Mixed Race Studies

We Named Our Son Lincoln: A Testimony Against Racial Injustice

ChicagoNow: The Family Table
Chicago, Illinois
2014-12-08

Amy Negussie
Lincoln Park, Chicago

I have been debating writing about race & Ferguson the few weeks since the announcement was made that Darren Wilson was not indicted. Then came the further blow of the Eric Gardner case. As I read what others write, I struggle over whether there is anything that I can add. But if anyone might read this and listen really, listen to what I say I have to say write:

I married a black man. We named our son Lincoln David Negussie. Lincoln for Abraham Lincoln abolisher of slavery, David for my brother and my family meaning beloved, and Negussie for his African grandfather’s name meaning king.

Despite my own family’s multiracial aspect, I am guilty of racism, I am a part of the sinful racist system. Do I want to be? No…

…My hope and my prayer is that my multiracial son will be a part of uprooting injustice as his namesake was, and that in his day we will see an end to the epidemic of incarcerating (and even killing) black youth for petty crimes for which white youth often get slapped on the wrist…

Read the entire article here.

Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization

Dream House Publishing Company
346 pages
1947
ISBN-10: 1258772795; ISBN-13: 978-1258772796

Theodore G. Bilbo (1877-1947), State Senator, Lt. Governor, twice Governor, three terms United States Senator
State of Mississippi

The incontrovertible truths of this book and its sincere warnings are respectfully inscribed to every white man and woman, regardless of nationality, who is a bona fide citizen of the United States of America.

The title of this book is Take Your Choice–Separation or Mongrelization. Maybe the title should have been “You Must Take or You Have Already Taken Your Choice–Separation or Mongrelization,” but regardless of the name of this book it is really and in fact a S.O.S call to every white man and white woman within the United States of America for immediate action, and it is also a warning of equal importance to every right-thinking and straight-thinking American Negro who has any regard or respect for the integrity of his Negro blood and his Negro race.

For nine years I have read, studied and analyzed practically all the records and everything written throughout the entire world on the subject of race relations, covering a period of close on to thirty thousand years. For more than three years I have been writing the message of warning to the white men and women, regardless of nationality, of the United States that you will find recorded on the pages of this book.

This book is not a condemnation or denunciation of any race, white, black or yellow because I entertain no hatred or prejudice against any human being on account of his race or color—God made them so. I have endeavored to bring to the attention of the white, the yellow, and the black races the incontrovertible truths of history over a span of thirty thousand years, all in an honest attempt to conserve and protect and perpetuate my own white race and white civilization, and at the same time impress especially the black and yellow races with the fact that they must join in an effort to protect the integrity of their own race, blood, and civilization.

Be it said to the credit of the black or Negro race in the United States that no right-thinking and straight-thinking Negro desires that the blood of his black race shall be contaminated or destroyed by the commingling of his blood with either the white or yellow races. The desire to mix, commingle, interbreed or marry into the white race by the Negro race is advocated largely by the mulattoes or mongrels who are now to an alarming degree found within the Negro race in this country.

Surely every decent white man and woman in America should have cause to be alarmed over the mongrelization of their white race and the loss of their white civilization when Dr. Ralph S. Linton, a leading Professor of Anthropology of Columbia University, New York City, said just recently that at the present rate of intermarrying, interbreeding, and intermixing within nine generations, which is only 300 years, that there would be no white race nor black race in America—that all would be yellow. And in a recent article entitled “Who Is A Negro,” Herbert Asbury makes the alarming and sickening statement that “more than two million United States Negroes have crossed the color line, contributing, among other things an ever-widening stream of black blood to the native white stock.”

In the face of these two startling statements, the truth of which is established beyond every reasonable doubt by the contents of this book, the time has arrived—the clock has struck, when something must be done immediately by every white man and woman in this great and glorious country to stay or to escape the certain and tragic fate that awaits the future of our children’s children of generations yet to be born.

It is indeed a sorry white man and white woman who when put on notice of the inevitable result of mongrelization of their race and their civilization are yet unwilling to put forth any effort or make any sacrifice to save themselves and their off-spring from this great and certain calamity. YOU MUST TAKE YOUR CHOICE!

Personally, the writer of this book would rather see his race and his civilization blotted out with the atomic bomb than to see it slowly but surely destroyed in the maelstrom of miscegenation, interbreeding, intermarriage and mongrelization. The destruction in either case would be inevitable—one in a flash and the other by the slow but certain process of sin, degradation, and mongrelization.

It is not too late—we can yet save the integrity and civilization of both the white and the black races. Many great men of the past have suggested the only solution—the only salvation. A physical separation as advocated from the days of Thomas Jefferson to the present is the only solution. To do this may be a Herculean task, but it is not impossible.

On the pages of this book the author has tried to give you the indisputable truth, expose forces and influences that seek the amalgamation of our races and has pointed out the only proper solution to America’s greatest domestic problem. May God in His infinite wisdom and mercy direct us and lead us into the ways of our only salvation.

Theodore G. Bilbo, United States Senate
The Dream House
Poplarville, Mississippi
August 1, 1946…

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction by Earnest Sevier Cox
• i. The Race Issue—Our Greatest Domestic Problem
• ii. Race and Civilization
• iii. The Negro Problem in American History
• iv. Southern Segregation and the Color Line
• v. The Demands of the Negro Leaders
• vi. Inequalities of the White and Negro Races
• vii. False Interpretations of American Democracy
• viii. False Concepts of the Christian Religion
• ix. The Campaign for Complete Equality
• x. Astounding Revelations to White America
• xi. The Springfield Plan and Such
• xii. The Dangers of Amalgamation
• xiii. Physical Separation—Proper Solution to the Race Problem
• xiv. Outstanding Advocates of Separation
• xv. The Negro Repatriation Movement
• xvi. Standing at the Crossroads

Read the entire book here.

“Race”: a Political Weapon

Counterpunch: Tells the Facts and Names the Names
2014-12-03

Luciana Bohne, Professor
Edinboro University, Edinboro, Pennsylvania

“The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.”

—US Census

According to a widely circulated statistic, the police kill a young black man every twenty-eight hours in America. Without doubt, the police have a problem with race. Moreover, the justice system appears to have a problem, too, as proven by the Grand Jury’s failed indictment of Darren Wilson in the killing this summer of young Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The failed indictment does not mean that Wilson is innocent; only that he will not be brought to trial. This is a terrible perversion of the path to justice. It suggests deliberate prevention of trial on the nearly 100% certainty that Wilson would be found guilty if tried. I am disturbed, however, by the well-intentioned flagellants among the white, non-racist community virtually calling for “America’s” white male blood, metaphorically speaking. I am disturbed because this is the wrong response to the judicial outrage in Ferguson. We should be calling for ruling-class blood, not dividing ourselves into blacks and whites. Isn’t this division a benefit that our divide-and-rule oppressors hardly deserve? Let us not play with the cards in their deck.

To begin with, is “America” racist? Real, existing Americans voted for a black candidate for president, one, moreover, who ticked off only the “African American” category on race in the US Census of 2010. In choosing the less privileged racial group than white, Obama adhered to the principle of “hypo descent,” which the US has traditionally used to determine the race of a child born of a mixed-race union. We have a black political class in the Congress; a black Supreme Court justice; two blacks have been secretary of state (one a woman). We have not one institution in which blacks don’t figure more or less prominently. Mixed marriages have been legal since 1967. In 2008, about 14% of all first marriages were mixed race; 9% of whites, 16% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics, and 31% of Asians were interracially married…

Read the entire article here.

How Racists and Partisans Exploit the Age of Obama

The Atlantic
2014-12-11

Norm Ornstein

Since 2008, the Democratic Party has increasingly become the home of minorities, while the Republican Party draws its support from whites.

One of my fondest memories was spending four days in February 1977 as a staffer sitting on the Senate floor, mostly wedged between Gaylord Nelson and Russell Long as the Senate debated a resolution to reform its committee system. They were good friends, lovely people, and great storytellers, and I mostly sat there taking their conversation in, occasionally earning my pay by letting them know what a particular provision of the resolution did or what an amendment would do.

At my request, Long opened up his Senate desk so I could see the signatures of all the senators who had used the same desk over many previous decades. The signature of Theodore Bilbo just jumped out at me. Bilbo was a legend—and not in a good way. In his two Senate terms representing Mississippi, from 1935 to 1947, he stood out as a mean and vicious racist, not shy about spouting ugly bile on the floor or elsewhere.

He wanted pure segregation and ultimately to send black Americans to Africa. He said, “The experiences and history of thousands of years prove that whenever and wherever the white and black man have tried to live side by side, the result has been mongrelization, which has destroyed both races and left a brown mongrel people.” When he filibustered an antilynching bill in 1938, he called its supporters “mulattoes, octoroons, and quadroons.” He use the “N” word incessantly, in and out of the Senate. Among a large collection of segregationists, he stood out for his ugly rhetoric and incitement of white Southerners to violence. As I sat on the Senate floor 37 years ago, I thought, “Well, we have at least come a long way.”

And we have. After Bilbo, and despite a set of Southern Democratic senators who were more civil than he was but still tenaciously segregationist, Congress passed civil-rights bills in 1957 and 1964, and the landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965—thanks in large part to the efforts of Republican heroes like Bill McCulloch and Everett Dirksen. We have seen a sharp decline in racist attitudes, a widespread acceptance of interracial marriage, and many other salutary changes. But we are seeing vividly now that race remains a defining gulf in our society, despite remarkable progress over the past five decades…

…Americans of all stripes were justifiably proud when the country elected its first black president in 2008, and again when he was reelected in 2012. The fact is that no other comparable democracy, in Europe or elsewhere, was then or would now be prepared to elect a leader from a minority group. But even as I watched the celebrations on election night in November 2008, I felt an undercurrent of unease. Heartening as it was, this was not a sign that we had broken the back of racism or of racially driven divisions in the country. The election of an African-American president could be seen by racists in America as a sign that they could be more blunt in expressing their views. After all, who could now say America is racist? And the same mindset could lead others to enable statements or actions that would otherwise be seen as over the line. And, of course, the inevitable harsh criticism of a president by partisans on the other side, something that comes with the territory, could easily take on a racial dimension for Barack Obama…

Read the entire article here.

Unrest Over Race Is Testing Obama’s Legacy

The New York Times
2014-12-08

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, White House Reporter

Michael D. Shear, White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — As crowds of people staged “die-ins” across the country last week to protest the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, young African-American activists were in the Oval Office lodging grievances with President Obama.

He of all people — the first black president of the United States — was in a position to testify to the sense of injustice that African-Americans feel in dealing with the police every day, the activists told him. During the unrest that began with a teenager’s shooting in Ferguson, Mo., they hoped for a strong response. Why was he holding back?

Mr. Obama told the group that change is “hard and incremental,” a participant said, while reminding them that he had once been mistaken for a waiter and parking valet. When they said their voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, “You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States.”

For Rasheen Aldridge Jr., 20, a community organizer from St. Louis who attended the meeting, it was not enough. “It hurt that he didn’t seem to want to go out there and acknowledge that he understands our pain,” Mr. Aldridge said in an interview. “It would be a great mark on his presidential legacy if he would come out and touch an issue that everyone is scared to touch.”

But Mr. Obama has not been the kind of champion for racial justice that many African-Americans say this moment demands. In the days since grand juries in Missouri and Staten Island decided not to bring charges against white police officers who had killed unarmed black men, the president has not stood behind the protesters or linked arms with civil rights leaders. Although those closest to Mr. Obama insist that he feels a new urgency to capitalize on the attention to racial divisions, few dispute that he is personally conflicted and constrained by the position he holds…

…The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya has struggled with questions about his own racial identity — described in his book “Dreams From My Father” — but Mr. Obama is by nature cool and cerebral and rarely shows emotion in public…

Read the entire article here.

White Anxiety and the Futility of Black Hope

The New York Times
2014-12-05

George Yancy, Professor of Philosophy
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Shannon Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

This is the third in a series of interviews with philosophers on race that I am conducting for The Stone. This week’s conversation is with Shannon Sullivan, a professor in the department of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She is the author of “Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism.” — George Yancy

George Yancy: What motivated you to engage “whiteness” in your work as a philosopher?

Shannon Sullivan: It was teaching feminist philosophy for the first time or two and trying to figure out how to reach the handful of men in the class — white men, now that I think of it. They tended to be skeptical at best and openly hostile at worst to the feminist ideas we were discussing. They felt attacked and put up a lot of defenses. I was trying to see things from their perspective, not to endorse it (it was often quite sexist!), but to be more effective as a teacher. And so I thought about my whiteness and how I might feel and respond in a class that critically addressed race in ways that implicated me personally. Not that race and gender are the same or can be captured through analogies, but it was a first step toward grappling with my whiteness and trying to use it.

What really strikes me now, as I think about your question, is how old I was — around 30 — before I ever engaged whiteness philosophically, or personally, for that matter. Three decades where that question never came up and yet the unjust advantages whiteness generally provides white people fully shaped my life, including my philosophical training and work…

…G.Y.: For many whites the question of their whiteness never comes up or only comes up when they are much older, as it did in your case. And yet, as you say, there is the accrual of unjust white advantages. What are some reasons that white people fail to come to terms with the fact that they benefit from whiteness?

S.S.: That’s a tough one and there probably are lots of reasons, including beliefs in boot-strap individualism, meritocracy and the like. Another answer, I think, has to do with class differences among white people. A lot of poor white people haven’t benefited as much from whiteness as middle- and upper-class white people have. Poor white people’s “failure” to come to terms with the benefits of their whiteness isn’t as obvious, I guess I’d say. I’m not talking about a kind of utilitarian calculus where we can add up and compare quantities of white advantage, but there are differences…

…G.Y.: And yet for so many poor people of color there is not only the fact that the wages pay less than pennies, as it were, but that black life continues to be valued as less. Is there a history of that racial differential wage between poor whites and poor blacks or people of color?

S.S.: Yes, definitely. Class and poverty are real factors here, but they don’t erase the effects of race and racism, at least not in the United States and not in a lot of other countries with histories (and presents) of white domination. The challenge philosophically and personally is to keep all the relevant factors in play in thinking about these issues. In that complex tangle, you hit the nail on the head when you said that black life continues to be valued as less. Poor white people’s lives aren’t valued for much either, but at least in their case it seems that something went wrong, that there was something of potential value that was lost.

Let’s put it even more bluntly: America is fundamentally shaped by white domination, and as such it does not care about the lives of black people, period. It never has, it doesn’t now, and it makes me wonder about whether it ever will…

Read the entire article here.

Racial divisions still require full attention

The Daily News Journal
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
2014-12-01

Editorial Board

Harpers Ferry…Montgomery…Little Rock…Birmingham…Selma…Ferguson…

Despite some optimism that the United States had evolved into a “post-racial” era, particularly with the election of a black president, events in Ferguson, Missouri, continue to reinforce the reality of a racial divide in this country.

While the initial focus of demonstrations in Ferguson was a white police office’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, what is at issue now appears to be the entire scope of racial divisions in this country since its founding.

The decision of a St. Louis County grand jury not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown has shown further the racial divisions in this country.

Read the entire article here…

Obama Plans Meetings on Ferguson Unrest at the White House

The New York Times
2014-11-30

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, White House Reporter

WASHINGTON — President Obama is planning a day of meetings at the White House on Monday to respond to the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and racially tinged anger across the country after a grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager.

Mr. Obama, who has labored to strike the right balance in reacting to the crisis, has not scheduled a trip to Ferguson despite days of speculation about a presidential visit there.

But he will gather his cabinet on Monday to discuss the results of a review of federal programs that provide military-style equipment to state and local law enforcement agencies. The initiatives were called into question in August, after the Ferguson police responded with riot gear and assault-style weapons to protests in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, the teenager, by Officer Darren Wilson…

…The president has faced a challenge in calibrating his response to the situation in Ferguson, working to balance the task of urging calm and unity with his desire, as America’s first black president, to acknowledge racial wounds — all while being careful not to interfere in the investigation…

Read the entire article here.

The Census Is Still Trying To Find The Best Way To Track Race In America

FiveThirtyEight
New York, New York
2014-11-26

Ben Casselman, Chief Economics Writer

At FiveThirtyEight, we use census data all the time to track demographic and social trends, from the aging of the U.S. population to the decline in marriage and shifts in immigration patterns. But the census not only reveals societal changes, it responds to them. This week, we’re examining three changes the Census Bureau is considering for its 2020 questionnaire. In the first two installments, we looked at the proposed changes to the way the census counts people of Arab ancestry and same-sex couples. Here, in our final article: The bureau ponders a new way of asking about Hispanic ethnicity.

Nancy López considers herself Latina — more specifically, Dominican. But she knows that when she walks down the street, many strangers see her as something else: a black woman.

“Race is not one-dimensional,” said López, a sociologist at the University of New Mexico and co-director of the school’s Institute for the Study of Race and Social Justice. “It’s multidimensional.”

The census has struggled to capture that complexity for its entire history, from 19th-century battles over how to count free black Americans to more modern efforts to categorize the U.S.’s growing mixed-race population. Now as it prepares for its 2020 population count, the Census Bureau is considering its biggest change in decades: combining its questions about race and ethnicity into a single, all-encompassing question. López could still, as she did in 2010, mark herself as black and Latina. But she could also select just one category – an option many U.S. Hispanics have said better reflects their self-identity.

That may seem like an academic distinction, but there are significant real-world implications, too. The government uses census data to help draw congressional boundaries, protect voting rights and allocate federal grant dollars. Researchers use it to track discrimination and social trends. And advocacy groups use it to secure political influence.

“Census taking,” said Tanya Hernández, a Fordham University law professor who studies discrimination, “is inherently a political act.”…

Read the entire article here.

In Northern Ireland, a Wave of Immigrants Is Met With Fists

The New York Times
2014-11-28

Douglas Dalby

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — More than 16 years after the Good Friday peace deal brought real hope that Protestants and Roman Catholics could live together in relative harmony, Northern Ireland is being racked by another wave of violence.

But this time it is not driven by the sectarian divide, but by animosity toward a fast-growing population of immigrants — adding one more challenge as Europe struggles to cope with the combination of intense economic strain and rapid demographic change.

“This is a society that always prides itself on being very friendly, but it is becoming less and less welcoming, particularly to certain types of people,” said Jayne Olorunda, 36, whose father was Nigerian, and though she grew up in Northern Ireland said her color has always marked her as an outsider.

The expanding problem appears to be partly racial and partly directed at immigrants of all backgrounds at a time when open borders in the European Union have led more legal migrants to Britain and Ireland in search of work. At the same time, war and economic deprivation have driven waves of legal and illegal migrants toward Europe from Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The more recent immigrants from Eastern Europe and parts of Africa tell stories similar to those of people from China, India and Pakistan who have lived here for decades…

…The new wave of immigrants has certainly not brought safety in numbers.

“It’s my home, but I don’t feel like a very welcome resident,” said Ms. Olorunda, whose broad accent is pure Northern Ireland.

“When more people began to arrive I was excited at first,” she said, “but then the attacks began to move from verbal to physical and I began to think this isn’t a good thing, after all.”

Ms. Olorunda said she has endured a lifetime of racism and stays in Northern Ireland mainly to look after her mother, who she said never recovered from the loss of her husband. He died in 1980 when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded on a train…

Read the entire article here.