Mixed Race Studies

The Mule as Metaphor in the Fiction of Charles Waddell Chesnutt

Theory and Practice in English Studies
Volume 4 (2005):
Proceedings from the Eighth Conference of British, American and Canadian Studies. Brno: Masarykova univerzita

Christopher E. Koy, Faculty of Arts
University of West Bohemia, Plzen

The term “mulatto,” meaning the offspring of one black parent and one white parent, is a racist term etymologically derived from the Spanish word “mulatto” meaning a young mule. The mule, a sterile offspring of a mare and a male donkey, is an important metaphor in early African American literature and folklore. Anthropologists collected African American tales with mules, and Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932), inspired in part by this folklore, employed the mule as a metaphor in his literary works to represent the subjugation of blacks.

1 Introduction

The mule, the sterile offspring of a mare and a male donkey, is an important symbol in early African American literature and folklore. The term mulatto, meaning the offspring of one black parent and one white parent, is a racist term etymologically derived from the Spanish “mulatto” meaning a young mule. It is racist because it associates offspring of animals of different species with a person of mixed ancestry. The term “mulatto” is a cognate—even the Czech language uses “mulat/mulatka” to indicate a person of mixed African and Caucasian ancestry. The old-fashioned Czech idiom “drít jako mezek” (to slave like a mule) likewise links slave and mule.

Sander L. Gilman has argued that “the abyss between the perceiver and the object in concepts of race is total. It is a complete form of distancing. Placing the Other beyond the pale by stressing an unchanging sense of self provides an image of the Other that is the antithesis of self” (Gilman 1986: 255). One might assume that the case of people of racially mixed ancestry might fill in this “abyss” described by Gilman. If the person were between black and white, the distance would be shortened, so to speak. Yet, then again it may be an examination of the myth-making which forms the basis of any communal identity that needs to be addressed.

the United States today as in Charles Chesnutt’s time, legally as well as otherwise, a person is classified either as black or white. Birth certificates and visa applications require classification of a person’s race, i.e., “Caucasian” or “African American,”—one or the other, since these forms leave no alternative. The “mulatto” term served as a linguistic means to maintain distance between the “white” and “black” race by defining the mixture of the two as Other (than white). After the Civil War “miscegenation” came to express the unacceptable notion of race mixing which in American English came to replace the term “amalgamation” as the word of choice.

2 The degeneracy of mulattos

Chesnutt implicitly and explicitly refutes the myth of race mixing as degenerate in part through the trope of the mule. On the plantation, the mule was known as the superior beast of burden to either the horse or donkey. The hybrid animal ate less, worked longer hours and lived longer. It became ill less frequently and required less attention from its owners. These characteristics are echoed in literature about lighter-skinned slaves, who were sold at higher prices at slave auctions. House slaves are further described as more refined, wearing finer clothes, surrounded by wealth as well as mastering to a greater extent than their darker skinned brethren the “more cultivated” language of their white master. Indeed, the lighter the pigmentation of Chesnutt’s African American characters, the closer their English language resembles that of their master, whereas darker blacks always speak African American vernacular…

Early African American fiction and folklore frequently focus on hybrid mulattos and mules. Chesnutt challenges the Anglo-Saxon myth that the mixing of races constitutes degeneracy (implying most often the degeneracy of the white race), an allegation directed against fair skinned heroes and heroines in his fiction. In Chesnutt’s first published novel, The House behind the Cedars, a medical journal reported that “…the smallest trace of negro blood would inevitably drag down the superior race to the level of the inferior” (Chesnutt 1993a[1900]: 71), replicating notorious medical racist notions of the time. In Chesnutt’s most renowned novel, The Marrow of Tradition (1901), a white journalist rebukes a black man who works for him for purchasing hair straightening solutions and chemicals to lighten skin pigmentation:

“Jerry, when I hired you to work for the Chronicle, you were black. The word ‘negro’ means ‘black.’ The best negro is a black negro, of the pure type, as it came from the hand of God. If you wish to get along well with the white people, the blacker you are the better,—white people do not like negroes who want to be white” (Chesnutt 1969[1901]: 245-246).

The advertisement claims, “mulattoes turned perfectly white” (Chesnutt 1969[1901]: 244). A change of appearance is regarded as degenerate as well as a threat to white Southerners. The white journalist knows that Jerry wants to join the privileged group in order to gain power. When his “black face is splotched with brown and yellow patches,” he is publicly exposed as a shoddy counterfeit, his face a metaphor of the “pathetic effort to escape from the universal doom of his race” (Chesnutt 1969[1901]: 245). At the same time that they decried race mixing as degenerate, in Chesnutt’s novels white characters persistently prefer lighter-skinned blacks. In The Quarry, which is set in the first quarter of the 20th century, the hero, Donald Glover, is fair-skinned. He

often had to explain that he was a Negro—he soon found out that most white people preferred the word to any designation that suggested or assumed blood kinship with themselves, though it was quite obvious that he got along better with them than a darker man would have, and in this way they acknowledged in practice what they rigorously ignored in theory (Chesnutt 1999b:189).

This experience was universal in the ante-bellum period, when lighter-skinned slaves served as domestic servants (or “house slaves”). The preference for fair-skinned blacks and the credence that they were somehow “better” or deserved preferential treatment is also not a uniquely American trait but can be observed among liberal-minded European intellectuals of the 19th century as well, even in countries with little experience in slavery or African colonialism…

Read the entire article here.

The Complexities of Identity: Teaching Michelle Cliff’s Abeng to High School Students

Minnesota English Journal
Volume 45 – Fall 2009
pages 19-33

Angie Iserman, English Teacher
Owatonna High School, Owatonna, Minnesota

When I decided to return to the role of student in order to obtain my graduate degree, my hope was I could bury myself within two genres of literature: adolescent and multicultural. Now, a year later, I have read several books in both genres and consistently find myself grappling with a single theme: identity. This may be due to the fact that both adolescent literature and multicultural literature readily lend themselves to the investigation of this theme, but I believe my fascination with it also stems from my experience as a high school English teacher. So far, much of my teaching career has been spent in classrooms filled with seventh, eighth, and ninth graders, and I have witnessed the struggle of these students to define themselves on a daily basis. Sometimes, it even seems like these students change their identities by the hour.

While changes in identity manifest themselves in students of all cultures, such changes are most easily observed in students who want to belong to two cultural groups at once. In particular, I am reminded of a Muslim student at the school where I teach who comes to school dances in traditional Muslim garb and who subsequently changes into pants as soon as possible after arriving in order to integrate herself into the dominant culture of the American teenager. As if the struggle to define one’s identity during adolescence is not challenging enough, this student must also create an identity for herself while straddling two cultures.

Being more than familiar with the struggle to find one’s identity, I was immediately drawn to the plight of Clare, the biracial protagonist in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng. After being introduced to this novel in one of my graduate courses, I decided to further explore Cliff’s assertion that the survival of a biracial person is dependent upon whether or not this person is able to create an identity for himself/herself. To do this, I investigate the current research on biracial children, the historical context of the novel, and the influences on Clare’s identity. Then, I use the novel itself to suggest biracial people must develop identities for themselves if they are to continue living. Finally, I conclude by discussing the pedagogical implications of studying identity in Abeng and in multicultural literature in general.

Although this comes as no surprise to teachers who are witnessing shifts in the racial and ethnic composition of their classes, Barbara Tizard and Ann Phoenix in their book Black, White or Mixed Race? state that current data indicates “there are a growing number of people in racially mixed relationships and marked increases in the number of people of mixed parentage”. As children with mixed parentages become more common, one must question the impact this will have on their identities. Will such children classify themselves as black, white, or biracial? How will society define them? How will society’s definition of them affect their lives socially, economically, and emotionally? In the past, it was believed people of mixed-race would suffer from an identity crisis. This sentiment is echoed in Black, White, or Mixed Race? when the authors assert: “‘The prevailing view of mixed children is that they have identity problems because of their ambiguous social position… the stereotype of the tortured misfit’”.

However, recent research suggests this notion of mixed-raced children suffering from an identity crisis is fictitious. As Tizard and Phoenix state, “It is now much more commonly recognized than previously that people of ‘mixed parentage’ largely do not suffer from racialised identity problems [. . .]” (54). As evidence of this conclusion, Tizard and Phoenix cite a study which suggests “that up to the age of 9, at any rate, the majority of mixed-parentage children did not suffer from identity problems; she [the researcher] found them to be happy and secure with an intermediate identity”.

Yet, this conclusion seems premature when one considers the works of authors with mixed-race parentage, such as Michelle Cliff. In fact, Cliff undermines recent research’s assertions that biracial children will not fall victim to identity crises when she comments in interviews on the similarities between herself and Abeng’s protagonist Clare. She is quoted as saying, “‘I was a girl similar to Clare and have spent most of my life and most of my work exploring my identity as a light-skinned Jamaican, the privilege and damage that comes from that identity’” (Dagbovie 96). Obviously, Cliff, like Clare, struggles, or struggled, to define herself…

Read the entire article here.

The Modern Mulatto: A Comparative Analysis of the Social and Legal Positions of Mulattoes in the Antebellum South and the Intersex in Contemporary America

Columbia Journal of Gender and Law
Volume 15, Number 3 (September 2006)

Marie-Amélie George, Associate Lawyer
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

Recognizing new social forces working against the “correction” of intersexed children at birth, this article explores the undefined position of the sometimes invisible segment of the population that is intersexed. In examining the similarities between the legal position of mulattoes in the Antebellum south with that of the intersex today, the article takes on the very definition of sex in contemporary society. The author argues that sex, like race, is not binary, but rather constructed so as to reinforce heteronormative patriarchal norms. Through an examination of case law concerning transsexuals, the author demonstrates the ways in which law erroneous relies on a sexual binary, and goes on to provide a guide for understanding how courts would locate intersexuals in contemporary society.

…”This case involves the most basic of questions. When is a man a man, and when is a woman a woman? Every schoolchild, even of tender years, is confident he or she can tell the difference, especially if the person is wearing no clothes.” (1) With this opening statement, Judge Harberger, writing the majority opinion in Littleton v. Prange, quickly goes on to demonstrate that this most basic of questions can be more difficult to answer than appears at first glance. The case at issue, which required the court to determine the legal sex of a post-operative transsexual, questioned the basic notion that male and female are fixed, immutable, and oppositional categories. The very premise of the case is an assault on the foundational assumption that sex is a binary and biological phenomenon, which has been overwhelming accepted in contemporary thought. Importantly, these two concepts once underpinned race theory, but were subsequently rejected by both the academic and legal worlds. (2) The same, while examined and critiqued at length in feminist and sexuality theory, (3) has thus far failed to occur in the realm of legal doctrine and social consciousness.

This Article seeks to add to the scholarship that illustrates the way in which sex can be conceptualized in much the same way as race, and may thus be divested of the presumptions of dichotomy and physiology, by comparing the regulation of race in the antebellum period (4) and sex in the modern day. In doing so, it also aims to undermine objections that sex and race are not in fact parallel socio-physiological categories. (5) Specifically, this Article examines the manner in which antebellum mulattoes, whose mixed race challenged the bases for racial hierarchy, were socially and legally made black so as to be folded within the binary on which slavery depended. It then follows this analysis with a consideration of the ways in which the intersex, who are persons with ambiguously sexed genitals, chromosomes, or phenotypes, are physically forced into one sex or the other so as not to cast doubt on the sexual binary necessary to sustain a patriarchal political and social system. Using this comparison as a framework from which to extend its deconstruction of social categories, this Article then turns to an examination of the role of the law in regulating sexual identity, noting how the law has the potential to be used to create sex in much the same way as it was employed to craft race during the antebellum period.

The importance of this analogy is evident in the implications that flow from it. If sex is as much a construction as is race, the laws and statutes which rely on sexual demarcations, such as whether an individual is protected by Title VII, what penal laws may be applied to a person, in which athletic competitions an individual is permitted to participate, whether a person is subject to a military draft, and who an individual may marry, among others, lose their foundational support, as the premises on which they rely do not exist. (6) The social impact is potentially much greater, as the law is but a shallow reflection of the deep sex-based differences on which society is based. Whether a legal recognition that sex is a construction will have a substantial effect on social norms is unclear, though the possibility does exist. (7) With these ideas in mind, Part I of this Article begins by focusing on race in the American antebellum South, detailing both the cultural factors that resulted in mulattoes joining the disfavored racial category and the legal means by which a binary racial hierarchy was established. This section discusses the attempts at combating miscegenation, as well as the regulations that delineated blackness and established mulattoes’ place as blacks in terms of status, condition, and physicality. In Part II, the analysis turns to theoretical perspectives on sex as a social creation so as to provide a framework from which to develop a better understanding of the ways in which the intersex, as the physical intermediaries between the two established sexes, violate the political and social order. Part III examines the social and legal position of intersex individuals in contemporary American society, drawing attention to the parallels and divergences between the legal status of the intersex today and mulattoes of the antebellum world. It then highlights the ways in which this serves to undermine the basis for different judicial standards of review for race and sex based discrimination. Part IV concludes the Article, evaluating the likelihood for potential change in the law’s treatment of sex as a biological phenomenon.

I. SOCIAL AND LEGAL REGULATION OF MULATTOES IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH

 The constructed nature of race is clearly illustrated by the social perspectives on and the legal regulation of miscegenation in the antebellum South. Interracial sexual relationships, while accepted as standard in some parts of the South during the colonial era, were by the antebellum period uniformly perceived as extremely dangerous to white supremacy. This was due in large part to the mulatto offspring they produced, as mixed-race children blurred the line between the races, thereby upsetting the clear racial hierarchy on which slavery depended. Slavery was defended on the notion that racial stratification was part of a natural order, one in which whites dominated blacks due to their superior physical, mental, and behavioral traits. (8) Racial dilution not only led to a deterioration of these attributes, but also demonstrated immorality and cultural degeneracy. (9) Mulattoes, as evidence of interracial sex, were also “a visible reproach to the white man’s failure to live up to basic moral and social precepts.” (10) Consequently, hybridism was described as “heinous,” and mulattoes became a “spurious” issue requiring legal regulation. (11)

Mulattoes threatened a vision of the natural order as being one of clear, defined categories to one of gradations, a theory upon which the institution of slavery could not stand, as “[s]lavery rest[ed] on the fundamental distinction between human labor and those who own[ed] it, and the total relations between master and slave generate[d] the idea that all relationships … should [have] be[en] total.” (12) Plantation economies required whites to control the labor force in its entirety, a proposition that would have been impossible were it not for the strict bounds of the racial hierarchy. By relegating mulattoes to the status of their pure black contemporaries, the sharpness of racial distinctions would be maintained, and the power relationships that relied on racial purity could be sustained. (13) Such a clear racial divide also provided Southern lawmakers with a means of preventing interracial alliances between white servants and blacks, as giving value to whiteness granted the servant class privileges that they would seek to preserve. (14) Consequently, the white underclass would identify its interests as protected by racial division, as opposed to developing a class-based ideology, which could have undermined the system on which the Southern economy was based.

Given the threats they produced, interracial sexual liaisons had to be deterred and the mixed-race progeny regulated so as not to disturb the political and economic systems that fostered white privilege. Before turning to the legal measures adopted to accomplish these goals, however, it is first instructive to examine the ways in which colonial attitudes on amalgamation formed and developed, as such information will assist in understanding the timing and purpose of the legal regulations.

A. Social Perspectives of Mulattoes in the Colonial Era

The colonial South was not unified in terms of racial divides, attitudes, and mixing, but rather was a bifurcated region with respect to the status of blacks and mulattoes. (15) The upper South, comprised of Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, and the District of Columbia, contained a relatively large mulatto population. (16) Often the offspring of white indentured servants and both free and enslaved blacks, a considerable portion were free, but overwhelmingly impoverished. (17) The economically depressed circumstances into which they were born, along with the low status of their parents and their residence in rural, rather than urban, areas, guaranteed mulattoes a place in the social underclass. Mulattoes did tend to rank in the upper echelons of free black society, but this did not alter the ways in which white citizens viewed mixed-race persons. (18) Indeed, whites equated mulattoes with blacks, making few distinctions as to hue or ancestry amongst persons of color. Mulattoes were thus just as socially, economically, and legally marginalized as their fully black brethren.

The lower South, consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, (19) had a contrastingly generous view of free mulattoes, and afforded these individuals a status superior to that of blacks, thereby creating a third, intermediate class between black and white. (20) The impetus for this was based on practical as well as cultural influences, many of which were linked to the settlement pattern that emerged in the lower South. Unlike the upper South, many early immigrants to the lower South were from the West Indies, where the pattern of race relations resulted in a multi-tiered racial hierarchy, with mulattoes serving as a variable intermediate class. (21) Further, settlement in the lower South was characterized by a small number of white plantation owners and overseers and a large population of black slaves. (22) The scarcity of white women encouraged amalgamation, both because it increased a sense of sexual license and because it prevented settlers from reestablishing European patterns of domestic life, with its ideal of a monogamous heterosexual couple at its center. (23) Consequently, mulatto children were often the progeny of prosperous fathers and slave women. (24) While the plantation economy discouraged fathers from manumitting their mixed-race children, those who were granted freedom joined the upper strata of society, due in large part to the recognition and largess of their white fathers. (25) The topmost few lived nearly on par with their white neighbors, and mulattoes as a whole dominated the free black community. (26) Avoiding interaction with unmixed blacks, many mulattoes adopted the attitudes of whites toward the lower castes, and took advantage of the social and economic opportunities that their lighter skin afforded. (27) These privileges provided incentives for free mulattoes to support the status quo in the lower South, and thus for mulattoes to ally themselves with the white dominating class. With a high ratio of blacks to whites in the plantation communities of the lower South, whites valued the buffer that the intermediate mulatto category provided. (28)

The three-tier class structure of the lower South disintegrated in the face of increased anxiety and tension due to abolitionist attacks on slavery. (29) Whites were fueled to defend the institution, a difficult endeavor when the line drawn between the two races, a line supposedly signifying a natural distinction between ruler and ruled, (30) was blurred by a significant mulatto population. A movement for society to be divided into two groups, black and white, gained momentum, and the white population of the lower South became less tolerant of miscegenation and the preferential treatment of mulattoes. (31) The potential for insurrection also served to lessen whites’ support for a free class of blacks, regardless of the hue of the individuals at issue. (32) As a result, by the antebellum period, the lower South had become a two-class society like its Northern counterpart.

B. Legal Regulation

While the attitudes concerning mixed-race individuals originally differed in the colonial South, by the antebellum period all of the states had imposed stringent regulations on miscegenation and had relegated mulattoes to the same status as “pure” blacks. These statutes addressed interracial marriage and fornication, so as to deter the production of mulatto children, and also worked to disarm the potential power of a mixed-race class by legislating blackness onto mulattoes.

1. Marriage and Fornication

In order to protect its economic system, as well as the social and political institutions that accompanied slavery, Southern lawmakers attempted to eradicate interracial liaisons by imposing legal sanctions on interracial marriage and fornication. In the early seventeenth century, Virginia began lashing out at miscegenation, declaring sexual intercourse with blacks to be equivalent to bestiality. (33) Courts imposed severe punishments on those found guilty of this trespass; in 1630, Virginian Hugh Davis “was sentenced ‘to be soundly whipped, before an assembly of Negroes and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christians, by defiling his body in lying with a Negro, which fault he is to acknowledge next Sabbath day.”‘ (34) The penalties became less corporeal in subsequent years, and in 1662, the legislature mandated that “‘if any christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double'” the previously imposed fine. (35) This provision, while reducing the punishment from physical to fiscal, was nevertheless important because it was a marked change from the colony’s precedent, which punished all violators, regardless of the sexual makeup of the fornicating couple, equally. (36)

Other colonies imposed even more stringent consequences on the participants of interracial relationships. South Carolina, a colony originally known for its widespread acceptance of interracial unions, punished interracial bastardy by binding out white men and women and free black men as indentured servants for seven years; the child of any such union was forced to serve until adulthood. (37) Maryland’s 1664 anti-miscegenation law provided punishments similar to those imposed in South Carolina. White women who married male slaves were compelled to serve their husbands’ masters for the lifetimes of their husbands, and any children born to the couple were required to labor for the parish for thirty-one years. (38) In 1692, the Maryland Assembly amended the statute by requiring free blacks who married white women to be forced into a lifetime of bondage. (39) Pennsylvania had the same provision, and also permitted courts to impose a sentence of seven years in bondage to all free persons convicted of interracial fornication. (40) Virginia diverged from its contemporaries by choosing banishment from the colony as its foremost penalty for interracial marriage. In 1691, Virginia passed a law prohibiting marriage between blacks and whites, “ordering that any white person marrying a black person be ‘banished and removed from this dominion forever.”‘ (41) This punishment was changed to six months in jail in 1705; the same edict also imposed a fine of up to 10,000 pounds of tobacco against the minister performing the ceremony. (42 Virginia did not punish the black members of the union, presumably because most blacks were slaves, and thus any penalties against these individuals would have deprived masters of their slaves’ labor. (43)

By the time of the Civil War, twenty-one out of thirty-four states had some sort of legislation proscribing and punishing interracial sexual relationships. (44) While these laws diverged in identifying the violators, the specific proscribed offenses, and the punishments meted out for violations, the provisions generally tended to target white female offenders. (45) Indeed, the Maryland legislature, abhorrent of white women’s sexual exploits with black men, described marriages between white women and black men as “always to the Satisfaccon of theire Lascivious & Lustfull desires, & to the disgrace not only of the English butt also of many other Christian Nations.” (46) Virginia, similarly concerned, enacted a bill aimed at addressing miscegenation that provided for banishment within three months of the mixed child’s birth. However, it further declared that any white woman “who gave birth to ‘a bastard child by any Negro or mulatto’ would be heavily fined or subject to five years of servitude and that the child would be bound into servitude until it reached age thirty.” (47) While this regulation may have been enacted due to a concern over the number of mixed-race children born to white women, there were other reasons for colonialists to target white women’s sexuality and regulate it heavily. (48) Bastard children were a problem regardless of color, as the community was then pressured to provide for those children. (49) Furthermore, given the demographic realities of the time, with white men outnumbering white women well into the 1750s, providing disincentives for interracial relationships encouraged intra-racial procreation, thereby ensuring the perpetuation of a racially pure, white dominating class. Also important were the negative perceptions of white female morality, in that white women were seen as being of frail moral character; this was linked to the desire to maintain a paternalistic social order. Finally, this regulation was a way of addressing the fact that mulatto progeny blurred the lines of freedom. “Since the law defined freedom according to the status of mothers, it became imperative for white men to specifically delineate severe punishments for those white women who crossed the sexual color line.” (50)

Importantly, the fact that the mother’s status of slave or free determined whether or not the child would be enslaved was a marked shift from the English common law, whereby children followed the status of the father. (51) However, due to the large numbers of mixed race children born to slave mothers and white fathers, colonies enacted statutes mandating a “status of the mother” rule. As Charles Robinson notes, “most interracial sexual relations involved intercourse between white masters and slave women…. Colonial authorities had real concerns that English common law might in fact undermine the institution of slavery by allowing biracial children to claim freedom on the basis of their paternal heritage.” (52) Under such circumstances, there would have been a large free mulatto population, which could have shifted the balance of power away from the white ruling class. This legal rule thus emerged so as to prevent mulatto freedom, and did not derive from a “natural” identity. In short, social needs trumped what were considered biological realities under the law.

Forcing mulatto children into servitude had the desired effect of propelling mixed race persons as close to slave status as possible:

By the time these men and women reached their freedom, they often…

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Abeng

Penguin Press
1984
176 pages
5.35 x 8.07in
ISBN 9780452274839

Michelle Cliff

Ever since Abeng was first published in 1984, Michelle Cliff has steadily become a literary force. Her novels evoke both the clearly delineated hierarchies of colonial Jamaica and the subtleties of present-day island life. Nowhere is her power felt more than in Clare Savage, her Jamaican heroine, who appeared, already grown, in No Telephone to Heaven. Abeng is a kind of prequel to that highly-acclaimed novel and is a small masterpiece in its own right. Here Clare is twelve years old, the light-skinned daughter of a middle-class family, growing up among the complex contradictions of class versus color, blood versus history, harsh reality versus delusion, in a colonized country. In language that surrounds us with a richness of meaning and voices, the several strands of young Clare’s heritage are explored: the Maroons, who used the conch shell—the abeng—to pass messages as they fought a guerilla struggle against their English enslavers; and the legacy of Clare’s white great-great-grandfater, Judge Savage, who burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. A lyrical, explosive coming-of-age story combined with a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica, this novel is a triumph.

As the mixed-race population grows, the stigma of the past fades

jcOnline.com (Journal and Courier)
Lafayette – West Lafayette, Indiana
2011-05-01

Taya Flores

Gerald and Susan Thomas experienced a hurtful racial climate in Greater Lafayette when they dated during the 1970s.

A drive-by verbal assault in Lafayette early in their marriage is one Gerald still remembers today.

He said the couple was driving in a convertible when some white men called out a racial insult. “Those type of things happen. Fortunately, now I think it’s more subtle,” he said. “It’s still there, but it’s much more subtle than it was in the past.”…

…There can also be discrimination from people who might not approve of a person’s interracial parentage, said Carolyn Liebler, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who studies ethnicity.

That is more common among older generations.

Initially, Robinson’s maternal grandparents did not approve of her parents’ interracial relationship.

“I know my grandparents (mom’s parents) didn’t approve of my mom and dad being together, but once my (older) sister was born they accepted the fact,” she said.

Some black-white biracials can penetrate the color line because they have white relatives. These relatives broaden the biracial’s social connections and improve their access to resources such as good schools or employment networks, Liebler said.

These biracials tend to be better off than their minority counterparts but worse off than whites, according to Liebler…

For example, the percentage of black-white biracials who reported fair to poor health (13.4 percent) was closer to whites than blacks who had relatively poorer health.

However, the percentage for white-Asians (7.8 percent) was closer to Asians. But Asians had relatively better health than whites, according to a sociology study published online in the February edition of the journal Demography.

The research was conducted by Rice University sociologists Jenifer Bratter and Bridget Gorman. They used a seven-year (2001-2007) sample from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national health survey, to examine differences in health as reported by participants.

Many social inequalities, such as poverty or health disparities, are passed down from generation to generation. Factors besides race, such as parents’ occupation and family wealth, childhood upbringing and education, also play a role in a person’s success, Liebler said. But racial stereotypes and discrimination have historically caused differences in these socioeconomic factors even among biracial people.

“This is not turning the world upside down. It’s just sort of adding a nuance,” she said…

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Shady’s Back

New Matilda
Surry Hills NSW, Australia
2011-05-02

Jennifer Mills

As Obama is called to prove his place of birth, Indigenous Australians are being asked to account for their origins too. Not black enough, not white enough: Jennifer Mills on public anxiety about biracial identity

The release of Obama’s birth certificate by the White House on Thursday has drawn a variety of responses—from conspiracists’ disbelief in its veracity to analysts’ disbelief in its necessity. Some say it arrives too late to dispel doubts about his origins, and others that Obama has cleverly sprung a right-wing trap by drawing conspiracists out.

At the same time, the case of nine Aboriginal people seeking an apology from Andrew Bolt for two columns in which he questioned their right to claim Aboriginal heritage has been fuelling public discussion, the best thing about which has been its domination by the voices of Indigenous women. The argument that Aboriginal people should be the ones who choose who gets to be Aboriginal has been made well elsewhere. But the fact that these discussions are happening with such vitriol and in the public sphere is worth noting, as it says more about the culture at large than about any of the individuals involved.

Where does this yawning discomfort and anxiety around biracial or multicultural identities come from? Are we seeing a return to blood quantums or to centralised, institutional definitions of race? Why does it matter if you’re black and white?

…The release of the birth certificate may achieve little, because it doesn’t address the real question of the birthers, to whom Obama will continue to exhibit a certain uncomfortable quality which the easily frightened are apt to label “foreignness.” There is indeed “something shady” about Obama—his colour. There is a vagueness about him which threatens those who seek to categorise and divide. That vague quality is a multicultural identity…

…Race is a fiction, an invention. It doesn’t show on a family tree, it can’t be proven with birth certificates or in a court of law. A legal definition of Indigenousness would be dangerously divisive, just as it is in the United States where Certificates of Degree of Indigenous Blood are still controversially issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Blood quantum laws in the US date back to the early 18th century and were used as a colonial tool to keep track of Indigenous populations. Now most sovereign tribes make their own definitions of Indigenous heritage and tribal membership. In Australia, the legal definition is similarly loose, autonomous and consensus based…

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Birtherism’s real anxiety

The Carletonian
Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota
2011 Spring Issue 4 (2011-04-29)

David Heifetz

Can we put this issue to rest now? On Wednesday morning, President Obama surprised a lot of people by suddenly releasing his long-form birth certificate, which, of course, showed that he was born in Hawaii. In explaining why he had decided to release it now, Obama explained that the issue had simply become too much of a distraction. There are more important things to do, and it is a waste of everyone’s time to be dwelling on this, he said.

But will facts make this go away? Doubtful. And the reason is because this conspiracy theory always had less to do with doubting the physical place where Obama was born and more to do with a deep discomfort about who he is and what he represents. Whether it is a dislike of his policies and party, racism, or a combination of the two, the birther idea is just the manifestation of a deeper dislike of Obama….

…In addition to the plain dislike of having a black man as president, what doubts about Obama’s birthplace also signify is a deep xenophobia in parts of this country. It is the attitude that goes deeper than just believing in American exceptionalism; it is the belief that America has nothing to learn from anyone else, that we have all the answers, and that it is un-America to suggest that there is value in other ways of life.

President Obama’s upbringing was unique in that he was constantly immersed in different cultures and surrounded by different perspectives. Whether it was reconciling his biracial identity, spending years of his childhood in Indonesia, or visiting his family in Kenya later in his life, Obama has grown up with a distinct sense that there is not one right way to do things. He has learned that although Judeo-Christian America is beautiful for all of its many strengths, there are peoples in the world who come from different traditions that have things to offer as well…

Read the entire article here.

Book Review: Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Editor, Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity. New York: Routledge, 2010. 230 pp. (paperback).

Teaching Sociology
Volume 39, Number 2 (2011-04-11)
pages 214-216
DOI: 10.1177/0092055X11403292

Beth Frankel Merenstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut

This collection of articles is organized into four sections, each focusing on the various issues and concerns of multiracial Americans, all with a particular emphasis on social class. Using a variety of methods, including statistical models as well as qualitative, in-depth interviews, the articles focus on issues of identity, demographical change, and culture, all through a lens of, as explained in the foreword, understanding how under a system of white supremacy, social class plays a pivotal role in the creation of a multiracial identity.

One immediate concern I had was with the organization of the book. While I found all the articles useful and informative in their own right, the division under the four different sections was unclear. In particular, I was unclear on why Section III had the three articles it did, focusing on multiracial Asian Americans, multiracial American Indians, and multiracial Hispanic youth, respectively. While none of these articles focused on biracial black-white Americans as the majority of the previous articles did, there seemed to be little other reason these three articles were joined together.

Nonetheless, correctly and jointly, these articles recognize that we live in a society dominated and dictated by white supremacy. To understand multiracial Americans, we must place individuals with this identity within this context. Additionally, this collection does what no other has: It includes in this recognition the role that class can and does play when it comes to understanding a multiracial identity and construction. Furthermore, numerous articles mention the way in which, in most conversations and research on multiracial Americans and racial identity, class is often conflated with culture. For example, Nikki Khanna…

Read or purchase the article here.

Biracial Identity and the College Social Environment: An Examination of the Effect of College Racial Composition on Black-White Biracial Students’ Racial Identity Construction and Maintenance

29th Annual SouthEastern Undergraduate Sociology Symposium 2011
Co-sponsored by Morehouse College and Emory University Departments of Sociology
Emory University, February 25-26, 2011

Kristen Clayton
Emory University

Winner of the first place prize at the 2011, 29th Annual SouthEastern Undergraduate Sociology Symposium (SEUSS).

The majority of the extant research on biracial identity focuses on documenting and describing the variety of ways in which individuals of mixed black and white ancestry identify, while paying substantially less attention to the social factors which affect biracial identity development. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by examining some of the ways social context affects biracial identity; this study specifically examines the effect of college racial composition on black-white biracial students’ racial identity construction and maintenance. In this paper I draw upon the transcripts of five taped interviews with biracial men attending an all male HBCU [Historically black colleges and universities] to show how the majority black institution affected their racial identities. Preliminary analysis of these interviews indicates that the racial composition of the men’s HBUC affected the students’ racial identities by affecting the individuals available for social comparisons, increasing students’ exposure to and familiarity with black people, and influencing the messages students received about race through both the peer and academic cultures of the institution. These social processes are the same ones described by researchers like Renn (2004), Khanna (2007), Rockquemore and Brunsma (2002*; 2002**) and Twine (1996). Taken together, these studies imply a connection between racial identity and social context that warrants further exploration.