Mixed Race Studies

I propose that the one drop rule no longer trumps physical appearance, but nonetheless it continues to influence racial identity today. In particular, the one drop rule affects how black-white biracials’ physical appearances are perceived by others. Despite the range in their physical appearances (e.g., some have dark and others light skin), black-white biracial Americans are frequently raced as black. This is because the legacy of the one drop rule has shaped how Americans (of all racial and ethnic backgrounds) perceive normative “black” phenotypes. According to Russell, Wilson, and Hall (1992), black Americans show a “kaleidoscope of skin tones” (9), due both to the long history of interracial mixing between blacks and whites and to the broad definition of “blackness.” Under the one drop rule, individuals with any degree of black ancestry were classified as black; thus, the normative phenotypic image of a “black” person became broad, and we can see today that black phenotypes vary widely in skin tone and other physical characteristics (e.g., nose shape, hair texture). Even today, having some “white” phenotypic characteristics—such as light skin, blue eyes, and straight hair—does not necessarily conflict with Americans’ image of blackness. For example, actress Vanessa Williams and recording artist Beyoncé Knowles are both “black” with some degree of white ancestry and “white” features. While Williams and Knowles do not outwardly appear white (i.e., they could not pass as white), they do have some physical features that reflect their white ancestry; Vanessa Williams has light skin and blue eyes, and Beyonce Knowles has light skin and long, straight hair. Having these “white” normative physical characteristics, however, does not necessarily conflict with Americans’ image of what it looks like to be black.

This broad image of blackness not only influences how Americans view blacks, but also how they view biracial black-white Americans. Regardless of any “white” physical characteristics biracial individuals may have, others tend simply to classify them as black because their perceptions of what a “black” person looks like do not preclude normative “white” physical characteristics. For instance, a biracial person may have straight, long hair, but so do many black Americans (either because of white ancestry or because of hair straightening/“relaxing” techniques common among black women today). As a consequence, many Americans are unable to distinguish between black and biracial phenotypes. Thus, appraisals of these phenotypes (both real and reflected) are influenced by the historical legacy of the one drop rule, which continues to shape black identities even today.

Nikki Khanna, Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity, (Lahnam, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2011), 47.

The multiracial population is young and rapidly growing, and may soon account for one-fifth of the U.S. population by the year 2050, and one-third of the country’s population by 2100. Because the multiracial population is overwhelmingly young, the parents choose their children’s racial identification on official documents like the Census form, and also help to shape the way that multiracial youth see and identify themselves. Based on the in-depth interviews, we find that while Asian-White and Latino-White couples recognize and identify their children as multiracial or multiethnic, they feel that their children will soon adopt a White or American identity, regardless of how hard they may try to instill a multiracial or multiethnic culture and identity. Black intermarried couples, however, feel differently. While interracial Black couples also recognize the multiracial backgrounds of their children, they are more likely to identify their children as Black—in part, they claim, because others identify them as such.

The divergent patterns of racial identification among these couples indicate that the assimilative power of intermarriage operates differently for Blacks than it does for Asians or Latinos. The assimilative power of intermarriage operates so strongly for the children of Asian-White and Latino-White couples that most identify and are identified by others as White and/or American. By contrast, the children of Black interracial couples are much more likely to adopt a Black racial identity, suggesting that these couples appear to be traversing a different pathway, and more specifically, incorporating into a racialized, minority status. The interviews illustrate that when marrying across the color line, interracial Black couples are the least likely, least able, and0or least willing to transfer a non-Black identity and status to their children.

Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean, “A Postracial Society or A Diversity Paradox? Race, Immigration, and Multiraciality in the Twenty-First Century,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, Volume 9, Issue 2, (Fall 2012). 432. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X12000161.

One of the key phenomena to understanding skin color stratification among African Americans is the history of sexual violence against African women by white men during slavery. “The social order established by powerful white men was founded on two inseparable ingredients: the dehumanization of Africans on the basis of race, and the control of women’s sexuality and reproduction.”¹ As one of the violent mechanisms of social control that whites exercised against African Americans, sexual violence, including rape, was part of the beginning of the skin color stratification process itself. This violent method of social control produced two important effects. The first and most obvious result was the creation of racially mixed children by white fathers and black mothers. The second more long-term effect was the creation of a color hierarchy through systematic privileging of light-skinned African Americans over darker-skinned African Americans. Though many mixed-race offspring were the result of violent unions between white men and black women, there were also a notable number of consensual relationships between the races. Many men and women involved in interracial relationships lived together and were married in churches despite an enormous amount of resistance on the part of most whites and some blacks.

Margaret L. Hunter, Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone, (New York, London: Routledge, 2005). 18-19.

We speak of bastardization in the case of a mixed race (Mischlinge) that develops from fundamentally different races or racial mixtures, as, for example, one between Europeans and Negroes, Europeans and Asians, Europeans and Indians, Europeans and Jews, etc. Such mixed race individuals carry the contradictory trains of both races, resulting in a confusion. Bastards are unhappy people. A bastard of European and Negroid decent has some of the characteristics of the white race, and some characteristics of the black race. He unsuited both for the jungles and hot sun of the south, but also for the north. Two souls live and compete within the breast of the bastard. He never finds peace and a harmonious, balanced life. The hard laws of blood force him to live a life of racial confusion and fragmentation.

Karl Bareth and Alfred Vogel, (Randall Bytwerk, trans.), Heredity and Racial Science for Elementary and Secondary Schools (Erblehre und Rassenkunde für die Grund- und Hauptschule) 2nd edition, (Bühl-Baden: Verlag Konkordia, 1937). Source: German Propaganda Archive, Calvin College. http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/erblehre.htm.

This family lives in the Stringer community of Jasper County. A school bus from Stringer white attendance center passes in front of their home and also a school bus from the white attendance center at Soso in Jones County. The School Board in Jasper County will not permit them to go to the white school and the School Board in Jones County will not take them on transfer. They cannot and will not attend the Negro schools because they are white and because this would be violating Mississippi law. They are now eight and nine years old respectively and have never attended school one day.

Erle Johnston, Jr., “Letter to Paul B. Johnson Jr. and Lieutenant Governor Carroll Gartin,” Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, (February 14, 1964, Jackson, Mississippi). Source: University of Southern Mississippi Libraries Special Collections: Exhibits and Events. http://http//www.lib.usm.edu/spcol/exhibitions/item_of_the_month/iotm_march_10/iotm_mar10_letter

Those who profess Christianity as the worldwide religion and yet justify the operation of a color line disprove and discredit their pretension. If Christianity is to be a biological religion, it cannot be universal. The ideal of Christianity is that all of its devotees, regardless of ethnic deviation, are baptised in one spirit. Spiritual kinship transcends all other relations among men. Unless Christianity can overcome the color line, the universality of its claim will be discredited, and the world must still repeat the query propounded by the rugged teacher of righteousness to his august relative and rival.

Kelly Miller, “The Mulatto in the United States. by Edward Byron Reuter—Review by: Kelly Miller,” American Journal of Sociology, Volume 25, Number 2 (Sep., 1919). 224.

I first met Audre in 1984, when I was 22. She told me her grandfather had been Scottish, and that I didn’t need to choose between being Scottish and being black. “You can be both. You can call yourself an Afro Scot,” she said in her New York drawl. Lorde was Whitman-like in her refusal to be confined to single categories. She was large. She contained multitudes…

Jackie Kay, “My hero: Audre Lorde by Jackie Kay,” The Guardian, November 11, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/18/my-hero-audre-lorde-jackie-kay

My greatest challenge in writing this book has been to present the information in a way that does not accelerate racism.  To avoid this, I talked with experts such as Randy Lindsey and Glenn Singleton. Mr. Singleton asked me to consider this question when I wrote the book: “What accelerates racism when dealing with the topic of multiraciality?” I used this question as a guide to my thinking and writing. Additionally, I read and reread Rainier Spencer’s outstanding book Challenging Multiracial Identities in the hopes of better understanding this complex topic. His question “How do we move away from the fallacy of race while remaining aggressive in the battle against racism?” was another idea I used to guide my work. This book is what I now know I know.

Bonnie M. Davis, The Biracial and Multiracial Student Experience: A Journey to Racial Literacy, (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2009), xiii.

Yet having populated North America for nearly four centuries, mixed-race people are far from being a recent phenomenon in the United States. Their early presence has been recorded to greater and lesser degrees in legal records, literature, and historical documentation. As far back as the 1630s and 1640s, colonial records attest to the punishment of interracial sexual unions and the regulation of mulattoes’ slave status (Williamson, 1980). Dictionaries chart 16th-century English usage of the word mulatow (Sollors, 2000), although the meaning of this term has varied over time (Forbes, 1993). Finally, mixed-race people have long populated American literature, particularly since the early 19th century (Sollors, 2000). In sum, the multiracial community is not a new, 20th century phenomenon but rather a long-standing element of American society.

Ann Morning, “New Faces, Old Faces: Counting the Multiracial Population Past and Present,” in New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century, ed. Loretta I. Winters and Herman L. DeBose (dd: SAGE Publication, 2002), 41.

The term ‘black Welsh’ remains for me a white person’s concept used to deny me my own experience of racial oppression (the Welsh themselves, are an oppressed and colonised people). ‘Black Welsh’ is not an identity; on the contrary, it is a duality and a contradiction. Perhaps this explains to some extent the high incidence of schizophrenia among black people. If I claim to be Welsh when everyone can plainly see that I am ‘foreign’, I must be mad. But if I claim to be black, that has no significance, it’s just like having freckles, and if I claim to be oppressed, I’m playing the race card, demanding special treatment. So to survive, I must be nothing, invisible and above all silent, because my very existence is a reminder that at least one white Welsh woman had sex with a black man, and that is the beginning of the end of the purity of the Welsh people. And without the Language of Heaven, the Calon Lân, (white heart) the sense of being a chosen, Godly people, what does it mean to be Welsh?

Isabel Adonis, “Black Welsh Identity: the unspeakable speaks,” BBC News, North West Wales, May 30, 2006.
http://isabeladonis.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/black-welsh-identity-the-unspeakable-speaks/