Midday with Dan Rodricks 3-8-11 Hour 2 [The Invisible Line: Daniel Sharfstein]

Posted in Audio, History, Interviews, Law, Live Events, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2011-03-23 20:57Z by Steven

Midday with Dan Rodricks 3-8-11 Hour 2 [The Invisible Line: Daniel Sharfstein]

WYPR 88.1 FM
Baltimore, Maryland
2011-03-08

Dan Rodricks, Host

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University

The Invisible Line: Daniel Sharfstein, a Vanderbilt law professor visiting Baltimore for an engagement at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, followed three families, from the Revolutionary Era up to the Civil Rights movement, as they straddled the color line and changed their racial identification from black to white. While previous stories of “passing” have focused on individuals’ struggles to redefine themselves, Sharfstein’s subjects managed to defy the legal definitions of race within their own communities. For members of the Gibson, Spencer, and Wall families, what mattered most was the ways that their neighbors treated them in spite of their racial differences.

Listen to the entire interview here. (00:41:06, 28.2 MB)

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Race and health care: problems with using race to classify, assess, and treat patients

Posted in Dissertations, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2011-03-22 21:45Z by Steven

Race and health care: problems with using race to classify, assess, and treat patients

University of Texas
May 2010
64 pages

Atalie Nitibhon

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Public Affairs

Though racial classifications may serve as a mechanism for identifying and correcting disparities among various groups, using such classifications in a clinical setting to detect and treat patient needs can be problematic. This report explores how medical professionals and researchers use race in health care for purposes of data collection, risk assessment, and diagnosis and treatment options. Using mixed race individuals as an example, it then discusses some of the problems associated with using race to group individuals, assess risk, and inform patient care. Finally, it discusses how certain components of personalized medicine, such as genetic testing, Electronic Health Records, and Rapid Learning Systems could help address some of the concerns that arise from the application of race in a health care setting.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1: Introduction
    • What is Race?
  • Chapter 2: Race and Health Care
    • Data Collection/Health Statistics
    • Risk Assessment
    • Diagnosis/Treatment
  • Chapter 3: The Case of Mixed Race
  • Chapter 4: Addressing the Issue
    • Genetic Testing
    • Genetic Testing Policy
      • Privacy and Security
      • Accuracy
      • Medical Education
      • Access
      • Research
    • Electronic Health Records and Rapid Learning Systems
    • Electronic Health Records Policy
    • Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records
  • Chapter 5: Conclusion
  • References
  • Vita

…Chapter 3: The Case of Mixed Race

As mentioned during the previous discussion entitled “What is Race?”, no such thing as “pure race” exists, so it stands to reason that everyone is, to some degree, “multiracial” or of “mixed race.” However, for the purposes of this discussion, the terms “multiracial,” “mixed race,” and “mixed heritage” refer to individuals with parents who are classified as being from two distinct racial or ethnic categories. Mixed heritage individuals described by such a definition provide an excellent example of some of the problems associated with relying on race to classify individuals, assess risk, or inform patient care.

Racial identification, either on the part of the individual or by an external actor (e.g., a medical professional) is an area of concern, particularly in terms of the reliability of using race to assess health risk. For example, an individual who has one black parent and one Hispanic parent may self-identify as only one or the other. If she identifies as black and does not think to share the racial or ethnic identities of both of her parents with the medical professionals administering care, how comprehensive will the patient assessment be? Or, if a patient has one Asian parent and one white parent, but a medical professional identifies her as Hispanic, what effects does that external misidentification have on the adequacy, accuracy, and equitability of the physician’s assessment of the patient? Furthermore, patients do not inform health care professionals that they believe they have disease X, thus allowing the clinician to then administer exams to confirm that diagnosis. Instead, patients present a list of symptoms to their physician, and then expect a diagnosis and treatment. While most physicians will follow proper medical protocol in assessing and diagnosing a patient, her beliefs and biases, however well-meaning they may be, could influence the type of treatment the patient receives. Thus, if the physician believes the Asian/White patient to be Hispanic, the physician’s perceptions about Hispanics in the health care setting may subconsciously influence her assessment and care of the patient…

…In general, the absence of options for multiethnic or multiracial individuals reveals part of the problem in using race as a risk assessment tool: it neglects to account for the extent of genetic variation that underlies the concept of race. Thus, not only does it disregard a number of people who do not fit neatly into any of the given categories, but it may also misgauge the genetic contributions of individuals who do select a specific race or ethnicity with which they identify socially….

…The 2000 Census marked the first time individuals had the option to “mark one or more” race; the resulting data reveal that nearly 7-million individuals self-identified as multiple races. Another study projects that individuals who self-identify as mixed race will make up 21 percent of the population by 2050. The growing number of individuals who self-identify as multiracial indicates that the “traditional” methods of grouping people according to race need reassessment. Similarly, the manner in which medical professionals consider race to inform patient care needs reassessment. Nonetheless, inclusion of the option to mark one or more on the Census does not mean that mixed heritage individuals are a new “phenomenon.” Recalling the idea that nobody is purely one race, it stands to reason that doctors have been treating “mixed heritage” patients for quite some time now. In some respects, that illustrates the notion that the actual “race” of an individual is irrelevant; the only way to treat the patient is to treat the patient…

Read the entire thesis here.

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President Underscores Similarities With Brazilians, but Ignores One

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2011-03-22 01:37Z by Steven

President Underscores Similarities With Brazilians, but Ignores One

The New York Times
2011-03-20

Alexei Barrionuevo

Jackie Calmes

RIO de JANEIRO — From a visit to this city’s most infamous slum to a national address amid the gilded elegance of a celebrated theater, President Obama on Sunday sought to underscore the shared histories and futures of the United States and Brazil, reaching out to the people of one of the most racially diverse countries in the Americas.

But Mr. Obama, on the second day of a five-day tour of Latin America, once again seemed to sidestep mentioning his own racial background in appearances here, even as Brazilians who gathered at a plaza trying to catch a glimpse of him said that he had inspired millions in this country because of his African heritage.

“Because he knows the reality of discrimination against blacks, it would be very important for him to pass on the message that it is possible to get somewhere, to be someone, in spite of all the difficulties,” said Célio Frias, a 46-year-old businessman. “He is an inspiration.”…

…But Brazilians see the issue differently. Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery, having done it in 1888. Yet unlike the United States, Brazil never passed Jim Crow segregation laws, and despite the persistence of racism here, many Brazilians take pride in having intermarried more than whites and blacks in the United States.

In the months leading up to his election, Mr. Obama’s popularity soared in Brazil with a wide cross-section of Brazilians. Many proclaimed that Mr. Obama’s gregarious personality made him seem like a Brazilian masquerading as an American, even as many Americans see him as too cool and detached.

“I was moved by his election, I followed everything, saved magazines, newspapers, everything that came out about him,” said Maria Helena Reis, 62, a nurse. “He gives a lot of pride to blacks.”

Opinion polls in the region show that Mr. Obama’s election has also improved Latin American countries’ opinion of the United States as a whole. Among Brazilians, those with a favorable view increased by 16 percentage points from 57 percent in 2008 to 73 percent in 2009, according to Latinobarometro, a polling company in Santiago, Chile. The increase was higher among blacks and those of mixed race surveyed than among whites.

Mr. Obama’s activities on Sunday in Rio—first, his visit to the sprawling City of God favela, or slum, made famous the world over in the 2002 movie that bears its name, followed by a televised speech to a large audience at a historic theater—illustrated the White House’s efforts to take advantage of the president’s unique appeal to the broad and heavily mixed-race Brazilian public…

Read the entire article here.

 

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American Identity in the Age of Obama

Posted in Barack Obama, Census/Demographics, Identity Development/Psychology, Live Events, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2011-03-21 21:36Z by Steven

American Identity in the Age of Obama

Northeastern University
Amilcar Cabral Center in the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Friday, 2011-03-25, 08:30-15:30 EDT (Local Time)

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States has opened a new chapter in the country’s long and often tortured history of inter-racial and inter-ethnic relations. Many relished in the inauguration of the country’s first African American president—an event foreseen by another White House aspirant, Senator Robert Kennedy, four decades earlier. What could have only been categorized as a dream in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education was now a reality. Some dared to contemplate a post-racial America. Still, soon after Obama’s election a small but persistent faction questioned his eligibility to hold office; they insisted that Obama was foreign-born. Following the Civil Rights battles of the 20th century hate speech, at least in public, is no longer as free flowing as it had been. Perhaps xenophobia, in a land of immigrants, is the new rhetorical device to assail what which is non-white and hence un-American. Furthermore, recent debates about immigration and racial profiling in Arizona along with the battle over rewriting of history and civics textbooks in Texas suggest that a post-racial America is a long way off. Indeed, in his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, Obama observed both how far we have come and how far we yet to traverse.

This conference will provide an opportunity to discuss changing and persistent notions of American identity in the Age of Obama. What roles do race, ethnicity, ancestry, immigration status, locus of birth play in the public and private conversations that defy and reinforce existing conceptions of what it means to be American?

Morning Session 08:30 – 12:00 EDT

Paper 2: “The First Black President?: Cross-racial Perceptions of Barack Obama’s Race”

Matthew Hunt, Associate Professor of Sociology
Northeastern University

David C. Wilson, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations
University of Delaware

Barack Obama’s ancestry can aptly be described as racially-mixed given his “black” Kenyan father and “white” American mother. At the same time, Obama self-identifies as African American and is widely regarded as the country’s first black president. These latter facts, of course, stem from the socially constructed nature of racial identities, America’s malevolent racial history and pattern of racial formation (think “one drop rule”), and (related) contemporary patterns of racial classification and experience. Nonetheless, the nature of Obama’s racial status does not go uncontested in the public arena. African Americans have questioned Obama’s racial authenticity (“Is he Black enough?”). And, among many whites, Obama is seen as something other than truly “black” – a fact that made him more palatable to whites as a candidate and likely contributed to his electoral success. These issues all point to the importance of understanding how and why people view Barack Obama as occupying one or another racial status/category in America. This paper explores these issues empirically via an analysis of 2009 polling data from the Pew Research Center’s “Racial Attitudes in America II” project (N = 2,850). Our analyses center on whether Obama is seen as “black” or “mixed race.” Specifically, we explore how a host of factors – including demographics, concerns about Obama’s political focus on Whites and Blacks, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of the nature of Obama “values, racial stereotypes, and respondents” own racial identities (including a “mixed race” option) – shape how the public views the President in terms of race. In so doing, we hope to shed light on the ways in which persons’ social locations, identities, and views on racial and societal issues contribute to how Obama’s racial status is constructed by the lay public.

Paper 3: “Racial Identification in a Post Obama era: Multiracialism, Immigration and Identity Choice”

Natalie Masuoka, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Tufts University

In 2008, 2.2% of Americans identified with two or more racial categories. Indeed, assertions of non-traditional identities evoking a mixed race (or multiracial) back-ground are more prevalent in society today, particularly among younger generations. The rise of multiracial identification is indicative of new social norms that govern racial identification which offer a more inviting environment for individuals to assert multiracial identities. Yet, as a trend of multiracial self-identification grows, it demands the attention of those that self-identify with the established racial categories, such as white or black, who must then consider and respond to these identities. I anticipate that response to multiracial identities will vary by racial background. As a general pattern, I argue that whites tend to interpret multiracial identities with normative optimism about U.S. race relations while racial minorities generally respond more unfavorably to the assertions of these identities. Because of this, racial minorities will be more critical of multiracial identities and challenge the legitimacy of these identities. Using recent public opinion data, I examine the relationship between views on multiracial identities and other racial and political attitudes and compare how this relationship may differ across whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians.

For more information, click here.

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Media Advisory — Census Bureau to Hold Webinar Prior to Release of Center of Population and First Two 2010 Census Briefs

Posted in Audio, Census/Demographics, Live Events, Media Archive, United States on 2011-03-21 19:26Z by Steven

Media Advisory — Census Bureau to Hold Webinar Prior to Release of Center of Population and First Two 2010 Census Briefs

2011-03-22, 18:00Z (14:00 EDT)

Karen Humes, Assistant Division Chief
Special Population Statistics, Population Division

Nicholas A. Jones, Chief, Racial Statistics Branch
Population Division

Roberto R. Ramirez, Chief, Ethnicity and Ancestry Branch
Population Division

The U.S. Census Bureau will hold a media webinar prior to the March 24 release of the final states redistricting data, national mean center of population and release of 2010 Census Briefs on population distribution and race and ethnicity. Reporters will learn the background on race and Hispanic origin concepts and the types of race and ethnic data that will be reported in the upcoming 2010 Census releases.

The webinar will consist of a simultaneous audio conference and online presentation. Reporters will be able to ask questions during the audio conference once the presentation is complete.

Details:
Audio conference — access information
Toll free number: 888-324-7210
Participant passcode: CENSUS
Questions and answers are limited to media

Online presentation — access information

Please login early, as some setup is required:
URL: https://www.mymeetings.com/nc/join/
Conference number: PW6204276
Audience passcode: CENSUS

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Census serves up racial buffet in Silicon Valley

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2011-03-21 19:19Z by Steven

Census serves up racial buffet in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Mercury News
2011-03-20

Joe Rodriguez

Who are you? What are you?

Sara Phillips, a 20-year-old computer science student from Hawaii at Santa Clara University, just may have the new look of the 21st century. When her 2010 Census form arrived last year, she gazed at the variety of ethnic and racial boxes available to her and selected four: Spanish and Filipino, same as her mother; and Japanese and white from her father’s lineage.

“I always mark as many as I can,” she said.

Choosing from this racial buffet made her one of about 87,300 people living in Santa Clara County who claimed more than one race, according to the latest results released by the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s an increase of about 9,000 from the past decade…

…Advocates, including the Berkeley-based Association of Multi Ethnic Americans, started lobbying for the distinction in the late 1960s, arguing in part that the blending of races eventually would transcend racial divisions. Curiously, some odd bedfellows opposed them.

On one side, cultural conservatives said another racial category would Balkanize America and stifle the dream of a colorblind society. On the other, traditional black, Asian and Native American groups feared the new category would dilute their numbers and political clout.

For better or worse, the mixed-race genie is out of the bottle, said professor Matthew Snipp, a sociologist who heads the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

“It’s going to continue to grow, and how fast is anybody’s guess,” he said. At the same time, “It’s still a relatively small part of the population.”

Although he has some Irish blood, Snipp is Native American and marked only that box on his own census form. He said the key issues in the mixed-race question still are alive and meaty.

For example, he said, federal anti-discrimination laws name and protect traditional minority groups, but not multiracial people. The Census Bureau is the only agency that collects such information. When a federal health agency wants to know which racial populations need attention and where, Census Bureau computers assign mixed-race people to one of the traditional racial groups and hands the recoded counts to the agencies.

“The bigger issue is that we still have laws in place to combat discrimination that still exists,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

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Fear and Desire: Regional Aesthetics and Colonial Desire in Kate Chopin’s Portrayals of the Tragic Mulatta Stereotype

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Louisiana, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2011-03-21 17:11Z by Steven

Fear and Desire: Regional Aesthetics and Colonial Desire in Kate Chopin’s Portrayals of the Tragic Mulatta Stereotype

The Southern Literary Journal
Volume 43, Number 1 (Fall 2010)
pages 1-22
E-ISSN: 1534-1461 Print ISSN: 0038-4291

Dagmar Pegues

The interrogation of the category of race in Kate Chopin’s fiction represents an essential dimension of regional aesthetics, and it offers an alternative view to previous interpretations that focus primarily on feminist themes. This article examines the role of Louisiana as a specific region in the construction of the tragic mulatta stereotype in the fiction of Kate Chopin, primarily in her stories “Désirée’s Baby” and “La Belle Zoraïde,” and by analogy in her most successful novel The Awakening. I propose to extricate Chopin’s work from the virgin/whore dichotomy so often applied to white and non-white characters respectively. From a new perspective, an illumination of the portrayals of the tragic mulatta figure in Chopin’s texts invites a reconsideration of the stereotype of the tragic mulatta that typically oscillates between evocations of the exotic and the sentimental. Attempting to reclaim the category of race in regionalist fiction by examining the tragic mulatta stereotype in the selected texts, I see parallels between this pervasive image of southern local color fiction and the post-colonial paradigm, i.e. the dichotomy of the colonizer versus the colonized as it is suggested by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks as well as the notion of stereotype as a form of normalizing, yet contradictory, judgment in Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture. From this perspective, the trope of the tragic mulatta appropriated by Chopin in her fiction represents an essential point of concurrence of the issues of gender, race, and region, and it points to the underlying racial anxiety manifested by the existence of ambivalent feelings of fear and desire toward the racial Other. Consequently, the internalization of colonial commodification of the racially Other can be interpreted as the true tragic element in the…

Read or purchase the article here.

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

Posted in Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-03-21 02:59Z by Steven

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.

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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

Posted in Books, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science on 2011-03-21 02:45Z by Steven

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.

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The Mestizos of South Carolina

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Social Science, Tri-Racial Isolates, United States on 2011-03-20 22:26Z by Steven

The Mestizos of South Carolina

The American Journal of Sociology
Volume 51, Number 1 (July 1945)
pages 34-41

Brewton Berry

There are several communities of white-Indian-Negro hybrids in South Carolina, the members of which do not fit into the biracial caste system upon which the state’s whole social structure is built. Similar groups are found in other states. Some of these are amalgamating with the Negroes, while others have won an intermediate status as “Inidans.” Those in South Carolina have resisted both of these accommodations and have persistently fought for white status. Their present position in etiquette and is local institutions, such as churches and schools, is a particular one, being the status of neither Negroes nor whites.

There are in South Carolina today fully five thousand people—perhaps even ten thousand—who do not fit into the biracial caste system upon which the state’s whole social structure is built. These out-castes insist that they are white, and they claim the privileges and courtesies of white people. Some of them, if pressed, will not deny a strain of Indian, though they take no pride in the fact; and most of them are offended even at that suggestion. The dominant whites, on the other hand, are convinced that there is a trace of Negro blood in them and, on the theory that “one drop of Negro blood makes one a Negro,” are reluctant to accept them and regard their claim to white status with various and mixed emotions, ranging from amusement to horror.

This failure of a sizable group of people to fit into the social system creates many problems. It is, in fact, a threat to the whole structure, undermining the popular faith that the system functions adequately and will continue to function forever. “We simply cannot admit them to the white schools,” confessed one trustee, “because, if we did, pretty soon the Negroes would want to come in, and then where would we be?” The same question arises with respect to churches, hospitals, political parties, parks, playgrounds, moving pictures, hotels, restaurants, clubs, and cemeteries. These institutions, in all of which rigid racial segregation is the rule, are operated upon the assumption that every person is either white or black and that there are absolute criteria to determine in which group one belongs. It is so with regard to the etiquette of race relations. “I wish you would tell me what these Brass Ankles are,” said a bank teller, “so I would know whether to ‘mister’ them or not.” Most disturbing of all is the threat to the assumed purity of the white race; for if these doubtful ones are being absorbed without dire consequences, as seems to be the case, what is to prevent an inundation of Negro blood?

These outcastes, whom I call “mestizos,” are designated by a wide variety of names, none of them flattering. In Richland County they are known as “Red Bones.” In one section of Orangeburg County they are “Red Legs”; in another, “Brass Ankles.” The degrading name “Brass Ankle” is also commonly used in Dorchester, Colleton, Berkeley, and Charleston counties. In Sumter they arc called “Turks”; in Bamberg, “Buckheads”; while in Marlboro, Dillon, Marion, and Horry they are “Croatans,” a name that is sometimes shortened to the even more unflattering “Cro.” In Chesterfield they are known as “Marlboro Blues,”a slur on the adjoining county, whence they came. In some localities…

Read or purchase the article here.

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