Mixed Race Studies

Kaa-tipeyimishoyaahk – ‘We are those who own ourselves’: A Political History of Métis Self-Determination in the North-West, 1830-1870

University of Victoria, British Columbia
2014
394 pages

Adam James Patrick Gaudry

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Indigenous Governance

This dissertation offers an analysis of the history of Métis political thought in the nineteenth century and its role in the anti-colonial resistances to Canada’s and Hudson’s Bay Company governance. Utilizing the Michif concepts of kaa-tipeyimishoyaahk and wahkohtowin to shed light on Métis political practices, this work argues that the Métis people had established themselves as an independent Indigenous people in the nineteenth century North West. By use of a common language of prairie diplomacy, Métis had situated themselves as a close “relation” of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but still politically independent of it. Nineteenth century Métis had repeatedly demonstrated their independence from British institutions of justice and politics, and were equally insistent that Canadian institutions had no authority over them. When they did choose to form a diplomatic relationship with Canada, it was decidedly on Métis terms. In 1869-1870, after repelling a Canadian official who was intended to establish Canadian authority over the North-West, the Métis formed a provisional government with their Halfbreed cousins to enter into negotiations with Canada to establish a confederal treaty relationship. The Provisional Government of Assiniboia then sent delegates to Ottawa to negotiate “the Manitoba Treaty,” a bilateral constitutional document that created a new province of Manitoba, that would contain a Métis/Halfbreed majority, as well as very specific territorial, political, social, cultural, and economic protections that would safeguard the Métis and Halfbreed controlled future of Manitoba. This agreement was embodied only partially in the oft-cited Manitoba Act, as several key elements of the agreement were oral negotiations that were later to be institutionalized by the Canadian cabinet, although were only ever partially implemented. These protections included restrictions on the sale of the 1.4 million acre Métis/Halfbreed land reserve, a commitment to establish a Métis/Halfbreed controlled upper-house in the new Manitoba legislature, a temporary limitation of the franchise to current residents of the North West, and restrictions on Canadian immigration to the new province until Métis lands were properly distributed. While these key components of the Manitoba Treaty were not included in the Manitoba Act, they remain a binding part of the agreement, and thus, an unfulfilled obligation borne by the contemporary government of Canada. Without adhering to Canada’s treaty with the Métis people, its presence on Métis lands, and jurisdiction over Métis people is highly suspect. Only by returning to the original agreement embodied by the Manitoba Act can Canada claim any legitimacy on Métis territories or any functional political relationship with the Métis people.

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Beyond “Code-switching:” The Racial Capital of Black/White Biracial Americans

University of Connecticut
2013
170 pages

Chandra D. L. Waring

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Social science has examined the experiences of the burgeoning bi/multiracial population within the scope of three core areas: racial identity (Funderburg 1994; Kilson 2001; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2008; Renn 2004; Root 1996), social psychological well-being (Bracey et al. 2004; Campbell and Eggerling-Boek 2006; Cheng and Lively 2010; Binning et al. 2009) and family racial socialization (DaCosta 2007; Dalmage 2000; Samuels 2009; Socha and Diggs 1999; Twine 2010). In my dissertation, I shift the theoretical focus from identity and well-being to the conceptual development of how race—embedded with assumptions, understandings and histories—shapes bi/multiracial Americans’ everyday social interactions with white and black Americans. Through 60 in-depth, semi-structured, life story interviews, I found that the majority of my participants reported interacting differently during encounters with whites and blacks or when in predominately white settings versus predominately black settings as a means to establish racial in-group membership. In an effort to analyze these interactional patterns, I offer the concept of “racial capital” to call attention to the repertoire of racial resources (i.e. knowledge, experiences, meaning and language) that biracial Americans draw upon to negotiate racial boundaries in a highly racialized society. While past research on bi/multiracials has created conceptual frameworks for racial identity trends as well as social psychological development, these studies have not systematically considered how everyday interactions unfold, and how bi/multiracials draw upon a unique racialized “tool kit” (Swidler 1986) to work within and around racial boundaries. Furthermore, while racism scholars have discussed the negotiation of racial boundaries for other populations that do not neatly fit into racial categories, such as second generation South Asian Americans (Purkayastha 2005), these processes have not been systematically addressed in the bi/multiracial population. Through the narratives of my respondents, I fill this gap in the literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Study Biracials?
• Chapter 2: Methodological Considerations
• Chapter 3: Made in America: Interracial Sexuality and Bi/multiracial Children
• Chapter 4: Race and Resemblance: Exploring Relationships in Multiracial Families
• Chapter 5: “It’s Like We Have an ‘In’ Already:” The Racial Capital of Biracial Americans
• Chapter 6: “I’m a Different Kind of Biracial:” Biracial Americans with Immigrant Parents Negotiate Race in the United States
• Chapter 7: “I’m Exotic and That Intrigues Them:” Gender, Sexuality and the Racially Ambiguous Body
• Chapter 8: Conclusions, Implications and Suggestions
• Appendix: Interview Guide
• References

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The racial identity of the offspring of Latino intermarriage: A case of racial identity and census categories

Fordham University, Bronx, New York
May 2013
241 pages

Michael Hajime Miyawaki

Since 1970, rates of Latino intermarriage and the number of “part-Latinos” have been on the rise in the United States. Among newlyweds, Latino/non-Latino couples account for over 40 percent of all mixed marriages. In places like California, part-Latinos already make up more than two thirds of mixed heritage births. Despite these demographic trends, part-Latinos remain an understudied population. In my dissertation, I examine the racial identity of the offspring of Latino/non-Latino white, black, and Asian intermarriages. To investigate part-Latino racial identity, I rely on multiple measures of race using quantitative and qualitative research methods. First, I look at how Latino/non-Latino couples racially classify their children using data from the 2008-2010 American Community Survey (ACS). Second, I use the same dataset to analyze how part-Latino adults racially report themselves. Third, for an in-depth analysis of racial identity, I interview 50 part-Latinos from the New York metropolitan area, focusing on the meanings that they attribute to their racial responses in the 2010 Census and their “lived racial identity” experience. Findings from the ACS indicate that the majority of Latino/non-Latino white and black children are classified by their parents as “white” and “black,” respectively, whereas most Latino/non-Latino Asian children are given a “multiracial” classification. Similar patterns in racial reporting in the ACS are found among part-Latino adults. While these findings suggest that part-Latinos racially identify as white, black, and even multiracial, interviews with part-Latinos reveal that their racial responses in the Census do not always correspond with their racial identity. Many feel constrained by question format because Hispanic origins are not included in the race question. If given a “Latino” option, the majority of my respondents would report being Latino and white, black, or Asian. Overall, most part-Latino respondents racially identify as “mixed,” particularly among Latino/non-Latino blacks and Asians. For some, their racial identity has changed over time and across situations. Lastly, their experience being classified by others are influenced by not only by their physical appearance and ethnic markers (e.g., name), but also vary by region (e.g., California vs. New York). These findings point to the complexity of part-Latino racial identity.

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Racial Malleability and Authenticity in Multiracial Well-Being

University of Miami
134 pages
May 2014

Lauren E. Smith

A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Miami in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

After relatively stable rates of interracial marriage, the numbers of unions across race markedly increased over the past decade, with the number of mixed race babies also increasing. This growing shift in our population is known as the “Biracial Baby Boom” (Bratter, 2007), however, research is lagging with regard to the lived experience and its relationship to psychological well-being of this significant part of our population. Previous research found that greater malleability of one’s racial identity is related to decreased psychological well-being (Sanchez, Shih & Garcia, 2009). However, other research, related to self-concept, suggested that authentic self-complexity, more complex cognitive representations of the self, can serve as a buffer against daily stress (Ryan, LaGuardia & Rawsthorne, 2005). The construct of racial malleability, shifting expressions of racial identity in a given context, has been grounded in self-concept literature supporting the importance of stability in how one sees oneself. Though similar, research on self-complexity reinforces the protective quality of organizing self-knowledge in terms of a greater number of authentic self-aspects. Differences in outcomes for these similar yet related concepts may be due to the representations of racial self-aspects based on the kinds of contextual experiences. Specifically, one’s ability to incorporate multiple aspects of identity may be compromised in the face of questioning by others or one’s sense of authenticity. Thus, the association between malleable identity and outcomes is dependent on contextual experiences. This study explored the ways in which identity experiences and authenticity influence the relationship between racial malleability and psychological well-being for 149 multiracial adults surveyed via the internet. Psychological well-being was defined by measures of perceived stress and life satisfaction. Findings suggest that racial malleability positively relates to life satisfaction. Additionally, the relationship between racial malleability and perceived stress is moderated by experiences of identity questioning. Regarding authenticity, self-alienation as a measure of authenticity played a significant role in multiracial well-being. Implications for these relationships are discussed regarding therapy and research with multiracial individuals.

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The Life And Times Of Adella Hunt Logan: Educator, Mother, Wife, And Suffragist, 1863-1915

Florida State University
November 2012

Daria Willis

Adella Hunt Logan was a woman trapped between two worlds. She was a mulatto who suffered from the pressures and injustices of Jim Crow America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The impact of Adella Logan’s life is seen beginning in 1883 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She maintained a large family while making a lasting impact on the Tuskegee community, as well as the women’s suffrage movement. Adella often led a life full of contradictions that can be attributed to her social status as well as her mixed racial heritage. Nonetheless, her efforts at advancing the cause of lower-class blacks and the students and teachers at Tuskegee Institute cannot be denied. This study discusses Adella Logan in terms of race, class, and gender. It is the story of an African American woman, an unusual American family, and the world she lived in.

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(Re)mapping the Borderlands of Blackness: Afro-Mexican Consciousness and the Politics of Culture

Duke University
2013
233 pages

Talia Weltman-Cisneros

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

The dominant cartography of post-Revolutionary Mexico has relied upon strategic constructions of a unified and homogenized national and cultural consciousness (mexicanidad), in order to invent and map a coherent image of imagined community. These strategic boundaries of mexicanidad have also relied upon the mapping of specific codes of being and belonging onto the Mexican geo-body. I argue that these codes have been intimately linked to the discourse of mestizaje, which, in its articulation and operation, has been fashioned as a cosmic tool with which to dissolve and solve the ethno-racial and social divisions following the Revolution, and to usher a unified mestizo nation onto a trajectory towards modernity.

However, despite its rhetoric of salvation and seemingly race-less/positivistic articulation, the discourse of mestizaje has propagated an uneven configuration of mexicanidad in which the belonging of certain elements have been coded as inferior, primitive, problematic, and invisible. More precisely, in the case of Mexicans of African descent, this segment of the population has also been silenced and dis-placed from this dominant cartography.

This dissertation examines the coding of blackness and its relationship with mexicanidad in specific sites and spaces of knowledge production and cultural production in the contemporary era. I first present an analysis of this production immediately in the period following the Revolution, especially from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, a period labeled as the “cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution.” This time period was strategic in manufacturing and disseminating a precise politics of culture that was used to reflect this dominant configuration and cartography of mexicanidad. That is, the knowledge and culture produced during this time imbedded and displayed codes of being and belonging, which resonated State projects and narratives that were used to define and secure the boundaries of a unified, mestizo imaginary of mexicanidad. And, it is within this context that I suggest that blackness has been framed as invisible, problematic, and foreign. For example, cultural texts such as film and comics have served as sites that have facilitated the production and reflection of this uneasy relationship between blackness and mexicanidad. Moreover, this strained and estranged relationship has been further sustained by the nationalization and institutionalization of knowledge and culture related to the black presence and history in Mexico. From the foundational text La raza cósmica, written in 1925 by José Vasconcelos, to highly influential corpuses produced by Mexican anthropologists during this post-Revolutionary period, the production of knowledge and the production of culture have been intimately tied together within an uneven structure of power that has formalized racialized frames of reference and operated on a logic of coloniality. As a result, today it is common to be met with the notion that “no hay negros en México” (there are no blacks in Mexico).

Yet, on the contrary, contemporary Afro-Mexican artists and community organizations within the Costa Chica region have been engaging a different cultural politics that has been serving as a tool of place-making and as a decolonization of codes of being and belonging. In this regard, I present an analysis of contemporary Afro-Mexican cultural production, specifically visual arts and radio, that present a counter-cartography of the relationship between blackness and mexicanidad. More specifically, in their engagement of the discourse of cimarronaje (maroonage), I propose that these sites of cultural production also challenge, re-think, re-imagine, and re-configure this relationship. I also suggest that this is an alternative discourse of cimarronaje that functions as a decolonial project in terms of the reification and re-articulation of afromexicanidad (Afro-Mexican-ness) as a dynamic and pluri-versal construction of being and belonging. And, thus, in their link to community programs and social action initiatives, this contemporary cultural production also strives to combat the historical silence, dis-placement, and discrimination of the Afro-Mexican presence in and contributions to the nation. In turn, this dissertation offers an intervention in the making of and the relationships between race, space and place, and presents an interrogation of the geo-politics and bio-politics of being and belonging in contemporary Mexico.

Contents

• Abstract
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Mapping Blackness Elsewhere: Mestizaje, Anthropology, and the Coloniality of Knowledge
  • 1.1 Mestizaje and the Mapping of Blackness Beyond the Borders of Modern Mexicanidad
  • 1.2 Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran: The Production of Knowledge and the Anthropological (Dis)placement of Blackness in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
  • 1.3 Recuerdos del Jarocho: The Museumification of Blackness
  • 1.4 The Coloniality of Knowledge and the Dis-placement of Blackness
• Chapter Two: Forjando Patria: Framing and Performing Blackness in the “Golden Age” of Mexican Culture
  • 2.1 Memin Pinguin: Dis-locating Blackness
  • 2.2 Angelitos negros: Absorbing Blackness and Saving the National Family
  • 2.3 Al son del mambo: Discovering and Modernizing the Primitive Place of Blackness
  • 2.4 On Framing Blackness and Popular Culture as a Racialized Regime of Representation
• Chapter Three; Cimarronaje Cultural: Towards a Counter-Cartography of Blackness and Belonging in Mexico
  • 3.1 Articulating the Place of Blackness in the Costa Chica
  • 3.2 Understanding Cimarronaje Cultural as a Counter-Cartography of Blackness and as a Place-Making Narrative
  • 3.3 Cimarronaje Cultural: Towards a Counter-Cartography of Blackness
    • 3.3.1 El Centro Cultural Cimarron
    • 3.3.2 Naufragio and the Work of Aydée Rodriguez Lopez
    • 3.3.3 Cimarron: La Voz de los Afromestizos
  • 3.4 Conclusions: Cimarronaje as a Decolonial Project
• Chapter Four: Towards a Re-mapping of Blackness and Belonging in Mexico
  • 4.1 México Negro and the Encuentro de los Pueblos Negros: From Pluri-versal Networks to Social and Political Action
  • 4.2 Nomenclature, Identity in Politics, and the Re-thinking of Afro-Mexican Consciousness
• Conclusions
• Figures One-Six
• Bibliography
• Biography

LIST OF FIGURES

• Figure 1: Mural Painting, Centro Cultural Cimarrón
• Figure 2: Mural Painting, Centro Cultural Cimarrón
• Figure 3: Mural Painting, Centro Cultural Cimarrón
• Figure 4: Naufragio, Aydée Rodriguez Lopez
• Figure 5: Naufragio, Aydée Rodriguez Lopez
• Figure 6: Naufragio, Aydée Rodriguez Lopez

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Home is Where the Hurt Is: Racial Socialization, Stigma, and Well-Being in Afro-Brazilian Families

Duke University
2012
228 pages

Elizabeth Hordge Freeman

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

This dissertation examines racial socialization in Afro-Brazilian families in order to understand how phenotypically diverse families negotiate racial hierarchies and ideologies of white supremacy. As an inductive, qualitative project, this research is based on over fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in fifteen poor and working-class Bahian families and 116 semi-structured interviews with family members and informants. Findings suggest that one of the most prominent features of racial socialization is the pervasive devaluation of black/African influences, which is conveyed through implicit and explicit messages as well as concrete practices (including rituals) that promote the stigmatization of negatively valued racialized physical features. The study reveals a pattern of unequal distribution of affection based on racial appearance (phenotype), which is evident in parent-child, sibling, extended family, and romantic relationships. Findings suggest that negative appraisals of racial phenotype may significantly compromise affective bonds in families and have social psychological consequences impacting self-esteem and sense of belonging, while also eliciting suicidal ideations and anxieties. These outcomes are most pronounced for Afro-Brazilian females. Racial socialization also conveys the “strategically ambiguous” logic of color and racial classification, uncritically exposes family members to racist messages, jokes, and stereotypical images of Afro-Brazilians, and encourages cultural participation that superficially valorizes Afro-Brazilian culture and fosters nationalism, rather than racial identity. In contrast to traditional findings of racial socialization in the U.S., messages valorizing racial heritage are rare and efforts to prepare family members for bias rely on universal terms. Families do employ counter-discourses and creative strategies of resistance; and so, racial socialization is characterized by practices that reflect both resistance and accommodation to racial hierarchies. I conclude that racial socialization in families is influenced by and sustains racialization processes that maintain the broader system of white supremacy. Contrary to how racial socialization has been framed as having a purely protective role in families, this study illustrates how it may disadvantage blacks vis-à-vis whites and uniquely stigmatizes the most “black-looking” family members vis-à-vis those who more closely approximate an idealized (whiter) somatic norm. Future studies should triangulate data on racial socialization from other regions of the Americas.

Contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 “The Face of A Slave”
  • 1.2 Background
  • 1.3 Case Selection
    • 1.3.1 Community Site
  • 1.4 Data and Methods
  • 1.5 Methodology
  • 1.6 “Second Sight” or Double Vision? My Subjectivity in the Field
  • 1.7 Organization of the Dissertation
• 2. Literature Review
  • 2.1 Crafting a Social Order: Race and Racialization
    • 2.1.1 Towards a Phenotypic Continuum
  • 2.2 Blinded by the White: Whitening and Racial Socialization in Families
    • 2.2.1 Studying Families in the U.S. and Brazil
    • 2.2.2 Mothering in Families
  • 2.3 The Stigmatized Body and Well Being
  • 2.4 The Family Systems Paradigm and Emotions
  • 2.5 Conceptual Framework
  • 2.6 Theoretical Framework
  • 2.7 The Racial Rubik: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
• 3. “All in the Family”: Implicit and Explicit Racial Socialization
  • 3.1 Chapter Preface
  • 3.2 “Strategic Ambiguity” and Color Inconsistencies
    • 3.2.1 Family Interventions in Racial Classification
    • 3.2.2 Will the real white person please stand up?
    • 3.2.3 There are no whites, We are all black!
  • 3.3 Race and Space
    • 3.3.1 Todo no seu Lugar – Everything in its Place
  • 3.4 “Explicit Socialization Messages?.
    • 3.4.1 Educação é Salvação: Education is Salvation
    • 3.4.2 Reading Bodies, Not Books
  • 3.5 Racially (Mixed Messages) and Quotas
  • 3.6 What is racism?
  • 3.7 Media and Culture
    • 3.7.1 Novelas
    • 3.7.2 Re-Telling National Tales
  • 3.8 Conclusion
• 4. What’s Love Got to Do With It? : The Stigma of Racialized Features, Affect, and Socialization in Families
  • 4.1 Context
  • 4.2 The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Mother-Child Relationships
  • 4.2.1 Harbingers of Racial Socialization: Babies
  • 4.3 Like a Good Neighbor
  • 4.4 Mama’s Baby is Daddy’s Maybe
  • 4.5 Racial Roulette and Sibling Rivalry
  • 4.6 She’s just my (pheno)Type: Romantic Love
    • 4.6.1 Race and Romance
  • 4.7 Discussion
• 5. Black and “Blue”: Racial Stigma and Well being
  • 5.1 Incog-negro: Abandoning Blackness
  • 5.2 When Racial Roulette is Violent
  • 5.3 Depression, Trust, and Trauma
  • 5.4 Pretty Please?! Beauty and Self-Esteem
  • 5.5 We (Don’t) Belong Together
  • 5.6 Discussion
• 6. Pigments of the Imagination: Beauty, Body, and Racialization
  • 6.1 The Bodies Exhibit
  • 6.2 Hands, Feet, and Ears, Oh My!
  • 6.3 Hair-itage
    • 6.3.1 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
  • 6.4 The Roots of Resistance: Afro-Aesthetics
    • 6.4.1 Hide My Roots! Afro-Aesthetics and Cultural Movements at Home
  • 6.5 Discussion
• 7. “Where There is Power, There is Also Resistance
  • 7.1 Nascimento Family Values
    • 7.1.1 Racial Names.
    • 7.1.2 Race and Privilege
    • 7.1.3 Beauty
    • 7.1.4 Racial History
    • 7.1.5 Internalized Racism
  • 7.2 The Santos Family
    • 7.2.1 Racial Rituals
  • 7.3 The de Jesus Family: The Brazilian Black Panthers
    • 7.3.1 Brief Life History of Pantera Negra
    • 7.3.2 Explicit Socialization
  • 7.4 Discussion
• 8. Conclusion – The Ties That Bind
  • 8.1 Limitations and Future Directions
  • 8.2 Conclusions
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• References
• Bibliography

List of Tables

• Table 1: Color Categorization by Percentage
• Table 2: Summary of the color terms used in interviews and observations
• Table 3: Summary of responses to the question: What is your race?
• Table 4: List of all color or racial nicknames used by informants

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Racial identity development of mixed race college students

Clemson University
2012
216 pages

Helen Diamond Steele

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence mixed race college students’ choice of racial identity. This study also explored whether or not there are any differences among each of the racial identity groups’ perceptions of institutional support for mixed race college students. The theoretical framework of this study was formed by Chickering’s Theory of Psychosocial Identity Development, Wijeyesinghe’s Factor Model of Multiracial Identity, and Renn’s Patterns of Multiracial Identity. The eight research questions that guided this study addressed hypothesized factors that may have a relationship with a mixed race student’s racial identity and students’ perceptions of institutional support for mixed race students. The sample included traditional age college students (18-24 at the time of the survey) who are mixed race (which is defined as having biological parents belonging to different racial groups) and enrolled as full-time students (registered for twelve or more credits) at an institution that was a member of the University System of Georgia. This study employed a survey instrument that included 63 multiple-choice and Likert scale questions and was divided into six sections: (a) racial ancestry, (b) racial identity, (c) physical appearance, (d) cultural attachment, (e) other social identities, and (f) institutional characteristics. The following quantitative methods were employed to analyze the collected data: (a) descriptive statistics, (b) Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test, (c) analysis of variance, (d) multinomial logistic regression, and (e) factor analysis. Implications for future research, policy, and practice are included. Keywords: mixed race, racial identity development.

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“The Quiltings of Human Flesh”—Constructions of Racial Hybridity in Contemporary African-Canadian Literature

University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
2010-05-02
366 pages

Heike Bast

Dissertation to obtain the academic degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Division of the Humanities, University of Greifswald

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ‘RACE’ MATTERS’: A PERSONAL NOTE ON BELONGING
• 1. INTRODUCTION: ‘SOLE OR WHOLE’ – QUILTING THE RACIALIZED SUBJECT
• 2. SIGNIFYING THE IN-BETWEEN: ‘RACE’, ‘RACIAL HYBRIDITY’ AND QUESTIONS OF BELONGING
  • 2.1. The Language of ‘Race’ – Notes on Terminology
  • 2.2. Identities in Flux: Discourses on ‘Race’ and Subjectivity
    • 2.2.1 ‘Race Theory’ – a Brief Historical Review
    • 2.2.2. “Identities Without Guarantees” and the Critique of Sameness: Contemporary Race Theory
  • 2.3. Uncertain Crossings: Racial Hybridity and Post-Colonial Belonging
• 3. APPROACHING AFRICAN-CANADIAN BORDERLANDS
  • 3.1. The African-Canadian Experience: Unearthing the History of Miscegenation in Canada
  • 3.2. Canadian Multiculturalism and Cultural Violence: Mixed-Race Identities and the Intricacies of Belonging
  • 3.3. Living and Writing the In-Between: Tracing a Black Literary Tradition in Canada
  • 3.4. From ‘Tragic Mulatto’ to ‘Zebra Poetics’? – Racial Hybridity in African-Canadian literature
• 4. EXPLORING AFRICAN-CANADIAN BORDERLANDS
  • 4.1. Borderlands Poetics in the Writings of Suzette Mayr
    • 4.1.1. Suzette Mayr’s Zebra Talk (1991)
    • 4.1.2. Metamorphoses and the Racialized Body: Suzette Mayr’s Moon Honey (1995)
    • 4.1.3. Canadian Hodgepodge in Suzette Mayr’s The Widows (1998)
  • 4.2. ‘Reverse Doublestuff’, or from Halfness to Wholeness: The Poetry of Mercedes Baines
  • 4.3. Polyvalent Blackness in African-Canadian Drama: Difference and Healing in Maxine Bailey’s and Sharon Lewis’s Sistahs (1994)
  • 4.4. ‘An Exile in the Land of My Birth’: Racial Mixture and National Belonging in the Autobiographical Writings of Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar
  • 4.5. Anti-Mulatto Rhetoric in Haitian and Haitian-Canadian History, Literature, and Culture
    • 4.5.1. Unmasking the Carnival: Max Dorsinville’s Erzulie Loves Shango (1998)
    • 4.5.2. Torment, Memory and Desire: Gérard Étienne’s La Pacotille (1991)
  • 4.6. ‘In Pursuit of Wholeness’: ‘Race’, Class and Black Masculinity in Kim Barry Brunhuber’s Kameleon Man (2003)
• 5. ‘FROM SOLE TO WHOLE’ – AFRICAN-CANADIAN MIXED-RACE POETICS
• 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• APPENDIX I: BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON AUTHORS
• APPENDIX II: INTERVIEW WITH SUZETTE MAYR (JULY 25TH, 2009)
• Danksagung

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Assimilation in Charles W. Chesnutt’s Works

University of New Orleans
2013-05-17
41 pages

Mary C. Harris

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 English

Charles W. Chesnutt captures the essence of the Post Civil War period and gives examples of the assimilation process for African Americans into dominant white culture. In doing so, he shows the resistance of the dominant culture as well as the resilience of the African American culture. It is his belief that through literature he could encourage moral reform and eliminate racial discrimination. As an African American author who could pass for white, he is able to share his own experiences and todevelop black characters who are ambitious and intelligent. As a result, he leaves behind a legacy of great works that are both informative and entertaining.

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