Mixed Race Studies

Race is an elusive category and provides an even more elusive way to forge a sense of collective belonging. Nobody is more aware of this elusiveness than Brazilian black-power activists. For most of the history of blacks in Brazil, Africans and their descendents had a strong sense of being different from their white slaveholders. This difference was forced onto them and used to hold them at the bottom of Brazil’s social hierarchies, and it left no doubt that Brazilian whites had no intention whatsoever to accept the moral and legal equality of blacks, which held true well into the twentieth century. The sense of black identity was indeed so strong during most of the colonial period and slavery, which lasted until 1888, that African and Brazilian blacks of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and of different degrees of biological mixture repeatedly united to contest white supremacy and attempted to overthrow the system that held them at the bottom. On several occasions, Brazil barely escaped its “Haitian moment.” As late as 1931, the radical Frente Negra Brasileira, the Brazilian Black Front, had a membership of about 200,000, mostly concentrated in the industrialized south (Davis 1999: 187). In 1936, however, the authoritarian government of Vargas outlawed the Black Front, together with all other oppositional political parties. The Vargas government sought to discourage any association that had the potential to endanger his project of national unity. The risk of factionalism and even secession was so great during the 1930s that the Vargas government undertook extraordinary measures to forge a sense of nationality, national pride, and even a sense of what it meant to be Brazilian.

Among the most successful in this cause was sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1986). Freyre’s writings on the Brazilian national character provided the ideological foundation upon which a unified nation could be constructed, and the Vargas regime left no means untouched to disseminate this ideology. Brazil would be a racial paradise, inhabited by one race, the Brazilian version of “cosmic race”—a tropical mulatto republic. Anybody daring to say differently was transformed into a naysayer and a reactionary. The concept of a racial paradise promised a solution to finally catch up to the developed world, even if—and especially because—Brazil had such a large mixed population.

To the black-power movement, this move proved devastating. Up until the 1930s, Brazilian blacks were forcefully united by the perverse power of racism and social Darwinism; after the 1930s, asserting one’s blackness was transformed into an act of civic upheaval and antipatriotism and little by little, as the Vargas regime made sure that its version of the truth was accepted, asserting ethnic difference became an act of political incorrectness not only aimed against the state, but against mainstream society. Under Vargas, race was removed from textbooks, censuses, and from the official discourse about Brazil. The state thus produced the main and only official way to represent the country, and any Brazilian—black or white, mixed or indigenous—had no other choice but to accept that reality and to find ways of social mobility that explicitly took it into account. The core of the doctrine disseminated under Vargas was that no matter what their ethnic background, Brazilians are all mixed and hence one. Nevertheless, this was not an “imagined community,” as Benedict Anderson (1991) suggests. Rather, it was a designed community, designed by the state and forced onto its people. The only one imagining, dreaming, and sometimes hallucinating such a community was the father of the idea, Gilberto Freyre.

The Vargas years severely delegitimized any attempt to forge a sense of racial solidarity among excluded blacks. Just as black-power movements regrouped during the 1950s and early 1960s, the state stepped in again, this time to avoid a potentially explosive bonding between labor and racialized groups. During the military regime, black-power activism became subversive and was subject to prosecution in the best-case scenario, but also to state-sponsored persecution, imprisonment, torture, and even death. The military regime also ensured that the category race would disappear again from the census, and it thus sought to curtail even the prospects for an emerging racial solidarity that would embrace and represent all those affected by the forces of racism and racialized exclusion. Categories, after all, are the building blocks of group consciousness (Brubaker 2004). Without numbers, mobilization is greatly complicated, as there can be no sense of a shared destiny if it is not known with whom, and with how many, this destiny is shared. Political activism is all but rendered impossible if there are no data and no existing categories other than being Brazilian.

Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell (Gladys Mitchell-Walthour), “The New Politics of Race in Brazil” in Brazil’s New Racial Politics, edited by Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012): 3-5.

Novel focuses on region’s multi-ethnic heritage

The Coalfield Progress Post
Norton, Virginia
2012-07-06

Katie Dunn, Staff Reporter

BIG STONE GAP — America is often described as a melting pot, a nation where different ethnicities and cultures have assimilated into a cohesive union.

In her recently published novel, Washed in the Blood, author Lisa Alther, a Kingsport, Tenn. native, focuses on this notion by exploring the early history of the southern Appalachians and chronicling the story of several generations of a multi-ethnic family who lived in the region.

The book begins with the arrival of Diego Martin, a hog drover who came to the region with a Spanish exploring party in the 16th century. Martin is abandoned by the expedition’s leader in the wilderness, but is rescued by “friendly natives.” Alther’s book chronicles Martin’s descendants through the early 20th century as they struggle to survive and gain acceptance in a racially charged era.

Alther discussed this and another of her recently published books during the Melungeon Heritage Association’s gathering last weekend.

She told those gathered that she had researched the novel for 10 years, beginning in 1996; the book was published last fall.

The novel focuses on the racial mixing that occurred in the region, though Alther said she abstained from using the term “Melungeon,” noting that through her research she has concluded that there is no such thing as the “Melungeon Story.” Each family whose ancestors made their way inland from the coast to the mountains has stories of the different ethnicities that were absorbed along the way, she said.

Read the entire article here.

Constructing Dialogue, Constructing Identites: Mixed Heritage Identity Construction in “Half and Half”

Georgetown University
2009-04-16
55 pages

Anissa Jane Sorokin

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Language and Communication

This paper examines how mixed heritage authors featured in the book Half and Half use constructed dialogue, also known as reported speech, to construct their identities as bi-ethnic, bi-racial, and bi-cultural individuals. Constructed dialogue, which is often representative of previous social interactions, functions frequently as a tool for identity construction in a literary form, strongly suggesting that mixed heritage identity is in many ways formed through talk. Through constructed dialogue, narrators can explain how what was said has contributed to who they feel they are, and often allows them to portray themselves as agents who take an active role in forming identities. Authors use constructed dialogue to convey stances that signal distance from a group, alignment with a group, or a sense of living a dual-culture identity. The analysis of constructed dialogue in Half and Half adds to an understanding of how mixed heritage narrators see themselves in relation to the world around them, and vividly highlights the role words may play in the constructions of their identities.

Table of Contents

• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
  • 2.1 Defining Reported Speech
  • 2.2 Reported Speech as a Misnomer
  • 2.3 Layers of Voices in Constructed Dialogue
  • 2.4 Reported Speech and Identity Construction
  • 2.5 The Importance of Context
  • 2.6 What is Autobiography?
  • 2.7 Some Notes on Ethnicity, Race, and Mixed Heritage People
• 3. METHODOLOGY
  • 3.1 What Kind of a Book is Half and Half?
  • 3.2 Data Collection and Analysis
• 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
  • 4.1 What Are You? Where Are You From?
  • 4.2 Questioning Authenticity
  • 4.3 Identifying as the Other: Early Experiences with Racial Name-Calling
  • 4.4 Constructing Mixed Heritage Identity Through Linguistic Features
• 5. CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the entire thesis here.

HIST 387 004: Inventing the Nation in Latin America

George Mason University
Spring 2012

Matt Karush, Associate Professor of History

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Latin Americans have struggled to define themselves and their nations. This quest for identity has involved governments, intellectuals, and artists, but also ordinary men and women. And the results have been extremely varied: whereas many nineteenth-century liberals dreamed of whitening or Europeanizing their populations, some revolutionaries and nationalists argued that the future lay in a glorious mixing of the European and indigenous or African races. This course will trace this history of identity formation and ask a series of key questions: Why did some formulations of race and nation gain acceptance in some places but not in others? What impact did these identities have on people’s lives? How have ideas about race and nation been expressed in popular culture? In addition to work by historians, we will be examining many primary sources: novels, essays, films, and music. We will focus particular attention on the cases of Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil.

Blackness in Argentina: Jazz, Tango and Race Before Perón*

Past and Present
Volume 216, Issue 1 (August 2012)
pages 215-245
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gts008

Matthew B. Karush, Associate Professor of History
George Mason University

On the question of race and nation, the dominant Latin American paradigm has never applied to Argentina. In Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere, twentieth-century nationalists crafted ideologies of mestizaje that broke with European and North American models by celebrating the indigenous or African as crucial elements in a new racial mixture. Yet most Argentine intellectuals rejected this sort of hybridity and instead constructed national identities that were at least as exclusionary as those produced by their North American counterparts. The only mixtures they countenanced were those that followed from European immigration. Just as the United States was a ‘melting pot’, Argentina was a crisol de razas (crucible of races), in which Spaniards, Italians and other immigrant groups were fused into a new nation. This ideology, visible in the well-known aphorism that ‘Argentines descend from ships’, marginalized Argentines of indigenous and African descent and eventually erased them from national consciousness. As George Reid Andrews showed over thirty years ago, the alleged disappearance of the once-substantial Afro-Argentine population of Buenos Aires was at least as much the product of this ideological manoeuvre as it was the result of miscegenation, war and disease. Only recently has Argentina’s status as a white nation begun to be openly contested.

Nevertheless, even if non-whites have been pushed off the historical stage, race remains a pervasive category in Argentine society. The word ‘negro’ is a commonplace in everyday speech, functioning both as a hateful insult and, paradoxically, as a term of endearment. Equally mysteriously, the insult usually alludes to indigenous rather than African ancestry. Typically, these usages are traced to the Peronist era. During his first two terms in office (1946–55), Juan Perón built a powerful working-class movement that challenged the nation’s hierarchies. Perón’s opponents attacked his followers in racial terms, labelling them cabecitas negras (little blackheads)…

Read or purchase the article here.

Racial Theories (2nd Edition)

Cambridge University Press
April 1998
264 pages
Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm
Paperback ISBN:9780521629454

Michael Banton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology
University of Bristol

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Michael Banton’s classic book reviews historical theories of racial and ethnic relations and contemporary struggles to supersede them. It shows how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concepts of race attempted to explain human difference in terms of race as a permanent type and how these were followed by social scientific conceptions of race as a form of status. In a new concluding chapter, “Race as Social Construct,” Michael Banton makes the case for a historically sensitive social scientific understanding of racial and ethnic groupings that operates within a more general theory of collective action and is, therefore, able to replace racial explanations as effectively as they have been replaced in biological science. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand contemporary debates about racial and ethnic conflict. This new edition is thoroughly updated and contains a new chapter on developments in recent years.

Features

• Reviews history of racial theories and place of race in history of science
• Proposes new social science of racial and ethnic relations
• Distinguishes racial and ethnic explanations and puts contemporary ideas in historical perspective

Table of Contents

1. Race as designation
2. Race as lineage
3. Race as type
4. Race as subspecies
5. Race as status
6. Race as class
7. Race as social construct

Brazil’s New Racial Politics

Lynne Rienner Publishers
2009
251 pages
ISBN: 978-1-58826-666-8

Edited by:

Bernd Reiter, Associate Professor of Political Science
University of South Florida

Gladys L. Mitchell (Gladys Mitchell-Walthour), Assistant Professor of Political Science
Denison University, Granville, Ohio

As the popular myth of racial equality in Brazil crumbles beneath the weight of current grassroots politics, how will the country redefine itself as a multiethnic nation? Brazil’s New Racial Politics captures the myriad questions and problems unleashed by a growing awareness of the ways racism structures Brazilian society.

 The authors bridge the gap between scholarship and activism as they tackle issues ranging from white privilege to black power, from government policy to popular advocacy, and from historical injustices to recent victories. The result is a rich exploration of the conflicting social realities characterizing Brazil today, as well as their far-reaching political implications.

Contents

• Foreword—Michael Mitchell.
• 1. The New Politics of Race in Brazil—Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell.
• BLACK EMPOWERMENT AND WHITE PRIVILEGE.
  • 2. Whiteness as Capital: Constructing Inclusion and Defending Privilege—Bernd  Reiter.
  • 3. Politicizing Blackness: Afro-Brazilian Color Identification and Candidate Preference—Gladys L. Mitchell
  • 4. Out of Place: The Experience of the Black Middle Class—Angela Figueiredo.
  • 5. The Political Shock of the Year: The Press and the Election of a Black Mayor in São Paulo—Cloves Luiz Pereira Oliveira.
• AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONTESTED.
  • 6. Affirmative Action and Identity—Seth Racusen.
  • 7. Opportunities and Challenges for the Afro-Brazilian Movement—Mónica Treviño González.
• THE NEW POLITICS OF BLACK POWER.
  • 8. Racialized History and Urban Politics: Black Women’s Wisdom in Grassroots Struggles—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry.
  • 9. Black NGOs and “Conscious” Rap: New Agents of the Antiracism Struggle in Brazil—Sales Augusto dos Santos.
  • 10. Power and Black Organizing in Brazil—Fernando Conceição.
  • 11. New Social Activism: University Entry Courses for Black and Poor Students—Renato Emerson dos Santos.
• CONCLUSION.
  • After the Racial Democracy—Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell.

Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana

University of Pennsylvania Press
November 2012
384 pages
6 x 9 | 33 color, 17 b/w
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8122-4437-3

Sophie White, Associate Professor of American Studies; Associate Professor of Africana Studies; Associate Professor of History
University of Notre Dame

Based on a sweeping range of archival, visual, and material evidence, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians examines perceptions of Indians in French colonial Louisiana and demonstrates that material culture—especially dress—was central to the elaboration of discourses about race.

At the heart of France’s seventeenth-century plans for colonizing New France was a formal policy—Frenchification. Intended to turn Indians into Catholic subjects of the king, it also carried with it the belief that Indians could become French through religion, language, and culture. This fluid and mutable conception of identity carried a risk: while Indians had the potential to become French, the French could themselves be transformed into Indians. French officials had effectively admitted defeat of their policy by the time Louisiana became a province of New France in 1682. But it was here, in Upper Louisiana, that proponents of French-Indian intermarriage finally claimed some success with Frenchification. For supporters, proof of the policy’s success lay in the appearance and material possessions of Indian wives and daughters of Frenchmen.

Through a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach to the material sources, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians offers a distinctive and original reading of the contours and chronology of racialization in early America. While focused on Louisiana, the methodological model offered in this innovative book shows that dress can take center stage in the investigation of colonial societies—for the process of colonization was built on encounters mediated by appearance.

Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays

Edwin Mellen Press
June 2012
308 pages
ISBN10:  0-7734-1601-3; ISBN13: 978-0-7734-1601-7

Edited by:

Michael A. Zeitler, Associate Professor of English
Texas Southern University, Houston

Charlene T. Evans, Professor of English
Texas Southern University, Houston

This book examines significant aspects of President Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father both in relation to the African American literary tradition and to the context of the relevant historical and cultural productions that inform it. The authors view the book a work of literature and compare it to other works by black authors such as Toni Morrison, Frederick Douglass, and Ralph Ellison among others. Some authors contest the idea that the book was written during a pre-political stage in President Obama’s life because it was released to coincide with his first political campaign in Chicago, Illinois in the mid-1990’s. For autobiographical reasons the book is important because it shows various aspects of President Obama’s upbringing, and put in his own words his experience of being black in America. There is also a discussion of why he chose the less Americanized Barack when he went into college, rather than the homogeneous, whitened name Barry, which was the name he preferred in grammar school (out of being teased by other children)—and how he chose this name precisely because it constructed his identity as antithetical to the dominant paradigms of whiteness that he had been confined to while growing up in Hawaii. One article even describes President Obama’s father being ostracized from Kenyan politics after a coup d’etat forced a leader out of power who he had publically supported, which lead the family to America. It also tells the story of a turgid paternal influence on the young Barack Obama, where caught in a vicious cycle of perpetually working for his father’s approval, he spiraled into low self-esteem, which may have fueled his political ambitions later in life (as overcompensation for a lack of fatherly approval).

Table of Contents

• Foreword / Molefi Kete Asantei
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction / Michael A. Zeitler
• A Knot to Bind Our Experiences Together: Storytelling in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father and Critical Race Theory / Erin Ponton Fiero
• No Apology for the Show: Performance and Oratorical Self-Creation in Obama, Douglass, and Ellison / Granville Ganter
• Slumming and Self-Making in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father / David Mastey
• In Search of My Father’s Garden: Kenya as the Focal Point for the Study of a New Kind of Narrative in African American Autobiography / Claire Joly
• An Image of Africa: Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Rewriting of Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ / Michael Zeitler
• Obama, Ellison, and the Search for Identity / Rita Saylors
• Voices of His Mothers: Feminist Interventions and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father / Letizia Guglielmo
• Queer Coherence: Loss and Hybridity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father / Patricia Harris Gillies
• The Search for Race and Masculine Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father / Dolores Sisco
• Beyond Race: Racial Transcendence in Jean Toomer’s Cane and Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father / Charlene T. Evans
• Glorious Burdens: A Lacanian Reading of Racial Passing, Inheritance, and Paternal Desire in Obama’s Dreams from My Father / Nicholas Powers

The Heart of Hyacinth

University of Washington Press
2000 (Originally published in 1903)
288 pages
5-1/2 x 8-1/2
Paperback ISBN: paperback (9780295979168

Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton) (1875-1954)

Introduction by:

Samina Najmi, Professor of English
California State University, Fresno

The Heart of Hyacinth, originally published in 1903, tells the coming-of-age story of Hyacinth Lorrimer, a child of white parents who was raised from infancy in Japan by a Japanese foster mother and assumed to be Eurasian. A crisis occurs when, 18 years after her birth, her American father returns to Japan to reclaim her just as Hyacinth has become engaged to a Japanese aristocrat, and she forcefully asserts her Japanese ties only to find that her prospective father-in-law will not tolerate a white wife for his son. Onoto Watanna creates in her protagonist a young white woman who not only claims a Japanese identity but shifts between her Japaneseness and her whiteness as expediency dictates. In this novel Watanna is on the cutting edge of what we now call race theory, using that theory-of racial constructions and fluidity-in the service of an avant-garde feminism.

Onoto Watanna (pen name for Winnifred Eaton) was a popular writer of American romance novels. Daughter of a Chinese mother and English father, she used her own mixed heritage to explore diverse social issues and exploited the Orientalist fantasies of her readership to become a best-selling author. Samina Najmi is visiting assistant professor in English at Wheaton College and has written extensively on women and race in Asian American literature.