Mixed Race Studies

Want to know how the average African-American came to be 65 percent sub-Saharan African, 29 percent European, and 2 percent Native American (source: Ancestry.com)? Most of America doesn’t want to talk about how the beginnings of “mixed-race utopia” started with slave owners raping slaves. And do you really need me to explain how not-utopic that’s turned out?

What this Mixed-Race Fantasia really implies is: The more we erase Black/Brown/Foreign bodies (who are the targets of racism), the less racism there will be. By romanticizing a future of mixed-race babies as symbols for “racial progress” without more meaningful interrogations of history, we equate an end of racism with the eradication of people of color.

Kristina Wong, “UNPOPULAR OPINION: 6 Reasons Why Your Utopic Vision for a Mixed-Race Future is My Nightmare,” xoJane. December 10, 2014. http://www.xojane.com/issues/your-mixed-race-utopia-is-my-nightmare.

Privilege is like oxygen: You don’t realize it’s there until it’s gone. As white folks, we can’t know what it’s like to go through life without racial privilege because we literally haven’t.

Sally Kohn, “What white people need to know, and do, after Ferguson,” The Washington Post, November 28, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/28/what-white-people-need-to-know-and-do-after-ferguson/.

FOLKS MIXED WITH WHITE: Calling out white supremacy does not mean that you don’t love your white family. If anything, seeing our friends and family as real people with flaws, is true love. We have all been raised in this system, we are all complicit. Let us remember that the revolution starts at home.

Rema Tavares, “Mixed-Race Identity, Ferguson & Why it Matters to Us,” Mixed In Canada, November 25, 2014. https://mixedincanada.com/2015/11/30/mixed-race-identity-ferguson-why-it-matters-to-us/.

“We’ve sexualised or pornographied mixed race. It’s a very narrow line between exoticisation and sexualisation, fetishisms—where you turn all non-white people into people who exist simply into your own pleasure.

She said that “a person who is half white is more “palatable” and acceptable in society – an idea, she believed, is steeped in racism and prevalent since colonisation.

“Colonialism has circulated the idea that white is best. White is at the top of a kind of hierarchy of humanity… If you believe there is a hierarchy of races, which is what racism is about, a little bit of white is more palatable,”—Dr. Julie Matthews

Lin Taylor, “How far have we come in our acceptance of mixed race people?,” Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), November 14, 2014. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/10/how-far-have-we-come-our-acceptance-mixed-race-people.

“Most other mixed and biracial people I know have at least one secret or lie in their family, have at least one person who is choosing to pass or is passing and doesn’t even know it. That theme is so common. I have a half sister who didn’t know she was half black until she was 11. I’m interested in telling these stories because it is my family’s history…” —Amber Gray

Alexis Soloski, “Returning to an ‘Impossible’ Role,” The New York Times, April 24, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/theater/amber-gray-on-an-octoroon-at-soho-rep.html.

“People would call me mulatto all the time. My dad was like: “Don’t let people call you that. Say that you’re mixed. Say that you’re biracial.” My parents were really careful with me. They were clear that you can’t separate out the two sides. You’d be denying half of yourself if you did.” —Amber Gray

Alexis Soloski, “Returning to an ‘Impossible’ Role,” The New York Times, April 24, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/theater/amber-gray-on-an-octoroon-at-soho-rep.html,

While literary scholars have long mined the “tragic mulatto” theme, until recently US historians have rarely explored and barely acknowledged the clandestine world of the tens of thousands of black people, across many generations, who masqueraded as white. Here, Allyson Hobbs provides fresh analysis of an oft-ignored phenomenon, and the result is as fascinating as it is innovative. She foregrounds the sense of loss that passing inflicted, and argues that many of those who were left behind were just as wounded and traumatised as those who departed. Those who passed may have had much to gain, but what were the hidden costs, the invisible scars of enforced patterns of subversion and suppression? She suggests that the core issue of passing is not what an individual becomes, but rather “losing what you pass away from”

Catherine Clinton, “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, by Allyson Hobbs,” Times Higher Education, (October 30, 2014). http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/a-chosen-exile-a-history-of-racial-passing-in-american-life-by-allyson-hobbs/2016548.article.

Because the “presumption of freedom [arose] from color [white]” and the “black color of the race [raised] the presumption of slavery,” whiteness became a shield from slavery, a highly volatile and unstable form of property. In the form adopted in the United States, slavery made human beings market-alienable and in so doing, subjected human life and personhood—that which is most valuable—to the ultimate devaluation. Because whites could not be enslaved or held as slaves, the racial line between white and Black was extremely critical; it became a line of protection and demarcation from the potential threat of commodification, and it determined the allocation of the benefits and burdens of this form of property. White identity and whiteness were sources of privilege and protection; their absence meant being the object of property.

Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be “white,” to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings.

Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review, (Volume 106, Number 8, June 1993). 1720-1721.

The American history that most of us are familiar with is one that paints a picture of segregated ethnic groups, depicting Whites as slave owners, Africans as slaves, and Native Americans as tribe members. In most of our minds, all three groups were separate and played a very specific and hierarchical role in history. Yet, before North America was widely colonized, distinct segregation did not exist, and the interaction between Africans and Native Americans was somewhat frequent. Enslaved Africans escaped to Native American tribes (some tribes even hosted stops on the Underground Railroad), some Native Americans were enslaved by Europeans alongside Africans, and some Native Americans had African slaves. Often times, the two groups worked alongside each other, lived together, and shared recipes, myths, legends, and herbal remedies. Africans and Native Americans intermarried and had children. In fact, relations were so frequent that when a census was taken in the early 1800s, 10% of the Cherokee Nation was of African descent; 100 years later, this number increased to 50%.

Leslie Ann Berg, “Down Blige Road: Where There’s No Place Like Home,” Richmond Hill Reflections, (Volume 10, Number 4, September, 2014). 60. http://www.richmondhillreflectionsmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/RelectionsVol10No4.pdf.

“I am a culturally mixed woman searching for racial answers.”

—Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

Kelundra Smith, “Preview: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni questions race and identity in “One Drop of Love”,” ArtsATL: Atlanta’s source for arts news and reviews, September 21, 2014. http://www.artsatl.com/2014/09/preview-fanshen-cox-digiovanni-questions-race-identity-one-drop-love/.