Mixed Race Studies

City of Amalgamation: Race, Marriage, Class and Color in Boston, 1890-1930

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
September 2008
223 pages
Paper AAI3337029

Zebulon V. Miletsky, Assistant Professor of Black Studies
University of Nebraska, Omaha

Submitted to the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation examines the evolution of early race relations in Boston during a period which saw the extinguishing of the progressive abolitionist racial flame and the triumph of Jim Crow in Boston. I argue that this historical moment was a window in which Boston stood at a racial crossroads. The decision to follow the path of disfranchisement of African Americans and racial polarization paved the way for the race relations in Boston we know and recognize today. Documenting the high number of blacks and whites who married in Boston during these years in the face of virulent anti-miscegenation efforts and the context of the intense political fight to keep interracial marriage legal, the dissertation explores the black response to this assault on the dignity and lives of African Americans. At the same time it documents the dilemma that the issue of intermarriage represented for black Bostonians and their leaders. African Americans in Boston cautiously endorsed, but did not actively participate in the Boston N.A.A.C.P.’s campaign against the resurgence of anti-miscegenation laws in the early part of the twentieth century. The lack of direct and substantial participation in this campaign is indicative of the skepticism with which many viewed the largely white organization.

Boston, with its substantial Irish population, had a pattern of Irish, and other immigrant women, taking Negro grooms–perhaps because of the proximity within which they often worked and their differing notions about the taboo of race mixing. Boston was, for example, one of the most tolerant large cities in America with regard to interracial unions by 1900. In the period between 1900 and 1904, about 14 out of every 100 Negro grooms took white wives. Furthermore, black and white Bostonians cooperated politically to ensure that intermarriage remained legal throughout the nation.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Abstract
• Preface
• Introdution
• 1. A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation: Race, Marriage and Freedom in Boston
• 2. Interracial Paradise?: Boston and the Profressive Racial Impulse
• 3. Proving Ground: Boston’s Black Leadership and the Dilemma of Intermarriage
• 4. Breach of Promise: Passing and the Van Houten Case in Boston
• Conclusion
• Bibliograpy

Preface

This dissertation examines the history of mixed race in Boston since 1890. As such, various mixed race “phenomena” are investigated including, but not limited to, interracial marriage, community and settlement patterns, the politics of intermarriage, love and sex across the color line, and racial paranoia surrounding the issue of miscegenation. It also investigates the disastrous implications the one-drop rule has had for virtually every important institution in American life: love, family and kinship patterns, marriage, sex, filial ties, legal and jurisdictional matters, education, community migration and settlement patterns. Furthermore, it tracks the evolution of the assumption of race as a biological reality to its present day manifestation as a socially constructed phenomenon. Finally, it outlines the ways in which the one-drop rule, originally intended to deny the rights of African Americans, came (somewhat ironically) to galvanize the black community.

The Introduction to this study serves as a brief review of the literature on the history of the one-drop rule in America. It is this measure of blackness, which has made racial mixing, miscegenation, and therefore, mixed race identity in the United States, problematic in ways that it did not in other post-slave societies. This literature illuminates the ways in which the one-drop rule came to govern America’s unique binary racial system, beginning with its incarnation as a widespread and complicated system of laws during slavery that decreed slave status was inherited through the mother (also known as hypodescent) to the anti-miscegenation laws that sprang up after the Civil War making it illegal in this country for people of different races to marry one another. A secondary aim of the introduction will be to briefly discuss nineteenth century pseudoscientific theories of race and the mythology of “blood theory”.

Chapter one, A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation, documents the relatively high number of blacks and whites who married in Boston during these years and the fight to keep interracial marriage legal. The politics of interracial marriage with a particular emphasis on the abolitionist legacy in Boston, beginning with the struggle to lift the ban on intermarriage in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1843, is the origin from which this study germinates. It was in this radical environment that progressives, radicals and other heirs to the abolitionist legacy formulated a counter-philosophy that attempted to transgress America’s greatest fiction—the notion of the “one-drop” rule. In this way, cities like Boston became havens for interracial marriages and love across the color line, in general.

Chapter two, Interracial Paradise, examines the somewhat idyllic ways in which Boston was portrayed by anti-amalgamationists and southern apologists to the lost cause of the Civil War. It discusses important neighborhoods such as the South End, which was the stage upon which much of this drama took place and was the heart of Boston’s black community after it moved out of the confines of Beacon Hill. African Americans in Boston cautiously endorsed, but did not actively participate in, the campaign against the resurgence of anti-miscegenation laws in the early part of the 20th century. This lack of direct and substantial black participation in this campaign is significant. It is indicative of the dilemma that the issue of intermarriage represented for black Bostonians and their leaders.

Chapter three, Proving Ground, examines the political struggle over the issue of interracial marriage and the dilemma it posed for the Boston branch of the N.A.A.C.P., as well as the national organization, when Congress attempted to pass a national ban on intermarriage in 1915. The N.A.A.C.P. and its Boston branch constituted the principal opposition to the ban. This chapter examines the political struggle over the issue of interracial marriage and the dilemma it posed for leading organizations such as the N.A.A.C.P., not only in Boston but across the nation. That same year, the Boston chapter held several mass meetings to protest the pending anti-miscegenation legislation in Congress. The Boston branch was especially challenged when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts attempted to pass a statewide ban in 1927 in response to the Jack Johnson interracial marriage controversy. I will examine the steps that were taken not only by the Boston N.A.A.C.P. to organize black Bostonians to defeat the bill, but the involvement of William Monroe Trotter’s National Equal Rights League and the dilemma the intermarriage caused for black leadership in general.

Chapter four, Breach of Promise, takes a look at a case of passing which was the Van Houten case in Boston. The case caused quite a stir in the delicate balance of social and racial hierarchy in Boston as well as a reversal of fortune in the courts. The case was watched very closely by the press who fed the public’s appetite for every detail of the story, much like the drama that filled the pages of the romance novels on passing such as Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. Like the protagonist of that story, Anna Van Houten was cursed by her racial betrayal and in the end despised for her deception. Her case was an important turning point in the adjudication of interracial marriage since it necessitated a legal remedy against intermarriage in a state where it was supposedly legal.

Introduction

Race and racial identity are perhaps the single most important social markers of identification in American life and culture. They serve as automatic registers of information about a person—their history, their background, their politics, and even, perhaps, their socioeconomic status—and yet for all the things we ask it to do for us, race falls incredibly wide of the mark. Race cannot, for example, tell us, who we’re going to become in the future, or what we can accomplish, or for that matter who we are. Social scientists, anthropologists, and biological scientists all tell us that race is not real—that there is no biological basis for race in human physiology—and yet, we live and operate on a day-to-day basis as though it were. What is the impact of this enduring paradox—America’s greatest fiction, one that we have lived and propagated now for more than four centuries?

As we have seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whiteness became highly sought after as the preferred status of choice that conferred all the benefits of racial privilege—and until the 1950s, naturalized citizenship. However, it should be mentioned that whiteness as a concept is far more significant for what it is not, then for what it is—namely, not black. Therefore, although America differs in its racial formulas of determining who is white and who is not, the main reason for the invention of whiteness, escape from the racial curse of blackness, remains intact in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Gilberto Freyre’s notion of Brazil as an interracial democracy that is different from a racist United States is a good example of this phenomenon. Their odyssey over the highly contested and often controversial terrain of race and national identity has been a long and difficult journey. Burdened by a dual legacy of colonialism and foreign occupation, many of these republics, with the exception of perhaps Cuba, Haiti and anglophone West Indian countries, have suffered from a seeming inability to use blackness as a collective national organizing principle. Several of these countries have vacillated between ideologies that are based on white supremacy and reinforced by a legacy of historical amnesia. Scholars of race in Latin America have characterized this as an outright state of denial, for some, of their true racial make-up.

It is this unique binary racial system then, which has made racial mixing, miscegenation and a mixed race identity in the United States problematic in ways that it did not in other post-slave societies. It has had disastrous implications for virtually every important institution in American life: family and kinship patterns, marriage, filial ties, legal and jurisdictional matters, education, love, community migration and settlement. Race in the United States, for example, creates the odd and strange phenomenon that a white woman is able to give birth to a black child, but a black woman can never, under any circumstances, give birth to a white child. This was the basis for a widespread and complicated system of laws during slavery that decreed that slave status was passed on by the mother and miscegenation laws that sprang up after the Civil War making it illegal in this country for people of different races to marry one another. Moreover, racial classification in America has created an entire mythology that we still unflinchingly believe is based on the archaic and unsound biological concept of blood theory. It is still commonplace to hear someone characterize a mixed person, for example, as having “mixed-blood” and subscribe to the mythical concept of the one-drop-rule, also known as hypo-descent, meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group in their ancestry.

In the United States, blood theory and pseudo-scientific theories of race reached their pinnacle in the late-nineteenth century with scientists engaged in a constant effort to prove that the Negro was a member of “a separate and permanently inferior species,” and, “not simply a savage or semi-civilized member of the same species.”  The basic assumption was that race was a biological phenomenon and an essential one at that.

It has become common practice of late in scholarship dealing with race and racial identity to point to the phenomenon of race as a socially constructed fallacy that has no basis in biological or scientific fact. Increasingly, terms such as construction, invention, and idea have replaced the once dominant scientific and empirical terminology used to describe race, a phenomenon that had, and still has, profound implications for the stratification of society. However, as eager as anthropologists are to proclaim the premature death of race, it is imperative to acknowledge the powerful and important social role that race still plays in our daily lives, cultures, and lived experiences, not to mention the endless sea of ink that has been spilled over the nature and image of the Negro. The theorem posed by W. I. Thomas in the year 1928, seems applicable here. It states, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Perhaps one of the biggest limitations of these modern approaches is a marked tendency to critique ideas about race by challenging the validity of the concept of race itself. Because the discipline of anthropology has effectively moved to a “color blind” position, one which increasingly views society through the lens of ethnicity rather than race, it has confused the issue by distorting the role that race plays in society. By denying the importance of race and the way in which racial categories are formulated in the first place, it has among other things, opened itself up to a racial discourse that allows conservatives to advance the false ideal of a color-blind society…

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Mixed bodies, separate races: The trope of the “(tragic) mulatto” in twentieth-century African literature

McMaster University (Canada)
2007
251 pages
AAT NR57539

Diana Adesola Mafe, Assistant Professor of English
Denison University

This dissertation proposes that the American literary trope of the “tragic mulatto” has both roots and resonances in sub-Saharan Africa. The concept of the mulatto, a person of mixed black and white heritage, as a tragic, ambiguous Other evolved primarily from nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American fiction. I argue, however, that the mulatto occupies a similarly vexed discursive space in the historiography of sub-Saharan Africa and contemporary African literature. After contextualizing the American trope through such postbellum novels as James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), I track the emergence of specific racially mixed populations in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of trade, migration, and colonialism. My historical survey of such mixed race communities as the Afro-Portuguese lançados of Senegambia and the Coloured people of South Africa brings to light the remarkable currency of (tragic) mulatto stereotypes across time and space. Having established the circulation of mulatto stereotypes in (pre-)colonial sub-Saharan Africa, I consider how two contemporary mixed race South African writers engage with such stereotypes in their work. This study argues that twentieth-century Coloured writers Bessie Head and Arthur Nortje realize the trope of tragic mixedness in their respective lives and writing. Head and Nortje reflect the rigid apartheid ideology of their native South Africa and assign universality to the “plight” of being mixed race in a segregationist society. But both writers also use their (gendered) identities as “tragically mixed” to challenge the policed racial categories of apartheid, subverting fixity through, paradoxical performances of Self. I conclude my study in the post-civil rights and post-apartheid arena of the twenty-first century, using my own experiences as an African “mulatta” and the current field of mixed race studies to illustrate how paradox itself is indispensable to progressive readings and imaginings of mixed race identity.

Table of Contents

• CHAPTER ONE: The Evolution of the “Tragic Mulatto” Trope in American Literature: An Introduction
• CHAPTER TWO: The White Man’s “Other” Burden: (Pre-)Colonial Race Mixing in the “Dark Continent”
• CHAPTER THREE: A Mulatta in Motabeng: Bessie Head’s A Question of Power as African Tragic Mulatta Fiction
• CHAPTER FOUR: A Portrait of the (Tortured) Artist as a Young (Coloured) Man:Reading Arthur Nortje
• CHAPTER FIVE: The Premise/Promise of Paradox: Concluding Theories and Reflections from a New Millennium “Mulatta”
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Navigating Racial Boundaries: The One-Drop Rule and Mixed-Race Jamaicans in South Florida

Florida International University
2010
343 pages

Sharon E. Placide

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparitive Sociology

Like many West Indians, mixed-race Jamaican immigrants enter the United States with fluid notions about race and racial identifications that reflect socio-political events in their home country and that conflict with the more rigid constructions of race they encounter in the U.S. This dissertation explores the experiences of racially mixed Jamaicans in South Florida and the impact of those experiences on their racial self-characterizations through the boundary-work theoretical framework. Specifically, the study examines the impact of participants’ exposure to the one-drop rule in the U.S., by which racial identification has been historically determined by the existence or non-existence of black forebears. Employing qualitative data collected through both focus group and face-to-face semi-structured interviews, the study analyzes mixed-race Jamaicans’ encounters in the U.S. with racial boundaries, and the boundary-work that reinforces them, as well their response to these encounters. Through their stories, the dissertation examines participants’ efforts to navigate racial boundaries through choices of various racial identifications. Further, it discusses the ways in which structural forces and individual agency have interacted in the formation of these identifications. The study finds that in spite of participants’ expressed preference for non-racialism, and despite their objections to rigid racial categories, in seeking to carve out alternative identities, they are participating in the boundary-making of which they are so critical.

Table of Contents

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Theoretical Framework
  • Rationale for Population and Location of Study
  • Research Methodology and Data Analysis
  • Defining Terms
  • Challenges and Limitations
  • Chapter Descriptions
• II. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF A RACIAL DICHOTOMY IN THE U.S
  • Race as a Social Construction
  • Section 1 Race and Mixed-Race During Slavery: The Social Construction of the One-Drop Rule
    • The Construction of Race During Slavery
    • Miscegenation and the Emergence of the One-Drop Rule
  • Section 2 The Rise and Crystallization of Bright Boundaries
    • Contesting Racial Boundaries: Abolitionists, Free Negroes and Slaves Oppose Slavery
    • White Response: Entrenchment of Racist Ideology
    • Emancipation and Reconstruction Blur Boundaries
    • Southern Whites Defend their Status, Strengthening Racial Divides
    • Crystallization of the Bright Boundary: The One-Drop Rule
    • Mulattoes, Blacks, and Boundary-Work
    • Science Supports the One-Drop Rule
  • Section 3 Blurring Racial Boundaries
    • The Civil Rights Movement and its Impact
    • The Multi-Racial Challenge to the One-Drop Rule
    • Why the One-Drop Rule Persists
    • Chapter Conclusion
• III. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF A COLOR HIERARCHY IN JAMAICA
  • Clarification of Terms: Color and Race
  • Section 1 Construction of Bright Boundaries: Formation of a Tripartite Color Hierarchy During Slavery (1655 to 1834)
    • African Slavery and the Beginnings of Race Ideology
    • The Impact of Demography
    • Miscegenation, Free Browns, and the Status Mixed Progeny (Slave and Free)
    • Free Browns Become Buffer
  • Section 2 Boundary Blurring: Color and Social Status from Abolition to the Independence (1834 to 1962)
    • Loss of Labor and Decline of the White Planting Class
    • Boundary-Blurring Continues: Rise of the Brown Class And Black Social Mobility
    • Complicating the Color Hierarchy: East Indians, Chinese, “Syrian” Immigrants
    • Creole Multiracialism Versus Black Nationalism
    • Persistence of a Color Hierarchy
  • Section 3 Boundary-Shifting: Race, Color and Social Status after Independence (1962 to present)
    • Boundary-Blurring: Race, Color, and Social Location
    • Color as Symbolic and Social Boundary
    • Chapter Conclusion
• IV. OUT OF MANY, ONE PEOPLE: RACE AND COLOR IN JAMAICA
  • Race is Not Important
  • Intersectionality: Class Plus Race
  • Color Draws Boundaries in Jamaica
  • Chapter Conclusion
• V. ENCOUNTERING BOUNDARIES AND BOUNDARY-WORK IN THE U.S
  • Race Draws Bright Boundaries in the U.S.: The Centrality of Race Boundary Maintenance: Two Worlds
  • South Florida: Three Worlds?
  • Theoretical Discussion
  • Chapter Conclusion
• VI. NAVIGATING RACIAL BOUNDARIES IN THE U.S.
  • I am Jamaican – Ethnic (Post-Racial) Identification
  • Racial Identification Choices
  • Factors Affecting Jamaicans’ Immigrants Racial Identifications
  • Choice or No Choice? The Impact of Structure on Agency and Vice Versa
  • Mixed-Race Jamaicans Doing Boundary-Work
  • Chapter Conclusion
• VII. CONCLUSION
  • Findings
  • Limitations and Directions for Future Research
  • REFERENCES
  • APPENDICES
  • VITA

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Thinking outside the box: Racial self-identification choice among mixed heritage adolescents

University of Pennsylvania
2009
234 pages
ISBN: 9781109236088

Michele Munoz-Miller

A Dissertation in Education Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this study was to explore how and why adolescents of mixed racial heritage racially self-identify the way they do. Identification choice was defined using an adult-based identity typology (Brunsma & Rockquemore, 2001): (a) consistently monoracial (singular), (b) consistently multiracial (border), or (c) inconsistent (protean). Three sub-groups of multiracial adolescents were analyzed separately, based on their self-reported racial parentage: non-Blacks, Black/non-American Indians, and Black/American Indians. Using an identity-focused cultural ecological model (Spencer, 2006), adolescents’ perceptions of their risks and protective factors (sociodemographics), as well as their beliefs about the oppression of non-Black minorities in the United States, were investigated in terms of how well (and in what combination) they predicted self-identification choice, both across race question formats and over time.

Findings suggested that there were different personal and contextual factors implicated in self-identification choice for each sub-group of adolescents. For non-Blacks, generational proximity to racial mixture, the percentage of Blacks in one’s neighborhood, and attitudes about racial oppression in the United States were strong predictors of racial self-identification choice. Among Black/non-American Indians, these characteristics were joined by self-perceived skin tone, academic achievement level, and age in their predictive effects. Among Black/American Indians, age, self-perceived skin tone, and attitudes about racial oppression exhibited strong main effects. There was an additional interaction effect found within this group between neighborhood diversity, skin tone, and the perception of the oppression of non- black minorities in the U.S.

This work suggests that self-identification choice is linked to adolescents’ perceptions of their risks and protective factors as well as their attitudes regarding the racial climate of the United States. Providing additional nuance to the literature are the differences found across racial parentage groups. By engaging a phenomenologically focused cultural ecological framework, both self-appraisal and reactive coping processes are revealed as central to racial identity development for this understudied population. Representing a mere slice of a broader research agenda, this project contributes a unique and important perspective to the emergent body of research on the rapidly growing population of multiracial Americans.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables viii
• List of Figures x
• Chapters
  • I. Introduction
    • Racial self-identification
    • Complications of race research
    • Race versus ethnicity
    • Methodological qualifications of the present study
  • II. Literature review
    • The United States multiracial population
    • Multiracial identity research
    • Methodology: How multiracial individuals racially self-identify
    • Process: Why multiracial individuals racially self-identify the way they do
    • Identity Typology
    • Factors that influence racial self-identification choice
    • The special case of Black/American Indians
    • Symbolic ethnicity 82
    • Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory
    • The Present Study
      • Component 1: Net vulnerability level
      • Component 2/3: Primary reactive coping processes
      • Component 3: Reactive coping response
    • Strengths of the present study
  • III. Method
    • Study background
    • Procedure
    • Sample
  • IV. Results
    • Preliminary Analyses
    • Research questions and hypothesis testing
  • V. Discussion
    • Overview of findings
    • Population breakdowns
    • Incidence and proportion of identity types
    • Predictive effects of independent variables
      • Component 1: Net vulnerability variables
      • Component 2/3: Primary reactive coping process variable
    • Limitations of the study
    • Implications for future research
    • Conclusion
• References

List of Tables

1. Net vulnerability sample characteristics: Age, gender, academic achievement, and city
2. Net vulnerability sample characteristics: Generational proximity to racial mixture
3. Net vulnerability sample characteristics: Skin tone
4. Net vulnerability sample characteristics: Neighborhood diversity
5. Net vulnerability sample characteristics: Racial combination group
6. Rotated factor pattern for entire sample
7. Oppression perception mean scores
8. Multiracial populations by question format
9. Incidence and proportion of identity types across all datasets and racial combinations
10. Year 1 log odds estimates of identity types for non-Blacks: Format variability
11. Year 2 log odds estimates of identity types for non-Blacks: Format variability
12. Year 1 log odds estimates of identity types for Black/non-American Indians: Format variability
13. Year 2 log odds estimates of identity types for Black/non-American Indians: Format variability
14. Year 1 log odds estimates of identity types for Black/American Indians: Format variability
15. Year 2 log odds estimates of identity types for Black/American Indians: Format variability
16. Log odds estimates of identity types for non-Blacks: Temporal variability
17. Log odds estimates of identity types for Black/non-American Indians: Temporal variability
18. Log odds estimates of identity types for Black/American Indians: Temporal variability
19. Summary of findings for non-Blacks across variability types
20. Summary of findings for Black/non-American Indians across variability types
21. Summary of findings for Black/American Indians across variability types

List of Figures

1. Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory
2. Engaged components of PVEST

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The physical and mental health of multiracial adolescents in the United States

University of Pennsylvania
2007
101 pages
ISBN: 9780549117445

Jamie Mihoko Doyle
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
University of Pennsylvania

A dissertation in Demographic Presented to Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in partial fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Healthy People 2010 objectives cite the need to eliminate racial disparities in health by the year 2050. However, with increases in intermarriage and migration, a growing number of individuals are self-identifying with more than one race. It is unclear whether they constitute a growing, at-risk population that policy interventions currently overlook. This analysis evaluates the physical and mental health status of multiracial adolescents, particularly in comparison to single race groups. The data are from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative study of approximately 20,000 youth ages 12-18 interviewed in 1995 and re-interviewed 6 years later. The main outcome measures for physical health include weight status (Body Mass Index) and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). For mental health, the measures include depression (CES-D) and self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale). Sexual debut was also examined. Generalized Estimating Equations are used for all analyses using logistic regression and Generalized Linear Mixed Models are used for continuous dependent variables to correct for the Add Health study design. Overall, findings from this dissertation demonstrate that socioeconomic privilege does not necessarily confer positive physical and/or mental health. Interracial families have a mid- to high-socioeconomic profile; yet Asian-White multiracials exhibit a poor mental health profile and Black-White multiracials exhibit the highest risk of having STDs as adults. Moreover, most multiracial subgroups resemble their single-race minority counterparts on most outcomes considered. In terms of physical health, Asian-White and Black-White mutltiracials are not at a disproportionately high risk of being obese as young adults, irrespective of how races are categorized. This thesis has uncovered several mediated mechanisms for these patterns–yet this diverse area of research on multiracials is still in infancy. The role of peer networks, culture, and school contexts in shaping the physical and mental health of multiracials are all interesting avenues for a future researcher to pursue.

Table of Contents

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Mexipino: A History of Multiethnic Identity and the Formation of the Mexican and Filipino Communities of San Diego, 1900-1965

(From T-RACES: a Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California’s Exclusionary Spaces)

University of California, Santa Barbara
June 2007
488 pages

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Assistant Professor, Asian Pacific American Studies, School of Social Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Arizona State University

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfactions of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History

This dissertation examines how a Mexipino identity was forged through the historical interactions of Mexicans and Filipinos in San Diego, California during the years 1900 to 1965. It traces their initial interactions in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries under Spanish colonialism and the Acapuclo-Manila Galleon trade. This laid the foundations for early cultural exchanges. During the twentieth century, San Diego’s rising industries of agriculture, fish canning, construction, service oriented and defense related work, necessitated the need for cheap labor. Mexicans and Filipinos came in to fill that void.

Central to this study is how race and class were key components in the establishments of the Mexican and Filipino communities. Through racially restrictive covenants and other forms of discrimination, both groups were confined to segregated living spaces along with other racial and ethnic minorities. Within these spaces they built a world of their own through family and kin networks, social organizations, music, and other forms of entertainment. As laborers, race and gender were also central factors to their marginalization in the workforce. Their exploitation fueled their militancy. Both Mexicans and Filipinos formed labor unions, and often in coalition fought their employers for higher wages and better working conditions.

All of these historical conditions fostered the interrelationships between Mexicans and Filipinos. Given their shared historical past and cultural similarities these unions were highly successful. Their children, who I define as Mexipinos and Mexipinas, are the result of this long historical connection and the experiences that they collectively shared as community members, workers, and lovers. Mexipino children have also contributed to San Diego’s multiracial and multiethnic communities by living in two cultures, and in the process, forging a new identity for themselves. Their lives are the lens by which we see these two communities and the ways in which they interacted over generations to produce this distinct multiethnic experience.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Vita
Abstract
List of Tables
Introduction
Chapter 1: Historical Antecedents
Chapter 2: Immigration to a Rising Metropolis
Chapter 3: The Devil Comes to San Diego: Race, Space and the Formation of Multiracial and Multiethnic Communities
Chapter 4: Race, Gender and Labor Activism in San Diego
Chapter 5: Filipino-Mexican Couples and the Forging of a Mexipino Identity
Epilogue
Bibliography

List of Tables

Table 1 Estimated Number of Foreign Born White Mexicans in California Counties as of 1930
Table 2 Total Mexican Population in San Diego, 1900-1970
Table 3 Filipino Population Statistics
Table 4 Comparing the Mexican and Filipino Population in the United States,1925-1929
Table 5 Churches with Large Mexican, Filipino, and Other Nonwhite Parishioners

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Illegal fictions : white women writers and the miscegenated imagination 1857-1869 (E. D. E. N. Southworth, Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, Lydia Maria Child)

Indiana University
2000

Katharine Nicholson Ings, Associate Professor of English
Manchester College, North Manchester, Indiana

This dissertation examines how popular nineteenth-century white women writers depicted interracial romance in their fiction. I focus on E. D. E. N. Southworth, Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Lydia Maria Child, authors who composed what I call illegal fictions, largely neglected works that explored the possibilities of interracial unions between blacks and whites. These authors, all abolitionists, denounce slavery in their works while simultaneously reflecting upon the limitations of the feminine roles that they were expected to play in society.

I approach their fictions through three critical lenses: racial theory, sentimental narrative theory, and biography to determine the implications of the hybrid individual, national, and textual identities present in the narratives and in the authors’ lives. On the one hand, these illegal fictions attempt to negotiate the tension between white women and black men and women, each of whom strove to be recognized as citizens. On the other hand, their fictions point to how the idea of miscegenation literally a mixing of races informed the creativity of these women authors during the years spanning the Civil War. At the imaginative level the authors offer visions of either a successful or failed multicultural America; at the generic level they engage in a blending of forms: slave narrative merges with the sentimental novel to initiate a dialogue between African and Caucasian American literary traditions.

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Afro-German Biracial Identity Development

Virginia Commonwealth University
May 2010
75 pages

Rebecca R. Hubbard

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University

An increase in the biracial population has heightened our awareness of unique issues that pervade the experience of these individuals. The importance of environmental influences on biracial identity development has been established, but investigations concerning racial socialization of biracial individuals are scarce. This study, utilizing a qualitative design, explores racial identity development of biracial Afro-Germans living in Germany. The purpose of the study is to understand the strategies that biracial individuals use to negotiate their racial identity, factors that influence their development, cultural influences, and racial socialization processes. Interviews with biracial Afro-Germans were conducted using phenomenological interviewing techniques. Twelve themes emerged from the data that are best conceptualized in an ecological model. Inter-rater reliability was established in two phases. Implications of the findings include a need for continued research with Black-White biracial populations.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Abstract
• Problem Statement
• Review of the Literature
  • Developmental Models
  • Developmental Models of Biracial Identity Development
  • Ecological Models
  • Ecological Models of Biracial Identity Development
  • Racial Socialization
  • Racial Socialization of Biracial Individuals
  • Value of Cross-Cultural Comparisons
  • Historical Context of People of African Descent in Germany
  • Empirical Research with Afro-German Populations
  • Theoretical Conceptualization
  • Research Questions
• Method
  • Purpose
  • Design
  • Role of the Researcher
  • Sampling & Recruitment of Participants
  • Procedure
  • Data Analysis
  • Verification
  • Limitations
• Themes
  • Intersectional Identity
  • Black Identity
  • German/White Identity
  • Disconnect/Denial
  • Positive Internal Coping
  • Environmental Support
  • Injured Family
  • Person-Environment Discrepancy
  • Multi Kulti
  • American Familiarity
  • Racism, Marginalization, Conflict
  • Progress and Change
  • Ecological Conceptualization of Themes
• Discussion
  • The Essence of Biracial Afro-German Identity
  • Culture and Nationality
  • Lack of Appropriate Language
  • Future Directions
• List of References

List of Tables

1. Table 1 Mean Age and Parental Heritage by Gender
2. Table 2 Participant Demographics

List of Figures

1. Figure 1 Root’s Ecological Model of Biracial Identity
2. Figure 2 “Sarotti Mohr” Trademark of a German chocolate company
3. Figure 3 Hubbard’s Ecological Model of Afro-German Biracial Identity (HEMBAGI)

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Interracial families in South Africa: an exploratory study

Rand Afrikaans University
June 1994
310 pages
(In English and Afrikaans)

Lesley Morrall

A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in Psychology in the Faculty of Arts at Rand Afrikaans University.

Interracial marriage can be viewed as a barometer of social change. South Africa has historically been a country of racial tension with legislation seeking to keep the races apart. However, during April 1994 the country’s first democratic elections took place, thus ending the reign of white minority rule. It is against this backdrop that the present study took place. The aim of the study is to seek a deeper understanding of the experiences of mixed: race families living in South Africa. Certain questions are raised, inter alia; the causes for interracial relationships and marriage, the reactions of the families of origin, the patterns of adjustment, the raising of the children with specific reference to identity development and, the reactions of the community. Theories on prejudice, discrimination and interpersonal attraction were studied as a basis for a possible understanding of the phenomenon of mixed marriage. A brief exposition of the history of South Africa detailing relevant legislation places the study in context. Statistics on the incidence of interracial marriage and divorce were tabulated. Research pertaining to mixed marriage and interracial children was reviewed emphasizing the issues as outlined in the questions posed. However, very few studies could be found which related to South Africa. As such, media coverage of interracial relationships as reported in South Africa between 1993 to 1994 was also covered.

Table of Contents

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• SUMMARY (ENGLISH)
• SUMMARY (AFRIKAANS)

1. OVERVIEW
   1. Introduction
   2. Marriage
   3. Family
   4. The Concept of Race
   5. The Concept of Mixed-Race
   6. The Present Study
      • Aims of the study
2. THEORIES : PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION AND INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION
   1. Introduction
   2. Prejudice and Discrimination Defined
   3. The Origin of Prejudice
   4. Theories of Prejudice
   5. Combatting Prejudice
   6. Interpersonal Attraction Defined
   7. Proximity
   8. Emotional State
   9. Need for Affiliation
   10. Physical Attractiveness
   11. Similarity
   12. Conclusion
3. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE LAW
   1. Introduction
   2. Historical Overview
   3. Legislation
      • The Population Registration Act, Act 30 of 1950
      • The Group Areas Act, Act 41 of 1950
      • History of the Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act
        • Media coverage
        • Repeal of the Acts
   4. Conclusion
4. LITERATURE REVIEW: MIXED-RACE MARRIAGE
   1. Introduction
   2. Trends and Pattems of Mixed-Race Marriage
   3. Spouse Selection
   4. Adjustment
   5. Divorce
   6. Public Attitudes towards Mixed Marriage
   7. Attitude of Family towards Mixed-Race Couples
   8. Research Critique
   9. Conclusions from the literature Review
5. LITERATURE REVIEW: MIXED-RACE CHILDREN
   1. Introduction
   2. Theories: Biracial Children and their Identity
   3. Studies of Biracial Children
      • Intellectual development: Birth to four years
      • Racial awareness: Early childhood
      • Self-concept: Scholars
      • Racial identity: Adolescents
      • Mixed-race heritage: Adults
   4. Raising Biracial Children
   5. Conclusions from the Literature Review
6. INCIDENCE OF MIXED-RACE MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
   1. Introduction
   2. Incidence in the United States of America
   3. Incidence of Mixed-Race Marriage in South Africa
   4. Incidence of Mixed-Race Divorce in South Africa
7. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
   1. Introduction
   2. Questions
   3. Qualitative Research
   4. The Study
   5. Sample
   6. Data Analysis
8. CASE NUMBER 1 – MOHAMMED AND RONELLE: AN ASIAN/WHITE FAMILY
9. CASE NUMBER 2 – JACK AND TINA: A WHITE/BLACK RELATIONSHIP
10. CASE NUMBER 3 – CLIVE AND MINNIE: THREE GENERATIONS OF MIXED MARRIAGES
11. CASE NUMBER 4 – LEON AND ESTHER: A WHITE/BLACK INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE
12. CASE NUMBER 5 – ED AND ELLEN: FOUR GENERATIONS OF MIXED MARRIAGES
13. CASE NUMBER 6 – JOHAN AND BELINDA: WHITE/COLOURED MIXED MARRIAGE
14. CASE NUMBER 7 – THOMAS AND BELLA: A WHITE/BLACK INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE
15. RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH
    1. Introduction
    2. General Results
    3. Specific Results
    4. Conclusion
16. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
    1. Introduction
    2. Theories: Prejudice and Discrimination
    3. Theories: Interpersonal Attraction
    4. Previous Research: Mixed-Race Marriage
       • Who marries out?
       • Spouse selection
       • Adjustment
       • Societal attitude towards mixed marriage
       • Attitude of extended family
    5. Identity Development: Mixed-Race Children
    6. Divorce
    7. Conclusions
       • Causes of interracial relationships
       • Adjustment patterns
       • Child raising practices
       • Racial identity
       • The extended family
       • Legislation and the political environment
    8. Limitations of the Study
    9. Directions for Future Research

• REFERENCES
• APPENDIX A: MEDIA COVERAGE OF INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS: 1993-1994
  1. Introduction
  2. Articles
  3. Conclusion
• APPENDIX B: NEWSPAPER CARTOONS
• APPENDIX C: QUESTIONNAIRE
• APPENDIX D: LETTER TO THANDI MAGAZINE
• APPENDIX E: ADVERTISEMENT IN THANDI MAGAZINE

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Empire’s progeny: The representation of mixed race characters in twentieth century South African and Caribbean literature

2006-01-01
355 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3249543

Kathleen A. Koljian
University of Connecticut

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, 2006.

This dissertation is an examination of the portrayal of mixed race characters in South African and Caribbean literature. Through a close reading of the works of representative Caribbean [Derek Walcott, Michelle Cliff, and Jamaica Kincaid] and South African authors, [Bessie Head, Zoe Wicomb, and Zakes Mda] my dissertation will construct a more valid paradigm for the understanding of mixed-race characters and the ways in which authors from the Caribbean and South Africa typically deploy racially mixed characters to challenge the social order imposed during colonial domination. These authors emphasize the nuanced and hierarchical conceptualizations of racialized identity in South Africa and the Caribbean. Their narratives stand in marked contrast to contemporary models of ‘hybridity’ promulgated by prominent post-colonial critics such as Homi Bhabha and his adherents. In this dissertation, I hope to provide a more historically and culturally situated paradigm for understanding narrative portrayals of mixed race characters as an alternative to contemporary theories of ‘hybridity’. Current paradigms within post-colonial theory are compromised by their lack of historical and cultural specificity. In failing to take into account specific and long-standing attitudes toward racial identity prevalent in particular colonized cultures, these critics founder in attempts to define the significance of the racially mixed character in postcolonial literature. Bhabha, for example, fails to recognize that the formation of racialized identity within the Caribbean and South Africa is not imagined in simple binary terms but within a distinctly articulated racial hierarchy. Furthermore, Bhabha does not acknowledge the evolution of attitudes and ideas that have shaped the construction and understanding of mixed-race identity. After a brief survey of the scientific discourse of race in the colonial era, and a representative sampling of key thematic elements and tropes in early colonial literature to demonstrate the intersection of race theory and literature, close readings of individual narratives will demonstrate the limitations of current models of ‘hybridity’ and illuminate the ways in which individual authors and texts are constructed within (and sometimes constrained by) long-standing and pervasive discourses of racialized identity.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Empire’s Progeny
• “A Small Corner of the Earth”: Bessie Head
• “Colouring the Truth”: Zoe Wicomb
• Birthing the Rainbow Nation: Zakes Mda’s Madonna of Excelsior
• The “Mulatto of Style”: Derek Walcott’s Carribean Aesthetics
• “Only Sadness Comes from Mixture”: Clare Savage’s Matrilineal Quest
• Xeula and Oya: Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother
• Conclusion
• Works Cited

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