Mixed Race Studies

Because the “presumption of freedom [arose] from color [white]” and the “black color of the race [raised] the presumption of slavery,” whiteness became a shield from slavery, a highly volatile and unstable form of property. In the form adopted in the United States, slavery made human beings market-alienable and in so doing, subjected human life and personhood—that which is most valuable—to the ultimate devaluation. Because whites could not be enslaved or held as slaves, the racial line between white and Black was extremely critical; it became a line of protection and demarcation from the potential threat of commodification, and it determined the allocation of the benefits and burdens of this form of property. White identity and whiteness were sources of privilege and protection; their absence meant being the object of property.

Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be “white,” to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings.

Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review, (Volume 106, Number 8, June 1993). 1720-1721.

Another layer of blackness: theorizing race, ethnicity, and identity in the U.S. black public sphere

University of Iowa
2013
277 pages

Patrick B. Oray

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in American Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa

While many studies of U.S. immigration highlight the diversity within other racial and ethnic groups, scholarly attention to the significance of ethnicity among black people in this country is still sorely underdeveloped. This dissertation project explores how black identities are constructed not only through the prism of race in the U.S. context, but also through other social dynamics that operate “in the shadow of race,” such as differences in class, color, country of origin, and circumstances of migration. Instead of a singular black identity fueled by our political discourses and popular culture, my project treats “blackness” as a floating signifier that is constructed both within the racial organization of the U.S. nation-state and among the peoples of the black diaspora within its borders. In short, blackness is a matter that has become national, international, and transnational in scope.

Ethnicity and its implications for how we think about black identity and group representation in U.S. society is the other “layer of blackness” this dissertation addresses. The formation and reshaping of American identity among various immigrant groups have historically involved complicated relationships between race and ethnicity, two concepts scholars have used to articulate group identities in the U.S. The history of U.S. racial and ethnic relations reveals the complicated processes through which some social groups have been able to establish their place in the American mainstream by adapting to the cultural and institutional norms established by mainstream white society. Non-white immigrant groups have been forced to find their American identities on the margins of U.S. society because of their purported inability or unwillingness to assimilate to established cultural and institutional norms. Sometimes this alienation from the American mainstream takes on a purely racial dimension. At other times, the prejudices of U.S. society are directed at particular ethnic groups.

But in spite of the status ascribed to them, these immigrants have also proven to be empowered agents in their implicit and explicit critiques of the U.S.’s social order. Historically, non-white immigrants in the U.S. have demonstrated the power to question, disrupt, and resist cultural and institutional forms of discrimination even as they are incorporated into them.

My interrogation of black ethnic identity and what it brings to bear on how we define blackness in the U.S. begins by asking what cultural capital black immigrants bring with them in their sojourn to America rather than assuming what is lost in the process of their incorporation into U.S. race relations. Patterns of immigration, return migration and circular migration that have come to characterize the experience of many foreign-born blacks in the U.S., as well as the circulation of ideas, culture, and history between sending and receiving countries are all issues germane to the process of black immigrant incorporation and black ethnic identity in the U.S. As such, the argument I proffer in my dissertation project is this: because of the myriad processes at play in formulating black racial and ethnic identities in America (i.e., historically established structures of race as well as an unprecedented surge in foreign-born black migration this country)-how we define blackness in the U.S. context is more fruitfully theorized as a matter that is at once national, international, and transnational in scope. It is at the nexus of these fronts that the historical and cultural constructions of blackness are currently defined among the diversity of black people in the U.S.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• I. BLACK LIKE WHOM?: AN INTRODUCTION TO RACE, CLASS, AND ETHNICITY IN THE UNITED STATES BLACK PUBLIC SPHERE
  • 1.1 Ethnicity as “Another Layer of Blackness”
  • 1.2 Theorizing the U.S. Black Public Sphere
  • 1.3 Uncovering an Ethnic Layer of Blackness in the U.S. Black Public Sphere
• II. “NO BOOTBLACK HAITIANS:” BLACK COSMOPOLITAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF HAITI (1915-1934)
  • 2.1 The Roots of Black Cosmopolitan Consciousness in the U.S.: The African-American Press Response to the Occupation
  • 2.2 Cosmopolitanism and the U.S. Black Public Sphere: The Occupation, The New Negro Movement, and the Harlem Renaissance
  • 2.3 The Limits of Cosmopolitanism in the U.S. Black Public Sphere
• III. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN “BROTHERS” AND “OTHERS” (REPRISE): AFRICAN-AMERICANS, BLACK IMMIGRANTS, AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE
  • 3.1 African Americans and the Transformation of the “Chocolate City” of Oakland, California
  • 3.2 “Challenges to “Umoja” (Unity): The Close Encounters of Black Americans and Black Immigrants in Oakland
  • 3.3 The “Blues City” Finds a New Identity“
• IV. RACE AND REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACKNESS IN THE ERA OF OBAMA
  • 4.1 Obama’s Presidential Conceit: A “Black Man” Who is Also “Everyman”
  • 4.2 “Articulate, Bright, and Clean”: Barack Obama and the Melodrama of Blackness in Campaign ‘08
  • 4.3 Obama Walks the Tightrope Between “Race” and “Nation”
• V. CONCLUSION: W(H)ITHER THE BLACK PUBLIC SPHERE?: RACE, ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY IN THE ERA OF OBAMA
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the entire dissertation here.

One Drop: Drexel professor’s new book explores what determines blackness

The Philadelphia Inquirer
2013-11-26

UNLESS YOU want an earful, don’t get Drexel University professor Yaba Blay talking about colorism. She sees examples of discrimination based on skin color everywhere – from drug stores that stock skin-bleaching creams to the online chatter that erupts when photos surface of Beyonce and Jay Z’s daughter, Blue Ivy.

“[People say], why doesn’t Beyonce comb that baby’s hair?” Blay said. “You would rather put an entire pack of barrettes on that baby’s hair?”

“I hate that,” I murmured.

“I hate it more,” she shot back. “[People] expect her to look like her mama. . . . She’s 2.”

And don’t bring up the subject of Kanye West, who once famously referred to biracial women as “mutts.”

“Kanye’s choosing Kim [Kardashian] is not about Kim. It’s about Kanye,” said Blay, author of a new book called (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race. “He’s obsessed with her. It has to do with what her being on his arm says about him.”

Yeah, Blay went there.

And, let me tell you, the codirector of the Africana Studies program doesn’t hold back in that new book of hers, either. It deals with America’s biggest third-rail issue: race. That subject hasn’t gotten any less explosive since America elected its first black president.

The book is provocative right from its title, taken from the slavery-era notion that if you had one drop of black blood, you were considered black.

Plus, here’s a darker-hued woman writing about the racial experiences of lighter-skinned people, many of whom identify as black or mixed race. That’s an incredibly touchy topic among some black folk because of historical social stratification based on skin color that grants higher status to lighter-hued blacks.

The subject was explored in depth in a documentary called “Dark Girls” that aired recently on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

(1)ne Drop is sort of the reverse…

Read the entire article here.

“The Box Marked Black” is coming to Willamette University Oct. 24-25

Willamette University News
Salem, Oregon
2014-10-02

What does it mean to be black? Is it the shade of your skin or the kink in your hair? Is it learned?

These questions are explored in “The Box Marked Black: Tales from a Halfrican American growing up Mulatto. With sock puppets!” Written and performed by Damaris Webb and directed by Debra Disbrow, the play is debuting at Willamette University Oct. 24-25.

“In exploring the story of my blackness and unpacking my personal relationship to identity, race and culture, it quickly became clear that the best form for this exploration was as a solo piece,” Webb says. “Hopefully, telling my story will create space for others to unpack and breathe around their own varied identities.”

With only Jenny Willis from “The Jeffersons” as a guide, Webb’s narrative uses direct storytelling, modern dance, song and puppetry to share the perspectives of both sides of her interracial family…

For more information, click here.

Performance added for one-woman play at Willamette U.

The Salem Statesman-Journal
Salem, Oregon
2014-10-13

Tom Mayhall Rastrelli, Fine Arts & Culture Writer

Damaris Webb will debut her one-woman play “The Box Marked Black: Tales from a Halfrican American growing up Mulatto. With sock puppets!” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24 and 25 at M. Lee Pelton Theatre, Willamette University, 900 State St. According to the box office, the performance Oct. 24 is sold out, but the recently-added performance Oct. 25 has many tickets available.

Using Jenny Willis from “The Jeffersons” as a guide, Webb will narrate her experience of living in an interracial family with storytelling, dance, song and puppetry. The play asks what it means to be black, but it’s themes of abandonment, belonging, fear and acceptance, are universal.

“Hopefully, telling my story will create space for others to unpack and breathe around their own varied identities,” Webb said…

Read the entire article here.

Revisiting Middlebury’s Racial History

The Middlebury Campus
Middlebury College
Middlebury, Vermont
2014-03-19

Conor Grant, Managing Editor

Alexander Twilight Hall, a building named in honor of Alexander Twilight of the class of 1823, is just one part of the complicated legacy of America’s first black college graduate. (Courtesy/Middlebury)

Alexander Twilight Hall — the austere brick building separating the town from Middlebury College — is named for Alexander Twilight, the 1823 Middlebury College graduate who is known today as the first American black college graduate.

Today, Twilight is widely touted as an example of Middlebury’s rich legacy of inclusivity and racial diversity.

But who exactly was Alexander Twilight? Was he really the first black man at Middlebury?

The answer to that question is more complicated than it might first appear…

Read the entire article here.

Skin tone, biracial stratification and tri-racial stratification among sperm donors

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 37,  Issue 3, 2014 (Special Issue: Race, Migration and Identity: Shifting Boundaries in the USA)
pages 517-536
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.696666

Carol S. Walther, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Northern Illinois University

Conception through donor insemination is an attractive option for many couples and single women in the USA, being a relatively simple and inexpensive way of having a baby by a biological birth. Sperm banks provide online catalogues in which sperm donors can be selected according to their physical and social characteristics. One sperm bank’s catalogue was analysed based on the pregnancy of selected donors. Three hypotheses were tested related to colourism, biracial stratification and tri-racialism. Specifically, the selection of donors did not reflect: (1) any general preference for a lighter skin tone; (2) a black–white polarity; or (3) any trend towards tri-racialism. Donors who could be identified as Jewish or Muslim were more likely to be selected. Donors whose major was law were less likely to be selected.

Read or purchase the article here.

Whiteness as Property

Harvard Law Review
Volume 106, Number 8 (June 1993)
pages 1707-1791

Cheryl I. Harris, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Professor in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
School of Law
University of California, Los Angeles

Issues regarding race and racial identity as well as questions pertaining to property rights and ownership have been prominent in much public discourse in the United States. In this article, Professor Harris contributes to this discussion by positing that racial identity and property are deeply interrelated concepts. Professor Harris examines how whiteness, initially constructed as a form of racial identity, evolved into a form of property, historically and presently acknowledged and protected in American law. Professor Harris traces the origins of whiteness as property in the parallel systems of domination of Black and Native American peoples out of which were created racially contingent forms of property and property rights. Following the period of slavery and conquest, whiteness became the basis of racialized privilege—a type of status in which white racial identity provided the basis for allocating societal benefits both private and public in character. These arrangements were ratified and legitimated in law as a type of status property. Even as legal segregation was overturned, whiteness as property continued to serve as a barrier to effective change as the system of racial classification operated to protect entrenched power.

Next, Professor Harris examines how the concept of whiteness as property persists in current perceptions of racial identity, in the law’s misperception of group identity and in the Court’s reasoning and decisions in the arena of affirmative action. Professor Harris concludes by arguing that distortions in affirmative action doctrine can only be addressed by confronting and exposing the property interest in whiteness and by acknowledging the distributive justification and function of affirmative action as central to that task.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. THE CONSTRUCTION OF RACE AND THE EMERGENCE OF WHITENESS AS PROPERTY
  • A. Forms of Racialized Property: Relationships Between Slavery, Race, and Property
    • 1. The Convergence of Racial and Legal Status
    • 2. Implications for Property
  • B. Forms of Racialized Property: Relationships Between Native American Land Seizure, Race, and Property
  • C. Critical Characteristics of Property and Whiteness
    • 1. Whiteness as a Traditional Form of Property
    • 2. Modern Views of Property as Defining Social Relations
    • 3. Property and Expectations
    • 4. The Property Functions of Whiteness
      • (a) Rights of Disposition
      • (b) Right to Use and Enjoyment
      • (c) Reputation and Status Property
      • (d) The Absolute Right to Exclude
  • D. White Legal Identity: The Law’s Acceptance and Legitimation of Whiteness as Property
    • 1. Whiteness as Racialized Privilege
    • 2. Whiteness, Rights, and National Identity
• III. BOUND BY LAW: THE PROPERTY INTEREST IN WHITENESS AS LEGAL DOCTRINE IN PLESSY AND BROWN
  • A. Plessy
  • B. Brown I
  • C. Brown II
  • D. Brown’s Mixed Legacy
• IV. THE PERSISTENCE OF WHITENESS AS PROPERTY
  • A. The Persistence of Whiteness as Valued Social Identity
  • B. Subordination Through Denial of Group Identity
  • C. Subjugation Through Affirmative Action Doctrine
    • 1. Bakke
    • 2. Croson
    • 3. Wygant
• V. DE-LEGITIMATING THE PROPERTY INTEREST IN WHITENESS THROUGH AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
  • A. Corrective Justice, Sin, and Whiteness as Property
  • B. Affirmative Action: A New Form of Status Property?
  • C. What Affirmative Action Has Been; What Affirmative Action Might Become
• VI. CONCLUSION

…Because the “presumption of freedom [arose] from color [white]” and the “black color of the race [raised] the presumption of slavery,” whiteness became a shield from slavery, a highly volatile and unstable form of property. In the form adopted in the United States, slavery made human beings market-alienable and in so doing, subjected human life and personhood—that which is most valuable—to the ultimate devaluation. Because whites could not be enslaved or held as slaves, the racial line between white and Black was extremely critical; it became a line of protection and demarcation from the potential threat of commodification, and it determined the allocation of the benefits and burdens of this form of property. White identity and whiteness were sources of privilege and protection; their absence meant being the object of property.

Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be “white,” to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings…

Read the entire article here.

Appointment of new Chancellor

University of Salford, Manchester
News
2014-10-17

The distinguished award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays, Jackie Kay MBE, has been appointed as our new Chancellor. Jackie, who takes up the position immediately, takes over from the University’s previous Chancellor, Dr Irene Khan who stepped down earlier this year after her five-year term.

As well as the honorary role of Chancellor, Jackie will, from the 1 January 2015, take up the position of University ‘Writer in Residence’. In this capacity, she will contribute major commissions that will enhance learning and teaching and the students’ broader experience at the University.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Martin Hall said: “We are thrilled to welcome Jackie to our University. She will inspire our staff, work with our students to help them imagine their future selves and strengthen our role as a civic institution in our wider community.”

Jackie Kay said:” It’s a huge honour to have been chosen to be Chancellor of Salford University, and I’m very much looking forward to taking up the role, and to being a hands-on Chancellor, as well as a shaking hands Chancellor. As Writer in Residence, the idea of getting to know each department thoroughly and of finding new and pioneering ways to work across disciplines excites me.”…

…Jackie, who lives in Manchester, was born to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father in Edinburgh and was adopted as a baby by Helen and John Kay, growing up in Glasgow…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race Irish group seek redress amid claims of racist abuse in industrial schools

The Irish Examiner
Dublin, Ireland
2014-10-22

Noel Baker, Senior Reporter

Mixed Race Irish group seek redress amid claims of racist abuse in industrial schools

Mixed-race Irish who spent time in industrial schools will today claim they faced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse there because of the colour of their skin.

The Mixed-Race Irish group has 71 members, many of whom now live outside Ireland. Representatives of the group will appear before the Oireachtas Justice Committee today as part of a campaign aimed at official recognition of their experiences and access to redress.

Founder members Evon Brennan, Rosemary C Adaser, and Carole Brennan are set to address the committee and are expected to outline how there has been a failure to acknowledge the historical and ongoing suffering of mixed-race Irish children placed in State institutions throughout Ireland between the 1940s and the 1980s.

They claim mixed-race children who spent time in the industrial school system have had their lives blighted as a result, from poor adoption and educational opportunities, reduced job opportunities due to institutional racism, and memories of neglect and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse because of their skin colour.

The group say records relating to their care are not readily available as the Irish Census did not begin to record ethnicity until 1996.

In all, the group believes as many as 150 mixed-race children were placed in State industrial schools between 1940 and 1980, including in St Patrick’s in Kilkenny, on the Navan Road in Dublin, and in Letterfrack in Galway…

Read the entire article here.