Mixed Race Studies

It’s Not Always Black And White: Caught Between Two Worlds

Outskirts Press
2013-01-18
100 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781478716693

John Reed, Ph.D.

John Reed knows from experience how difficult the life of a biracial person can be. He was born in Germany after World War II to a German-Caucasian mother and an African-American father. The difficulty of finding a place in society was compounded by his mother’s rejection of him; he spent the first year of his life in a convent, cared for by nuns. As the physical, mental, and verbal abuse John suffered from his mother were mirrored by a judgmental and racist society around him, he found himself in a crisis of identity and shattered self-esteem. In this searingly honest and thought-provoking memoir, John shows us how racism is still very much alive in our current “politically correct” world, and the ways in which biracial people struggle with knowing whether they are truly accepted, or if the people around them are just playing the game. John’s path to personal healing, which included learning about and embracing his heritage, and severing ties with those who abused and failed to accept him, is an inspiration to anyone who has fought the questions of acceptance and identity. No matter what your personal background and heritage, It’s Not Always Black And White will enlighten you about what it’s like to be a person of color in a world where being white is the norm, and will vividly show you that every person, regardless of color, deserves to be treated with dignity, love, and respect.

Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being ‘Half’ in Japan

Multilingual Matters
2009-12-03
280 pages
210 x 148 (A5)
Paperback ISBN: 9781847692320
Hardback ISBN: 9781847692337

Laurel Kamada, Lecturer Professor
Tohoku University, Japan

This is the first in-depth examination of “half-Japanese” girls in Japan focusing on ethnic, gendered and embodied ‘hybrid’ identities. Challenging the myth of Japan as a single-race society, these girls are seen struggling to positively manoeuvre themselves and negotiate their identities into positions of contestation and control over marginalizing discourses which disempower them as ‘others’ within Japanese society as they begin to mature. Paradoxically, at other times, within more empowering alternative discourses of ethnicity, they also enjoy and celebrate cultural, symbolic, social and linguistic capital which they discursively create for themselves as they come to terms with their constructed identities of “Japaneseness”, “whiteness” and “halfness/doubleness”. This book has a colourful storyline throughout—narrated in the girls’ own voices—that follows them out of childhood and into the rapid physical and emotional growth years of early adolescence.

Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico

Duke University Press
April 2012
292 pages
43 photographs, 2 maps
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-5132-0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-5121-4

Laura A. Lewis, Professor of Anthropology in Modern Languages and Linguistics
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

Located on Mexico’s Pacific coast in a historically black part of the Costa Chica region, the town of San Nicolás has been identified as a center of Afromexican culture by Mexican cultural authorities, journalists, activists, and foreign anthropologists. The majority of the town’s residents, however, call themselves morenos (black-Indians). In Chocolate and Corn Flour, Laura A. Lewis explores the history and contemporary culture of San Nicolás, focusing on the ways in which local inhabitants experience and understand race, blackness, and indigeneity, as well as on the cultural values that outsiders place on the community and its residents.

Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, Lewis offers a richly detailed and subtle ethnography of the lives and stories of the people of San Nicolás, as well as of community residents who have migrated to the United States. San Nicoladenses, she finds, have complex attitudes toward blackness—both their own and as a racial and cultural category. They neither consider themselves part of an African diaspora nor do they deny their heritage. Rather, they acknowledge their hybridity and choose to identify most deeply with their community.

Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line

Belknap Press (an imprint of Harvard University Press)
January 2002
416 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
1 halftone
Paperback ISBN: 9780674006690

Paul Gilroy, Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory
London School of Economics

After all the “progress” made since World War II in matters pertaining to race, why are we still conspiring to divide humanity into different identity groups based on skin color? Did all the good done by the Civil Rights Movement and the decolonization of the Third World have such little lasting effect?

In this provocative book Paul Gilroy contends that race-thinking has distorted the finest promises of modern democracy. He compels us to see that fascism was the principal political innovation of the twentieth century—and that its power to seduce did not die in a bunker in Berlin. Aren’t we in fact using the same devices the Nazis used in their movies and advertisements when we make spectacles of our identities and differences? Gilroy examines the ways in which media and commodity culture have become preeminent in our lives in the years since the 1960s and especially in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop and other militancies. With this trend, he contends, much that was wonderful about black culture has been sacrificed in the service of corporate interests and new forms of cultural expression tied to visual technologies. He argues that the triumph of the image spells death to politics and reduces people to mere symbols.

At its heart, Against Race is a utopian project calling for the renunciation of race. Gilroy champions a new humanism, global and cosmopolitan, and he offers a new political language and a new moral vision for what was once called “anti-racism.”

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. Racial Observance, Nationalism, and Humanism
1. The Crisis of “Race” and Raciology
2. Modernity and Infrahumanity
3. Identity, Belonging, and the Critique of Pure Sameness

II. Fascism, Embodiment, and Revolutionary Conservatism
4. Hitler Wore Khakis: Icons, Propaganda, and Aesthetic Politics
5. “After the Love Has Gone”: Biopolitics and the Decay of the Black Public Sphere
6. The Tyrannies of Unanimism

III. Black to the Future
7. “All about the Benjamins”: Multicultural Blackness–Corporate, Commercial, and Oppositional
8. “Race,” Cosmopolitanism, and Catastrophe
9. “Third Stone from the Sun”: Planetary Humanism and Strategic Universalism

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix

Lynne Rienner Publishers
October 2010
325 Pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-58826-751-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58826-776-4

Rainier Spencer, Director and Professor of Afro-American Studies; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Is postraciality just around the corner? How realistic are the often-heard pronouncements that mixed-race identity is leading the United States to its postracial future? In his provocative analysis, Rainier Spencer illuminates the assumptions that multiracial ideology in fact shares with concepts of both white supremacy and antiblackness.

Spencer links the mulatto past with the mulatto present in order to plumb the contours of the nation’s mulatto future. He argues cogently, and forcefully, that the deconstruction of race promised by the American Multiracial Identity Movement will remain an illusion of wishful thinking unless we truly address the racist baggage that serves tenaciously to conserve the present racial order.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• THE MULATTO PAST
  • The Mixed-Race Background
  • Of Tragic Mulattoes and Marginal Men
  • Mulatto Writers on Marginality
  • Imitations of Life
  • Rejecting a Shared Past
• THE MULATTO PRESENT
  • Postraciality, Multiraciality, and Antiblackness
  • Resurrecting Old Myths of Mulatto Marginality
  • The False Promise of Racial Bridging
  • Assessing the New Millennium Marginal Man
• THE MULATTO FUTURE
  • Whither Multiracial Militancy? Conserving the Racial Order
  • Mulatto (and White) Writers on Deconstructing Race
  • Beyond Generation Mix

Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Sixth Edition)

AltaMira Press
1997
704 pages
Cloth ISBN10: 0-8039-4647-3; ISBN13: 978-0-8039-4647-7
Paper ISBN10: 0-8039-4648-1; ISBN13: 978-0-8039-4648-4

Ashley Montagu (1905-1999)

Man’s Most Dangerous Myth was first published in 1942, when Nazism flourished, when African Americans sat at the back of the bus, and when race was considered the determinant of people’s character and intelligence. It presented a revolutionary theory for its time; breaking the link between genetics and culture, it argued that race is largely a social construction and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people. In the ensuing 55 years, as Ashley Montagu’s radical hypothesis became accepted knowledge, succeeding editions of his book traced the changes in our conceptions of race and race relations over the 20th century. Now, over 50 years later, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth is back in print, fully revised by the original author. Montagu is internationally renowned for his work on race, as well as for such influential books as The Natural Superiority of Women, Touching, and The Elephant Man.

This new edition contains Montagu’s most complete explication of his theory and a thorough updating of previous editions. The Sixth Edition takes on the issues of the Bell Curve, IQ testing, ethnic cleansing and other current race relations topics, as well as contemporary restatements of topics previously addressed. A bibliography of almost 3,000 published items on race, compiled over a lifetime of work, is of enormous research value. Also available is an abridged student edition containing the essence of Montagu’s argument, its policy implications, and his thoughts on contemporary race issues for use in classrooms. Ahead of its time in 1942, Montagu’s arguments still contribute essential and salient perspectives as we face the issue of race in the 1990s. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth is the seminal work of one of the 20th century’s leading intellectuals, essential reading for all scholars and students of race relations.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 Abridged Student Edition Table of Contents
• Chapter 2 Foreword to the First Edition
• Chapter 3 Foreword to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 4 Preface to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 5 Introduction
• Chapter 6 1. The Origin of the Concept of Race
• Chapter 7 2. The Fallaciousness of the Older Anthropological Conception of Race
• Chapter 8 3. The Genetical Theory of Race
• Chapter 9 4. The Biological Facts
• Chapter 10 5. Natural Selection and the Mental Capacities of Humankind
• Chapter 11 6. The Mythology of Race, or “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
• Chapter 12 7. Race and Society
• Chapter 13 8. Biological and Social Factors
• Chapter 14 9. Psychological Factors
• Chapter 15 10. Race and Culture
• Chapter 16 11. Racism and Social Action
• Chapter 17 12. Intelligence, IQ, and Race
• Chapter 18 Unabridged Table of Contents
• Chapter 19 Foreword to the First Edition
• Chapter 20 Foreword to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 21 Preface to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 22 Introduction
• Chapter 23 1. The Origin of the Concept of Race
• Chapter 24 2. The Fallaciousness of the Older Anthropological Conception of Race
• Chapter 25 3. The Genetical Theory of Race
• Chapter 26 4. The Biological Facts
• Chapter 27 5. Natural Selection and the Mental Capacities of Humankind
• Chapter 28 6. The Mythology of Race, or “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
• Chapter 29 7. Race and Society
• Chapter 30 8. Biological and Social Factors
• Chapter 31 9. Psychological Factors
• Chapter 32 10. The Creative Power of Ethnic Mixture
• Chapter 33 11. Eugenics, Genetics, and Race
• Chapter 34 12. Race and Culture
• Chapter 35 13. Race and War
• Chapter 36 14. Race and Blood
• Chapter 37 15. Innate Aggression and Race
• Chapter 38 16. Myths Relating to the Physical Traits of Blacks
• Chapter 39 17. Are the Jews a Race?
• Chapter 40 18. The First Americans
• Chapter 41 19. The Meaning of Equal Opportunity
• Chapter 42 20. Race and Democracy
• Chapter 43 21. Racism and Social Action
• Chapter 44 22. Sociocultural Behavioral Influences
• Chapter 45 23. Intelligence, IQ, and Race
• Chapter 46 Appendix A: Ethnic Group and Race
• Chapter 47 Appendix B: The Fallacy of the Primitive
• Chapter 48 Appendix C: The Term Miscegination
• Chapter 49 Appendix D: Intelligence of Northern Blacks and Southern Whites in the First World War
• Chapter 50 Bibliography

The Equality of the Human Races

University of Illinois Press
2002 (First published in 1885)
536 pages
5.5 x 8 in.
6 black & white photographs, 12 tables
Paper ISBN: 978-0-252-07102-7

Anténor Firmin (1850-1911)

Translated from the French by:

Asselin Charles

Introduction by:

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Rhode Island College

Positivist Anthropology

This is the first paperback edition of the only English-language translation of the Haitian scholar Anténor Firmin’s The Equality of the Human Races (De l’Égalité des Races Humaines), a foundational text in critical anthropology first published in 1885 when anthropology was just emerging as a specialized field of study.

Marginalized for its “radical” position that the human races were equal, Firmin’s lucid and persuasive treatise was decades ahead of its time. Arguing that the equality of the races could be demonstrated through a positivist scientific approach, Firmin challenged racist writings and the dominant views of the day.

Translated by Asselin Charles and framed by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban’s substantial introduction, this rediscovered text is an important contribution to contemporary scholarship in anthropology, pan-African studies, and colonial and postcolonial studies.

Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom

University of California Press
February 2005
329 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9780520241329
Paperback ISBN: 9780520250024

Tiya Miles, Professor of American Culture, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies
University of Michigan

• Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association
• Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, Organization of American Historians

This beautifully written book tells the haunting saga of a quintessentially American family. It is the story of Shoe Boots, a famed Cherokee warrior and successful farmer, and Doll, an African slave he acquired in the late 1790s. Over the next thirty years, Shoe Boots and Doll lived together as master and slave and also as lifelong partners who, with their children and grandchildren, experienced key events in American history—including slavery, the Creek War, the founding of the Cherokee Nation and subsequent removal of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War. This is the gripping story of their lives, in slavery and in freedom.

Meticulously crafted from historical and literary sources, Ties That Bind vividly portrays the members of the Shoeboots family. Doll emerges as an especially poignant character, whose life is mostly known through the records of things done to her—her purchase, her marriage, the loss of her children—but also through her moving petition to the federal government for the pension owed to her as Shoe Boots’s widow. A sensitive rendition of the hard realities of black slavery within Native American nations, the book provides the fullest picture we have of the myriad complexities, ironies, and tensions among African Americans, Native Americans, and whites in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Shoeboots Family Tree
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE. BONE OF MY BONE: SLAVERY, RACE, AND NATION—EAST
  • 1. Captivity
  • 2. Slavery
  • 3. Motherhood
  • 4. Property
  • 5. Christianity
  • 6. Nationhood
  • 7. Gold Rush
• PART TWO. OF BLOOD AND BONE: FREEDOM, KINSHIP, AND CITIZENSHIP—WEST
  • 8. Removal
  • 9. Capture
  • 10. Freedom
• Epilogue: Citizenship
• Coda: The Shoeboots Family Today
• Appendix 1. Research Methods and Challenges
• Appendix 2. Definition and Use of Terms
• Appendix 3. Cherokee Names and Mistaken Identities
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany

Peter Lang
2008
168 pages
ISBN 978-1-4331-0278-3 (paperback)

Ika Hügel-Marshall (Translated by Elizabeth Gaffney)

Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, republished in a new annotated edition, recounts Ika Hügel-Marshall’s experiences growing up as the daughter of a white German woman and an African-American man after World War II. As an “occupation baby”, born in a small German town in 1947, Ika has a double stigma: Not only has she been born out of wedlock, but she is also Black. Although loved by her mother, Ika’s experiences with German society’s reaction to her skin color resonate with the insidiousness of racism, thus instilling in her a longing to meet her biological father. When she is seven, the state places her into a church-affiliated orphanage far away from where her mother, sister, and stepfather live. She is exposed to the scorn and cruelty of the nuns entrusted with her care. Despite the institutionalized racism, Ika overcomes these hurdles, and finally, when she is in her forties, she locates her father with the help of a good friend and discovers that she has a loving family in Chicago.

The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism

Indiana University Press
2007-05-22
320 pages
22 b&w photos
6.125 x 9.25
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-253-21927-5; Cloth ISBN: 978-0-253-34902-6

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz exposes and challenges the common assumptions about whom and what Jews are, by presenting in their own voices, Jews of color from the Iberian Peninsula, Asia, Africa, and India. Drawing from her earlier work on Jews and whiteness, Kaye/Kantrowitz delves into the largely uncharted territory of Jews of color and argues that Jews are an increasingly multiracial people—a fact that, if acknowledged and embraced, could foster cross-race solidarity to help combat racism. This engaging and eye-opening book examines the historical and contemporary views on Jews and whiteness as well as the complexities of African/Jewish relations, the racial mix and disparate voices of the Jewish community, contemporary Jewish anti-racist and multicultural models, and the diasporic state of Jewish life in the United States.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• A Note on Language
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Are Jews White?
  • What’s White
  • The People of Contradictions
  • Apartheid/American Style
  • Jews: Race or Religion?
  • Christian Centricity
• 2. Black/Jewish Imaginary and Real
  • Real 1: The Black/Jewish Tangle
  • Real 2: Am I Possible?
  • Imaginary 1: Exodus
  • Imaginary 2: Media Coverage
  • Imaginary 3: Media Hype
  • Real 3: Solidarity
  • Real 4: Nationalism and Feminism
• 3. Who Is This Stranger?
  • The Cultures of Jews
  • Mizrahim
  • Sephardim
  • Post-Colonial Jews
  • Feminist Ritual
  • Ashkenazim
  • De-Ashkenization
  • U.S. Jews
• 4. Praying with Our Legs
  • Fighting Slumlords, Building Coalitions: Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (Chicago)
  • Confronting Power in the Jewish Community: Jews United for Justice (St. Louis)
  • Trying to Change Congregational Life: Jewish Community Action (Minneapolis)
  • Bringing Our Bodies to the Picket Line: Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (New York)
  • The Place to Go for a Progressive Jewish Voice
• 5. Judaism Is the Color of This Room
  • The Temple of My Familiar: Ayecha (National)
  • Crossing Many Borders: Ivri-NASAWI/Levantine Center (International)
  • A Mixed Multitude: Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation (Chicago)
  • Respect and Knowledge: Beta Israel of North America (International)
  • Hospitality Is the First Principle: Congregation Naharat Shalom (Albuquerque)
  • Jews Were All People of Color: Center for Afro-Jewish Studies (Philadelphia)
  • I Promised Them It Wasn’t Going to Happen Again: Central Reform Synagogue (St. Louis)
  • Jews of Color Speak Out
  • Transformation in Partnership
• 6. Toward a New Diasporism
  • If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem
  • If I Forget Thee O Doikayt, O Haviva Ottomania
  • Home
  • Diasporism and the Holocaust
  • Israel and Diasporism
  • Anti-Semitism and Diasporism
  • A Jewish Tradition: Radical Justice-Seeking
  • To Change the Way Racism Is Fought: Shifting the Center
  • Diasporism and the Colors of Jews
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index