Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Quadroon Balls functioned as a form of entertainment but also served a meeting space for its participants to enter into plaçage/sexual relationships. It was at these dances that free young women of color, guided by their mothers, charmed their way into the hearts and pockets of Louisiana’s white males. At the balls, quadroon women “show their accomplishments in dancing and conversation to the white men.” Upon finding a quadroon to his liking, a man would negotiate with the quadroon woman’s mother. If both mother and daughter were satisfied with his financial and social ranking, she would be “placed” as his placée. According to literary traveler George William Featherstonhaugh,

When one of them [a quadroon] attracts the attention of an admirer, and he is desirous of forming a liaison with her, he makes a bargain with the mother, agrees to pay her a sum of money, perhaps 2000 dollars, or some sum in proportion to her merits, as a fund upon which she may retire when the liaison terminates. She is now called “une placée;” those of her caste who are her intimate friends give her fetes, and the lover prepares “un joli appartement meuble.”

Each quadroon had a “value” which “depended on the attractiveness of the subject, the fairness of her complexion, and her mother’s ability to show her off against the competition.” This “value” was derived through negotiations between the quadroon’s mother and the white suitor. If an agreement was reached, the quadroon would become a concubine or placée for the white man in exchange for financial support for the woman. These exchanges frequently meant that the quadroon woman would receive housing, a sum of money, and promised financial support for any children that would come from these relationships. The “price” for a quadroon varied, but could be as much as $2,000. Often times, the quadroon woman would be set up in an apartment (“un joli appartement meuble”) located on Ramparts Street in New Orleans that was rented by the white gentleman for their use. These plaçage relationships could last for weeks, months, years, and, much less frequently, a life-time. In these exchanges, sexual exploitation by both parties is particularly noticeable; the quadroon exploited the pocketbook and the man exploited her body.

Quadroon women who participated in the balls had been groomed from early childhood by their mothers to take advantage of this unique opportunity to become the exploiters, using their bodies, beauty and assumed exotic sexuality to enter into contracts with wealthy white men. Monique Guillory discusses this exchange that gives women some power when she states, “Through this strategic commodification of the quadroon body, which I have called the commercial, women of color seized an opportunity beyond the confines of slavery to set the price for their own bodies.” These quadroon women chose to use their bodies as leverage to raise their own social status above the “negro” slave and the dark-skinned free people of color. This population of women became agents who exploited themselves and white men in an effort to transcend the racist system of antebellum Louisiana.

Noël Voltz, “Black Female Agency and Sexual Exploitation: Quadroon Balls and Plaçage Relationships” (PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008).

The Construction of Racial Identity in Children of Mixed Parentage: Mixed Metaphors

Posted in Books, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science on 2013-09-23 20:25Z by Steven

The Construction of Racial Identity in Children of Mixed Parentage: Mixed Metaphors

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
1996
224 pages
234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-85302-376-7

Ilan Katz, Professor
Social Policy Research Center
University of New South Wales, Australia

For several decades the issues of race, identity and child development have been of major concern to policy makers and practitioners in social services. This book is a major contribution to this literature, and offers a radically new way of looking at some of these issues. Based on intensive research on interracial families with young children, the book reviews the previous literature relating to racial identity development, especially relating to biracial children, and shows it to be based on flawed assumptions.

Using intensive observations and in-depth interviews with parents of biracial children the author shows the many ways in which inter-racial families deal with issues of identity and difference. He concludes with a discussion of alternative conceptions of identity, race and development which will provide both practitioners and policy makers with new ways to think about these issues.

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Interracial Debate
Chapter 3: Racial Attitudes and Marginality
Chapter 4: Theories of Identity Development
Chapter 5: Methodology
Chapter 6: The A Family
Chapter 7: The B Family
Chapter 8: The First Set of Interviews
Chapter 9: Second Set of Interviews
Chapter 10: Conclusions
Chapter 11: Revisiting the Theory
Appendix One: Mother’s Interviews
Appendix Two: Interview Transcript

Comments Off on The Construction of Racial Identity in Children of Mixed Parentage: Mixed Metaphors

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Canada, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, Social Work, United Kingdom, United States on 2011-12-15 04:33Z by Steven

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing

Routledge
2012-05-25
224 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-59804-0

Edited by

Suki Ali, Senior Lecturer of Sociology
London School of Economics and Political Science

Chamion Cabellero, Senior Research Fellow
Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
University of Southampton

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

People from a ‘mixed’ racial and ethnic background, and people partnering and parenting across different racial and ethnic backgrounds, are increasingly visible internationally and often construed in diametrically opposed ways. On the one hand, images of racial and ethnic diversity are posed in opposition to unity and solidarity, creating a crisis of cohesive social trust. On the other hand, there are assertions that the portrayals of segregation and conflict ignore the reality of ongoing interactions between a mix of minority and majority racial, ethnic and religious cultures, where multiculture is an ordinary, unremarkable, feature of everyday social life.

This interdisciplinary volume brings internationally well-respected researchers together to explore the different contexts and concepts underpinning discussions about mixedness and mixing. Moving beyond pathologically focused research about confused identities and a dualistic black-white conception of mixedness, the book includes chapters on:

Multiraciality and race classification
Mixed race couples
Mixedness in everyday life
Mixed race politics

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing develops theoretical perspectives and presents intellectually shaped empirical evidence that can deal with complexity and normalcy in order to move the debate onto more fruitful grounds. It is an important book for students and scholars of race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

Introduction / Suki Ali, Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards and Miri Song
Multiraciality and census classification in global perspective / Ann Morning
Mixed race across time and place: an international perspective / Ilan Katz
Scaling diversity: mixed-race couples, segregation and urban America / Steven Holloway
The geography of mixedness in England and Wales / Charlie Owen
From ‘Draughtboard Alley’ to ‘Brown Britain’: the ordinariness of mixedness in British life / Chamion Caballero
How mixedness is understood and experienced in everyday life / Peter Aspinall and Miri Song
Finding value on a council estate in Nottingham: voices of white working class women / Lisa McKenzie
How to find mixed people in quantitative datasets / Anne Unterreiner
When ethnicity became an important family issue in Slovenia / Mateja Sedmak
Same difference? Developing a critical methodological stance in critical mixed race studies / Minelle Mahtani
Mixed race politics / Suki Ali

Tags: Ann Morning, Anne Unterreiner, Chamion Caballero, Charlie Owen, Ilan Katz, Lisa McKenzie, Mateja Sedmak, Minelle Mahtani, Miri Song, Peter Aspinall, Rosalind Edwards, Routledge, Steven Holloway, Suki Ali

Comments Off on International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing

Mixed Race Studies

The Construction of Racial Identity in Children of Mixed Parentage: Mixed Metaphors

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing

Pages

Categories

Calendar of Posts

Links

Meta