Mixed Race Studies

The Louisiana Convention.

The Spirit of Democracy
Woodsfield, Ohio
1867-12-17
page 2, column 3

The Convention for the reconstruction of Louisiana, now in session at New Orleans, is one of the smallest affairs in the way of brains ever before assembled in the United States. It is composed of cooks, boot-blacks, field-hands, bureau officers, and men unknown five miles from their place of residence. It is with weapons of this sort that the Radical Revolutionists are ruling the South, and trampling the rights of White men under their feet. Here is a list of the  members, taken from the N. Y. World:

• W. Jasper Blackburn, white, is a Northern man who edits the Homer Iliad, a little Radical paper of intense bitterness published in Claiborne parish.
• O. C. Bladin is a New Orleans mulatto.
• Hyacinthe Bonseigneur is the same and chairman of a standing committee that on “conteengeent expanses.”
• Emile Bonnefoi is a mulatto.
• Wm. Brown is an unknown white
• Dennis Burrel is a negro.
• Wm. Butler is a negro.
• Wm. H. Cooley is a white man; a District Judge in Point Coupee and chairman of the standing committee on the new constitution. He is not so Radicals he was and swears freely.
• W. R.  Crane is a truly loyal man whose name appears subscribed to this oath: “I do solemnly swear that I am qualified according to the Constitution, and the laws of the State to vote. I will be faithful and true allegiance bear to the State of Louisiana and the Confederate States of America, and that I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the State and of the said Confederate States. So help me God. March 20, 1862.”Some years prior to this the reconstructing Crane offered a resolution in the Louisiana Legislature to unseat J. P. Benjamin then United States Senator; because the said Judah was in favor of Mr. Clay’s compromise measure, instead of being as Soule, Quitman and the reconstructing Crane then were for instantaneous secession. After Butler the beast came to this city, Mr. Crane became curator of the estates of persons sent beyond the line, and of registered enemies. In personal appearance he is adust as to the face, orange-tawny as to the beard, and stringy as to the neck, around which, without any intervention of a collar is twisted a wispy black cravat.
• Thos. S. Crawford is a melancholy unknown young white man in blue steel specs.
• R. J. Cromwell is a negro doctor.
• Samuel E. Curey is a very black negro.
• Geo. W. Dearing, Jr, is a mulatto.
• A. J. Demarestis white, unknown.
• Chas. Depasseau, is a mulatto.
• P. G. Deslonde, mulatto.
• Jos. DeBlonde, mulatto.
• Auguste Donator Jr., mulatto.
• Davis Douglas, mulatto.
• J. G. Drimkard, white, unknown.
• Gustavus Duparte, mulatto.
• Ulger Dupart, mulatto.
• C. H. B. Duplessis, white, unknown.
• J. B. Esnard, mulatto.
• G. W. Furgeson, white, unknown.
• John Gair, mulatto.
• R. G. Gardiner, a very black negro, temporary president of the Convention.
• Abraham N. Gould, negro.
• Leopold Guichard, mulatto.
• Peter Harper, Jno. S. Harris, Thos. P. Harrison, O. H. Hempstead, and W. .H. Hiestaud, all white and entirely unknown.
• J. H. Ingraham, mulatto, a cook in the Washington artillery during the war, and now Chairman of the Committee on Bill of Rights.
• R. H. Isabelle, mulatto.
• Thos. Isabelle, mulatto.
• Simon Jones, white.
• Geo. Y. Kelso, mulatto.
• Jas. H. Landers, white, wears a brimstone colored vest an is Solon Shinge to a hair. Otherwise unknown.
• Victor Lange, mulatto.
• Chas Leroy, mulatto.
• J. B. Lewis, Viite.
• Richard Lewis, black.
• Jno. J. Ludwig, white, a German—Has good sense, but speaks English fewly.
• Jno. Lynch, white. “Give ye me wor’rd of honor he has” said he the other day, sotto voce, in debate. And of such is delegate Lynch.
• Frederic Mane, white.
• Thomas M. Martin, mulatto.
• J. A. Massicot, white.
• Win. R. Meadows, white.
• Ben. McLeran, white.
• W. L. McMillan, white of Ohio, ex-U. S. A.
• Milton Morris, a very black negro.
• S. R. Moses, still blacker.
• Wm. Munell, mulatto.
• Jas. Mushaway, white.
• Theophile Myers, mulatto.
• J. P. Newsham, white, ex-U. S.
• Jos. C. Oliver, mulatto.
• S. B. Packard, white.
• Jno. Pierce, mulatto.
• P. B. S. Pinchback, mulatto. Great friend of. Banks, N. P.
• Curtis Pollard, negro, black as jet.
• Geo. W. Reagan, white, ex-U. S. A.
• D. Reese, white.
• Fortune Riard, mulatto.
• D. D. Riggs, white.
• J. A. N. Roberts, mulatto.
• L. Rodriquez, mulatto.
• N. Schawb, white, German.
• Charles Smith, white, Internal Revenue assessor.
• Sosthene Snacr, mulatto.
• Jno. Scott, negro.
• G. Snider, white.
• H. G. Steele, white.
• Chas. Thibaut, white.
• E. Twichant, mulatto.
• M. H. Twichell, white, ex-U. S. A.
• Napoleon Underwood, white.
• P. F. Valfroit, negro.
• Jno. B. Vandergriff, white.
• Michel Vidal, white.
• Rufus Naples, white.
• G. M. Wickliffe, white, is a truly loyal man. In 1860, he edited a paper at Clinton, in this State called The Spirit of the South, full of death to abolitionists, hang the abolitionist devils, whet the knife, prepare the fuel, etc., etc., in the very worst style of the fire-eating school. As before observed he is a truly loyal man. He looks, big black mustache “hilang!” air and all as though he had just dropped down out of the Bowery and with two negroes Williams and Wilson, closes the roll of this Convention.

Were the people of the South true to their own interests they would rise in the name of the Constitution of the United States, and wipe the vampire band of howling, blood-thirsty Niggers and unknowns, who are now engaged in eating out their substance and outlawing them, from existence.

Here is a specimen of the blood-thirsty speeches daily thrown into the faces of disfranchised white men:

New Orleans, December 7.—In the Convention to-day, while discussing the preamble and resolutions denying the statements contained in the memorial to congress expressing a fear of a war of races, a negro named Cromwell declared: “We will rule; until the last one of us goes down forever.” That negroes were going to have their rights, if it was by revolution and blood, in spite of Andy Johnson or any other man, and declared that he was ready for revolution.

From the above the people can very readily see what, the negro doctrines of Sumner and Wilson have brought the country too.

Trevor Noah Blasts Ben Carson for Claiming President Obama Was ‘Raised White’

The Daily Beast
2016-02-25

Matt Wilstein, Entertainment Writer

‘The Daily Show’ host hits back at the low-in-the-polls neurosurgeon for claiming Obama can’t relate to the ‘experience of black Americans.’

Believe it or not, Ben Carson is still running for president. And this week, he made some news by claiming in an interview that President Obama was “raised white” and therefore can’t identify with the “experience of black Americans.”

Trevor Noah isn’t having it. ”Like a glitched character on a video game, Ben Carson is just off facing the wrong direction,” The Daily Show host said Wednesday night. “Yeah, he is not attacking Trump or the other Republicans, but rather he’s chosen to attack President Obama. And it’s not for his policies and it’s not for his record. It’s for not being black enough.”

“So Ben Carson is saying that because Obama didn’t grow up poor, he didn’t grow up black,” Noah said after playing the clip of Carson’s comments. “That is such a bullshit argument. Being poor isn’t what makes you black.”…

Read the entire article here.

America Is Obsessed With Identity. Thanks, Obama?

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2016-02-17

Alicia Montgomery

Annette Elizabeth Allen for NPR

When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, there was a lot of talk about “The Obama Effect”: how the nation’s first black president signaled a new era of racial harmony and understanding.

That didn’t happen. But what did? The Obama family’s tenure in the White House has overlapped a revolution in the way Americans deal with identity. From race to religion, from gender to sexual orientation and beyond, marginalized groups that historically worked and waited for “a seat at the table” increasingly demanded their share of cultural power.

And people who once assumed that they could define what it means to be American were called on to defend their ideas and “check their privilege…

Read the entire article here.

Michigan in Color: Authenticity

The Michigan Daily: The campus newspaper of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
2016-02-18

Michael Chrzan

Courtesy of Michael Chrzan

In an article for the National Review late last year, senior editor Jonah Goldberg discussed the (now former) popularity of Ben Carson amongst the GOP. He said “ … most analysis of Carson’s popularity from pundits focuses on his likable personality and his sincere Christian faith. But it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black. One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama … ”

Goldberg makes this statement and then goes on to make a number of claims as to why President Obama is not “authentically African-American” enough, at least when compared to Carson.

“ … Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents. In his autobiography, Obama writes at length about how he grew up outside the traditional African-American experience — in Hawaii and Indonesia — and how he consciously chose to adopt a black identity when he was in college.”…

This isn’t a new sentiment. Many people of many different races have often brought up Obama’s racial heritage as a way to discredit his Blackness. In fact, a 2014 article by the Washington Post shows most of America doesn’t consider the president as Black, but as “mixed race.” The problem with this line of thinking stems from how we conceptualize multi-racial identities in this country — one with a history of hypodescent ideologies, like the infamous one-drop rule. The problem with this line of thinking is that all Obama needs to be “authentically” Black is to be Black, and that he most definitely is…

Read the entire article here.

Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide

William Morrow (an imprint of HarperCollins)
2015-09-08
384 pages
Trimsize: 6 in (w) x 9 in (h) x 1.21 in (d)
Hardcover ISBN: 9780062305251
Paperback ISBN: 9780062305268
E-book ISBN: 9780062305275

Joy-Ann Reid

Barack Obama’s speech on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches should have represented the culmination of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial unity. Yet, in Fracture, MSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid shows that, despite the progress we have made, we are still a nation divided—as seen recently in headline-making tragedies such as the killing of Trayvon Martin and the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore.

With President Obama’s election, Americans expected an open dialogue about race but instead discovered the irony of an African American president who seemed hamstrung when addressing racial matters, leaving many of his supporters disillusioned and his political enemies sharpening their knives. To understand why that is so, Reid examines the complicated relationship between Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, and how their varied approaches to the race issue parallel the challenges facing the Democratic party itself: the disparate parts of its base and the whirl of shifting allegiances among its power players—and how this shapes the party and its hopes of retaining the White House.

Fracture traces the party’s makeup and character regarding race from the civil rights days to the Obama presidency. Filled with key political players such as Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and Al Sharpton, it provides historical context while addressing questions arising as we head into the next national election: Will Hillary Clinton’s campaign represent an embrace of Obama’s legacy or a repudiation of it? How is Hillary Clinton’s stand on race both similar to and different from Obama’s, or from her husband’s? How do minorities view Mrs. Clinton, and will they line up in huge numbers to support her—and what will happen if they don’t?

Veteran reporter Joy-Ann Reid investigates these questions and more, offering breaking news, fresh insight, and experienced insider analysis, mixed with fascinating behind-the-scenes drama, to illuminate three of the most important figures in modern political history, and how race can affect the crucial 2016 election and the future of America itself.

This photo of Obama and a little visitor at a Black History Month celebration is remarkable

The Washington Post
2016-02-20

Janell Ross

Clark Reynolds, 3, is greeted by President Obama during a Black History Month Celebration held Feb.18, 2016, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Pete Souza/White House)

For 3-year-old Clark Reynolds, Thursday began like most others.

Morning preparations gave way to hours at school and then a visit to his mother’s office to change into a suit and tie. Clark’s mother, Nichole Francis Reynolds, is a former congressional staffer who now works in the private sector. Friends had secured an invitation for Francis Reynolds and her son to the White House’s Black History Month celebration, the final gathering of its kind while the first black president remains in office. But Francis Reynolds had told Clark only that he had earned a special treat. He is, after all, only 3.

What Clark does know is the president’s name, his face when he sees Obama on TV and the sound of President Obama’s voice when it comes through the satellite radio in his dad’s car. Then, there’s Clark’s favorite book, the one that he almost always picks when it’s reading time. Clark has been through the “The White House Pop-Up Book” by Chuck Fischer so many times that, almost as soon as Clark and his mother walked onto the White House grounds Thursday, Clark knew where they were…

Read the entire article here.

I sat beside Obama at the Black Lives Matter meeting. This was no political show

The Guardian
2016-02-20

Brittany Packnett

The author sits beside Barack Obama’s in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 18 February. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Some political meetings devolve into theater. Not this one: we all spoke direct truth to literal power

Black folks know political theater when we see it; we’ve lived through it for years. And as the 2016 presidential election ramps up, our feeds, and our lives, are inundated with grandstanding and pandering, much lofty rhetoric and often, too few solutions that actually prioritize the unique needs of people of color.

Any White House meeting, much like the one 15 of us had Thursday with President Obama to discuss civil rights, could have appeared as such.

I witnessed such theater just a week prior at the Ferguson city council meeting. A consent decree to help rid Ferguson of its now well-documented racist policing practices was due for a vote. The decree had been negotiated by city officials and the Department of Justice for many months, and both bodies had been dutifully engaged by a substantial number of Ferguson citizens in conversation, community meetings hosted by the Ferguson Collaborative and public comment at three city council meetings…

Read the entire article here.

The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2016-02-02
368 pages
6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9780544387669
eBook ISBN: 9780544386426
Paperback ISBN: 9780544811805

Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Michael Eric Dyson explores the powerful, surprising way the politics of race have shaped Barack Obama’s identity and groundbreaking presidency. How has President Obama dealt publicly with race—as the national traumas of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have played out during his tenure? What can we learn from Obama’s major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?

Dyson explores whether Obama’s use of his own biracialism as a radiant symbol has been driven by the president’s desire to avoid a painful moral reckoning on race. And he sheds light on identity issues within the black power structure, telling the fascinating story of how Obama has spurned traditional black power brokers, significantly reducing their leverage.

President Obama’s own voice—from an Oval Office interview granted to Dyson for this book—along with those of Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and Maxine Waters, among others, add unique depth to this profound tour of the nation’s first black presidency.

Mixed-Race Youth and Schooling: The Fifth Minority

Routledge
2016-02-26
256 pages
10 B/W Illus.
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-13-802191-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-13-802193-8

Sandra Winn Tutwiler, Professor of Education
Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas

This timely, in-depth examination of the educational experiences and needs of mixed-race children (“the fifth minority”) focuses on the four contexts that primarily influence learning and development: the family, school, community, and society-at-large.

The book provides foundational historical, social, political, and psychological information about mixed-race children and looks closely at their experiences in schools, their identity formation, and how schools can be made more supportive of their development and learning needs. Moving away from an essentialist discussion of mixed-race children, a wide variety of research is included. Life and schooling experiences of mixed-raced individuals are profiled throughout the text. Rather than pigeonholing children into a neat box of descriptions or providing ready made prescriptions for educators, Mixed-Race Youth and Schooling offers information and encourages teachers to critically reflect on how it is relevant to and helpful in their teaching/learning contexts.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Part I: Being Mixed-Race in Society
  • Chapter 1: The Context of Race for Mixed-Race People
  • Chapter 2: Mixed-Race People in Society Over Time
  • Chapter 3: Racial Identity: Multiple Perspectives on Racial Self-Understanding
• Part II: Family, Community, and Peers
  • Chapter 4: Structures, Practices, and Socialization in Interracial and Multiracial Families
  • Chapter 5: Community, Social Class and Sociocultural Interactions
  • Chapter 6: Peer Relations and Friendship Formations
• Part III: Education and Schooling: People, Places, and Practices
  • Chapter 7: Teachers’ (Mixed) Race Constructions and Teaching in Multiracial Classrooms
  • Chapter 8: The Racial Context of Schooling and Mixed-race Youth
  • Chapter 9: Schooling Supportive of Mixed-Race Youth
• Index

Black Lives Matter Activist Says Obama Meeting Was Positive

TIME
2016-02-18

Maya Rhodan

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 18: U.S. President Barack Obama (C) speaks about race relations while flanked by Brittany Packnett (L), and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, February 18, 2016 in Washington, DC. President Obama met with African American faith and civil rights leaders before an event to celebrate Black History Month. Mark Wilson—Getty Images

For over an hour on Thursday, 31-year-old activist and educator Brittany Packnett sat beside President Obama at a table in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a unique meeting of the minds.

The nation’s first African American president convened a group of activists, both young and old, for a discussion on how he can spend his final year in office tackling issues that impact the black community—from criminal justice reform to police-community relations. Though one activist from Obama’s hometown of Chicago publicly slammed the meeting as a “photo opportunity and a 90-second sound bite for the president,” according to Packnett, the meeting was the complete opposite of that.

“We had a conversation that lasted over 90 minutes,” Packnett tells TIME. “The president actually extended himself because he wanted to continue the conversation. We had a lot of opportunity to elevate various strategies that are happening on the ground as far as criminal justice reform, working on police violence, and systemic educational inequities.”…

Read the entire article here.