The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in British India 1858-1930

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs on 2012-07-05 22:44Z by Steven

The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in British India 1858-1930

Oxford University Press
January 2012
288 pages
Hardback ISBN13: 9780199697700; ISBN10: 0199697701

Satoshi Mizutani

From 1858 to 1930 the concept of whiteness in British India was complex and contradictory. Under the Raj, the spread of racial ideologies was pervasive, but whiteness was never taken as self-evident. It was constantly called into question and its boundaries were disciplined and policed through socio-cultural and institutional practices.

Only those whites with social status, cultural refinement, and the right level of education were able to command the respect and awe of colonized subjects. Among those who straddled the boundaries of whiteness were the ‘domiciled community’, made up of mixed-descent ‘Eurasians’ and racially unmixed ‘Domiciled Europeans’, both of whom lived in India on a permanent basis. Members of this community, or those who were categorized as such under the Raj, unwittingly rendered the meaning of whiteness ambiguous in fundamental ways.

The colonial authorities quickly identified the domiciled community as a particularly malign source of political instability and social disorder, and were constantly urged to furnish various institutional measures—predominantly philanthropic and educational by character—that specifically targeted its degraded conditions. The Meaning of White reveals the precise ways in which the existence of this community was identified as a problem (the ‘Eurasian Question’) and examines the deeper historical meanings of this categorization. Dr Mizutani demystifies the ideology of whiteness, situating it within the concrete social realities of colonial history.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. British prestige and fears of colonial degeneration
  • 2. The origins and emergence of the ‘domiciled community’
  • 3. The ‘Eurasian Question’: the domiciled poor and urban social control
  • 4. ‘European schools’: illiteracy, unemployment, and educational uplifting
  • 5. Towards a solution to the Eurasian Question: child removal and juvenile emigration
  • 6. Disputing the domiciliary divide: civil-service employment and the claim for equivalence
  • 7. Conclusion: Race, class, and the contours of whiteness in late British India
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Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000

Posted in Books, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Slavery on 2012-04-08 20:24Z by Steven

Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000

Oxford University Press
May 2004
304 pages
15 illus. & 3 maps; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Hardback ISBN13: 9780195152326; ISBN10: 0195152328
Paperback ISBN13: 978-0-19-515233-3; ISBN10: 0-19-515233-6

George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor of History
University of Pittsburgh

Winner of the Arthur P. Whitaker Prize of the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies

While the rise and abolition of slavery and ongoing race relations are central themes of the history of the United States, the African diaspora actually had a far greater impact on Latin and Central America. More than ten times as many Africans came to Spanish and Portuguese America as the United States.

In this, the first history of the African diaspora in Latin America from emancipation to the present, George Reid Andrews deftly synthesizes the history of people of African descent in every Latin American country from Mexico and the Caribbean to Argentina. He examines how African peoples and their descendants made their way from slavery to freedom and how they helped shape and responded to political, economic, and cultural changes in their societies. Individually and collectively they pursued the goals of freedom, equality, and citizenship through military service, political parties, civic organizations, labor unions, religious activity, and other avenues.

Spanning two centuries, this tour de force should be read by anyone interested in Latin American history, the history of slavery, and the African diaspora, as well as the future of Latin America.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1: i8oo
  • Chapter 2: “An Exterminating Bolt of Lightning”: The Wars for Freedom, 1810-1890
  • Chapter 3: “Our New Citizens, the Blacks”: The Politics of Freedom, 1810-1890
  • Chapter 4: “A Transfusion of New Blood”: Whitening, 1880-1930
  • Chapter 5: Browning and Blackening, 1930-2000
  • Chapter 6: Into the Twenty-First Century: 2000 and Beyond
  • Appendix: Population Counts, 1800-2000
  • Glossary
  • Notes
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Index
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Navigating Multiple Identities: Race, Gender, Culture, Nationality, and Roles

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Asian Diaspora, Barack Obama, Books, Gay & Lesbian, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2012-02-13 21:36Z by Steven

Navigating Multiple Identities: Race, Gender, Culture, Nationality, and Roles

Oxford University Press
March 2012
288 pages
Paperback ISBN13: 9780199732074; ISBN10: 0199732078

Edited by

Ruthellen Josselson, Professor of Psychology
Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California

Michele Harway, Faculty Research Specialist
Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California

Although questionnaires routinely ask people to check boxes indicating if they are, for example, male or female, black or white, Hispanic or American, many people do not fit neatly into one category or another. Identity is increasingly organized multiply and may encompass additional categories beyond those that appear on demographic questionnaires. In addition, identities are often fluid and context-dependent, depending on the external social factors that invite their emergence. Identity is constantly evolving in light of changing environments, but people are often uncomfortably fixed with societal labels that they must include or resist in their individual identity definition.

In our increasingly complex, globalized world, many people carry conflicting psychosocial identities. They live at the edges of more than one communal affiliation, with the challenge of bridging different loyalties and identifications. Navigating Multiple Identities considers those who are navigating across racial minority or majority status, various cultural expectations and values, gender identities, and roles. The chapters collected here by Josselson and Harway explore the ways in which individuals attain or maintain personal integration in the face of often shifting personal or social locations, and how they navigate the complexity of their multiple identities.

Features

  • Discusses different forms of identity, beyond race and ethnicity
  • Incorporates international perspectives

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1—The Challenges of Multiple Identity—Ruthellen Josselson and Michele Harway
  • Chapter 2—Multiple Identities and Their Organization—Gary S. Gregg
  • Chapter 3—The “We of Me”: Barack Obama’s Search for Identity—Ruthellen Josselson
  • Chapter 4—The Varieties of the Masculine Experience—Kate A. Richmond, Ronald F. Levant, and Shamin C. J. Ladhani
  • Chapter 5—Growing Up Bicultural in the United States: The Case of Japanese-Americans—James Fuji Collins
  • Chapter 6—The Multiple Identities of Feminist Women of Color: Creating a New Feminism?—Janis Sanchez-Hucles, Alex Dryden, and Barbara Winstead
  • Chapter 7—The Multiple Identities of Transgender Individuals: Incorporating a Framework of Intersectionality to Gender Crossing—Theodore R. Burnes and Mindy Chen
  • Chapter 8—A Garden for Many Identities—Suzanne Ouellette
  • Chapter 9—“I Am More (Than Just) Black”: Contesting Multiplicity Through Conferring and Asserting Singularity in Narratives of Blackness—Siyanda Ndlovu
  • Chapter 10—Identities in the First Person Plural: Muslim-Jewish Couples in France—Brian Schiff, Mathilde Toulemonde, and Carolina Porto
  • Chapter 11—Identity Wounds: Multiple Identities and Intersectional Theory in the Context of Multiculturalism—Michal Krumer-Nevo and Menny Malka
  • Chapter 12—Evaluation of Cultural and Linguistic Practices: Constructing Finnish-German Identities in Narrative Research Interviews—Sara Helsig
  • Chapter 13—“Because I’m Neither Gringa nor Latina”: Conceptualizing Multiple Identities Within Transnational Social Fields—Debora Upegui-Hernandez
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Racism and Ethnic Relations in the Portuguese-Speaking World

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Europe, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Judaism, Law, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Religion, Slavery, Social Science on 2012-02-13 19:27Z by Steven

Racism and Ethnic Relations in the Portuguese-Speaking World

Oxford University Press
July 2012
300 pages
12 halftones, tables, and graphs
234x156mm
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-19-726524-6

Edited by

Francisco Bethencourt, Charles Boxer Professor of History
King’s College London

Adrian Pearce, Lecturer in Brazilian & Spanish American History
King’s College London

  • Comprehensive overview of racism and ethnic relations throughout Portuguese-speaking world
  • Radical updating – last overview was published in 1963
  • Draws out new connections between different parts of this area over time
  • Experiments with new methods, e.g. anthropological history, visual culture

How did racism evolve in different parts of the Portuguese-speaking world? How should the impact on ethnic perceptions of colonial societies based on slavery or the slave trade be evaluated? What was the reality of inter-ethnic mixture in different continents? How has the prejudice of white supremacy been confronted in Brazil and Portugal? And how should we assess the impact of recent trends of emigration and immigration? These are some of the major questions that have structured this book. It both contextualises and challenges the visions of Gilberto Freyre and Charles Boxer, which crystallised from the 1930s to the 1960s, but which still frame the public history of this topic. It studies crucial issues, including recent affirmative action in Brazil or Afro-Brazilian literature, blackness in Brazil compared with Colombia under the dynamics of identity, recent racist trends in Portugal in comparative perspective, the status of native people in colonial Portuguese Africa, discrimination against forced Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants in different historical contexts, the status of mixed-race people in Brazil and Angola compared over the longue durée, the interference of Europeans in East Timor’s native marriage system, the historical policy of language in Brazil, or visual stereotypes and the proto-ethnographic gaze in early perceptions of East African peoples. The book covers the gamut of inter-ethnic experiences throughout the Portuguese-speaking world, from the sixteenth century to the present day, integrating contributions from history, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, literary, and cultural studies. It offers a radical updating of both empirical data and methodologies, and aims to contribute to current debates on racism and ethnic relations in global perspective.

Table of Contents

  • Francisco Bethencourt: Introduction
  • Part I. Present Issues
    • 1: António Sérgio Guimarães: Colour and Race in Brazil: From Whitening to the Search for Afro-Descent
    • 2: Peter Wade: Brazil and Colombia: Comparative Race Relations in South America
    • 3: Jorge Vala and Cícero Pereira: Racism: An Evolving Virus
    • 4: Luiz Felipe de Alencastro: Mulattos in Brazil and Angola: A Comparative Approach, Seventeenth to Twenty-First Centuries
  • Part II. The Modern Framework
    • 5: João de Pina-Cabral: Charles Boxer and the Race Equivoque
    • 6: Maria Lucia Pallares-Burke: Gilberto Freyre and Brazilian Self-Perception
    • 7: David Brookshaw: Writing from the Margins: Towards an Epistemology of Contemporary African Brazilian Fiction
    • 8: Michel Cahen: Indigenato Before Race? Some Proposals on Portuguese Forced Labour Law in Mozambique and the African Empire (1926-62)
    • 9: Miguel Jerónimo: The ‘Civilisation Guild’: Race and Labour in the Third Portuguese Empire, ca. 1870-1930
  • Part III. The Long View
    • 10: Ricardo Roque: Marriage Traps: Colonial Interactions with Indigenous Marriage Ties in East Timor
    • 11: Herbert Klein: The Free Afro-Brazilians in a Slave Society
    • 12: Andrea Daher: The ‘General Language’ and the Social Status of the Indian in Brazil, Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries
    • 13: José Pedro Paiva: The New Christian Divide in the Portuguese-Speaking World (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)
    • 14: Jean Michel Massing: From Marco Polo to Manuel I of Portugal: The Image of the East African Coast in the Early Sixteenth Century
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The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American / Hispanic Political Thought

Posted in Books, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Monographs, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2011-06-28 20:24Z by Steven

The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American / Hispanic Political Thought

Oxford University Press
November 2011
288 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Hardback ISBN13: 9780199746668; ISBN10: 0199746664

Diego A. von Vacano, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Texas A&M University

The role of race in politics, citizenship, and the state is one of the most perplexing puzzles of modernity. While political thought has been slow to take up this puzzle, Diego von Vacano suggests that the tradition of Latin American and Hispanic political thought, which has long considered the place of mixed-race peoples throughout the Americas, is uniquely well-positioned to provide useful ways of thinking about the connections between race and citizenship. As he argues, debates in the United States about multiracial identity, the possibility of a post-racial world in the aftermath of Barack Obama, and demographic changes owed to the age of mass migration will inevitably have to confront the intellectual tradition related to racial admixture that comes to us from Latin America.

Von Vacano compares the way that race is conceived across the writings of four thinkers, and across four different eras: the Spanish friar Bartolomé de Las Casas writing in the context of empire; Simón Bolívar writing during the early republican period; Venezuelan sociologist Laureano Vallenilla Lanz on the role of race in nationalism; and Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos writing on the aesthetic approach to racial identity during the cosmopolitan, post-national period. From this comparative and historical survey, von Vacano develops a concept of race as synthetic, fluid and dynamic—a concept that will have methodological, historical, and normative value for understanding race in other diverse societies.

Features

  • Advances an alternative concept of race as inherently mixed, unstable, fluid, and politically potent
  • Links approaches to race in Latin American thought to canonical Western political discourse
  • Posits “race” as a central component of modernity and of political theory

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. Paradox of Empire: Las Casas and the Birth of Race
  • 2. Mixed into Unity: Race and Republic in the Thought of Simon Bolivar
  • 3. Race and Nation in the Democratic Caesarism of Vallenilla Lanz
  • 4. The Citizenship of Beauty: Jose Vasconcelos’s Aesthetic Synthesis of Race
  • Conclusion: Making Race Visible to Political Theory
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Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire

Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Oceania, United Kingdom on 2011-05-14 03:00Z by Steven

Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire

Oxford University Press
May 2011
320 pages
Hardback ISBN13: 9780199604159; ISBN10: 0199604150

Damon Ieremia Salesa, Associate Professor of History, American Culture, and Asian/Pacific Islander Studies
University of Michigan

The Victorians were fascinated with intersections between different races. Whether in sexual or domestic partnerships, in interracial children, racially diverse communities or societies, these ‘racial crossings’ were a lasting Victorian concern. But in an era of imperial expansion, when slavery was abolished, colonial wars were fought, and Britain itself was reformed, these concerns were more than academic. In both the British empire and imperial Britain, racial crossings shaped what people thought about race, the future, the past, and the conduct and possibilities of empire. Victorian fears of miscegenation and degeneration are well known; this study turns to apparently opposite ideas where racial crossing was seen as a means of improvement, a way of creating new societies, or a mode for furthering the rule of law and the kingdom of Heaven.

Salesa explores how and why the preoccupation with racial crossings came to be so important, so varied, and so widely shared through the writings and experiences of a raft of participants: from Victorian politicians and writers, to philanthropists and scientists, to those at the razor’s edge of empire—from soldiers, missionaries, and settlers, to ‘natives’, ‘half-castes’ and other colonized people. Anchored in the striking history of colonial New Zealand, where the colonial policy of ‘racial amalgamation’ sought to incorporate and intermarry settlers and New Zealand Maori, Racial Crossings examines colonial encounters, working closely with indigenous ideas and experiences, to put Victorian racial practice and thought into sharp, critical, relief.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Crossing Races
  • 1. Systematic Colonisation and Racial Amalgamation
  • 2. Intimate Encounters in New Zealand Before 1840
  • 3. Racial Amalgamation in New Zealand 1840-1850s
  • 4. Crossing Races, Encountering Places
  • 5. The Tender Way in Race War
  • Conclusion: Dwelling in Unity
  • Bibliography
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The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Volume 1)

Posted in Books, Media Archive, Novels, Women on 2011-01-27 01:50Z by Steven

The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Volume 1)

Oxford University Press
1988
480 pages
4-5/8 x 6-1/2
Hardback ISBN13: 978-0-19-505250-3; ISBN10: 0-19-505250-1

Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)

Edited by Gloria Hull

Spanning the gamut of literary genres, from autobiographical short stories to poetry, journalism, and novelettes, this is a comprehensive collection of one of America’s most seminal women writers. A testament to the nineteenth century as birthplace for black woman writers, The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson offers insight into the themes of oppression and intolarance, often considered dangerous or ignored in the nineteenth century, but now pervade much writing today. Themes such as crossing racial boundaries, infused with Dunbar-Nelson’s autobiographical fervor.

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Race in an Era of Change: A Reader

Posted in Family/Parenting, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Law, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2010-06-08 04:42Z by Steven

Race in an Era of Change: A Reader

Oxford University Press
September 2010
544 pages
ISBN13: 9780199752102
ISBN10: 0199752109

Edited By:

Heather Dalmage, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mansfield Institute
Roosevelt University

Barbara Katz Rothman, Professor of Sociology
Baruch College of the City Univerity of New York

Featuring a wide range of classic and contemporary selections, Race in an Era of Change: A Reader is an affordable and timely collection of articles on race and ethnicity in the United States today. Opening with coverage of racial formation theory, it goes on to cover “racial thinking” (including the challenging and compelling concept of “whiteness”) and the idea of “assigned and claimed” racial identities. The book also discusses the relationships between race and a variety of institutions—including healthcare, economy and work, housing and environment, education, policing and prison, the media, and the family—and concludes with a section on issues of globalization, immigration, and citizenship.

Editors Heather Dalmage and Barbara Katz Rothman have carefully edited the selections so that they will be easily accessible to students. A detailed introduction to each article contains questions designed to help students focus as they begin reading. In addition, each article is followed by a “journaling question” that encourages students to share their responses to the piece. Offering instructors great flexibility for course use—the selections can be used in any combination and in any order—Race in an Era of Change: A Reader is ideal for any undergraduate course on race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

PART I: RACIAL FORMATION THEORY

1. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, from Racial Formation in the United States
2. Eva Marie Garroutte, “The Racial Formation of American Indians”
3. Nicholas DeGenova and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, “Latino Racial Formations in the United States: An Introduction”

PART II: RACIAL THINKING

Essentialism

4. Joanne Nagel, “Sex and Conquest: Domination and Desire on Ethnosexual Frontiers”
5. Janell Hobson, “The “Batty” Politics: Towards an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body”
6. Barbara Katz-Rothman, from The Book of Life: A Personal Guide to Race, Normality, and the Implications of the Genome Project
A Voice from the Past: Franz Boas, “Race and Progress”

The Social Construction of Race

7. Eduardo Bonilla Silva, David Embrick, Amanda Lewis, “‘I did not get that job because of a Black man…’ The storylines and testimonies of color-blind racism”
8. Margaret Hunter, “The Beauty Queue: Advantages of Light Skin”
9. Heather Dalmage, “Discovering Racial Borders”
A Voice from the Past: W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of the Races”

Outing Whiteness

A Special Introduction by the Editors
10. France Winddance Twine and Charles Gallagher, “Introduction: The Future of Whiteness: A Map of the ‘Third Wave'”
11. Troy Duster, “The Morphing Properties of Whiteness”
12. Jennifer L. Eichstedt, “Problematic Identities and a Search for Racial Justice”
A Voice from the Past: Frederick Douglass, “The Color Line”

PART III: RACIAL IDENTITIES

A Special Introduction by the Editors
13. Joy L. Lei, “(Un) Necessary Toughness?: ‘Those Loud Black Girls’ and Those ‘Quiet Asian Boys'”
14. Nada Elia, “Islamophobia and the ‘Privileging’ of Arab American Women”
15. Nina Asher, “Checking the Box: The Label of ‘Model Minority'”
16. Patty Talahongva, “Identity Crisis: Indian Identity in a Changing World”
17. Juan Flores, “Nueva York – Diaspora City: U.S. Latinos Between and Beyond”
18. Nancy Foner, “The Social Construction of Race in Two Immigrant Eras”

PART IV: RACIALIZED AND RACIALIZING INSTITUTIONS

Economy and Work

19. Sherry Cable and Tamara L. Mix, “Economic Imperatives and Race Relations: The Rise and Fall of the American Apartheid System”
20. Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination”

Housing & Environment

21. Benjamin Howell, “Exploiting Race and Space: Concentrated Subprime Lending as Housing Discrimination”
22. Mary Patillo, “Black Middle Class-Class Neighborhoods”
23. Kari Marie Norgaard, “Denied Access to Traditional Foods Including the Material Dimension to Institutional and Environmental Racism”

Education

24. Linda Darling-Hammond, “Race, Inequality, and Educational Accountability: The Irony of ‘No Child Left Behind'”
25. Amanda E. Lewis, Mark Chesler, and Tyrone Forman, “The Impact of ‘Colorblind’ Ideologies on Students of Color: Intergroup Relations at a Predominantly White University”

Policing and Prison

26. Loic Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh”
27. David Harris, “U.S. Experiences with Racial and Ethnic Profiling: History, Current Issues, and the Future”

Media

28. Jose Antonio Padin, “The Normative Mulattoes: The Press Latinos. And the Racial Climate on the Moving Immigration Frontier”
29. Jonathan Markovitz, “Anatomy of a Spectacle: Race, Gender, and Memory in the Kobe Bryant Rape Case”

Family

30. Dorothy Roberts, from Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare
31. Krista M Perreira, Mimi V Chapman, and Gabriela L Stein, “Becoming an American Parent: Overcoming Challenges and Finding Strength in a New Immigrant Latino Community”

Healthcare

32. Mathew R. Anderson, Susan Moscou, Celestine Fulchon and Daniel R. Neuspiel, “The Role of Race in the Clinical Presentation”
33. Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle, “Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity”

PART V: GLOBALIZATION, IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP

34. Anupam Chander, “Flying the Mexican Flag in Los Angeles”
35. Patricia Hill Collins, “New Commoditites, New Consumers: Selling Blackness in a Global Marketplace”
36. William I. Robinson, “‘Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!’: Global capital and immigrant rights”

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Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960

Posted in Africa, Books, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Monographs on 2010-05-04 00:54Z by Steven

Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960

Oxford University Press
1999
216 pages
Hardback ISBN13: 9780198208198; ISBN10: 0198208197

Owen White, Associate Professor of History
University of Delaware

This book recreates the lives of the children born of relationships between French men and African women from the time France colonized much of West Africa towards the end of the 19th century, until independence in 1960. Set within the context of the history of miscegenation in colonial French West Africa, the study focuses upon the lives and identities of the resulting mixed-race or métis population, and their struggle to overcome the handicaps they faced in a racially divided society. This author has drawn an evaluation of the impact and importance of French racial theories, and offers a critical discussion of colonial policies in such areas as citizenship and education, providing insights into problems of identity in colonial society.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
Map of French West Africa and Togo
Introduction
1. Miscegenation in French West Africa
2. Abandonment and Intervention
3. Education and Employment
4. Race and Heredity
5. Paternity and the Mother Country
6. Métis and the Search for Social Identity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

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Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler

Posted in Biography, Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, United States, Women on 2010-01-09 21:17Z by Steven

Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler

Oxford University Press
January 1995
360 pages
47 halftones
6-1/8 x 9-1/4
ISBN13: 978-0-19-511393-8
ISBN10: 0-19-511393-4

Kathryn Talalay

The Tragic Saga of Harlem’s Biracial Prodigy

George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would “invigorate” the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America’s race problems.

Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune , and The New Yorker . But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the “little Harlem genius.” Suffering the double sting of racial and gender bias, Philippa was forced to find recognition abroad, where she traveled constantly, performing for kings and queens, and always in search of her self. At the age of thirty-five, Philippa finally began to embark on a racial catharsis: she was just beginning to find herself when on May 9, 1967, while on an unauthorized mission of mercy, her life was cut short in a helicopter crash over the waters of war-torn Vietnam.

The first authorized biography of Philippa Schuyler, Composition in Black and White draws on previously unpublished letters and diaries to reveal an extraordinary and complex personality. Extensive research and personal interviews from around the world make this book not only the definitive chronicle of Schuyler’s restless and haunting life, but also a vivid history of the tumultuous times she lived through. Talalay has created a highly perceptive and provocative portrait of a fascinating woman.

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