Mixed Race Studies

Blackness in Germany

Afroeuropa: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies
Volume 1, Number 1 (2007)

Tomi Adeaga
Universität Siegen, Deutschland

This paper analyses the situation of the Black population in Germany. It revises its historical origins, well back in history, although it focuses more on the experience of the younger generation, particularly people of mixed parentage who are exposed to an endemic racism rooted in the stereotype of Africans as the most primitive race on earth. The survival of the myth of white superiority has been preserved in Germany and little effort has been made to integrate black Germans into mainstream society.

…Being black in Germany means that one is a foreigner, who has to struggle against stereotypical notions of the African continent as one at the bottom of the evolution ladder. The issue of Blackness is determined by the operational modes of the political climate in Germany, which depends largely on the political party in power. A look at the political situation at work in Germany before World War I shows that racial discrimination already existed in the societies because of the way the German colonies were operated before they were taken over by France and England. We only have to look at the Herero Uprising in Namibia whereby thousands of Hereros were killed. The Swakopmunder street is a proof of the German colonial history. What seems to have gone lost in history is the fact that the first official German concentration camp was built there in 1907 and all the Hereros who dared to be against the German hegemony were killed there. The Africans in Germany, including the Francophones in the French army stationed on the Rhine river, who had relationships with German women and gave birth to mixed children which were seen as exotic and unwanted, were victimised along with the Jews, the Roma and the Sinti and other non-Aryan foreigners by the German NS government.

In an attempt to shed some light on the dynamics of cultural co-existence in multi-ethnic societies as a way of bridging the gap between them, Homi Bhabha has developed the concept of “cultural hybridity” to discuss the dynamics of the impacts of colonisation. However, hybridity in my opinion is the co-existence of two cultures which do not mix together…

…Bhabha’s observation identifies the differences in cultures existing within the same country. Indeed multiculturalism is highly complex in its composition. However, it is secondary within German contexts because the dominant factor still remains the skin colour, the otherness. There is often the tendency for politicians and even Germans themselves to claim that Germany is a homogeneous country. However, this claim is an illusory one because of the existence of multiple cultures due to the mass migrations both from parts of Europe, and the rest of the world. Intermarriages have also always taken place. Moreover, since people of African origins have been in Germany as far back as the 10th century or even earlier, the possibility of mixed African presence has always been there. But their presence became a national problem as the political climate became hostile to people considered as threats to the German existence and supremacy…

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World Premiere of “Family Portrait in Black and White” at 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Family Portrait in Black and White
2011
Interfilm Productions, Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Directed by: Julia Ivanova
Producted by Boris Ivanov

OLGA NENYA is a foster mother to SIXTEEN BLACK ORPHANS in Ukraine—where 99.9% of the population is white and where race DOES matter. Forced to constantly defend themselves from racist neighbors and skinheads, these children have to be on guard against the world that surrounds them.

No one is related by blood in this family, but everyone is connected by the color of their skin and by the woman who chose to be their foster mother. Olga is a loving mother but she is not Mother Teresa; she bears much more resemblance to a platoon leader. Some kids have learned to manipulate her, some obey, and only one constantly battles with her. Kiril, a 16-year-old boy nicknamed ‘Mr. President’ for his intelligence and effortless aristocracy, is the one who dares to openly argue with Olga—and pays dearly for it. The modern world is interconnected: not only did the British Charity buy the house for the family, but these kids from a tiny place in Ukraine have been spending summers with host families in France and Italy year after year. When European families offer to adopt the kids, Olga refuses despite being aware of what awaits a black Ukrainian beyond the protective shield of her family. For her, these children already have a family and, as she says, “The bird should only have one nest”. This film is a multi-dimensional portrait of one family, the country they live in, and the bigger world they are a part of.

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2010-12-01
Park City, Utah

PARK CITY, UT – Sundance Institute announced today the lineup of films selected to screen in the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. In addition to the four Competition Categories, the Festival presents films in six out-of-competition sections to be announced on December 2. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at www.sundance.org/festival…

…World Cinema Documentary Competition

This year’s 12 films were selected from 796 international documentary submissions.

Family Portrait in Black and White / Canada (Director: Julia Ivanova) – In a small Ukrainian town, Olga Nenya, raises 16 black orphans amidst a population of Slavic blue-eyed blondes. Their stories expose the harsh realities of growing up as a bi-racial child in Eastern Europe. World Premiere

Vikings Possibly Carried Native American to Europe

Discovery News
2010-11-17

Medieval texts suggest the Vikings arrived in the New World more than 1,000 years ago.

THE GIST

• DNA analysis reveals that four families in Iceland possess genes typically found in Native Americans or East Asians.
• Genealogical evidence revealed that these families shared a distant ancestor from the same region.
• The Vikings may have brought back a Native American woman with them after they arrived in the New World.

The first Native American to arrive in Europe may have been a woman brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, a study by Spanish and Icelandic researchers suggests.

The findings boost widely-accepted theories, based on Icelandic medieval texts and a reputed Viking settlement in Newfoundland in Canada, that the Vikings reached the American continent several centuries before Christopher Columbus traveled to the “New World.”

Spain’s CSIC scientific research institute said genetic analysis of around 80 people from a total of four families in Iceland showed they possess a type of DNA normally only found in Native Americans or East Asians…

Read the entire article here.

Selling eugenics: the case of Sweden

Notes & Records of the Royal Society
Volume 64, Number 4
pages 379-400
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2010.0009

Maria Björkman
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

Sven Widmalm
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institute’s first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

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Equivocal subjects: The representation of mixed-race identity in Italian film

University of California, Irvine
2007
226 pages
AAT 3296258
ISBN: 9780549410775

Shelleen Maisha Greene, Assistant Professor of Conceptual Studies
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

My dissertation seeks to establish a critical framework for the analysis of mixed-race subjects in Italian film. Within the Italian context, mixed-race subjects emerged out of the colonial conditions stemming from the nation’s occupation and settlement of its east African colonies beginning in the nineteenth century. However, racial mixture has also served as a metaphor for the internal division of Italy between North and South, a historical formation that arguably allows for the development of analytics, such as the “Southern Question,” by which to essentialize a racially heterogeneous population. Through an examination of four historically contextualized films, I examine the presentation of mixed-race subjects in Cabiria (1914), Sotto la croce del sud (1938), Il Mulatto (1949/1951), and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (1974). I argue that the mixed-race subject is a constitutive element of the Italian cinema, a figure that serves as a nodal point for the intersection of conceptions of race and the nation.

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What’s in a Name? Mixed-Race Families and Resistance to Racial Codification in Eighteenth-Century France

French Historical Studies
Volume 33, Number 3 (2010)
Pages 357-385
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-2010-002

Jennifer L. Palmer, Collegiate Assistant Professor of History
University of Chicago

The Saint-Domingue planter Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau did not simply leave colonialism behind when he returned to his hometown La Rochelle: he literally brought some of its complications with him. Five of his mixed-race children by his former slave Jeanne arrived with or soon after their white father. The very existence of this family complicated an increasingly easy equation between blackness and slavery, and for both the planter and his children, family ties shaped their experience of race and status. In the midst of growing racial paranoia in France and legislation that regulated all people of color, Fleuriau and his daughter Marie-Jeanne privileged family over race as a means of carving out a position of autonomy for themselves in French society, albeit in very different ways and for very different reasons. In doing so, they shaped what the category “family” meant in France.

Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau, ex–résident blanc de Saint-Domingue, au lieu d’abandonner le colonialisme après son retour à La Rochelle, a rapporté avec lui certaines des complications coloniales. Cinq des enfants métisses qu’il a eus avec son ancienne esclave Jeanne sont arrivés avec lui, ou peu après. L’existence même de cette famille a compliqué le lien évident entre la négritude et l’esclavage. Pour le planteur et ses enfants les liens familiaux ont informé leur manière d’assumer leur race et leur position sociale. Au milieu de la paranoïa raciale croissante en France au dixhuitième siècle et la législation qui réglementait tous gens de couleur, Fleuriau et sa fille Marie-Jeanne ont privilégié les liens familiaux plutôt que raciaux afin de créer une position d’autonomie dans la société française, bien que par des moyens et pour des raisons très différents. Ils ont ainsi façonné la catégorie « famille » en France.

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Trading Races: Joseph and Marie Bunel, a Diplomat and a Merchant in Revolutionary Saint-Domingue and Philadelphia

Journal of the Early Republic
Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2010
pages 351-376
E-ISSN: 1553-0620
Print ISSN: 0275-1275

Philippe R. Girard, Associate Professor of History
McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana

Based on extensive research in French, British, and U.S. archives, the article focuses on Joseph Bunel, a diplomatic and commercial envoy for Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and his wife Marie Bunel (Fanchette Estève), who spent her adult life as a merchant in Cap Français (Cap Haïtien) and Philadelphia. Joseph and Marie Bunel were a white Frenchman and a free black Creole, but their careers were shaped more by their social and monetary ambitions than by their racial background. After spending a few years in prerevolutionary Saint-Domingue (Haiti) as a merchant and a plantation manager, Joseph Bunel played an important administrative role in Louverture’s regime after 1798, first as a diplomatic envoy charged with drafting treaties of commerce and non-aggression with the United States and England during the Quasi-War, then as Louverture’s paymaster. Because of his closeness to the regime, he was deported to France during the Leclerc expedition. After moving to Philadelphia in 1803, he became a noted exporter of war contraband to Dessalines’ Haiti and in 1807 settled permanently in this country as a merchant. Marie Bunel, a prosperous free-colored merchant from Cap Français before the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution, continued her mercantile activities throughout the revolutionary period. Though personally close to notable figures like Louverture and Henri Christophe, her political involvement in the revolutionary struggle was limited. Persecuted along with her husband during the Leclerc expedition, she moved to Philadelphia, where she lived as an independent merchant long after Haiti had declared its independence. It was not until 1810 that for personal reasons she moved back to Haiti, where little evidence is available to retrace the end of the Bunels’ eventful lives.

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Understanding the Identity Choices of Multiracial and Multicultural Afro-European and Black Women Living in Germany: Identifying a Model of Strategies and Resources for Empowerment

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München
October 2006
179 pages

Dominique Michel-Peres

This grounded theory study investigated the identity choices of highly achieving multiracial and multicultural Afro-European and Black immigrant women living in Germany and the role these choices played in their personal constructs of coping and self-empowerment. 10 openended narrative interviews, field observations formed the data base; whereby the field observations where used to affirm or disaffirm evolving hypothesis. The historical, social, and cultural context in which these women live is reviewed, and key terms such as racism and discrimination are clarified. The individual racial identity choice and coping strategies were analyzed, and a theoretical model was developed describing the a) causal conditions that influence and form racial identity choices, b) phenomena that resulted from these causal conditions, c) the contextual attributes that influenced type of strategy developed, d) intervening condition that have an impact on the type of strategy developed, e) the strategies themselves, and f) the consequences of those strategies. The components of the theoretical model are first described and then illustrated by narrative excerpts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Abstract
Introduction

1. Conceptual Point of Departure
1.1. Bi- / Multi-isms and the Precariousness of Recognition
1.2. Racist Construction in Europe
1.2.1. European expansion and exploration:-its role in shaping images of Africans and of “races”
1.2.2. The stage is set: socio-historical and socio-cultural props
1.2.2.1 Social Darwinism and German colonialism
1.2.2.2. Internalized Colonialism
1.3. Representations and Projections
1.3.1 Postwar Germany’s Black children
1.3.2. Non-white minorities and the German educational system
1.4. Summary

2. Racism and Discrimination
2.1. Racism, Discrimination and Subjectivity
2.1.1. Defining racism
2.1.2 What is racism? Identity Choices of Multiracial & Multicultural Afro-European and Black Women in Germany
2.1.2.1. Axiom 1: Racism does not implicate the existence of races
2.1.2.2. Axiom 2: Racism implies the existence of social hierarchies
2.1.2.3. Axiom 3 Racism requires influence in social structuring processes
2.2. Racism and Racial Discrimination’s New Attire
2.2.1. Central Frames in Racism
2.2.1.1. Abstract liberalism
2.2.1.2. Abstract liberalism and its role in cultural racism
2.2.1.3. Cultural racism and self-fulfilling prophecies
2.2.1.4. Symbolic Racism Excurse: Germany’s discourse on immigration
2.3. Racial Discrimination : Subjectivity and Psychological Impact
2.3.1. The Psychological Impact of Perceived Racial Discrimination
2.4. Summary

3. Identity Construction, Patchwork Identities and the Stigmatized Self
3.1. Identity Construction and Patchwork Identities: Who am I?
3.1.1. Patchworks of Racial and Ethnic choices
3.2. Multicultural-Multiracial- Who am I?
3.2.1. Models of ethnic and racial identity development
3.2.1.1. Visible racial and ethnic group models (V-REG)
3.2.1.1.1. Cross’s Theory of Black Identity Development Identity Choices of Multiracial & Multicultural Afro-European and Black Women in Germany
3.2.1.1.2. Helm’s model of White Identity Development
3.2.1.1.3. Multiracial identity development models
3.2.1.2. Salience model: Ethnic Identity Development Theory
3.2.2. Implications for Afro-Europeans and immigrants
3.3. Cultural Differences and the Salience of Ethnic and Racial Identity and Oppositional Identity
3.3.1. Voluntary and involuntary minorities
3.3.2. Oppositional identity and the burden of “acting White”
3.3.3. Accommodation without assimilation
3.3.4. Personal and group attributions to racism and discrimination
3.4. Racial and Ethnic Identity’s Role in the Self-Esteem of Minorities
3.4.1. Self-esteem
3.5. Social Identity and Stigmatized Identities
3.5.1. Social identity and stigmatized identities
3.5.1.1. Coping with attribution ambiguity
3.5.1.2. Maintaining a sense of Self independent of the “spoiled collective identity”
3.5.1.3. Ethnicity, race, gender and other socially defined groups as developmental contexts
3.6. Summary

4. Identity Choices in Multiple Contexts: Concepts, Properties and Dimensions
4.1. Methodology
4.1.1. Participants
4.1.2. Procedure
4.1.2.1. The narrative interview: Identity Choices of Multiracial & Multicultural Afro-European and Black Women in Germany
4.1.2.2. The interviewing process
4.1.2.3. The interview
4.1.2.4. Underlying ethnographic aspects: field notes and observations
4.2. Verification of Concepts and Categories
4.2.1. Verification
4.2.1.1. Quality verification

5. Analysis and Results
5.1. Sources of Influence
5.1.1. Direct and indirect dispositional and situational sources of influence
5.1.1.1. Dispositional factor
5.1.1.2. Situational factors
5.1.2. Higher categories
5.1.2.1. Coping strategies
5.1.2.2. Personal characteristics
5.1.2.3. Social identity: content and salience
5.1.2.4. Threats
5.1.2.5. Opportunities
5.1.3. Core Category, phenomena, and consequences
5.1.3.1. Core category as causal condition
5.1.3.2. Phenomenon resulting from racial socialization parental racial-beliefs
5.1.3.3. Context in which coping strategies develop Identity Choices of Multiracial & Multicultural Afro-European and Black Women in Germany
5.1.3.4. Intervening conditions influencing coping strategies
5.1.3.5. Consequences of strategies against powerlessness, helplessness and victimization
5.2. Multicultural-Multiracial Narratives: Excerpts from two lives
5.2.1. Jennifer’s story
5.2.1.1. Explicitness of experienced discrimination and perception
5.2.1.2. Racial salience
5.2.1.3. Sense of self
5.2.2. Angela’s story
5.2.2.1. Attribution ambiguity
5.2.2.2. Parent’s experiences with racism and racial discrimination
5.2.2.3. Internalized racism and race salience

6. Discussion: Implications for Multicultural Counselling and Empowerment
6.1. Focus on Primary Socialization Issues and Subjectivity
6.1.2. Focus on strengths and assets

References

List of Tables

1. Ratio of German to Foreighn Students According to School Track in the Year 2002 in Germany
2. Discourse on Immigration as Represented in two Major German Publications
3. Summary of Salient Points in Poston and Kich Multiracial Identity Development Model
4. Table 4 Participants Ethnic Backgrounds
5. Dispositional and Situational, Direct and Indirect Factors

List of Figures

1. Conceptual framework: The embeddedness of identity
2. Identity construction as patch-working
3. Descriptive model of the relationship between ego identity and Nigrescence
4. Factor Model of Multiracial Identity
5. Paradoxes found in self-esteem research
6. Research results on the detrimental effects of membership in devalued Social-groups
7. Summary of research results on social-group membership and its Consequences
8. Results of research on the factors affecting social identity development and how they interact
9. In-group and out-group identification in relation to expectations and Aspirations; group vs. individual based strategies; and attribution style
10. The results of axial coding: Higher categories and their respective subcategories
11. Theoretical model for understanding idenitity and strategy choices of multiracial and multicultural women

Read the entire dissertation here.

Afro-German Biracial Identity Development

Virginia Commonwealth University
May 2010
75 pages

Rebecca R. Hubbard

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University

An increase in the biracial population has heightened our awareness of unique issues that pervade the experience of these individuals. The importance of environmental influences on biracial identity development has been established, but investigations concerning racial socialization of biracial individuals are scarce. This study, utilizing a qualitative design, explores racial identity development of biracial Afro-Germans living in Germany. The purpose of the study is to understand the strategies that biracial individuals use to negotiate their racial identity, factors that influence their development, cultural influences, and racial socialization processes. Interviews with biracial Afro-Germans were conducted using phenomenological interviewing techniques. Twelve themes emerged from the data that are best conceptualized in an ecological model. Inter-rater reliability was established in two phases. Implications of the findings include a need for continued research with Black-White biracial populations.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Abstract
• Problem Statement
• Review of the Literature
  • Developmental Models
  • Developmental Models of Biracial Identity Development
  • Ecological Models
  • Ecological Models of Biracial Identity Development
  • Racial Socialization
  • Racial Socialization of Biracial Individuals
  • Value of Cross-Cultural Comparisons
  • Historical Context of People of African Descent in Germany
  • Empirical Research with Afro-German Populations
  • Theoretical Conceptualization
  • Research Questions
• Method
  • Purpose
  • Design
  • Role of the Researcher
  • Sampling & Recruitment of Participants
  • Procedure
  • Data Analysis
  • Verification
  • Limitations
• Themes
  • Intersectional Identity
  • Black Identity
  • German/White Identity
  • Disconnect/Denial
  • Positive Internal Coping
  • Environmental Support
  • Injured Family
  • Person-Environment Discrepancy
  • Multi Kulti
  • American Familiarity
  • Racism, Marginalization, Conflict
  • Progress and Change
  • Ecological Conceptualization of Themes
• Discussion
  • The Essence of Biracial Afro-German Identity
  • Culture and Nationality
  • Lack of Appropriate Language
  • Future Directions
• List of References

List of Tables

1. Table 1 Mean Age and Parental Heritage by Gender
2. Table 2 Participant Demographics

List of Figures

1. Figure 1 Root’s Ecological Model of Biracial Identity
2. Figure 2 “Sarotti Mohr” Trademark of a German chocolate company
3. Figure 3 Hubbard’s Ecological Model of Afro-German Biracial Identity (HEMBAGI)

Read the entire thesis here.

Europe’s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900

Duke University Press
2010
296 pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4745-3
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-4764-4

Vanita Seth, Associate Professor of Politics
University of California, Santa Cruz

Europe’s Indians forces a rethinking of key assumptions regarding difference—particularly racial difference—and its centrality to contemporary social and political theory. Tracing shifts in European representations of two different colonial spaces, the New World and India, from the late fifteenth century through the late nineteenth, Vanita Seth demonstrates that the classification of humans into racial categories or binaries of self-other is a product of modernity. Part historical, part philosophical, and part a history of science, her account exposes the epistemic conditions that enabled the thinking of difference at distinct historical junctures. Seth’s examination of Renaissance, Classical Age, and nineteenth-century representations of difference reveals radically diverging forms of knowing, reasoning, organizing thought, and authorizing truth. It encompasses stories of monsters, new worlds, and ancient lands; the theories of individual agency expounded by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; and the physiological sciences of the nineteenth century. European knowledge, she argues, does not reflect a singular history of Reason, but rather multiple traditions of reasoning, of historically bounded and contingent forms of knowledge. Europe’s Indians shows that a history of colonialism and racism must also be an investigation into the historical production of subjectivity, agency, epistemology, and the body.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Self and Similitude: Renaissance Representations of the New World
2. “Constructing” Individuals and “Creating” History: Subjectivity in Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau
3. Traditions of History: Mapping India’s Past
4. Of Monsters and Man: The Peculiar History of Race
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index