines the towering figure of nineteenth century Latin American letters from a fresh perspective. Machado is a writer of philosophical fiction. His subtle criticism of cherished institutions is evident to all readers, and his skepticism (sometimes confused with pessimism) has often been mentioned by critics. Not until Maia Neto’s study, however, has Machado’s philosophical position been seriously examined by a philosopher.

Maia Neto traces Machado’s particular brand of skepticism to that of the ancient philosopher, Pyrrho of Elis, and reveals the sources through which he inherited that line of thought. The author then shows how Machado’s own philosophic development (as seen primarily through his fiction) follows the stages proposed by Pyrrho for the development of a skeptical world-view: flight from hypocritical society in favor of domestic quietude, investigation of manipulative social interactions, suspension of judgment, and mental tranquility.

Impressive for both the breadth and the depth of its reading, the study pays particular attention to the Brazilian master’s short stories and novels, pointing out how characters during different phases of the author’s career tend to portray the stages in the development of a skeptical philosophy.

For those who study literature, Maia Neto’s book will provide a foundation for understanding the thought of one of the most important writers of the Americas. For philosophers, the book will reveal a fascinating modern world-view, thoroughly rooted in the traditions of ancient skepticism.

Racial Hegemony in America: The Struggle for identity Among the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southern United States

2004/2005 Portland State University McNair Scholars Online Journal
Volume 1, Transformative Possibilities: Transcending Interlocking Boundaries
pages 150-164

Natasha Hartsfield
Faculty Mentors: Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate

The notion of race was introduced to the Americas at the time of colonization. For the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes, racism has led to the rejection of their tribal heritage from both tribal and United States governments. The Black Indians are of both African and Native American ancestry with a history born in America and rich with resistance against colonial power. Blood quantum, the governmental requisite for tribal membership, is but one of the many laws put in place to govern Native American tribes. This introduces the question: Why, in a Nation that claims “freedom for all,” does there continue to be groups of people whose identities are not recognized? Why are descendants of both Native American and African ancestors ineligible for education scholarships, land allotments, gaming and fishing rights and other tribal allowances? In 1965 African-Americans were marching on Washington to demand their rights as American citizens. Today, Black Indians are marching on Washington from Indian Territory in Oklahoma to demand their rights. As a people who represent the continuing struggle for American freedom, the case of the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes demonstrates how hegemony introduced the hypodescent rule or “one drop of blood” rule by the United States, laid the foundation for systemic effects of the racial hierarchy within the tribes. As this is an issue that may be further explored, future research might include a comparative study of other unrecognized groups that have been affected by colonialism, incorporating archival research, research of material culture and oral histories.

Introduction

There are many tribal groups within the United States who remain unrecognized by governmental and societal institutions due to issues of race. The Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes represent a community of individuals who are the descendants of both Native American and African ancestors from the Southeastern region of the United States.

At the birth of the American colonial experiment, race served as a distinguishing factor in roles of domination and subordination among individuals. Later, race became codified into law through legislation such as the Dawes Act, which was, and continues to be defined by blood quantum. Today, the concept of race continues to be woven deeply into the fabric of American society. For the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes, racism has led to the rejection of their tribal heritage from both the tribal and the United States governments. Members of the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes are a self-ascribed people, who have for many years, endured the struggle of gaining both federal and tribal recognition as an existing people with a rich history in the United States. The significance of self-defined identities is to be emphasized here. How is membership defined as per the individual and the tribe, contrary to the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the United States? Biology or blood quantum is but one example of governmental provisions imposed on Native tribes. When such constraints for group inclusion are made, they serve to disregard the Native customs and imply the colonial ideology, creating subsequent damage to the social fabric within the tribes. Why in a Nation that claims “freedom for all”, there continue to be groups of people whose communities are not recognized? Why are the descendants of both Native American and African ancestors ineligible for education scholarships, land allotments, gaming and fishing rights and other tribal allowances? Is the reason for such an unequal distribution of rights the result of socio-economic structure founded on the basis of racial inequality? The story of the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes demonstrates how the introduction of hypodescent, or “one drop of blood” rule, by the United States, laid the foundation for the systemic effects of the racial hierarchy within the tribes. It remains to be seen whether the civil rights of multi-racial people will become acknowledged in law. As one member of the Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes, Angela Molette exclaims: “The descendants of African ancestored tribes of the United States are not extinct.” (2004). It is beyond time that United States accepts its obligation to its people to provide cultural and ethnic recognition as per the terms of each community…

Read the entire article here.