Mixed Race Studies

None of this, of course, should encourage the reader to think of Louisiana as any sort of racial haven. Louisiana began as a white idea and remained one: Choctaw kindnesses were repaid with genocide, most Africans were shipped in as chattel slaves, and Europeans walked the land as rulers, just as they did everywhere else. What did make Louisiana, and especially its port city, New Orleans, different from the English colonies or the eastern seaboard was the way it understood race mixture. Though white Americans also had sex with Africans and Indians, they usually denied its result. Anyone with “one drop” of African blood was by the American schema defined as black, and everyone else was effectively white.

Joe Wood, “Fade to Black: Once Upon a Time in Multi-Racial America,” The Village Voice, 12/08/1994. 25-34. https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/12/04/escape-from-blackness-once-upon-a-time-in-creole-america/.

“We’ve allowed ideas about race to loom very large,” says Mr. [Richard] Alba. “We tend to believe that people can have only one ethno-racial background and that this identity is fixed when in fact it can be quite fluid.” This in turn has corrupted political thinking, especially among Democrats who accept the demography-is-destiny theory—the notion that they need only bide their time and minority voters will put them into a position of unassailable political power.

John J. Miller, “‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It,” The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/majority-minority-america-dont-bet-on-it-11612549609.

It may be strange, but sometimes I’m embarrassed for not having remarkable stories of racism in my life. As much as I insist on reaffirming my black roots, people always think the opposite. It’s very uncomfortable and it is as terrible as the most pure prejudice. From the moment I became known to the general public, the situation became even more evident. I’m used to being stopped in the streets by people who find it strange the fact that my skin is light, my features are aquiline and my hair straight. They ask why I insist on saying that I am black being “so cute”. It’s absurd. It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color. I am very like my mother, the former model Vera Lúcia Manhães, who has my color. My father, Antônio Pitanga, is black. There were times when I was very saddened by this attitude, but today I face this more naturally. I don’t care, for example, the comments that I heard after being on cover of Raça Brasil (magazine). Some fans wrote and said that they did not understand the fact of me being interviewed by a publication directed toward blacks. I repeat: I’m black.

Marques Travae, “Camila Pitanga on people questioning her blackness: “It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color.”,” Black Brazil Today, February 11, 2012. https://blackbraziltoday.com/camila-pitanga-on-people-questioning-her-blackness/.

The news media, in general, has not done a good job of covering the Latino vote. “One day after this election is over I am going to write a piece about how Latino is a contrived ethnic category that artificially lumps white Cubans with Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans . . .” tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times.

One day after this election is over I am going to write a piece about how Latino is a contrived ethnic category that artificially lumps white Cubans with Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans and helps explains why Latinos support Trump at the second highest rate.

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) November 4, 2020

Margaret Sullivan, “We still don’t know much about this election — except that the media and pollsters blew it again,” The Washington Post, November 4, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/we-still-dont-know-much-about-this-election–except-that-the-media-and-pollsters-blew-it-again/2020/11/04/40c0d416-1e4a-11eb-b532-05c751cd5dc2_story.html.

The future is mixed. Since its founding, Cornell [University] has served as a shining beacon in the fight for the inclusivity of women, POC, the LGBT+ community and people with disabilities in higher education. If Cornell truly believes in its motto, “Any Person, Any Study,” this new area of study and research into mixed-race individuals would fit like a glove into the ideals of this institution, and be a good step in developing future curricula as the United States’ demographic evolves.

Katherine Luong, “GUEST ROOM | Create a Mixed-Race Studies Department at Cornell,” The Cornell Daily Sun, September 18, 2020. https://cornellsun.com/2020/09/18/guest-room-create-a-mixed-race-studies-department-at-cornell/.

No white person, no non-Black person, has the right to claim proximity to or belonging in a Black community by virtue of abuse, trauma, non-acceptance, and non-belonging in a white community. The abuse within and alienation from my birth family and society are no one’s burden but my own, and mine alone to address. Black people and Black communities have no obligation to harbor the refuse of non-Black societies. I have done this. I know it is wrong and I have done this anyway.

Jessica A. Krug, “The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies,” Medium, September 3, 2020. https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-violence-of-my-lies-9a9621401f85.

There is something specifically traumatic about listening to your own parent expressing prejudiced views against people who look like you, and denying or trivialising your existence. Unlike arguing with a stranger, it’s almost impossible to completely disregard their opinion. Often, we can’t help but care what they think. No matter how old we get, there exists in most of us a small child that still longs for validation from our parents. Accordingly, their words can shatter whatever anti-racism defences we have spent years carefully constructing. This isn’t simply a matter of overlooking political differences, it is deeply personal. As Pauline tells me, her mother’s “complete lack of empathy and eagerness to learn from her own child” is what she finds most hurtful.

Emma, “‘My mum calls me the N-word’ – the reality of growing up mixed race with a racist parent,” gal-dem, September 5, 2020. https://gal-dem.com/my-mum-calls-me-the-n-word-the-reality-of-growing-up-mixed-race-with-a-racist-parent/.

The reconstruction of the Union seemed to be on everyone’s mind, including abolitionists. In late January 1864 [William Lloyd] Garrison challenged an anti-Lincoln resolution at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society meeting. Garrison’s longtime friend Wendell Phillips, primed to take the helm of abolitionism from his old friend and mentor, labeled Lincoln “a half-converted, honest Western Whig, trying to be an abolitionist.” As Garrison stared down emancipation, Phillips looked past emancipation at the reconstruction of the United States. Back in December 1863, Lincoln had announced his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which offered restoration of rights (except slave-holding) to all Confederates taking the loyalty oath. When loyalty levels reached 10 percent, states could establish governments that restricted civil rights for Black residents, Lincoln had proposed. But this proposal “frees the slave and ignores the negro,” Phillips snapped. The sizable free biracial community of New Orleans snapped, too, demanding voting rights. These biracial activists separated “their struggle from that of the Negroes,” said an observer. “In their eyes, they were nearer to the white man, they were more advanced than the slave in all respects.” Overtures to Louisiana Whites failed, and biracial activists had no choice but to swallow their racist pride and ally with emancipated Blacks by the end of 1864.

Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2016), 226.

“I’m not saying that everybody, or even most people, who are inspired by [Robin] DiAngelo or want to hear what she’s saying are cynical. But I do think that what people like Barbara and Karen Fields are asking of us in their book Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life; what Paul Gilroy in Against Race is asking of people; what someone like Albert Murray was asking of people when he told us that we were a “mongrel nation,” and that “[a]ny fool can see that white people are not really white, and that black people are not black”; what, in my own way, I’ve tried to propose in Self-Portrait in Black and White, is that you can’t actually defeat racism by merely opposing racism. You have to actually start opposing the categories of race if you want to transcend the hierarchies and caste systems they impose. I think that’s a much harder task.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams

Otis Houston, “Part of a Larger Battle: A Conversation with Thomas Chatterton Williams,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 16, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/part-of-a-larger-battle-a-conversation-with-thomas-chatterton-williams/.

In recognizing and expressing gratitude for the many opportunities he’s had, [Patrick] Mahomes also tells me he’s proud of his Black heritage—a subject he notices is sometimes talked about online. “I’ve seen how people, on Twitter, have tweeted and said, ‘Oh, you’re not full Black,’ ” he said. “But I’ve always just had the confidence and believed in who I am. And I’ve known that I’m Black. And I’m proud to be Black. And I’m proud to have a white mom too. I’m just proud of who I am. And I’ve always had that confidence in myself.”

Clay Skipper, “How Patrick Mahomes Became the Superstar the NFL Needs Right Now,” GQ, July 14, 2020 (August 2020 issue). https://www.gq.com/story/patrick-mahomes-cover-profile-august-2020.