Mixed Race Studies

In this connection the language of Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in the case of Philadelphia & West Chester Railway Company vs. Miles, 93 American Dec., 747, is well worth considering. It is as applicable to the Chinese and the Japanese as it is to the negro:

“The danger to the peace engendered by the feeling of aversion between individuals of the different races cannot be denied. If a negro takes his seat beside a white man or his wife or daughter, the law cannot repress the anger or conquer the feeling of aversion which some will feel. However unwise it may be to indulge the feeling, human infirmity is not always proof against it. It is much wiser to avert the consequences of this repulsion of race by separation than to punish afterwards the breach of the peace it may have caused. * * *

The question is one of difference, not of superiority, or inferiority. Why the Creator made one black and the other white, we know not; but the fact is apparent, and the races distinct, each producing its own kind, and following the peculiar law of its constitution. Conceding equality, with natures as perfect and rights as sacred, yet God has made them dissimilar, with those natural instincts and feelings which He always imparts to His creatures when He intends that they shall not overstep the natural boundaries He has assigned to them. The natural law which forbids their intermarriage, and that social amalgamation which leads to a corruption of the races, is as clearly divine as that which imparted to them different natures. The tendency of intimate social intermixture is to amalgamation, contrary to the law of races. The separation of the white and black races upon the surface of the globe is a fact equally apparent. Why this is so, it is not necessary to speculate; but the fact of a distribution of men by race and color is as visible in the providential arrangement of the earth as that of heat and cold. The natural separation of the races is therefore an undeniable fact, and all social organizations which lead to their amalgamation are repugnant to the law of nature. From social amalgamation it is but a step to illicit intercourse, and but another to intermarriage. But to assert separateness is not to declare inferiority in either; it is not to declare one a slave and the other a freeman,—that would be to draw the illogical sequence of inferiority from difference only. It is simply to say that following the order of Divine Providence, human authority ought not to compel these widely separate races to intermix. The right of such to be free from social contact is as clear as to be free from intermarriage. The former may be less repulsive as a condition, but not less entitled to protection as a right. When, therefore, we declare a right to maintain separate relations, so far as is reasonably practicable, but in a spirit of kindness and charity, and with due regard to equality of rights, it is not prejudice, nor caste, nor injustice of any kind, but simply to suffer men to follow the law of races established by the Creator himself, and not to compel them to intermix contrary to their instincts.”

The American Law Register, Volume 54, (From January to December 1906), (Philadelphia: 1906), 702. https://books.google.com/books?id=RzLBgPFFjGMC&pg=PA702.

President Obama is an extraordinary figure who has done some good things in bad times, and some great things under impossible circumstances. As the first black president he has faced enormous difficulties and has had to weather a steady downpour of bad faith from the right wing and racist resistance from bigoted quarters of the country. He has been torn between America’s noble ideals of democracy and its cruel realities of race — a tension he rode into office, and one that occasionally defeated his desire to reconcile the best and worst halves of the nation he governs.

Michael Eric Dyson, “Barack Obama, the President of Black America?,” The New York Times, June 24, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/barack-obama-the-president-of-black-america.html.

Given these many contradictions, scholars have argued that rather than build racially egalitarian societies, Latin American elites simply created a more hegemonic and durable form of racial domination than their counterparts had in the United States or South Africa (Hanchard 1994; Marx 1998; Winddance Twine 1998; Winant 2001; Goldberg 2002; Sawyer 2006). According to these accounts, nationalist discourses of race mixture—insomuch as they relied on the logic of colorblindness and the silencing of racial critique—have often served to mask the reality of continued racism and structural inequality. It comes as something of a surprise then that nearly every Latin American country would change course so dramatically with respect to ethno- racial questions beginning in the late 1980s. In some cases, this shift also meant that state officials would recognize the persistence of racism within their societies for the first time in their histories.

Tianna S. Paschel, Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 7.

“I am as Portuguese as I am Indian as I am black. I believe in building a mestizo identity, which means to have everything together with balance. When people come to Brazil, they forget their ancestral identity. They tend to. So Brazilians become Brazilians very quick. People don’t say here, “I’m Afro-this and this.” Or, “I’m Portuguese this and this.” No, they say, “I’m Brazilian.” This is a good point about us.” —Adriana Varejão

Laura C. Mallonee, “Considering Brazil’s Racial Heritage,” Hyperallergic, December 15, 2014. http://hyperallergic.com/168901/considering-brazils-racial-heritage/.

Anatole Broyard wanted to be a writer—and not just a “Negro writer” consigned to the back of the literary bus. He followed the trail blazed by tens of thousands of light-skinned black Americans. He methodically cut ties with his family (including a mother and two sisters) and took up life as a white man with a white wife in white Connecticut. By the late 1980’s, he had been“white” for 40 years, with two adult children who were unaware that they were part of a large black family that included an aunt who lived an hour away in Manhattan.

Brent Staples, “Editorial Observer; Back When Skin Color Was Destiny — Unless You Passed for White,” The New York Times, September 7, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/opinion/editorial-observer-back-when-skin-color-was-destiny-unless-you-passed-for-white.html.

For me, identifying as Black has nothing to do with distancing myself from my mom, her whiteness, her family, heritage, or culture. Rather, it is one way I resist racism every day. By claiming and embracing my Blackness, I push back on the messages within me and around me that would have us believing that being Black is anything I wouldn’t want to be.

Megan Madison, “Yes, I’m Black! Here’s why.” Medium, June 16, 2016. https://medium.com/embrace-race/yes-im-black-here-s-why-482640e6ed4a.

In the many conversations with her since her story has been made public Miss Hemming[s] has attempted no defense of her position other than to say no one asked her while she was in college if she were white or colored. She takes the ground that she was not under moral obligations to announce her origin. She says she entered college as any student would enter, purely on her merits and ability to pay the tuition demanded.

“BEAUTIFUL ANITA HEMMING. STORY OF THE VASSAR GRADUATE BORN OF NEGROES.” The Sacramento Daily Record-Union, September 24, 1897, page 6, columns 1-4. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015104/1897-09-24/ed-1/seq-6/. (Source: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress)

The lies passed down from my grandmother have led to multiple family members passing as white. I have now, sixteen years after discovering my grandmother’s secret, begun to question it in earnest. I have begun to read about and question the history of passing; I have begun to ask black friends about their hidden relatives, and I ask my family questions they have never felt comfortable answering. But what I am really asking is, Am I black?

Jane Marchant, “Jane Marchant: A Century of Progress,” Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics, June 13, 2016. https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/jane-marchant-a-century-of-progress/.

Whiteness is provisional and cannibalistic. The imposition of whiteness is based on falsehoods and conflation. White supremacy is a conglomerate forged through fear, colonialism, imperialism and anti-Blackness, not through the purity of blood. The time has come not to seek access to farcical social constructs used to oppress, but instead to seek liberation through rejection of such. Racial superiority doesn’t actually exist, and to accept the concept of whiteness inherently represents a denial of Black humanity. The expression of who we are as individuals is what makes cultures and people the world across beautiful. Embracing who we are without dehumanizing anyone else or distancing oneself from Blackness poses a direct threat to the ideation of whiteness. In order to invest in humanity, we must divest from whiteness and our contributions to it.

William C. Anderson, “The Changing Face of Whiteness,” Truthout, June 5, 2016. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36292-the-changing-face-of-whiteness.

Juxtaposed, “Mexican Chef” and “Black Stars” speak volumes about the ongoing evolution of [Xenia] Rubios’ identity. While she identifies as Afro-Latina, she tells Colorlines that she does not identify as Black. “My family history is complicated, and I still don’t fully know the extent of it,” she says after describing her Black maternal great grandmother, her Puerto Rican family’s Taino heritage and her paternal grandfather’s emigration from Spain. “I started reading on the Afro-Latina diaspora two years ago, and I’m still ignorant to a lot of that, but I started seeing myself in that term. I explore the ‘Afro’ part of my cultural identity, and how I do or don’t fit into that, on ‘Black Terry Cat.’” She says that’s a big part of why hip-hop permeates this album.

Sameer Rao, “‘Breaking’ Presents: Xenia Rubinos, a Powerhose Singer/Songwriter Unafraid to Learn Out Loud,” Colorlines, June 10, 2016. http://www.colorlines.com/articles/breaking-presents-xenia-rubinos-powerhose-singersongwriter-unafraid-learn-out-loud.