I have always held my Blackness as the centre of gravity—the place from which all my many other identities flow.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-12-27 22:30Z by Steven

Choice—especially around identity—is a fascinating subject in and of itself. How we choose to identify is intensely personal for many, and perhaps particularly perplexing for some Mixed-race identified people, as it inherently calls into question our notions of “race”. Having said that, I can only speak for myself, and I have chosen to identify as Black-Mixed. Although how I have identified in the past has evolved, and will most like continue to do so into the future, I have always held my Blackness as the centre of gravity—the place from which all my many other identities flow.

Rema Tavares, “A Curious Confluence: Where Racism & Privilege Collide,” (1)ne Drop Project. (December 20, 2012). http://1nedrop.com/a-curious-confluence-where-racism-privilege-collide-by-rema-tavares/.

Tags: ,

Triple Jeopardy: Family Stresses and Subsequent Divorce Following the Adoption of Racially and Ethnically Mixed Children

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Work on 2012-12-27 22:25Z by Steven

Triple Jeopardy: Family Stresses and Subsequent Divorce Following the Adoption of Racially and Ethnically Mixed Children

Journal of Divorce
Volume 4, Issue 4, 1982
pages 43-55
DOI: 10.1300/J279v04n04_03

Perihan Aral Rosenthal, MD

The adoption of racially, ethnically, or culturally different older children creates a stressful process of integration for both the children and parents. If such children are placed in families already troubled by severe marital or emotional problems, the children’s and parents’ difficulties escalate disastrously. To prevent the kind of aggravated problems described in this article, mental health professionals must educate and sensitize adoption agencies and prospective parents to the hazards.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , ,

Racial endogamy in Great Britain: A cross-national perspective

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science, United Kingdom on 2012-12-27 21:42Z by Steven

Racial endogamy in Great Britain: A cross-national perspective

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 3, Issue 2 (1980)
pages 224-235
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.1980.9993301

Richard T. Schaefer, Professor of Sociology
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Introduction

Large numbers of Blacks and Asians have migrated to Great Britain since World War II, and especially between 1955 and 1967. These ‘coloured’ people, as they are referred to in Britain, were met with increasingly less sympathy and harsher immigration restrictions until the barriers to entry were almost insurmountable.

Initially British observers were optimistic about the likelihood of a multi-racial society succeeding in Britain. Kenneth Little advanced the ‘colour-class hypothesis’ in the early 1950s arguing that the Commonwealth immigrants were seen by the English as representatives of the natives in the Empire. The acquisition of wealth, education, and knowledge of the arts could make the immigrant acceptable to the host country. Implicit in this argument was that intolerance shown to the people from the former colonies was due to their being immigrants, not because they were coloured. Although the British experience of the last two decades has refuted this hypothesis, little data have been accumulated with respect to the ultimate measure of acceptance—intermarriage. The rate of intermarriage between races is affected by numerous factors, and may be viewed as a specific social action with significance both to the individual participants and the society of which they are member.

The experience in the Empire would have predicted little acceptance of marriage between whites and coloureds. For example, the English and Indians intermingled freely in the latter’s native country and the East India Company under British control first encouraged intermarriage in the belief that racially mixed people would serve as a ‘bridge’ between Britain and India. However, by the end of the eighteenth century the official policies had turned full circle; marriages crossing racial lines were treated with distrust and even regarded at a potential threat to the Empire.

Gunnar Myrdal outlined the theory of the ‘rank order of discrimination’ in which he postulated that the primary concern of whites during the Jim Crow era in the South in their relations with blacks, is to prevent complete intermarriage. When marital assimilation, as Milton Gordon termed it, ‘takes place fully, the minority group loses its ethnic identity in the larger host…

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: ,

Race, ideas, and ideals: A comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F.K. Günther

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, History, Media Archive on 2012-12-27 21:08Z by Steven

Race, ideas, and ideals: A comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F.K. Günther

History of European Ideas
Volume 32, Issue 3, 2006
pages 313-332
DOI: 10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2006.05.001

Amos Morris-Reich, Director of the Bucerius Institute
Department of Jewish History
University of Haifa, Israel

This article compares two radically opposed views concerning “race” in the first half of the 20th century: the one of Franz Boas (1858–1942), the founder of American cultural anthropology, and the other of Hans F. K. Günther (1889–1968), the most widely read theoretician of race in Nazi Germany. Opposite as their views were, both derived from a similar non-evolutionist German anthropological matrix. The article reconstructs their definitions of racial objects and studies their analyses of racial intermixture. Although both believed that contemporary peoples were racially deeply mixed, Boas moved towards an antiracist conception of race-as-population, whereas Günther moved towards a racist conception of homogenous races in mixed peoples. The comparison shows that the major difference between them concerns their ideals or guiding principles. Their respective ideals seeped into their versions of science and transformed the nature and the significance of their respective ideas.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , ,

Book Review: Exploring the Borderlands of Race, Nation, Sex and Gender

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive, United States on 2012-12-27 05:12Z by Steven

Book Review: Exploring the Borderlands of Race, Nation, Sex and Gender

Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendants
2012-12-26

Nancy Matsumoto

Growing up in predominantly white Marin County, mixed-race yonsei Akemi Johnson hates her name and just wants to blend in. In college, though, her attitude changes. She studies race and ethnicity and travels to Japan. Though her stated purpose there is to study issues around the American bases in Okinawa, she later writes, ”My real motives were more personal and intertwined with the past, with traumas that had been born many years before.” She reflects on why her grandparents, who were imprisoned at the Tule Lake and Gila River concentration camps, never talked about those experiences. Eventually she returns to America satisfied that she has confronted her “fears of association, shame, really, of my Japanese ancestry—and won.”

Johnson’s story is just one of many that psychologist Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu tells in his latest book, When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities. Exploring the complex issue of identity among mixed-race Asians has been his life work. With subtleness and great empathy he guides us through what he calls “the borderlands” where transnational and multiethnic identities are formed, arguing that in an increasingly globalized world, identities are more flexible and inclusive, and can “challenge the meaning of national and racial categories and boundaries.”…

Read the entire review here.

Tags: , , ,

Alden J. Blethen vs. Jack Johnson

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, United States on 2012-12-27 04:12Z by Steven

Alden J. Blethen vs. Jack Johnson

The Seattle Republican
Seattle, Washington
Volume XV, Number 43
1909-03-19
page 1, column 3
Source: United States Library of Congress: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

How perfectly natural for some folk to strain at a gnat and yet gulp down a camel; to see a pigeon on a barn, but not observe the barn; to struggle to remove a mote from the other fellow’s eye and overlook the beam in his own. Thus it is with the editor of the Seattle Daily Times, who for the past ten days or more has been in a veritable state of hysteria over “Jack Johnson and his white wife,” and has felt called upon to station himself upon the watch wall of “white supremacy” to give the danger alarm of black men capturing white women. The colonel has been seeing things for a number of years and his state of mind is evidently not improving.

If it be true, as the editor of the Times alleges, “that the people of this part of the world are distinctly opposed to miscegenation,” then we are at a loss to account for the four million half caste white and black folk “in this part of the world.” By “the people” we judge the editor of the Times means the white men “in this part of the world,” and yet we would hate to think the editor of the Times is despicable enough to charge even by inuendo that the white women are responsible for the four million mulatoes, yet they must be if the white men are as bitterly opposed to the miscegenation of black and white folks as the editor of the Times declares they are, or the white men “of this part of the world” encourage the misegenation of white men black amoritas, but do not favor equal privileges to the white women for black Othellos.

The editor of the Times goes on record as having no sympathy for a black man marrying or cohabiting with a white woman, but is as silent as the moonbeams about the white man and the black woman. But all of this claptrap about “Johnson and his white wife” is a gallery play to popularize the paper by inciting race strife. Tillman made himself not only United States senator, but a millionaire as well by playing on the same vulgar violin of race prejudice and did so when there was no more actual danger of “nigger dominancy” in the South than there was of Indian dominancy in the West. We are not advocates of black and white miscegenation but despite our protest the white man plunges headlong into the black sea of miscegenation and is thereby slowly but surely absorbing the black man, and in a half century more the black man, like lo the poor Indian, will be the white man.

Tags: , , , ,

Will the Negro Emigrate?

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2012-12-27 00:23Z by Steven

Will the Negro Emigrate?

Omaha Daily Bee
1894-07-01
page 13, columns 1-2
(Source: Library of Congress)

Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, President of Oxford College [University]
Oxford, Georgia

Bishop Atticus G. Haygood Argues that They will Not.

Another view of the Race Problem

Inter-Marriage of Whites and Negroes Less Common than Formerly—The Plan of Despotism a Failure—Progress of the Colored Race.

There is a negro question and not simply a matter of adjustment of relations between two classes of the same race, as of landlords and tenants, employers and employes—all be ing white or black, but of men and women of two very different races holding business and ther relations to each other and living together In the same communities. Whether the race element makes difficulty between white and black in other countries does not count, so far as facts go, here. In the United States it does make difficulty and in the south chiefly only because most of the negroes are in the southern states.

A few negroes have gone north as a few northern people have come south. How do these get on together? It is a question of facts only. Northern people and negroes, when brought Into relations, get on together just as southern people and their negro neighbors do, with unquestionably this difference, southern white people are more patient with negroes they employ than northern people are and, in personal relations, are more kind to them.

It is essentially, at bottom, a race question in all parts of the United States—of which I have had personal observation from Ohio to Texas and from Massachusetts to California. It was a question before and since the war; a question whenever and wherever these two peoples have been thrown together. It is a race question now and will be so long as the two races live together In this country.

Doctrinaries of many schools—striving strenuously to force facts into conformitywith their theories—have told us how to solve the race question that every day and hour demands our consideration. And a very emergent and important question it is.

There have not been lacking theorizers who have trusted in what they first called “amalgamation,” afterwards “miscegenation.” A few have seemed to gain a sort of pleasure in contemplating such a solution. It is a very monstrous and brutal way of looking at it. But it is as silly as it is revolting. One, a bishop, spoke of It as a “bleaching” process!

THE TENDENCY TO MISCEGENATION GROWING LESS.

Every informed person In the south knows that the tendency to miscegenation grows less and less every year. Emancipation strengthened in both races revolt at blood-mingling by these dissimilar people. The negro question will never be solved by any process of race effacement—though we wait a thousand years. The mulatto will gradually disappear. This negro question, inherited from our fathers, we will hand down to our children.

In seeking the best solution to any difficult question It is often very helpful to find out what cannot be done. Let us eliminate from our thinking the element of miscegenation.

THE NEGRO HERE TO STAY.

We may as well eliminate solution by deportation. In what follows on this point I must run the risk of being charged with dogmatism. One who has received impressions concerning any matter from his infancy may well enough have controlling reasons for conclusions he cannot give to another lacking similar knowledge.

One of my conclusions is: The negro is here to stay—concerning which opinion one might write a book, without getting to the end.

Bishop Henry M. Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church I have known since he first appeared in reconstruction politics–the like of which the sun never saw before and never can see again—in Georgia a generation ago. He is a man of great ability and of intense convictions. His whole soul is set on emigration to Africa as the one possible solution of the negro question. If he had a thousand years to live he would give nine centuries of his “expectation of life” to see his hope a reality. No man knows better than Bishop Turner that the negro question in the United States is a race question. I believe he thinks it a permanent question. I do most certainly. He has made many most eloquent speeches, seeking to fire the hearts of his people with an invincible desire to find homes, opportunity, freedom and enlargement of life in Africa. He has despaired of their finding these great boons here. If he could found, or see founded, a great christian negro republic in Africa he would be the happiest man in the world. He is, I am sure, most conscientious in all he thinks and says on the subject.

But he awakens among his own people more antagonism than favor when he urges them to colonize the dark continent.

EMIGRATION TO AFRICA.

The newspapers gave much prominence to such movements as Garton’s; a ship load of southern negroes going to Siberia from this country some months since. As if twice so many negroes wore not born the day they sailed!

As affecting the negro question such ill-managed enthusiastic escapades amount to nothing. The few who go are, in the opinion of the multitudes who stay, only freaks. Whether colonization be advocated by white or black men, doctrinaries or philanthropists, it is the same thing; the sum of the result is anger and distrust.

The fundamental reason for rejecting colonization in Africa ns a solution of our problem is a very simple and conclusive one; the negroes do not wish to go and they do not intend to go. Moreover, the great body of the white people do not wish them to go away. History shows that great epoch-making migrations result from some deep impulse urging the race that moves and not the desire of some other race that does not move. A people, dominated by another race, might bo so oppressed as to create this race-moving impulse. How little southern negroes are so affected we see in the very small number that have moved out of the old slave states into northern and western portions of the union. It may be answered–they find that their condition is not helped by such movings in the United States. Let another make the retort; I will not anticipate it by so much as offering an opinion about it.

NO MOVEMENT BY FORCE.

As to moving the negroes to Africa by force, I never heard of a southern man who entertained such a thought for a moment. Were it attempted from without and the negroes were passive (and they would not be passive) southern men would make trouble of an extraordinary sort if there were a fit country in which to settle them; if there were means for moving them; no right-thinking man would consent to send these people away against their will. Violent deportation would surpass the wrong that brought them here.

The exceptions to these statements are so few that they do not count in any view of the whole subject under consideration. The southern white people who want them out of this country are as few as the negroes who have gone to Africa or wish to go.

THE NEGROES WILL BE PROTECTED

A few weeks since the newspapers told us of some “striking brotherhood” that passed resolutions that “the negro must go.” They were not men of the south, the men of the south will protect the negro against men like these if they go beyond resolutions—to deeds.

What God’s providence may bring about as to the relation of these truly wonderful people to Africa, men Will know what time it pleases God to show his designs to men. That the negro race In America has important and vital relations to the future of Africa is as plain to me as that they came from Africa. But this is equally clear, if all the negroes wished to go, if all the white people wished them to go, if the United States government owned vast territories in Africa, if the people of the United States were ready to “foot the bill” for moving and settling and protecting them, the negroes here are now no more ready for to stupendous a change than Africa is ready for them. Great changes are going on in Africa. Greater by education and Christianization among the negroes here.

BUSINESS INTEREST OF THE NEGRO.

Before closing this article another view of the case should be presented. The southern negro has business and other interests in this country which he begins to appreciate very highly. He is getting land of his own; he Is accumulating property; he is educating his children. He is getting to be a business man. At this point I quote a paragraph from a speech delivered In the United States senate May 28, by the Junior senator from Georgia, the Hon. Patrick Walsh—an Irishman profoundly patriotic to America; a Catholic so broad minded and liberal that he is an example of tolerance and charity to many Protestants—than whom an honester, truer man is not in the United States senate. I have many times gone over the ground and the senator’s statements are from first sources—the books of the comptroller general of Georgia. Georgia has separate lists for the return of taxable property by whites and blacks. It is important that we study the business facts that enter into the general question. It is to be wished that other southern states would adopt the same method.

THE VIEW OF SENATOR WALSH.

Senator Walsh, a better authority than Miss Ida Wells, says:

“A fact worthy of note Is that the negroes returned for taxation In Georgia, property aggregating in value In 1879, $5,182,398; in 1889, $10,115,380; in 1893. $14,960,675. (He might, have added that the imitative negro never “gives in” his property at any fancy valuation; $15,000,000 In 1893 means about $40,000,000.)”

“This is an Indisputable evidence that tho negro is given a fair showing, and that in Georgia the industrious and econominal citizen can make a living and accumulate property, whether he be white or black. The negro is treated fairly, and besides being able to acquire property, his children are given educational advantages which they eagerly Improve. Georgia appropriates in round numbers eleven hundred thousand dollars for public schools, and this goes equally to the critical ion of both races. The tentedly together and the negroes recognize that their best friends are the whites among whom they live, who know their habits and customs, and have a more genuine interest in them than those who profess a great deal more.”

This witness is true. I spell “Negro” with a “big N.” In this question Negro means a race and not a color.

Atticus G. Haygood
Oxford, Ga.

Tags: , , ,