Mixed Race Studies

The Duty to Miscegenate

University of Michigan
152 pages
2013

Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy)

In ‘The duty to miscegenate’, I harness John Stuart Mill’s 19th century theory of social freedom to explain and to dismantle contemporary racialised and gendered injustice. In the first chapter—Social stigmatisation: ‘a social tyranny’—I argue that persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women were, in the past, unjustly stigmatised by legal penalties against ‘miscegenation‘ and are still, today, unjustly stigmatised by white male avoidance of cross-racial marriage and companionship. In the second chapter—Encounters that count: ‘a foundation for solid friendship’—I argue that we can dismantle this stigmatisation, by engaging in regular and frequent cross-racial commensality with persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women. In the third chapter—White right: ‘a right to avoid’—I argue that, although we have a right to avoid commensal encounters with others, we do not have a right to avoid persons we racialise as black. On the contrary, we have a duty to encounter them, on terms of equality and intimacy.

Table of Contents

• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• LIST OF TABLES
• 1. Social stigmatisation: ‘a social tyranny’
  • The chief mischief of the legal penalties
  • They strengthen the social stigma
• 2. Encounters that count: ‘a foundation for solid friendship’
  • The real remedy for breaking caste is inter-marriage
  • Another plan of action for the abolition of caste is to begin with inter-caste dinners
• 3. White right: ‘a right to avoid’
  • We have a right to avoid it
  • A right to avoid blacks?
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the entire dissertation here.

Mixed messages

The Queen’s Journal
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Volume 141, Issue 16, 2013-10-22

Olivia Bowden, Assistant News Editor

Many mixed race people, myself included, have trouble defining our ethnic identity.

As a child, I’d put on my mother’s makeup and be confused as to why her dark brown foundation didn’t blend with my pale skin. A family reunion with my dad’s side felt strange as I looked nothing like the blonde hair, blue-eyed bunch.

Both sides of my family, South Asian and Anglo-Saxon, have thoroughly accepted that I don’t reflect either side in my appearance. But, the question remains, where do I belong?…

…It’s sometimes unsettling when people ask me where I’m from. While it might seem like an innocent question, it makes me feel like I have to accept a racial label. I’ve completed many surveys where I’ve had to state my race as “other”.

It’s especially sickening when I’ve been told that I am “lucky” to pass as white. Some people feel comfortable saying racist comments in reaction to my appearance. I’ve been told that I’m “pretty, for a brown girl”.

Looking “white” does not mean I am okay with racism…

Read the entire article here.

“A Future Unwritten”: Blackness between the Religious Invocations of Heidi Durrow and Zadie Smith

South Atlantic Quarterly
Volume 112, Number 4 (2013)
pages 657-674
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-2345225

Brian Bantum, Assistant Professor of Theology
Seattle Pacific University

Race and religion were two aspects of the Western colonial project. Novelists Heidi Durrow and Zadie Smith reflect two related but distinct articulations of how to understand this relationship from within the black diaspora and in particular the legacies of “mixed-race” children of the diaspora. This essay argues that each literary exploration of race and place demonstrates the inherent complications of two strategies of negotiating racial and religious identity in contemporary society. While Durrow seeks to extricate her character from both race and religion, seeing religion as simply a cultural marker, Smith wraps her main character inextricably to the historicity of race and religion. Through these interlocutors, this essay examines how black religion might imagine its future in relationship to the particularities of its diaspora(s) and confessions of faith.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Fluidity

Neither/Both: my mixed-race experience
2013-10-19

Lola Osunkoya

I went to the skating rink on a night I don’t usually go, and found myself to be the only female of color there.  It was unusual to me because on my regularly night, it’s a predominantly Black crowd.  In this stage of my identity development, I’m very conscious of my racial surroundings when I am one of the few.

Today I identify primarily as Mixed, but also as Black.  That has changed over the years as Mixed identities are inherently fluid… if we choose that route – static is another choice.  I have been militantly Mixed, not White enough, begrudgingly Black.  All of them had a certain frantic energy on them because I felt like they were dependent on outside validation.  Today I feel more at peace with my chosen identity.  Will it remain this way now that it feels peaceful?  Maybe.  But the fluidity could push me in a new direction sometime in the future…

Read the entire article here.

Cuba is White, Black and Mixed Race Because it is Diverse

Havana Times: open-minded writing from Cuba
2013-10-22

Dmitri Prieto
Agrarian University of Havana

HAVANA TIMES — Recently, on the eve of October 10, a Cuban national holiday commemorating the date (in 1868) in which Cuban landowner Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and his retinue of (former) slaves took up arms against Spanish colonial domination, a Round Table program bearing the controversial title of “Neither Black Nor White: Cuba is Mixed Race” was aired on television.

During the Round Table discussion, Cuban scientists presented valuable and interesting evidence showing that our population’s gene pool combines the DNA of African, European and Asian / Indo-American peoples, concluding that, therefore, it would be impossible to define any Cuban “races” on the basis of genetics as such.

On the basis of this accurate insight, however, they also suggested something that I consider dangerously dubious: the notion that Cuba is a “mixed race” country…

Read the entire article here.

Growing Up Black in American Apartheid – Ford Pt1

Reality Asserts Itself
The Real News Network
2013-10-23

Paul Jay, Host

Glen Ford, Executive Editor
Black Agenda Report

On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay: Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, tells his story as a red-diaper baby, growing up facing racism in the North living with his white activist mother, and living in the Deep South with his black deejay father.