Mixed Race Studies

Detroit Housewife Kills White Husband

Jet
1953-03-05
page 20

A 29-year-old Detroit Negro housewife stabbed her white husband to death because he nagged her about not having his dinner ready. Mrs. Dorothy Homic told police she took a paring knife from her husband, Frank, 38, and stabbed him in the chest after he threatened her. She was arraigned on a first degree murder charge before Recorders Judge Paul E. Krause.

Frederick Douglass: a multi-racial trailblazer

The Baltimore Sun
2018-02-08

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law

Gregory Morton purchased Frederick Douglass’ home in Fells Point and makes it available to rent on Airbnb. (Barbara Haddock Taylor / Baltimore Sun)

Last year President Trump made statements that left the impression he believed that abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive. In some respects, he still is. This month marks the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ birth, and his racial justice work continues to be relevant today. In fact, after President Trump was informed that Douglass died in 1895, the president signed into law the Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission Act to organize events to honor the bicentennial anniversary of Douglass’s birth.

While slave records mark Douglass’ birth month as February — he was born in a plantation on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County — his status as a slave meant he had no information about the exact day he was born. As an adult he chose Feb. 14th for himself as a birth date. He was also never told who his father was, but circumstances lead him to conclude that it was his white slave owner.

Despite his mixed-race heritage and likely connection to his owner, Douglass was separated from his mother at an early age and exposed to physical abuse from his owners…

Read the entire article here.

Looking at Indians, white Americans see themselves

The Economist
2018-02-10

Thinking about natives in an era of nativism

IN EARLY 1924 the blue-bloods of Virginia found themselves with a problem. To criminalise interracial marriage, the state had drafted a law that classified anyone possessing even “one drop” of non-white blood as “coloured”. Awkwardly, that would include many of the so-called First Families of Virginia, because they traced their descent to a native American woman, Pocahontas, who had been abducted and married by a member of the Jamestown colony three centuries before. This ancestry had been considered far from shameful. It was a mark of American aristocracy, the real-life Pocahontas having been reinvented (she probably did not save the life of a colonist called John Smith) as an “American princess”. To fix matters, a clause known as the “Pocahontas exception” was added to the racist law, to exempt anyone with no more than one-sixteenth Indian blood.

This episode, documented in a new exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, on Indian myths and reality, helps explain a cultural puzzle. It has become clear that the pre-Columbian Americas were much more densely populated, by more sophisticated civilisations, than was previously thought. By one estimate North America, the more sparsely populated continent, had 18m people when Columbus sailed, more than England and France combined. Yet in the popular imagination it remains a vast wilderness, peopled by a few buffalo-hunters. The reason for this gigantic misunderstanding, suggest the Smithsonian’s curators, goes beyond bad schooling…

Read the entire article here.

Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833

University of North Carolina Press
2018-01-22
432 pages
12 halftones, 4 figs., 3 charts, 4 tables, notes, index
6.125 x 9.25
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-3443-2

Daniel Livesay, Associate Professor of History
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California

Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia

By tracing the largely forgotten eighteenth-century migration of elite mixed-race individuals from Jamaica to Great Britain, Children of Uncertain Fortune reinterprets the evolution of British racial ideologies as a matter of negotiating family membership. Using wills, legal petitions, family correspondences, and inheritance lawsuits, Daniel Livesay is the first scholar to follow the hundreds of children born to white planters and Caribbean women of color who crossed the ocean for educational opportunities, professional apprenticeships, marriage prospects, or refuge from colonial prejudices.

The presence of these elite children of color in Britain pushed popular opinion in the British Atlantic world toward narrower conceptions of race and kinship. Members of Parliament, colonial assemblymen, merchant kings, and cultural arbiters–the very people who decided Britain’s colonial policies, debated abolition, passed marital laws, and arbitrated inheritance disputes–rubbed shoulders with these mixed-race Caribbean migrants in parlors and sitting rooms. Upper-class Britons also resented colonial transplants and coveted their inheritances; family intimacy gave way to racial exclusion. By the early nineteenth century, relatives had become strangers.

Race, Sex And the Supreme Court

The New York Times
1964-11-22

Anthony Lewis

WASHINGTON.

OVER the last decade, the legal foundations of racial discrimi­nation in this country have been washed away in the Supreme Court. One after another, state and local laws drawing lines between hu­man beings on the basis of their color have been found in conflict with the 14th Amendment’s promise of “the equal protection of the laws.”

Only one area in the law of race relations has escaped this judicial scrutiny, and that is the most sensi­tive of all—sex. During the decade, the Supreme Court strained to avoid passing on the constitutionality of the network of laws forbidding the sexual relations between the races in the South and some other states.

Now the time for decision appears to be at hand. The Court has heard argument this term in a case chal­lenging a Florida law against inter­racial cohabitation—a case which threatens to stir again the deepest Southern racial fears.

Even those who are ordinarily most skeptical of psychological generalisa­tions are likely to agree with the view of many social scientists that sex is a fundamental factor in Southern racial attitudes.

“Would you like to have your daughter marry a Negro?”

Twenty years ago, Gunnar Myrdal observed that this question was the automatic response of the Southern man on the street “to any plea for social equality” among whites and Negroes. Anyone who has argued the issues of racial discrimination has heard the question in one form or another, again and again…

Read the entire article here.

Love, Alone, Will Not Dismantle Racism

Girl Mob
2017-11-13

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Actor/Producer/Educator

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

For the last four years I have traveled across the globe presenting my one-woman show, One Drop of Love. The first two words of the play’s title refer to the one-drop rule. The one-drop rule was created to determine the amount of Sub-Saharan African blood necessary (‘one drop’) to justify enslaving and otherwise stripping away the rights of a person. These words in my title symbolize the historical and systemic racism inherent in the United States. I end the title and the play with the word love – for the hope I carry that we, collectively, will commit ourselves to dismantling this system. However, after the show, some audience members cling to the last word—love—while seemingly ignoring the first two.

While love may be helpful in change-making, there is necessary work to do before expecting people disenfranchised by racism to love their way to change—we must insist on truth and justice first…

Read the entire article here.

The Matrix of Race: Social Construction, Intersectionality, and Inequality

SAGE Publishing
October 2017
480 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1452202693

Rodney D. Coates, Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Abby L. Ferber, Professor of Sociology
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia

The Matrix of Race: Social Construction, Intersectionality, and Inequality is a textbook that makes race and racial inequality “visible” in new ways to all students in race/ethnic relations courses, regardless of their backgrounds–from minorities who have experienced the impact of race in their own lives to members of dominant groups who might believe that we now live in a “color blind” society. The “matrix” refers to a way of thinking about race that reflects the intersecting, multilayered identities of contemporary society, and the powerful social institutions that shape our understanding of race. Its goals are to help readers get beyond familiar “us vs. them” arguments that can lead to resistance and hostility; promote self-appraisal; and stimulate more productive discussions about race and racism.

Contents

• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• PART I. INTRODUCTION TO RACE AND THE SOCIAL MATRIX
  • Chapter 1. Race and the Social Construction of Difference
    • The Social Construction of Race
    • The Social Matrix of Race
    • The Operation of Racism
    • Our Stories
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 2. The Shaping of a Nation: The Social Construction of Race in America
    • Race Today: Adapting and Evolving
    • Indigenous Peoples: The Americas before Columbus
    • Discovery and Encounters: The Shaping of Our Storied Past
    • The U.S. Matrix and Intersectionality— Where Do We Go from Here?
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
• PART II. THE MATRIX PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
  • Chapter 3. The Social Construction and Regulation of Families
    • Historical Regulation of the Family
    • Family Inequality Theories
    • Family Inequality through the Matrix Lens
    • Transforming the Ideal Family Narrative
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 4. Work and Wealth Inequality
    • Recent Trends in Work and Wealth
    • Theories of Economic Inequality
    • Applying the Matrix to the History of Economic Inequality in the United States
    • Transforming the Story of Race and Economic Inequality
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 5. Health, Medicine, and Health Care
    • Patterns of Inequality in Health and Health Care
    • Theorizing Inequality in Health and Health Care
    • Applying the Matrix to Health Inequity and Inequality
    • Resisting and Transforming Inequality in Health and Health Care
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 6. Education
    • The Shaping of the Matrix of U.S. Education
    • Theories of Education
    • Examining the Concealed Story of Race and Education through the Matrix
    • Alternative Educational Movements and the Future of Education
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 7. Crime, Law, and Deviance
    • A History of Race, Crime, and Punishment
    • Sociological Stock Theories of Crime and Deviance
    • Applying the Matrix to Crime and Deviance
    • Transforming the Narrative of Race, Crime, and Deviance
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 8. Power, Politics, and Identities
    • Contemporary Political Identities
    • Critiquing Sociological Theories of Power, Politics, and Identity
    • Applying the Matrix of Race to U.S. Political History
    • Building Alternatives to the Matrix of Race and Politics
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 9. Sports and the American Dream
    • The State of Sport Today
    • Examining Stock Sociological Theories of Sport
    • Applying the Matrix to Sports in the United States
    • Creating a New Playing Field
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Chapter 10. The Military, War, and Terrorism
    • Class, Gender, and Race in the U.S. Military
    • Military Sociology Stock Theories
    • Applying the Matrix Approach to U.S. Military History, War, and Terrorism
    • A More Inclusive Future
    • Key Terms
    • Chapter Summary
  • Conclusion
• GLOSSARY
• REFERENCES
• INDEX

Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821–1871

University of Georgia Press
2017-11-01
258 pages
2 b&w photos, 8 maps
Trim size: 6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8203-5133-9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8203-5163-6

Jason A. Gillmer, John J. Hemmingson Chair in Civil Liberties and Professor of Law
Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington

Riveting trials that exposed conflicting attitudes toward race and liberty

In these absorbing accounts of five court cases, Jason A. Gillmer offers intimate glimpses into Texas society in the time of slavery. Each story unfolds along boundaries—between men and women, slave and free, black and white, rich and poor, old and young—as rigid social orders are upset in ways that drive people into the courtroom.

One case involves a settler in a rural county along the Colorado River, his thirty-year relationship with an enslaved woman, and the claims of their children as heirs. A case in East Texas arose after an owner refused to pay an overseer who had shot one of her slaves. Another case details how a free family of color carved out a life in the sparsely populated marshland of Southeast Texas, only to lose it all as waves of new settlers “civilized” the county. An enslaved woman in Galveston who was set free in her owner’s will—and who got an uncommon level of support from her attorneys—is the subject of another case. In a Central Texas community, as another case recounts, citizens forced a Choctaw native into court in an effort to gain freedom for his slave, a woman who easily “passed” as white.

The cases considered here include Gaines v. Thomas, Clark v. Honey, Brady v. Price, State v. Ashworth, and Webster v. Heard. All of them pitted communal attitudes and values against the exigencies of daily life in an often harsh place. Here are real people in their own words, as gathered from trial records, various legal documents, and many other sources. People of many colors, from diverse backgrounds, weave their way in and out of the narratives. We come to know what mattered most to them—and where those personal concerns stood before the law.

Race, Nation, and Refuge: The Rhetoric of Race in Asian American Citizenship Cases

State University of New York Press
October 2017
318 pages
Hardcover ISBN13: 978-1-4384-6661-3

Doug Coulson, Assistant Professor
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Explores the role of rhetoric and the racial classification of Asian American immigrants in the early twentieth century.

From 1870 to 1940, racial eligibility for naturalization in the United States was limited to “free white persons” and “aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent,” and many interpreted these restrictions to reflect a policy of Asian exclusion based on the conclusion that Asians were neither white nor African. Because the distinction between white and Asian was considerably unstable, however, those charged with the interpretation and implementation of the naturalization act faced difficult racial classification questions. Through archival research and a close reading of the arguments contained in the documents of the US Bureau of Naturalization, especially those documents that discussed challenges to racial eligibility for naturalization, Doug Coulson demonstrates that the strategy of foregrounding shared external threats to the nation as a means of transcending perceived racial divisions was often more important to racial classification than legal doctrine. He argues that this was due to the rapid shifts in the nation’s enmities and alliances during the early twentieth century and the close relationship between race, nation, and sovereignty.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Mongolian Invaders, the Bureau of Naturalization, and Ozawa
• 2. The Ghadr Party and the Indian Caste System in Thind
• 3. The Armenian Genocide, Martyrdom, and Cartozian
• 4. World War II Alliances in Asia and the End of Racial Eligibility for Naturalization
• Conclusion
• Race, Sovereignty, and Transcendence
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

What Emerging Multiracial Plaintiff Cases Suggest About Employment Discrimination Law

New York Law Journal
2017-11-03

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law

Tanya Katerí Hernández writes: The presence of fluid mixed-race racial identities within allegations of employment discrimination leads some legal commentators to conclude that civil rights laws are in urgent need of reform.

With the growth of a mixed-race population in the United States that identifies itself as “multiracial,” legal commentators have begun to raise concerns about how employment discrimination law responds to the claims of multiracial plaintiffs. The U.S. Census Bureau began permitting respondents to simultaneously select multiple racial categories to designate their multiracial backgrounds with the 2000 Census. With the release of data for both the 2000 and 2010 census years much media attention has followed the fact that first 2.4 percent then 2.9 percent of the population selected two or more races. The Census Bureau projects that the self-identified multiracial population will triple by 2060. Yet mixed-race peoples are not new. Demographer Ann Morning notes that their early presence in North America was noted in colonial records as early as the 1630s…

Read the entire article here.