Mixed Race Studies

The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium

Stanford University Press
February 2011
312 pages
23 illustrations
Cloth ISBN-10: 0804756295; ISBN-13: 9780804756297
Paper ISBN-10: 0804756309; ISBN-13: 9780804756303

Michele Elam, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of English and Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Stanford University, Stanford, California

Cover Photo: “Baby Halfie Brown Head”, from artist Lezley Saar’s, Mulatto Nation (2003) art installation.

The Souls of Mixed Folk examines representations of mixed race in literature and the arts that redefine new millennial aesthetics and politics. Focusing on black-white mixes, Elam analyzes expressive works—novels, drama, graphic narrative, late-night television, art installations—as artistic rejoinders to the perception that post-Civil Rights politics are bereft and post-Black art is apolitical. Reorienting attention to the cultural invention of mixed race from the social sciences to the humanities, Elam considers the creative work of Lezley Saar, Aaron McGruder, Nate Creekmore, Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, Emily Raboteau, Carl Hancock Rux, and Dave Chappelle. All these writers and artists address mixed race as both an aesthetic challenge and a social concern, and together, they gesture toward a poetics of social justice for the “mulatto millennium.”

The Souls of Mixed Folk seeks a middle way between competing hagiographic and apocalyptic impulses in mixed race scholarship, between those who proselytize mixed race as the great hallelujah to the “race problem” and those who can only hear the alarmist bells of civil rights destruction. Both approaches can obscure some of the more critically astute engagements with new millennial iterations of mixed race by the multi-generic cohort of contemporary writers, artists, and performers discussed in this book. The Souls of Mixed Folk offers case studies of their creative work in an effort to expand the contemporary idiom about mixed race in the so-called post-race moment, asking how might new millennial expressive forms suggest an aesthetics of mixed race? And how might such an aesthetics productively reimagine the relations between race, art, and social equity in the twenty-first century?

Read an excerpt of “Obama’s Mixed Race Politics” here.

New Latin American pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio not a person of color?

New York Amsterdam News
New York, New York
2013-03-21

Courtenay Brown, Special to the AmNews

The installation of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I on March 13 caused a stir of questions regarding his race. Yes, he was the first pope from Latin America, but should he be considered the first pope of color?

By definition, a “person of color” is an all-encompassing, typically American term that categorizes non-whites, which include Asians, Indians, Native Americans, Blacks and Latinos.

This classification may work in the U.S., but it does not function so well in Latin America. According to a study by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, 31.4 percent of immigrants to Argentina came from Spain, while 44.9 percent came from Italy from 1857 to 1940. This helps quantify just how many immigrants came from these specific countries as opposed to other places in Europe.

Pope Francis’ own parents were immigrants to Argentina. Since the children of two Italian citizens are legally regarded as Italian no matter where they are born, according to Italian legal tradition, Pope Francis is technically regarded as Italian.

According to Argentina native Martin Pereyra, a law student at the University of Buenos Aires, many Argentines would not identify as people of color because of the great deal of European influence in the country. The country is often even nicknamed the “Paris of South America.”

“I don’t think we have just one ‘color,’” Pereyra said. “But at the same time, we are considered Latinos.”…

…So while prescribing to a single “race” is far from a universal concept for the Latino community, Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, professor in the Chávez Department of Chicano/a Studies at the University of Central Los Angeles (UCLA), believes that Bergoglio should be considered Latino and thus a person of color—despite the pope’s Italian roots. According to Hinojosa-Ojeda, using lineage to determine who is Latino would “eliminate a large part of Latin America and a lot of Latinos,” he told LA Weekly last week.

“More important is the experience, not the genetic background,” he continued…

Read the entire article here.

BlackAtlas and Laura Izibor in Dublin, Ireland

BlackAtlas
American Airlines
2012-09-28

Laura Izibor, Singer/Songwriter

Singer/Songwriter Laura Izibor explores multicultural Dublin, Ireland through her eyes.  Featured are Temple Bar area, the pubs, the Guinness factory, the Grand Canal, the Royal Canal and a statue of Phil Lynott (the only African-Irish statue in Ireland).

Statehood Issue Stirs Passions About Puerto Rican Identity

Puerto Rico: Unsettled Territory
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Arizona State University
2012-10-29

Kailey Latham
Cronkite Borderlands Initiative

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — What does it mean to be Puerto Rican?

For over 500 years, the people of this island have struggled with the answer to that question. This November, the question will follow them into the voting booth.

As the rest of the United States goes to the polls to elect a new president, the big issue for Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens but can’t vote for president unless they live in a U.S. state, is whether to vote for a change in their territorial status. They can decide to remain as they are, become an independent nation, or apply to become the 51st U.S. state. If statehood wins at the polls Congress will eventually have to decide Puerto Rico’s political fate.

But much more than meets the eye rides on the vote. The question on the ballot goes to the heart of what it means to be Puerto Rican. A question that has hung over the island since the U.S. acquired it in 1890.

These days, citizenship links Puerto Ricans to the United States on paper but culture and history separate the two.

“Puerto Rico is not a nation-state, not an independent … country, but still it has its own history, language, territory, culture and autonomy,” said Jorge Duany, a dean and anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. “And perhaps more importantly, the awareness people do have of being separate from other people of the world, including the United States.”…

…Puerto Rican Racial Identity and the U.S. Paradigm

Under the leadership of Gov. Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rico in 1960 removed the racial identification question from the territory’s version of the U.S. census. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Puerto Rico Planning Board worked together to develop a specific census that met the needs of the territory, and did not include stateside topics such as race and Hispanic origin.

Professor Juan Manuel Carrion, from the University of Puerto Rico, says that this change is representative of a traditional view about race on the island.

“The governments of Puerto Rico and of the Popular Democratic Party defended that on the idea that we are all Puerto Rican here, we don’t make distinctions about race,” Manuel said.

The race question remained off the Puerto Rican version of the census until 2000, when the Puerto Rican government sent a letter to the U.S. Census Bureau requesting to receive the same decennial census that is distributed within the continental United States.

However, the reinstatement of this question has posed some challenges because racial categories in the United States are not reflective of the racial identities used in Puerto Rico.

In 2010, approximately 76 percent of the Puerto Rican population identified as ‘white’ and 12.4 percent identified as ‘black.’

“If you took the more recent census statistics seriously, Puerto Rico would look more like a Scandinavian country than a Caribbean country in terms of the large proportion of people that have African origin and are not reflected in the census,” Duany said.

Milagros Denis-Rosario, a professor at Hunter College at the City University of New York, says that the racial identification question does not provide Puerto Ricans on the island the flexibility to identify using the terms they are familiar with.

“There are race categories in Puerto Rico, but people self-define,” she said. “It’s not like the U.S., like a binary system where you are black or white. But on the island, there is this flexibility.”

Manuel agrees, saying that race is more than black and white in Puerto Rico; it is about the shades in between.

“According to North American criteria, all Puerto Ricans would be black no matter how light their skins are,” Manuel said.

Duany says that because the census has been translated from the U.S. version it has created a big issue for Puerto Ricans who may not understand where they fit in.

“Every 10 years, Puerto Ricans get their census questionnaire and they have to figure out exactly how to fill out the form,” he said.

Vasquez, the student from the University of Sacred Heart, says that racial distinctions in Puerto Rico are not as important as they are in the United States. He feels that the census is an effort to make Puerto Ricans fit within a mold that they never came from.

“All of this really boils down to is that we don’t give such an importance to race, because at the end of the day we are all Puertoriquenos,” Vasquez said. “I don’t care what your color is, or where you come from. What I care about is that we have a common cultural background.”

Vasquez believes that Puerto Rico’s mixed heritage is the reason why racial differences are not a concern for the Puerto Rican people.

“Even from within the family nucleus we are always sharing space with someone that looks different, and when you are sharing space with someone that looks different than you, those differences start melting away and you don’t see them anymore,” he said.

Joglar Burrowes, the student from the University of Puerto Rico, agrees as she has witnessed these sentiments in her own family.

“I am white, but my grandparents are more dark,” Joglar said. “They are almost black. It is almost like we are not very defined. I may look white, but I don’t feel like it.”

Manuel says the same racial pride you find in the United States cannot be found in Puerto Rico.

“If you think that is something that should be cultivated at least for some racial categories, then the situation in Puerto Rico is not very likeable,” he said.

While Barack Obama in 2008 made history as America’s first black president, Luis Lopez Salgado, a senior at the University of Puerto Rico, says the President wouldn’t necessarily be considered black in Puerto Rico.

“Here, he wouldn’t necessarily be deemed black,” Lopez said. “He would be called mixed race, because he is mixed race. If he were competing for governor here, there wouldn’t be that much attention paid to his racial identity.”

Lopez says that the issue of race on the census is one huge problem without a solution.

“I think it’s kind of absurd to ask people to identify themselves,” he said. “It’s very a personal thing how you identify yourself, and it should be left up to the person. Not fill out whatever category you think because what you think you are may not even be in those categories.”

With all of Puerto Rico’s challenges in defining identity, the upcoming election season has added extra pressure on the people of this nation to let the world know exactly who they are…

Read the entire article here.

The portrait of a nation: Edgard Roquette-Pinto’s study on the Brazilian ‘anthropological types’, 1910-1920 (Retratos da nação: os ‘tipos antropológicos’ do Brasil nos estudos de Edgard Roquette-Pinto, 1910-1920)

Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi: Ciências Humanas
Volume 7, Number 3 (September/December 2012)
pages 645-670
ISSN 1981-8122
DOI: 10.1590/S1981-81222012000300003

Vanderlei Sebastião de Souza
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

The article analyses the studies carried out by the anthropologist Edgard Roquette-Pinto (1884-1954) on the classification of ‘anthropological types’ of Brazil. Affiliated to the Museu Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro, the anthropologist collected data on the anatomical, physiological and psychological characteristics of the Brazilian population in the early decades of the 20th century. The racial classification put forward by Roquette-Pinto resulted not only from the ongoing national intellectual context, but also resulted from technical and theoretical influences from abroad, in particular from Germany and the United States. The anthropologist’s goal was to produce an ‘anthropological portrait’ of Brazil. His research aimed at revealing the racial characteristics involved in the formation of the nation, as well as evaluating the biological viability of the population, especially the ‘mixed race types’.

Read the entire article (in Portuguese) here.

Eugenics in South America

Eugenical News
Volume 7, Number 3 (March, 1922)
pages 17-42

Reginald G. Harris

Ever since the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws of inheritance plant and animal breeders have been occupied with conducting experiments on a large number of widely varying types of organisms. These experiments hare brought to light the method of inheritance of may unit characters (single traits). In some cases even the location of the factors or genes which influence the development of the unit characters has been graphically pictured. Among many animals, fowl, rats, mice, guineapigs. rabbits, vinegar-flies, etc., as well as among many plants, experiments have been conducted to ascertain the laws governing heredity.

There are many human traits which are governed in their inheritance by laws similar to those which have been discovered among the lower forms of life. Unfortunately these laws may be applied only in their most general sense. The fact that a unit character, vermillion eye in Drosophila, for example, is a “recessive allelomorph” of the wild type red eye, does not prove that blue eye in human individuals is the allelomorph of, or is recessive to, brown eye; it merely shows that unit characters may be allelomorphic and that one is dominant over the other. If one wished to know the relationship of various eye colors to each other in other animals than human beings he would carry on breeding experiments, and from observations  on the resulting offspring conclude in what way the several unit characters acted upon each other.

But such an experimental procedure in the case of man is obviously impracticable. The eugenicist welcomes in the absence of controlled laboratory experiments natural, more or less controlled, crosses of human races. Such crosses have no doubt been infrequent, though two notable examples are well known. One is the case of the colony of Pitcairn Island, and later of Norfolk Island. In these islands at the present time there are nearly one thousand individuals all descendants of a cross between English men and Tahiti women. The original crosses, in this case, occurred about a century ago. The second experiment occurred when a few Boers and Hottentots intermarried and continued to intermarry for some time without crossing with neighboring tribes. These two examples of human racial crossing are of unique interest to the eugenist because they afford him an opportunity of observing the resultant hybrid offspring uncontaminated with other genetic factors than those originally given by the two parent strains.

Study of eugenics in South America offers the observer a no less fascinating, though no doubt more complex situation, than those presented in the foregoing cases. The observations which I shall present at this time are the result of facts which came to my notice, and impressions which I received during a recent excursion through South America with the Cornell University Entomological Expedition of 1919-1920. For this discussion, then, the term South America will designate those countries which were visited, namely, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. In such a large number of nations, and even within the nations themselves, wide differences of race and environment may exist, hence the great danger of hasty generalization, and the need for extreme care in making and interpreting statements concerning the inhabitants of South America either present or past.

The problem of ascertaining the result of the interbreeding of the widely divergent human races in South America can not be solved by a superficial glance at the data which may be drawn from a study of European, Aboriginal, and Negro parent stock, and the resulting offspring. Given the parents and the hybrids, the effect of crossing is not at once apparent, for the parent stocks are widely variable, and the environment furnishes modifying influences the scope of which is only a subject of conjecture. But to say that there is a new people because an unusual crossing of races exists is wholly insufficient. The parent stock and resultant offspring must be carefully studied.

If sterility and the chemistry of blood are true indicators of the limits of a species, man includes but one species. Thus far crosses between even the widest morphologically divergent types have failed to produce sterility in the offspring. In this respect human beings are similar to horses, cattle, dogs, fowl, etc., where there exists a striking variety of form and color within the same species. It is generally believed that crosses between human races of extremely different physical and mental traits produce offspring which are intermediate between the two parent types, that is to say, the hybrids show that friending Inheritance has occurred. An indiscriminate crossing of human races is considered unwise, not only on account of possible great psychic differences, but more especially because of the conflict of social inheritance which often results. Every biologist is aware of the snail-like progress of organic evolution. Morphological and other physical changes in existing organisms ore infrequent. To the sociologist the importance of social inheritance as a method of rapidly bettering the human race is apparent. The eugenicist, however, is equally interested in thebiological inheritance of the individual, for he sees, in encouraging crossing and fecundity among the higher types of human beings, and discouraging mating and the production of numerous offspring in the lower groups, an opportunity for permanent racial advancement. It is natural, then, that the eugenicist should turn with keen interest to South America, where racial crossing has been taking place, practically unchecked, for four centuries.

There are in South America three widely different human races existing side by side: (1) the native peoples, all members of the Indian race: (2) the conquerors nnd early colonists of the continent, men of the white race from the Iberian peninsula; (3) representatives of the Negro race who were imported by the conquerors and colonists, especially in Brazil, as slaves. That these several races should continue to mingle with each other in none other than social and business relationships would form a sufficient basis for a study of unusual interest to the sociologist. But their juxtaposition has not been limited to social and commercial dealings. There has been an interchange of the blood of these several races.

The ease and rapidity with which interbreeding has occurred is almost unparalleled. At the outset there existed a relationship between the aborigines and the conquerors quite different from that which occurred in the northern continent. Indians and whites (Latins from Southern Europe) crossed freely during the early periods of conquest and colonization, while later Negroes, Teutonic Europeans, and Asiatics were added to the “melting pot.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st Century International Discourse

Springer
2013
348 pages
32 illustrations
Hardcover ISBN 978-94-007-4607-7
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-4608-4
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4608-4

Edited by:

Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work
Michigan State University

• Addresses the issue of skin color in a worldwide context
• Discusses the introduction of new forms of visual media and their effect on skin color discrimination
• Touches up on the issue of skin bleaching and the Bleaching Syndrome

In the aftermath of the 60s “Black is Beautiful” movement and publication of The Color Complex almost thirty years later the issue of skin color has mushroomed onto the world stage of social science. Such visibility has inspired publication of the Melanin Millennium for insuring that the discourse on skin color meet the highest standards of accuracy and objective investigation.

This volume addresses the issue of skin color in a worldwide context. A virtual visit to countries that have witnessed a huge rise in the use of skin whitening products and facial feature surgeries aiming for a more Caucasian-like appearance will be taken into account. The book also addresses the question of whether using the laws has helped to redress injustices of skin color discrimination, or only further promoted recognition of its divisiveness among people of color and Whites.

The Melanin Millennium has to do with now and the future. In the 20th century science including eugenics was given to and dominated by discussions of race category. Heretofore there remain social scientists and other relative to the issue of skin color loyal to race discourse. However in their interpretation and analysis of social phenomena the world has moved on. Thus while race dominated the 20th century the 21st century will emerge as a global community dominated by skin color and making it the melanin millennium.

Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1. The Bleaching Syndrome: Western Civilization vis-à-vis Inferiorized People of Color; Ronald E. Hall
• Chapter 2. The Historical and Cultural Influences of Skin Bleaching in Tanzania;  Kelly M. Lewis, Solette Harris, Christina Champ, Willbrord Kalala, Will Jones, Kecia L. Ellick, Justie Huff and Sinead Younge
• Chapter 3. Pathophysiology and Psychopathology of Skin Bleaching and Implicationa of Skin Colour in Africa; A. A. Olowu and O. Ogunlade
• Chapter 4. An Introduction to Japanese Society’s Attitudes Toward Race and Skin Color; Arudou Debito
• Chapter 5. The Inconvenient Truth of India, Caste, and Color Discrimination; Varsha Ayyar and Lalit Khandare
• Chapter 6. Indigeneity on Guahan: Skin Color as a Measure of Decolonization; LisaLinda Natividad
• Chapter 7. A Table of Two Cultures; Eneid Routté-Gómez
• Chapter 8. Where are you From?; Stéphanie Cassilde
• Chapter 9. Social Work Futures: Reflections from the UK on the Demise of Anti-racist Social Work and Emerging Issues in a “Post-Race'” Era; Mekada J. Graham
• Chapter 10. Shades of Conciousness: From Jamaica to the UK; William Henry
• Chapter 11. Fanon Revisited: Race Gender and Colniality vis-à-vis Skin Color; Linda Lane and Hauwa Mahdi
• Chapter 12. Pigment Disorders and Pigment Manipulations; Henk E. Menke
• Chapter 13. Skin Color and Blood Quantum: Getting the Red Out; Deb Bakken and Karen Branden
• Chapter 14. The Impact of Skin Color on Mental and Behavorial Health in African American and Latina Adolescent Girls: A Review of the Literature; Alfiee M. Breland-Noble
• Chapter 15. Characteristics of Color Discrimination Charges Filed with the EEOC; Joni Hersch
• Chapter 16. The Consequences of Colorism; Margaret Hunter
• Chapter 17. Navigating the Color Complex: How Multiracial Individuals Narrate the Elements of Appearance and Dynamics of Color in Twenty-first Century America; Sara McDonough and David L. Brunsma
• Chapter 18. The Fade-Out of Shirley, a Once-Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity; Lorna Roth
• Chapter 19. What Color is Red? Exploring the implications of Phenotype for Native Americans; Hilary N. Weaver
• Chapter 20. From Fair & Lovely to Banho de Lua: Skin Whitening and its Implications in the Multi-ethnic and Multicolored Surinamese Society; Jack Menke
• Chapter 21. Affirmative Action and Racial Identityin Brazil: A Study of the First Quota Graduates at the State University of Rio de Janneiro: Vânia Penha-Lopes
• Index

Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African-Nicaraguan Community

University of Texas Press
August 1998
320 pages
ISBN-10: 0292728190; ISBN-13: 978-0292728196

Edmund Gordon, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Texas, Austin

This book is out of print.

Based on a decade the author spent among the African-Caribbean “Creole” people on Nicaragua’s southern Caribbean coast, Disparate Diasporas is a study of identity formation and politics in that community. Edmund Gordon lived in Bluefields, Nicaragua, during most of the 1980s, a turbulent period during which he participated in the community’s search for solutions to problems ranging from a crumbling economic base to the mutual mistrust and animosity between most Creole people and the Sandinista revolutionary government.

Disparate Diasporas is not a conventional ethnography. Rather than being just an observer, Gordon actively participated in the life of the community, intent on contributing to its political processes. A basic premise of his book is that engagement and activity can enhance ethnographic insights and sharpen theoretical understanding.

Disparate Diasporas shows how a particular “Black” community can evolve distinct types of diasporic consciousness, and, depending on the historical moment, how different types of memories, consciousness, and politics come to predominate. The author uses the Gramscian notion of “common sense” to understand the Creole community’s history of shifting politics and ideologies, focusing on the period of the 1970s and 1980s. His work explains the inability of the Sandinistas to come to terms with the racial and cultural challenge to the Nicaraguan nation posed by the Creole community.

“Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts?

American Anthropologist
Volume 101, Issue 3 (September 1999)
pages 563–578
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1999.101.3.563

Donna Goldstein, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Colorado, Boulder

Racial democracy is maintained in Brazil through both scholarly and popular discourses that consider “interracial” sex as proof of Brazil’s lack of a racial problem. In this article, I scrutinize the discourse that asks, “How can we be racist when so many of us are mixed?” I argue that racial discourses are embedded in everyday interactions, but are often codified or masked. “Race” is especially pertinent to sexuality, yet the two have hardly been analyzed together. In fact, it is not the belief in a racial democracy that is at the heart of Brazilian racial hegemony, but rather the belief that Brazil is a color-blind erotic democracy. Using my ethnographic data, I illustrate that “race” is embodied in everyday valuations of sexual attractiveness that are gendered, racialized, and class-oriented in ways that commodity black female bodies and white male economic, racial, and class privilege.

Read the entire article here.

History 101.020: Betwixt and Between in the United States: Boundaries and the People who Defy Them

University of California, Berkeley
Spring 2013

MacKenzie Moore, Visiting Lecturer

This 101 seminar is geared toward any student who wants to study the boundaries among and between people, nations, or states, broadly defined. It is also perfect for those wishing to explore what happens when such barriers are (inevitably) ruptured, questioned, or otherwise revealed to be unstable. Some, but by no means all, possible topics include: immigrant history, Native American/colonial contact, the history of American sexuality, frontier environments, mixed-race communities or individuals, the US/Mexico Borderlands, religious synthesis, or urban communities.  We will begin the semester by exploring theoretical approaches to the question of boundaries and categories and the power that sustains them. We will also discuss what such categories mean to people as they construct communities, nations, and identities. We will then consider specific examples of people who, out of choice or circumstance, defy those boundaries. The rest of the semester will be run as a writing and reading seminar. We will support and encourage each other through peer editing, research partners, and other boundary-crossing activities.