Mixed Race Studies

Exploring the Political Exploitation of Blood Quantum in the U.S.

Indian Country Today Media Network
2013-05-17

Vincent Schilling, Executive Vice President
Schilling Media, Inc.

Arica L. Coleman is an assistant professor of Black American Studies at the University of Delaware. She is African American and Native American (Rappahannock), which may help explain why she has conducted research for the past 12 years on what she calls the “intersections between Native American, African American and European peoples in the southeastern United States with a focus on the etymology of race, the ideology of racial purity and its historical and contemporary effects on racial and identity formation.” In non-academic terms, that means she has done a lot of thinking about the relations and interactions of blacks, Indians and whites on the East Coast, primarily in Virginia.

Coleman has turned her Ph.D. dissertation into an upcoming book, That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia, and agreed to talk with ICTMN about her experiences as an African American woman who gets a lot of grief for also being an American Indian.

Wouldn’t you say that back in the day, American Indians and African Americans all went to the same parties?

Yes, we went to the same parties and we also worked the slave plantations together. This is what a lot of people do not understand when you talk about slavery. My African American brothers and sisters will have a problem with this because they like to look at slavery only in terms of black and white. The truth is—and specifically in Virginia—there was Indian slavery. The first slaves in the Americas were Native American and this business that the Native Americans died off as a result of disease and war [is inaccurate]—those were not the only reasons for their demise, there was the Indian slave trade, which is something we do not discuss a lot.

When you had people of African descent being brought across the Atlantic to the Americas, you also had Native American people throughout the Americas being dispersed throughout the world, including portions of South Africa and Angola. When you look at the records of the South—and specifically in Virginia—they talk about Indian, Negro and mulatto slaves…. From the 16th century through the 19th century, you had Native American peoples identified as Negro and as mulatto.

When you look in those records and see these terms you cannot automatically assume that these folks were African, because they could have been a mix of Native American or European as well. Racial labels have never been constant or used with consistency…

Read the entire interview here.

That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia

Indiana University Press
2013
328 pages
12 b&w illustrations
6 x 9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-253-01043-8

Arica L. Coleman, Assistant Professor of Black American Studies
University of Delaware

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2014

That the Blood Stay Pure traces the history and legacy of the commonwealth of Virginia’s effort to maintain racial purity and its impact on the relations between African Americans and Native Americans. Arica L. Coleman tells the story of Virginia’s racial purity campaign from the perspective of those who were disavowed or expelled from tribal communities due to their affiliation with people of African descent or because their physical attributes linked them to those of African ancestry. Coleman also explores the social consequences of the racial purity ethos for tribal communities that have refused to define Indian identity based on a denial of blackness. This rich interdisciplinary history, which includes contemporary case studies, addresses a neglected aspect of America’s long struggle with race and identity.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• Part 1: Historicizing Black—Indian Relations in Virginia
  • Prologue: Lingering at the Crossroads: African-Native American History and Kinship Lineage in Armstrong Archer’s A Compendium on Slavery
  • 1. Notes on the State of Virginia: Jeffersonian Thought and the Rise of Racial Purity Ideology in the Eighteenth Century
  • 2. Redefining Race and Identity: The Indian-Negro Confusion and the Changing State of Black-Indian Relations in the Nineteenth Century
  • 3. Race Purity and the Law: The Racial Integrity Act and Policing Black/Indian Identity in the Twentieth Century
  • 4. Denying Blackness: Anthropological Advocacy and the Remaking of the Virginia Indians (The Other Twentieth Century Project)
• Part 2: Black-Indian Relations in the Present State of Virginia
  • 5. Beyond Black and White: Afro-Indian Identity in the case of Loving V. Virginia
  • 6. The Racial Integrity Fight: Confrontations of Race and Identity In Charles City County, Virginia
  • 7. Nottoway Indians, Afro-Indian Identity, and the Contemporary Dilemma of State Recognition
• Epilogue: Afro-Indian Peoples of Virginia: The Indelible Thread of Black and Red
• Appendix: Racial Integrity Act Text
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

A Portrait of Modern Britain

Policy Exchange
London, England
2014-05-06
100 pages
ISBN: 978-1-907689-76-5

Rishi Sunak, Head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit

Saratha Rajeswaran, Deputy Head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit

People from ethnic minority backgrounds will make up nearly a third of the UK’s population by 2050.

A Portrait of Modern Britain reveals that the five largest distinct Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities could potentially double from 8 million people or 14% of the population to between 20-30% by the middle of the century. Over the past decade, the UK’s White population has remained roughly the same while the minority population has almost doubled. Black Africans and Bangladeshis are the fastest growing minority communities with ethnic minorities representing 25% of people aged under the age of five.

The handbook draws on an extensive set of survey, census, academic and polling data to build up a detailed picture of the five largest minority groups in the UK – Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. The paper outlines the demographics, geography, life experiences, attitudes and socioeconomic status of each of these major ethnic groups. The purpose of the research is to show that there are clear and meaningful differences between each of these communities, which need to be fully understood by policymakers and politicians.

The study also reveals that while the face of Britain has changed and is continuing to become even more multi-racial, people from ethnic minority backgrounds have a far stronger association with being British than the White population. In the 2011 Census, only 14% of Whites identified themselves as being purely British, with 64% seeing themselves as purely English. All other ethnic minority communities were over four times more likely to associate themselves with being British. 71% of Bangladeshis and 63% of Pakistanis considered themselves purely British. A quarter of the Black Caribbean community see themselves as purely English, while just over half (55%) see themselves as just British…

Introduction

The face of Britain has changed. Among the heroes of Britain’s 2012 Olympic triumph were a Somali immigrant and a mixed-race girl from Yorkshire. Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis captured the spirit of the nation and came to represent Britain’s incredible diversity. Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people now make up a significant and fast-growing part of the population. However, understanding of these communities has not kept up with their rising importance.

From a political perspective, few attempts have been made to properly understand Britain’s minority communities and there is a tendency in the media to assume that all BME communities can be treated as a single political entity – as if all ethnic minorities held similar views and lived similar lives.

But clearly there is no single ‘BME community’. Over 100 different languages are spoken on London’s playgrounds alone. Families that came to the UK decades ago from the Caribbean will be quite different to recent arrivals from Somalia, or indeed Indian immigrants from East Africa. And single ethnic identities are themselves becoming more complex due to the growth of the Mixed population and generational change.

This report starts to answer the question: ‘Who are Britain’s BME communities?’ It draws on an extensive set of survey, census, academic and polling data to build up a detailed portrait of the five largest minority communities in the UK. The report outlines the demographics, geography, life experiences, attitudes and socioeconomic status of each of these major ethnic groups. These research findings are brought to life through ‘pen portraits’ from contributors spanning the worlds of politics, medicine, media, social action and religion.

The report’s conclusions are clear. BME communities will continue to become an ever more significant part of Britain. There are clear and striking differences between communities. These differences should be understood by policymakers and politicians. A Portrait of Modern Britain serves as a rich, authoritative and accessible reference guide to furthering that understanding…

Read the entire summary here. Read the entire report here.