Mixed Race Studies

Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology

University of Minnesota Press
February 2015
240 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-8730-5
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-8726-8

Michelle M. Wright, Associate Professor of Black European and African Diaspora Studies
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

What does it mean to be Black? If Blackness is not biological in origin but socially and discursively constructed, does the meaning of Blackness change over time and space? In Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology, Michelle M. Wright argues that although we often explicitly define Blackness as a “what,” it in fact always operates as a “when” and a “where.”

By putting lay discourses on spacetime from physics into conversation with works on identity from the African Diaspora, Physics of Blackness explores how Middle Passage epistemology subverts racist assumptions about Blackness, yet its linear structure inhibits the kind of inclusive epistemology of Blackness needed in the twenty-first century. Wright then engages with bodies frequently excluded from contemporary mainstream consideration: Black feminists, Black queers, recent Black African immigrants to the West, and Blacks whose histories may weave in and out of the Middle Passage epistemology but do not cohere to it.

Physics of Blackness takes the reader on a journey both known and unfamiliar—from Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravity to the contemporary politics of diasporic Blackness in the academy, from James Baldwin’s postwar trope of the Eiffel Tower as the site for diasporic encounters to theoretical particle physics’ theory of multiverses and superpositioning, to the almost erased lives of Black African women during World War II. Accessible in its style, global in its perspective, and rigorous in its logic, Physics of Blackness will change the way you look at Blackness.

Contents

• Introduction. Many Thousands Still Coming: Theorizing Blackness in the Postwar Moment
• 1. The Middle Passage Epistemology
• 2. The Problem of Return in the African Diaspora
• 3. Quantum Baldwin and the Multidimensionality of Blackness
• 4. Axes of Asymmetry
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Confounding Identity: Exploring the Life and Discourse of Lucy E. Parsons

Berks Conference for Women Historians
2011
29 pages

Michelle Diane Wright, Assistant Professor of History
Community College of Baltimore County

Despite the vast research conducted on radical activist history of late nineteenth century Chicago, there is very little that examines political and social ideologies that diverged from the westernized male archetype of the era. Furthermore, the contrived disciplinary divide that separates scholarly study into artificial and static compartments such as labor history, anarchist history, women’s studies or others, oversimplifies the contributions of individuals that straddle all categories of endeavor. Lucy Parsons, a woman of color, was born in Waco, Texas in 1853 but moved to Chicago in 1873 and became a pivotal figure in the labor and anarchist movements well into the early twentieth century causing the Chicago Police Department to label her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” Frequently overshadowed by the eminence of her husband Albert Parsons—labeled by many a Haymarket martyr—Lucy Parsons was a significant agitator in her own right and navigated a path for herself far outside the realm of the predominant thinking of other revolutionaries at that time. This paper examines the life and discourse of Lucy Parsons in an effort to contend with seemingly contradictory disciplines and perspectives in order to synthesize a holistic approach to a woman who confounds the strict identities that many have forced on her. Lucy Parsons’ impact upon concepts of injustice, governmental repression and labor inequalities come from a paradigm often marginalized and misinterpreted not only because it wasn’t derived from a source that was European or male, but also because her views came from a mind unconcerned with convention in relation to accepted societal standards. I am conducting research on the contributions of Lucy Parsons in order to write an accurate, comprehensive biography that also dissects marginalized perspectives of widely accepted historical accounts. In turn, I endeavor to provide a fuller and more holistic consideration of a historic period many assume is already understood.

Black By Default?

Lucy Parsons was born in Waco, Texas, in 1853 but moved to Chicago in 1873 where she lived until her death in 1942. She was a pivotal figure in several radical movements well into the early twentieth century causing the Chicago Police Department to label her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” Scholars, including biographer Carolyn Ashbaugh, have categorized Parsons solely African American although she never embraced the designation herself. Lucy Parsons publicly claimed to possess Mexican and Native American extraction. As was often the case of nineteenth century social mores, ill-informed Whites with social agendas centered on White supremacy designed racial categories employing superficial visual characteristics such as skin color, facial features and hair texture. In order to maintain White preeminence racial descriptions were dichotomous labels of White or Black, generally resulting in individuals possessing one drop of any non-European blood being deemed Black by default.

Further confounding public perception, Lucy Parsons was essentially, but not legally, married to a White man. Her husband, moreover, was one of the four men hanged following the Haymarket Massacre that occurred in Chicago in 1886, a fact that often overshadows the significant contributions of Lucy Parsons. Contrived labels such as of miscegenation or amalgamation clouded the legacy of Lucy Parsons as mainstream newspapers and other contemporaries publicly relegated her solely to the category of Black for no other reason than to discredit her efforts as well as those of her husband.

This essay analyzes the life and rhetoric of radical leftist agitator Lucy Parsons with the intention of providing a healthier understanding of the complicated world of racial identity politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While wider society—and even her death certificate—labeled her “Negro,” she was conversely accustomed to the concoction of nineteenth century Texas’ more complicated caste system that took into account all possible ethnic equations. Coming from a birthplace where she might have considered herself anything from Mestizo to Mulatto or any other of the dozens of categories utilized at the time, she was not culturally prepared for wider society’s monoracial designation of Black, and therefore scoffed at its validity.

In hindsight, onlookers often accuse Lucy Parsons of negating her African heritage for a seemingly more desirable ethnic identity. There is a sense, especially within the modern African American community, that a person of color self-labeling anything other than exclusively Black is virtually treasonous and committing a form of identity denial and self-hate. Criticism of notable individuals such as Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and others exemplify this sentiment of betrayal. In actuality, Lucy Parsons seemed to be holistically embracing her complete ethnic heritage, not merely a fraction of it. Therefore, the question must ultimately be posed as to how the legacy of those early externally defined racial and ethnic designations can provide a better consideration of multiracial designations in contemporary times…

Read the entire paper here.

In hindsight, onlookers often accuse Lucy Parsons of negating her African heritage for a seemingly more desirable ethnic identity. There is a sense, especially within the modern African American community, that a person of color self-labeling anything other than exclusively Black is virtually treasonous and committing a form of identity denial and self-hate. Criticism of notable individuals such as Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and others exemplify this sentiment of betrayal. In actuality, Lucy Parsons seemed to be holistically embracing her complete ethnic heritage, not merely a fraction of it. Therefore, the question must ultimately be posed as to how the legacy of those early externally defined racial and ethnic designations can provide a better consideration of multiracial designations in contemporary times…

Michelle Diane Wright, “Confounding Identity: Exploring the Life and Discourse of Lucy E. Parsons,” Berks Conference for Women Historians, 2011, 29 pages.

Was first black priest black enough?

Chicago Tribune
2010-05-02

Manya A. Brachear, Tribune reporter

Healy, son of a plantation owner, isn’t mentioned as often as Tolton, who is being pushed for sainthood

More than a year after some African-Americans scrutinized the blackness of the nation’s first black president, America’s Catholics are now wrestling with the same questions to determine who was the nation’s first black priest.

The debate emerges as the Archdiocese of Chicago seeks sainthood for the Rev. Augustus Tolton, long hailed in Chicago as the first African-American clergyman to serve in the U.S. Catholic Church.

A rival for the title is Bishop James Augustine Healy, who was ordained in 1854, the year Tolton was born. But Healy, the son of an Irish-American landowner and a mixed-race slave, was light-skinned enough to pass as a white man. And in many cases, he did…

…As bishop of Portland, Maine, Healy served another marginalized population: Native Americans.

The eldest of 10 siblings, Healy was raised Catholic but attended a Quaker school in New York. In 1849, he graduated valedictorian of the first class at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

He attended seminary in Canada and was eventually ordained in Paris. But he distanced himself from an African-American identity. He declined to participate in African-American organizations and turned down invitations to address the National Black Catholic Congress, citing the New Testament — “Christ is all and in all” — as his reason.

James O’Toole, author of “Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family [, 1820-1920],” said that denial comes across to some as betrayal. To others, it gives a new dimension to the struggle. But he believes contemporary categories or agendas shouldn’t be imposed upon historical figures.

“In a sense, that can look like racial treason. Why are you denying who you are?” said O’Toole. “Those are very much the standards of today. But they’re not their standards. As a historian, that’s what ought to govern here. … We should be assessing them on their own terms.”

But Michelle Wright, associate professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University and author of “Becoming Black [: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora],” cautions that ceding to Healy’s self-identity could further the misconception that African-Americans did not contribute to society…

Read the entire article here.

Black Europe and the African Diaspora

University of Illinois Press
2009
368 pages
6 x 9 in. 
15 black & white photographs, 1 map
Cloth: ISBN 978-0-252-03467-1
Paper: ISBN 978-0-252-07657-2

Edited by

Darlene Clark Hine, Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies
Northwestern University

Trica Danielle Keaton, Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies
the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Stephen Small, Associate Professor of African American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Multifaceted analyses of the African diaspora in Europe

The presence of Blacks in a number of European societies has drawn increasing interest from scholars, policymakers, and the general public. This interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary collection penetrates the multifaceted Black presence in Europe, and, in so doing, complicates the notions of race, belonging, desire, and identities assumed and presumed in revealing portraits of Black experiences in a European context. In focusing on contemporary intellectual currents and themes, the contributors theorize and re-imagine a range of historical and contemporary issues related to the broader questions of blackness, diaspora, hegemony, transnationalism, and “Black Europe” itself as lived and perceived realities.

Contributors are Allison Blakely, Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Tina Campt, Fred Constant, Alessandra Di Maio, Philomena Essed, Terri Francis, Barnor Hesse, Darlene Clark Hine, Dienke Hondius, Eileen Julien, Trica Danielle Keaton, Kwame Nimako, Tiffany Ruby Patterson, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Stephen Small, Tyler Stovall, Alexander G. Weheliye, Gloria Wekker, and Michelle M. Wright.