Mixed Race Studies

Identity Notes Part One: Playing in the Light

American University Law Review
Volume 45, Number 3 (February 1996)
pages 695-720

Adrienne D. Davis, Vice Provost; William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law
Washington University in St. Louis

What parts do the invention and development of whiteness play in the construction of what is loosely described as “American”?’

INTRODUCTION

There is now a well-developed and compelling body of scholarship challenging the notion that race is either a natural or a scientific category. Scholarly treatments regarding the social construction of race are still finding their way into law and legal scholarship. Most of these treatments argue that race is socially constructed. This Essay makes a different point. Using two cases from the early and midnineteenth century, I discuss how race is socially constructed, why it matters, and how the process can appear in issues as dry as an allocation of the burden of proof. In particular, I focus on the construction of whiteness, which, I argue, drives the process of legally classifying groups of color.

A focus on the politics of local contests invites an archaeological exploration of historic sites where a black/white paradigm of race was in crisis and vulnerable to correction. In each of these crises, however, the force of the paradigm itself prevailed, reinscribing itself with yet more force in law and the lives of all three groups implicated: African Americans, other groups of color, and whites. An historical assessment of the relationship of other groups of color to a black/white paradigm reveals the paradigm as not only undescriptive and inaccurate, but debilitating for legal analysis, as well as civil rights oriented organizing.

The two cases reveal distinct dynamics of the binary model, which I suggest is hegemonic for the following reasons. A primary mechanism of this model is its disciplining function on other groups of color seeking legal rights and recognition. It is an organizing principle for knowledge (here, law), it has an internal hierarchy of power, it masks this hierarchy through a seemingly neutral shell of “race,” and it operates as self-reinforcing through its disciplining mechanism. In addition, in classicly hegemonic fashion, the paradigm includes rules that prove to be internally inconsistent. The cases reveal the internal contradiction of the rules employed by courts to establish racial identity at law. In one opinion, jurists use mutually exclusive determinations of racial identity in resolving a single legal matter. The underlying facts and interests involved suggest that the court’s reasoning was driven not by the interests of the immediate parties, but rather by a larger, perhaps unconscious, desire to define white identity and secure white liberty interests.

Finally, I hope that the contrast of the two cases demonstrates that the black/white paradigm exercises influence on legal reasoning across time and geographic space, and also that the paradigm itself appears to be a natural ordering, obscuring the assumption of a white subject position. Though involving seemingly unrelated legal conflicts, the cases are linked together through the discursive structure formed by binarism. It orders the legal logic and rhetoric of the judges, as well as the arguments of the litigants. Both cases prove to be inescapably embedded with racial determinations and, inevitably, legal constructions.

What follows stems from a series of discussions, and remains an inquiry directed toward certain suggestive episodes within a much broader history that I leave to others to continue to explore and excavate…

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In the Middle, In Between: Cultural Hybridity, Community Rejection, and the Destabilization of Race in Percival Everett’s “Erasure”, Adam Mansbach’s “Angry Black White Boy”, and Danzy Senna’s “Caucasia”

Howard University
2011
84 pages
Publication Number: AAT 1495397
ISBN: 9781124728568

Laura R. Perez

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Howard University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English

Cultural hybridity, a term first introduced by post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha, has been a shifting and difficult to define concept within academic discourse. My thesis will focus on cultural hybridity as the embodiment of a pluralistic identity that encompasses the characteristics or attributes of more than one culture or race. I will examine three contemporary literary works of racial satire—Percival Everett’s Erasure, Adam Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy, and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia—that present culturally hybrid protagonists and explore the ways in which these protagonists are utilized to destabilize race. Furthermore, I will demonstrate the tensions that this destabilization creates through community rejections of each protagonists’ hybridity – tensions that become inherent to hybridity itself.

My exploration will include an analysis of the protagonists’ hybridity—the ways in which they do not fit into the existing notions of what blackness or whiteness is—and how this hybridity is marginalized by their communities. Following this, I will explicate the protagonists’ responses to their marginalization—their creation of dual identities or alter egos and the racial/psychoanalytic significance of this process. I will draw upon post-colonial and critical race theory writings, as well as Freudian and Lacanian theory, to frame my analysis. But most importantly, I will draw upon the work of scholars—including Marwan Kraidy, Jopi Nyman, Sabrine Broeck, Pnina Werbner, Peter Burke, and Robert Young—to theorize hybridity within my analysis.

Finally, I will examine the novels’ conclusions, during which the protagonists’ dual identities are forcefully merged, and demonstrate the lack of resolution that this merging creates. This examination will reveal that the community rejections of hybridity in each novel are, in themselves, impossible to mediate. Thus, I will prove that each protagonist’s hybrid positioning not only destabilizes race by challenging the concreteness of racial categorizations, but that this positioning, and the community’s response to it, also demonstrates the tensions inherent to hybridity itself. In this way, each text undermines the black-white binary, while also affirming the tensions that result from not willfully engaging in it.

Table of Contents

• Thesis Committee
• ABSTRACT
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
  • Background to the Problem
  • Statement of the Problem
  • Review of Literature
  • Theoretical Framework and Methodology
  • Plan of Research
  • Definition of Terms
• CHAPTER 2: PERCIVAL EVERETT’S ERASURE
• CHAPTER 3: ADAM MANSBACH’S ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY
• CHAPTER 4: DANZY SENNA’S CAUCASIA
• REFERENCES

Purchase the dissertation here.

Bi-racial identity: Children born to African-American and white couples

Clinical Social Work Journal
Volume 21, Number 4 (December 1993)
pages 417-428
DOI: 10.1007/BF00755575

Dorcas D. Bowles, Distinguished Professor of Social Work
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia

The quest for self-identity has been more complex for African-Americans than for all the groups in American society. This quest has been especially troubling for children where one parent is African-American and the other parent is white. The scholarly literature is replete with themes on black identity and self-esteem, but this literature does not speak to the issue of biraciality since societal attitudes decree that any person with a drop of black blood is black. There is a move afoot by bi-racial (black and white) young adult children to claim both parts of their ethnic heritage. This paper suggests that the issue of bi-racial identity must be revisited and re-examined.

Read or purchase the article here.

‘Obama’s My Dad’: Mixed Race Suspects, Political Anxiety and the New Imperialism

thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory & culture
Volume 10, Number 1 (2011)

Rachel Gorman, Lecturer
Women and Gender Studies Institute
University of Toronto

In this article I will argue that the ideology of white supremacy is currently being reproduced as an ideology of political supremacy. I explore narratives of Obama and my father, and bring a transnational feminist framework to an examination of ontological and cultural ideologies of mixed race identity.

All my life I have encountered suspicion about my race. As a child in a working class neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada in the 1970s, my mixed race identity seemed to be an ontological threat to my European immigrant and white settler neighbours, and my ‘Mediterranean’ appearance rendered me unintelligible in relation to Blackness As a pre-teen transplanted to Muscat, Oman in the 1980s, I was intelligible as Arab, which, given Oman’s historical and geographical proximity to Eastern Africa, did not preclude African ancestry. While I was unremarkable at the national school, I was questioned by British ‘expats’ when I circulated in the international neighbourhood, despite (or perhaps because of) the presence of several mixed families. Back in Toronto during the aggressive intensification of war and occupation in the Middle East in the 2000s, my racial ambiguity has become suspicious in new ways. I am dating this shift from September 2000, the beginning of the second Intifada, not September 2001, when the New American Century went prime time. Much happened between the two Septembers–mass protests at the summit on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas at Québec City in April 2001; the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in August 2001. In the weeks following Durban, the global struggle to maintain white supremacy was recast as the will to reestablish American political supremacy. It was also during this time that, as an antiwar and anti-occupation organizer, my racial ambiguity was reconstituted through suspicions over whether I harbour dangerous worldviews…

…A phenomenology of race is useful to continue to dispel the illusions of white supremacists who argue that Obama’s presidency means we are living in a post-racist world. Indeed, there are many questions to be asked about how mixed race people are emerging as tropes of the triumph of a liberal brand of diversity—as Kimberley DaCosta argues, the identity ‘multiracial’ emerged in the US context in part through a struggle over racial categories on government forms, and in part through niche market recognition. In order to resist the tendency to analytically collapse antiracism into advocacy for market inclusion, we need a phenomenology of race that allows us to grasp both ontology and culture in relation to political consciousness…

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Though Many Have White Skin, their Veins Flow of Black Blood: Afro-Argentine Culture and History during the Twentieth Century in Buenos Aires, Argentina

McNair Scholars Journal
Volume 7, Issue 1 (2003)
Article 8
11 pages

Erika D. Edwards, Grand Valley State University

Although the Afro-Argentine population continued to decline during the twentieth century, the people played an integral role in shaping Argentina’s culture through their contributions in the field of dance, literature, and religion. Unfortunately, their vibrant culture and history are often ignored and overlooked because of Argentina’s subtle efforts to whiten its population. The purpose of this project is three-fold. First, it aims to recognize the survival of the Afro-Argentine community during the twentieth century. Second, it recaptures the means used to preserve African traditions. Finally, it reveals efforts of Afro-Argentine groups such as La Fundación Africa Vive that have dedicated themselves to reconstructing the Afro- Argentine role in Argentina’s culture and history.

Introduction

One of the first things I noticed while studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was that there were few, if any, blacks among the city’s inhabitants. I lived there for six months and people always assumed that I was Brazilian because of their popular belief that Afro-Argentines no longer exist. However, this is a lie: Afro-Argentines do indeed exist. Africans began arriving in Argentina as slaves in 1534, two years after the foundation of Buenos Aires, and since then they have shaped and transformed Argentina. This paper seeks to draw attention to the contributions of Afro-Argentines to the country’s culture and history. To this end, I will recognize their existence despite the country’s denial of its black population. Then, I will address the ways in which Afro-Argentines recapture their African past through dance, music, religion, and literature. Finally, I will discuss what Afro-Argentines are doing to reconstruct their history and, in the process, correct lies, misconceptions, and myths about them. In denying Afro-Argentine culture and history, many Argentines may not learn about their families’ and country’s past. Though many have white skin, their veins flow of black blood.

Recognizing the Existence of Afro-Argentines

Statisticians often claim, “the numbers never lie.” Yet in the case of census information for Argentina over the course of the twentieth century, the existence of the country’s black population is often denied or its size is underestimated. The noted Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges remembered that in 1910 or 1912 there was a tenement of blacks on the corner of Uriburu and Vicente López streets and another on Sarmiento Street in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1946, Nicolás Besio Moreno calculated that there were “one and a half million people with black blood [in Argentina]” and further stated that they could be classified as blacks based upon the United States guidelines, which suggest that people who have a lighter complexion and often might pass for whites would still be classified as blacks. The following year, in 1947, a national census identified the presence of 15,000 blacks, (5,000 blacks and 10,000 mulattos).  By 1963, Afro-Argentines were estimated to number 17,000. Their population declined over the next four years to 3,000 in 1967 but increased to 4,500 in 1968 for reasons which remain unclear. However, some people have estimated that there were as many as 10,000 blacks “not counting those mixed with dark skinned people in the provinces.” The journalist Narciso Binayan Carmona stated in 1973 that “if all Argentines with black blood were accounted there would be 2-3 million.” Based upon this information, one can see there are discrepancies involving the size of Argentina’s black population; their true number probably lies somewhere between what the census counted and people’s perceptions.

Present-day statistics tend to agree with what people saw during the twentieth century. This could be due to El Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (INDEC) which forgot to include a box for citizens to identify their descent (descendencia) during the last national census in 2001. INDEC later denied that it had forgotten to include the box. It is interesting to note that when the last national census was undertaken, INDEC included a category for the first time to check if one was of indigenous descent, a change from the last national census conducted in 1991. Their failure to inquire about people of African descent further perpetuates the myth that Afro-Argentines no longer exist. In stark contrast, La Fundación Africa Vive, an Afro-Argentine group dedicated to promoting black culture and history, believes that there are currently two million Afro-Argentines (descended from slaves) in the country. Thus, regardless of how a person may appear (dark- or light-skinned) and whether or not they are aware, many Argentines have black blood.

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, miscegenation served to lighten the complexion of the country’s black population. Argentina’s black male population was already in decline as a result of wars for independence and territorial expansion as well as diseases. Then, from 1880 to 1930, a mass of European immigrants arrived in the country. Most European immigrants were male, thus their arrival led to a surplus of white males and a shortage of white females. Given the pre-existing scarcity of black males, prospective black brides often married white grooms, many of whom were European immigrants. Interracial marriages became common. The children of such unions often had lighter skin giving them access to better education and employment opportunities thereby facilitating their ability to pass themselves off as white.

However, not all blacks who wished to marry selected white spouses. There were black couples, such as the Monteros. The couple had three daughters but due to miscegenation in their family’s past, each of the girls was a different shade of brown: the eldest looked black, the middle child resembled a mulatto, and the youngest appeared to be entirely white. “So great were the physical differences… people refused to believe they were family.” However, the Monteros considered themselves black and “had a shelf of books on race and a stack of Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, and Ike and Tina records to prove it.” At the time they were interviewed in 1973, the girls were dating white boys. Were they to have married and had children, they too would have contributed to the whitening of the country’s black population. As the black population becomes lighter through miscegenation, it will become harder to identify its existence…

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Between Black and White: An Exploratory Investigation of Biracialism in the United States and South Africa

McNair Scholars Journal
Volume 11, Issue 1 (2007)
Article 7

Whitney Laster
Grand Valley State University

The United States and South Africa both endured periods of intense racism produced from rigid social hierarchies. While European populations controlled these institutions, black populations remained marginalized. Critical race theory proposes that race is socially constructed as opposed to inherently biological. Although social construction of the white and black ethnicities formed similarly, the development of the mixing of white and black into biracial peoples developed uniquely in each country. This study will apply concepts from critical race theory to analyze similarities and differences within the constructions, highlighting the elements of colonization, slavery, and de facto segregation and investigating the effects on the social identity.

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