Mixed Race Studies

‘More or Less Colored Children’

After the OPSB [Orleans Parish School Board] meeting, [William O.] Rogers charged a delegation of Board members to investigate the allegations of race mixing at Bayou Road. He also instructed [Stephanie] Bigot to have each child ‘reputed to be of mixed race’ deliver to their parent or guardian ‘without delay’ written requests for ‘such documentary evidence or testimony of sworn witnesses as will serve to establish the Status, in point of color of said pupil’ (OPSO [Orleans Parish Superintendent’s Office], 1868:298). Without proper documentation, the student would be dismissed promptly from the Bayou Road School (OPSO, 1868:299). Of the twenty-nine students investigated, five had been dismissed. The report from the Board delegation concluded, ‘[F]rom information received, through Parents and Citizens … more or less colored children have been smuggled into the schools set apart for the education of white children’ (OPSB, pp. 327-8). The investigations into the racial and class positions occupied by each of the families in question raised concerns about the dangers of middle-class claims by racial outsiders and the need for rigidly enforced boundaries.

The Daily Picayune noted that two students ‘who bore evidences of African descent’ were, according to both Rogers’ and Bigot’s testimonies, admitted into the school by conventional means: ‘the first upon a certificate of birth in France, and the other at the request of the father, a white citizen of the Second District’ (New Orleans Daily Picayune, 1868, May 22, p. 1). Although each of the girls had been recorded as ‘white’ in the Orleans Parish Register of Births, other records revealed ambiguity about their families’ racial backgrounds (State of Louisiana, n.d.). Both parents of Alice and Anais Meilleur, for example, appeared as ‘white’ in the 1860 census but their father, whose birthplace was listed as France, was identified as ‘mulatto‘ in the 1850 census. These findings, combined with the fact that the fathers of all five girls were employed as white-collar workers,¹ confirmed white fears about the threat black social mobility posed to race and class boundaries in light of the postbellum South’s changing social dynamics. Without upper class wealth, the city’s middle-class families relied upon perceived respectability to reproduce social position. Bigot’s carelessness had put their social position at risk by undermining familial claims to racial purity.

Joseph O. Jewell, “Other(ing) People’s Children: Social Mothering, Schooling, and Race in Late Nineteenth Century New Orleans and San Francisco,” Race, Gender & Class, Volume 21 , Number 3-4, (2014). https://www.jstor.org/stable/43496989.

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother—Partus Sequitur Ventrem. And that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.

“Laws of Virginia, 1662 Act XII;” Latin added by William Henig, The Statutes at Large, 1819.

After more than two centuries of willful collective ignorance about Jefferson and Hemings, it might sound far-fetched to suggest that she ought to be designated a first lady. But our country was populated through precisely this sort of racial mixing — sexual relationships that, it bears repeating, enslaved people such as Hemings did not choose for themselves.

Evelia Jones, “It’s time to recognize Sally Hemings as a first lady of the United States,” The Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jones-sally-hemings-first-lady-20190104-story.html.

Race is an absurdity, having long ago been discredited as a valid biological category and, in the Brown decision, a defensible legal one. Yet as a means of defining and separating people, it retains its power. That power can’t be undone simply by pretending it doesn’t exist, or even by telling African Americans that they should desist from “race-holding” as an excuse or crutch. How do we ignore the power of racialist thinking when we see it exploited by cynical politicians who ignore facts and try to convince white voters—often in coded ways—that their economic woes are largely attributable to blacks and other minorities who are getting more than their share in a zero-sum struggle for economic advancement and opportunities? “We make up selves from a tool kit of options made available by our culture and society,” writes the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. “We do make choices, but we do not determine the options among which we choose.”⁴ For my part, I can’t help seeing the ways race played, and continues to play, a role in my life. Yet at the same time, I recognize how a racial identity can be limiting and burdensome, particularly when it is based on, and helps to perpetuate, hoary myths and outright lies.

W. Ralph Eubanks, “What Makes Me Black? What Makes You White?” The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Volume 20, Number 2 (Summer 2018). https://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2018_Summer_Eubanks.php.

It doesn’t matter how dark or fair someone’s skin is or if they grew up in a family that struggled or one of privilege. There is no such thing as being Indigenous enough.

Charla Huber, “Charla Huber: Every Indigenous person is Indigenous enough,” The Times Colonist, December 30, 2018. https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/charla-huber-every-indigenous-person-is-indigenous-enough-1.23566435.

“Historically, in the United States, if you had one drop of black blood, you were defined as black. You had various names for people who looked as white as their master, but they were defined as black. I didn’t grow up identifying as black because of that — for me it was more about pride, culture and my parents’ politics. But Maria, like me, walks into a room and people don’t see that she’s black. She deals with that as a conflict more than just the fact of being mixed. If you pass as white in the world but know yourself not to be white, you’re privy to all those uncensored comments about black people that other black people sort of in liberal circles are shielded from. You’re constantly aware of this kind of mask falling away.” —Danzy Senna

Eleanor Wachtel, “Danzy Senna’s darkly comic take on racial identity,” Writers & Company with Eleanor Wachtel, CBC Radio, June 15, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/danzy-senna-s-darkly-comic-take-on-racial-identity-1.4707804.

The value of black pride cannot be overstated in its role of providing hope, dignity, and political strength to a population that has long existed within a racist white supremacist nation.¹ After centuries of American history that have consistently made it difficult to be anything but black (via hypodescent) and made black pride the most effective tool for combating white racism and discrimination, it is understandable why an African American might prefer that those with black ancestry identify themselves similarly. Certainly, racial solidarity is the chief objection to multiracial identity in contemporary discourse about multiracialness. Many commentators argue that multiracialism poses a potential threat to the continued struggles of African Americans by reducing the numbers of African Americans or distracting black multiracials from being wholly committed to African American causes. While this may be a problem in relation to some multiracial individuals (as well as some white multiracial-activist parents), for many Americans who identify as black–white, their multiracial identification does not detract from their black pride or their commitment to black political struggle. Even if hypodescent is no longer enforced, its effects remain. That is, the legacy of the one-drop rule—black pride—is undiminished for many who identify as multiracial even if the rule itself no longer legally dictates how they identify themselves.

Molly Littlewood McKibbin, Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 145.

“I want to move people away from thinking of racism as a feeling of hatred, because it’s rare to find someone who blatantly hates people of color. But the impact of racial bias isn’t lessened because it’s not blatant. If someone denies me a job because I’m “not the right fit,” without realizing that their idea of the right fit is almost always a white person, it doesn’t hurt me any less than if I’m told, “I won’t hire you because you’re black.” Racism is not necessarily an intention or a feeling. It is a system that produces predictable results.” —Ijeoma Oluo

Mark Leviton, “White Lies: Ijeoma Oluo On Privilege, Power, And Race,” The Sun, December 2018. https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/516/white-lies.

By the 20th century these stories had morphed into stereotypes about “mixed-race” black women, which migrated into popular culture, where we now had the privilege of being represented as “tragic mulattos”; according to white supremacist discourse, the mulatto did not have the “right to live” the US senator Charles Carroll said in 1900. We were an abomination who disrupted the racial order, and as a result of our pathology were emotionally unstable, yet we were still perceived as seductresses. And that’s why it’s no coincidence that when these online imposters post as their light-skin black alter egos they post thirst-traps with sultry eyes and pouty mouths, yet in photographs as their white selves, they remain smilingly wholesome girls next door. They are operating in familiar terrain, reinforcing topes that emerged out of slavery and which have been developed and refined via mass media throughout the 20th and 21st century. None of this is about flattery, it’s about power, desire and ownership. A sinister reminder that people who once owned our bodies, still can, and of the troubled history and deep seated taboos that continue to define race relations between black and white in the 21st century.

Emma Dabiri, “white girls reinventing themselves as black women on instagram has to stop,” i-D, November 20, 2018. https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/nepzyg/white-girls-instagram-blackface-blackfishing.

As a half-white, half-Asian woman I find myself viewed by my white surroundings as a safe and relatable personification of their orientalist fascinations. I theorize that this intercalary role is a convenient tool for white people to mask racial tensions and guilt. By exhibiting acceptance to people of color who embody whiteness, such as in the “lighter is better” advertisement, in the model immigrant trope, as assumed interracial mediators to white people, and as westernized exotic sexual fantasies, white society attempts to maintain its dominance while exhibiting an image of tolerance.

Sophie Buzak-Achiam, “Stop using mixed race people as symbols of interracial unity to ease your white guilt,” Friktion, May 9, 2018. https://friktionmagasin.dk/stop-using-mixed-race-people-as-symbols-of-interracial-unity-to-ease-your-white-guilt-997208eb420b.