Mixed Race Studies

Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti & Confucius Too

Dominion of New York
2012-07-31

Alondra Nelson, Associate Professor of Sociology
Columbia University

There was breaking news yesterday in the lively world of presidential genealogy. Barack Obama–who is regarded as an inauthentic African-American by some because his late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham, was a white woman and his father’s ancestry traced to Kenya rather than Kentucky or the Carolinas–was suggested to be descended on his maternal side from John Punch, a black man.

Researchers at Ancestry.com, the online root-seeking company, derived Obama’s relationship to Punch using a combination of standard genealogical research and Y-chromosome genetic analysis. (Y-DNA is passed essentially unchanged from fathers to sons to grandsons to great-grandsons, etc.) The timing of this announcement could not be better for the Provo, Utah company that just reported booming fourth quarter profits and is rumored to be seeking a buyer.

An indentured servant in 17th century Virginia, Punch would earn the lamentable designation of “the first documented African enslaved for life in American history” when he was reduced to chattel as punishment for his attempt to escape servitude. Punch, like Obama the elder, was an African; tragically, what makes Punch “African-American” is his slave status. With rebellious, freedom-loving roots firmly planted in the New World, our nation’s first president of African descent —Punch’s 11th great grandson–may just be “black enough” after all…

…We have a high threshold for political gossip and, in the digital age, genealogy is a fast fad that shows no sign of passing out of vogue. But the primary reason these ancestry stories entrance us is because they bring us face-to-face with our national fascination with and anxieties about racial miscegenation. Take, for example, the minor controversy over Rachel L. Swarns recently published American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multicultural Ancestors of Michelle Obama. Megan Smolenyak, the prominent genealogist who conducted the research for Swarns’ widely-read 2007 co-authored article that revealed Michelle Obama’s white slavery-era ancestors, critiqued it in the Huffington Post. Smolenyak was stunned that:

the maternal half of the first lady’s family tree — her mother Marian (Shields) Robinson’s side [was] overlooked. Though Michelle Obama has classic Great Migration roots winding their way back to at least eleven states, southern Virginia — and especially Henry and Pittsylvania counties — can claim more of her heritage than any other location. Fully a quarter of her ancestry traces to this area on the North Carolina border, but inexplicably, it’s this portion of her family tree that’s given short-shrift.

Smolenyak further complained that “the ‘revelation’ of the white ancestor via DNA testing” wasn’t unexpected; “the only true surprise in the book” she concluded, was “the absence of over a third of Mrs. Obama’s known ancestors.”…

Read the entire article here.

Almost White

Macmillan
1963
212 pages
Original Classication ID: E184.A1 B53
Source: University of Michigan via The Hathi Trust Digital Library

Brewton Berry

Contents

• Preface
• 1. The Myth of the Vanishing Indian
• 2. Where Are They?
• 3. Who Are They?
• 4. What the Whites Believe
• 5. What the Negro Thinks
• 6. Etiquette
• 7. How They Live
• 8. Their Schools
• 9. Almost Red
• 10. Almost Black
• 11. Almost White
• Bibliography
• Index

Preface

Miscegenation seems to be an inevitable consequence of the meeting of races and nationalities. Despite the fears and warnings of the Jeremiahs, hybrids are everywhere. Fortunately, most people of mixed blood are able to identify themselves with, and are accepted by, one or the other of the racial groups from which they have sprung. Thus, the American mulatto thinks of himself as a Negro and is accepted by other Negroes as one of themselves.

But here and there we find pathetic folk of mixed ancestry who never know quite where they belong. There are Eurasians in the Far East, Anglo-Indians in India, Cape Coloured and Afro-Asians in South Africa, Jamaica Whites in Jamaica, and Indo-Europeans in Indonesia. Elsewhere we find Bovianders, Lobos, Caboslos, Cafusos, Moplahs, Moriscos, Cholos and countless others. These are raceless people, neither fish nor fowl, neither white, nor black, nor red, nor brown. They bear a heavy cross.

We have such folk in the United States. I first became aware of them as a youth in Orangeburg, South Carolina where there are outcasts known as Brass Ankles, Red Legs, and Buckheads. But, like others of my class, I remained aloof from them and never gave them a passing thought. Not, at any rate, until 1937 when I read Everett Stonequist’s The Marginal Man. That set me to thinking, and for the past twenty-five years I have been searching out and visiting these hybrid communities. A fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation enabled me to spend one full year in the field, and another was made possible by a grant from the Graduate School of The Ohio State University.

My informants have been legion. Over the years I have corresponded with hundreds of persons who shared my interest. I have talked with thousands of whites and Negroes who live in proximity to these mixed-bloods. My indebtedness to all these is very great. Especially do I appreciate the help given me by Dr. William Harlen Gilbert, Jr., of the Library of Congress, Mr. Calvin L. Beale of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dr. Edward T. Price of Los Angeles State College, and Mr. C. A. Weslager of Wilmington, Delaware. I am grateful to Dr. Chapman J. Milling, of Columbia, South Carolina, for permission to use his poem “Croatan” which appears in Chapter II. The editors of Phylon allowed me to reprint “The Myth of the Vanishing Indian,” and the University of North Carolina Press granted permission to quote from James Aswell’s God Bless the Devil!

Most of all I am indebted to the thousands of mixed-bloods, whom I call mestizos, who received me with kindness and courtesy, and who shared their secrets with me. I hope that this book will help to remove some of the prejudice and misunderstanding to which they have been subjected.

Brewton Berry

Read the entire book here.

From Negro to Caucasian: or, How the Ethiopian is Changing His Skin

Pilot Publishing Company, San Francisco, California
1929
65 pages
Source: University of Michigan via The Hathi Trust Digital Library

Louis Fremont Baldwin

A concise presentation of the manner in which many Negroes in America … have abandoned their… afiliation with Negroes

A concise presentation of the manner in which many Negroes in America who, being very fair in complexion, with hair naturally or artificially free from kink, have abandoned their one-time affiiliations with Negroes, including their own relatives,  and by mingling at first commercially or industrially, then socially with Caucasians, have ultimately been absorbed by the latter.

Prepared and published at the request of the Society for the Amalgamation of the Races
New York, Paris and London
Pilot Publishing Company
617 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, Calif.

PREFACE

The reader is earnestly asked to accept as authentic and reliable the information that is given in this book. The writer is indebted to many friends throughout the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande.

These friends rendered valuable assistance enabling him to locate the individuals with whom he has held interviews related in the text, and from whom he was able to gather information that impressed him with the fact, of the enormous num ber of Colored Americans, who have sufficient ad mixture of bloods in their veins, to alienate them in appearance from the American Negro.

More startling still is the discovery of the great numbers of this contingent of the so-called Negro race, who have deserted-and forsaken kith and kin, and become merged with, or rather absorbed by the American Citizenry as the latter pursues the ordinary paths of trade, commerce, industry and professions, and . . and matrimony.

The reader will also recognize how complicated the situation—but this does not mean that the situation is necessarily calamitous,—but how difficult for any person, particularly those whose ancestors resided “In The South” to be perfectly sure that there is not “a drop of Negro blood in their veins!”  That it can be there, goes without saying, as the  incidents mentioned in the text that follows plainly show, but just as millions of Negroes—Negroes with fair complexions and perfectly straight hair,— those who have not “Crossed Over” as well as those who have, have white blood in their veins, why the author asks, can there not be millions of  persons who believe themselves to be white, yet  have Negro blood in their veins, obtained by the methods that it has been thought appropriate to  bring to the attention of the public through the publication of this book.

—THE AUTHOR.

Let the undersigned assure the readers of this book that after he had read the proof-sheets, he felt it his duty to give the author permission to add his personal testimony as to the prevalence of the practice alleged to be in vogue. He can confirm what is stated as occurring in so many instances, because a branch of his own family “Crossed Over” some few years ago, and has become completely absorbed in the white race.

—A. E. SHADD, Bishop of the United Holy Church of America; Western & Pacific Coast District

Read the entire book here.

The semantics of ‘mestizo’

GMA News Online
2012-07-12

Amanda Lago

“What’s your mix?” clothing brand Bayo asked Filipina women in its heavily-lampooned ad campaign from last month.

The ad drew criticism for excluding 100-percent Filipinos, and glorifying the “50-precent Filipina” instead, thereby feeding the beauty industry’s obsession with so-called mestizas.

But as it turns out, all Filipinos are mestizos of a sort—and it comes down to matter of semantics.

Apparently, the word “mestizo” has long suffered from widespread misuse, at least according to cultural anthropologist Dr. Fernando Zialcita.

To most Filipinos, “mestizo” refers to fellow Pinoys who are fairer-skinned than others, usually those who are descended from American or European parents or grandparents.

But in a lecture at the Instituto Cervantes Tuesday, Zialcita said that the original meaning of the word “mestizo” has nothing to do with skin color…

Read the entire article here.

Instituto Cervantes holds forum on genetic diversity in the Philippines

GMA News Online
Quezon City, Philippines
2012-07-24

On Tuesday, July 24, Instituto Cervantes presents “Todos somos mestizos: A Topogenetic Atlas of the Philippines,” a forum on the genetic make-up of Filipinos all over the archipelago. The talk will be led by Filipino anthropologist Fernando Zialcita, Ph.D. and Spanish Biology professor, Antonio González-Martín, Ph.D., who is currently in the country to conduct an ongoing project funded by the Goverment of Spain.

The forum’s title, which roughly translates to ”We Are All a Mix,” is a prelude to the subject matter of the genetic diversity of Filipinos originating from different parts of the country. Dr. González-Martín will reveal for the very first time a rough approximation of the genetic make-up of the Filipino people. Why did he choose the Philippines? “Aside from the fact that the Philippines has an extremely rich demographic history, these islands are key to explain the expansion of human beings in the Austronesian region,” says González-Martín…

Read the entire article here.

16th Union Report

Melungeon Heritage Association: One People, All Colors
16th Union at the Southwest Virginia Historical Museum State Park
2012-07-11

K. Paul Johnson

Every Melungeon Union combines an extended family reunion with a scholarly conference featuring authors and researchers sharing the latest perspectives on our heritage.  All presenters come at their own expense, as volunteers receiving no compensation or travel costs, as do MHA members who organize and direct the conference.  We travel considerable distances to attend this annual event, to learn and celebrate this heritage we share and treasure…

…My presentation on links between Pell Mellers and Melungeons began with family stories, examined genealogical evidence, and concluded with a description of DNA testing and its mixed results in answering historical questions about my own mixed ancestry. This was intended as a preview of the keynote address, since my genealogical quest centered on the same county in North Carolina, Bertie, about which Dr. Smallwood had written a book in 2002 and which continues to be a research focus for him.

Phyllis Starnes spoke informally about the promises and pitfalls of genetic testing for genealogical research, helping us through the labyrinth of Y-DNA, mitochondrial, and autosomal studies of Melungeons. We owe Phyllis thanks for generating more questions in the q&a than the rest of us combined, and for answering them deftly and capably.

Arwin D. Smallwood, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Colonial American History at the University of Memphis, was the keynote speaker at 13th Union in 2009, and has been a presenter in every subsequent Union, returning this year at 16th to give a keynote address that featured new dimensions of the research he has been pursuing for several years on the Tuscarora tribe’s diaspora from his native Bertie County. This year Dr. Smallwood included a detailed accounting of Virginia’s legal oppression of people of color, a tightening noose of restrictions throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. This becomes a factor in the migration of African-European mixed families southward into North Carolina and westward into mountainous regions of Virginia, away from the plantations and slavery and into frontier communities where they interblended with Indians who had likewise been displaced. MHA is indebted to Dr. Smallwood for his ongoing work which tends to incorporate the traditionally-accepted triracial explanation of Melungeon origins with the more exotic possibilities of Mediterranean ancestry suggested by folklore. He was extensively interviewed by a local newspaper reporter so we look forward to seeing the coverage…

…Wayne [Winkler] followed up on the DNA issue by explaining that the negative spin of the recent AP story and especially the headlines were not intended by the report authors. Yet the headlines were undeniably negative—in that our Native American and Mediterranean ancestry were allegedly disproven and relegated to the status of racist mythology—more than positive about what was proven. After all, the study authors selected “a multi-ethnic population” as a subtitle, and not “mulatto wannabe Indians” which nonetheless has been the stereotypical insult applied to Melungeons in the wake of the AP story. Conferees were left feeling that the air had been cleared of some misunderstandings and hard feelings. What the study does prove beyond dispute is the subsaharan African Y DNA lineage of many families of the Newman’s Ridge Melungeon community. But by its very nature, such a study cannot disprove the triracial status of Melungeons in general—which has been unanimously attested by generations of social scientists as well as testimony of Melungeons themselves. Mediterranean ancestry was repeatedly claimed by 19th century Melungeons in addition to Native American, English, and African ancestry, and not as a cover story to deny the triracial foundations of their communities. In his closing remarks, Wayne stated clearly that nothing in any DNA evidence conflicts with the triracial-and-beyond understanding of Melungeons presented in Dr. Smallwood’s keynote address the night before…

Read the entire report here.

Irrevocable Ties and Forgotten Ancestry: The Legacy of Colonial Intermarriage for Descendents of Mixed Ancestry

University of British Columbia, Vancouver
April 2008
56 pages

Kim S. Dertien

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Anthropology)

The identities of mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descendents in British Columbia is as varied as it is complex. In this paper I examine what caused some people of mixed Native and non-Native ancestry not to identify as Aboriginal while others did. The point of fracture for those who identify with their Aboriginal origins and those who do not can be traced to a specific time in our history. More importantly, specific variables were instrumental in causing that divergence of identity, spurred by a pervasive social stigma in colonial society. For many of mixed ancestry, the disassociation from their Aboriginal identity led to generations of silence and denial and eventually to a ‘complete disappearance of race’. It was a deliberate breeding out of cultural identity through assimilative ideology and actions in order to conform to European norms.

Determining what factors caused this divergence of identity for mixed-descendents entails considering why many Aboriginal women married non-Native partners in B.C. during the mid-19th century, how intermarriage affected identity formation for offspring, and what the multi-generational effects have been on the identities of mixed descendents. Today, this leaves a dilemma for those in-between who are eligible for status, and for those who are not but who choose to reconnect with, acknowledge and learn more of their ancestry. Both assertions of First Nations identity and choices to reconnect with a First Nations heritage while maintaining a non-Native identity, challenge the assumed inevitability of assimilation, and the federal government’s continuing reluctance to understand the cultural significance of identification as ‘Indian’.

Read the entire thesis here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama and Race: History, Culture, Politics

Routledge
2011-11-10
200 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-68678-5

Edited by

Richard H. King, Professor Emeritus of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham

In this collection, academics from both sides of the Atlantic analyze the confluence of a politician, a process, and a problem—Barack Obama, the 2008 US presidential election, and the ‘problem’ of race in contemporary America. The special focus falls upon Barack Obama himself, who appears in many guises: as an individual from biracial and transnational backgrounds; a skilled, urban African-American organizer and then politician; and as intellectual and author of a bestselling autobiographical exploration.

There is a certain representative quality about Obama that makes him a convenient way into the labyrinth of American race relations, national and regional politics (including the South and Hawaii), and past history (particularly from the 1960s to the present). Contributors also explore the role Michelle Obama has played in this process, both separately from and together with her husband, while one theme running through many chapters concerns the myriad ways that the American left, right and centre differ on the nature and future of race in a country that daily becomes more mixed in ethnic and racial terms. Race is everywhere; race is nowhere. The essays are grouped by their approach to the topic of Obama and race: via historical analysis, cultural studies, political science and sociology, as well as pedagogy. The result is an exciting mix of perspectives on one of the most fascinating phenomena of our time.
 
This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Patterns of Prejudice.

Contents

1. Obama and race: culture, history, politics Richard H. King, University of Nottingham, UK
2. The riddle of race Emily Bernard, University of Vermont, USA
3. ‘A curious relationship’: Barack Obama, the 1960s and the election of 2008 Brian Ward, University of Manchester, UK
4. Barack Hussein Obama: the use of history in the creation of an ‘American’ president George Lewis, University of Leicester, UK
5. Becoming black, becoming president Richard H. King, University of Nottingham, UK
6. Two great days in Harlem Carmel King, freelance photographer, UK
7. How to read Michelle Obama Maria Lauret, Sussex University, UK
8. Barack Obama and the American island of the colour blind Peter Kuryla, Belmont University, USA
9. Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawaii Jonathan Y. Okamura, University of Hawaii, USA
10. Barack Obama and the South: demography as electoral opportunity Donald W. Beachler, Ithaca College, USA
11. Teaching Obama: history, critical race theory and social work education Damon Freeman, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Embodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

University Of Hawai‘i Press
May 2010
272 pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-3344-2

Taku Suzuki, Assistant Professor of International Studies
Denison University, Granville, Ohio

Embodying Belonging is the first full-length study of a Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, hundreds of Bolivian-born ethnic Okinawans have left the Colonia in the last two decades and moved to Japanese cities, such as Yokohama, to become manual laborers in construction and manufacturing industries.

Based on the author’s multisited field research on the work, education, and community lives of Okinawans in the Colonia and Yokohama, this ethnography challenges the unidirectional model of assimilation and acculturation commonly found in immigration studies. In its vivid depiction of the transnational experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians, it argues that transnational Okinawan-Bolivians underwent the various racialization processes—in which they were portrayed by non-Okinawan Bolivians living in the Colonia and native-born Japanese mainlanders in Yokohama and self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves—as the physical embodiment of a generalized and naturalized “culture” of Japan, Okinawa, or Bolivia. Racializing narratives and performances ideologically serve as both a cause and result of Okinawan-Bolivians’ social and economic status as successful large-scale farm owners in rural Bolivia and struggling manual laborers in urban Japan.
 
As the most comprehensive work available on Okinawan immigrants in Latin America and ethnic Okinawan “return” migrants in Japan, Embodying Belongingis at once a critical examination of the contradictory class and cultural identity (trans)formations of transmigrants; a rich qualitative study of colonial and postcolonial subjects in diaspora, and a bold attempt to theorize racialization as a social process of belonging within local and global schemes.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Racializing Culture and Class in a Transnational Field
• 1. Modern Okinawan Transnationality: Colonialism, Diaspora, and “Return”
• 2. The Making of Patrones Japonesas and Dekasegi Migrants
• 3. From Patrón to Nikkei-jin Rodosha: Class Transformations
• 4. Educating “Good” Nikkei and Okinawan Subjects
• 5. Gendering Transnationality: Marriage, Family, and Dekasegi
• Conclusion: Embodiment of Local Belonging
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index