Barack Obama and the MixedRace Question

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Barack Obama and the Mixed-Race Question

• Ralina L. Joseph
• Assistant Professor
• Department of Communication
• University of Washington

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Roadmap

• Overview of Obama and the mixed-race question
• Important dates in African American history
• Background on how the mulatto represented in US
  scholarship and culture
• Predictions and discussion

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Why look at black/white mixing?

• Barometer of race relations in US
• Fears of and desire for the product of race
  mixing
• Historically used as justification for slavery,
  immigration legislation
• Our first viable presidential candidate of color
  is mixed black and white

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Obama as a symbol

• What does it mean that Obama is important in what
  he represents?

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• At heart the presidential election is a contest
  over whom we want to represent not just our
  nation but our idea of nationhood and who we are
  as a people. As a result, campaigns are in part
  a conversation about identity and whom the
  majority of voters will identify with. Of
  course, our conception of the ideal American to
  represent us is influenced by our own particular
  sense of identity
• Gregory Rodriguez, LA Times 12-24-07

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How has Obama been described?

• Black
• African American
• Kenyan father, white mother
• Biracial
• Mixed-race
• Post-racial
• Colorblind

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How does he describe himself?

• 2004 DNC speech (start 1 min)
• 2008 More Perfect Union speech (start 245)

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Note on the term mulatto

• OED (Spanish and Portuguese etymology)
• animalism mulatto young mule, hence one of
  mixed race
• sickness like mulatto jack meaning a term for
  yellow fever
• mulatto complexion unfortunately tawny in
  color
• Antiquated term still in limited circulation
• Is NOT considered a neutral descriptor

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Anti-Miscegenation Laws

• Jamestown mulattoes spurious issue and
  abominable mixture
• First anti-miscegenation laws in VA and MD in
  1660s
• First the laws criminalized marriages b/t whites
  and black indentured servants and slaves
• then in 1690s b/t all whites and blacks, slave,
  free, or indentured. Based on RACE not
  servitude.
• Justifications religion, eugenics, economics
• All states except CT, NH, NY, NJ, VT, DC, WI, MN,
  HI, AL

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Loving V. Virginia, 1967

• Ruled down centuries of anti-miscegenation laws
• Cited civil rights advances to argue that
  antimiscegenation laws unconstitutionally
  discriminated on the basis of race in violation
  of equal protection and that they interfered with
  the fundamental right to marry under the due
  process clause
• Sixteen states had on books at time

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One drop rule/hypodescent

• Anyone with any amount of black blood is
  considered black
• Aided chattel slavery (reproduction of more
  slaves), Jim Crow (clarification of segregation),
  and consolidation of white power and privilege
• Can be seen as a positive thing because helped
  draw strength in numbers for Black Americans

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1896, Plessy v. Ferguson

• Homer Plessy (an octoroon could not ride in
  white railway car)
• Separate but equal
• One drop rule of hypodescent
• Ratification of spatial segregation ? legal
  enforcement of Jim Crow laws

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1954, Brown v. Board of Education

• "separate educational facilities are inherently
  unequal"
• Actual desegregation occurred through Civil
  Rights Act of 1964 (title II)

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Representation of the Tragic Mulatto

• Hypersexual
• Desirable
• Overly emotional
• Largely female (or feminized)
• Irrational
• Cunning
• Prone to insanity
• Seen throughout popular culture some date to
  Lydia Marie Childs novels The Quadroons (1842)
  and Slaverys Pleasant Homes (1843)

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Hes just too pretty

• Obama is the Fred Astaire of politics graceful
  and elegant, with a surface so pleasing to the
  eye that it seems mistaken, even greedy, to
  demand depth. No one, however, would have given
  Astaire control of nuclear weapons, so attention
  must be paid to Obamas political as well as
  aesthetic qualities

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Eugenics, scientific racism, and the mulatto

• Mulattoes used to discern biological distance or
  proximity between blacks and whites
• Civil war anthropometric studies (of virtually
  every body part) result that blacks inferior to
  whites and mulattoes inferior to both parent
  groups

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Hybrid degeneracy theory

• mulattoes like mules tend to be
  barrenasno species of animals in the natural
  world was known to have developed from the union
  of two separate species
• Part of biological determinism different races
  are different species
• Greatest popularity from late 1800s until around
  1910

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Edward Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States
(1918)

• Psychologically the mulatto is an unstable type
  because between these two groups, one admiring
  and the other despising, stand the mixed
  bloodsThey are uncertain of their own worth
  conscious of their superiority to the native they
  are nowhere sure of their equality with the
  superior group.
• narrative of tragedy mulattos envy the
  white, aspire to equality with them, and are
  embittered when the realization of such ambition
  is denied them. They are a dissatisfied and an
  unhappy group.

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Everett Stonequist, The Marginal Man (1937)

• mixed bloods liminal position, being torn
  between two courses of action, results in a
  psychological dysfunction with a nervous
  strain, self-absorption, and hypersensitivity
  because of racial disharmony, clash of blood
  and an unstable genetic constitution.
• Note the biological, and hence unchangeable,
  nature of this description.
• Park celebrated marginal man as modern creation
  whose cosmopolitan nature allowed him to move
  between identity categories

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Barack Obama, The Marginal Man

• Barak Obama, who, as he made sure to tell us in
  the opening words of his famous keynote address
  at the 2004 Democratic Convention, is half-Kenyan
  and half-white, has cornered the market on Ethnic
  Electricity
• Many have bought Dreams, but, despite Mr.
  Obamas graceful prose style, few have finished
  it because the Preppie from Paradises lifelong
  fixation with proving himself black enough
  makes his tale tediously self-obsessed
• Steve Sailer, The Washington Times, 12-25-07

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Theories of Multiracial Exceptionalism

• Proximity to whiteness gives value
• Race mixture progress
• Novelist Charles Chestnutt (The Future
  American, House Behind the Cedars, 1900)

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Obama and Multiracial Exceptionalism

• Unlike Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama
  openly suggests that his background both as the
  son of parents of different races and as a person
  who spent part of his childhood in
  Muslim-dominated Indonesia would enable him to
  appeal to other nations on different termsHe has
  said he would cite his years in Indonesia as a
  way to gain credibility with leaders of Muslim
  countries, and would point to his African
  grandmother to create a bridge to the Third
  World.
• Peter Canellos, Boston Globe, 12-25-07

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U.S. Census

• First U.S. Census taken in 1790
• Taken every 10 yrs 22 taken
• Enumerate population for congressional seats,
  government programs
• Highly political, always contested
• Census categories on race and ethnicity shift
  virtually every census
• Census 2000 http//www.census.gov/

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EX Changing Census Categories for Black
individuals

• 1790 Slave (3/5 of a person)
• 1850 Black, Mulatto
• 1890 Black, Mulatto, Quadroon, Octoroon
• 1900 Negro
• 1910 Black, Mulatto
• 1930 Negro
• 2000 Check All That Apply

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In the 1980s, civil rights gains spurred a
conservative backlash

• mixed-race bodies began to be celebrated and
  politically recognized

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Multiracial Category (to Check all that apply)
Census 2000

• What does race mean when so many Americans
  cannot fill out their census forms because
  theyre an amalgam of races?
• Newt Gingrich, May 21, 1997

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• The multiracial category would serve civic
  health by undermining the obsession with race and
  ethnicity that fuels identity politics.
• George Will, October 12, 1997
• George Will December 30, 2007
• Obamas candidacy fascinates because he
  represents racial autonomy He has chosen his
  racial identity but chosen not to make it matter
  much.
• Obamais a product of Americas mainstream in
  which he enjoys unlimited opportunities. He is a
  model of blacks possibilities when they are
  emancipated from ideologies of blackness
• Obama seems to understand Americas race
  fatigue

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2.4 of U.S. Pop Check All

• Twice as many children under 18
• Hawaii (21), OK (5), CA (5)
• 63 combinations
• White and some other race (32)
• White and American Indian (16)
• White and Asian (13)
• White and Black (12)
• Black and some other race (6)

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So what about Obama?

• Obama Phenomenon
• no candidate in either party can move an
  audience like he can (Bob Herbert, NYT 1-5-08)
• Obama lacks the baggage of the Clinton old
  guard but theres a particular type of
  racialization at play there.
• Obama doesnt have the race baggage of African
  American candidates of the past

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Low angle shots
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(No Transcript)
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Working against Bradley Effect

• Douglas Wilder's gubernatorial campaign, in 1989,
  where he was 9 but only won by one
• Harold Washington's 1983 mayoral contest in
  Chicago 14, won by 4
• David Dinkins's 1989 New York campaign 18, won
  by 2
• Harvey Gantt's 1990 senatorial campaign 6, lost
  by 6

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Working against history

• Less than 4 percent of nations elected officials
  are black (90 percent of them represent
  predominantly black or predominantly
  black-and-Hispanic constituencies)
• Three black U.S. senators and two black governors
  have been elected since Reconstruction

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Predictions?