My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots

Posted in Autobiography, Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, United States on 2011-12-30 20:36Z by Steven

My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots

Basic Civitas Books
2007-01-02
352 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780465015740; ISBN-10: 0465015743

Thulani Davis

Starting from a photograph and writings left by her grandmother, acclaimed African-American novelist Thulani Davis goes looking for the “white folk” in her family, a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined. Her journey challenges us to examine the origins of some of our most deeply ingrained notions about what makes a family black or white, and offers an immensely compelling, intellectually challenging alternative.

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Hypodescent: A history of the crystallization of the one-drop rule in the United States, 1880-1940

Posted in Dissertations, History, Law, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-12-30 19:41Z by Steven

Hypodescent: A history of the crystallization of the one-drop rule in the United States, 1880-1940

Princeton University
September 2011
383 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3480237
ISBN: 9781124939179

Scott Leon Washington

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

This dissertation examines the crystallization of the one-drop rule in the United States between 1880 and 1940. The “one-drop rule” is a colloquial expression, a phrase which reflects the belief that a person bearing a trace of African ancestry (literally, a single drop of black or Negro “blood”) is black. Historians and social scientists have tended to assume that, as a principle of classification, the one-drop rule can be traced back to the institution of slavery. This study provides a different account. Using a variety of methods, it attempts to explain how the one-drop rule developed, when it became institutionalized, and why. It also adopts a new approach to the study of race, ethnicity, and nationalism, an approach based largely although by no means exclusively on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The study in its present form has been limited to five chapters. Chapter One explores the origins and development of the one-drop rule, while Chapter Two provides a detailed reading of the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Chapter Three provides a quantitative account of the country’s history of anti-miscegenation legislation, while Chapter Four examines the role lynching played in the South as a means of social demarcation. The study ends in Chapter Five with a brief synopsis, an inquiry into the relationship between slavery and democracy, and a nonpartisan look at the legacy of the one-drop rule.

Contents

  • Abstract
  • Maps and Figures
  • Tables
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • I. Introduction: A Prehistory of the Present
    • 1.1. An American Anomaly
    • 1.2. The Origins and Development of the One-Drop Rule
    • 1.3. An Outline of the Argument
    • 1.4. Words about Words
    • 1.5. References
  • II. The Blood of Homer Plessy
    • 2.1. Introduction
    • 2.2. Digression: The Virtues of Virtual History
    • 2.3. The Wider Context
    • 2.4. Plessy v. Ferguson: Background Information
    • 2.5. The Tourgée Brief
    • 2.6. The Majority Opinion
    • 2.7. Counterfactual Scenario
    • 2.8. Plausibility Defense
    • 2.9. Conclusion
    • 2.10. References
  • III. Crossing the Line
    • 3.1. Introduction
    • 3.2. A Brief History of Laws Prohibiting Interracial Sex and Marriage
    • 3.3. Trends in Anti-Miscegenation Activity
    • 3.4. Data and Methods
    • 3.5. Results
    • 3.6. Discussion
    • 3.7. Conclusion
    • 3.8. References
    • 3.9. Appendix
  • IV. The Killing Fields Revisited: Lynching and Anti-Miscegenation Legislation in the Jim Crow South, 1882-1930
    • 4.1. Introduction
    • 4.2. Lynching: Background Information
    • 4.3. Anti-Miscegenation Legislation: Background Information
    • 4.4. The Strange Career of Judge Lynch: A Review of the Literature
    • 4.5. Data and Methods
    • 4.6. Results
    • 4.7. Discussion
    • 4.8. Conclusion
    • 4.9. References
  • V. Conclusion: The Legacy of the One-Drop Rule
    • 5.1. Permanence and Change
    • 5.2. Synopsis
    • 5.3. Slavery and Democracy
    • 5.4. A Final Note
    • 5.5. References

Maps and Figures

  • 3.1A. Colonies Prohibiting Interracial Sex or Marriage, 1776
  • 3.1B. States and Territories, Prohibiting Interracial Sex or Marriage, 1861
  • 3.1C. States and Territories, Prohibiting Interracial Sex or Marriage, 1877
  • 3.1D. States Prohibiting Interracial Sex or Marriage, 1938
  • 3.1E. States Prohibiting Interracial Sex or Marriage, 1967
  • 3.2A. Anti-Miscegenation Activity, 1619-2000
  • 3.2B. Anti-Miscegenation Activity, Excluding Significant Cases, 1619-2000
  • 3.3A. Anti-Miscegenation Bills Defeated, 1913
  • 3.3B. Anti-Miscegenation Bills Defeated, 1927
  • 3.4A. Statutory Definitions, 1861
  • 3.4B. Statutory Definitions, 1877
  • 3.4C. Statutory Definitions, 1938
  • 3.5A. Statutory Penalties, 1861
  • 3.5B. Statutory Penalties, 1877
  • 3.5C. Statutory Penalties, 1938
  • 3.6. Punishments Against Secondary Parties, 1938
  • 3.7. Racial Coverage of Laws Prohibiting Miscegenation, 1938
  • 3.8. Appellate Litigation Concerning Definitions of Race, 1776-2000
  • 3.9A-G. Severity of Definitions, 1880-1940
  • 3.10A-G. Severity of Penalties, 1880-1940
  • 4.1. Lynching and Anti-Miscegenation Legislation in the Jim Crow South, 1882-1930
  • 4.2. Lynching and Anti-Miscegenation Legislation in the Jim Crow South, Integrated Trends, 1882-1930
  • 4.3. The Moving Effects of Anti-Miscegenation Activity and the Constant Dollar Price for Cotton, 1882-1930
  • 5.1. Percent of Americans Marrying Out of Race, 1970-2000
  • 5.2A. Percent of Whites Marrying Out of Race, 1880-2000
  • 5.2B. Percent of Blacks Marrying Out of Race, 1880-2000
  • 5.3A. Percent of Whites Marrying Out of Race, Adjusting for Relative Numbers in the Population, 1880-2000
  • 5.3B. Percent of Blacks Marrying Out of Race, Adjusting for Relative Numbers in the Population, 1880-2000
  • 5.4. Percent within Categories Reporting Two or More Races, 2000

TABLES

  • 1.1. The Longue Durée of the One-Drop Rule, 1619-2000
  • 3.1. Percent of Colonies, Territories, and States Prohibiting Interracial Sex or Marriage, 1776-1967
  • 3.2A. Anti-Miscegenation Activity, 1619-2000
  • 3.2B. Anti-Miscegenation Activity, Excluding Significant Cases, 1619-2000
  • 3.3A. Average Severity of Definitions, 1861, 1877, 1938
  • 3.3B. Average Severity of Definitions, Excluding States without Definitions, 1861, 1877, 1938
  • 3.4A. Average Severity of Penalties, 1861, 1877, 1938
  • 3.4B. Average Severity of Penalties, Excluding States without Penalties, 1861, 1877, 1938
  • 3.5. Expected Relationships
  • 3.6. ARMA (1,1) Regression of Anti-Miscegenation Activity on Selected Variables
  • 3.7. ARMA (1,1) Regression of Severity of Definitions on Selected Variables
  • 3.8. ARMA (1,1) Regression of Severity of Penalties on Selected Variables
  • 3.9. Racial Categories Used by the United States Census Bureau, 1880-1940
  • 3.10. Growth of the Decennial Census, 1880-1940
  • 3.11A. Significant Cases, 1810-1894
  • 3.11B. Significant Cases, 1895-1972
  • 4.1. ARMA (1,1,1) Regression of Black Lynchings on Selected Variables
  • 4.2. ARMA (1,1) Regression of Black Lynchings on Selected Variables
  • 4.3. The Impact of Anti-Miscegenation Activity and the Market for Southern Cotton Before and After 1900
  • 5.1. Percent of Americans Marrying Out of Race, 1970-2000
  • 5.2. Black-White Intermarriage Rates, 1970-2000
  • 5.3. Total Population by Number of Races Reported, 2000
  • 5.4. Percent within Categories Reporting Two or More Races, 2000
  • 5.5. Multiple-Race Population, 2000

Purchase the dissertation here.

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Psychology Major Publishes Analysis of Racial Dynamics in the Wizarding World

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-12-30 02:27Z by Steven

Psychology Major Publishes Analysis of Racial Dynamics in the Wizarding World

James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Department of Psychology
2011-10-20

Jordan Pye

When a fan asked her about the political allegories in her book series, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said, “I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world.”

By exploring this idea, one senior psychology student, Christina Thai, put her love for Harry Potter to use in a comparison of how societies perceive people of mixed racial backgrounds. Her work will be published in “A Wizard of Their Age: Critical Essays from the Harry Potter Generation,” a compilation by students who applied concepts in the series to their own fields of study. Thai’s chapter is called “Harry Potter and Blood Status: A Psychological Look at Blood Stratification in the Wizarding World,” which she compares the racial dynamics in Harry Potter’s wizarding world to the historical relationship between European Americans and African Americans in the United States…

…Thai, a native of Fairfax, Va. with a second major in biology, found inspiration for the topic during her first semester of research in the Cultural and Racial Diversity Studies lab with Dr. Matthew Lee. After studying racial identity and discrimination, Thai built upon alumnus Candace Vanderpoel’s honors thesis research on hypodescent among African Americans and Asians. This concept is the belief that a bi-racial person has both minority and majority race heritage, but their minority identity overshadows their majority status, so their community considers them a minority.

Thai translated this idea to social hierarchy in the Harry Potter series, where witches and wizards of “pure blood” descent have a higher status than Muggles, who have no magical heritage, and the “mudbloods,” who have a mix of wizard and Muggle parents. Harry himself had a wizard father and a witch mother who was born a Muggle. Thai mainly focused on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book in the series where Voldemort assumes power of the Ministry of Magic and enacts laws that promote pure blood status and discriminate against Muggles and mudbloods…

Read the entire article here.

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Results of Inbreeding on Norfolk Island

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Oceania on 2011-12-30 01:00Z by Steven

Results of Inbreeding on Norfolk Island

Science  Magazine
Volume 65, Number 1693 (1927-06-10)
page x
DOI: 10.1126/science.65.1693.0x-s

Providing the original stock is sound, inbreeding among human beings results in no deterioration, physical or mental. Nor does mixture of widely differing races produce an inferior type.  Such are the conclusions of Dr. Harry L. Shapiro, ethnologist of the American Museum of Natural History, from a recent study of the inhabitants of Norfolk Island, a small island north of New Zealand.  They are the Tahitian-English half-castes whose history dates back  the mutiny of the crew of the ship Bounty in 1789.  At pesent there are more than 600 of these islanders and they are the descendants of twelve Tahitian women and nine Englishmen, part of the mutinous crew.

In 1789 the crew of the Bounty, a vessel sailing in the southern Pacific, mutinied, casting the captain adrift in a small boat and making for Tahiti. Here nine of the crew, fearing capture, sailed to Pitcairn, a small uninhabited island east of Tahiti. They took with them twelve Tahitian women and nine Tahitian men.  On Pitcairn the women were divided among the Englishmen as wives.  The Tahitian men were allowed no women. This lead to jealousy and the Tahitian men where killed, leaving no descendants.  The Tahitian women and the Englishmen all of them sound stock established a  line of half-castes.  They were completely isolated and they multiplied rapidly.

By 1856 the population was to great for the small space of Pitcairn. More that 150 moved to Norfolk Island which was at that time uninhabited. To-day there is a population of 600 on Norfolk Island and 175 on Pitcairn, all descendants of the original Tahitians and English.  It is of the Norfolk Islanders that Dr. Shapiro has made a study.

Dr. Shapiro has found these islanders to be of sound physique, taller than the average English and Tahitians, and of good mentality.  There is only one feeble-minded person, he said, on Norfolk Island.  Their education has of necessity been rudimentary for generations, but they are now provided with teachers by the Australian Government under the jurisdiction of which they come.  And the teachers are getting excellent results.

Thus, according to Dr. Shapiro, the Norfolk Islanders prove that, when the stock is sound to begin with, intensive in-breeding makes for no decrease in stamina.  Likewise, race mixture, in his opinion, brings go deterioration.

The idea that the half-caste is inferior, he maintained, comes largely from the fact that pure races have always look down on the half-caste. In Norfolk Island, he said, the half-caste has a chance to show his worth, for there is no discrimination against him, as the entire population is half-caste.  And Norfolk Island, he pointed out, is one of the only places in thw world with no stigma is attached to half-castes.

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