Mixed Race Studies

Race, Religion, and Caste: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives

Comparative Sociology
Volume 1, Issue 2 (2002)
pages 115-126
DOI: 10.1163/156913302100418457

T. K. Oommen, Professsor Emeritus
Jawaharlal Nehru University

Although race as a biological concept has no validity, racism persists. In spite of the fact that caste is a social construct caste discrimination continues. To understand the reason for this one must trace the career of these concepts. The biological category of race subsequently came to have linguistic/philological, ethnological/cultural and political/national connotations giving birth to Nazism and fascism. Similarly, caste carried a racial connotation in that its social construction can be traced to the Hindu Doctrine of Creation as Varna implied colour. Further, both orientalist scholars and Hindu nationalists used caste and race, race and nation and even religion and race interchangeably. The divide between the fair-skinned upper caste Aryan Hindus and the dark-skinned lower caste Dravidian Hindus also implied racial differences. Therefore, the mechanical insistence on semantic purity of race and caste would adversely affect one’s comprehension of the nature of empirical reality in South Asia. While the tendency to equate caste and race in a neat and tidy vein is not sustainable, it is more difficult to eradicate caste discrimination as compared with racism not only because the two share several common characteristics, but also because caste discrimination is sanctioned by religion. Finally, it is important to remember that perceptions people hold about social reality are equally important as social fact, in successfully tackling social problems.

Passing, Performance, and Perversity: Rewriting Bodies in the Works of Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, and Danzy Senna

49th Parallel: An interdisciplinary journal of North American studies
Issue 26: Autumn 2011
ISSN: 1753-5794
19 pages

Natalie Wall
University of Calgary

This paper examines the function of passing in the works of Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, and Danzy Senna. It traces the historical use of the term passing, following its development from a static conception of the black person passing for white to a theoretical practice of acting out any/every race, in order to open the term up and explore why passing is considered perverse by so many and enlightened by a few. Passing, the essay suggests, exposes the dual nature of race – a construct that is arbitrary and fictional but which also possesses immense social and material power. Finally, by juxtaposing the works of these three authors, the essay argues for a conception of passing as an intersectional phenomenon, defined not only by race but also by its interactions with class, gender, and sexuality.

Read the entire article here.

Canada’s famous first black doctor

National Review of Medicine
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Volume 1, Number 4 (2004-02-28)

Marvin Ross

Born in Toronto in 1837, Dr Anderson Abbott was a close friend of Abe Lincoln but refused to serve in the US Colored Troops

Not only was Anderson Ruffin Abbott the first black man to graduate from medical school in Canada (University of Toronto, 1861), he is described in a US history textbook as “probably the most famous British North American-born surgeon to serve coloured soldiers during the Civil War.” He was also a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, whose widow presented him with the shawl Lincoln wore to his first inauguration.

Dr Abbott’s father, Wilson, was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1801 to free parents but he eventually moved to Canada in 1835 to escape prejudice in the US. Wilson prospered in Toronto where he became an influential real estate dealer and city alderman. Anderson, who was born in 1837, studied medicine at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1861. While working as an intern, or medical licentiate as it was then known, in 1863 he petitioned President Lincoln to be allowed to join the Union Army.

He became one of only eight black surgeons serving, which brought him to the president’s attention and led to their friendship. Dr Abbott, however, refused to serve in the United States Colored Troops—a segregated unit. Instead, he opted to work as a contract surgeon. He explained why in a 1907 letter, writing that he felt equal to operating on any man and that having been born in a land where all men are free, he was not going to submit to government-endorsed segregation. His heroic act had a negative side effect, though: because of his refusal to serve in the segregated regiment, his widow was denied a Civil War Widow’s Pension…

…His son, Wilson R. Abbott, also became a doctor and practised as a lung and heart surgeon in Chicago. But unlike his father, he wasn’t relegated to a segregated black hospital—not because the laws had changed, but because he worked at a white hospital by passing. Anderson Abbott had married a woman from St Catharines, Ontario who was of mixed racial background. His son, Wilson, married a white woman and they and their descendents began to live as whites. Ms Slaney only learned that she was part black in 1975 at age 24 when she was approached by the Ontario Black History Society to ask about her great-great grandfather. No one had ever told her that half her family was black and, as she pointed out that at the time, “I didn’t even know any black people.” Her story and that of her black ancestor is the subject of her book Family Secrets: Crossing the Colour Line.

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Mexican: A Short Study on Identity

University of Kansas
April 2009
63 pages

Ariane Rose Tulloch

Submitted to the graduate degree program in Anthropology and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s of Arts.

Up until the early 19th century, blacks outnumbered white Spaniards in most major Mexican cities (Vaughn 2008). Nowadays, the black population has been localized to two areas: Veracruz and the Costa Chica. This study looks at whether Afro-Mexicans in the Costa Chica region had developed a racial consciousness, and if so, to what extent. Data gathered about Afro-Mexicans was analyzed using the Minority Identity Development Model (Atkinson et al 1983) which captured the complexities of minority-majority relations in a multi-ethnic society. Not all Afro-Mexicans had developed a strong sense of Afro-Mexican identity, but instead accepted their classification into the dominant mestizo group. Others see themselves as Afro-Mexicans in their own right, possibly due to having been influenced by activist group in the U.S. and elsewhere. The latter group sees itself and others in a positive yet autonomous light, corresponding to the final stages of the Minority Identity Development Model.

Read the entire thesis here.

Identity of Biracial College Students

San Jose State University
May 1999
77 pages

MyTra Fitzpatrick

A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Child Development San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts

This thesis examined the identity of biracial college students and the relationship between parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) and biracial identity development. Biracial subjects were defined as individuals having parents who were from two different ethnic/racial groups. Of the total of 104 subjects, 65 students were classified into one of three mixed-groups categories according to the two ethiucities of their parents: Asian/Euro-American, Asian/Latino, and Latino/Euro-American. Results showed that students identified strongly with one or both ethnicities, and that strong bicultural identity was associated with positive self-esteem. The majority of parents utilized authoritative parenting styles, regardless of their ethnic mix. While authoritative parents were more likely to have offspring who exhibited higher levels of bicultural identity and self-esteem, these results were not statistically significant. These findings are consistent with the parenting styles literature and with studies showing positive identity for biracial students.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction to the Problem
  • Interracial Marriages
  • Definition of Biracial Individuals
  • Statement of the Problem and Purpose of this Study
• Chapter 2: Review of the Literature
  • Research on Biracial Individuals
  • Identity Development: Definitions and Theories
  • Identity Development of Ethnic Minority Individuals
  • Identity Development of Biracial Individuals
  • Parenting Styles and the Relationship to Biracial Adolescents’ Social and Emotional Development
    • Baumrind’s Four Dimensions of Parental Behavior
    • Baumrind’s Three Parenting Style Typologies
    • Ethnic Differences in Parenting Styles
• Chapter 3: Methodology
  • Participants
  • Materials
  • Procedure
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusions
• References
• Appendix A

List of Tables

1. Who Students Live With by Ethnicity of Parents
2. Percent of Students who Identified with Their Mom vs. Their Dad
3. Identity Strength for Group 1 by Ethnicity of Parents
4. Identity Strength for Group 2 by Ethnicity of Parents
5. Bicultural Identity from Low to High by Ethnicity of Parents
6. Mean Scores for Identity Items by Primary Identity Group
7. Reasons Student Select for Identifying with Primary Ethnic Identity Group
8. Mean Score of Self-Esteem by Primary Ethnic Identity
9. Mean Score of Self-Esteem by Bicultural Identity
10. Mean Score of Self-Esteem by Ethnicity of Parents
11. Parenting Styles by Ethnic Mix-Groups of Parents
12. Percent of Parents Using Each Parenting Styles by Bicultural Identity of Child.
13. Mean Self-Esteem Scores by Parenting Styles

Read the entire thesis here.

The Language Trap: U.S. Passing Fiction and its Paradox

University of Kansas
2009
181 pages

Masami Sugimori, Instructor of English
University of South Alabama

Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Through exploration of William Faulkner’s, James Weldon Johnson’s and Nella Larsen’s “passing novels,” this dissertation points out that narrative representation of racial passing facilitates and compromises the authors’ challenge to the white-dominant ideology of early-twentieth-century America. I reveal that, due to their inevitable dependence on language, these authors draw paradoxically on the white-dominant ideology that they aim to question, especially its system of binary racial categorization. While the “white” body of a “passing” character serves the novelists as a subversive force in white-supremacist society (which depends on the racial other to define “whiteness”), language, which is essentially ideological, traps the writers in racial binary and continually suggests that, while the character looks white, s/he is really black. Accordingly, the authors have to write under the constraints of the problem that American discourse of race must and, for the most part, does systematically suppress its own essential fictiveness.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Passing Paradox: Representing Racial Chaos within the Symbolic Order
• Chapter 1: Racial Mixture, Racial Passing, and White Subjectivity in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!
• Chapter 2: Signifying, Ordering, and Containing the Chaos: Whiteness, Ideology, and Language in William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust
• Chapter 3: Narrative Order and Racial Hierarchy: James Weldon Johnson’s Double-Consciousness and “White” Subjectivity in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Along This Way
• Chapter 4: Ordering the Racial Chaos, Chaoticizing the Racial Order: Nella Larsen’s Narrative of Indeterminacy and Invisibility in Passing
• Conclusion: Toward a Language for the Real, Chaotic and Unnamable
• Notes
• Works Cited

Read the entire dissertation here.

Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity

Lexington Books (a division Rowman & Littlefield publishing group)
2011-08-28
224 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-7391-4574-6 / 978-0-7391-4574-6
Electronic ISBN: 0-7391-4576-2 / 978-0-7391-4576-0

Nikki Khanna, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Elected in 2008, Barack Obama made history as the first African American President of the United States. Though recognized as the son of his white Kansas-born mother and his Kenyan father, the media and public have nonetheless pigeonholed him as black, and he too self-identifies as such. Obama’s experiences as a biracial American with black and white ancestry, although compelling because of his celebrity, however, is not unique and raises several questions about the growing number of black-white biracial Americans today: How are they perceived by others with regard to race? How do they tend to identify? And why? Taking a social psychological approach, this book identifies influencing factors and several underlying processes shaping racial identity. Unlike previous studies which examine racial identity as if it was a one-dimensional concept, this book examines two dimensions of identity—a public dimension (how they identify themselves to others) and an internalized dimension (how they see themselves internally)—noting that both types of identity may not mesh, and in fact, they may be quite different from one another. Moreover, this study investigates the ways in which biracial Americans perform race in their day-to-day lives. One’s race isn’t simply something that others prescribe onto the individual, but something that individuals “do.” The strategies and motivations for performing black, white, and biracial identities are explored.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Questions of Identity
• Chapter 2: Black and White in America: Then and Now
• Chapter 3: Through the “Looking Glass”: Reflected Appraisals and the One Drop Rule
• Chapter 4: The Push and Pull of Day-to-Day Interactions
• Chapter 5: Social Comparisons and Social Networks
• Chapter 6: Identity Work: Strategies and Motivations
• Chapter 7: Concluding Thoughts

“If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black”: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule

Sociological Quarterly
Volume 51 Issue 1 (Winter 2010)
Pages 96 – 121
Published Online: 2010-01-15
DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01162.x

Nikki Khanna, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Despite growing interest in multiracial identity, much of the research remains atheoretical and limited in its approach to measuring identity. Taking a multidimensional approach to identity and drawing on reflected appraisals (how they think others see them), I examine racial identity among black-white adults in the South and the lingering influence of the one-drop rule. Most respondents internally identify as black and when asked to explain these black identities, they describe how both blacks and whites see them as black. I argue that the one-drop rule still shapes racial identity, namely through the process of reflected appraisals.

…To address this gap in the literature, I draw on interview data with 40 black-white biracial adults currently living in the South and examine how reflected appraisals shape their racial identities. Because I am looking at racial identity among people with black ancestry, I also look at how the one-drop rule influences the reflected appraisal process (and hence identity). Few studies seriously engage reflected appraisals as a determinant of racial identity, and none examine the way in which the one-drop rule affects reflected appraisals. Additionally, I interview black-white biracial people who are currently living in the South for two reasons. First, the one-drop rule is historically rooted in Southern slavery and the Jim Crow segregation in the South, and recent empirical research suggests that the one-drop rule continues to shape black identities in the South (Harris and Sim 2002; Brunsma 2005, 2006).  Second, little attention has been given to this region in previous studies. While quantitative studies suggest that the one-drop rule still impacts identity in the South, little qualitative work examines black-white identity within this context (see Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002a for an exception)….

Read the entire article here.

Narrative Order, Racial Hierarchy, and “White” Discourse in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Along This Way

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.
Volume 36, Number 3, Fall 2011
page 37-62
DOI: 10.1353/mel.2011.0041

Masami Sugimori, Instructor of English
University of South Alabama

African Americans became increasingly mobile during the early twentieth century, as exemplified by the Great Migration that began around 1910. Reflecting the general anxiety about such racial mobility, the March 2, 1911, issue of The Independent included an article about racial passing, “When Is a Caucasian Not a Caucasian?” Referring to the downfall of a “white” family whose part-black ancestry, unknown even to themselves, accidentally became public, the anonymous author discusses the “stupidity” and “cruelty” of the one-drop law and advises “all white negroes” to leave the South and live as “white people” so that, “as the bleaching process goes on, the conundrum will cease to concern them, When is a Caucasian not a Caucasian?” Despite the author’s insight into the precarious nature of racial categories, the article’s logic is predicated on the assumption of stable whiteness. On the one hand, along with its title, the article’s rhetorical question “Who knows where . . . it [the family’s tragedy] may strike next?” emphasizes that any white person can really be nonwhite. On the other hand, to highlight the “stupidity” and “cruelty” of white supremacy, the writer must posit an unquestionably pure-white man as the society’s representative. Thus, concerning the husband who annulled his marriage to an unwitting passer under Louisiana’s “infamous law against intermarriage,” the article states that “[t]here was no question that he was a full Caucasian” (479) despite its ongoing claim of the endless questionability of pure whiteness.

One finds such simultaneous refutation and affirmation of clear-cut racial classification in James Weldon Johnson’s novel about passing published a year later, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). As Samira Kawash points out. the novel’s scrutiny of the racial binary even problematizes “the simple black passing for white’ logic of passing . . . and its attendant model of race as the expression of a prior, embodied identity,” so that the “Ex-Coloured Man’s relation to blackness is shown…