Mixed Race Studies

Bayou Folk

Prometheus Books
Originally Published by Houghton Mifflin in 1894
Pages: 286
Paperback ISBN: 1-57392-975-1

Kate Chopin

The author who today is probably best known for her novel The Awakening initially established her literary reputation with short stories about life in rural Louisiana during the late nineteenth century. Born Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri, she later married Oscar Chopin, a Creole cotton trader and commission merchant, and lived in and around New Orleans for more than a decade until her husband’s death. During these years, while raising six children on a Southern plantation, Chopin became acquainted with Creoles, Cajuns, and newly freed blacks. After her husband’s death she returned to St. Louis and began writing, drawing from her recent experience in Louisiana to create her fiction.

The stories collected in Bayou Folk present remarkably vivid snapshots of daily life in a now vanished world. Many of them highlight the relations between blacks and whites in a society where the rules of engagement still reflected the entrenched patterns of slavery some two decades after the Civil War. As she was ahead of her time regarding women’s rights in The Awakening, where she depicted a woman unafraid to throw off traditional restraints, Chopin was also farsighted about race relations in Bayou Folk. Perhaps the story Désirée’s Baby about the birth of a mixed-race baby to two ‘white’ parents best expresses the uneasy relationship between blacks and whites in the old South, and the moral outrage of its strict codes against miscegenation.

Chopin’s gifts for capturing the dialects of the region and for telling a compelling story in memorable vignettes provide the reader with a richly rewarding experience.

Incorrigible

Wilfrid Laurier University Press
December 2004
184 pages
ISBN13: 978-0-88920-444-7

Velma Demerson

On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were having breakfast when two police officers arrived to take her away. Her crime was loving a Chinese man, a “crime” that was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child. Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Demerson was then transferred (along with forty-six other girls) to Toronto’s Mercer Reformatory for Females. The girls were locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and required to work in the on-site laundry and factory. They also endured suspect medical examinations. When Demerson was finally released after ten months’ incarceration weeks of solitary confinement, abusive medical treatments, and the state’s apprehension of her child, her marriage to her lover resulted in the loss of her citizenship status.

This is the story of how Demerson, and so many other girls, were treated as criminals or mentally defective individuals, even though their worst crime might have been only their choice of lover. Incorrigible is a survivor’s narrative. In a period that saw the rise of psychiatry, legislation against interracial marriage, and a populist movement that believed in eradicating disease and sin by improving the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock, Velma Demerson, like many young women, found herself confronted by powerful social forces. This is a history of some of those who fell through the cracks of the criminal code, told in a powerful first-person voice.

Velma Demerson is a widow, and mother of three children—the first child, the son of her interracial marriage, died at age twenty-six. She has worked throughout her life in a variety of positions, mostly as a secretary for governments (provincial and federal) and lawyers. She is self-educated. This is her first book.

Read an excerpt here.

The Obama Issue

Journal of Visual Culture
August 2009
Volume 8, No. 2
Online ISSN: 1741-2994
Print ISSN: 1470-4129

The August 2009 edition of Journal of Visual Culture is focused on president Barack Obama.

Table of Contents

Marquard Smith and JVC Editorial Group
Questionnaire on Barack Obama
pp. 123-124

W.J.T. Mitchell
Obama as Icon
pp. 125-129

Shawn Michelle Smith
Obama’s Whiteness
pp. 129-133

Dora Apel
Just Joking? Chimps, Obama and Racial Stereotype
pp. 134-142  

Raimi Gbadamosi
I Believe In Miracles
pp. 142-150 

Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan
Recognizing Obama: Image and Beyond?
pp. 150-154

Toby Miller
My Green Crush
pp. 154-158

Jacqueline Bobo
Impact of Grassroots Activism
pp. 158-160

Julian Myers, Dominic Willsdon, Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough, and Lauren Berlant
What Happened in Vegas
pp. 161-167

Lauren Berlant
Dear journal of visual culture
pp. 166-167

Marita Sturken
The New Aesthetics of Patriotism
pp. 168-172

Lisa Cartwright and Stephen Mandiberg
Obama and Shepard Fairey: The Copy and Political Iconography in the Age of the Demake
pp. 172-176  

John Armitage and Joy Garnett
Radicalizing Refamiliarization
pp. 176-183

Victor Margolin
Obama Sightings
pp. 183-189  

Joanna Zylinska
You Killed Barack Obama, 2008
pp. 190

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
The Modern Prince . . . ‘to come’?
pp. 191-193  

Anna Everett
The Afrogeek-in-Chief: Obama and our New Media Ecology
pp. 193-196  

Julian Stallabrass
Obama on Flickr
pp. 196-201  

Ellis Cashmore
Perpetual Evocations
pp. 202-206  

John Carlos Rowe
Visualizing Barack Obama
pp. 207-211 

Robert Harvey
Other Obamas
pp. 211-219

Curtis Marez
Obama’s BlackBerry, or This Is Not a Technology of Destruction
pp. 219-223

Cynthia A. Young
From ‘Keep on Pushing’ to ‘Only in America’: Racial Symbolism and the Obama Campaign
pp. 223-227

Nicholas Mirzoeff
An End to the American Civil War?
pp. 228-233

Intermarriage across Race and Ethnicity among Immigrants: E Pluribus Unions

LFB Scholarly Publishing
November 2008
228 pages
5.5 X 8.5 / viii
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-59332-294-6

Charlie V. Morgan, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Brigham Young University

Morgan examines the relationship between assimilation and intermarriage. In studying mixed relationships, he finds that ethnicity, in the form of language and religion, is more important than race. Males and females were more likely to find themselves in coethnic relationships as they imagined the role that extended family would play. They talked about parental prejudices, language, religion, and other cultural clashes as major factors. There were many females, however, who did not follow this pattern because of perceptions of patriarchy. They avoided coethnic relationships because they wanted a partner who would think of them as an equal.

Pearl’s Secret: A Black Man’s Search for His White Family

University of California Press
May 2001
Paperback ISBN: 9780520227309
321 pages
5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches, 25 b/w photographs, 2 line illustrations

Neil Henry, Associate Professor of Journalism
University of California, Berkeley

Pearl’s Secret is a remarkable autobiography and family story that combines elements of history, investigative reporting, and personal narrative in a riveting, true-to-life mystery. In it, Neil Henry—a black professor of journalism and former award-winning correspondent for the Washington Post—sets out to piece together the murky details of his family’s past. His search for the white branch of his family becomes a deeply personal odyssey, one in which Henry deploys all of his journalistic skills to uncover the paper trail that leads to blood relations who have lived for more than a century on the opposite side of the color line. At the same time Henry gives a powerful and vivid account of his black family’s rise to success over the twentieth century. Throughout the course of this gripping story the author reflects on the part that racism and racial ignorance have played in his daily life—from his boyhood in largely white Seattle to his current role as a parent and educator in California.

The contemporary debate over the significance of Thomas Jefferson‘s longtime romantic relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, and recent DNA evidence that points to his role as the father of black descendants, have revealed the importance and volatility of the issue of dual-race legacies in American society. As Henry uncovers the dramatic history of his great-great-grandfather—a white English immigrant who fought as a Confederate officer in the Civil War, found success during Reconstruction as a Louisiana plantation owner, and enjoyed a long love affair with Henry’s great-great-grandmother, a freed black slave—he grapples with an unsettling ambivalence about what he is trying to do. His straightforward, honest voice conveys both the pain and the exhilaration that his revelations bring him about himself, his family, and our society. In the book’s stunning climax, the author finally meets his white kin, hears their own remarkable story of survival in America, and discovers a great deal about both the sting of racial prejudice as it is woven into the fabric of the nation, and his own proud identity as a teacher, father, and black American.

The Dance of Identities: Korean Adoptees and Their Racial Identity Journeys

University of Hawai’i Press
October 2010
224 pages
3 illustrations
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-3371-8

John D. Palmer, Associate Professor of Educational Studies
Colgate University

Korean adoptees have a difficult time relating to any of the racial identity models because they are people of color who often grew up in white homes and communities. Biracial and nonadopted people of color typically have at least one parent whom they can racially identify with, which may also allow them access to certain racialized groups. When Korean adoptees attempt to immerse into the Korean community, they feel uncomfortable and unwelcome because they are unfamiliar with Korean customs and language. The Dance of Identities looks at how Korean adoptees “dance,” or engage, with their various identities (white, Korean, Korean adoptee, and those in between and beyond) and begin the journey toward self-discovery and empowerment.

Throughout the author draws closely on his own experiences and those of thirty-eight other Korean adoptees, mainly from the U.S. Chapters are organized according to major themes that emerged from interviews with adoptees. “Wanting to be like White” examines assimilation into a White middle-class identity during childhood. Although their White identity may be challenged at times, for the most part adoptees feel accepted as “honorary” Whites among their families and friends. “Opening Pandora’s Box” discusses the shattering of adoptees’ early views on race and racism and the problems of being raised colorblind in a race-conscious society. “Engaging and Reflecting” is filled with adoptee voices as they discover their racial and transracial identities as young adults. During this stage many engage in activities that they believe make more culturally Korean, such as joining Korean churches and Korean student associations in college. “Questioning What I Have Done” delves into the issues that arise when Korean adoptees explore their multiple identities and the possible effects on relationships with parents and spouses. In “Empowering Identities” the author explores how adoptees are able to take control of their racial and transracial identities by reaching out to parents, prospective parents, and adoption agencies and by educating Korean and Korean Americans about their lives. The final chapter, “Linking the Dance of Identities Theory to Life Experiences,” reiterates for adoptees, parents, adoption agencies, and social justice activists and educators the need for identity journeys and the empowered identities that can result.

The Dance of Identities is an honest look at the complex nature of race and how we can begin to address race and racism from a fresh perspective. It will be well received by not only members of the Korean adoption community and transracial parents, but also Asian American scholars, educators, and social workers.

Constructing “Race” and “Ethnicity” in America: Category-Making in Public Policy and Administration 

M. E. Sharpe
November 2002
272 pages
Tables, figures, references, index
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-7656-0800-0
Paper ISBN: 978-0-7656-0801-7

Dvora Yanow, Professor of Public Affairs & Administration
California State University, East Bay

• 2004 Best Book Award, Section on Public Administration Research, American Society for Public Administration
• 2007 Herbert A. Simon Book Award, Public Administration Section, American Political Science Association

What do we mean in the U.S. today when we use the terms “race” and “ethnicity?” What do we mean, and what do we understand, when we use the five standard race-ethnic categories: White, Black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic?

Most federal and state data collection agencies use these terms without explicit attention, and thereby create categories of American ethnicity for political purposes. Dvora Yanow shows how “race” and “ethnicity” are socially constructed concepts–not objective, scientifically-grounded variables–and do not accurately represent the real world. She joins the growing critique of the unreflective use of “race” and “ethnicity” in American policy-making through an exploration of how these terms are used in everyday practice. Her book is filled with current examples and analyses from a wealth of social institutions: health care, education, criminal justice, and government at all levels. The questions she raises for society and public policy are endless. Yanow maintains that these issues must be addressed explicitly, publicly, and nationally if we are to make our policy and administrative institutions operate more effectively.

The People Who Own Themselves: Aboriginal Ethnogenesis in a Canadian Family 1660-1900

University of Calgary Press
2003
300 pages
6″ x 9″
ISBN: 1-55238-115-3

Heather Devine, Professor of Communication and Culture
University of Calgary

The search for a Metis identity and what constitutes that identity is a key issue facing many Aboriginals of mixed ancestry today. The People Who Own Themselves reconstructs 250 years of the Desjarlais’ family history across a substantial area of North America, from colonial Louisiana, the St. Louis, Missouri region, and the American Southwest to Red River and Central Alberta. In the course of tracing the Desjarlais family, social, economic, and political factors influencing the development of various Aboriginal ethnic identities are discussed. With intriguing details about the Desjarlais family members, this book offers new, original insights into the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, focusing on kinship as a motivating factor in the outcome of events. With a unique how-to appendix for Metis genealogical reconstruction, this book will be of equal interest to Metis wanting to research their own genealogy and to scholars engaged in the reconstruction of Metis ethnic identity.

A Place to Be Someone: Growing Up with Charles Gordone

Texas Tech University Press
September 2008
272 pages
35 B/W photos
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-89672-635-2

Shirley Gordon Jackson

with introduction by

Maceo C. Dailey, Jr., Professor of African American Studies
University of Texas El Paso

The enlightening memoir of one  multiethnic family’s struggles and triumphs.

Before playwright Charles Gordone (1925–1995) became a Texan, he became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for No Place to Be Somebody, in 1970. His search for a home in the West led him in 1987 to Texas A&M University, where he taught playwriting for the last nine years of his life, and to an influential role in the Cowboy Renaissance of the 1990s. Much as Mary Austin saw the West as a place without gender, Gordone regarded Texas as a place without race, where the need for neighborly connections to survive outweighed discriminatory urges.

A Place to Be Someone covers the years prior to this geographical and psychological journey, the childhood and youth that deeply informed Gordone’s pilgrimage. Growing up in Elkhart, Indiana, a “free” northern town, Charles Gordon and his family never fit completely into commonly understood racial categories. Elkhart and the world labeled them “black,” ignoring the rest of their multiracial and multiethnic heritage. Their familial experiences shaped not only their identities but also their perceptions.

For Gordone, childhood was the beginning of a lifelong battle against labels, and this memoir shows many of the reasons why. Written by his younger sister Shirley, who recognized that her brother had spent his whole life coming “home” to Texas, this revealing family memoir will be welcomed by Gordone scholars and those in African American drama and literature, American studies, women’s studies, and history and by any reader young or old who seeks to understand the forces and consequences of discrimination and mental and physical abuse. The sole surviving sibling, Shirley Gordon Jackson tells this story with the intimacy and immediacy it demands.

Born in 1929 and raised in Elkhart, Indiana, Shirley Gordon Jackson is the fourth of five siblings. Upon graduation from Elkhart Senior High School, Jackson completed her education at Century College of Medical Technology in Chicago, Illinois, on a scholarship. An accomplished pianist and organist, she is also an artist, poet, and writer. After residing in California for some forty-five years, she now calls North Texas home.

Diversity in ads not reflected in real life

St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg, Florida
2005-02-21

Associated Press

Advertisers are filling commercials with a mix of races and ethnicities, but critics contend such utopian situations rarely exist.

Somewhere there’s an America that’s full of neighborhoods where black and white kids play softball together, where biracial families e-mail photos online and where Asians and blacks dance in the same nightclub.

And that America is on your television…

…But critics say such ads gloss over persistent and complicated racial realities. Though the proportion of ethnic minorities in America is growing, experts say, more than superficial interaction between groups is relatively unusual.  Most Americans live and mingle with people from their own racial background.

Advertising, meanwhile, is creating a “carefully manufactured racial utopia, a narrative of colorblindness” says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta [2004-2008; now at La Salle University].

Only about 7 percent of marriages are interracial, according to Census data. About 80 percent of whites live in neighborhoods in which more than 95 percent of their neighbors are white, and data show most Americans have few close friends of another race, Gallagher said.

“The lens through which people learn about other races is absolutely through TV, not through human interaction and contact,” he said. “Here, we’re getting a lens of racial interaction that is far afield from reality.” Ads make it seem that race doesn’t matter, when real life would tell you something different, he added…

Read the entire article here.