Mixed Race Studies

The Lure of Whiteness and the Politics of “Otherness”: Mexican American Racial Identity

University of Texas, Austin
2004
185 pages

Julie Anne Dowling

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the The University of Texas at Austin In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Using a “constructed ethnicity” (Nagel 1994) approach, this project employs multiple methods to explore the racial identification of Mexican Americans. The U.S. Census has grappled with appropriate strategies for identifying the Mexican-ancestry population for over a century, including the use of a “Mexican” racial category in 1930. I examine historical documents pertaining to the 1930 Census and the development of the “Mexican” racial classification, as well as how Mexican Americans in the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) constructed “White” racial identities in their efforts to resist such racialization. I then explore contemporary Mexican American identity as reflected in current racial self-reporting on the U.S. Census. Finally, I conduct fifty-two in-depth interviews with a strategic sample of Mexican Americans in five Texas cities, investigating how such factors as socioeconomic status, racial composition of neighborhood, proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, social networks, nativity/migration history, Spanish language fluency, physical appearance, and political attitudes affect their racial and ethnic identifications. Results indicate a complex relationship between personal histories and local community constructions of identity that influences racial identification.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• List of Figuresxii
• Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race
• Chapter 2: Modernity and Texas Racial Politics in the Early Twentieth Century, LULAC and the Construction of the White Mexican
• Chapter 3: The “Other” Race of Mexican Americans: Exploring Racial Identification in the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses
• Chapter 4: “Where’s Hispanic?” Mexican American Responses to the Census Race Question
• Chapter 5: What We Call Ourselves Here: Mexican American Racial and Ethnic Labeling in Texas
• Chapter 6: Just An(other) Shade of White? Making Meaning of Mexican American
• Whiteness on the Census.
• Appendix A: Census 1990 Race Question
• Appendix B: Census 2000 Race Question
• Bibliography
• Vita

Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race

Introduction

The roots of this dissertation can be traced to a qualitative study I began as an undergraduate, interviewing persons of “biracial” mixed Mexican-Anglo heritage like myself. During the course of this research that became the basis for my master’s thesis, I discovered that according to the U.S. Census, Latinos are not a racial group. This did not fit my experience growing up in Texas where I found myself torn between two different worlds, one white and one brown.

This disjuncture between government classification and self-identification, between federal definitions and regional definitions of race, is at the heart of my project. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the historical roots of the census classification of Mexican Americans as “White,” and to examine who rejects this classification, identifying as “Other” race. Are there significant differences between these groups? What factors play into how Mexican Americans label themselves? And what are the meanings of these labels?

The most common “other race” response given on the racial identification question of the 1990 U.S. Census was a Hispanic identifier—Hispanic, Latino or a nationality such as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban (U.S. General Accounting Office 1993). While approximately 51% of Mexican Americans in the 1990 census identified as “White” on the racial identity question, an almost equal proportion (47%) identified as “Other.” In 2000, the numbers were similar with 48% of Mexican Americans identifying as “White” and 46% as “Other.” It is clear that a substantial number of Mexican Americans view themselves as a racial group outside of the current census classifications of White, Black, Native American, and Asian American…

Read the entire dissertation here.

An Exploration of Factors Influencing Multiracial/Multiethnic Identity Development: A Qualitative Investigation

University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota
2012-05-12

Anesh S. Patel

A Doctoral Project Presented to the Graduate School of Professional Psychology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology

As of 2000, one in forty Americans identified themselves as multiracial/multiethnic (Lee & Bean, 2004), with 70% of the multiracial/multiethnic population younger than thirty-five years of age (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Population trends predict that the multiracial population will continue to increase, possibly reaching 21% of the population by the year 2050 (Smith & Edmonston, 1997). With the burgeoning number of multiracial/multiethnic individuals in our society, it is important for counseling psychologists to understand the ways in which they identify with race/ethnicity, and how that identification is formed.
 
This qualitative study was designed to explore the lived experiences of a multiracial/multiethnic individual’s life to in order to better understand their process of racial identification/ethnic identification and thus identity for the express purpose of enhancing therapeutic interventions with this population. The way in which experiences were explored was through addressing the following questions: What are the influencing factors on identity development in multiracial/multiethnic individuals? What, if any, implications do these factors have for the practice of psychology when working with mixed race/ethnicity individuals?
 
This study revealed three themes that most strongly influenced identity development in the eight participants. The first theme that arose was influential people as participants highlighted social and family groups that made an impact on participants overall sense of belonging. Secondly, the theme of influential moments arose, which joined together experiences in participant’s lives that made them stop and think specifically about their different races/ethnicities. It could be defined for some as their “eureka moment” in their identity selection process. The final theme that emerged from the eight interviews was influential cultural experiences. This theme ranged from specific college courses taken by individuals to pressure around learning cultural rituals, either way, it was experiences in their lives directly linked to increasing knowledge and understanding of one’s specific culture/racial/ethnic group.

Read the entire project here.

The black experience in postwar Germany

University of Connecticut
Honors Scholar Program
2012-05-06
36 pages

Jamie Christopher Morris

This paper endeavors to find the extent of anti-black racism in various sectors of German society following World War Two through an examination of primary sources and secondary scholarship. While some Germans, often women, tolerated and even loved African-American soldiers, many German men actively sought to keep black GIs out of their communities, encouraged by white GIs. Afro-German children were viewed as a huge and shameful problem to be dealt with en masse by the government. The development of German anti-black racism is interesting to track how the German people shifted from Nazi attitudes towards Americanized ones.

Introduction

In the late 1940s a young and frightened German girl believed that the African-American soldiers marching through her town had tails hidden in their trousers, a rumor that had been told to her by a passing white soldier. A decade later that girl was dating one of those same black GIs, and had in fact approached him first to get his attention. She may have been recalling the fact that it was the black soldiers who had treated her the best as a child, giving her gifts and making sure she was clean, or she may have simply desired an American boyfriend in the hopes that he would lavish her with his comparatively rich lifestyle. The girl’s attitude reflects that of many Germans towards blacks in the late 1940s and 1950s. Public opinion of black soldiers grew locally in the towns that hosted them, driven in no small part by their generosity and kindness compared to that of white GIs, but their exotic appearance and unique American outlook also attracted attention and praise.

Of course there was also some strong resistance to the stationing of black American soldiers in occupied Germany. Vestiges of the National Socialist ideology of racial purity remained in many Germans’ thoughts, if not always in their speech and actions, as well as the traditional prejudice against anything different from themselves that clung still to most Europeans. But because of the intense Nazi focus on race and cleansing, and the uncovering of the Nazi atrocities, Germany was forced into a unique position of having to prove its mended ways; as historian Heide Fehrenbach notes, “The postwar logic of race that emerged in Germany was beholden to an internationally enforced injunction that Germans differentiate their polity and policies from the Nazi predecessor.” Thus over the 1950s the language of “race” all but disappeared in Germany, although prejudices were often just as strong as previously. These hatreds, however, were turned towards the new and highly visible group of racial “others”: blacks.3 Germans maintained a unique outlook towards this new racial group, convincing themselves that they were not racist but proving hostile towards blacks and those who associated with them. An overwhelmingly conservative system of values warred with the Germans’ vehement denial of the feelings of the past to create a uniquely hostile yet also inviting environment for African-Americans…

Read the entire thesis here.

“No more kiyams”: Métis women break the silence of child sexual abuse

University of Victoria,  British Columbia, Canada
2004
146 pages

Lauralyn Houle

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK In the Faculty of Human and Social Development

“No more kiyams” Métis women break the silence of child sexual abuse, is a glimpse into the lives of four M&is women who were raised in an Aboriginal community and who speak to the effects and the obstacles of trying to heal from an abuse that affects not only them, but also their families and communities.

As Métis people, the women in this thesis bring to light, the generational abuses that affect the healing process. They give a picture of how healing is a very personal journey but at the same time a collective process. Rose, Betsy, Angela and Rena provide us with insight into why healing from child sexual abuse needs to address a cultural perspective. Rose became a victim of a respected elderly uncle. Betsy and Angela’s fathers were their abusers. For Rena it was her stepfather, grandfather, and cousins; how does one send all those significant people to jail? In addition, remain a ‘part’ of family and community. The Métis are raised to be very proud and loyal to family and community. We do not heal alone.

This work is about honouring individual strength and gifts in order to heal. It speaks to healing that is not in isolation from identity as a Métis or in isolation from one’s community. This thesis is about acknowledging the strengths of Métis women by giving voice to their stories, their dreams, and their lives.

Read the entire thesis here.

Henry Louis Rey, Spiritualism, and Creoles of Color in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

University of New Orleans
2009-12-20
72 pages

Melissa Daggett

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

This thesis is a biography of Henry Louis Rey (1831-1894), a member of one of New Orleans’ most prominent Creole of Color families. During the Civil War, Rey was a captain in both the Confederate and Union Native Guards. In postbellum years, he served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representative and in appointed city offices. Rey became heavily involved with spiritualism in the 1850s and established séance circles in New Orleans during the early 1870s. The voluminous transcripts of these séance circles have survived into the twenty-first century; however, scholarly use of these sources has been limited because most of the transcripts and all marginal annotations later written by René Grandjean are in French. The author’s translations of the spirit communications through their entire run reveal insight into the spiritual and material realms negotiated by New Orleans Black Creoles as they weathered declining political and economic fortunes.

Read the entire thesis here.

Households and Neighborhoods Among Free People of Color in New Orleans: A View from the Census, 1850-1860

University of New Orleans
2010-05-14
58 pages

Frank Joseph Lovato

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

Historians have debated to what extent the free people of color in New Orleans were members of a wealthy privileged elite or part of a middle or working class in the South’s largest antebellum city. This study steps outside the debate to suggest that analysis of the censuses of 1850 and 1860 shows correlations between neighborhoods, household structures, and occupations that reveal a heterogeneous population that eludes simple definitions. In particular this study focuses on mixed-race households to shed light on this segment of the free colored population that is mostly unstudied and generally misrepresented. This study also finds that immediately prior to the Civil War, mixed-race families, for no easily understood reason, tended to cluster in certain neighborhoods. Mostly this study points out that by the Civil War, the free people of color in New Orleans had evolved into a diverse mostly working class population.

Table of Contents

• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Maps
• List of Census Form
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Origins of the Free People of Color in New Orleans
• Historiography of the Free People of Color in New Orleans
• Methodology Used for Data Gathering
• Economic Role of the Free People of Color in Ante-Bellum New Orleans
• Community Organizations
• Neighborhoods and the Free People of Color
• Free People of Color and the Prelude to the Civil War
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Tables
• Maps
• Census Forms
• Vita

List of Figures

• Figure 1 – 4th Ward Mixed-Race Couple Distribution
• Figure 2 – 5th Ward Mixed-Race Couple Distribution
• Figure 3 – New Orleans Population in 1850 & 1860
• Figure 4 – New Orleans Colored Population in 1850 & 1860
• Figure 5 –Population Density of Colored Males in 1850 & 1860

List of Tables

• Table 1 – 1850 New Orleans Census
• Table 2 – 1860 New Orleans Census
• Table 3 – Population Density for Colored, Mulatto and Blacks in the 1850 New Orleans Census
• Table 4 – Population Density for Colored, Mulatto and Blacks in the 1860 New Orleans Census
• Table 5 – Property Values of the Free People of Color in 1850 New Orleans
• Table 6 – Property Values of the Free People of Color in 1860 New Orleans

List of Maps

• MUNICIPALITIES and WARDS 1847
• WARDS 1852
• Neighborhoods in New Orleans

List of Census Forms

• Title Page 1st and 4th Wards (1st Municipality)
• 1st Ward, 1st Municipality – 1850
• 9th Wards -1860

Read the entire thesis here.

Mothers and Their Biracial Children: Growing Up Biracial in a One Race Fits All Society

Cedarville University, Cedarville, Ohio
November 2009
86 pages

Kristin Felts-Keller

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Education

This thesis is a qualitative study on the Mothers of biracial children and the formation of a biracial identity in a one race fits all society. The goal of this study was to gain a deeper understanding and explore the concerns mothers of biracial children hold for their children. It is not intended to be applied to the general population but it does however, give us an insight into what it means to be biracial, how it is perceived as a race and how the Mothers of these children teach their children to cope with their race and form a positive sense of self-identity.

Read the entire thesis here.

Reconstructing Molly Welsh: Race, Memory and the Story of Benjamin Banneker’s Grandmother

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
September 2008
194 pages

Sandra W. Perot

Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of History

Molly Welsh, oral tradition captured in the nineteenth century tells us, was a white Englishwoman who worked as an indentured servant. The same tradition has it that she owned slaves, although she is said to have married (or formed a union with) one of them. I aim not only to recover the life of Molly Welsh Banneker, but also to consider its various tellings—probing in particular at Molly’s shifting racial status. By examining a multiplicity of social and cultural aspects of life for seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Maryland women, I test whether these various narratives are even possible or plausible reconstructions of the Molly Welsh story. My project thus sheds light on the woman Molly Welsh was, how her story was constructed, what factors contributed to the retelling of her story, and why and at what point various narratives deviate from each other. By comparing the various Molly Welsh/Benjamin Banneker narratives it is possible to uncover or at least posit the most reliable narrative, while at the same time coming to a greater understanding of how such historically undocumented stories are constructed and what part memory plays in their reconstruction. An extensive bias informs many of these narratives, shaped by the various “memories” generated by family loyalty, by the growing tensions between the North and the South over slavery, by Reconstruction, and by new standards in historical accuracy that appeared with the founding of the American Historical Association in 1884.
 
While Molly Welsh may appear to be a near-silent character in her grandson Benjamin Banneker’s story, it is possible that new discoveries will be made that further verify (or refute) the long-standing tradition that Molly Welsh was a white English dairymaid transported to Maryland and that she married one of her own slaves by whom she had four daughters. Recent interest in new ways of approaching history, a greater acceptance of oral traditions as an important historical source, and a renewed appreciation for exploring stories of the untold masses, including women and minorities, may someday locate Molly’s voice and allow her to speak for herself. The chances of uncovering Molly Welsh’s story through documentary sources has improved with the recent emergence of powerful databases and electronic search tools have made many things possible that once were not (ancestry.com, the Old Bailey records for example). And then, perhaps Molly might come to represent other seventeenth-century women who married or had children with African men, like Eleanor Atkins who had a “Molattoe” child and who subsequently received twenty-four lashes for her crime, Elizabeth Day who admitted before the court that she had an illegitimate “Malatto” child by a “Negro man named Quasey belonging to her master,” or Eleanor Price who pleaded guilty to “Fornication with a Negro Man named Peter Belonging to Mr. John Walker,” received twenty-one lashes, and whose child, Jeremiah, was bound out until the age of twenty-one. Through their stories we might come to accept that one of the few choices these women had may have been with whom they had a child, though even this is subject to question. Regardless, Molly Welsh’s story is one that does not appear to stand alone. Through her we might see how women survived their indentures and prospered, or managed at the very least to endure life in Maryland, women whose lives until now never managed to become a footnote in anyone’s biography.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION: LOCATING MOLLY WELSH: MEMORY AND MYTH IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MARYLAND
• I THE DAIRYMAID AND THE PRINCE
• II “OF THE DEEPEST DYE”: EARLY NARRATIVES
• III “A REMARKABLY FAIR COMPLEXION”: THE EMERGENCE OF MOLLY WELSH
• IV “ACT WELL YOUR PART, THERE ALL THE HONOR LIES”: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MOLLY WELSH’S CHARACTER
• V “THE TALE AS IT WAS TOLD FOR A HUNDRED YEARS ON THE RIDGE”: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCHOLARS REVITALIZE MOLLY’S STORY
• VI “TRUE NOBILITY’S CONFINED TO NONE”: MOLLY IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY
• VII “BUT WHAT ARE COLOURS? DO COMPLEXIONS CHANGE?” TWENTYFIRST CENTURY PERSPECTIVES ON MOLLY WELSH.114
• VIII EPILOGUE
• APPENDICES
  • I CHRONOLOGY OF PRINT CONCERNING ANCESTRY OF BENJAMIN BANNEKER
  • II BANNEKER FAMILY TREE
  • III INTERNET RESPONSES TO MOLLY WELSH
  • IV MARYLAND LAWS DIRECTLY PERTAINING TO SLAVERY, RACE, INDENTURED SERVITUDE, WOMEN, AND MARRIAGE IN SEVENTEENTH- AND EARLY-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MARYLAND
  • V 1685 INDENTURE
  • VI A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TRANSPORTATION RECORDS
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the entire thesis here.

A British Ireland, or the limits of race and hybridity in Maria Edgeworth’s novels

Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
2009-09-21
73 pages

Kimberly Philomen Clarke

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English

Ireland was united with Wales, Scotland, and England in 1801. However, separated by distance, religion, British prejudice, and Ireland’s colonial status, Ireland was excluded from identifying with the British. Anglo-Irish author Maria Edgeworth actively works against this image of Irish subjection as she displaces Irish colonial otherness on to Creole, West Indian, and Africanist character associated with black imagery. Instead of making Ireland a metaphor for Anglo-colonial relations, Edgeworth positions the Creole and black characters as a colonial figures who cannot satisfactorily become British.

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE
  • HYBRIDITY AND EXTERNAL DIFFERENCES IN BRITAIN: THE MONSTEROUS HYBRIDISM OF THE EAST AND WEST
  • RACIAL HYBRIDITY AND INTERNAL DIFFERENCES
  • MARIA EDGEWORTH’S APPROACH TO IRISH IDENTITY AND BRITISH HYBRIDITY
  • MULTIPLICITY IN THE ABSENTEE, ORMOND, AND ENNUI
  • LIMITATIONS OF EDGEWORTH’S BRITISH HYBRIDITY
• CHAPTER TWO
  • RACIAL AND AFRICANIST ATTITUDES TOWARD THE IRISH
  • AFRICANISM AND IRISH LITERARY BLACKNESS IN EDGEWORTH’S ENNUI
  • BELINDA AND THE EXCLUSION OF BLACK HYBRIDITY
• CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

Hybridity, a blending or cross-breeding of cultures, elements or race, defines the twenty-first century, and not simply through hybrid technology in the types of cars we drive. Most notably, in November 2008, the United States elected its first biracial president who has become a conspicuous symbol of America’s growing multicultural and multiracial society. This prevalence of racial and cultural hybridity in Western society symbolizes a desire for this diversity even while it catalyzes existing fears of such multiracial mingling. These are not new fears, nor are they present only in American society. This uneasy relationship with racial hybridity appears in the nineteenth-century literature of Anglo-Irish author Maria Edgeworth in her exploration and analysis of whiteness and Irish cultural and racial identity in Britain.

The similarities between twenty-first century and nineteenth-century attitudes about hybridity elucidate Edgeworth’s racial politics and the continued relevancy of racial identity – both its fixity and fluidity – in the construction of a national identity. Her novels reflect her desire to legitimize and resolve her Anglo-Irish identity (her loyalty to England and her emotional ties to Ireland) as well as her struggle to define British racial and cultural makeup at a time when Britain’s literary voice and national complexion became more diverse from within and from influences beyond its own borders.

My understanding of Edgeworth’s novels and her approach to race in Britain has been influenced by my understanding of the relationship between the Irish-American and African-American communities in the United States in the nineteenth century. As Noel Ignatiev explains in his 1995 How the Irish Became White, Irish immigrants and African-Americans were grouped together as part of America’s working and poverty classes during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they competed against each other for employment and fought the political system and each other in order to gain citizenship and acceptance in the States. Edgeworth depicts the relationship between the Irish and Afro-Caribbean community in a similar way, even if it existed on smaller scale in Britain. Historically, these groups were seen as racial outsiders who threatened hegemonic white identity in America and Great Britain. While the popularity of such modern-day figures as Tiger Woods or Barack Obama show Western society’s willingness to embrace multiracial identity, Edgeworth’s attempts to integrate Ireland into Great Britain’s social, religious, and racial consciousness reveal nineteenth-century efforts and shortcomings in tackling issues of racial hybridity that existed two centuries ago and still survive today.

Being Irish in nineteenth-century Britain was an othered cultural and racial identity that destabilized the illusion of British whiteness. The negative stereotypes of poverty-stricken, uneducated, rebellious Irish Catholic outsiders conjured fears that an Irish presence would muddy the image of pure-blooded whiteness. Despite her gestures in embracing the singularity of Irish culture as part of Britain’s diverse society, Edgeworth exhibits her ambivalence toward hybridity by limiting Irish identity and implicitly policing British racial identity…

Read the entire dissertation here.

Biological Distance and the African American Dentition

Ohio State University
2002
229 pages

Heather Joy Hecht Edgar

A DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Gene flow occurs whenever two human populations come in contact. African Americans are the result of gene flow between two biologically disparate groups: West Africans and Americans of European descent. This project utilized characteristics of dental morphology to trace genetic relationships among these three groups. Dental morphological traits are useful for this purpose because they are heritable, do not remodel during life (although they can be lost to wear or pathology), and can be compared equally among samples from past and present populations. The results of this research provide new knowledge about human microevolution in a biocultural setting. By analyzing observations from a variety of samples from African Americans, European Americans, West Africans, and western Europeans, conclusions were made on patterns of genetic change through time and space.

The specific hypothesis addressed is that since gene flow has been continuous among West Africans, African Americans, and European Americans in the American colonies and subsequently in the United States, the more recent a sample of African Americans observed, the more they tend toward the average, genetically, of West Africans and Europeans. Dental characteristics reflect this heritage and the pattern of temporally limited genetic similarities. In addition to testing this hypothesis, several predictions were made and tested regarding the historical patterns of admixture in African Americans. These predictions involved whether gene flow has occurred at a constant rate, whether African Americans with greater admixture were more likely to take part in the Great Migration, and whether the dental morphology of the Gullah of South Carolina is especially like their West African ancestors.

The results of this research indicate that while admixture of European American genes into the African American gene pool has been continuous over the last 350 years, it has not occurred at a constant rate. Cultural trends and historical events such as the Civil War and the Jim Crow era affected the rate of admixture. A final product of the current research is a series of probability tables that can be used to determine the likely racial affiliation of an unknown individual. These tables are useful in historic archaeological and forensic settings.

Read the entire dissertation here.