Mixed Race Studies

The Fluidity of Race: “Passing” in the United States, 1880-1940

The National Bureau of Economic Research
NBER Working Paper No. 20828
January 2015
76 pages
DOI: 10.3386/w20828

Emily Nix
Department of Economics
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Nancy Qian, Associate Professor of Economics
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

This paper quantifies the extent to which individuals experience changes in reported racial identity in the historical U.S. context. Using the full population of historical Censuses for 1880-1940, we document that over 19% of black males “passed” for white at some point during their lifetime, around 10% of whom later “reverse-passed” to being black; passing was accompanied by geographic relocation to communities with a higher percentage of whites and occurred the most in Northern states. The evidence suggests that passing was positively associated with better political-economic and social opportunities for whites relative to blacks. As such, endogenous race is likely to be a quantitatively important phenomenon.

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So what are you anyway?

CYF News (CYF News is the newsletter for the Children, Youth and Families Office)
American Psycological Association
August 2013

Mahogany L. Swanson

Individuals in the U.S. with one Black and one White parent use the concept of “race switching” as one mechanism for coping with pressures of racial identity.

Although biracial individuals include any persons with parents of differing race, this paper uses the term biracial to identify any individual whose parents are of African and European descent. Biracial individuals, or individuals with one black and one white parent, growing up in the United States develop a necessary coping mechanism whereby they are able to race switch. Race switching (see Wilton, Sanchez, & Garcia, 2013) allows individuals to identify and de-identify with different parts of their identity. This process of identification and de-identification is often dictated by the constraints or opportunities in the social milieu. Although viewed by some as opportunistic, an often-hostile environment may compel the need for racial fluidity in many self-identified biracial and multiracial individuals; however, the consequences of race switching can be deleterious for these individuals.

Multiracial and biracial individuals experience unique challenges with regards to their racial self-identification. Although in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that the criminalization of miscegenation by the state was unconstitutional it was not until 2000 that the children of such marriages were permitted to self-identify as biracial on the national census (Roth, 2005). Additionally, in a study conducted by Herman (2004), biracial individuals with at least one black ancestor reported significantly more perceived discrimination than any other minority monoracial group, including Blacks (Herman, 2004). This finding is disconcerting given that Jackson, Yoo, Guevarra, & Harrington (2012) found individuals expressing greater amounts or perceived racial discrimination concomitantly reported lower levels of psychological adjustment.

This racial discrimination can result in the individual de-identifying with his or her biracial or multiracial identity, and choosing to self-identify with the more accepted minority and monoracial race. Historically, the singularly black identity was given to all biracial and multiracial individuals, regardless of whether they espoused this identity. Coined the “one-drop rule“, and often a means of hegemony, an individual with one black ancestor was considered singularly black.  Overtime, this method of racial reporting was accepted and used by Blacks and Biracials alike (Roth, 2005).

In addition to the one-drop rule, racial classification is frequently done through a process known as physiognomy, or the practice of making decisions about a person’s race based off his or her physical appearance. In a national longitudinal study conducted by Doyle and Kao (2007), 97 percent of self-identified biracial individuals who believed they appeared more black were identified by others as looking more black, where as only 17 percent of self-identified biracial individuals who believed they appeared more white were also described as being white by an outside observer. According to Doyle & Kao (2007), black/white biracial individuals are often compelled by society to self-identify as black due to physiognomy; whereas those minorities with lighter skin color, such as Native and Asian Americans are often given more latitude in terms of self-identification. The last three types of racial self-identification used by biracial individuals include: singularly white, border identity, protean and transcendent identity (see Roth 2005; Hitlin, Brown, and Elder, 2007)…

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A Multiethnic Movement Emerges in Guyana to Counter Politics-as-Usual

The New York Times
2015-01-17

Girish Gupta

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — Swaying to the rhythms of Afro-Guyanese reggae, the protesters, descendants of African slaves and indentured laborers from India, gathered on the streets of Georgetown in a show of unity against the country’s president.

A few years ago, a gathering of members of Guyana’s two main ethnic groups, which have long been at opposite ends of the country’s political divide, would have been unusual.

But the protest in November, after President Donald Ramotar suspended Parliament in order to fend off a no-confidence motion, reflected an important change taking place in this tiny English-speaking country of just 740,000 people perched on the shoulder of South America.

Politics in Guyana have long been delineated by race. But a multiethnic movement that has emerged in recent years has given voice to a new generation of Guyanese who say that politics as usual has held the country back by favoring race over merit, undermining economic progress.

“This shows the true reality of Guyana now,” Marcia de Costa, 37, a manager of a beauty salon, said, pointing toward the diverse crowd at the rally. “This is new for us.”

The two main political parties in Guyana have traditionally hewed to racial lines: one drawing support from the descendants of Africans brought over by the Dutch in the 17th century, and the other from the descendants of the Indians brought by the British a couple of centuries later.

But the emergence of a third party in recent years has changed the dynamics…

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On race, Obama sticks to a game plan of seeking steady progress within the system

The Washington Post
2015-01-18

Steven Mufson, White House correspondent, financial staff writer

During racially tense moments that have beset the nation recently, many Americans have longed for President Obama to display some of the passion and soaring rhetoric that made the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who would have turned 86 last week, a civil rights legend.

But the messages of restraint Obama has given in response to outcry over police violence are the same ones he has been dispensing for 20 to 30 years, echoes of thoughts he has had ever since he was a young community organizer in Chicago. His central tenets: Don’t give in to anger and violence; work to improve, not destroy, the legal system; and accept that change will come and things are getting better, albeit more slowly than many would like.

Though Obama’s views have evolved on issues such as gay marriage and national security during his six years in office, his views on race have remained remarkably consistent, and recent events appear to have affirmed rather than altered those views.

The president is likely to touch on race again Tuesday in his State of the Union address, and if so, he will probably acknowledge that on race, as on the economy, a “resurgent America” has made great progress but still requires greater inclusiveness.

Rather than making pressing demands for economic justice like those that defined King’s crusade, Obama will make a pitch for a tax package that will aid lower- and middle-class households and serve as modest tools for economic advancement for both whites and blacks…

Read the entire article here.

Confusion.

Mixed Humans ~ Reflections on occupying a space of inbetweenness. Persistently grappling with identity.
2015-01-18

Natalie Armitage
London

Authenticity. Authentic. What is that? I always wondered, what it meant when people referred to the lentils mum made us as “really authentic, not like that stuff you get in the curry houses thats not real, its not actually indian compared to this”. I assume it was because she was the only indian person that they actually knew, the first time that they actually saw lentils being made in this way.

Authenticity. The first thing that comes to mind was a house, a large old manor that was converted into a place called “Trading Boundaries” and there were two large model elephants outside. We used to go there to look at the furniture that had been imported from Bali on the way back from school. It was lavish.

The objects and ornaments in there mixed with the smell of incense felt like something, out of a book I read called A Little Princess. A story, of little rich girl that feels lost and abandoned in London, after being sent to boarding school from India where her father is a Captain. Upon her father’s death in war, and a confusion about financial ownership she is rendered worthless by the English headmistress and made to be a servant at the school, where previously she was a princess. Anyway, the part that I remember is that she becomes friends with a black girl called Becky, who is also a servant though treated a lot worse than the princess, but they bond over their misery and become friends and the princess entertains her with magical stories of Gods in India. There is also a pet monkey involved somewhere that they play with and love as much as they do each other.

What a story to read as a little girl. Being half indian, half english, the princess of my fathers eye, blissfully unaware of what colonialism actually was. Confusion, is a word that doesn’t quite cover it. Authentic?…

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Erasing the Color Line: The Racial Formation of Creoles of Color and the Public School Integration Movement in New Orleans, 1867-1880

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2013

Mishio Yamanaka

A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the master’s degree of History in the Department of History

This thesis examines the public school racial integration movement of Creoles of color, a francophone interracial group in New Orleans, from 1867 to 1880. During Reconstruction, Creoles of color succeeded in desegregating about one-third of the city public schools. This thesis argues that the integration campaign of Creoles of color was an attempt to maintain their in-between identity – being neither fully whites nor fully blacks and being both Creoles and Americans – and an effort to erase the color line by improving the social status of black Americans to equal that of white Americans. Creoles of color forged desegregation by manipulating their ambiguous ethno-racial heritage and by negotiating with white radical Republicans, white New Orleanians and Anglophone blacks. Focusing on the political, legal and grass-root struggles of Creoles of color, this thesis reveals that they challenged segregation as it symbolized the emergence of biracial hierarchy in post-Civil War New Orleans.

Read the entire thesis here.

ENLT 2513 Major Authors of American Literature: Race and Performance

University of Virginia
Spring 2015

Sarah Ingle, Lecturer

This course will explore representations of race and performance in American literature and culture from the eighteenth century to the present. We will examine cultural phenomena such as blackface minstrel shows, stories of racial “passing,” and a variety of texts (plays, fiction, poetry, and non-fiction) that depict the complex relationship between race and identity in American culture. Authors will include Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, William Wells Brown, Herman Melville, Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Zitkala-Sa, Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna, David Henry Hwang, and Suzan Lori-Parks. Course requirements will include three essays, weekly informal reading responses, active class participation, and a final exam.

For more information, click here.