Mixed Race Studies

Analysis of a Tri-Racial Isolate

Human Biology
Volume 36, Number 4 (December 1964)
pages 362-373

William S. Pollitzer
Department of Anatomy
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Based on a paper presented at the meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Philadelphia, May 2, 1962

A relatively isolated population in the state of North Carolina, composed of persons who call themselves Indian but who appear to be of tri-racial origin, provides a model for the study of analysis by gene frequencies of a mixed population of White, Negro, and Indian ancestry.

A people considered Indian is known to have occupied this territory by the mid-eighteenth century; they spoke English, tilled the soil, and owned slaves. English, Scotch Highlanders, and French Huguenots migrated into the area in the eighteenth century also. Planters from neighboring states settled in this vicinity, often bringing slaves and a few free Negroes with them. The most common names of the free Negroes are the same as those of the present-day mixed population.

The origin of the Indian component of this hybrid population is open to speculation; three ideas have been advanced. The most colorful theory is that the people of the present isolate are the descendants of Raleigh’s famous “Lost Colony” who mixed with the Croatan Indians, an Algonquin-speaking tribe on the coast. Some similarity in the names of the colonists and the names in the present population, plus a few cultural traits, have been construed as evidence for this view. Another suggestion is that the Cherokee, a powerful Iroquois-speaking tribe who had general overlordship in the Western Carolinas, contributed the Indian genes to the hybrid group. Finally, the view has been advanced that the Siouan-speaking tribes who lived in the Piedmont Carolinas, e.g., the Catawba, were the Indian stock involved.

Considerable phenotypic variation is found within the isolate today, with extremes of skin color from light to dark and of hair form from very curly to straight- The morphology of the face also suggests broad racial backgrounds. It is therefore of interest to learn what the blood factors and hemoglobins tell of the composition of this population of multiple racial origins.

In 1958, in cooperation with Dr. Amoz Chernoff, blood samples were…

Booker Sworn In as U.S. Senator

The New York Times
2013-10-31

Jennifer Steinhauer, Congressional Reporter

WASHINGTON — Cory A. Booker, who gained celebrity as a danger-dodging, super-tweeting mayor of Newark, was sworn in as New Jersey’s junior United States senator on Thursday, the first African-American to be elected to the chamber since Barack Obama in 2004…

Read the entire article here.

Mixing Race, Risk, and Reward in the Digital Age

University of Southern California
Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
University Park Campus
Doheny Memorial Library (DML), East Asian Seminar Room: 110C
2013-11-05, 13:00-17:00 PST (Local Time)

USC Conference Convenors:

Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion
University of Southern California

Brian C. Bernards, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Southern California

Velina Hasu Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty Recognition and Development, Director of Dramatic Writing and Professor
University of Southern California

What are the outcomes of evolving racial ideologies in North America and how are they impacting 21st century American identities?  How do 21st century multiracial identities and representations reflect and challenge historical constructions of racial mixing?  How does racial mixing inform transhumanistic enterprises (i.e., wearable technology) and impact educational experiences dedicated to mixed-race studies in digital spaces?

PRESENTERS:

“Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity”

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
University of Southern California (Author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).)

“Frizzly Studies: Law, History, Narrative, and the Color Line”

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University (Author of The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin Press, 2013) and “Crossing the Color Line: Racial Migration and the Emergence of the One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860,” Minnesota Law Review (2007).)

“Tweeting into the Future: Mixing Race and Technology in the 21st Century”

Ulli K. Ryder, Scholar in Residence, Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life
Brown University (Author of forthcoming book Mixed Race 3.0: Mixing Race, Risk & Reward in the Digital Age (Annenberg Press, 2014).)

For more information, click here.

350:445 Revisiting Racial Passing in the 21st Century

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Summer 2013

This is a course on racial passing, which many people wrongly believe is an antiquated phenomenon. Passing has historically referred to light-skinned African Americans who use their phenotypes to pretend to be white and enjoy the privileges of whiteness. As we will discuss in our seminar, today people pass in a variety of ways, and not just racially. For example, folks regularly pass economically, religiously, and/or through gender. In discussing contemporary passing, we will begin with President Barack Obama, who some have argued has engaged in a form of passing by having black skin yet “white politics.”

We will read primary and secondary material on this literary genre, to determine the tropes, images, themes, and formal elements that comprise “the passing narrative.” We will also consider the ways in which it has been expanded in this “post-race” era.

Primary texts will include:

• James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
• Nella Larsen’s Passing
• Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun
• Danzy Senna’s Caucasia
• Philip Roth’s The Human Stain
• Brooke Kroeger’s Passing (collection of contemporary personal narratives)
• Short Stories by Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, and Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson.

Films will include: “Imitation of Life” (1934 & 1959) and “The Human Stain” (2003).

For more information, click here.

Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are

PublicAffiars an imprint of Perseus Books Group
2004-11-30
288 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58648-287-9
5 1/2 x 8 1/4

Brooke Kroeger, Professor of Journalism
New York University

Through the provocative stories of six contemporary “passers,” and examples from history and literature, a renowned journalist illuminates passing as a strategy for bypassing prejudice and injustice

Despite the many social changes of the last half-century, many Americans still “pass”: black for white, gay for straight, and now in many new ways as well. We tend to think of passing in negative terms—as deceitful, cowardly, a betrayal of one’s self. But this compassionate book reveals that many passers today are people of good heart and purpose whose decision to pass is an attempt to bypass injustice, and to be more truly themselves.

Passing tells the poignant, complicated life stories of a black man who passed as a white Jew; a white woman who passed for black; a working class Puerto Rican who passes for privileged; a gay, Conservative Jewish seminarian and a lesbian naval officer who passed for straight; and a respected poet who radically shifts persona to write about rock’n’roll. The stories, interwoven with others from history, literature, and contemporary life, explore the many forms passing still takes in our culture; the social realities which make it an option; and its logistical, emotional, and moral consequences. We learn that there are still too many institutions, environments, and social situations that force honorable people to twist their lives into painful, deceit-ridden contortions for reasons that do not hold.

Passing is an intellectually absorbing exploration of a phenomenon that has long intrigued scholars, inspired novelists, and made hits of movies like The Crying Game and Boys Don’t Cry.

Subjecting Pleasure: Claude McKay’s Narratives of Transracial Desire

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 44, Number 7 (October 2013)
pages 706-724
DOI: 10.1177/0021934713507579

Smita Das, 2012-2013 Dissertation Fellow
University of Illinois, Chicago

This article explores the threat posed by the Afro-Asian body in Claude McKay’s novels, Banjo (1929) and Banana Bottom (1933). Banjo’s narrative of transracial alliances converges onto the body of the Afro-Asian prostitute, whose positioning as a “conjunction” exposes contradictions surrounding immigration within French liberalism. Banana Bottom also maps a conflictual relationship between a licentious Afro-Asian coolie woman, and a Black subject who both wrestle with attaining national belonging within an idyllic Jamaica. While Banjo reveals McKay’s yearnings for transnational Black affiliations without the Afro-Asian woman, Banana Bottom reconciles the wrought relations between Black middle-class Jamaicans and the bastardized “coolie gal.”

Read or purchase the article here.