Mixed Race Studies

New Book Explores Georgetown Inside and Out

Georgetown Alumni Online
Georgetown University
2010-11-2010

Historian R. Emmett Curran discusses his recently published book, a three-volume history of Georgetown that uncovers little known facts about the university.

True or false?

1. In Georgetown’s first decade of existence, nearly 20 percent of its students came from outside the United States.

2. Georgetown was not actually founded in 1789.

A History of Georgetown University: The Complete Three-Volume Set, 1789-1989, released this month, sheds new light on these and other little known facts about Georgetown, as well as offers a broad perspective on the university’s identity and place in American culture.

Here, author R. Emmett Curran, a historian and member of the Georgetown community for more than three decades, talks about the book’s evolution and surprising discoveries he made during its research. Copies of the three-volume set are available in the Georgetown University bookstore.

(The answer to both of the above questions is “true.”)…

…Q: What is your favorite story from Georgetown’s past that people might not have heard?

Curran: The manner by which Patrick Healy became president of Georgetown is a good story. In 1870 the Jesuits were struggling to come up with a suitable candidate for the presidency of Georgetown. After Rome rejected the first slate of candidates that the Jesuits in the United States sent them, Jesuit officials in the Maryland Province (then encompassing most of the eastern United States) sent a new slate that listed Patrick Healy as the preferred candidate.

“Clearly Healy is the best qualified,” the regional superior stated, “despite the difficulty that perhaps can be brought up about him.” That ambiguous reference concerned either Healy’s illegitimate background (as the son of parents [Irish planter and mixed-race slave] who, by Georgia law, could not marry) or his biracial identity.

Rome ended up choosing no one on the list and reappointed John Early, who had earlier held the office. When Early’s latest term came to an end in 1873, the regional superior proposed an interesting deal. He suggested to the superior general in Rome that John Bapst, then president of Boston College, be made president of Georgetown and Patrick Healy replace Bapst in Boston. That suggests that the “difficulty” had actually been Healy’s biracial background and so-called slave status. The regional superior was calculating that mixed race would not have the potential for problems in New England (where Patrick Healy’s two brothers had important positions among the clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston) that it might well pose in Washington.

Before Rome could respond, John Early died suddenly in May 1873. The regional superior immediately appointed Healy as acting rector, and the following day the directors of the university chose him as president. Rome, obviously unhappy about developments, took more than a year to confirm his appointment as rector.

Read the entire article here.

Note from Steven F. Riley: For more information on the Healy brothers, read James M. O’Toole’s book, Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920.

The Politics of Mothering in a “Mixed” Family: An Autoethnographic Exploration

Identities
Volume 12, Issue 4, 2005
pages 479-503
DOI: 10.1080/10702890500332642

Nora Lester Murad, Founder and Executive Director
Dalia Association

Interweaving excerpts from her personal journal with research and literature about mixed race, interfaith, and bicultural experience, Nora Lester Murad uses autoethnographic methods to explore the experience of mothering in an American–Jewish and Palestinian–Muslim family. She pushes theoretical discussion beyond the experiences of “mixed” people to consider how the identity of otherwise monoracial/ monocultural parents may be transformed through the experience of parenting across socially/politically significant differences, particularly, national origin, culture, and faith. She also extends theoretical discussion beyond the confines of identity to consider parenting as a political process with an impact within and beyond families.

Perhaps there is a place I have not yet imagined where exiles and strangers gather, racial hybrids of consciousness which can run as thick as blood, who out of necessity make the effort to rename what it means to belong (Lazarre 1996: 51).

Family politics

My eldest daughter. Serene, met her grandparents on her father’s side for the first time in 1997, when she was one year old. It was her first trip outside of the United States to visit my husband Hani’s village in the Arab sector of Northern Israel. It was her first time being surrounded by Palestinian Muslims.

I vividly remember watching my little angel standing on the balcony off the sitting room. She was so focused, so grounded, so totally at home as she stared toward the olive-tree-covered mountain behind the house. I remember my own amazement—and fear—as I realized that this is…

Read or purchase the article here.

“Are You Black or Are You Jewish?”: The New Identity Challenge

Lilith Magazine
Fall 1996
pages 21-29

Sarah Blustain

Two or three times a week, on the streets of San Francisco, complete strangers walk up to Lisa Feldstein and I ask, “What are you?”

She’s not Indian, South American, Puerto Rican or—her favorite suggestion—French. The child of a black Christian woman and a white Jewish man from an Orthodox family, she usually gives them a straight answer. But for Lisa, and the estimated thousands of other biracial children of black-Jewish origin, the answers are not so simple.

A large segment of this biracial population was born into the liberalism of the 1960s, whose adherents hoped to achieve, by activism and example, an America in which race and religion would invite no bias. They have not succeeded. Indeed, in the subsequent three decades, the ideal has shifted more than once away from color-blindness toward racial and ethnic identification—stranding these black-Jewish offspring in hostile territory.

From all over the country, we found individuals willing, even eager, to describe their lifelong struggles to define themselves. Often, and movingly, they report childhoods spent in confusion, and adulthoods spent negotiating die polarized alliances of their birth.

But at this moment in America, they also find themselves with another choice. It is a choice evolving into a national grassroots movement of “multiracial pride,” an attempt to assert all parts of the self as equally valid. They have organized nationally to add a “multiracial” category to the year 2,000 census—their option in the last census was “other”—and political and cultural groups have begun operating both online and face-to-face in cities throughout the country. A retreat for multiracial Jewish families is being planned for November at the Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut; and, in the company of black Jews by descent (Ethiopian), adoption, or conversion, they formed last year the Alliance of Black Jews. Organizer Robin Washington, the son of a Jewish woman and a black man, says of his own identification: “[I’m] one hundred percent of both.”

These individuals defy the dictates of history, politics and simple appearance, and their stories illuminate the fracturing biases of a society that is not ready for them. But even as they demand recognition, the question arises: Does the multiracial movement add yet another allegiance to the list demanded by their social and political communities; or, in an increasingly multiracial country, does “their very existence,” as one observer suggested, “change society”?…

Read the entire article here.

20 years after riots, Crown Heights is now a mixed racial haven

New York Daily News
2011-08-14

Simone Weichselbaum, Staff Writer

Crown Heights has become a mixed race mecca.

The Brooklyn neighborhood infamous for the 1991 riot between blacks and Jews has the second-most residents who identify as being both black and white, the latest Census figures show.

Crown Heights had 635 people in 2010 who said they were born to one black parent and one white. Harlem led the city with 776.

The neighborhood’s new population includes mixed race hipsters and young biracial families moving from pricier neighborhoods. Others identify as Jewish with a black parent who want a multi-cultural area to call home…

Read the entire article here.

Prayer, and Bug Juice, at a Summer Camp for Jews of Color

The New York Times
2011-08-12

Samuel G. Freedman, Professor of Journalism
Columbia University

PETALUMA, Calif. — On Sabbath morning, as fog still hung over the valley, the campers walked past the Torrey pines and blackberry bushes toward the garden. There, several rows of chairs had been arranged in front of an altar fashioned from a folding table covered with Senegalese cloth and a Torah scroll on loan from an Orthodox synagogue.

About 15 minutes into the service, two girls rose to lead the congregation in a series of prayers. “Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu, melech ha-olam, she’asani Yisrael,” they said. Then they switched to the English translation: “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has made me a Jew.”

In all its ordinariness, as a standard part of liturgy, the assertion could hardly have been bolder, coming as it did from Amalia Cymrot-Wu and her camp buddy Maya Campbell. Maya is the daughter of an interracial black-white marriage, Amalia the product of Brazilian and Chinese bloodlines, and they were matter-of-factly proclaiming their place among the Jewish people…

Read the entire article here. View the slide show here.

Mulatto Theology: Race, Discipleship, and Interracial Existence

Duke University
2009
290 pages

Brian Keith Bantum, Assistant Professor of Theology
Seattle Pacific University

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University

To exist racially “in-between,” being neither entirely of one race nor another, or more simply stated being a mulatto or interracial, has been characterized in the outlook that tends to mark existence in the modern world as a tragic state of being. It is from this outlook of loneliness and isolation that the term the “tragic mulatto” emerged. The dissertation Mulatto Theology: Race, Discipleship, and Interracial Existence will theologically interpret these lives so as to interrogate the wider reality of racialized lives that the mulatto’s body makes visible. As such, mulatto bodies are modulations of a racial performance in which all are implicated. The mulatto’s body is significant in that it discloses what is most pronouncedly masked in modern (and particularly white) identities.

Culture, identities (individual and communal) are not only interconnected, but they are mixtures where peoples become presenced in the lives and practices of other “alien” peoples. This mixture requires careful reflection upon the formation of all identities, and the ways in which these identities become visible within the world. Given this arc of identity any reflection upon Christian identity must articulate itself within the inherent tensions of these identities and the practices that mark such identities within the world. Through this work I hope to show how European theology itself has failed to account for its own dominant enclosure of identities, but also how Christian reflection itself might find a way out of this tragic reality.

In examining the formation and performance of mulatto bodies this dissertation suggests these bodies are theologically important for modern Christians and theological reflection in particular. Namely, the mulatto’s body becomes the site for re-imagining Christian life as a life lived “in-between.” The primary locus of this re-imagination is the body of Christ. A re-examination of theological reflection and Scripture regarding his person and work display his character as uniquely mulatto, or the God-man. But not only is his identity mulatto, but his person also describes the nature of his work, his re-creation of humanity. So understood Christian bodies can be construed as “interracial” bodies—bodies of flesh and Spirit that disrupt modern formations of race. The Christian body points to a communal reality where hybridity is no longer tragic, but rather constitutive of Christian discipleship. This new, hybrid and “impure” way of existing witnesses to God’s redemptive work in the world.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I – Renunciation: Racial Discipleship; or Disciplining the Body
  • Chapter 1 – I Am Your Son White Man! The Mulatto and the Tragic
  • Chapter 2 – Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Presence as Politics
• Part II – Confession: Christ, the Tragic Mulatto
  • Chapter 3 – What Child is This? or How can this Be? The Mulatto Christ
  • Chapter 4 – I Am the Way: Mulatto Redemption and the Politics of Identification
• Part III – Immersion: Christian Discipleship; or The New Discipline of the Body
  • Chapter 5 – You Must Be Re-Born: Baptism Mulattic Re-Birth
  • Chapter 6 – The Politics of Presence: Discipleship and Prayer
• Bibliography
• Biography

Read the entire dissertation here.

Race Mixing a Religious Fraud

circa 1930-1960s
8 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc033

D. B. Red, (Author of the pamphlet, A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit)

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; D. B. Red states that God implemented segregation after the flood and enforced it all through the Old Testament. He quotes the Bible to support his belief that segregation of races was ordained by God and that race-mixing is an instrument of the Devil. He also quotes Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to support his view that racial integration is undesirable. Red also contends that religious leaders who support integration have been duped by an influx of Communist rhetoric that seeks to undermine the social structure of the United States.

Race Mixing A Religious Fraud

Race mixing not only disregards the age-long experience of man and constitutional guarantees, but as it is now taught, is a religious fraud. Many religious leaders have asked the Federal Government to reach over the heads of the states into homes to usurp the God-given right and duty of parents to give their children the benefit of the most wholesome surroundings in public schools. Approval is given to Block Busting integration which divides the value of residential property by two or three, and exposes people to all of the annoyance and dangers of slum and crime areas.

The indifference of church leaders to the fate of the victims of race mixing reminds this scribe of the hit and run drivers who never change their ways or look back at their victims. Some are worse than others but all of the larger denominations are pushing us down the Devil’s highway of racial integration and on toward national perdition.

Christ says: “YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN… BEHOLD I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK”, Church and State say: “YOU MUST BE INTEGRATED NOW; BEHOLD A BAYONET IS AT YOUR BACK.”

IS THIS SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, OR IS SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND CHRIST ?

God Introduces Multiple Races and Segregation

While the virgin earth spread her beauty and bounty in all directions, great evils arose among men, who reveled in sin and so vexed the Creator that He almost destroyed mankind. As He again sent man forth with the hope of producing much more righteous conditions, He introduced the multiple race plan. Have age-long results justified the wisdom of God as displayed in this crisis? Or has time justified the wisdom of those who have long ignored this plan and spread a blanket of perpetual blight and mixed races over much of the earth?

Every faculty of man as he was originally created is capable of both good and evil. Frightful evils are entagled with the desire for a happy future existence. Evil also arises from a loyalty to your own kind and an aversion to other kinds. Should we denounce these things and reject the wisdom of the Creator? Or should we seek to better understand His wisdom?

The efforts of religious leaders to lead and force men to accept racial integration are surprising, and become even more so when the communist attitude is known. In 1913, a communist living in England suggested the agitation of the race problem in the United States of America as a trouble-maker. Comrade Lenin said, “We will find our most fertile field for the infiltration of Marxism within the field of religion, because religious people are the most gullible and will accept almost anything if it is couched in religious terminology.” Soon the viper of racial integration was brought forth in robes of righteousness, and religious leaders have abundantly justified this statement of Lenin as to their gullibility. They freely misuse or ignore scripture in efforts to fit scriptural robes on this ancient abomination. It seems safe to assume that if God did err by the introduction of the multiple race plan, He would surely have been able to see it and would have at least relaxed in His demands for the adherence to this plan. The division of the land and the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel both tended to maintain racial divisions. The call of Abraham produced a racial subdivision and rigid segregation was used to preserve it. We find that God has always had to depend on minorities to carry His message. Perhaps He was wisely preparing in advance for this.

God Deals With Mixed People

There were natural and special penalties for integration. The commandments of Moses and Joshua clearly forbade mixing with the descendants of Ham. In strong, figurative language Joshua foretold the frightful price of disobedience- Quote Joshua 23:13: “They shall be snares and traps unto you and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.” In Ezra, chapters 9 and 10, and Nehemiah, chapters 9 through 13, we find that on discovery of mixed marriages a systematic check was made and a considerable number were required to give up their strange wives with any children that they may have had. “Also they separated from Israel all of the mixed multitude.” This was a clear-cut case of a special penalty. Others seem to have suffered a combination of penalties. In Genesis 26: 34-35 we find that Esau first took two Hittite wives “which were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebecca.” In Obadiah 18 we find, “There shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau.” This came to pass centuries ago. Concerning Israel, Hosea said in 7:8-9, “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people . . . Strangers hath devoured his strength and he knoweth it not.”…

…Who Plays the Sucker

In the time of Christ gambling was hoary with age. National bondage and individual slavery were great evils. Neither of these are condemned in the Bible. They are generally conceded to be evil. Race-mixing is not only often and severely condemned in the Bible, but is an age-long and incurable curse of the first magnitude. Of all the millions and billions of people who have borne the curse of blended blood and jumbled humanity, the mixers will only speak of the situation in Hawaii where they are said to have an easy fluid mixture of the races. They fail to note that communist influence has long been strong in the islands and that this fluid situation is a much sought goal of communism, since it facilitates the easy formation of communist cells, and leaves no coherent group to oppose them. Are these mixers as ignorant as they seem, or are they only presuming on the ignorance of others?…

Read the entire pamphlet here.

Interracialism and Contemporary Religion

Oklahoma State University
2007
105 pages
AAT 1443028

Wayne S. White

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science

The purpose of this study was to examine the myths and theories related to interracial couples regard to contemporary religious institutions. This study is an exploratory in Nature and focused primarily on the acceptance of heterosexual biracial (Black/White) couples within a religious setting. The methodology used for the purpose of this study was content analysis of literature that was important to the framing of topic from a historical perspective to the present. Method techniques were also borrowed from social constructionism and labeling theory when analyzing the literature.

The findings of this research project found that religious mythologies and social theories about the nature of interracial marriage among Black/White couples continues to be problematic for religious mixed race couples. These myths and theories are based on the assumption that biracial couples are a threat to a well established White dominant racial hierarchy. Furthermore, the socially constructed image of interracial couples that emerges from these myths and theories become the basis of racist ideology without hard empirical evidence to support these assertions. Nevertheless, the cultural assumption still exist among the general public and within some religious institutions and have real life consequences for some mixed race couples. Thus the social construction of reality is ongoing for some interracial couples. This research is important because it provides insight into human behavior and actions within an institution whose inner workings are often private while outwardly claiming to be accessible to everyone without prejudice.

Table of Contents

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Definition of Terms
  • Purpose of the Study
  • Contribution to Sociology
  • Preview of the Remaining Chapters
• II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Introduction
  • Religion and Racism
  • Contemporary Myths and Theories
  • Summary
• III. THEORETICAL CONCERNS
  • Introduction
  • Discussion of Social Construction
  • Discussion of Contact Theory
  • Summary
• IV. METHODOLOGY
  • Introduction
  • Content Analysis of Literature
  • Sampling Technique
  • Themes and Classifications
• V. FINDINGS
  • Authors’ Approach & Perspectives
  • Religious Opposition to Interracial Relationships
  • Coping Mechanism of Interracial Couples
  • Interracial Congregations as the Answer to Racism
• VI. CONCLUSION
  • Connecting Theory To Findings
  • Limitation of the Study & Future Implications
• REFERENCES

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

• Tables
  1. Chapter and Subheadings Discussing Myths and Theories about Blacks and Interracial Relationships
  2. Authors’ Approach and Perspectives
  3. Participation in Racially Diverse Worship
  4. Methods of Discouraging Interracial Relationships by Religious Leaders
  5. Coping Mechanisms of Interracial Couples
• Figures
  1. Factors Determining Interracial Contact
  2. Mythologies and Theories Found in Texts
  3. Discussion of Race Relations in Society
  4. Whites Not As Accepting of Interracial Dating

INTRODUCTION

Some contemporary Christian leaders use their pulpits to discourage heterosexual interracial relationships while others use their influence to vocalize support for racial intermarriage. A White pastor of a multiracial church in Tulsa, Oklahoma informed his daughter while she was in kindergarten (when he came home and found a little African American boy there), “Hey look we’re friends, we play, we go together in groups but we do not date one another. We don’t mix our races” (Price 2001:32).

The minister in this example based his objection to mixed race relationships on theological grounds, saying interracial marriages are a direct violation of the Word of God (Price 2001:33-34). But he also argued racial intermarriage ought to be opposed by the Black community as a matter of racial pride and on the basis of racial purity. He said,

“There’s only 13% of the population that is your color. If we continue to mix it (there) ain’t going to be none of you left. There ain’t nobody going to be able to say Black is beautiful; they’re going to have to say mixed is beautiful” (Price 2001:38).

What this example illustrates is that segregationist notions about race are constructed from religious ideology. The construction of separatist ideology is an attempt to dictate what constitute legal and illegal sexual contact between Blacks and Whites. Historically the prohibiting of interracial relationships between Blacks and Whites was presented as being for the good of society (Chappell 1998:237-262; Hughey 1987: 23-34).

For example, Kevin Strom (2000)vargues that race mixing is a crime worse than murder. He wrote:

“When you commit murder you kill one man, you end one life: you tragically injure one family and circle of friends. When you commit murder, if your victim has had no children you do cut off the potential existence of one small branch of the (white) race’s future. But when you commit the crime of racial mixing you are participating in genocide.” (Strom 2000:30-31)

Contrary to Strom’s position scholars like Yancey (2002) and Campolo (2005) come to the defense of racial intermarriage. They do not see society being harmed by race mixing nor do they find any theological grounds for opposing interracial marriage. Rather they suggest there are certain scriptures which actually support heterosexual interracial relationships. Yancey (2002) claims that Christ has removed any racial barrier between ethnic groups (Yancey 2002:16-17)2. Campolo cites Galatians 3:283 as another proof text for support of interracial marriages and integrated congregations (Campolo 2005: vii-xi).

This research project is an exploratory work on the role of Christianity and society in the debate on interracial relationships. The purpose of this research is to examine the formal and informal institutional structures and the social practices that either impede or facilitate biracial couples ability to find a welcoming place to worship despite the fact there is no legal basis for opposing interracial marriages. In examining social interaction between religious biracial couples and the religious world, this paper examines the coping mechanisms of mixed race couples and the effectiveness of contact theory in reducing racial prejudice and discrimination. I expect the literature to show that some biracial couples in the face of religious opposition cease their religious practice, while others may continue their search until they find a congregation where they are accepted or experience a measure of tolerance.

The literature will show that through fear of mixed race relationships between Blacks and White’s monochromatic congregations were formed in an effort to prevent interracial relationships and to promote social segregations. This material will also demonstrate the efforts of those Christian leaders who support racial intermarriage as a way of solving racial problems in American society. It will examine the notion that biracial congregations are one way of obtaining racial reconciliation through social contact because they promote inclusiveness (Becker 1998:451-472; Bryan 2000: 25-27; DeYoung 2004:128-147; Dougherty 2003)…

Read the entire dissertation here.

Rebuilding the Tower of Babel

Pelican Publishing Company, New Orleans
1957
24 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc030

Stuart O. Landry

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; In this pamphlet, Landry asserts that integrationists are trying to reunite the races that God separated in the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. He asserts that new anthropological and psychological theories of racial equality are pseudoscientific and backed by Communist interests. Landry cites some Old Testament quotations that he interprets as implying that segregation is ordered by God, and he asserts that race amalgamation will be lead to the downfall of Christianity. He also compares African Americans’ social condition to that of Jews, Italians, Germans, and Irish in order to support his argument that African Americans’ place at the bottom of the United States’ social structure is a result of their lack of effort.

FOREWORD

This is not an attack upon the Church nor a criticism of Christianity. It is not a message of hate or of intolerance. On the contrary, it is a plea for broad-mindness on the part of many Christian groups who are becoming narrow-minded with respect to the ideas and customs of brother Christians.

It is with reluctance that I emphasize the difference—physical, mental and cultural—between white people and colored people. It looks like I am acting the Pharisee, wearing his phylacteries with an air of “better than thou.” But such is not the case.

My enumeration of racial differences is no more invidious than making a comparison between men and women between whom there are many physical and mental differences. I am simply trying to show the disadvantage of race-mixing.

Above all, I am not trying to close the door of opportunity to anyone, or condemn any individual to failure by making him feel inferior. This he can easily disprove. My generalizations apply to large groups. If any man can rise above his environment, more power to him!

S. O. L.

And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech… And they said Let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach into heaven… And the Lord said Let us go down there and confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech… Therefore is the name called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

—Genesis XI: 1-9.

The good church people of the United States want to rebuild the Tower of Babel. They wish to do away with races and the confusion of tongues. Can they climb to heaven on such a structure?

The building of a new tower reaching to high heaven, even if only figurative, transgresses the will of God, who thousands of years ago destroyed the actual attempt and scattered peoples all over the world, and contravenes the laws that govern human nature.

But most church members seem to have forgotten the story of Babel, and today are much concerned over the alleged discrimination against Negroes and other races.

The thought of the times is, let’s desegregate and integrate. Let’s bring together men of all colors, races and countries—we are all brothers under the skin. Let’s go back to Babel.

The movement to do away with all racial segregation in school, church and social life (which eventually means amalgamation of the races and the mongrelization of the white race) has now found favor with all the leading church groups of America…

…The Presbyterian Church is now taking the lead in the “desegregation revolution.” The 168th General Assembly (Presbyterian Church in the U. S.) in May 1956 called for all-out efforts to end segregation in the fields of education, housing and industry. On June 14th, 1956 the Presbyterian Session of New York unanimously approved a resolution commending the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Only recently a Presbyterain minister told the General Assembly of the Church of Ireland that inter-marriage between black and white “on an immense scale” would solve the color problem.

In Connecticut last year a Presbyterian church with a predominantly white congregation called a Negro pastor. What has this great church come to, once the strict interpreter of the Bible, when it now thinks that the Ethiopian can change his skin!…

The “Scum” Origin Of Integration

The idea of racial equality and integration has come up from the lower orders of the social scale. The underworld knows no class. Prize fighting, not exactly the underworld, but not a very cultural institution, was the first sport to “integrate.” Now we find kindly old ladies all over the land watching Negro brutes fighting white brutes on television and glorying in knockouts.

Night clubs, “hot-spots,” and taverns went for racial equality rapidly. Negroes have preempted this form of enlightened entertainment. With sex, obscenity, jazz, rock-and-roll music, the night life of the country is far from being elevating, yet much of it slops over into radio and television to familiarize us all with the idea of non-segregation…

…There is no Commandment against segregation, no prohibition of it in the Bible nor in any of the great canons of moral law. Segregation was not a sin ten years ago, it was not a sin a hundred years ago, it was not a sin a thousand years ago and it is not a sin now. If right and wrong change with the years then the materialistic philosophy of William Graham Sumner is correct—that is, morals vary with the times and in accordance with the culture of peoples. This is the view of Karl Marx and modern communists. Such a view is against the principles of the Christian religion which believes in the Eternal God and absoluteness of truth. Right does not change with the years. It does not become wrong because of the preaching of false prophets, who, from mistaken or ulterior motives, make the welkin ring with their declamations against what they call injustice and immorality.

A Practical Solution

Segregation is a practical working method whereby large numbers of two race?, differing in customs, culture and intelligence, living in the same area, are in constant contact with each other without trouble or dissension. Under the systems employed in countries and states where the population is bi-racial, segregation has worked successfully. In the Southern states of the United States, in spite of the belief to the contrary, Negroes have had all the opportunity the land afforded…

…The Harm Of Racial Mixing

The question is asked that if the Bible is vague on the question of segregation, wouldn’t we resolve the problem more in keeping with Christian brotherhood if we declared it against the policy of the Church? What is the harm of mixing the races together in churches, schools and social affairs?

Well, the harm in the fraternizing and mixing of white and colored people comes in the breaking down of the social inhibition against the intermarriage between whites and Negroes. Race mixing that leads to racial intermarriage is a crime against the future of the white race. To mix the black and white races is bad science, bad eugenics and bad genetics. It is not a matter of Christianity, it is a matter of common sense, a practical matter that affects the future of all our people.

The Church, in advocating integration or the mixing of the races in schools and social affairs, knows that this will lead to eventual amalgamation and the absorption of the Negro race all to the disadvantage of the race that absorbs them.

On the same theory that all men are brothers we will then begin to mix in with the Chinese, East Indians and more Africans. Soon we will have one race of people. I do not understand why the good Christians of this country cannot see that in the event we absorb all the races of the world, or rather that we are absorbed by them since there are twice as many colored people as there are whites, religion as we know it today will disappear. We will have no more Christianity. We will have some kind of blended belief such as advocated by Arnold Toynbee. Back to Babel again.

Not White Supremacy But White Superiority

No plea is made here for the denial of any of the rights to which the citizens of this country are entitled. The right to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness belongs to everyone. There is no suggestion of a limit on the exercise of political rights, the advocating of economical and educational restrictions, or belittling the dignity of the members of any minority group.

My plea is simply that we recognize in a common sense way that there is a difference between the white race and the Negro race, that sensible white people do not want to become too intimate socially with colored people as that only leads to intermarriage and a mongrelization of the Caucasian race…

…How To Have A Superior People

Up until recently eugenists—now graduated into geneticists and now soft-pedalling the theory of superior peoples or races—were pointing out to Americans as well as the world the necessity for more careful mating on the part of individuals, and the desirability of superior persons choosing their wives or husbands from outstanding families. Taking their cue from stock breeders and dog fanciers they believed that the way to bring about the evolution of a highly intelligent and moral people was to mate together people who possessed these qualities. But modern ethnologists, sociologists and even geneticists wish us to disregard the principles employed by practical breeders of cattle, dogs, birds, flowers and plants when it comes to race mixing.

Influenced by propaganda the doctors of these “sciences,” which are still vague and far from exact, are saying in effect that black is white and there are no racial differences that are consequential. They want us to develop into a hybrid or mongrel race…

Read the entire pamphlet here.

Christian view on segregation

Association of Citizens Councils
Winona, Mississippi
1954-11-04
16 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc032

Rev. G. T. Gillepsie, D.D., President Emeritus
Belhaven College, Jackson Mississippi

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; In this pamphlet published by the White Citizens’ Council of Winona, Mississippi, Gillespie states that racial separation is the way to support racial harmony. He says that Soviet Communists are behind the Civil Rights movement, because they want to break down the barriers between races so that racial amalgamation will occur. He contends that school integration will lead to intermarriage, and he cites Biblical and pseudoscientific reasons that segregation must continue. He also quotes Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington.

A reprint of an address made before the Synod of Mississippi of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. on November 4, 1954.

The problem of race relations is not new. It is as old as civilization. Whenever in the history of the race two peoples of significantly different characteristics have come in contact with each other, or have sought to occupy the same area, a problem of race relations has inevitably developed. The closer the contact, and the more nearly the numerical strength of the two groups has approached equality, the more difficult and acute the problem has become.

The problem of racial relations throughout the world today has been greatly accentuated by the rapid development of modern means of communication and transportation, which have brought all the peoples of the world into much closer contact than ever before.

The problem has also been complicated by the worldwide spread of Karl Marx’s doctrine of Internationalism and the Classless society, combined with the vigorous propaganda of Soviet Communism to bring about a world revolution and the breakdown of all national and racial distinctions and to effect the complete amalgamation of all races.

The Anglo-Saxon and English-speaking people have steadfastly opposed and resisted the mixture of their racial stock with that of other peoples, especially where the physical and cultural characteristics were widely dissimilar, and wherever they have gone, around the world, they have consistently instituted and maintained a pattern of segregation which uniformly provided an effective check against the process of amalgamation, and which has preserved the racial integrity of the English-speaking peoples of the world.

The race problem in America arises inherently out of the concentration of large masses of the negro race in areas predominantly Anglo-Saxon in racial type and in culture, and where the principle of racial segregation has been generally upheld by legal, social and moral sanctions.

Comparatively little of the opposition to the principle of segregation has come spontaneously from the pure-blood negroes, or from the masses of the negro population; more strenuous opposition has come from the negroes of mixed blood, who have migrated from the South to Northern cities, and who bitterly resent the tensions and discrimination to which they find themselves and their families subjected in their efforts to secure recognition in Northern communities. It is not without significance, however, that a very considerable part of the violent agitation against segregation stems from sources outside the negro race, and outside of America, and coincides with the worldwide movement for racial amalgamation which has its fountainhead in Moscow.

…In Northern or Western communities, where negroes number usually less than five per cent of the total population, the admission of a few negro children to the public schools does not present any serious problem, and even if an occasional interracial marriage should occur, it would have little appreciable effect upon the cultural pattern or the blood-stream of community life, but in the South, where negroes constitute a large proportion, and in some areas a majority, of the population, the integrated school with its blurring of all racial distinctions presents a serious threat to the whole cultural pattern of community life, and points unmistakably to the gradual but eventual merging of the two distinct racial types into a mulatto race. This is not a baseless and fantastic phobia, but a well grounded and reasoned conviction which determines the attitude of Southern parents, and gives assurance that they cannot and will not acquiesce in a program which means the surrender of the birthright of their children and of generations yet unborn…

…4.  Segregation Does Not Necessarily Involve Discrimination.

Whenever two individuals or groups of widely different physical characteristics are brought into close contact, it is likely or even inevitable that some discrimination should occur, especially where the situations are competitive; but such discrimination is a spontaneous human reaction and cannot be charged against the principle of segregation.

As a matter of fact, segregation, by reducing the number of points of contact, tends to lessen friction and tension, and especially if there is clear recognition on the part of both races that the chief reason for segregation is the desirability of preventing such intimacies as might lead to intermarriage and the amalgamation of the races, then the chief occasion for misunderstanding and discrimination is removed…

Read the entire pamphlet here.