Mixed Race Studies

Intelligence of Negroes of Mixed Blood in Canada

The Journal of Negro Education
Volume 10, Number 4 (October, 1941)
pages 650-652

H. A. Tanser

Miscegenation, as between the White and Negro races, presents an interesting field for study. Herskovits, Hooton, Peterson and Lanier, and others have attempted to investigate such so-called racial differences as those which concern colour of skin, hair and eyes, thickness of lips, the nasal breadth, prognathism, interpupillary distance, texture of hair, etc. An attempt has also been made to study the relationship between intelligence and certain Negroid traits. As a result of his research a few years ago Herskovits came to the conclusion that the American Negro is forming a type which lies somewhere between the European, the African, and the American Indian. The increasing uniformity of type in the American Negro he attributes to social rather than biological factors. Peterson and Lanier, after testing ninety-one cases on the Otis, and forty-nine cases on the Myers, report that there is no significant relation between lightness of skin colour and intelligence. They find a coefficient of correlation of .044±.067 for the first group, and .180±.091 for the second group.

While Davenport and Steggerda, on investigation of race crossing in Jamaica, hold the opinion that crossing Whites and Negroes results in disharmonic combinations, Reuter, on the other hand, champions the cause of mulattoes on account of the hybrid vigour they display as compared with the general lack of achievement on the part of full-blooded Negroes. He makes the interesting contention that mulattoes are the result of a process of biological selection in which the best elements of the Negro race have been assimilated into the mixed blood of the mulattoes. He also makes the observation that in the days of slavery the White masters naturally selected the intellectually superior Negro women for their mistresses. He and Herskovits further contend that this process of biological selection has been perpetuated by the tendency that exists for talented Negroes to marry girls whose skin is light in colour. On account of the social cleavage that still exists between the Whites and Negroes, to a greater extent in the Southern States and to a less extent in the Northern States and Canada, one would naturally expect that any race crossing that takes place would represent the best elements of the Negroes and the less superior elements of the Whites.

In investigating the intelligence of Negroes, Mixed-bloods, and Whites, the present writer would like to emphasize…

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Color, Race, and Genomic Ancestry in Brazil: Dialogues between Anthropology and Genetics

Current Anthropology
Volume 50, Number 6 (2009)
pages 787-819
DOI: 10.1086/644532

Ricardo Ventura Santos, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Public Health
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
also Associate professor of Anthropology
National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Peter H. Fry, Professor
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Departamento de Antropologia
Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais/UFRJ, Largo de São Francisco de Paula 1

Simone Monteiro, Senior Researcher
Oswaldo Cruz Institute

Marcos Chor Maio, Senior Researcher
House of Oswaldo Cruz
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

José Carlos Rodrigues, Professor
Fluminense Federal University
also Associate Professor
Catholic University

Luciana Bastos-Rodrigues
Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at the Institute of Biological Sciences
Federal University of Minas Gerais

Sérgio D. J. Pena, Professor of Biochemistry and Immunology
Institute of Biological Sciences
Federal University of Minas Gerais

In the contemporary world, “race” narratives are so multifaceted that at times, different views of the concept appear mutually incompatible. In recent decades biologists, especially geneticists, have repeatedly stated that the notion of race does not apply to the human species. On the other hand, social scientists claim that race is highly significant in cultural, historical, and socioeconomic terms because it molds everyday social relations and because it is a powerful motivator for social and political movements based on race differences. In this paper we present the results of an interdisciplinary research project incorporating approaches from genetics and anthropology. Our objective is to explore the interface between information about biology/genetics and perceptions about color/race in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We argue that the data and interpretation of our research resonate far beyond the local level, stimulating discussion about methodological, theoretical, and political issues of wider national and international relevance. Topics addressed include the complex terminology of color/race classification in Brazil, perceptions about ancestry in the context of ideologies of Brazilian national identity, and the relationship between genetic information about the Brazilian population and a sociopolitical agenda that turns on questions of race and racism.

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The Future is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet, Revised Edition

University Press of Colorado
2000
136 pages
8.2 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
Paper ISBN:978-0-87081-576-8

Virgilio Elizondo, Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology; Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies and Kellogg Institute
Notre Dame University

Twelve years after it was first published, The Future is Mestizo is now updated and revised with a new foreword, introduction, and epilogue. This book speaks to the largest demographic change in twentieth-century United States history-the Latinization of music, religion, and culture.

Contents
Contents

• Foreword by Sandra Cisneros
• Preface The Great Border
• Introduction The Future Is Mestizo: We Are the Shades by David Carrasco
• 1. A Family of Migrants
  • My City
  • My Family
  • My Neighborhood and Parish
• 2. Who Am I?
  • Moving into a “Foreign Land”
    vAcceptance, Belonging, and Affirmation
  • Experiences of Non-Being
  • Neither/Nor but Something New
• 3. A Violated People
  • The Masks of Suffering
  • The Eruption
  • The Eruption Continues
  • Going to the Roots
• 4. Marginality
  • Festive Breakthrough
  • Institutional Barriers
  • Invisible Mechanisms
• 5. My People Resurrect at Tepeyac
  • The Dawn of a New Day
  • From Death to New Life
  • First “Evange!ium” of the Americas
  • Beginning of the New Race
• 6. Galilee of Mestizos
  • Is Human Liberation Possible?
  • Conquest or Birth
  • The Unimagined Liberation
  • From Margination to Unity
• 7. Toward Universal Mestizaje
  • From Unsuspected Limitations to Unsuspected Richness
  • A New Being: Universal and Local
  • Continued Migrations
  • Threshold of a New Humanity
  • The Ultimate Mestizaje
• Epilogue: A Reflection Twelve Years Later
  • The Negative
  • The Challenge

Is the Future Mestizo and Mulatto? A Theological-Sociological Investigation into the Racial and Ethnic Future of the Human Person within the U.S.

Zygon Center for Religion and Science
Third Annual Student Symposium on Science and Spirituality
Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Illinois
2011-03-25
13 pages

Kevin Patrick Considine
Loyola University, Chicago

My study is a theological investigation into the racial and ethnic future of the human person within a changing racial context. I examine the concept of mestizaje/mulatez, which has its theological roots in the work of Virgilio Elizondo, and perform a mutually critical correlation between it and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s and George Yancey’s sociologies of the changing racial structure. Elizondo is pointing towards God’s creation of an eschatological people of cultural and biological hybridity who embody a new creation that transcends racial categorization and is made incarnate in the person of the Galilean Jesus. At the same time, mestizaje/mulatez contains ambiguity in that it possesses both liberating and oppressive possibilities for the future of humankind and its struggle against racialized suffering. Nevertheless, I contend that mestizaje/mulatez embodies a small sacrament of salvation, a cautious hope, for the redemption of the human community from racial suffering within an emerging multiracial context.

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The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism

University of Minnesota Press
2008
272 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-5005-7
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-5004-0

Estelle Tarica, Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture
University of California, Berkeley

The only recent English-language work on Spanish-American indigenismo from a literary perspective, Estelle Tarica’s work shows how modern Mexican and Andean discourses about the relationship between Indians and non-Indians create a unique literary aesthetic that is instrumental in defining the experience of mestizo nationalism.

Engaging with narratives by Jesús Lara, José María Arguedas, and Rosario Castellanos, among other thinkers, Tarica explores the rhetorical and ideological aspects of interethnic affinity and connection. In her examination, she demonstrates that these connections posed a challenge to existing racial hierarchies in Spanish America by celebrating a new kind of national self at the same time that they contributed to new forms of subjection and discrimination.

Going beyond debates about the relative merits of indigenismo and mestizaje, Tarica puts forward a new perspective on indigenista literature and modern mestizo identities by revealing how these ideologies are symptomatic of the dilemmas of national subject formation. The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism offers insight into the contemporary resurgence and importance of indigenista discourses in Latin America.

Racial Identities, Genetic Ancestry, and Health in South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay

Palgrave Macmillan
October 2011
272 pages
Includes: 10 pages of figures, 10 pages of tables
5.500 x 8.250 inches
ISBN: 978-0-230-11061-8, ISBN10: 0-230-11061-4

Edited by

Sahra Gibbon, Wellcome Trust Fellow
Department of Social Anthropology
University College London

Ricardo Ventura Santos, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Public Health
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
also Associate professor of Anthropology
National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Mónica Sans, Associate Professor and Director of the Biological Anthropology Department
University de la Republic in Uruguay

This unique edited collection brings together biologists, geneticists, and social and biological anthropologists to examine the connections between genetics, identity, and health in South America. It addresses a wide range of theoretical issues raised by the rapid changes in the field of genetic sciences. Contributors come from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, the UK, and the United States, providing a comparative cultural perspective for scholars, researchers, and students.

Table of Contents

• Preface; N.Redclift
• PART I: DOING AND DEFINING “BIO-CULTURAL” ANTHROPOLOGY AS APPLIED TO GENETICS
  • Anthropology, Race, and the Dilemmas of Identity in the Age of Genomics; R.Ventura Santos & M.Chor Maio
  • The Inexistence of Biology Verses the Existence of Social Races: Can Science Inform Society?; S.D.J.Pena & T.S.Birchal
  • Ethics/Bioethics and Anthropological Fieldwork; A.L.Caratini
• PART II: ADMIXTURE MAPPING AND GENOMICS IN SOUTH AMERICA AND BEYOND
  • Admixture Dynamics in Hispanics: A Shift in the Nuclear Genetic Ancestry of a South American Population Isolate; L.Ruiz
  • Pharmacogenetic Studies in the Brazilian Population; G.Suarez-Kurtz & S.D.J.Pena
  • Admixture Mapping and Genetic Technologies; B.Bertoni
  • The Significance of Sickle Cell Anemia within the Context of the Brazilian Government’s ‘Racial Policies’ (1995-2004); P.H.Fry
• PART III: GENETIC ADMIXTURE HISTORY, NATIONHOOD AND IDENTITY IN SOUTH AMERICA
  • Gene Admixture and Type of Marriage in a Sample of Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area; F.R.Carnese
  • Ethnic/Race Self-Adscription, Genetics, and National Identity in Uruguay; M.Sans
  • Forced Disappearance and Suppresion of Identity of Children in Argentina: Experiences after Genetic Identification; V.B.Penchaszadeh
  • Molecular Vignettes of the Columbian Nation: The Place of Race and Ethnicity in Networks of Biocapital; C.A.Barrigan
• Afterward/Commentaries; R.Rapp, T.Disotell, M.Montoya & P.Wade

The Political Ontology of Race

Polity
2011-10-17
DOI: 10.1057/pol.2011.15

Michael Rabinder James, Associate Professor of Political Science
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
 
Race theory is dominated by two camps. Eliminativists rely on a biological ontology, which contends that the concept of race must be biologically grounded, in order to repudiate the very term, on grounds that it is epistemologically vacuous and normatively pernicious. Conservationists use a social ontology, in which race is based on social practices, in order to retain racial categories in remedial social policies, such as affirmative action and race-based political representation. This article attempts to reorient this debate in two ways. First, it challenges the idea that racial identity is entirely unchosen by defending a political ontology of race that, unlike the biological and social ontologies, affirms the role of non-white agency in determining the political salience of ascribed racial identity. It then transcends the normative impasse between eliminativism and conservationism by contending that all three ontologies are potentially valuable and dangerous, depending on where they are applied. The biological ontology is defensible for evolutionary and medical research, the social ontology for affirmative action and anti-discrimination policy, and the political ontology for political representation.

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Daniel Sharfstein, “The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White” Penguin, 2011

New Books in African American Studies
Discussions with Scholars of African Americans about their New Books
2011-11-01

Vershawn Young, Associate Professor of English
University of Kentucky

Daniel Sharfstein’s The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin Press, 2011) is the latest and perhaps best book in the growing genre of neo-passing narratives. The Invisible Line easily rests between Philip Roth’s The Human Stain and Blis Broyard’s One Drop, though it is different and in ways richer than both. Part American history, part legal analysis (Sharfstein is a legal scholar), part ethnographic study, it is a wholly gripping and exquisitely written narrative that tracks the racial passing of three black families over several centuries, leading us right up to their living “white” descendents today. You will certainly learn a lot about the history of race in the United States from The Invisible Line and, if you’re like me, you won’t be able to put it down.

Download the interview here. (00:57:52.)

Escape into Whiteness

The New York Review of Books
2011-11-24

Brent Staples

Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 9781594202827.

Tickets to the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial were a hot item in the spring of 1922. Tens of thousands of people converged on the Mall for a day of celebration that included parades, music, and speeches by President Warren Harding and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft, under whose presidency the memorial had been initiated.

One of the better-known black Washingtonians on hand that sunny Memorial Day was Whitefield McKinlay, former collector of customs at Georgetown and real estate manager to many of the city’s light-skinned mulatto elite. Nearing his seventieth birthday, McKinlay had lived through the best and the worst of what the post–Civil War world had to offer people of color. He had enrolled in the University of South Carolina during the heady days of Reconstruction and then been expelled when the Democrats rose to power there and created a particularly virulent form of the Jim Crow state. He had seen black politicians swept into office by newly enfranchised black voters and swept out again when the franchise was revoked.

Through this same process, Washington, D.C., had been transformed from what one of McKinlay’s more prominent real estate clients had termed “The Colored Man’s Paradise”—a place of considerable freedom and opportunity—into what the historian David Levering Lewis aptly describes as a “purgatory,” where Negroes were barred from hotels and restaurants, driven from federal jobs, and generally persecuted by Southerners in Congress who seemed intent on erasing the colored presence from the city. Though he does not deal at length with McKinlay, Daniel Sharfstein, an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt, brings this part of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Negro society vividly to life in his authoritative and elegantly written The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White…

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Playing in the dark/ playing in the light: Coloured identity in the novels of Zoë Wicomb

Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Volume 20, Issue 1, 2008
pages 1-15
DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2008.9678286

J. U. Jacobs, Senior Professor of English and Fellow
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Zoë Wicomb’s three fictional works—You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), David’s Story (2000) and Playing in the Light (2006)—all engage with the question of a South African ‘coloured’ identity both under apartheid with its racialised discourse of black and white, and in the context of the post apartheid language of multiculturalism and creolisation. This essay examines the representation of ‘colouredness’ in Wicomb’s writing in terms of the two different conceptions of cultural identity that Stuart Hall has defined: an essential cultural identity based on a single, shared culture, and the recognition that cultural identity is based not only on points of similarity, but also on critical points of deep and significant difference and of separate histories of rupture and discontinuity. The politics of South African ‘coloured’ identity in Wicomb’s works reveals a tension between, on the one hand, acceptance of the complex discourse of colouredness with all its historical discontinuities, and, on the other, the desire for a more cohesive sense of cultural identity, drawn from a collective narrative of the past. In David’s Story the possibility of an essential cultural identity as an alternative to the unstable coloured one is considered with reference to the history of the Griqua ‘nation’ in the nineteenth century. And in Playing in the Light the alternative to colouredness is examined with reference to those coloured people under apartheid who were light enough to pass for white and crossed over, reinventing themselves as white South Africans. The essay approaches coloured identity through the lens of postcolonial diaspora theory, and more specifically, diasporic chaos theory.

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