Mixed Race Studies

Don’t Forget the Accent Mark: A Memoir

University of New Mexico Press
2011
110 pages
5.5 x 8 in.; 15 halftones
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8263-5047-3

David Sánchez, Professor of Mathematics (Retired)
University of New Mexico

Raised in a Mexican home in an Anglo neighborhood, David Sánchez was fair-skinned and fluent in Spanish and English when he entered kindergarten. None of this should have had any influence on the career path he chose, but at certain moments it did. With the birth of the Chicano Movement and affirmative action, a different and sometimes disturbing significance became attached to his name. Sánchez’s story chronicles his life and those moments.

No matter how we transcend our origins, they remain part of our lives. This autobiography of an outstanding mathematician, dedicated to others, whose career included stints as a senior university and federal administrator, is also the story of a young man of mixed Mexican and American parentage.

Contents

• PROLOGUE
• Chapter One: EARLY DAYS
• Chapter Two: SECONDARY SCHOOL DAYS
• Chapter Three: COLLEGE: THE FIRST TWO YEARS
• Chapter Four: NEW MEXICO: VISIT ONE
• Chapter Five: ANN ARBOR: VISIT ONE
• Chapter Six: SEMPER FI: THE FIRST YEAR
• Chapter Seven: SEMPER FI: SAYONARA
• Chapter Eight: ANN ARBOR: VISIT TWO
• Chapter Nine: THE WINDY CITY AND ENGLISH LIFE
• Chapter Ten: WESTWOOD DAYS
• Chapter Eleven: NEW MEXICO: VISIT TWO
• Chapter Twelve: PAPFR-PUSHING DAYS: PRIVATE AND FEDFRAL
• Chapter Thirteen: A BRIEF TEXAS INTERLUDE
• Chapter Fourteen: ACADEME AND NEW MEXICO: THE FINAL VISIT
• APPENDIX

Chapter 1: EARLY DAYS

Sanchez is a pretty common name in the southwestern United States. More properly it should be spelled Sánchez, as I was informed by my grandfather Cecilio shortly after I moved into my Mexican grandparents’ home in San Diego, California, at the age of three. I asked him what was the funny mark above our name, and he sternly replied, “Asi se escribe nuestro nombre en esta familia” (In this family that is the way our name is written). Don Cecilio was not a person to be disobeyed, so whenever I sign my name, the accent mark is always there—a little symbol of my Mexicanness in the Anglo world in which I was raised.

Growing up, the accent was not a problem, except for a few raised eyebrows now and then because I look more Irish or Welsh than Mexican. But when I was in training in the Marine Corps, we were required to stencil our names on our utility shirts. I decided to add the accent mark, which really angered one of my drill instructors. He asked me what it was, and I replied as my grandfather had done. He loudly accused me of being some kind of a French pervert or a communist sympathizer; uniformity is a very strict requirement of Marine Corps training, even on stencils. I stood rigidly at the best USMC attention, just as loudly repeated my reason, and after a few more insults, the DI stormed off. I never heard any more about it.

Nowadays you see the name Sánchez everywhere. There are writers, artists, entertainers, military personnel at all levels, news commentators, athletes, politicians, and scholars, many of them with the first name David. But well into my early middle age, I rarely encountered a namesake, and I regarded myself as a typical American but with the advantage of being bilingual. No English was spoken in my grandparents’ house. When I arrived, I only spoke English, but my grandfather insisted that every Sunday we have a Spanish lesson, using some of the old primers he used as a boy in Mexico in the late eighteen hundreds. When I entered kindergarten, I could already read and speak Spanish. Since there were only two Mexican families in our neighborhood, Mission Hills (middle to upper class then, but now much more posh), it was English out the door and Spanish in the door.

In the thirties and early forties, San Diego had a population of about two hundred thousand, with a sizeable Mexican population largely living in the Logan Heights neighborhood. We would visit friends there frequently; many of them were families whose parents had fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, just as my grandparents had done. Birthday and holiday fiestas, lively events in which I enthusiastically participated, were packed with our Mexican friends, which certainly enhanced my appreciation and acceptance of my heritage.

Statistics on the composition of today’s Latino households shows many families in which the grandparents are raising the children, usually for reasons such as an illegitimate birth or a broken marriage. Many of these grandparents are trying to protect the family structure and reputation and want to insure that the child is raised in a loving environment with attention being paid to its education. The Mexican grandparental culture is a strong, supportive one from which I certainly benefited.

How did I acquire the name Sánchez? I was born in 1933 in San Francisco, probably out of wedlock, the son of Berta Sánchez and a man I prefer not to identify. (I did not know his name until I was seventeen, when my grandmother had to emotionally provide my birth certificate in order for me to apply to the Navy Reserve.) When I was three years old, my mother decided to move back to Mexico; she was bilingual and a skilled secretary, so there were good job opportunities. But she had no confidence in the Mexican medical system and did not wish the stigma of being an unwed mother. So she arranged for me to be raised in San Diego by my grandparents, Cecilio and Concepcion Sánchez…

My Eyes Only Look Out

Brandon Books
October 2001
236 pages
ISBN: 9780863222849

Margaret McCarthy

Irish people describe the realities of being of mixed race in a mostly white society In the first book of its kind, Irish people describe, in a series of compelling interviews, the realities of being of mixed race in a mostly white society which is only now trying to adjust to the beginnings of the creation of a multicultural society.

Amongst those featured are:

• Andrew: “I’m blessed to be a mixed-race boy.” Son of a South African mother and English father, he grew up in Galway and now lives in Handsworth, Birmingham.
• Teresa: “I am still an outsider, but now it feels OK.” Daughter of a German mother and a Nigerian father, Teresa moved as a child to a mainly white area of London, where she was ostracised because of her colour. Now she lives in rural Ireland.
• Lorna: “If you are mixed race, whether it is a quarter of you or whatever, you are black.” Reared in Ireland, she left for London in her teens, but she always yearned for America, and in her mid-thirties she moved to Miami.
• Curtis: “A black Irishman, that’s me. Nobody can take that away from me.” A professional footballer with a passion for the game and a deep loyalty to his old clubs and mentors as well as to his present club.
• Sean: “I rarely, if ever, had any trouble on the pitch.” A Gaelic football and hurling star, he is a graduate in Finance through Irish.
• Lisa: “In my mind I was always Lisa the dancer.” A bright and popular shop assistant, Lisa’s adoptive parents and natural mother are dead, and she knows little about her natural father, whom she believes was Ghanaian.
• Ian: “Celebrated as “the first coloured policeman in Ireland”, Ian experiences confusion about his identity.
• Luzveminda: “I had an ordinary kind of childhood.” A science graduate, she was crowned Rose of Tralee and launched Trí³caire’s African campaign.

Fuori/Outside

Third World Newsreel
1997
Color
12 minutes
United States

Kym Ragusa

In Fuori/Outside the videomaker, a woman of African American and Italian American descent, examines her relationship with her Italian American grandmother. The lives of the two women are inextricably linked to local geographies; family stories embedded in the walls of tenement buildings and suburban landscapes. Personal memories overflow into public spaces, contradictions around race within the family are contextualized within larger conflicts between Italian Americans and African Americans. The foundation of Fuori/Outside is the powerful bond between the two women, marginalized by color and age, that survives the instability of family, class and ethnic identity.

Awards
Best Video, South Bronx Film and Video Festival, 1997

For more information, click here.

Born Along the Racial Fault Line

The New York Times
2011-11-06

Janet Maslin

My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir By Mark Whitaker. Illustrated. 357 pages. Simon & Schuster.

As a social studies major in his junior year at Harvard, Mark Whitaker attended a debate on the subject of ethnicity. One participant was the chairman of the department. Mr. Whitaker stood up to raise some questions.

“What would you tell someone who didn’t have a clear ethnic identity?” he asked. “For example, what would you tell someone who had one parent who was black and another who was white? Who had one parent who was American and another who was European? Who had moved dozens of times as a child and didn’t have a specific place to call home?” Everyone in the room knew that Mr. Whitaker was talking about himself.

“I guess I would say that that’s too bad,” the professor answered. “In the future I hope we don’t have too many more people like you.”

Mr. Whitaker recounts this story in “My Long Trip Home,” a book filled with as much family tumult as Jeannette Walls described in “The Glass Castle” and a racial factor to boot. It’s a story that registers not only for its shock value but also for the perspective and wisdom with which it can now be told…

Read the entire review here.

My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots

Basic Civitas Books
2007-01-02
352 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780465015740; ISBN-10: 0465015743

Thulani Davis

Starting from a photograph and writings left by her grandmother, acclaimed African-American novelist Thulani Davis goes looking for the “white folk” in her family, a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined. Her journey challenges us to examine the origins of some of our most deeply ingrained notions about what makes a family black or white, and offers an immensely compelling, intellectually challenging alternative.

My Experience on the Indian-Negro Color Line

Indian Country Today
2011-12-27

Julianne Jennings
Arizona State University

Growing-up on the Indian-Negro color line (I am the daughter of a European mother and a black and Indian father), I lived with mixed signals and coded information by the dominant culture. It had determined that white European culture and people were superior in contrast to those who were generally classified as darker, “primitive” and “uncivilized.” Applying the adage “write what you know,” my master’s thesis was titled “Blood, Race and Sovereignty: The Politics of Indian Identity.” This work would not have been possible without the professors in the Department of Anthropology at Rhode Island College (RIC). They taught me how to challenge racial paradigms and stereotypes that Western society has about Indians; and how to brave racial orthodoxy and search new ways of thinking about our country’s seemingly insoluble problems with race.

Classroom discussions about race motivated me, at the age of 46, to reclaim my Indian ancestry by having my birth certificate changed from “Negro” to “American Indian.” The experience was emotionally overwhelming as I had been denied my birthright as an E. Pequot–Nottoway. Changing my birth certificate was not because I was ashamed of my multiracial identity; it was an affirmation of my survival as an Indian and an act of self-determination in a country that has gone so far to erase my ancestry from history. I assert my tri-racial identity, but most of America’s forms, like birth certificates, at present allow listing only one race. To employ biological over cultural definitions of American Indians reflects a fundamental ignorance of American history and its unprocessed shame of slavery and American Indian traditions. Thus, issues about race are especially important to me, as “mixed-blood” Indians are not considered “authentic” by mainstream society. We have to dress in buckskin; feathers and beads to be taken seriously, yet those with European ancestry do not have to wear tall black hats or buckled shoes to convince others of their ancestry…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Identities, Genetic Ancestry, and Health in South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay

Palgrave Macmillan
October 2011
272 pages
Includes: 10 pages of figures, 10 pages of tables
5.500 x 8.250 inches
ISBN: 978-0-230-11061-8, ISBN10: 0-230-11061-4

Edited by

Sahra Gibbon, Wellcome Trust Fellow
Department of Social Anthropology
University College London

Ricardo Ventura Santos, Professor of Biological Anthropology and Public Health
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
also Associate professor of Anthropology
National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Mónica Sans, Associate Professor and Director of the Biological Anthropology Department
University de la Republic in Uruguay

This unique edited collection brings together biologists, geneticists, and social and biological anthropologists to examine the connections between genetics, identity, and health in South America. It addresses a wide range of theoretical issues raised by the rapid changes in the field of genetic sciences. Contributors come from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, the UK, and the United States, providing a comparative cultural perspective for scholars, researchers, and students.

Table of Contents

• Preface; N.Redclift
• PART I: DOING AND DEFINING “BIO-CULTURAL” ANTHROPOLOGY AS APPLIED TO GENETICS
  • Anthropology, Race, and the Dilemmas of Identity in the Age of Genomics; R.Ventura Santos & M.Chor Maio
  • The Inexistence of Biology Verses the Existence of Social Races: Can Science Inform Society?; S.D.J.Pena & T.S.Birchal
  • Ethics/Bioethics and Anthropological Fieldwork; A.L.Caratini
• PART II: ADMIXTURE MAPPING AND GENOMICS IN SOUTH AMERICA AND BEYOND
  • Admixture Dynamics in Hispanics: A Shift in the Nuclear Genetic Ancestry of a South American Population Isolate; L.Ruiz
  • Pharmacogenetic Studies in the Brazilian Population; G.Suarez-Kurtz & S.D.J.Pena
  • Admixture Mapping and Genetic Technologies; B.Bertoni
  • The Significance of Sickle Cell Anemia within the Context of the Brazilian Government’s ‘Racial Policies’ (1995-2004); P.H.Fry
• PART III: GENETIC ADMIXTURE HISTORY, NATIONHOOD AND IDENTITY IN SOUTH AMERICA
  • Gene Admixture and Type of Marriage in a Sample of Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area; F.R.Carnese
  • Ethnic/Race Self-Adscription, Genetics, and National Identity in Uruguay; M.Sans
  • Forced Disappearance and Suppresion of Identity of Children in Argentina: Experiences after Genetic Identification; V.B.Penchaszadeh
  • Molecular Vignettes of the Columbian Nation: The Place of Race and Ethnicity in Networks of Biocapital; C.A.Barrigan
• Afterward/Commentaries; R.Rapp, T.Disotell, M.Montoya & P.Wade

Halfbreed

University of Nebraska Press
1973
157 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8032-6311-6

Maria Campbell

“I write this for all of you, to tell you what it is like to be a Halfbreed woman in our country. I want to tell you about the joys and sorrows, the oppressing poverty, the frustration and the dreams. . . . I am not bitter. I have passed that stage. I only want to say: this is what it was like, this is what it is still like.”

For Maria Campbell, a Métis (“Halfbreed”) in Canada, the brutal realities of poverty, pain, and degradation intruded early and followed her every step. Her story is a harsh one, but it is told without bitterness or self-pity. It is a story that begins in 1940 in northern Saskatchewan and moves across Canada’s West, where Maria roamed in the rootless existence of day-to-day jobs, drug addiction, and alcoholism. Her path strayed ever near hospital doors and prison walls.

It was Cheechum, her Cree great-grandmother, whose indomitable spirit sustained Maria Campbell through her most desperate times. Cheechum’s stubborn dignity eventually led the author to take pride in her Métis heritage, and Cheechum’s image inspired her in her drive for her own life, dignity; and purpose.

Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia

Peter Lang Publishing Group
2007
186 pages
Weight: 0.330 kg, 0.728 lbs
Paperback ISBN: 978-3-03911-323-1
Series: Studies in Asia-Pacific “Mixed Race” (Volume 2)

Edited by:

Maureen Perkins, Associate Professor of History, Anthropology and Sociology
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

What does an Australian look like? Many Australians assume that there is such a thing as an ‘ethnic’ face, and that it indicates recent arrival or refugee status. This volume contains nine life narratives by Australians who reflect on the experience of being categorised on the basis of their facial appearance.

The problem of who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’ is at the heart of some of the most important challenges facing the contemporary world. Assuming that facial appearance and identity are inextricably linked makes this challenge even harder.

The introduction by the editor provides the theoretical framework to these narratives. It discusses the relevance to notions of belonging and identity of the term ‘mixed race’, and concludes that we are all mixed race, whether we look white, black or ‘ethnic’.

Table of Contents

• Maureen Perkins: Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia
• Jan Teagle Kapetas: Lubra Lips, Lubra Lips: Reflections on my Face
• Jean Boladeras: The Desolate Loneliness of Racial Passing
• Lynette Rodriguez: But Who Are You Really?
• Wendy Holland: Rehearsing Multiple Identities
• Christine Choo/Antoinette Carrier/Clarissa Choo/Simon Choo: Being Eurasian
• Glenn D’Cruz: ‘Where Are You Coming From, Sir?’
• Farida Tilbury: Hyphenated Realities: Growing up in an Indian-American-Bruneian Baha’i in ‘Multicultural’ Australia
• Hsu-Ming Teo: Alien Asian in the Australian Nation
• Ien Ang: Between Asia and the West.

Defending Home and Hearth: Walter White Recalls the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot

Web Source: History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web
Walter White, A Man Called White
1948; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969
pages 5–12

Walter White (1893-1955)

The riots that broke out between 1898 and 1906 were part of a pattern of anti-black violence that included several hundred lynchings each year. One of the most savage race riots in these years erupted in Atlanta on September 22, 1906 after vague reports of African Americans harassing white women. Over five days at least ten black people were killed while Atlanta’s police did nothing to protect black citizens, going so far as to confiscate guns from black Atlantans while allowing whites to remain armed. In this selection from his memoirs, Walter White, the future head of the NAACP recalled how, at age 13, he and his father defended their home from white rioters.

The unseasonably oppressive heat of an Indian summer day hung like a steaming blanket over Atlanta. My sisters and I had casually commented upon the unusual quietness. It seemed to stay Mother’s volubility and reduced Father, who was more taciturn, to monosyllables. But, as I remember it, no other sense of impending trouble impinged upon our consciousness.

I had read the inflammatory headlines in the Atlanta News and the more restrained ones in the Atlanta Constitution which reported alleged rapes and other crimes committed by Negroes. But these were so standard and familiar that they made—as I look back on it now—little impression. The stories were more frequent, however, and consisted of eight-column streamers instead of the usual two or four-column ones.

Father was a mail collector. His tour of duty was from three to eleven P.M. He made his rounds in a little cart into which one climbed from a step in the rear. I used to drive the cart for him from two until seven, leaving him at the point nearest our home on Houston Street, to return home either for study or sleep. That day Father decided that I should not go with him. I appealed to Mother, who thought it might be all right, provided Father sent me home before dark because, she said, “I don’t think they would dare start anything before nightfall.”Father told me as we made the rounds that ominous rumors of a race riot that night were sweeping the town. But I was too young that morning to understand the background of the riot. I became much older during the next thirty-six hours, under circumstances which I now recognize as the inevitable outcome of what had preceded.

…Late in the afternoon friends of my father’s came to warn of more trouble that night. They told us that plans had been perfected for a mob to form on Peachtree Street just after nightfall to march down Houston Street to what the white people called “Darktown,” three blocks or so below our house, to “clean out the niggers.” There had never been a firearm in our house before that day. Father was reluctant even in those circumstances to violate the law, but he at last gave in at Mother’s insistence…

Read the entire text here.