Mixed Race Studies

Understanding Interracial Relationships

Russell House Publishing
June 2009
160 pages
ISBN:978-1-905541-53-9

Toyin Okitikpi, Professor
University of Bedfordshire

It is no longer a novelty to see people of different races and ethnicity holding hands and going about their daily lives. Between 1991 and 2001, the British population grew by 4.0 per cent, while the mixed population increased by 138 per cent; and in 2008 the Office of National Statistics reported more people involved in interracial relationships in Britain than in any other country in Europe. But despite the normality of seeing children of mixed parentage and couples – married or cohabiting – in interracial relationships, there remains strong interest in the nature of the relationships, in the motivations that drive them and in the experiences of the children that are born from such relationships. Sometimes this is articulated as concern and prejudice, both in society as a whole and in the helping professions.

This book provides an analysis of the experiences of the people involved in such relationships and explores the implications for anyone who works with them. For counselors, social workers and others involved in work with families and children, it will also be illuminate learning and research in these areas.

Most publications to date that explore practice around interracial relationships focus on the children of mixed parentage. This book explores the experiences, dilemmas and complexities involved in forming intimate relationships across the racial divide. But, as workers’ attitudes and approaches towards children of mixed parentage are generally guided by their views and assumptions about the nature of interracial relationships, this is an important book about working with children, as well as with couples. It:

• provides detailed discussion of the history of the wider social and economic relationship between white and black people
• discusses the way black and white relationships have evolved over the centuries and the underlying assumptions
• offers an account of the dilemmas and complexities involved in interracial relationships
• explores the nature of the explanations that have been advanced by others about people’s motivation for getting involved in such relationships
• explores the reactions, views, attitudes and concerns others have towards the relationship; and identifies how people in interracial relationships cope with the negative attitudes and approbation
• identifies the implications for effective intervention by welfare professionals working with couples involved in interracial relationships.

Reflecting the fact that interracial relationships consisting of black men and white women constitute the highest proportion of interracial relationships in the UK, and that this type of relationship also appears to provoke the greatest disapprobation from many in society, this book is based on interviews with 20 black men and 20 white women who are or have been in interracial relationships. It focuses on developing a better understanding.

Table of Contents

Introduction – looking at interracial relationships

The historical context: looking back to look forward

• Black people in Britain: a brief history
• A changing relationship
• A very visible relationship
• Interracial as an artistic genre
• Making sense of the fault lines
• Racial mixing

Making sense of people’s experiences

• Experiences matter
• Revisiting the popular explanations
• Interracial relationships: is it all about sex?
• Managing interracial relationship
• Looking beyond the boundaries

New book highlights the needs of Mixed Parentage children

London South Bank University
News
2005-06-02

Dr Toyin Okitikpi with his challenging new book [Working with Children of Mixed Parentage]

Proportionately a higher percentage of mixed parentage children end up in care and in Britain we only statistically classify mixed parentage for children where one parent is black and the other white. The new book argues this totally misses the children who for example may be of Asian Chinese descent and when it comes to documents such as the National Census the best we can do is offer them the classification of ‘other’ and ask them to specify.

Toyin explains that there are problems with this form of pigeon holing. He explains, “We are expecting these children to be forced into one classification or another and there is confusion about the children’s identity and their sense of self”…

Read the entire article here.

Young Single White Mothers with Black Children in Therapy

Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry
1996
Vol. 1, No. 1
pages 19-28
DOI: 10.1177/1359104596011003

N. J. Banks
Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Birmingham

This article describes the treatment of 16 single, white women aged 17-23 years with black mixed-parentage children within an integrative psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural therapy model. Issues of loss, isolation and familial rejection are discussed. The mothers’ abilities to cope with their children’s ethnic identities in the context of absent fathers are examined, as are the mother-child relationships. Suggestions are made for enabling therapy.

White Mothers, Mixed-Parentage Children and Child Welfare

British Journal of Social Work
Volume 29, Number 2 (1999)
pages 269-284

Ravinder Barn, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work
Royal Holloway, University of London

It is now well documented that the majority of mixed-parentage children who enter the public care system in Britain have a white biological mother and a black African Caribbean father. This paper explores some of the underlying factors which increase the vulnerability of mixed-parentage children. The situation of white single mothers is examined in the context of ‘race’, class, gender and location in British society. Empirical findings from two recent research studies provide a profile of white single mothers and their children in receipt of social work help and assistance. Areas for further discussion are raised within this framework.

Eurocentrism in Social Work Education: From Race to Identity Across the Lifespan as Biracial Alternative

Journal of Social Work
Volume 5, Number 1 (April 2005)
pages 101-114
DOI: 10.1177/1468017305051238

Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work
Michigan State University, East Lansing

• Summary: Consequent to Eurocentric hegemony, race has been erroneously validated as the standard identity construct by social work education as well as much of Western science. For example, the approach utilized in this study includes reference to the literature of biologists and medical personnel who contend that race is scientifically meaningless.
• Findings: The findings suggest that for those who are biracial, living in the midst of race constructionists encourages a life of identity conflict. That conflict is more often irrelevant to monorace subjects who by skin color are assigned to a single race category. This is an important notion for those, such as social workers, working in the human services.
• Applications: The application proposes a human development across the lifespan construct to serve as an ecological alternative to the pathologizing influences of race. Although race and other Eurocentric constructs may have had their place at one time, the rapidly changing demographic dynamics of Western populations, including Britain, Europe and the Americas, and the inconceivable pace at which diversity is becoming the norm necessitate a commensurate change in policy, practice and theory. Identity across the lifespan in preparation of social workers for the 21st century is a viable alternative.

Read or purchase the article here.

Working with children of mixed parentage

Russell House Publishing
2005-03-01
160 Pages
ISBN:978-1-903855-64-5

Edited by

Toyin Okitikpi, Professor
University of Bedfordshire

Table of Contents

• Introduction: mixed responses: working with children of mixed parentage.
• Looking at numbers and projections: making sense of the census, emerging trends.
• Mulatto, marginal man, half-caste, mixed race: the one-drop rule in professional practice.
• The social and psychological development of mixed parentage children.
• Identity and identification: how mixed parentage children adapt to a binary world.
• Practice Issues: working with children of mixed parentage.
• Direct work with children of mixed parentage.
• Exploring the discourse concerning white mothers of mixed parentage children.
• Permanent family placement for children of dual heritage: issues arising from a longitudinal study.
• Mixed race children: policy and practice considerations.

The University of Iowa – Be Remarkable: Courtney Parker

University of Iowa
2009-06-08

Po Li Loo

Inspired by her multicultural background, a 2008 grad set out to connect campus groups and redefine diversity.

Courtney Parker came to The University of Iowa because of the renowned Writers’ Workshop. But in her time here, she discovered other passions.  Instead of penning poetry, the 2008 graduate found herself resurrecting the UI Black Student Union (BSU) and cultivating cross-cultural partnerships across campus…

…Parker has developed leadership skills at the UI, but her time here has also taught her how to be comfortable in her own skin. She grew up in a predominantly white, upper middle-class area in Connecticut, and had felt insecure about her mixed heritage. She sees herself first as an African American, but she also has English, Jewish, and Native American roots.

“It’s interesting that most people don’t look at me and recognize me as being African American,” she says. “But you can’t really spend much time with me without knowing that I’m black, without knowing that I’m Jewish.”

Her commitment to helping students transcends the UI. She was accepted by Teach for America and headed to North Carolina after graduation. The organization recruits recent graduates to teach for two years in rural and urban schools around the country…

Read the entire article here.

An Inter-Racial Love Story in Fact and Fiction: William and Mary King Allen’s Marriage and Louisa May Alcott’s Tale, ‘M.L.’

History Workshop Journal
2002
Volume 53, Number 1
pages 17-42
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/53.1.17

Sarah Elbert, Professor Emerita of History
The State University of New York, Binghamton

William G. Allen, the child of a free mulatto mother and a white father, was born about 1820, raised by a free black family,and taught probably by ‘educated foreigners’; among the Federal Troops stationed in Fortress Monroe. In 1838 a New York clergyman accepted Allen in his newly-opened school and then recommended his pupil to Gerrit Smith, a prominent New York abolitionist who supported black students at Oneida Institute in upstate New York.  There Allen developed close ties to leaders of the black abolitionist movement. Allen taught fugitive slaves in Canada and co-edited the National Watchman, an abolitionist newspaper in Troy, New York. By 1847 Allen was in Boston clerking for Ellis Gray Loring, an abolitionist lawyer, and also lecturing, writing, and agitating for immediate abolition, racial equality, ‘amalgamation’, and Africa’s importance in the history of world civilization.  Appointed a professor of Greek Language and Literature at New York Central College in McGrawville, upstate New York, he was among pioneers in coeducation and inter-racial education. Allen courted Mary E. King, a white student there. The couple first met little opposition from her family but their toleration quickly vanished when the couple’s engagement prompted an anti-abolitionist and certainly an anti-‘amalgamation’ mob of 500 ‘gentlemen of property and standing’ who prepared to tar and feather Allen and roll him in a nail-studied barrel.  Allen fled to Syracuse, New York, where Jeremiah Loguen and the Reverend Samuel J. May (uncle of Louisa May Alcott) we reactive radical abolitionists and conductors for slaves escaping on the ‘Underground Railway’.  King and Allen then married in New York City and fled to England. Allen lectured in Leeds, Bradford, and Newcastle in 1853 and he wrote their story in ‘The American Prejudice against Color’ and ‘A Personal Narrative’. The pamphlets published in Dublin and London were sent to Samuel J. May and Louisa May Alcott was visiting the May family during the months of the Allen-King incident and its sensationalist treatment in the local papers. Alcott fictionalized the King-Allen romance in her story ‘M.L.’, (now reprinted in Louisa May Alcott on Race, Sex and Slavery, Northeastern University Press, 1998).  Professor R. J. M. Blackett traced the Allens’ years in England and Ireland but found no record of the couple or their children after 1878, when they were living in Notting Hill, London, impoverished and dependent upon friends for support.  Both were dedicated teachers, devoted to the education of poor boys and girls. Allen was the principal of the Caledonian Training School in Islington1863, but Englishmen too were not lacking in racism and his school was resented by competitors who drove him out. (See Blackett,’William G. Allen: the Forgotten Professor’, Civil War History26:2, pp. 39–51). This article brings together Alcott’s tale and the events upon which it was based, in the context of abolitionist culture and activity in upstate New York and New England, and of Alcott’s life, politics, and writing.

Read or purchase the entire article here.

The American Prejudice Against Color: An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got Into An Uproar

Northeastern University Press
University Press of New England
2002 (originally published in 1853)
224 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2″
EAN: 978-1-55553-545-2

William G. Allen, Professor of Classics
New York Central College

Mary King

Louisa May Alcott

Edited by

Sarah Elbert, Professor Emerita of History
The State University of New York, Binghamton

A compilation of the explosive reactions to interracial love and marriage in antebellum America.

In 1853, William G. Allen, the “Coloured Professor” of Classics at New York Central College, became engaged to Mary King, a student at the coeducational, racially integrated school and daughter of a local white abolitionist minister. Rumors of their betrothal incited a mob of several hundred men armed with “tar, feathers, poles, and an empty barrel spiked with shingle nails.” Allen and King narrowly escaped with their lives, married in New York City, and then fled as fugitives to England and Ireland.

Their love story and brave resistance were recorded in engrossing detail by Allen in two pamphlets-The American Prejudice Against Color: An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily the Nation Got into An Uproar (1853) and A Short Personal Narrative (1860). Reproduced here in their entirety, Allen’s forthright, eloquent, and ironic accounts, which include excerpts from abolitionist and anti-abolitionist newspaper reports about the incident, drew renewed threats against the exiled pair as well as support from the couple’s circle of antislavery friends and allies, a diverse group including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith, Reverend Samuel J. May, and George Thompson.

The experiences related by Allen vividly illustrate the rampant fears of “amalgamation” that sparked violent protests in antebellum America. He also reveals white abolitionists’ contradictions regarding mixed-race relationships. Also contained in this volume is Louisa May Alcott’s M.L., a fictional tale of interracial love based on her familiarity with the Allen-King episode through her abolitionist uncle, the Reverend Samuel J. May. Alcott’s story was refused by The Atlantic magazine because, she said, it “might offend the dear South.”

An insightful introduction by editor Sarah Elbert places the writings within a historical and cultural context. She details William G. Allen’s notable career as a graduate of the Oneida Institute and as an active abolitionist in the network reaching from New York’s North Star Country through Boston, Canada, England, and Ireland. In exile, William and Mary King Allen, important members of the trans-Atlantic movement, continued their struggle for “free association” and supported their family by teaching poor children in London.

Read the entire book here or here.

Louisa May Alcott On Race, Sex, And Slavery

Northeastern University Press
University Press of New England
1997
160 pages
EAN: 978-1-55553-307-6

Louisa May Alcott

Edited by

Sarah Elbert, Professor Emerita of History
The State University of New York, Binghamton

The passionate supporter of abolition and women’s rights speaks out on the most controversial issues of the day.

Louisa May Alcott championed women’s causes in gothic tales of interracial romance and in newspaper articles published during the Civil War. Drawn from her service as a nurse in a Union hospital as well as from her radical abolitionist activities, these writings allow Alcott to comment boldly on unstable racial identities, interracial sex and marriage, armed slave rebellion, war, and the links between the bondage of slaves and the conditions of white womanhood. A comprehensive introduction situates Alcott and her family within the network of antebellum reformers and unmasks her personal and literary struggles with the boundaries of race, sex, and class.