Mixed Race Studies

Are there ‘Mestizos’ in the Arab World? A Comparative Survey of Classification Categories and Kinship Systems

Middle Eastern Studies
Volume 48, Issue 1 (January 2012)
pages 125-138
DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2011.643301

Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste, Professor of Social Anthropology
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Terminology devoted to miscegenation and inter-ethnic relationships is extremely problematic, and this article shows that many of these categories are more classificatory than descriptive. Some North African and Middle Eastern examples reveal that theoretical concepts about mixture reflect the folk conceptions of the observers rather that the meaning of local categories which not necessarily share those notions of mixture. In this sense, it is suggested that social categorizations of miscegenation are created from specific structures of descent which consider the transmission of two different social statuses, and that the pre-eminent unilineal descent systems of the Arab world should refrain from the political construction of such classification categories.

The aim of this study is to consider the cultural classifications of mixture as a social category, despite the fact that the social sciences have used many concepts in an arbitrary way as analytical categories that arc supposedly neutral and descriptive of something evident, deriving from biology. In fact, the central problem is that historians and anthropologists have projected their folk conceptions of mixture onto the societies studied, instead of analysing it as a political exercise in social classification: mestizo, half-caste, half-blood, mulatto and so on are far from being objective concepts that describe people; they are social and political categories created in specific historical contexts. The question I would like to pose is what these mixture categories as applied to persons, taken for granted by those who should question them, refer to, and whether these ideas of mixture are applicable to Arabic societies. From this standpoint. I aim to show that: (1) the ideas about mixture depend on social classification systems, so that socio-political categories construct the idea of the mixture of people and not the reverse: (2) in the Maghreb, and in the Arab-Muslim world in general, there is an apparent absence of mixture categories as applied to persons: (3) explaining why some societies produce classifications about miscegenation while others do not involves taking into account political factors and the role of the systems of descent in defining group membership.

In social sciences, the idea of a mixture of people has become a category that is not only taken for granted, but is also considered as a description of a target biological phenomenon. My proposal is that the mixture can only emerge when one considers the contribution of two different entities that are transmitted in a bilateral way; and therefore requires that such entities be thought of as being different. This is the premise already discussed by Jean-Loup Amselle in terms of the paradox of racial mixing as an affirmation of pure essences. In contrast, the data I shall present regarding Arab contexts reflect the weight of a system of patrilineal descent that establishes membership without recognizing mixtures, and is based on the formal reproduction of the male lines.

In Western ideas about mixture, two major dimensions have converged concepts which are in fact based on a bilateral approach to the transmission of social status: (1) the idea that sexual mixing generates new people (mestizos, mulattos, half-caste, etc.), in accordance with the emerging racialist thinking of the eighteenth century,…

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African and American

Science Magazine
Volume 17, Number 418 (1891-02-06)
page 78
DOI: 10.1126/science.ns-17.418.78

At a meeting of the Canadian Institute, Toronto, Jan. 24, Mr. D. R. Keys, M.A., read on behalf of Mr. A. F. Chamberlain, M.A., fellow in Clark University, Worcester, Mass., a valuable and interesting paper entitled “African and American: the Contact of the Negro and the Indian.” He said that the history of the negro on the continent of America has been studied from various points of view, but in every case with regard to his contact with the white race. It must therefore be a new as well as an interesting inquiry, when we endeavor to find out what has been the effect, of the contact of the foreign African with the native American stocks. Such an investigation must extend its lines of research into questions of physiology, psychology, philology, sociology, and mythology.

The writer took up the history of the African negro in America in connection with the various Indian tribes with whom he has come into contact. He referred to the baseless theories of pre-Columbian negro races in America, citing several of these in illustration. He then took up the question ethnographically, beginning with Canada. The. chief contact between African and American in Canada appears to have taken place on one of the Iroquois reservations near Brantford. A few instances have been noticed elsewhere in the various provinces, but they do not appear to have been very numerous. In New England, especially in Massachusetts, considerable miscegenation appears to have taken place, and in some instances it would appear that the Indians were bettered by the admixture of negro blood which they received. The law which held that children of Indian women were born free appears to have favored the taking of Indian wives by negroes.

On Long Island the Montauk and Shinnacook Indians have a large infusion of African blood, dating from the times of slavery in the Northern States. The discovery made by Dr. Brinton, that certain words (numerals) stated by the missionary Pyrlaeus to be Nanticoke Indian were really African (probably obtained from some runaway slave or half-breed), was referred to. In Virginia some little contact of the two races has occurred, and some of the free negroes on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake peninsula show evident traces of Indian blood. The State of Florida was for a long t1ime the home of the Seminoles, who, like the Cherokees, held negroes in slavery, One of their chiefs was said, in 1835, to have had no fewer than one hundred negroes. Here considerable miscegenation has taken place, although the authorities on the subject seem to differ considerably on questions of fact. In the Indian Territory, to which Cherokees, Seminoles, and other Indian tribes of the Atlantic region have been removed, further contact has occurred, and the study of the relations of the Indian and negro in the Indian Territory, when viewed from at sociological standpoint, are of great interest, to the student of history and ethnography. The negro is regarded in a different light by different tribes of American aborigines. After mnentioning a few isolated instances of cointact in other parts of the United States, the writer proceeded to discuss the relations of African and Indian mythology, coming to about the same conclusion as Professor T. Crane, that the Indian bas probably borrowed more from the negro than has the negro from the Indian. The paper concluded with calling the attention of the members of the institute to the necessity of obtaining with all possible speed information regarding (1) the result of intermarriage of Indian an negro, the physiology of the offspring of such unions; (2) the social .status of the negro among the various Indian tribes, the Indian as a slaveholder; (3) the influence of Indian upon negro and of negro upon Indian mythology.

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Firman/Furman Family

Tracing the Black Presence in Nineteenth-Century Westmorland, New Brunswick
Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada
2011

Jennifer Harris, Associate Professor of English
Mount Allison University

The Furman family, consisting of parents John and Susan L. with their son Ralph, is buried in St. Mark’s Anglican Cemetery, Mount Whatley, as is daughter Mary Anne (under the name Firman). The fate of their daughter, Susan, is unknown (though as she only appears in the 1861 Census, a year from which their daughter Mary is absent, it is possible they are one and the same). However, son Sydney can be traced through numerous records. The family in all probability lived in the Annapolis Valley during the 1830s, but as of 1851 they were in Westmorland Point, employed as unskilled labor. In 1871 John Furman was identified as Creole, born in the United States about 1789. While it might seem viable that the census taker preferred “Creole” to “mulatto,” the then-dominant term for mixed race individuals, it is unlikely; there were far too many in the region identified as mulatto on baptismal records and other documents who were simply identified as “African” on the census. Thus it seems likely that John was, indeed, a transplanted Creole residing in Westmorland. Given the nineteenth-century meaning of Creole, particularly pre-1820s when John is first identified as being the region, we can extrapolate that John was from Louisiana, of mixed African and French ancestry, and spoke English and French. (Certainly, there were Creole Furmans in nineteenth-century New Orleans, as well as white Furman families who owned slaves.) John may have also spoken some Spanish, as he was born during Spanish rule of Louisiana. If his sense of Creole identity was strong enough to identify as such after over forty years in Canada—and likewise convince the enumerator—it is probable he came of age in this world. By contrast, John’s wife Susan was born in New Brunswick circa 1801, and noted as African.  Both were, not surprisingly, illiterate. At the advanced age of 82, John still worked as a laborer…

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Normal Families Facing Unique Challenges: The Psychosocial Functioning of Multiracial Couples, Parents and Children

The New School Psychology Bulletin
Volume 9, Number 1 (2011)
Print ISSN: 1931-793X; Online ISSN: 1931-7948

Joshua Wilt
Department of Psychology
Northwestern University

The number of interracial couples in the United States has increased rapidly since anti-miscegenation laws were repealed in 1967. Early stereotypes conceptualized interracial couples as pathological, highlighting the importance of research addressing the psychosocial functioning of these couples and multiracial families. This article provides a summary of research on the psychosocial functioning of interracial couples, multiracial children, and parent-child relationships in multiracial families. Results across these domains suggest that multiracial families are not pathological but rather that they are normal families faced with unique challenges. Counseling options to support multiracial families navigate such challenges are discussed. Themes emerging from research on the psychosocial functioning of multiracial families are identified and avenues for future research are suggested.

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Legislation eradicates Dominican “Indians”

Dominican Today
2011-11-11

Santo Domingo.—Mulatto, black and white will be the only colors among Dominicans and will be stated thus in the citizens ID cards (cedula), effectively eradicating the nation’s “Indians.”

The bill “Dominican Republic Electoral Law Reform” states that in the master file of cedulas the color of Dominicans will be established by their ethnic group, and as such only three colors. The Spanish Royal Academy of Language defines ethnic group as “a human community defined by racial affinities.”
 
Organization of American States (OAS) and Central Electoral Board (JCE)technicians drafted the legislation to reform Electoral Law 275-97, and will be debated by the JCE prior to being submitted to Congress in the next few days…

…Although nearly all Taíno Indians perished early during Spanish colonization, the term “Indio” lingered from the many remaining descendants of mixed blood also called mestizos…

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Lecture Series. Multiculturalism and Miscegenation in the Construction of Latin America’s Cultural Identity
 
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
101 International Studies Building
910 S. Fifth Street, Champaign, Illinois
2012-02-23, 12:00 CST (Local Time)

Eduardo Coutihno, Distinguished Lemann Visiting Professor of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Professor of Comparative Literature,  Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

For more information, click here.

AP Exclusive: Many resist census race labels

Miami Herald
2012-01-31

Hope Yen, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — When the 2010 census asked people to classify themselves by race, more than 21.7 million – at least 1 in 14 – went beyond the standard labels and wrote in such terms as “Arab,” “Haitian,” “Mexican” and “multiracial.”

The unpublished data, the broadest tally to date of such write-in responses, are a sign of a diversifying America that’s wrestling with changing notions of race.

The figures show most of the write-in respondents are multiracial Americans or Hispanics, many of whom don’t believe they fit within the four government-defined categories of race: white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native. Because Hispanic is defined as an ethnicity and not a race, some 18 million Latinos used the “some other race” category to establish a Hispanic racial identity.

“I have my Mexican experience, my white experience but I also have a third identity if you will that transcends the two, a mixed experience,” said Thomas Lopez, 39, a write-in respondent from Los Angeles. “For some multiracial Americans, it is not simply being two things, but an understanding and appreciation of what it means to be mixed.”

Lopez, 39, the son of a Mexican-American father and a German-Polish mother, has been checking multiple race boxes since the Census Bureau first offered the option in 2000. Marking off the categories of Hispanic-Mexican ethnicity, “other” Hispanic ethnicity and a non-Hispanic white race, Lopez opted in 2010 to go even further. He checked “some other race” and scribbled in a response: “multiracial.”…

…Roderick Harrison, a Howard University sociologist and former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau, predicted a wider range of responses and blurring of racial categories over the next 50 years as interracial marriage becomes increasingly common. Still, he said racial categories will continue to be relevant so long as racial gaps persist in educational attainment, income, jobs and housing.

“These histories of exclusion, discrimination, and racism are central to the identities of several minority populations,” he said.

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Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many black Americans

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
2003-10-26

Monica L. Haynes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The young unkempt woman still in her pajamas shuffled into her 8 a.m. college psychology class and sat down next to Barbara Douglass.

“I’m sure glad there are no niggers in this class ’cause I can smell them a mile away,” the young woman declared.

But Douglass, who lives in Wilkinsburg, is a 53-year-old black woman. She could pass for white but she has never tried, she said.

“Growing up, I knew of people who did, and I was even instructed not to say, at that time, that they were colored. In order to get their jobs, they had to say they were white.”

The new film “The Human Stain,” based on a novel of the same name by Philip Roth, provides a glimpse into the world of blacks so fair they can live undetected among whites.

Thelma Marshall knows that routine.

During the 1950s and early ’60s, she did what her mother before her had done. What her grandmother and aunts had done.

She passed for white.

“One time I told a woman I was black, colored in those days,” Marshall recalled. “She said, ‘You won’t get the job unless you pass for white.’ ”

So that’s what Marshall did.

“I passed for white on lots of jobs,” she said. “I had to be white to get the jobs.” …

…”We are a child of God first. We are human beings first,” Douglass remembered her mother saying.

In fifth grade, she learned that the United States is a melting pot, and she declared to her mother that she would be a melting pot.

Her mother decided it was the perfect definition, seeing as how her ancestors were Cherokee, black, Dutch, German and Irish.

Maybe all blacks would have defined themselves that way given the chance. Since black people first came to the New World in 1619, they’ve mingled and mixed with every race and ethnic group here.

It is not just the fair-skinned blacks who can lay claim to that melting pot definition. Those blacks who have the mark of Africa in their features and skin tone also have multicultural ancestry. They just can’t pass.

Most blacks were never afforded the luxury of defining themselves. After the Civil War, Southern whites, not wanting this swirling of races to get out of hand and seeking to keep the white race as pure and powerful as possible, instituted a rule that anyone with “one drop” of black blood was black.

That spurred even more fair-skinned blacks to cross over and escape Jim Crow laws that kept blacks in the shackles of second-class citizenship…

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Has ‘whiteness studies’ run its course at colleges?

Cable News Network (CNN)
In America: You define America. What defines you?
2012-01-30

Alex P. Kellogg, Special to CNN

Among university departments that study African-American history, Latin American or Chicano cultures and all varieties of ethnicities and nationalities, there’s a relatively obscure field of academic inquiry: whiteness studies.

While there are no standalone departments dedicated to the field, interdisciplinary courses on the subject quietly gained traction on college and university campuses nationwide in the 1990s. Today, there are dozens of colleges and universities, including American University in Washington, D.C., and University of Texas at Arlington, that have a smattering of courses on the interdisciplinary subject of whiteness studies.

The field argues that white privilege still exists, thanks largely to structural and institutional racism, and that the playing field isn’t level, and whites benefit from it. Using examples such as how white Americans tend not to be pulled over by the police as often as blacks and Latinos, or how lenders targeted blacks and Latinos for more expensive, subprime loans during the recent U.S. housing crisis, educators teach how people of different races and ethnicities often live very different lives.

Most of the instructors specialize in sociology, philosophy, political science and history, most of them are liberal or progressive, and most of them are, in fact, white. Books frequently used as textbooks in these courses include “How the Irish Became White” by Noel Ignatiev, an American history professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and “The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter, a professor emeritus of American history at Princeton; but the field has its roots in the writings of black intellectuals such as W.E.B. DuBois and author James Baldwin.

In the past, detractors have said the field itself demonizes people who identify as white.

But today, academics who teach the classes say they face a fresh hurdle, one that has its roots on the left instead of the right: the election of Barack Obama as America’s first black president.

“Having Obama is, in a curious way, putting us behind,” says Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania…

…These academics generally agree that the end of slavery, the dismantling of Jim Crow and the election of a black president are all clear signs that things are getting better.

But that progress has slanted the mainstream narrative too far into positive terrain, they argue, leaving many to think that racial equality has arrived. Even some young students of color are more skeptical than ever before.

That’s dangerous, they argue.

“The typical college student will always say ‘What racial inequality? Look at the White House,’” says Charles Gallagher, chair of the sociology department at La Salle University in Philadelphia. “I have to first convince them that inequality exists.”…

…Charles Mills says he, too, has a fresh sense that many faculty and students are more skeptical of his work since Obama’s election. Mills is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. His first book, “The Racial Contract,” is widely taught in courses on U.S. college campuses.

Mills, like other scholars who study whiteness, argues in his courses that whites in particular have a self-interest in seeing the world as post-racial. In that world, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. The advantage of this perspective, he says, is that it allows your success in life not to be determined by race, but by how hard you work.

“Obama’s election meant to many white Americans that we’re in a post-racial epoch,” says Mills, even if most indicators show that we’re not…

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The Loving Story – HBO Screening Event

Multiracial Network Blog
2012-01-24

It is a rare occasion for Marc Johnston, MRN Chair, and Heather Lou, MRN Incoming Chair, to find themselves in the same city outside of the annual ACPA Convention. So what do these two fun-loving higher education and student affairs administrators choose to do when they are reunited in the City of Angels? They attend the amazing HBO Screening of Nancy Buirski’s The Loving Story (2011) at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, of course!

On a recent evening in LA, Marc and Heather settled into their seats to view the story of Richard and Mildred Loving—an interracial couple arrested and exiled from Virginia in 1958 for violating anti-miscegenation laws. The documentary captured footage of the couple’s relationship, family, challenges, and triumphs—including the monumental 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the 15 states that still had them, legalizing interracial marriage across all of the United States.

After viewing The Loving Story, Marc and Heather wanted to share their personal thoughts on the documentary, along with potential implications for higher education…

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