Mixed Race Studies

On being mixed-race

New Statesman
2011-04-07

Samira Shackle

I grew up thinking of myself as equally English and Pakistani, writes Samira Shackle. Was I wrong?

When I meet people for the first time, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “Where are you from?” If I reply, “London,” they say, “Oh, no, where are you from from,” or, “Where are you actually from?” It’s a polite way of seeking an explanation for my colour. Most of the time, I don’t find it offensive—I am half Pakistani and half English and look racially ambiguous.

If you are mixed-race (as one in ten British children now is), you don’t slot neatly into racial or national categories. The conversation above tends to continue, “Do you go back home often?”—which feels strange, as until now I have visited Pakistan only as a baby and “home” is Queen’s Park in north London. Having one English parent makes you as much English as anything else—arguably more English than not, if you live here—yet most people’s default position is to define you by your difference.

It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to show interest in someone’s background. It becomes corrosive only when it is tied to a non-inclusive sense of Englishness that is hostile to “the other” and suggests that, because you have a mixed heritage, you cannot share ownership of the place where you live…

Read the entire article here.

Anthropological Studies of Children

Eugenics Review
Volume 18, Number 4 (January 1927)
pages 294-301

Rachel M. Fleming

Some ten years ago, with the guidance and help of Professor Fleure, of the Department of Geography and Anthropology, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, I began to study race type in women, and from the study of divergent-race characteristics for the sexes there naturally emerged a desire to follow up growth in children, and see how far and in what way racial type affected development, if it affected it at all. For this purpose it seemed essential to follow the course of growth year by year in individuals; there are numerous studies of different batches of children at different ages compared as to various physical characters. This method, however, does not bring out either what actually happens in individual cases, or allow for racial variations. On the other hand the method of following up growth in individual children is a slow and laborious one, and though, for the past eight years, some thousand children have been under continuous observation, the work is still far from complete. Last year, at the suggestion of the Eugenics Society, Professor Fleure and I took some measurements on children of mixed parentage (coloured and white) in various seaport towns. In its initial stages the work had for its main aim to record developmental changes and their correlation, if any, with different race types.As the work has progressed other possibilities have developed-the marked differences in rate of development according to sex led to some conclusions as to the desirability of recognising the sex factor in school curricula, and the Advisory Committee to the board of Education asked for the data. Further, the extensive studies of racial types carried out by Professor Fleure and his students have afforded a basis on which to consider some possibilities of special aptitudes associated with particular race types. In the course of my visits to secondary schools I am often asked by children and their parents for help in deciding on a possible career for a youth or girl who seems “pretty good all round,” “likes nearly everything,” &c., and is obviously as yet not fully developed in knowledge of what will finally be the special bent. No claim is made that special aptitudes must go with particular physical types, or vice versa, but the claim is made that in many cases it is possible to say that to many people of a certain type, a certain side of life appeals, and therefore to suggest this as probably the right one. To take a concrete example. In taking measurements at a boys’ commercial secondary school in an industrial centre, where most lads were of Scotch parentage, a lad was brought to me with the half-jesting suggestion that perhaps the callipers could find out why he had done such consistently bad work for the 18 months that he had been in the school, though he had headed the scholarship list on entry. It happened that the lad was of a striking physique noted frequently among photographs of old Welsh bards and preachers. In conversation it turned out that the lad was of Welsh extraction, that a relative had just won a bardic prize, and that the lad’ s interests were all literary. Following a talk to the head master the lad was removed to a school where his literary ability had scope, and later I heard that he had done brilliantly and was now in a University. Head teachers in some schools are now helping me to record special aptitudes, and eventually the cards should help, it is hoped, in the problems of advisory committees on the occupation of adolescents. An important scientific aspect of the work is the effort to record ancestry, and so to work out to some extent the heredity of the child and its relation to each of its parents. The advantages from this point of view of studies of children of negro and white, of Chinese and white, &c., are obvious, since some results of crossing are written in obvious characters, whereas in the blending of the races so long living side by side in our own island, the problem is much more intricate…

…PART II. CHILDREN OF MIXED PARENTAGE.

The observations on children of English and foreign parentage have only been carried out for the last year, and so results are based on much smaller numbers, and no growth data are available. The conclusions given are therefore merely in the nature of an interim report and should not be taken as final.

Several children whose fathers were Chinese, and mothers English were measured; in one case the father was Chinese and the mother Anglo-Chinese. Parents were measured in some cases. As regards physical characters, 47.3% had inherited the fold of the eyelid characterised as Mongolian. One unfortunate lad had this fold and an orbit of Chinese shape on one side only. His eyes also varied, one being the characteristic “opaque” brown of the Chinese, and one being a light grey-brown English eye.

Skin colour. Although the mothers were usually of the fair “Nordic” type, only one child had a really fair fresh skin, and 68.4% had inherited Chinese skin type and colour.

Eye colour. 68.4% had the characteristic “opaque” brown Chinese eye, and only one child had blue eyes…

…Social Workers agreed in reporting that the Chinese were good husbands, and especially good fathers, and insisted on care of the children. This was borne out by what we saw in visiting the homes, where the Chinese father often seemed most anxious to get the children to be at their best intellectually when we went in. Several Chinese were bitter about the impossibility of getting good housing conditions The children often seemed affectionate and to have complete confidence in their Chinese father, whereas in the negro-white home the children clung to the mother. The unions of Chinese and White were more usually stable than those of Negro and White…

…CHILDREN OF NEGRO AND WHITE ANCESTRY.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS.

Skin colour. With three exceptions skin colour had been inherited from the coloured side to a greater or less degree. There were several cases of negro father and half-caste mother, and in these cases the skin was distinctly negroid. In all cases, Fl and F2 reckoned together, 92% showed some degree of negro colouring. Marked variations of intensity in pigmentation occurred, and it was noticeable that in many children the forehead seemed specially dusky, in others the arms and legs and neck varied much in intensity of shade. In cases of Portuguese and Spanish negro crossed with English half-caste, the skin was a beautiful gold-orange tint with a deep red in the cheeks. In the case of negro ancestry of American origin there were indications of North American Indian in skin and eyes, etc. It is hoped to follow up this question of inheritance of skin colour in larger numbers, and to get data on the effect of sex linkage.

Eye colour. 30% had English eyes, 70% had the peculiar velvety deep bluish brown negro eye. Only one child had really blue eyes. There were several cases of a grayish rim to the eye which had the appearance of the ring due to age, and in two cases cataract had developed. It would be interesting to work out whether this had any relation to the different light conditions, i.e., the eye had developed its intensity in tropic conditions and that intensity may possibly not be suited to our cloudier conditions.

Hair. A little over 50% had hair negroid in type and in colour, 25% had hair English in type and colour. The remaining 25% exhibited some curious mixtures-hair tight and frizzy in type, but flaxen in colour surmounting a quite black face, in another case hair partly woolly in type and partly straight, and ranging from light brown to black, and so on.

Lips. About 12% had lips like the average English child, 50% had wide everted lips, and the remainder had one lip wide and everted and one English in type.

Nose. 70% had the broad flat negro nose.

Limbs. 70% showed negroid features in the slimness of bone or in the bulbous appearance of the joints.

General appearance. 43% immediately gave the impression of being distinctly negroid. 5% might have passed as English children, and the remainder were half caste in appearance. There were some striking anomalies, e.g., negro skin and flaxen hair, negroid colouring and white scalp-in this peculiar case, almost the only thing that betrayed any English blood was the very white scalp-the hair was woolly and black. In another case the eyes and lips were English in type, the skin colour a rich brownish red, the hair dark and the scalp, very light. Other peculiarities were the long hairs often growing on the check bones and outwards from a central vertical space in the forehead. The fact that 25% admitted half-caste blood on the mother’s side shows that this intermixture is going on steadily in our seaport towns.

Head Shape. In most cases the head form was markedly long and narrow, as is to be expected since the mothers were mainly fair long heads and the negro is long headed.

General conclusions. The negro side of the ancestry tends to be very apparent in both Fl and F2 generations. Skin, eye and hair colour are not all inherited together, but vary most curiously and unexpectedly, giving the children at times a most disharmonic appearance.

Most of the Anglo-Negro children observed came from poor homes, and frequently children of the same mother had different fathers e.g. a family where the mother was recorded as sub-normal, included pure European, Anglo-negro, Anglo-halfcaste children, and a child of uncertain fatherhood. One such European child in a mixed family was a girl of aristocratic features anid bearing, who had an expression of suppressed and sullen inward rage and shamnefacediness that was painful to see. There were pleasant exceptions to this rule of bad conditions, notably a family where the father was a well educated, musical and intelligent negro, and the woman an intelligent and devoted European mother, who insisted that the father was her superior in mind and ideals. One girl in this family took a prominent part in school activities and athletics and was popular with both staff and scholars. Her frank, happy and intelligent expression was a refreshing contrast to the sulky, half shamed expression too often seen on the face of the adolescent half caste girl in our crowdecd cities. Yet even in this case teachers were finding it difficult to plan out a future occupation for the girl…

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A study of the intelligence of Anglo-Chinese children

Eugenics Review
Volume 30, Number 2 (July 1938)
pages 109-119

P. C. Hu
Department of Psychology
University College, London

I. OBJECT OF THE INQUIRY

The present investigation was carried out with the object of determining the general intellectual level of Anglo-Chinese children, and of dscovering what differences, if any, exist between their general standard of intelligence as compared with that of English children, selected from
the same social environment. With this object in view the East End of London and Liverpool were chosen as the most suitable districts in which to carry out the main portion of the research. Anglo-Chinese communities have existed in these districts for nearly a century, and small groups of half-caste children are here easily accessible to the investigator. To obtain precise information about the population, and particularly about the numbers of half-caste children residing in these areas, is by no means easy. In London they are scattered over many different schools, and accordingly the simplest plan seemed to be to choose the chief examinees from the Chung Hwa Club* for Anglo-Chinese children, and to test them in the club itself. The children attending this club must be of Chinese parentage; otherwise, no special qualification is necessary and no fee is paid, the members therefore forming a group typical of the total Anglo-Chinese population. In Liverpool the half-caste children are nearly all grouped together in the three schools; these therefore were tested in the school itself.

In both London and Liverpool the children of mixed parentage form only a small minority; and it would be useless to compare them with a paired control group containing an equally small number of English children. We need, if possible, to compare the average intelligence of both communities estimated as a whole. The method here adopted was to test the entire number of English children at the five London schools which the majority of the Anglo-Chinese children were attending. In Liverpool, to obtain sufficient numbers the English children were tested at five schools: three of the schools were attended by Anglo-Chinese, the other two by English children only, but the social status and economic conditions were much the same as those of the half-castes…

Read the entire article here.

The Liverpool-Born Black Community

Diverse Magazine
2009

Dr. Ray Costello

The history of The Liverpool Black Community seems to have been strangely ignored in the dialogue on asylum seekers and immigration by government pundits.

The Liverpool Black Community is distinguished from others by its continuity, some black Liverpudlians being able to trace their roots in Liverpool for as many as ten generations. This community dates back to even before the American War of Independence, which caused numbers of free Black Loyalists to settle in London and the growing township. Early settlers ranged from freed slaves and black servants to the student sons and daughters of African rulers, who had visited the port from at least the 1730s.

Liverpool’s Black community is some three centuries old, but, incredibly, still faces difficulties of identification. Although not all of the Liverpool Black Community is of dual heritage, the majority of those born in Liverpool are. Much of the difficulty of identification of the Liverpool Black Community lies in the fact that, from its beginnings, the Liverpool Black population has, indeed, been a mixed race community, the result of more male settlers than female; freed Black American soldiers arriving in 1782 after the American War of Independence, to be followed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by African and West Indian sailors, soldiers and workers.

The very definition of a “mixed-race” society is fraught with difficulty, and this is one of the problems of acknowledgement, even in Liverpool. All the current terms are inadequate: The term “half-caste” has long been discredited, but even newer terms; “mixed-race” and “dual heritage” have their own problems. “Dual heritage” suggests a child living with the supposed ‘dilemma’ of each parent having a different culture or background. This may not be the case in many Liverpool children with both European and African genes, as any intermarriage may have taken place generations ago. Thus, a child who appears to have 50/50 genes may not have one black and one white parent, but could be the product of a community which became a distinct multi-racial community literally centuries ago, just as Mexicans and many Central and South Americans have now evolved from being considered half Native American (or ‘Indian’, as they were wrongly called) and half Spanish to distinct ethnic identities…

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The Changing Face of Liverpool 8

Diverse Magazine
2009

Dave Clay

Four hundred years of shackles and chains, four hundred years of racist names and institutionalised racist games, Slavepool’s history has got to change
“Slavepool” by Eugene Lange AKA Muhammad Khalil

My mate, the late and inspirational, John Hill once described Liverpool-born Black people as Puzzle People. He had touched on the puzzling question of identity in the City of Liverpool.   Negro in the 1940s, Second Generation Immigrants in the 1950s,  Mixed-Race in the 1960s, Coloured/Half-caste in the1970s, Afro Caribbean in the 1980s,  Ethnic Minority in the 1990s  and to be found somewhere on an Ethnic Monitoring Form in the Millennium. You can be, politely, described as any of the above at any given time or era in Liverpool. Confused? This article endeavours to explore the so-called Identity Crisis in Liverpool from a Liverpool-born Black perspective.

When I considered which direction this article should take I found that it was so emotional that I had to express some feelings and experiences, rather than provide an academic overview of identity in Liverpool. The latter is more than adequately addressed by Dr. Ray Costello in his excellent overview of this subject on page.

I was born and raised in the Granby area of Liverpool 8 with an African father and a White mother. We were born in the slums of Liverpool 8. As a teenager in the early 1960s I considered myself as one of the ‘Shines’. Obviously intended as a derogatory remark. It was one term used to describe Liverpool Blacks and was fitting with the racist Scouse humour of the time. Here’s an example: Question—Where is the cleanest street in Liverpool?—Answer: Upper Parliament Street where there is a Shine on every corner!…

…FROME SHINES TO HALF-CASTE

Little had changed by the time I became one of the older boys. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. It was now almost 1970 and we were now being called Half-Caste and we continued in the tradition of fighting racism head on. The term half-caste in many ways distinguished us from our fathers only in the sense that we spoke the Scouse ‘language’; we were here to stay and mostly stood up for ourselves. It also isolated us from from Black people outside of Liverpool. Terms like ‘Yellow Man’ ‘half breed’ and ‘red’ were familiar terms within a growing Black population. As a 12 year old I recall being told about the ‘mad African’ who struttered around Upper Stanhope Street waving a paper and shouting extremities about ‘half-caste’ people. We used to consider him as an object of fun. One day I actually listened to what he was saying and it summed up the dilemmas faced by Black kids of our generation; “You half-caste. You are from nowhere. You were born in the middle of the Ocean”. Our fathers took a different view. They considered us as English, ignoring the skin pigmentation. Why did they not teach us African?  We deployed ‘back slang’ instead. The African community was more elderly and holding on to the last strand of the institutions they had created; The Ibo, The Federation, The Crew Club, The Sierra Leone, The Nigerian and The Yoruba. They saw themselves as returning to Africa one day, not with us, and saw no reason why their sons and daughters could not assimilate into the indigenous population since we were born in Liverpool, England, not Freetown Sierra Leone. Unlike their sons and daughters they had no fight in Britain. It was here Africans had arrived from slavery, colonialism, poverty and wars and in many ways they tried to shield us from racism, in order to ensure a good quality of life. They were polite, courteous, believed in education and, in some ways, were too appreciative of Britain for allowing them an opportunity in a country that had occupied Africa. This is not to ignore the African blood that was shed in two World Wars.  Fortunately we knew the reality of Liverpool and English history.  Our foot was in all camps in regard to Africa, language and Liverpool culture. We could not be hoodwinked too easily. We know racism—be it subtle or overt. In any past life we could have been slaves in Africa, on the Masta’s Plantation, targets of the KKK in America, rioters in Watts, or Rodney King, categorised in apartheid South Africa or joining the Mau Mau resistance…

Read the entire article here.

Black People in Britain: Response and Reaction, 1945-62

History Today
Volume 36, Issue 1 (January 1986)

Paul B. Rich

Paul Rich argues that while the official response to post-war immigration was slow to develop, the tensions and white backlash of the late fifties marked its emergence as a national political issue.

The Settlers from the West Indies and South Asia who arrived in Britain from the late 1940s up to the 1960s found a society remarkably unprepared for their incorporation into its elaborate class and cultural networks. Almost from the very start of this post-war migration, when the SS Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in June 1948 with 492 passengers from the West Indies, there was a mixture in governmental circles of either panic and fear of impending racial conflict or a more detached dismissal of the whole issue as a storm in a teacup. One Home Office civil servant minuted for example that ‘sooner or later action must be taken to keep out the undesirable elements of our colonial population’, for otherwise their presence in Britain would present ‘a formidable problem’ to the various government departments concerned, such as the Home Office, the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Labour. Some government ministers, including the Prime Minister Clement Attlee, refused to take the ‘Jamaican party’ to the United Kingdom ‘too seriously’, though the worry in official circles continued to increase over the following years. It was pointed out, however, to the Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, as early as 1948 that any attempt by legislation to restrict this immigration would have to come from Britain itself rather than in the Colonial context, since otherwise there would be massive opportunities for evasion. ‘In the case of Jamaica’, some ministerial notes pointed out, ‘the next country would be Cuba, and obviously we cannot control the Government of Cuba’…

…The local councils of social service up and down the country approached the area of black immigration with a very limited fund of experience. The ideal of ‘social service’ had quite a long tradition in British philanthropy and can be traced to the rise of a secularised Anglican conscience at the end of the nineteenth century centred around the notion of ‘duty’. The National Council of Social Service was established in 1919 and had developed the notion of ‘community service’ in the inter-war years in response to growing patterns of sub-urbanisation around housing estates. Local councils of social service had concerned themselves with local community centres, clubs for the unemployed and rural community councils in villages. They had not been concerned with ‘multi-racial” issues, which had been mainly confined to the seaport towns where, in Liverpool for example, the local university settlement had got involved in the issue in the late 1920s and 1930s through the Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children. Other issues surrounding colour like the problems confronting black students in Britain, had been taken up either by activist bodies like the West African Students Union (WASU) in London, run by a Nigerian, Ladipo Solanke, or the various universities concerned. In addition, the Colonial Office had taken a welfare interest in students during the war years through fear of rising colonial nationalism, but by the early 1950s had devolved its responsibility in this sphere to the British Council. In the early 1950s, therefore, the councils of social service approached the issue of post-war black immigration with few clear guidelines and tended to resort to whatever ‘expert’ advice there was available – whether from missionaries with a colonial experience of race, a small number of interested social workers or social anthropologists and sociologists who were by this time becoming interested in the new subject area of ‘race relations’…

…This association of the black presence with moral decline became to some extent popularised through the popular media, such as the 1959 film Sapphire which still linked the mixed race ‘half-caste’ with prostitution and the underworld (though the film did contain many useful documentary aspects which pointed out the social diversity of the immigrants and the problems of white racism). The National Council of Social Service tried to defend the immigrants, especially the West Indians, from charges of ‘loose living’ in its circular, Nacoss News, but nevertheless admitted ‘of all the possible causes of difficulty and tension… differences of outlook and ways of living remain the most intractable’, and noted the charges of some whites of ‘the noisy social habits’ of some immigrants. ‘Race relations’ began to become a serious industry as growing ties were forged with the newly established Institute of Race Relations in London, which had hived off from the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1958 under the Directorship of Philip Mason and developed a British interest as well as a wider international one. The recognition, though, that social work and the easing of racial tensions in many inner cities required increasingly specialised expertise which the older generation of voluntary workers in the local councils of social service did not possess, encouraged a climate favouring immigration control in order that resources could be geared to coping with those immigrants who had already settled in Britain. There was, therefore, a concern about the ability of the social services to maintain an adequate level of social control in the inner city areas which enhanced the back-bench Conservative and constituency pressure by 1960 in favour of legislative restriction. After years of resisting these appeals through fear of antagonising opinion in the West Indies and India, the Conservative government finally decided to introduce a bill in the Autumn of 1961. Speaking in support of the measure, the Home Secretary, R.A. Butler, noted that the essence of the bill was ‘control’, for the voluntary sector could ‘deal with limited numbers only, and, if the numbers of new entrants are excessive, their assimilation into our society presents the gravest difficulty’.

The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act thus reflected an important new government determination to intervene in the area of Commonwealth immigration and initiate a measure of restriction on the numbers of black immigrants. There had been previous measures before the First World War to control alien immigration through the 1905 and 1914 Alien Acts, and in 1925 the Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order had been passed to restrict the entry of black ‘alien’ seamen, some of whom claimed British citizenship but were unable to produce the necessary documentation. But there had traditionally been powerful political pressures inhibiting the restriction of Commonwealth immigrants, and it was this concern for the Commonwealth connection which the 1962 Act overrode. Initiating a new pattern of restriction of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, the legislation in some respects brought Britain, as the former imperial mother country, into line with her more racially conscious colonial daughters. Restriction of black immigration had first been initiated in Australia and New Zealand in 1901 to exclude Asian and Chinese immigrants and prevent competition with white labour. Based on an education test developed in Natal, these restrictions had been initiated in a militant climate of racial Anglo-Saxonism and belief in the inherent superiority of white racial stocks. The supporters of the 1962 legislation (apart from an extreme right-wing fringe) desisted from justifying it in such terms, but the measure did nevertheless echo some of the previous patterns of restriction in the white dominions, even though the criterion of admittance was through a voucher system gearing the numbers of likely ‘newcomers’ to the likely number of jobs available for them…

Read the entire article here.

Philanthropic racism in Britain: The Liverpool university settlement, the anti-slavery society and the issue of ‘half-caste’ children, 1919-51

Immigrants & Minorities
Volume 3, Issue 1 (1984)
Pages 69-88
DOI: 10.1080/02619288.1984.9974570

Paul B. Rich

The history of racial ideology in Britain has focused mainly on extreme groups of the political right. Less attention has been paid to more ‘respectable’ forms of racism. This paper attempts to redress the balance. It concentrates upon two groups, the Anti-Slavery Society and the Settlement Movement and, with particular reference to Liverpool and Cardiff between 1919 and 1951, examines their attitudes towards Britain’s ‘half-caste’ population.

The history of racial ideology in Britain has tended mostly to focus upongroups on the extreme right-wing fringe to the exclusion of what may be termed ‘middle opinion’. This rather narrow range of analysis, centred around the yardstick of fascism and its political variants, can lead to the downplaying in certain aspects of British racial attitudes which can be seen to represent a continuation, in a somewhat different guise, of Victorian racial ideas. It was Hugh Tinker who originally suggested this possible linkage between more modern British race attitudes and what he termed ‘neo-Victorianism’, though the thesis has been given no substantial institutional anchorage. This article, therefore, proposes to look at one particular set of institutional links between the Victorian era and the more modern arena of race relations in the 1920s and 1930s by looking at the role of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Settlement Movement in the debate on ‘half-castes’ in the seaport towns of Liverpool, and to a lesser degree Cardiff, between the wars.

This issue is of importance to students of race in Britain for a number of reasons. Both the Anti-Slavery Society and the Settlement Movement had roots in the Victorian philanthropic concern with the lower social orders and the less privileged. Though the anti-slavery movement had its heyday during the middle of the nineteenth century before and after the American Civil War of 1861-5, it left a strong legacy in middle-class liberal thought in Britain which was to enjoy a renewed upsurge on the issue of ‘forced labour’ in the Belgian Congo during the Edwardian years through the campaign of E.D. Morel and the Congo Reform Association. Similarly, the university settlement movement was a product of middle-class concern with the lower class—especially in London—in the 1880s as rising class consciousness and residential separation between classes made older and more paternalistic methods of social control increasingly ineffective. Both these Victorian movements carried on in…

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Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Issue 8, 2012
pages 1409-1426
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556194

Debra Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ohio University

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards ‘counting’ mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change—but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of—rather than problematic within—diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.

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The social and economic circumstances of mixed ethnicity children in the UK: findings from the Millennium Cohort Study

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published online: 2011-03-10
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556745

Lidia Panico, Research Student
Department for Epidemiology and Public Health
University College London

James Y. Nazroo, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research
University of Manchester

The number of people with a ‘mixed’ ethnicity heritage is growing in contemporary Britain. Research in this area has largely focused on implications for cultural and racialized identities, and little is known about associated economic and social factors. Data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a representative panel survey of children born in 2000-2001, are used to examine the circumstances of mixed ethnicity children in comparison with their non-mixed and white counterparts. Findings suggest a cultural location between ‘white’ and minority identities, and socio-economic advantage in comparison with non-mixed counterparts. For example, households of non-mixed white children had poorer economic profiles than households of both mixed white and mixed Indian children. This effect is associated with the presence of a white parent, and the factors underlying it are examined. Although the statistical approach used bypasses a consideration of the dynamics of identity, it provides important evidence on stratification and inequality, and the factors driving this.

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The Anglo-Indians: Aspirations for Whiteness and the Dilemma of Identity

Counterpoints
The Flinders University Online Journal of Interdisciplinary Conference Papers
Volume 3, Number 1 (September 2003)
Flinders University of South Australia

Sheila Pais James
Department of Sociology
Flinders University of S.A.

The Anglo-Indian, as a distinct ethnic identity, was the product of the racialised social hierarchies of British India. Set off from the Indian majority by their claims to British heritage, they were, because of their mixed ancestry, never accorded full status as British. At the end of British rule, their anomalous status was confirmed in certain protections, including employment quotas, enshrined in the Indian constitution. Despite this, the Anglo-Indian community in India declined in the decades after Independence as many chose to leave. Climate, proximity, and its British roots meant that Australia was considered a desirable destination by many. In particular, this paper focuses on the relevance of the study of whiteness in relation to the study of the Anglo-Indians as an ethnic and racial minority. It traces the aspirations for whiteness among these diasporic people in their quest for identity. It explores the dimensions in the constructions of identity and the possibility of identity dilemmas among the Anglo-Indians as transcolonial migrants in a multicultural Australian society.

…The discourse on whiteness as a theoretical notion that attempts to uncover the authority of the invisible is very promising. Studying whiteness delves into the silence or invisibility (Frankenberg, 1993; Dyer, 1997) about whiteness which lets everyone continue to harbour prejudices and misconceptions. This silence, when penetrated, opens channels for the understanding of identity dilemmas among the Anglo-Indians and the identity choices they make vis-à-vis the skin colour of others in similar situations.

By the 19th century, the British separated themselves from the coloured people but accepted fairer (and often wealthier) people of dual heritage as ‘Anglo-Indian’ . Darker (and usually poorer) people were given the name ‘Eurasian’ . Anglo-Indians were of British descent and British subjects; some even claimed to be British to escape prejudice. The British did not however accept such identification. They did not see Anglo-Indians as kinsmen, socially viewing them as ‘half-caste’ members who were morally and intellectually inferior to the sons and daughters of Britain (Varma 1979). The Anglo-Indians tried to counter this by trying to be more like the British. Their campaign to be called ‘Anglo-Indians’ was aimed at establishing a closer link with the British Raj (rule) in contrast to the general term ‘Eurasian’ (Bose, 1979).

Under these circumstances, it was not easy for Anglo-Indians to develop a clear conception of their own identity. Europeans tended to think of them as Indians with some European blood; Indians thought of them as Europeans with some Indian blood. On both the cultural and social level they were alien to many other Indians, though kin to them on the biological level. Many of the prejudices of the British were adopted by the Anglo-Indians towards the Indian people of dark complexion, thus creating rejection of the Anglo-Indians both by the British and other Indian communities. The prejudices against them, real or imagined, or the prejudices that they themselves had against other Indians were an obstacle to both group and individual identity (Gist, 1972, Gist and Wright, 1973)…

Read the entire paper here.