Mixed Race Studies

From Wikipedia: Loving v. (versus) [Commonwealth of] Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court by a [unanimous] 9-0 vote declared [on 1967-06-12] Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924“, unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Source: Talking Points Memo

The plaintiffs, Mildred Loving (nee Mildred Delores Jeter, a woman of African and Rappahannock Native American descent, July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man, October 29, 1933 – June 1975), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and any non-white person. Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban.

Comments by Steven F. Riley:

Read the entire decision here.

It should be noted that the Loving v. Virginia ruling in 1967 applied to the 16 remaining states that had enacted anti-miscegenation statutes.  Thus it is a fallacy to state that ‘interracial marriage was illegal in the United States until Loving v. Virginia. Most states had in fact, repealed their anti-miscegenation laws and a few never enacted any such laws at all (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, District of Columbia, Hawaii and Alaska).

From Wikipedia: A métis is a person born to parents who belong to different groups defined by visible physical differences, regarded as racial, or the descendant of such persons. The term is of French origin, and also is a cognate of mestizo in Spanish, mestiço in Portuguese, and mestee in English.  In the Western Hemisphere, this term usually is used to describe someone born or descended from the union of a European and an Amerindian.  However, the term was used by other groups around the world, mostly in countries which were under French influence, such as Vietnam. It is still commonly used by Francophones today for any multiracial person…

Comments by Steven F. Riley:

Scholar Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, had used the term métis and/or métisse instead of ‘mixed-race’ in her early works as a way of focusing away from ‘race’ as a form of identity.  Her desire was to create a common non-racist, non-sexist term that ‘mixed-race’ individuals could claim as one of their own.  But later she states in Mixed Race Studes: A Reader…

“…Using a French-African term in an English context, even if simply for discursive analyses, could be percieved as potentially exoticizing and further marginalizing ‘mixed-race’ subjectivities…”

She goes on to state…

“…Furthermore, one could argue that partially deflecting the attention away from what I call the popular folk concept of ‘race’ to other forms of identification and stratification diminishes the significant and potent function institutionalized racism plays in the maintenance of privilege and power for some and disadvantage and discrimination for others.  Finally, in attempting to construct a new lexicon, I am perpetuating a fictional history which ignores the ways in which the social processes of ‘racial’ mixing are themselves old.”