Mixed Race Studies

The Creole Elite and the Rise of Angolan Proto-Nationalism, 1870–1920

Cambria Press
2008-09-08
340 pages
ISBN: 9781604975291

Jacopo Corrado

This book is about Angolan literature and culture. It investigates a segment of Angolan history and literature, with which even Portuguese-speaking readers are generally not familiar. Its main purpose is to define the features and the literary production of the so-called ‘creole elite’, as well as its contribution to the early manifestations of dissatisfaction towards colonial rule patent during a period of renewed Portuguese commitment to its African colonies, but also of unrealised ambitions, economic crisis, and socio-political upheaval in Angola and in Portugal itself.

Nineteenth-century Angolan society was characterised by the presence of a semi-urbanised commercial and administrative elite of Portuguese-speaking creole families––white, black, some of mixed race, some Catholic and others Protestant, some old established and others cosmopolitan––who were based in the main coastal towns.

As well as their wealth, derived from the functions performed in the colonial administrative, commercial and customs apparatus, their European-influenced culture and habits clearly distinguished them from the broad native population of black peasants and farm workers. In order to expand its control over the region, Portugal desperately needed the support of this kind of non-coloniser urban elite, which was also used as an assimilating force, or better as a source of dissemination of a relevant model of social behaviour. Thus, until the 1850s great creole merchants and inland chiefs dealt in captive slaves, bound for export to Brazil via Cape Verde and São Tomé: the tribal aristocracy and the creole bourgeoisie thrived on the profits of overseas trade and lived in style, consuming imported alcoholic beverages and wearing European clothes.

After the abolition, however, their social and economic position was eroded by an influx of petty merchants and bureaucrats from Portugal who wished to grasp the commercial and employment opportunities created by a new and modern colonial order, anxious to keep up with other European colonial powers engaged in the partition of the African continent.

This book thus considers the first intellectuals, the early printed publications in the country, and the pioneers of Angolan literature who felt the need to raise their roots to higher dignity. Thus, they wrote grammar, dictionaries, poetry, fiction, and of course, incendiary articles denouncing exploitation, racism, and the different treatment afforded by the colonial authorities to Portuguese expatriates and natives.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Cherished Myths
  • The greatest and most Portuguese overseas possession
  • Lusotropicalism
• Chapter 2: The Intellectual Setting
  • The Luso-Atlantic cultural triangle
  • Brazil
  • Portugal
  • The literary and cultural influences
  • Diffusion
  • Association
• Chapter 3: Luanda
  • The advent of modernity
  • Between journalism and literature
  • The new century: Hope and failure
• Chapter 4: The ‘Creole’ Elite and Early ‘Nationalism’
  • The term ‘Creole’
  • The term ‘Nationalism’
• References
• Index

Mulattoes, octoroons and quadroons are much more susceptible to the ravages of syphilis and gonorrhea than are their more deeply tinted brethren. Negroes of all shades are extremely susceptible to tuberculosis, and also to measles. In my experience extending over a period of nearly twenty years, I do not recall having seen a case of scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps or tonsillitis in black negroes, and since beginning this paper I have made inquiries of all the physicians with whom I have come in contact and have received practically the same answer as to the immunity of the pure-blooded negro from these diseases.

H. M. Folkes, M.D., “The Negro as a Health Problem,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 55, Number 11 (1910): 1246-1247.

The Latin American Identity and the African Diaspora: Ethnogenesis in Context

Cambria Press
2010-08-08
360 pages
ISBN: 9781604977042

Antonio Olliz-Boyd, Emeritus Professor of Latin American Literature
Temple University

Just beneath the surface of most scholars’ research on the ethno-racial composition of Spanish-speaking America lies a definitive connection between the African Diaspora and the Latin American identity. Although to a lesser extent, this is also true of Portuguese-speaking Brazil—the existence of African-related people and their role as an integral part of the total Latin ethnicity currently appears to be more readily accepted and discussed in Brazil than in other Latin American countries. Afro-Peruvians, Afro-Colombians, Afro-Venezuelans, Afro-Uruguayans, or Afro-Mexicans—to name just a few—are rarely openly acknowledged in most of Spanish-speaking Latin America. However, one cannot deny that African slavery was a fact of life in all the territories colonized and settled by Spain and Portugal in the Americas, and with this, of course, came widespread miscegenation between the European male and the subjugated African female.

More than likely, because of the diversity of racial features, most non-natives do not see the extent to which Latin America’s genetic amalgam can often mask the phenotypic effects of race-mixing. As a result, many researchers and scholars of the area are reluctant to divulge that someone is a descendant of African forebears because doing so might run the risk of one being considered politically incorrect or having debased that person’s character. Whereas in the United States there is little to no stigma attached to the president’s African ancestry, for any president of a Latin American country, one cannot overtly attribute a genetic link to African heritage.

There is extensive research found both in books and articles on the various topics of Afro Latinism/Afro Hispanism that is directed mainly at the non-native. Nonetheless, one still notices either cultural confusion or political reluctance to accept the identity of Blackness that the Latin American native lives with—for himself or for others—on a daily basis. For the average Cuban, Venezuelan, Peruvian, and so forth, along with their Latin counterparts, Blackness in racial terms surfaces as a matter of degrees of African-relatedness that is then counterbalanced by degrees of European and/or Amerindian genomic components. It is only in non-native cultures that one encounters such disparate comparisons as “statistics for Hispanics versus statistics for Blacks.” But is it not possible to find persons that are ethnoracially Black included in the demographics for Hispanics?

The overarching aim of this book, then, is to determine whether it is possible to perceive a constituency within the Latin American whole who is also an integral part of the African Diaspora. It examines the concept of African-relatedness within the totality of the Latin American sphere—not just in one isolated country or region—through a careful process of literary analysis. By exploring the works of Latin American novelists, poets, and lyricists, this study shows how they creatively expose their most intimate feelings on ethnic Blackness through a semiotic reliance on the inner voice. At the same time, the reader becomes a witness to the writers’ associations with a sense of Africanness as it artistically affects them and their communities in their formulations of self-identity.

Unique to this volume is the scholarly presentation of the presence of a group of people in Ghana, West Africa, who owe their raison d’être as a clan to their ancestral origins in Brazil. Having been accepted and received by an endemic tribe of what was called the Gold Coast at an historical moment in the nineteenth century, a community of escaped slaves and deported ex-slaves from Brazilian bondage regrouped as an ethnic whole. The reality of their existence gives new meaning to the term African Diaspora. To this day, their descendants identify themselves as displaced Latin Americans in Africa. Undoubtedly, both this surprising feature of Latin Americans returning to the African continent and the book as a whole will stimulate further discussion on the issue of who is Black and who is Hispanic as well as generate continued, in-depth research on the relationship between two continents and their shared genotypology.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Essay I: Aesthetic Blackness in the Creative Literature of the Latin/Hispanic Reality
• Essay II: The Aesthetics of Language as an Experience of the Afro Latin/Afro Hispanic Reality
• Essay III: An Aesthetic Experience: The Reality of Phenotypes and Racial Awareness in Dominican Literature (Julia Alvarez and Loida Maritza Pérez)
• Introduction to Essay IV
• Essay IV: A Latin Identity, An African Experience: The Tabom Brazilians of Ghana
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Index

Jenifer L. Bratter, an associate sociology professor at Rice University who has studied multiracialism, said that as long as race continued to affect where people live, how much money they make and how they are treated, then multiracial families would be met with double-takes. “Unless we solve those issues of inequality in other areas, interracial families are going to be questioned about why they’d cross that line,” she said.

Susan Saulny, “In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger,” The New York Times, October 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/us/for-mixed-family-old-racial-tensions-remain-part-of-life.html.

The melungeons: A mystery people of east Tennessee

Ethnos
Volume 29, Issue 1-2 (1964)
pages 43-48
DOI: 10.1080/00141844.1964.9980946

Paul G. Brewster
Cookeville, Tennessee, USA

The United States has long been called, and with some justification, “the melting-pot of nations” and the intermarriage of members of different races is a commonplace. The children born to such unions are as a rule aware of their mixed ancestry and identify themselves as Swedish-French, Irish-Italian, Welsh-English, etc. However, there are many groups which have no knowledge at all as to their racial origin or, at best, only a tradition supported by no historical evidence. Such are the Weromos and the Renabees of Virginia, the “Rivers” of North Carolina, and similar groups in Delaware and Maryland. Of this type are also the “Jackson Whites” of upper New York State and the Ramapo Mountain area of northern New Jersey, some of whom live hardly more than twenty-five miles from New York City and yet have all the clannishness, hostility toward the outside world, and primitive way of life usually associated with mountain people of the Deep South. Although they themselves know (or care) nothing about their ancestry, research has established that they are the descendants of some 3500 women shipped to New York for the pleasure of British troops during the American Revolution. The name Jackson derives from that of the contractor who supplied them, and they were called “Whites” to distinguish them from the West Indian women included in the shipment. At the close of the War they were released by the British and left to fend for themselves, with the…

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I Am What I Say I Am: Racial and Cultural Identity among Creoles of Color in New Orleans

University of New Orleans
2009-05-15
62 pages

Nikki Dugar

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

This paper examines the generational changes in the culture and racial self-identification of Creoles of Color of New Orleans. This study argues that the key to understanding Creole culture is the role that isolationism has played in its history. While White ethnics pursued a path of assimilation, Creoles of Color pursued a path of isolationism. This path served them well during the Jim Crow era, but it suddenly became undesirable during the Black Power era. Now, however, new values of multiculturalism have resurrected Creole identity as a cultural asset.

Table of Contents

• List of Figures
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Historiography
• Early Debate
• Distinctly Creole
• Passing
• Light Skin With Good Hair
• Civil Rights Creoles
• Contemporary Creoles
• American Racial Policy and Ideology
• Multiracial Chic
• Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Vita

List of Figures

• Figure 1. Map depicting the proximity of traditional Creole institutions to each other
• Figure 2. Plan of New Orleans, 1872
• Figure 3. Geographic Distributions and Shifts of the Creole Population in New Orleans, 1800-2000
• Figure 4. North Claiborne Avenue before the construction of Interstate Highway 10, 1966
• Figure 5. North Claiborne Avenue after the construction of Interstate Highway 10, 2009

Introduction

“I‟m too white to be black and too black to be white,” remarked Ronald Ricard, a New Orleans Creole of Color, in an interview in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1977. Ricard was expressing a sentiment that many Creoles of Color continue to have about themselves. The feeling of not quite belonging to one race or the other has been an issue for many since the antebellum period. Since that time, the Creole community has gone through many political and social changes, which have affected not only the community‟s structure but also ideas about its racial identity. This study will focus particularly on three generations of Creoles: those who came of age before World War II, here called “Traditional Creoles” (born during the colonial period up to the 1930s); those who matured in the post war years, designated “Civil Rights Creoles” (born between 1940s and 1960s); and “Contemporary Creoles” (born in the 1970s to present day). In comparing these pre- and post-war groups, this study will explore how generational differences exist in how Creoles racially identify themselves.

To complicate matters further, Contemporary Creoles do not share a monolithic racial identity, for older and younger members of this category view certain issues very differently. This is to be expected, because identity is a constantly evolving phenomenon influenced by many external factors. Rather than gloss over their differences, this study will examine them closely in search of trends and patterns that will illuminate the entire history of Creoles of Color in New Orleans.

Primary sources used in this study include newspaper and magazine articles, maps, census data, and interviews conducted by the author. The latter were comprised of written questionnaires and follow-up oral interviews administered between Spring 2008 and Spring 2009. The sixteen interviewees were Creoles of Color, meaning people of mixed French-, African-, Spanish-, and Native-American ancestry, most of whom reside in or have familial ties to Louisiana. On the questionnaires, respondents supplied background information on themselves and family members including name, age, gender, current and previous neighborhood residences, and schools attended. They were then asked their opinions regarding Creoles of Color in New Orleans: what traits define the group, what racial and cultural differences separate Creoles from other African Americans, and what racial identity they and their families claim. After completing the questionnaires, participants were invited to contribute additional details, stories, and comments. These interviews, combined with other primary materials noted above, constitute the core of this research endeavor.

An array of secondary sources also informs this study. Secondary sources include works that examine the development of Creole culture. Sources on New Orleans history are used to place the different generations of Creoles within a historical context. Sources on multiculturalism, American popular culture, and Whiteness studies were also used to discuss the generations of Contemporary Creoles.

On the basis of the aforementioned primary and secondary sources, this study argues that the key to understanding Creole culture is the role that isolationism has played in its history. While White ethnics pursued a path of assimilation, Creoles of Color pursued a path of isolationism. This path served them well during the Jim Crow era, but it suddenly became undesirable during the Black Power era. Now, however, new values of multiculturalism have resurrected Creole identity as a cultural asset…

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Bill John Baker named official winner in Cherokee chief election

Tusla World
2011-10-13

Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, World Correspondent

TAHLEQUAH – Bill John Baker is now officially principal chief-elect of the Cherokee Nation.

About 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, the Cherokee Nation Election Commission certified the results from the tribe’s special election. The certified results show Baker defeating former chief Chad Smith, 10,703 votes to 9,128.

“I’d just like to thank every person involved in this election,” said commission chairwoman Susan Plumb. “First and foremost, a big thank you to the voters, who came out in record numbers. We received ballots from all 50 states and four foreign countries.”

Almost 20,000 Cherokee citizens voted in the special election, an increase of 5,000 people from the June 25 general election…

…Among the Baker supporters were several freedmen who came in part because of a tribal Supreme Court order issued Tuesday afternoon.

The order, filed at noon, declined to recognize an agreement brokered in federal district court that reinstated the tribal citizenship of 2,800 freedmen descendants.

“This is a time-out for all the racism that’s going on in all the tribes,” said Yvette Hill. “The large amount he (Baker) won by shows that the Cherokee Nation is not for that. The people have spoken, and the tribe needs to be an example.”

About 1,200 freedmen were registered to vote. It is unknown how many cast ballots in the special election.

The tribe’s attorney general, Diane Hammons, issued a statement Tuesday that the tribe does not have the option of ignoring a federal order. As of Wednesday, it is still unclear, what – if any – impact the justices’ order will have on the election.

On Aug. 22, the tribe’s Supreme Court had upheld a 2007 tribal referendum that disenrolled the freedmen descendants and required at least one Cherokee ancestor on the final Dawes Rolls in order to apply for citizenship…

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In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger

The New York Times
2011-10-13

Susan Saulny

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — “How come she’s so white and you’re so dark?”

The question tore through Heather Greenwood as she was about to check out at a store here one afternoon this summer. Her brown hands were pushing the shopping cart that held her babbling toddler, Noelle, all platinum curls, fair skin and ice-blue eyes.

The woman behind Mrs. Greenwood, who was white, asked once she realized, by the way they were talking, that they were mother and child. “It’s just not possible,” she charged indignantly. “You’re so…dark!”

It was not the first time someone had demanded an explanation from Mrs. Greenwood about her biological daughter, but it was among the more aggressive. Shaken almost to tears, she wanted to flee, to shield her little one from this kind of talk. But after quickly paying the cashier, she managed a reply. “How come?” she said. “Because that’s the way God made us.”

The Greenwood family tree, emblematic of a growing number of American bloodlines, has roots on many continents. Its mix of races — by marriage, adoption and other close relationships — can be challenging to track, sometimes confusing even for the family itself…

…Jenifer L. Bratter, an associate sociology professor at Rice University who has studied multiracialism, said that as long as race continued to affect where people live, how much money they make and how they are treated, then multiracial families would be met with double-takes. “Unless we solve those issues of inequality in other areas, interracial families are going to be questioned about why they’d cross that line,” she said.

According to Census data, interracial couples have a slightly higher divorce rate than same-race couples — perhaps, sociologists say, because of the heightened stress in their lives as they buck enduring norms. And children in mixed families face the challenge of navigating questions about their identities…

…Once, on a beach chair at a resort in Florida years ago, a white woman sunning herself next to Mrs. Dragan bemoaned the fact that black children were running around the pool. “Isn’t it awful?” Mrs. Dragan recalled the woman confiding to her.

Within minutes, Mrs. Dragan, ever feisty despite her reserved appearance, had her brood by her side. “I’d like to introduce you to my children,” she told the woman. Awkward silence ensued…

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The Marginalization of Afro-Asians in East Asia: Globalization and the Creation of Subculture and Hybrid Identity

Global Tides: Pepperdine Journal of International Studies
Volume 5 (2011)
15 pages
Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

Sierra Reicheneker

This article explores the topic of children born of biracial couplings in East Asia. The offspring of such unique unions face severe discrimination and marginalization. The status and future of this minority is especially salient in primarily homogenous states, such as Korea, Japan, and China, where racism varies from social stigma to institutionalized policies. The article will show that they have yet to create a cohesive group identity; they remain vulnerable to negative self-image and socially imposed isolation. In such nations, progress in equality for Afro-Asians will require key Afro-Asian leaders and public figures taking a stand against prejudices, as well as international pressure, and an increase in the number of biracial people due to globalization, in addition to the growing interconnectedness through New Media. Through these actions a hybrid identity and group mentality will form for the Afro-Asians of East Asia.

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible – and even the impossible may only be so as of now.” – Pearl S. Buck

The growing presence of an Afro-Asian population in Asia, particularly in Korea, Japan and China, has recently come to light in the global media. The homogenous nature of these countries exposes its biracial citizens to psychological marginalization. Despite the frequent trend within marginalized groups to create solidarity through a viable counter-culture, the Afro-Asian populations have not done so. However, with the increase in globalization, leading to larger numbers of biracial people born in these states, as well as their ability to connect through the Internet, this small minority will begin to form a group identity. This is furthered by icon-status Afro-Asians leading the way and acting as beacons of aspiration for all Afro-Asians. In addition, with the help of the international community in applying pressure on governments to change racist policies, an Afro-Asian subculture and hybrid identity is likely to emerge.

A Brief History

The first Afro-Asians were the product of American G.I.s during World War II. Starting in 1946, with the occupation of Okinawa and later mainland Japan, as well as the temporary military government of South Korea, Amerasian—including Afro-Asian—children became a visible reality in East Asia. The products of both prostitution and legally binding marriages, these children were largely regarded as illegitimate. When the military presence returned to America, the distinction between the two was, for all practical purposes, null. As the American military departed, any previous preferential treatment for biracial people ended, and was replaced with a backlash due to the return of ethnically-based national pride.

Korea has the largest Afro-Asian population in the Far East, due to increased interracial relationships during the Korean War (1950-1953). Once again, children were the product of both legitimate marriages and prostitution. After the war, the United States Congress passed acts to allow for immigration of biracial children, including the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987. The Korean government strongly supported the emigration of Amerasian children to the United States, considering it a “cost-effective way of dealing with social welfare problems,” as they viewed the children, particularly those from Black fathers, as “institutional burdens.”However, American military men looking to bring their Asian families to the states were heavily discouraged from doing so by their superiors; Marines in particular were threatened with court martial. Despite overwhelming support and willing adoptee families in the United States, the majority of Amerasian children remained in Korea. A staggering amount of mothers abandoned their babies, especially Afro-Asian offspring, either to be raised by distant, maternal relatives or to be sent to orphanages—though this is not the case for all of the Amerasian Koreans.

In China, the Afro-Asian people group is a newer phenomenon. They first began to appear beginning with African-American and African students coming to study in China, first in the city of Beijing and later in other larges cities, such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Prominent Afro-Chinese have recently been featured in international news, helping to bring to light the growing Afro-Asian population in China and in East Asia, as a whole…

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Institutional Barriers, Marginality, and Adaptation Among the American-Japanese Mixed Bloods in Japan

The Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 42, Number 3 (1983)
pages 519-544
DOI: 10.2307/2055516

William R. Burkhardt, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ohio University

Guided by the perspective of marginality theory, the author examines the problems that have faced the mixed-blood progeny of Japanese women and American military servicemen who were reared in father-absent homes and institutions in Japan. The group has experienced discrimination according to racial, class, and family background characteristics and has encountered barriers in the areas of education, employment, marriage, and citizenship or legal status. Although culturally Japanese, mixed bloods are often stereotyped by Japanese as cultural oddities or aliens. Black Japanese have been especially victimized by discrimination and negative stereotypes. Although most American-Japanese have accepted their marginal situation with a fate-orientation common among Japanese, some have responded maladaptively with deviant patterns of aggressive or self-destructive behavior. Others have sought emigration, and a few may have “passed” into Japanese society. The author places these findings in the context of existing research on the Burakumin and Korean minorities in Japan, Korean Amerasians, and Eurasians in East and South Asia.

This study examines the extent to which the American-Japanese or Amerasian mixed-blood group in Japan has been in a marginal situation relative to the larger society. This is accomplished by an historical sketch of the problems faced by mixed bloods in Japan; an examination of specific institutional areas in which opportunities have been blocked and marginality has resulted; and a discussion of three types of adaptations to marginal status, which is based on a review of some case examples of mixed bloods. The research is grounded on unstructured interviews with eight American-Japanese mixed bloods, interviews with several Japanese who have had professional or personally intimate relationships with Amerasians, and a review of the existing literature, including the translation of biographical materials published in Japanese.

The focus of the research is on father-absent Amerasians who have spent at least their childhood and adolescence in Japan. As the Japanese government has never officially identified Amerasians as a distinct racial or societal group, there is no accurate way to estimate their total number, which, according to various sources, probably ranges between ten and sixty thousand. The research will not be concerned with mixed-blood children who were adopted at an early age,  usually by families of American military servicemen, or with the several thousand progeny of Japanese women who married U.S. military personnel or civilians and have a family and cultural life that is characteristically American…