Mixed Race Studies

Rebuilding the Tower of Babel

Pelican Publishing Company, New Orleans
1957
24 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc030

Stuart O. Landry

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; In this pamphlet, Landry asserts that integrationists are trying to reunite the races that God separated in the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. He asserts that new anthropological and psychological theories of racial equality are pseudoscientific and backed by Communist interests. Landry cites some Old Testament quotations that he interprets as implying that segregation is ordered by God, and he asserts that race amalgamation will be lead to the downfall of Christianity. He also compares African Americans’ social condition to that of Jews, Italians, Germans, and Irish in order to support his argument that African Americans’ place at the bottom of the United States’ social structure is a result of their lack of effort.

FOREWORD

This is not an attack upon the Church nor a criticism of Christianity. It is not a message of hate or of intolerance. On the contrary, it is a plea for broad-mindness on the part of many Christian groups who are becoming narrow-minded with respect to the ideas and customs of brother Christians.

It is with reluctance that I emphasize the difference—physical, mental and cultural—between white people and colored people. It looks like I am acting the Pharisee, wearing his phylacteries with an air of “better than thou.” But such is not the case.

My enumeration of racial differences is no more invidious than making a comparison between men and women between whom there are many physical and mental differences. I am simply trying to show the disadvantage of race-mixing.

Above all, I am not trying to close the door of opportunity to anyone, or condemn any individual to failure by making him feel inferior. This he can easily disprove. My generalizations apply to large groups. If any man can rise above his environment, more power to him!

S. O. L.

And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech… And they said Let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach into heaven… And the Lord said Let us go down there and confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech… Therefore is the name called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

—Genesis XI: 1-9.

The good church people of the United States want to rebuild the Tower of Babel. They wish to do away with races and the confusion of tongues. Can they climb to heaven on such a structure?

The building of a new tower reaching to high heaven, even if only figurative, transgresses the will of God, who thousands of years ago destroyed the actual attempt and scattered peoples all over the world, and contravenes the laws that govern human nature.

But most church members seem to have forgotten the story of Babel, and today are much concerned over the alleged discrimination against Negroes and other races.

The thought of the times is, let’s desegregate and integrate. Let’s bring together men of all colors, races and countries—we are all brothers under the skin. Let’s go back to Babel.

The movement to do away with all racial segregation in school, church and social life (which eventually means amalgamation of the races and the mongrelization of the white race) has now found favor with all the leading church groups of America…

…The Presbyterian Church is now taking the lead in the “desegregation revolution.” The 168th General Assembly (Presbyterian Church in the U. S.) in May 1956 called for all-out efforts to end segregation in the fields of education, housing and industry. On June 14th, 1956 the Presbyterian Session of New York unanimously approved a resolution commending the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Only recently a Presbyterain minister told the General Assembly of the Church of Ireland that inter-marriage between black and white “on an immense scale” would solve the color problem.

In Connecticut last year a Presbyterian church with a predominantly white congregation called a Negro pastor. What has this great church come to, once the strict interpreter of the Bible, when it now thinks that the Ethiopian can change his skin!…

The “Scum” Origin Of Integration

The idea of racial equality and integration has come up from the lower orders of the social scale. The underworld knows no class. Prize fighting, not exactly the underworld, but not a very cultural institution, was the first sport to “integrate.” Now we find kindly old ladies all over the land watching Negro brutes fighting white brutes on television and glorying in knockouts.

Night clubs, “hot-spots,” and taverns went for racial equality rapidly. Negroes have preempted this form of enlightened entertainment. With sex, obscenity, jazz, rock-and-roll music, the night life of the country is far from being elevating, yet much of it slops over into radio and television to familiarize us all with the idea of non-segregation…

…There is no Commandment against segregation, no prohibition of it in the Bible nor in any of the great canons of moral law. Segregation was not a sin ten years ago, it was not a sin a hundred years ago, it was not a sin a thousand years ago and it is not a sin now. If right and wrong change with the years then the materialistic philosophy of William Graham Sumner is correct—that is, morals vary with the times and in accordance with the culture of peoples. This is the view of Karl Marx and modern communists. Such a view is against the principles of the Christian religion which believes in the Eternal God and absoluteness of truth. Right does not change with the years. It does not become wrong because of the preaching of false prophets, who, from mistaken or ulterior motives, make the welkin ring with their declamations against what they call injustice and immorality.

A Practical Solution

Segregation is a practical working method whereby large numbers of two race?, differing in customs, culture and intelligence, living in the same area, are in constant contact with each other without trouble or dissension. Under the systems employed in countries and states where the population is bi-racial, segregation has worked successfully. In the Southern states of the United States, in spite of the belief to the contrary, Negroes have had all the opportunity the land afforded…

…The Harm Of Racial Mixing

The question is asked that if the Bible is vague on the question of segregation, wouldn’t we resolve the problem more in keeping with Christian brotherhood if we declared it against the policy of the Church? What is the harm of mixing the races together in churches, schools and social affairs?

Well, the harm in the fraternizing and mixing of white and colored people comes in the breaking down of the social inhibition against the intermarriage between whites and Negroes. Race mixing that leads to racial intermarriage is a crime against the future of the white race. To mix the black and white races is bad science, bad eugenics and bad genetics. It is not a matter of Christianity, it is a matter of common sense, a practical matter that affects the future of all our people.

The Church, in advocating integration or the mixing of the races in schools and social affairs, knows that this will lead to eventual amalgamation and the absorption of the Negro race all to the disadvantage of the race that absorbs them.

On the same theory that all men are brothers we will then begin to mix in with the Chinese, East Indians and more Africans. Soon we will have one race of people. I do not understand why the good Christians of this country cannot see that in the event we absorb all the races of the world, or rather that we are absorbed by them since there are twice as many colored people as there are whites, religion as we know it today will disappear. We will have no more Christianity. We will have some kind of blended belief such as advocated by Arnold Toynbee. Back to Babel again.

Not White Supremacy But White Superiority

No plea is made here for the denial of any of the rights to which the citizens of this country are entitled. The right to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness belongs to everyone. There is no suggestion of a limit on the exercise of political rights, the advocating of economical and educational restrictions, or belittling the dignity of the members of any minority group.

My plea is simply that we recognize in a common sense way that there is a difference between the white race and the Negro race, that sensible white people do not want to become too intimate socially with colored people as that only leads to intermarriage and a mongrelization of the Caucasian race…

…How To Have A Superior People

Up until recently eugenists—now graduated into geneticists and now soft-pedalling the theory of superior peoples or races—were pointing out to Americans as well as the world the necessity for more careful mating on the part of individuals, and the desirability of superior persons choosing their wives or husbands from outstanding families. Taking their cue from stock breeders and dog fanciers they believed that the way to bring about the evolution of a highly intelligent and moral people was to mate together people who possessed these qualities. But modern ethnologists, sociologists and even geneticists wish us to disregard the principles employed by practical breeders of cattle, dogs, birds, flowers and plants when it comes to race mixing.

Influenced by propaganda the doctors of these “sciences,” which are still vague and far from exact, are saying in effect that black is white and there are no racial differences that are consequential. They want us to develop into a hybrid or mongrel race…

Read the entire pamphlet here.

The Missing Bi-racial Child in Hollywood

Canadian Review of American Studies
Volume 37, Number 2 (2007)
pages 239-263
E-ISSN: 1710-114X; Print ISSN: 0007-7720

Naomi Angel

The growing interest in issues pertaining to “mixed-race” identities and communities, as well as a surge in films with “mixed-race” characters has prompted this examination of representations of “mixedrace” characters in film. The research consists of an analysis of selected films, including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Jungle Fever, and situates this analysis within a historical framework based on the particular context in which each film was set and/or made. The value in studying “mixed-race” representations in film lies in the reflection it provides of significant moments in “mixed-race” histories and in the portrayal of cultural imaginings of people of “mixed race.”

Read or purchase the article here.

Even if multiracialism shifts us from the “one-drop rule” to a more graduated mestizaje model of racialization, this changes nothing for black people because blackness is still located at the “undesirable” end of the continuum—or, more accurately, hierarchy. In my view, it is necessary that we first understand the stability of that unethical structural relation before we can say that multiracialism challenges racism by injecting into the racist structure a “more fluid” sense of identity. Rainier Spencer’s 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article, [“Mixed Race Chic”] (Spencer, 2009, May 19), for example, asked, “how can multiracial identity deconstruct race when it needs the system of racial categorization to even announce itself?” Posing this question as a statement would be to say that one needs for there to be a structure of race in order to call oneself multiracial. Small wonder, then, that so many celebrations of multiracial identity sound antiblack. They are…

Omar Ricks, “Playing Games with Race,” The Feminist Wire, June 3, 2011. http://www.thefeministwire.com/2011/06/03/playing-games-with-race/

If the present ratio were to remain permanent, the inevitable product of the melting pot would be approximately an octoroon. It should not be necessary to stress the significance of this point. We know that under Mendelian law the African strain is hereditarily predominant. In other words, one drop of negro (sic) blood makes the negro (sic). We also know that no higher race has ever been able to preserve its culture, to prevent decay and eventual degeneracy when tainted, even slightly, with negro (sic) blood. Sixty centuries of history establish this rule. Since the first page of recorded fact, history can show no exception. Were the American people to become an octoroon race, it would mean their sinking to the level of Haiti and Santo Domingo…

John Powell, “Music and the Individual,” The Rice Institute Pamphlet, Volume 10, Number 3 (July 1923), p. 135.

John Powell: His Racial and Cultural Ideologies

Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online
Volume 5, Issue 1 (2006)
14 pages

David Z. Kushner, Professor Emeritus of Musicology/Music History
University of Florida

The opening of the first movement of the Symphony in A Major “Virginia Symphony” (Allegro non troppo ma con brio). QuickTime-format, WindowsMedia-format

Following John Powell’s death on August 15, 1963, Virginius Dabney closed his editorial comments in the Richmond Times-Dispatch with the following encomium: “Mr. Powell’s passing at 80 removes one of the genuinely great Virginians of modern times. In personality and character he was truly exceptional, and as a pianist and composer he was unique in the annals of the Old Dominion.” Only a dozen years earlier, on November 5, 1951, the then Governor of Virginia, John S. Battle, proclaimed a “John Powell Day,” on which the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Howard Mitchell performed the composer’s Symphony in A major. The Governor went on to state that the state-wide tribute to Powell was only fitting owing to “his many contributions to the cultural life of America….” The irregularity of such an extravagant gesture toward a musician in this country had the effect of rejuvenating interest in the artist both within the borders of Virginia and beyond. The world of academia, for example, contributed three master’s theses and a doctoral dissertation between 1968 and 1973, and Radford College, now Radford University, named its new music building Powell Hall at dedication ceremonies held on May 13, 1968.

By the 1950s and 1960s, Powell’s earlier involvement in contentious issues such as race relations in general, and the incorporation of racial and ethnic elements in the formation of an identifiably American music was conveniently forgotten or, at the least, placed on a back burner…

…Fame and, to some extent, fortune permitted Powell to devote more of his energy toward what became the leit motifs of his life—a preoccupation with racial purity and a conviction that Anglo-Saxon folksong serve as the primary basis for an identifiably American music. During the 1920s, Powell developed a friendship with Daniel Gregory Mason, a relationship that is treated in the latter’s book, Music in My Time.  Both composers held an aversion to the avant-garde music of their day and both supported the idea that an Anglo-Saxon-based musical aesthetic was the best way to establish an identifiably American music. But Powell’s persona is well-illustrated by the following remarks by Mason:

Considering how insatiably social John is, it is strange how hard it is to extract a letter from him. In all our long friendship I have accumulated only about half a dozen. He will gladly sit up all night with you, if you will let him, discussing music, or just gossiping—for he has an unappeasable appetite for personalia, especially when spiced with a little friendly malice—or declaiming on some of his pet fanaticisms such as the horrible dangers of intermarriage between Negroes and whites, or the supreme virtues of Anglo-Saxon folk-songs…

…Where Mason’s biases were slanted toward Jews, Powell’s were directed primarily, but not exclusively, to blacks. And these prejudices were, like Mason’s, intertwined with his views on the state of American music. In September 1922, Powell and several prominent Virginians of like thinking, was a founder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, the purpose of which was to foster “the preservation and maintenance of Anglo-Saxon ideals and civilization in America. This purpose is to be accomplished in three ways: first, by the strengthening of Anglo-Saxon instincts, traditions, and principles among representatives of our original American stock; second, by intelligent selection and exclusion of immigrants; and third, by fundamental and final solutions of our racial problems in general, most especially of the negro (sic) problem.” The pamphlet further enact legislation that will ensure the preservation of the white race:

1. There shall be instituted immediately a system of registration and birth certificates showing the racial composition (white, black, brown, yellow, red) of every resident of this State.
2. No marriage license shall be granted save upon presentation and attestation under oath by both parties of said registration or birth certificates.
3. White persons may marry only whites.
4. For the purposes of this legislation, the term “white persons” shall apply only to individuals who have no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian.

Aligning himself with leaders of the burgeoning eugenics movement, Powell was instrumental in gaining political support for passage of the Racial Integrity Act, which was signed into law on March 20, 1924 by the Governor of Virginia, Elbert Lee Trinkle. This bill also forbade the marriage of Orientals and other non-whites to whites, although the compulsory registration provision was defeated…

…Powell makes clear the direction in which he is heading, by decrying the likelihood of miscegenation and by citing specifically “the negro (sic) problem”:

If the present ratio were to remain permanent, the inevitable product of the melting pot would be approximately an octoroon. It should not be necessary to stress the significance of this point. We know that under Mendelian law the African strain is hereditarily predominant. In other words, one drop of negro (sic) blood makes the negro (sic). We also know that no higher race has ever been able to preserve its culture, to prevent decay and eventual degeneracy when tainted, even slightly, with negro (sic) blood. Sixty centuries of history establish this rule. Since the first page of recorded fact, history can show no exception. Were the American people to become an octoroon race, it would mean their sinking to the level of Haiti and Santo Domingo…

Read the entire article here.

A New Branch of the United States’ Miscegenated Family Tree: Lynn Nottage’s “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark”

The Feminist Wire
2011-04-29

Soyica Colbert, Assistant Professor of English
Dartmouth College

Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s new play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark opened at the Second Stage Theatre on April 6, 2011 to guffaws and robust applause. The play puts a playful twist on what Daphne Brooks calls “America’s miscegenated history” in order to recuperate the story of a forgotten black actress. Fittingly a comedy, Nottage’s play calls to mind the ongoing melodrama that is race relations in the United States. From the saga that Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings has become to the ongoing and offensive questions regarding President Barack Obama’s citizenship, the popular conversation about race seems to leap in the blink of an eye from the postracial world of the twenty-first century as Hortense Spillers describes in her provocative piece “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Too” to the scientific racism of the nineteenth century epitomized in a racist email Tea Party activist Marilyn Davenport sent to her constituency, picturing Obama’s parents as chimpanzees.

Using the temporal confusion race triggers in the twenty-first century to her dramaturgical advantage, Nottage’s play, directed by Jo Bonney, shuttles the viewer seamlessly through different time periods in the twentieth century, from 1933 to 1973 to 2003. The play offers an uproarious insight into the life of Vera Stark (Sanaa Lathan), an African American woman striving to become a Hollywood actress while working as the maid of a famous purportedly white actress Gloria Mitchell (Stephanie J. Block). By the end of a play that focuses on how the choices we make determine who we will become, we learn that Gloria is Vera’s cousin and that Gloria is passing for white. Laugh out loud funny, innovative in its staging and powerful in its organization, Nottage’s new play, playfully reveals the way that U.S. racial mixtries— a term used in Langston Hughes’ Broadway play Mulatto (1935) that communicates mixtures that are mysteries—create lines of contentious affiliation among women…

Read the entire article here.

“You Can’t Put People In One Category Without Any Shades of Gray:” A Study of Native American, Black, Asian, Latino/a and White Multiracial Identity

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia
May 2011
180 pages

Melissa Faye Burgess

Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science In Sociology

This study seeks to explore variations in the development of racial identities for multiracial Virginians in the 21st century by focusing on the roles that physical appearance, group associations and social networks, family and region play in the process. Simultaneously, this study seeks to explore the presence of autonomy in the racial identity development process. Using Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s racial formation theory as the framework, I argue that a racial project termed biracialism, defined as the increase in the levels of autonomy in self identification, holds the potential to contribute to transformations in racial understandings in U.S. society by opposing imposed racial categorization. Through the process of conducting and analyzing semistructured interviews with mixed-race Virginia Tech students I conclude that variations do exist in the identities they develop and that the process of identity development is significantly affected by the factors of physical appearance, group associations and social networks, family and region. Furthermore, I find that while some individuals display racial autonomy, others find themselves negotiating between their self-images and society’s perceptions or do not display it at all. In addition to these conclusions, the issues of acknowledging racism, the prevalence of whiteness, assimilation and socialization also emerged as contributors to the identity development process for the multiracial population.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 Problem Statement
• Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework
• Chapter 3 Literature Review
  • 3.1 The Formation of a U.S. Racial Hierarchy and Its Effects
  • 3.1.1 A Brief History of U.S. Racial Classifications: Creating the Racial Hierarchy and Increasing the Multiracial Presence in U.S. Society
  • 3.1.2 Attempts to Maintain White Superiority Through Anti-Miscegenation Laws
  • 3.2. Racial Passing
  • 3.3 The Multiracial Population Prior to the 20th Century
  • 3.4 Census Classification in the 20th Century
  • 3.5 Scientific Racism
  • 3.6 Importance of Virginia
  • 3.7 Recognizing the Possibility of Multiple Identities within the Multiracial Population
  • 3.8 Biracial Identity Development Models
  • 3.9 Factors Affecting Identity Development
  • 3.10 The Multiracial Movement
  • 3.11 A Post-Racial Society?
  • 3.12 Author’s Commentary on Issues at Play
• Chapter 4 Research Questions
• Chapter 5 Methods and Data
  • 5.1 Interviews and Recruitment
  • 5.2 Participants and their Characteristics
  • 5.3 Limitations
  • 5.4 Coding
• Chapter 6 Results
  • 6.1 Racial Self-Identifications
  • 6.2 Physical Appearance
  • 6.3 Group Associations and Social Networks
  • 6.4 Family
  • 6.5 Region
  • 6.6 Autonomy
• Chapter 7 Discussion and Conclusion
  • 7.1 Suggestions for Future Research
• Appendix A Interview Guide
• Appendix B Recruitment Ad for Collegiate Times
• Appendix C Recruitment Flyer
• Appendix D Consent Form
• Appendix E Characteristics of Interview Participants
• Notes
• Bibliography

Read the entire thesis here.