Mixed Race Studies

Negro Genius—Reviewed work(s):

The Journal of American Folklore
Volume 18, Number 71 (October-December, 1905)
pages 319-322

NEGRO GENIUS. As a dispatch from Washington, D. C., the “Evening Transcript” (Boston, Mass.) of February 18, 1905, published the following concerning the investigations of Mr. Daniel Murray: –

“Daniel Murray, for many years an assistant in the Library of Congress, is preparing a historical review of the contributions of the colored race to the literature of the world, with a complete bibliography relating to that subject. Public attention was sharply called to this question of the intellectual capacity of the Negro six years ago by Booker T. Washington and other colored men of prominence, when the United States government was preparing an exhibit for the Exposition at Paris, 1900. Mr. Washington urged that advantage be taken of the opportunity to show what the colored race had contributed to the world’s literature. The authorities consenting, Mr. Putnam, librarian of Congress, detailed Mr. Murray to make a list of all books and pamphlets written and published by authors identified with the colored race. As only four months intervened from the detail to the opening, the list was far from complete and very deficient in full historical information which has now been supplied.

“Mr. Murray’s work was practically begun about twenty-five years ago, when he commenced to gather material for such a work after reading Grégoire’s ‘Inquiry concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes and Mulattoes, Quadroons, etc.,’ 1810. Grégoire formed in 1790, in Paris, a society called ‘Friends of the Blacks,’ designed to secure their emancipation in the French colonies. Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were members. ‘One of the aims of this society,’ said Mr. Murray, ‘was to gather evidence of capacity on the part of Negroes and mulattoes, the same being designed to reinforce the argument the society intended to present to the French convention, to induce it to grant full equality to the mulattoes, etc., in the colonies. Benjamin Banneker, a mulatto, born in Maryland, to whom credit is due for saving to the American people L’Enfant’s original plan of the city of Washington when L’Enfant broke with the commissioners and took away his plans, which he later sold to Governor Woodward for laying out the city of Detroit, was an intimate friend of Jefferson’s and was often held up as evidence that no mulatto should be a slave. Banneker exhibited mathematical knowledge, and compiled in 1792 an almanac which Jefferson sent to the Anti-Slavery Society in Paris to support his view that the mulatto was the equal of the white man. Jefferson had high regard for Banneker and formally invited him to be his guest at Monticello, and in other ways treated him as an equal.

“‘In the same spirit animating Grégoire, and for the same purpose, to show to the world that the colored race, under which head I include all not white or who have a strain of African blood, is entitled to greater credit than is now accorded it by the American people, I have prosecuted my researches. I claim for the colored race whatever credit of an intellectual character a Negro, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon has won in the world of letters, and believe a fair examination of the evidence will remove no little prejudice against African blood. It has generally been accepted by scholars that ” Phillis Wheatley’s Poems,” 1773, was the first book by a Negro to display unusual intelligence and win recognition from the Caucasian. But this is not so. Beginning with Alexander the Great and his black general, Clitus, I have patiently gathered the facts from authentic sources of every highly creditable act by a Negro, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon in the forum of letters or the polite arts…

Read the entire article here.

Not keeping up appearances? Mixed race Asian Americans and the use of racial language

University of Utah
December 2009
76 pages

Paul Charles Humbert-Fisk

A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science

There has been a movement to proclaim that mixed race (biracial or multiracial) individuals transcend race or bring about an end to race and racism. In the U.S., many people also believe that they know race when they see it and that race can easily be pointed to, defined, and labeled. This language of race (which I am calling realist racial language) frames racial and ethnic identities as homogeneous, static, and as uncontested in terms of group membership. Many texts written by and about mixed race Asian Americans challenge both of these discourses about race. In this paper, I contend that the way race is commonly talked and written about is harmful to mixed race individuals. I examined the Pacific Citizen newspaper and the books What are you? and Part Asian: 100% Hapa for how mixed race Asian Americans narrate their experiences and contest, question, and subvert common sense notions of race. For many mixed race individuals, questions about race do not go away and instead race becomes pervasive in their lives. I use Foucault’s concept of surveillance to help understand the close scrutiny placed on mixed race individuals, through actions like asking “What are you?” I draw on Trinh Minh-ha’s approach by attempting to highlight and interrupt how “Truth” and validity are discursively created about race through the rules and regulations of (academic) disciplines. I believe that if teachers and scholars continue to rearticulate realist racial language in their discussions and analyses of race, they will continue to create problematic and deficit views of mixed race individuals.

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
  • Research Question
• DEBATES IN CRT ON ANALYZING ISSUES OF RACE
  • Intricacies of Race and Representation
• LIMITATIONS OF REALIST RACIAL LANGUAGE
  • Positionality
• DISCOURSES AND SURVEILLANCE OF RACE
• METHODS
• INTERPRETING MIXED RACE TEXTS
  • Defensive Interruptions
  • Questioning Interruptions
  • Productive Interruptions
• DISCUSSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR CRT/LATCRIT
• REFERENCES

Read the entire thesis here.

Celtic Tiger, Hidden Dragon: exploring identity among second generation Chinese in Ireland

The Irish Migration, Race and Social Transformation Review
Volume 2, Issue 1 (Summer 2007)
pages 48-69

Nicola Yau, Independent Researcher

Through qualitative interviews, participant observation and an asynchronous group discussion on an Internet forum for second generation Chinese, this article explores identity among the second generation in ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. The Chinese, while being one of the largest minority ethnic groups, are almost invisible in other ways. This article examines how the second generation self-identify by analysing the theory of double consciousness, the significance of experiencing identity in contrast to a search for ‘authentic identities’ and the limitations of an Irish-only identity which questions what it really means to be Irish. The diasporic nature of identity is also explored through a ‘homing desire’ in terms of ties to China and Hong Kong, as is representation due to the changing nature of racialisation in Ireland following the recent arrival of ‘new’ Mainland Chinese immigrants and the addition of an ‘ethnic’ question to the 2006 Census form.

Introduction

Identity in the age of modernity is always in process, leading Stuart Hall (1996a) to pose the question: who needs ‘identity’? Whether we are migrants ourselves or products of migration, identity at home and away is vital in locating ourselves in the world. In the age of migration, identity gains greater saliency. In this article, I explore identity among second generation Chinese in ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. Identity formation has always played a significant part in my own life because my father is ethnic Chinese and I had often wondered who the other members of the second generation were and if they had similar experiences to my own. In my mind there was a ‘felt necessity’ (Stanley 1996: 48, original emphasis) to carry out this research because, while being one of the largest visible minority ethnic groups in Ireland, the Chinese are very much invisible in other ways. I believe it is also important to research self-identification among the second generation which will assist in understanding the wide variety of experiences making up the current ethnic diversity of the country.

I begin by looking at identity as a process, how the second generation self identify and how they feel they are perceived by mainstream Irish society. The diasporic nature of identity is explored through the idea of a ‘homing desire’ (Brah 1996), by examining ties to China and Hong Kong, and finally I use theories of home and belonging to look at how the second generation views Ireland and what it represents for them and their identities…

…When I asked my participants how they would describe their identity, answers varied depending on their own processes of identification. However, the sense of identification being a process, of becoming, of journeying was clear, for example, when Lucy said her identity was fragmented, fractured and belligerent. She explained this by saying:

Because you’re really on your own your parents aren’t really helping you out with that. I don’t think anyone can really help you out with that, you know what I mean…you kind of have to just, yeah, figure it out in your own head. It takes a few years…but then once you figure it out and are happy with what you figured out then it’s fine but up until that point it does give an awful amount of trouble.

It is clear that her identity was individual, that it was her journey and her sense of becoming. Identity to her was the process, not merely the label she chose to go by. It was only when I asked her how she would describe her national identity that she discussed labels, none of which she chose herself:

I think if you’re kind of half and half and in between I don’t know but maybe some people find it very easy in a country where there is a lot of other people like that, then it can be very easy to identify as being like say British or American, but in Ireland I don’t think you’re ever given the facility to do that. There just isn’t the, you know, there isn’t the acceptance here to do that; not that you need people’s acceptance but like that does have an influence on you, you know people’s reactions to you, so it doesn’t really mean that much, it’s a passport and it’s an accent and that’s about it. I think you can be yourself wherever you are, so you know you don’t have to be constantly identifying yourself as Irish to be like a person.

Lucy did not feel a particular affinity to being categorized as Irish. Her sense of becoming enveloped the process of identification as being a person of mixed-race origins. She highlighted the in-between nature of her identity and while her group of friends, all of whom are white Irish, would class her as Irish, she did not. Irish is an identity that is largely symbolic to her, which she reduces to an accent and a passport. Although she may be ethnically Irish and Chinese, she is racialised as Chinese which corresponds to Song’s (2003) statement that very often people are forcefully included in groups and attributed ethnic identities which are not the same as their own sense of identity…

…For those of mixed race origins there were additional elements in their identity processes. This was evident in how my participants reacted to me. When the issue of my visible Chineseness was raised, Ida drew attention to my dual heritage while Catherine, who is also of dual heritage, thought that I looked ‘obviously’ Chinese. This mirrors the idea that monoracial groups often question membership of mixed race people because they are not ‘fully’ of any one heritage (Song 2003). Therefore, self-perception and perception by others plays a significant role in identity formation. In the next section, I examine how the second generation feel they are perceived by mainstream Irish society…

…For some of my participants of mixed race origins the ethnicity question caused confusion. When discussing this with Jessica I asked her if she considered ticking the Other option, since it included those of a mixed race background. She came to the conclusion that:

I was going to tick it but then I thought well you know I do kind of identify as Chinese, so, and Asia is ok for me and it was a difficult one to fill in to be honest. It was the last question I filled in, in the whole census form because it doesn’t allow, I’m not a complicated background, race background and I had a dilemma of which of two to fill in.

Jessica’s decision to choose the Asian Irish option ahead of the Other category highlights her desire to stress both her identities, which the latter did not allow her to do. This reflects the opinions of Darryl Slater who is of dual heritage. He stresses his two ethnic identities, even though mainstream British society sees him only as Black. The mixed race lived experience adds a further dimension to the process of identification. As Song (2003) concludes, it is Slater’s experience of his parents and his family relationships, if nothing else, that is distinct from that of monoracial people.

This reflects Anderson’s (1991: 166) contention that ‘the fiction of the census is that everyone is in it, and that everyone has one—and only one—extremely clear place. No fractions’. On the contrary, there is uncertainty and there are fractions. This sentiment was further conveyed by Lucy:

I think that people who are, you know, mixed race and Chinese and Irish or brought up Irish like, you kind of fall down between the cracks really because you can’t, because you’re asked to identify yourself with one particular group but it’s kind of hard to do it because culturally you might be but racially you’re not really, still you’re not seen as the same, so eh, which is a bit ridiculous really because it doesn’t really matter…that’s Ireland though because in America you wouldn’t have that because it’s all just everyone, whatever, loads of different people you know you can all end up being American although you can have your separate identity but in Ireland it seems you have to be Irish and that’s it and if you don’t fit white Irish then you’re not really Irish…

Read the entire article here.

The passing of Charles Chesnutt: Mining the white tradition

Wasafiri
Volume 13, Issue 27
pages 5-10
DOI 10.1080/02690059808589583

Sarah Meer, Lecturer of English
Univeristy of Cambridge

In May 1880, the young Charles Chesnutt confided to his diary his ambition to write a book. Its object would be ‘not so much the elevation of the colored people’—the concern of most late nineteenth century reformers, both white and black—‘as the elevation of the whites,’; for he considered it was ‘the unjust spirit of caste’, rather than the moral or economic or educational conditions of blacks which lay behind racial inequities in America. Chesnutt’s focus on white Americans as the problem would be accompanied by a particular methodology. He did not propose ‘a fierce indiscriminate onslaught; not an appeal to force, … (for) the subtle almost indefinable feeling of repulsion toward the negro, which is common to most Americans …, cannot be taken by assault’. Instead, ‘their [garrison) must be mined, and we will find ourselves in their midst before they think it’. This metaphor, of the secret operation which carries the writer silently into the enemy’s camp, is a peculiarly apt one for Chesnutt’s writing. His first book would not be published until 1899 but the two collections of stories which came out that year, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth, were both as subtle and as determined to make his point as the image suggests. In those books too, and in a subsequent novel, The Marrow of Tradition, Chesnutt would often appear to be taking his stand on enemy ground and revisiting fictions which were themselves part of the problem. Chesnutt not only took white authors as his models but seemed at times to seek out genres particularly associated with that ‘feeling of repulsion toward the negro’ which he believed so prevalent.

In a sense Chesnutt’s literary tactics reflected his own anomalous position in a society obsessive about racial boundaries. The son of free North Carolina blacks, Chesnutt was probably also the grandson, on both sides, of white men. His appearance was pale enough to ‘pass‘ for white, though it was an option he rejected. Physically ‘white’ to the eyes of the unacquainted, culturally ‘white’ in his education and tastes, Chesnutt was nonetheless black historically; in the place he inherited in America’s rigidly stratified society. Chesnutt’s writing addressed his country’s racial inequality and its slave-owning history but formally it continued to resemble the ‘white’ tradition of writing on the subject…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Classification and History

Routledge
1997-02-01
376 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-8153-2602-1

Edited by

E. Nathaniel Gates (1955-2006)
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Yeshiva University

Explores the concept of “race”

The term “race,” which originally denoted genealogical or class identity, has in the comparatively brief span of 300 years taken on an entirely new meaning. In the wake of the Enlightenment it came to be applied to social groups. This ideological transformation coupled with a dogmatic insistence that the groups so designated were natural, and not socially created, gave birth to the modern notion of “races” as genetically distinct entities. The results of this view were the encoding of “race” and “racial” hierarchies in law, literature, and culture.

How “racial” categories facilitate social control

The articles in the series demonstrate that the classification of humans according to selected physical characteristics was an arbitrary decision that was not based on valid scientific method. They also examine the impact of colonialism on the propagation of the concept and note that “racial” categorization is a powerful social force that is often used to promote the interests of dominant social groups. Finally, the collection surveys how laws based on “race” have been enacted around the world to deny power to minority groups.

A multidisciplinary resource

This collection of outstanding articles brings multiple perspectives to bear on race theory and draws on a wider ranger of periodicals than even the largest library usually holds. Even if all the articles were available on campus, chances are that a student would have to track them down in several libraries and microfilm collections. Providing, of course, that no journals were reserved for graduate students, out for binding, or simply missing. This convenient set saves students substantial time and effort by making available all the key articles in one reliable source.

Table of Contents

• Volume Introduction
• The Crime of Color—Paul Finkelman
• Reflections on the Comparative History and Sociology of Racism—George M. Fredrickson
• The Italian, a Hindrance to White Solidarity in Louisiana, 1890-1898—George E. Cunningham
• Cornerstone and Stumbling Block: Racial Classification and the Late Colonial State in Indonesia—C. Fasseur
• Racial Restrictions in the Law of Citizenship—Ian Haney Lopez
• The Prerequisite Cases—Ian Haney Lopez
• Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology—Alexander Saxton
• Introduction: Historical Explanations of Racial Inequality—Alexander Saxton
• Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia—Ann Stoler
• Irish-American Workers and White Racial Formation in the Antebellum United States—David R. Roediger
• The Race Question and Liberalism: Casuistries in American Constitutional Law—Stanford M. Lyman
• Introduction: From the Social Construction of Race to the Abolition of Whiteness—David R. Roediger
• Acknowledgments

In My Experience: A Multi-Racial Heritage

Forum: with Michael Kransy
KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2011-12-16

Dave Iverson, Host

As part of our series “In My Experience,” spotlighting the personal stories of our listeners, we talk with a panel of biracial and multi-racial people about race, identity and what it’s like to grow up looking different from your neighbors and even your parents. We listen to their stories, and we welcome yours.

Download the episode (00:51:58) here.