Mixed Race Studies

Jennifer Lisa Vest to explore ‘post-racial present’ at Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium

Report: Faculty/Staff Newsletter
Illinois State University
2015-04-02

Rachel Hatch, Editor

Performing artist and scholar Jennifer Lisa Vest will be the keynote speaker for the 20th annual Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) Symposium.

Vest will present Black Lives Matter: [Trans]Gender Violence, Disability, and Women in a ‘Post-racial,’ ‘Post-Sexist’ Present at 1 p.m. Friday, April 17, in the Bone Student Center. The talk is free and open to the public.

In celebration of the event, there will be a poetry reading at 7 p.m. Thursday April 16, at the University Galleries, 11 Uptown Circle, Normal.

Vest is a self-described “mixed-race queer feminist philosopher, poet, and artivist whose philopoetic works combine philosophy, poetry and feminist theories to provide intersectional analyses of social justice issues by explicating raced, gendered, and sexualized components of privilege, ablelism, and oppression.”…

Read the entire article here.

Boutté play to explore questions of race and identity

Illinois State University
2015-03-25

Eric Jome, Director of Media Relations

When Duane Boutté, an assistant professor in the School of Theatre and Dance, read James Weldon Johnson’s novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the story struck a familiar chord. It also served as further inspiration for Boutté to develop a play based loosely on his own family history.

Johnson was an author, songwriter, professor, lawyer, diplomat and civil rights leader in the early 20th century. The executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1920s, Johnson also composed the lyrics to Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, a song the NAACP promoted as a black national anthem.

The book’s plot revolves around the life of a man struggling with his own racial identity. The un-named main character leads an idyllic childhood in the American south, taking piano lessons and developing a love for the music of Chopin. His world is changed when he learns that his mother is of mixed race, even though she passes for white. He eventually comes to terms with his heritage, but ultimately decides to keep his true identity a secret, even from his children.

Boutté was immediately intrigued. Johnson’s novel explored themes of identity that resonate deeply with him. His family tree, rooted in Louisiana, includes black and white branches. “I have maternal and paternal grandparents of mixed race, but they always identified as black,” he said. “Throughout American history, mixed-race children were more often raised by the black branch and shunned by the white. My great-great-grandfather in Louisiana established his own family cemetery so that both black and white family members could be buried in the same area, but I’ve always been struck by stories about a few mixed-race relatives of ours who simply passed for white.”…

Read the entire article here.

Visually white, legally black: Miscegenation, the mulatto, and passing in American literature and culture, 1865–1933

Illinois State University
2004
193 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3128271

Karen A. Chachere

Many historians and literary scholars characterize the period between 1865-1933 as America’s preoccupation with the “Negro Question.” Admittedly, America was intrigued by the idea of the former slave as “citizen.” Seemingly, the more resounding question obscured behind the “Negro Question” was how whites would maintain their privilege. The answer to this question plagued America’s consciousness and manifested itself most obviously in American literature written from 1865-1933. Indeed, the novels, which emerged during this turbulent period, with their focus on miscegenation, the mulatto, and passing, accurately reflect the fear that whites felt at the thought of losing their legal, social, and economic advantages. White and black writers of the era capitalized on the nation’s fear of miscegenation and racial passing and voraciously used these themes to protest the venomous social, legal, and political conflicts that ensued over America’s desire to maintain its whiteness.

Diverse writers such as Mark Twain, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, and Jessie Redmon Fauset debated the color line in their works. “Visually White, Legally Black: Miscegenation and the Mulatto in American Literature and Culture, 1865-1933” examines the dialectical relationship that emerged between these diverse writers through American literature’s theme of miscegenation and passing narratives and exposes the underlying issue that was not blackness, but whiteness. And yet, the mulatto’s attempt at racial passing has often been misconstrued as an indictment against the black community rather than for what it really is–an indictment against claims of racial purity and white superiority. The first four chapters of this dissertation are grounded in biographical, historical, and legal evidence in order to expose the ways in which writers negotiated the nexus of race, class, and gender. Finally, chapter five illustrates how the passing genre may be used in the literature classroom to challenge and encourage dialogue concerning race, class, and gender superiority/inferiority.

Table of Contents

• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CONTENTS
• I. HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND LITERARY OVERIVIEW OF RACE MIXING
  • Brief Historical Overview of Miscegenation
  • A Divided Sisterhood: The Beginning
  • Building a Case Against Race Mixing
  • Constructing Whiteness Through the Legal System
• II. PROTECTING THE UNMARKED CATEGORY: WHITENESS RECOVERED IN MARK TWAIN’S PUDD’NHEAD WILSON
• III. WHITE ACCOUNTABILITY IN CHARLES W. CHESNUTT’S “THE SHERIFF’S CHILDREN”
• IV. REPRESENTATIONS OF WHITENESS IN JESSIE REDMON FAUSET’S COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
• V. MISCEGENATION, THE MULATTO, AND PASSING: A TEACHING NARRATIVE
• WORKS CITED

Purchase the dissertation here.