Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2012-02-09 22:28Z by Steven

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

Atheneum Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Simon and Schuster)
January 2012
272 pages
Reissue Hardcover ISBN-10: 1442446366; ISBN-13: 9781442446366
Reissue Paperback ISBN-10: 1442446374; ISBN-13: 9781442446373

William Loren Katz

CBC/NCSS Notable Children’s Book in Social Studies

The compelling account of how two heritages united in their struggle to gain freedom and equality in America—now updated with new content!

The first paths to freedom taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages. There, black men and women found acceptance and friendship among our country’s original inhabitants. Though they seldom appear in textbooks and movies, the children of Native- and African-American marriages helped shape the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and made a daring contribution to the fight for American liberty.

Since its original publication, William Loren Katz’s Black Indians has remained the definitive work on a long, arduous quest for freedom and equality. This new edition features a new cover and includes updated information about a neglected chapter in American history.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. If You Know I Have a History
  • 2. They Fled Amongst the Indians
  • 3. Between the Races We Cannot Dig Too Deep a Gulf
  • 4. The Finest Looking People I Have Ever Seen
  • 5. We Are All Living as in One House
  • 6. That You Know Who We Are
  • 7. He Was Our Go-Between
  • 8. Their Mixing is to be Prevented
  • 9. Like the Indians Themselves
  • 10. Blood So Largely Mingled
  • 11. The Finest Specimens of Mankind
  • 12. No Bars Can Hold Cherokee Bill
  • 13. The Greatest Sweat and Dirt Cowboy That Ever Lived
  • Acknowledgments
  • Bibliography
  • Index
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…but it is clear from the foregoing generalizations that concepts of racial purity are largely invalid and that the psychic homogeneity of the human species is much greater than is commonly supposed.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-02-09 04:24Z by Steven

It is impossible to do more by way of an introduction to a study of race mixture, but it is clear from the foregoing generalizations that concepts of racial purity are largely invalid and that the psychic homogeneity of the human species is much greater than is commonly supposed. It is also evident that differences in language and culture are by no means coincident with differences in physical traits. A rational approach to the question is needed-one which dispenses with what can only be the dead-weight of national ideologies and which acknowledges that an excessive degree af miscegenation must have taken place over thousands of years to account for the present day distribution of physical traits and the variability about a norm which obtains in even the most race-conscious of societies. Given the psychological abhorrence of race mixture which persists as a corollary of untenable theories of racial purity, we must endeavour to assess in quantitative and qualitative terms the indisputable fact of race mixture as it exists in the world to-day.

A. Dickinson, “Race mixture: a social or a biological problem?The Eugenics Review, Volume 41, Number 2 (July 1949): 81.

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Race mixture: a social or a biological problem?

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2012-02-09 04:11Z by Steven

Race mixture: a social or a biological problem?

The Eugenics Review
Volume 41, Number 2 (July 1949)
pages 81-85

A. Dickinson

The ideas of the layman on race are curiously distorted. Race is commonly identified with a given language or culture, with a group living in a common habitat or possessing a single characteristic feature such as pigmentation. Men stubbornly cling to concepts of racial purity and elaborate these into theories of racial superiority or inferiority. Needless to say, this human weakness is often attended by dire results in a world in which people of differing physical traits are being herded ever more closely together as the barriers of distance are gradually broken down…

…Prevalence of Hybridization

Yet objective investigation on scientific lines clearly shows that only the broadest classification is possible in respect of physical traits, a classification which reduces the teeming millions of the world, and the multitude of self-styled races into which they divide themselves, into perhaps no more than five main groups. Likewise empirical proof has been given that intra-racial variability often exceeds inter-racial variability in respect of measurable physical traits…

…We speak in general terms. It is impossible to do more by way of an introduction to a study of race mixture, but it is clear from the foregoing generalizations that concepts of racial purity are largely invalid and that the psychic homogeneity of the human species is much greater than is commonly supposed. It is also evident that differences in language and culture are by no means coincident with differences in physical traits. A rational approach to the question is needed-one which dispenses with what can only be the dead-weight of national ideologies and which acknowledges that an excessive degree af miscegenation must have taken place over thousands of years to account for the present day distribution of physical traits and the variability about a norm which obtains in even the most race-conscious of societies. Given the psychological abhorrence of race mixture which persists as a corollary of untenable theories of racial purity, we must endeavour to assess in quantitative and qualitative terms the indisputable fact of race mixture as it exists in the world to-day…

…Social Aspects of Hybridization

This of course throws into high relief the psychological and social aspects of the question. A strong psychological prejudice against race mixture will inevitably result in the concept of hybrid inferiority. This in turn will often prevent hybrids from revealing their true potentialities. Widely regarded as social outcasts they will find it well-nigh impossible to rise to the position in society which might well be their due. As a consequence their minds will become warped and their personalities stunted. It is not surprising that hybrids, particularly those living alongside their progenitors, commonly reveal a minimum of ability, marked indolence and an astonishing proclivity towards moral laxity. Yet the condition of such people can hardly be attributed to biological factors. Rather is it due to their lack of opportunity in a society which is at once prejudiced and highly irrational in outlook. In the words of Young, ” the social behaviour of hybrids is best considered as a reflection of their cultural milieu than as resulting from biological sources.” Castle, too, makes the same point by contrasting the crossbreeding of black and white and red and white in the United States. The blacks and the mulattoes are visited with strong social disapprobation, their opportunities for advancement are limited, their numbers decrease and, if the mulatto compares favourably with his black progenitors, it is only because in the past the whites, his blood relations, have shown at least a modicum of compassion for their unfortunate offspring, whereas the lot of the pure-blooded Negro has always been an unfortunate one in the land of his enslavement. That the mulattoes will not stand comparison with the whites goes without saying. But their plight should be contrasted with that of the Indian hybrids in whose case there is no strong social prejudice. It should be borne in mind how well they thrive, how they are assimilated back into the white population, how they frequently attain positions of considerable authority and responsibility to which they are fully equal. Here the difference in the results between the aforementioned crossings are not referable to any biological harmony or disharmony, but wholly to the social attitude adopted by the whites, favourable in one case, unfavourable in the other…

Read the entire article here.

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Call for Papers: Association for Feminist Anthropology Sessions

Posted in Anthropology, Forthcoming Media, Live Events, United States, Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers, Women on 2012-02-09 02:42Z by Steven

Call for Papers: Association for Feminist Anthropology Sessions

American Anthropological Association
2012-02-07

Posted by Josyln O.

The Association for Feminist Anthropology welcomes sessions to be considered for inclusion in AFA’s programming for the 111th AAA Annual Meeting, to be held November 14-18, 2012 in San Francisco. The AAA meeting theme this year is “Borders,” so AFA particularly welcomes panels that take up “borders” from a feminist anthropological perspective. Various approaches to the theme include papers and sessions that might explore:

  • Borders/collaborations/intersections between feminist anthropology and other scholarly spaces from within and beyond anthropology: critical race studies, queer studies, and/or women’s studies; linguistics and genetics; political science, geography, environmental, and/or policy studies; migration and immigration studies and/or economics and archaeology and/or ethnography; biology/history/cultural studies; masculinity and/or gender studies; educational psychologies and social work; etc., etc., etc.
  • Existing or potential conversations/alliances/engagements between scholarly anthropology and everyday activism
  • Geographical, political, and ecological borders and the people who move across and re-define them: histories/archaeologies/economies of trade, trafficking, and/or transnationalism; refugees, resettlements, and asylum seekers; multiple and multiplying citizenships; migration, immigration, and diasporas; etc.
  • “Borders” and “borderlands” in terms of identities: liminal; queer; mestizaje; mixed-race; transgender
  • The “in between” scholar working across/between/among disciplines; conducting research and participating within communities; “insider anthropology”; Lorde’s concept and Harrison’s theorizing of the “outsider within”

We are especially interested in sessions that take advantage of the meeting site of San Francisco by involving local activists, practitioners, and policy makers, whether they are anthropologists or not. If you have questions about the details of registration for non-anthropologists, please let us know…

For more information, click here.

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