Mixed Race Studies

Prejudice inspires filmmaker to discover Afro-German roots

Indiana Daily Student
Indiana University
2010-01-24

Abby Liebenthal, Staff Reporter

“It all started with a public threat on my life.”

Within the first few minutes of Mo Asumang’s documentary “Roots Germania,” students, faculty and Bloomington residents became part of a search for the director’s identity…

…Asumang said the journey to find her identity was driven by a desire to understand where racism toward Afro-Germans originated.

“It’s like a job to search for identity,” Asumang said. “It starts when you’re born in Germany – it’s not so easy to be part of that country.”

The film was triggered by a song, written by a Neo-Nazi band the “White Aryan Rebels,” that calls for Asumang’s murder. Lyrics in the song include “This bullet is for you, Mo Asumang.”…

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Mixed-Race Issues in the American and French Melodrama: An Analysis of the Imitation of Life Films (Stahl, USA, 1934; Sirk, USA, 1959) and Métisse (Kassovitz, France, 1993) In: Martin McLoone & Kevin Rockett, eds. Irish Films, Global Cinema, Studies in Irish Film 4.

Four Courts Press
2007
176 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84682-081-6

Zélie Asava
University College Dublin

The chapter analyses the positionalities of the mixed-race female protagonists of each film and the visualisation of their mixed-race identity.  It considers aspects of their struggle for self-definition against the director’s visual clues about their ‘true’ racial space.  It also explores the possibility in these films for a representation of mixed identity that surpasses the stereotypes of the ‘tragic mulatto’ torn between black and white worlds (as represented by mothers in the American films and lovers/parents in the French film).  Finally the article – as with my thesis – considers the limitations of American cinema in transcending binaried representations of race and the alternatives which French cinema offers, in order to consider the possibility for a mixed-race representative model which would visualise the multiplicity and ‘Third Space’, as Homi K. Bhabha put it, of mixed-race identity.

Mulattoes and métis. Attitudes toward miscegenation in the United States and France since the seventeenth century

International Social Science Journal
Volume 57, Issue 183
Pages 103 – 112
DOI: 10.1111/j.0020-8701.2005.00534.x

George M. Fredrickson, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History, Emeritus
Stanford University

This essay surveys and compares American and French attitudes toward miscegenation or métissage since the extensive contacts with non-European peoples that began in the Atlantic world of the seventeenth century. It develops a typology of possible responses to such race mixture and argues that the English colonies that became the United States quickly developed a highly restrictive attitude toward racial intermarriage, especially between blacks and whites, that has persisted through most of American history and is still influential today. The French in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth century often adhered to concepts of race as innate or biologically determined, but their attitudes toward interracial marriage or concubinage tended to be more pragmatic. In some situations French theorists of race and empire defended and even advocated certain forms of métissage. The difference can be summed up as follows: white Americans have historically pursued the ideal of racial purity with much more intensity and consistency than the French. The difference is best explained with reference to the unique status of African-Americans as a colour-coded pariah group with no real equivalent in metropolitan France.

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‘Whose colour was no black nor white nor grey, But an extraneous mixture, which no pen Can trace, although perhaps the pencil may’: Aspasie and Delacroix’s “Massacres of Chios”

Art History
Volume 22, Issue 5 (December 1999)
Pages 676-704
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8365.00182

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Professor of Art History
The University of California, Berkeley

While painting Massacres of Chios in 1824, Eugène Delacroix wrote in his journal that ‘The mulatto will do very well.’  This paper asks why a ‘mixed-blood’ would figure in a picture painted on behalf of the Greek War of Independence and argues that Chios must be understood as material evidence of the history of France’s imperial aspirations, as a vestige of its confusions as well as its experiments. To broaden the geopolitical horizon of interpretation of Chios is to appreciate the extent to which global politics were performed and remembered in the studio space of an ambitious, insecure and sexually preoccupied young French male painter.

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Status, Race, and Marriage: French Continental Law versus French Colonial Law

American Historical Association
124th Annual Meeting
Friday, 2010-01-08 14:30 PST (Local Time)
Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego
Manchester Ballroom F (Hyatt)
San Diego, California

Valérie Gobert-Sega
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

In its most traditional moral and legal conception, marriage had for consequence to erase the crime of cohabitation and dissoluteness. Independentently of geographic space and by virtue of the principle of the unity of French laws and customs, the institution of marriage could not be left supplant under colonial law and order. In 1685, the Edict administering the rights and the duties of slaves and emancipated slaves as well as their relationships with white people in the French colonies established legitimacy and religious rules. However, the rigidity of statutory tripartition of the population could not concretely integrate these justifiable, legally valid but socially prohibited unions. The first legal ban was introduced into the Code of Louisiana in 1724 and the second was imposed by the prescription of April, 1778 for continental France. Meanwhile, the Monarchy was never resolved to reform article 9 of the Code of 1685. In doing so, the administration strategically restricted the civil and professional rights of those who chose to go against the social misalliance. It isn’t until the promulgation of the Civil code of 1805 that the restriction based on race and status is finally unified. But once again even if the principle is acquired, its execution remains unpredictable: it extends to all people, of color or black, in colonies but only to black people in metropolitan France. However, for more than two centuries, the legislator, conscientiously maintained a flaw in the prohibition: whether it be in the colonies or in France, these marriages will never be punished by nullity. This absence of penalty will finally allow the Supreme Court and the Abolitionists to declare the legal ban on interracial marriages invalid and to overrule it.

Intimacy and the Atlantic World

American Historical Association
124th Annual Meeting
Friday, 2010-01-08 14:50 PST (Local Time)
Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego
Manchester Ballroom F (Hyatt)
San Diego, California

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

In 1755 the merchant Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau returned to his native city of La Rochelle, a bustling port on France’s Atlantic coast, after twenty years in the colonies where he made his fortune in indigo and sugar produced by slaves who worked his plantation. But he did not return alone: he brought five of his mixed-race children with him, his sons and daughters by a woman named Jeanne, one of his former slaves. The children’s gender determined their varied paths: the boys returned to Saint-Domingue where they supervised their father’s plantation, while the girls remained close to their father in La Rochelle. With his support, his daughters Jeanne-Marie and Marie-Charlotte set up house just a few blocks from where Aimé-Benjamin lived in the most splendid house in town with his new, white French wife and children. In spite of the ocean between them, Jeanne-Marie and Marie-Charlotte remained in touch with their brothers in the colonies, and made every effort to reinforce these family ties that distance threatened to pull asunder. In doing so, they drew on family strategies long-established in Europe and deployed them to define their own trans-oceanic, multi-racial family unit. This paper argues that intimacy provides a critical lens through which to view the Atlantic world. It was in the context of the family that enduring relationships between white men and people of color were most common, and examining how such intimate family relationships were constructed and maintained provides insight into how Europeans, including black and mixed-race Europeans, participated in and shaped the Black Atlantic. The results of such a view are sometimes surprising: free women of color, who might at first glance seem among the least influential members of a society that valued rank, name, and status, found ways to shape family structures and strategies.

Proposed Session: Multiracial/ethnic families

XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology
Sociology on the Move
International Sociological Association
2010-07-11 through 2010-07-17
Gothenburg, Sweden

Programme Coordinators

Rudy R. Seward, Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Chair of Sociology
University of North Texas, USA

Ria Smit, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Organizers:

Cynthia M. Cready, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of North Texas, USA

George Yancey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of North Texas, USA

Empirical and theoretical papers that address any aspect of multiracial/ethnic families are invited for this session. Possible topics include: attitudes toward racial/ethnic dating and intermarriage and multiracial/ethnic families; trends in racial/ethnic dating and intermarriage; individual- and community-level effects on racial/ethnic dating and intermarriage; the impact of racial/ethnic dating and intermarriage on other aspects of individual and community life; representations of multiracial/ethnic families in the media; interracial/ethnic adoption; socialization in multiracial/ethnic families; racial/ethnic identity of children from multiracial/ethnic families; identity issues among adults in multiracial/ethnic families; developmental outcomes of children from multiracial/ethnic families; theoretical and methodological approaches and challenges to the study of multiracial/ethnic families; and the interaction of social policy and multiracial/ethnic families.

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`For Venus smiles not in a house of tears’: Interethnic relations in European cinema

European Journal of Cultural Studies
2003
Vol. 6, No. 1
pages 55-74
DOI: 10.1177/1367549403006001470

Anneke Smelik
University of Nijmegen

In the 1990s, several European filmmakers addressed the Romeo and Juliet motif of `impossible love’ in the context of multiculturalism. A heterosexual love affair between people of different ethnic backgrounds allows filmmakers to address issues of racism and deconstruct racial stereotypes. In the films discussed in this article, the tragic love affairs point to the unwillingness of European countries to become pluralistic and multiethnic societies. Some films have attempted to represent interethnic love relations more hopefully, celebrating happy endings of mixed race couples. The success of such films may indicate that the genre of comedy has won over the tragedy of the Romeo and Juliet topos in cinematic representations of interethnic love relations. Perhaps European cinema is ready to embrace constructions of European identity as hybrid, diverse and multiple.

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow

Pendragon Press
March 2006
566 pages
ISBN: 9781576471098

Gabriel Banat

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, born Joseph Bologne, was the son of an African slave and a French plantation owner on the island of Guadeloupe. The story of his improbable rise in French society, his life as a famous fencer, celebrated violinist-composer and conductor, and later commander of a colored regiment in the French Revolution, should, on the facts alone, gladden the heart of the most passionate romance novelist. Yet, the information disseminated about this illustre inconnu is found in an extravagant nineteenth-century novel, which contains more fiction than fact. Unfortunately, many of the author’s flights of fancy have found their way into serious works about Saint-Georges. Gabriel Banat has set about systematically dispelling the confusion, for the real story is easily as fascinating as any flight of fancy. Gabriel Banat has been a professional violinist all his life; recitalist and member of the New York Philharmonic, he has systematically scoured the violin repertory for interesting and even unknown music. He came across the works of St. Georges and was fascinated by the freshness and charm of these 18th-century compositions. Eventually, he edited a critical edition of all the violin music and, inevitably, began a systematic investigation into the life of this intriguing and multifaceted individual, utilizing archives of the French Land Army, official clippings and untapped personal diaries of St. Georges’ contemporaries. Banat is the author of an authoritative monograph on St. Georges in the Black Music Research Journal.

Gabriel Banat has been a professional violinist all his life: recitalist and member of the New York Philharmonic, he has systematically scoured the violin repertory for interesting and even unknown music. He is the author of an authoritative monograph on St. Georges in the Black Music Research Journal.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xii
Preface xiv
Necrology xviii
Chapter 1 The Island 1
Chapter 2 Joseph 5
Chapter 3 The Trial 12
Chapter 4 A Fugitive Family 22
Chapter 5 The Bologne Plantation 27
Chapter 6 People ¿of Color¿ 37
Chapter 7 Return to France 40
Chapter 8 Paris 46
Chapter 9 The Prodigy 54
Chapter 10 Too Many Blacks 67
Chapter 11 The Chevalier de Saint-Georges 76
Chapter 12 A Young Man About Town 90
Chapter 13 Virtuoso 97
Chapter 14 Gossec 113
Chapter 15 The New Bow 119
Chapter 16 Composions- Quartets and Concertos 125
Chapter 17 Gluck and Marie Antoinette 140
Chapter 18 Concertos andSymphonie Concertantes 159
Chapter 19 TheOpéra Affair 177
Chapter 20 Ernestine 193
Chapter 21 Mme. de Montesson
Chapter 22 Mme. de Montalembert
Chapter 23 L¿Amant Anonyme
Chapter 24 Le Concert des Amateurs
Chapter 25 The Grand Orient of France
Chapter 26 Le Concert Olympique
Chapter 27 Le Palais-Royal
Chapter 28 London
Chapter 29 The Gathering Storm
Chapter 30 The Bastille
Chapter 31 Revolution
Chapter 32 An Orléans Conspiracy?
Chapter 33 Return to London
Chapter 34 Lille
Chapter 35 The National Guard
Chapter 36 La Légion Saint-Georges
Chapter 37 Regicide
Chapter 38 The Great Terror
Chapter 39 Too Many Colonels
Chapter 40 Paris 1795
Chapter 41 Saint Domingue
Chapter 42 Coda-Finale
Epilogue
Epitaphs for those who survived Saint-Georges 456
Appendix: Dramatis Personae
Works List
Discography
List of Documents
Bibliography
Index

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1.1 Map of Guadeloupe xix
Fig. 2.1 View of Basse-Terre, ca. 1750 7
Fig. 2.2 ¿Squares¿ of sugar cane, Bailiff 9
Fig. 5.1 Plantation with view on La Suffrière 30
Fig. 7.1 Custom Records of Passengers arriving in Bordeaux, Aug. 2, 1753 41
Fig. 7.2 Port of Bordeaux, 1753 42
Fig. 8.1 Mme. de Pompadour 49
Fig. 8.2 49 rue St. André des Arts today 52
Fig. 10.1 The Saint-Georges Guard 70
Fig. 11.1 Equestrian statue of Louis XV 79
Fig. 11.2 Chamber music at a musical salon 88
Fig. 12.1 ¿Winter¿ from Les quatre saisons 94
Fig. 12.2 The Italian style of fencing 95
Fig. 13.1 One of Les vingt-quatre violons du Roi 99
Fig. 13.2 Leopold Mozart and his two children 107
Fig. 13.3 English Tea in the Salon of the Four Mirrors 108
Fig. 13.4 Portrait of Saint-Georges at 22 111
Fig. 14.1 François Joseph Gossec 114
Fig. 14.2 L¿Hôtel de Soubise 115
Fig. 15.1 Leopold Mozart, 1756 121
Fig. 15.2 The evolution of the bow 122
Fig. 16.1 Title page of Saint-Georges¿ second set of quartets 130
Fig. 17.1 Maria Antoinette at her spinet in Vienna 145
Fig. 17.2 Christoph Willibald Gluck 147
Fig. 17.3 Marie Antoinette in 1777, Versailles 151
Fig. 18.1 George Polgreen Bridgetower 168
Fig. 19.1 La petit loge at the Opéra in the Palais-Royal 179
Fig. 19.2 Mlle.La Guimard in Le Navigateur 185
Fig. 19.3 Papillon de la Ferté 189
Fig. 20.1 Choderlos de Laclos 195
Fig. 20.2 Théatre Italien in 1777 198
Fig. 21.1 Mme. de Genlis 206
Fig. 21.2 Mme. de Montesson 208
Fig. 21.3 The Duke of Orléans and his son 210
Fig. 23.1 Title page of L¿Amant Anonyme 238
Fig. 24.1 Title page of the D¿Ogny catalogue 246
Fig. 24.2 Saint-Georges¿ quartets listed in the D¿Ogny catalogue 247
Fig. 25.1 Philippe, Duke of Chartres with his family 253
Fig. 26.1 Masonic initiation ceremony 260
Fig. 26.2 The Palais-Royal before its reconstruction 262
Fig. 27.1 ¿Prinny,¿ George, Prince of Wales 277
Fig. 27.2 Philippe, Duke of Orléans 278
Fig. 28.1 Henry Angelo 284
Fig. 28.2 Le Chevalier D¿Éon in his uniform 288
Fig. 28.3 Mlle. La Chevalière D¿Éon in 1783 288
Fig. 28.4 Cartoon of St. George and D¿Éon 293
Fig. 28.5 Fencing match at Carlton House 297
Fig. 29.1 Burning of the Opera House, 1781 307
Fig. 29.2 Palais-Royal after reconstruction 308
Fig. 30.1 Mme. de Genlis as ¿Governor¿ of Philippe¿s children 315
Fig. 30.2 Giovanni Baptista Viotti 317
Fig. 30.3 Louis XVI inaugerating the opening session of the Estates-General 320
Fig. 30.4 Desmoulins haranguing the people 324
Fig. 30.5 Fall of the Bastille
Fig. 31.1 Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliott 327
Fig. 32.1 March of the Paris Poissardes, 1789 334
Fig. 32.2 Cartoon of Lafayette kicking Philippe 340
Fig. 33.1 Mr. Angelo¿s Fencing Academy 342
Fig. 34.1 Session at the Jacobin Club, Paris, 1792 363
Fig. 35.1 General Dillon¿s body being burned in Lille 368
Fig. 36.1 Hussar of the Légion St. Georges 374
Fig. 36.2 The battle of Jemappes, 1792 378
Fig. 36.3 Trooper of the 13th regiment of the Chasseurs à cheval, 1793 383
Fig. 37.1 Execution of Louis XVI, 1793 386
Fig. 37.2 Bust of General Dumouriez 388
Fig. 37.3 Arrest of the Commissioners and the Minister of War by Dumourez 397
Fig. 38.1 General Thomas Alexandre Dumas 403
Fig. 38.2 Danton on his way to the guillotine 409
Fig. 38.3 The Feast of the Supreme Being 410
Fig. 38.4 ¿The Last Tumbrel¿ 411
Fig. 40.1 Invasion of the Assembly by the Sans-Culottes 428
Fig. 40.2 Post-Thermadorian manners, 1795 432
Fig. 40.3 Theresa Tallien ¿Our Lady of Thermador¿
Fig. 41.1 Toussaint Louverture, c.1800 444
Fig. 41.2 Map of Saint-Domingue 445

‘Toubab La!’ Literary Representations of Mixed-Race Characters in the African Diaspora

Cambridge Scholars Publishing
July 2007
453 pages
ISBN13: 9781847182319
ISBN: 1-84718-231-3

Ginette Curry, Professor of English
Florida International University

The book is an examination of mixed-race characters from writers in the United States, The French and British Caribbean islands (Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and Jamaica), Europe (France and England) and Africa (Burkina Faso, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal). The objective of this study is to capture a realistic view of the literature of the African diaspora as it pertains to biracial and multiracial people. For example, the expression “Toubab La!” as used in the title, is from the Wolof ethnic group in Senegal, West Africa. It means “This is a white person” or “This is a black person who looks or acts white.” It is used as a metaphor to illustrate multiethnic people’s plight in many areas of the African diaspora and how it has evolved. The analysis addresses the different ways multiracial characters look at the world and how the world looks at them. These characters experience historical, economic, sociological and emotional realities in various environments from either white or black people. Their lineage as both white and black determines a new self, making them constantly search for their identity. Each section of the manuscript provides an in-depth analysis of specific authors’ novels that is a window into their true experiences.

The first section is a study of mixed race characters in three acclaimed contemporary novels from the United States. James McBride’s The Color of Water (1996), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998) and Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish (2001) reveal the conflicting dynamics of being biracial in today’s American society. The second section is an examination of mixed-race characters in the following French Caribbean novels: Mayotte Capécia’s I Am a Martinican Woman (1948), Michèle Lacrosil’s Cajou (1961) and Ravines du Devant-Jour (1993) by Raphaël Confiant. Section three is about their literary representations in Derek Walcott’s What the Twilight Says (1970), Another Life (1973), Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) and Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1995) from the British Caribbean islands. Section four is an in-depth analysis of their plight in novels written by contemporary mulatto writers from Europe such as Marie N’Diaye’s Among Family (1997), Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara (1997). Finally, the last section of the book is a study of novels from West African and South African writers. The analysis of Monique Ilboudo’s Le Mal de Peau (2001), Bessie Head’s A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990) and Abdoulaye Sadji’s Nini, Mulâtresse du Sénégal (1947) concludes this literary journey that takes the readers through several continents at different points in time.

Overall, this comprehensive study of mixed-race characters in the literature of the African diaspora reveals not only the old but also the new ways they decline, contest and refuse racial clichés. Likewise, the book unveils how these characters resist, create, reappropriate and revise fixed forms of identity in the African diaspora of the 20th and 21st century. Most importantly, it is also an examination of how the authors themselves deal with the complex reality of a multiracial identity.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I. THE UNITED STATES
  • Chapter 1: James McBride’s The Color of Water (1996): A Journey Beyond Black and White
  • Chapter 2: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998): The Surviving Canary
  • Chapter 3: Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001): The Chameleon Experience
• PART II. THE FRENCH CARIBBEAN ISLANDS
  • Chapter 4: Mayotte Capécia’s I am a Martinican Woman (1948): “My father is Black, My Mother is Brown, and I, Am I White?” (Martinican Riddle)
  • Chapter 5: Michèle Lacrosil’s Cajou (1961): The Anti-Narcissus
  • Chapter 6: Raphaël Confiant’s Ravines du Devant-Jour (1993): Ethnostereotypes in Martinique
• PART III. THE BRITISH CARIBBEAN ISLANDS
  • Chapter 7: The Racial Paradox of Derek Walcott in What the Twilight Says (1970), Derek Walcott: Another life (1973) and Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967)
  • Chapter 8: Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1995): A Near-White Jamaican Woman’s Quest for Identity
• PART IV. EUROPE
  • Chapter 9: Marie N’Diaye’s Among Family (1997): A Desperate Search for Caucasian Identity
  • Chapter 10: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000): The Concept of Englishness in the 21st Century
  • Chapter 11: Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara (1997): Transculturality in England: Oyinbo, Whitey, Morena, Nig Nog, Nigra!
• PART V. AFRICA
  • Chapter 12: Monique Ilboudo’s Le Mal de peau (2001): Colonization and Forced Hybridity
  • Chapter 13: Bessie Head’s A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990): White-on-Black and Black-on-Black Racial Oppression in Southern Africa
  • Chapter 14: Abdoulaye Sadji’s Nini, Mulâtresse du Sénégal (1947): “Toubab La!”
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Primary Sources
• Critical Sources
• Index

Read a preview  here.