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https://linktr.ee/treventoured

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Mixed Messages is a show where each episode a guest shares their personal Mixed Race experience.

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We are a digital museum and archive sharing and preserving the history of racial mixing in Britain for future generations.

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Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is a biennial conference, field of study, and scholarly and activist community in partnership with Mixed Roots Stories, a non-profit organization that advocates for mixed race storytelling and brings art and cultural programming to the conference. The CMRS conference draws over 500 multiracial scholars, artists, students, activists, clinicians, community organizations and advocates from all over the world. The CMRS conference was the first, and remains one of the only, counterspaces for those interested in critically exploring constructions of race through a multiracial lens.

Our fifth conference #CMRS2018 was held March 2018 at the University of Maryland. With Keynote Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni; over 50 panels, roundtables, workshops, and caucus sessions organized by the CMRS Association; a feature film screening; TOTUS Spoken Word Experience's Mixed Monologue with an Open Mic; as well as a LIVE performance show and Performance Sampler produced by Mixed Roots Stories.
For our sixth conference we're headed to the Southwest!
ANCESTRAL FUTURISMS:
Embodying Multiracialities Past, Present, and Future
February 24-26, 2022
Virtual

cmrs2022.dryfta.com

#CMRS2022

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"Critical Mixed Race Studies is about recognizing the totality of one's heritage-seeing race and systems of racism in the particular context of mixed race and talking about what this means for our lives and communities today, what it has meant historically, and what we might envision our futures to be like, and what we can do now to help in anti-racist struggles across many different communities." - CMRS Co-Founder and Artist Dr. Laura Kina

"CMRS offers so much: cutting-edge research, diverse topics, arts and entertainment and a chance to build community." - Thomas Lopez, Multiracial Community Organizer

"Much of the work presented at CMRS is issue-based, and many of the connections and relationships that are established in these spaces have led to more direct activism." - Rob Buscher, Contributor of the Pacific Citizen

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Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is a biennial conference, field of study, and scholarly and activist community in partnership with Mixed Roots Stories, a non-profit organization that advocates for mixed race storytelling and brings art and cultural programming to the conference.

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Railway Children Return + Black American GIs (Tre Ventour-Griffiths, 2022)

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Railway Children Return + Black American GIs (Tre Ventour-Griffiths, 2022)

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The Railway Children Return: White Terrorism and Race Riots in Wartime Britain

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The Railway Children is one of my favourite stories ever — and this sequel continues it admirably. The arrival of 150,000 Black American…

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 Interracial Romance and Hollywood (Tre Ventour-Griffiths, 2022)

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 Interracial Romance and Hollywood (Tre Ventour-Griffiths, 2022)

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Premise

Seeing as we have now had two seasons of Bridgerton, I believe that is sufficient time to comment on how it follows in the footsteps of other Shondaland productions - including the ABC series as it is a textbook example of the white-centring interracial relationships on prime time television. Particularly the on-screen relationship between Fitz Grant and Olivia Pope revisits how whiteness continues to discipline Black people, in this case it's the 'disciplining' of Olivia Pope. Shondaland is no stranger to the centring of romance arcs around white feelings and emotions when producing interracial relationships, but it must be acknowledged that even in superficial diversity - the inclusion of Kate and Edwina Sharma in season two of Bridgerton validated many dark-skinned South Asian women (important).

That being said, Bridgerton is not an anomaly, but part of an American film and television complex in Hollywood where whiteness dictates who is worthy of love on screen. Such programmes include Master of None, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Girlfriends, Dear White Peopleand Modern Family - which 'legitimise' the desire of Black and Brown people as only possible in proximity to a white person - accredited their 'human status' via affiliations with 'white others'.

Building on a previous essay which discusses whiteness more generally amid Bridgerton's families, this article considers the role of the whiteness of interracial relationships in the Netflix show and the wider industry. In the wider social context, I also saw Good Luck to You, Leo Grandewhich (un)arguably fetishises Black male bodies to accentuate white womanhood.

Jeanine Abraham writes:

"Writer Katy Brand basically treats Leo as Miss Nancy's human sex toy, glossing over her position of power as she exoticizes Leo. Why is it that the entertainment industry has completely normalized exoticizing men of color as an object of sexual pleasure for white women of all ages?"

Discussion

Following season one of Bridgerton, I was challenged at how it positioned the inclusion of Black characters as progress when in terms of numbers, they are still few. These were Black individuals moving through white spaces much in the same way Nirmal Puwar writes in her 2004 book Space Invaders - as there are no Black communities, but there are Black individuals left to navigate spaces that we have been historically and conceptually excluded from.

Moreover, from day one seeing Lady Danbury playing matchmaker for white families, I saw how the inclusion of Black debutantes is only accepted, should their 'desire' (for lack of a better term) be for a white person. Though, the inclusion of these characters may be a trojan horse for for more 'diverse' period dramas in the future - as the success of Bridgerton and possibly may be what gave us a 'diverse' Persuasion - we must ask how, even in a 'post-racial' fantasy, why is it still possible for white people to dominate?

In her book 'Good White People', Shannon Sullivan writes:

"As long as both white master and [B]lack slave observed the appropriate rules of address and gestural codes of behavior - etiquette is a code that binds both the dominant and subordinate, after all - then significant social distances could be maintained in the midst of intimate physical proximities."

Yet, the inclusion of Simon and Marina in season one (played by light-skinned Black actors) not only raised issues of colourism, but also as they eventually went on to get hitched to white people - raised issues of Black desirability accentuated only by its proximity to whiteness. This is compounded by the numbers of interracial relationships in other shows that are necessitated by white people. As Nylah Burton writes, "Media commonly makes the mistake of portraying interracial relationships with white people as shining examples of racial progress [and] assuming interracial relationships between people of color are devoid of any need for progress, or even learning."

Season two interrupts the Black-white binary and introduces audiences to Kate and Edwina Sharma. Nonetheless, under global colonial whiteness, Black and Asian people exist on different levels of the hierarchy, also considering other markers of difference including gender and caste. Kate ends up married to Anthony, with Bridgerton reinforcing the Great White Hope of interracial relationships on mainstream television.

In a Tik Tok video clinical psychologist Dr Han Ren discusses why attraction may not be accidental:

"It's just my preference" or is it?? We don't talk about this enough, but racialized s*xual capital and politics are very real, especially in multiracial societies. There's power and access on both sides of the pairing" - Dr Han Ren

Every time people praise Bridgerton for its 'diversity', I am reminded how the 'the diversity' ended up being married into white families and thus 'embodied property' - as Aileen Moreton Robinson discusses in her 2015 book The White Possessive. Though Bridgerton was hailed as a landmark show, I am uncertain if it does anything different to others that also position white-centred interracial relationships as progressive. If Bridgerton aimed to do anything provocative, it would have been more useful to have been a Wakanda-esque regency fantasy world with a token white character (heck, Black Panthereven has a token white man in Everett K. Ross played by Martin Freeman).

In the book Inequalities of Love, scholar Averil Clarke uses ethnographic interviews and data from national surveys to explore the challenges degree-educated Black women can have when seeking love, romance, and marriage in contrast to their white and Hispanic peers. Now, Bridgerton fans are swooning over Kate and Anthony as #Kanthony on Twitter -just months after Simon was sexually assaulted by his white wife before marrying her and fathering their child! Make this make sense. This still has not been resolved.

With the existence of race and coloniality in the Ton, and Simon (a Black man) sexually assaulted by Daphne (a white woman), he may represent what Dr Ren called "sexualised racial capital" where Simon is written as the symbol of capitalism - almost as an Austen-adjacent Darcy stand-in. At the same time, Marina was stigmatised from the get-go by Lady Featherington - being pregnant while Black, the microaggressions were evident. Lady Danbury was also constructed as the Mammy. And though the showrunners were criticised on elements of South Asian representation, what remains unclear is the future and if Bridgerton will have any Black leads. Further, to the presence of rampant anti-Blackness starting in season one and pervaded into season two.

For all its flaws, the first season of ITV's , however,did something Bridgerton has still failed to do - show Black love on screen with its lead characters (Will and Alice Mondrich are at the fringe). With Sanditon's Georgiana Lamb and Otis Molyneux, the show did something many period dramas peddling 'diversity' have not. The first season of The Spanish Princesson Starz is also a contender in its representation of Black Tudors in love in Early Modern England - and if the Bridgerton showrunners wanted to depict Desi women, where are the Desi men? Bridgerton is a show that has used the popularity of D&I to garner record viewing numbers and it has worked par excellence, while at the same it is a white show pretending to be a diverse.

In their article 'Decolonising Desire' academic Dalia Gebrial considers the "colonial scripts" that write people into and out of being lovable:

"Embedded within the constituent discourses of love - of desirability, emotional labour, support and commitment - are codes of social value assigned to certain bodies; of who is worthy of love's work. The labour of decolonising these representative paradigms is structural, and involves addressing their material histories."

With Bridgerton season three reportedly following Penelope and Colin, I wonder if a project that originally hooked people on the grounds of 'racial diversity' will eventually just become white. And with the ongoing assertion of whiteness as the rubric of being 'lovable' in American films and TV, Bridgerton has largely reproduced that effect - even if by through the inclusion of Black and Brown faces, showing how proximity to whiteness can do harm.

For us Black and Brown people that have grown up in Britain and the US, seeing characters that look like us loving each other on screen in all parts of their humanity - is a drop in the ocean of what it needs to be. Though, to varying degrees even as far as superficial visibility - the late 1980s up to the early to mid 2000s seemed to do more for me. While I am 1995 child, I grew up watching shows like That's So Ravenand The Proud Family.

While things like Black-ish do talk about 'Black issues', it still feels like a series tailored to the delicate sensibilities of the white people who do not have any Black friends!

In a British context, my parents' generation tell me about which was released in 1989 and can be watched on BritBox. HBO's is another example of depictions of Black intimacies. However, in a 2015 article, Kavita Bhanot writes that "The concept of diversity only exists if there is an assumed neutral point from which 'others' are 'diverse'." That default point is white. Yet, this may include language. Whilst I do grant that if us westerners broaden our horizons to things like Nollywood, Bollywood, and films and TV not in the English Language, the possibilities are limitless. Though it would be unfair to say all westerners (speaking about the US and UK) only view western media, a review of yearly film lists from UK and US sites is revealing!

These lists reveal what these big institutions view as important - largely UK and US films with an over-representation of white people in front and behind the camera. So, the colonial whiteness of media is revisited in the recentring of the English language as the norm.

Whiteness is necessitated in many ways. By the by, whether we like it or not, interracial relationships on screen continue to be almost exclusively upheld by a 'need' for a white person, asserting the role of whiteness in the possibility of love for Black and Brown individuals. Pertinently when Black and Brown love on-screen within white nations is lacking. Numerous films and television shows that get made in Britain and the United States are situated in what Ghassan Hage writes about as 'fantasies of a white nation'. This is what makes films such as If Beale Street Could Talkand (both by Barry Jenkins) so important - when leading white characters are absent from the story.

Moonlight - about the lives of Black gay men (additionally dark-skinned men) and Beale Street based on the James Baldwin novel featuring Black families being unapologetically Black - would we ever get that at blockbuster level, not on the independent screen? If we see how much diversity is contingent on profit and not 'because it's right', there will always be a business case for Diversity & Inclusion in media to be made. Netflix's Bridgerton is probably the closest a period drama has gotten to blockbuster status, and it shows.

In terms of thinking more critically about D&I, scholar Anne McClintock's Imperial Leathermay go some way in depicting how wider debates were useful in selling Bridgerton to non-period drama audiences, especially those who were not period drama fans - the many Black and Brown people who joined a fanbase that is overrepresented by cis white women. As far as season one, Black actors were used to sell Bridgerton (commodity). In effort to 'do diversity' with the introduction of Kate in season two - like Simon - was treated as an extra to white families. So endemic is "commodity racism" to media, I think Bridgerton was only criticised for it because it positioned itself as a post-racial - while at the same time discussing inheritance structures that are inherently built on capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy.

Period dramas routinely have failed to include Black and Brown potential audiences due to our exclusion from these texts. Season one of Bridgerton was a first for many. However, there is history: season five of received racist backlash for its inclusion of historically accurate Black character Kitty Despard. Through characters like Jocasta Mackenzie, sub-sections of the fandom also caused trouble when the Outlander showrunners wrote in Scotland's role in racist colonial enslavement. Yet, if you go to Scotland you will see colonial statues and streets named for enslavers.

Also, the casting of actor Sophie Okenedo as Queen Margaret in season two of the BBC's The Hollow Crownin 2016received racist backlash. The scandal known as #PineappleGate in the Sanditon fandom is also worth a look, as well as criticisms of having Black characters in the Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Persuasion. Racism amid wider period drama discourse is not an anomaly, and conversations around race and Bridgerton do not come divorced from a wider social context within period drama fandom.

In her journal article 'Notes on a Scandal' on racism and social media in the Sanditon fandom, journalist Amanda-Rae Prescott writes

"Bridgerton's premiere ... on Christmas Day 2020 changed the media environment and also revealed new divisions in Austen and Austen-adjacent spaces. The promo photos of Regé-Jean Page as Simon, Golda Rousheuvel as Queen Charlotte, and the other Black supporting actors quickly resulted in the "historical accuracy means no BlPOC actors in traditionally white roles" racists rushing to trash the series. [...] Bridgerton's depictions of sex and the rejection of key aesthetics of previous Austen adaptations also made the show a target for white period drama traditionalists. Bridgerton fans in Austen and Austen-adjacent spaces were forced to either make separate spaces for discussion of the series or join existing Bridgerton fandom spaces."

These wider criticisms from period drama racists - in some cases they are out and out white supremacists - come separate from my criticisms and those of other people on the white-centring of interracial relationships in the Netflix programme and wider industry. Whilst it is important to depict interracial relationships on screen, why are they mostly white-centring? As I wonder Britain today, the country I know appears even more Mixed-Race than when I was a child. Now, I see more Black and Brown people from ethnic minority groups in my community and others with mixed families.

Further note:

The Blindian Project - which was constructed to build solidarity between Black and Brown communities, and normalise interracial Black and Brown relationships - is an indicator of what need to see more of on our TV screens.

With interracial relationships on television screens still necessitating the participation of a white person, it reminds us that as John Hartigan Jr writes in : "... white people are 'racially interested and motivated'." It tells us whiteness must be discussed always, even in the politics of love on and off screen. With the breadth of romance on screen still necessitating white people, there is a problem that in a dominant culture of white supremacy it says: 'Black and Brown people are incapable of love, unless when a white person is present, or if this text is a 'race show' or 'race film'.

The late scholar-feminist bell hooks in her 1994 book Outlaw Culturedescribed love "as a practice of freedom." In my 2021 journal article ' National Trust in Jane Austen's Empire of Sugar' , I discuss how the relationship between Sanditon's Georgiana Lambe and Otis Molyneux interrupts nineteenth century white patriarchal inheritance cultures known as primogeniture. For Bridgerton to 'include 'Black and Brown characters into this regency world without explicitly talking about race, is irresponsible - all while there are references to race and coloniality throughout.

Conclusions

Like in our critiques of white supremacy in other spaces- such as education and criminal justice - film, television, and media are other branches of this racist tree that holds sway on the ability for white people to see Black and Brown people as full humans. And white backlash to the last season of This is Usreminds us that many white people still do not see Black people as human - so not only do the stories we tell matter, but also how they are framed.

Adopted by white parents Jack and Rebecca Pearson, and growing up with his white siblings Kate and Kevin, and other white people - also going to a white private school - it would have been all too easy to have given Randall a white spouse. Meanwhile, Netflix series Lupin was criticised for its misogynoir via its exclusion of Black women. In its exclusion of leading Black women characters, Bridgerton, through its over-representation of white people and lack of leading Black women - is implicated in misogynoir.

By highlighting Bridgerton as part of an industry standard of white-centred romance, we can see how the possibility of being loved is not exempt from the race discussion. Few shows attract over 600m views in their first month, so it has a responsibility not to cause harm. Ultimately, it has recentred love-worthiness as white tied to a colonial script reproduced in Hollywood, and that is terrifying.

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The 'Whites' Who Loved Me: Interracial Romance, Hollywood, and Bridgerton's "Post-Racial" Fantasies

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Seeing as we have now had two seasons of Bridgerton, I believe that is sufficient time to comment on how it follows in the footsteps of other Shondaland productions - including the ABC series as it is a textbook example of the white-centring interracial relationships on prime time television.

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WW2 'Brown Babies': A little-known part of British 20th Century history - BBC World Service podcast

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'Living while Black' (Guilaine Kinouani, 2021)

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'Living while Black' (Guilaine Kinouani, 2021)

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'Revelatory, necessary and brilliant' Candice Carty-Williams | 'A must read' Robin DiAngelo | 'A powerful wake-up call' Patrick Vernon | 'An incisive and important book that will change the way you think' Nikesh Shukla | 'An unmissable read for everyone' | 'Honest, razor-sharp, f ascinating and impressive' The Psychologist | 'Groundbreaking' Bad Form

For the past 15 years, radical psychologist and therapist Guilaine Kinouani has helped hundreds of Black people to protect their mental and physical health from the harm of white supremacy. In this timely book, she brings together powerful case studies, eye-opening research and effective coping techniques from her anti-racist academy and award-nominated blog, Race Reflections, helping readers to:

- set psychological boundaries and process trauma
- protect children from racism
- handle difficult race-based conversations
- understand the complexities of 'Black love'
- find connection, beauty and joy in the world

Living While Black empowers you to adopt radical self-care tools that improve day-to-day wellness. It teaches you how to thrive not just survive and find hope - or even joy - in the face of racial adversity. It is also an essential anti-racist resource for allies who want to do better.

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Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma

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'Revelatory, necessary and brilliant' Candice Carty-Williams | 'A must read' Robin DiAngelo | 'A powerful wake-up call' Patrick Vernon | 'An incisive and important book that will change the way you think' Nikesh Shukla | 'An unmissable read for everyone' | 'Honest, razor-sharp, f ascinating and impressive' The Psychologist | 'Groundbreaking' Bad Form For the past 15 years, radical psychologist and therapist Guilaine Kinouani has helped hundreds of Black people to protect their mental and physical health from the harm of white supremacy.

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White Yardie is Jamaican (Unapologetic, Channel 4)

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White Yardie is Jamaican (Unapologetic, Channel 4)

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Jamaican is not a race ( culture and race are not the same )

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The European Tribe is the first book of essays by Caryl Phillips, published in 1987 (in the UK by Faber and Faber and in the US by Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Characterised by Andrea Lee in The New York Times as "part travelogue, part cri de coeur", the collection chronicles the author's journey through multiracial Europe of the 1980s, "guided by a moral compass rather than a map" and "seeking personal definition within the parameters of growing up black in Europe". Maya Jaggi of The Guardian has called it "a coolly indignant dissection of the 'sickness in Europe's soul'".

According to a review in The Caribbean Writer, "The topics of race, nationality and culture have loomed large in the consciousness of 20th century individuals, and they continue to attract literary writers of diverse sensibilities. Rarely, however, has the black writer attempted to grapple with such impassioned issues among Europeans; it is an enticing subject, for which Mr. Phillips would appear to be exceptionally equipped." Charles R. Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote:

"Novelist Caryl Phillips' brief, eye-opening book, "The European Tribe," is one black man's answer to Tocqueville's classic [Democracy in America], and may well become a classic of cultural exploration itself. ...Phillips' true theme in his travels everywhere is the global disenfranchisement of black people at a time when 'America has conquered Europe economically, politically, and culturally.' In 1831, Tocqueville wrote of Americans: 'The taste for superiority crops up everywhere.' A century and a half later, Phillips sees Europe in decline, America, 'the Frankenstein that Europe created risen from the slab,' and right-wing extremism becoming increasingly the solution to unemployment, hopelessness, and disillusionment in Western Europe." "The European Tribe," comprised partly of personal odyssey, partly of political indictment, is too important a book to be ignored.

The European Tribe was awarded the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize in 1987.

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The European Tribe is the first book of essays by Caryl Phillips, published in 1987 (in the UK by Faber and Faber and in the US by Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

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Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is 80 per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

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Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is 80 per cent Muslim.

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'Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole' (Herself)

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'Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole' (Herself)

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations.

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'Mixed-Race Identity Has Plurality: On Being Irish, Jamaican, and Black' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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'Mixed-Race Identity Has Plurality: On Being Irish, Jamaican, and Black' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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Mixed-Race Identity Has Plurality: On Being Irish, Jamaican, and Black

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Mixed-Race Identity Has Plurality: On Being Irish, Jamaican, and Black. It wasn't until I was twenty years old that I found out I come from a very recent Mixed-Race background - when my father told me my....

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'Brown Skin Girl' from 'Black is King' by Beyoncé (2020)

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'Brown Skin Girl' from 'Black is King' by Beyoncé (2020)

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Beyoncé, Blue Ivy, SAINt JHN, WizKid - BROWN SKIN GIRL (Official Video)

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'Britain's Brown Babies': The Stories of Children Born to Black GIs and White Women in the Second World War' by Lucy Bland (2019)

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'Britain's Brown Babies': The Stories of Children Born to Black GIs and White Women in the Second World War' by Lucy Bland (2019)

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This book recounts a little-known history of the estimated 2,000 babies born to black GIs and white British women in the second world war. The African-American press named these children 'brown babies'; the British called them 'half-castes'. Black GIs, in this segregated army, were forbidden to marry their white girl-friends. Nearly half of the children were given up to children's homes but few were adopted, thought 'too hard to place'. There has been minimal study of these children and the difficulties they faced, such as racism in a (then) very white Britain, lack of family or a clear identity. The book will present the stories of over fifty of these children, their stories contextualised in terms of government policy and attitudes of the time. Accessibly written, with stories both heart-breaking and uplifting, the book is illustrated throughout with photographs.

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Britain's 'brown Babies': The Stories of Children Born to Black GIs and White Women in the Second World War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This book recounts a little-known history of the estimated 2,000 babies born to black GIs and white British women in the second world war. The African-American press named these children 'brown babies'; the British called them 'half-castes'. Black GIs, in this segregated army, were forbidden to marry their white girl-friends.

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'The Social Adjustment of Chinese Immigrants in Liverpool' by Maurice Broady (1955)

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'The Social Adjustment of Chinese Immigrants in Liverpool' by Maurice Broady (1955)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
THE SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS IN LIVERPOOL

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THE SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS IN LIVERPOOL | Maurice Broody | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'The Tragic Stories of the 1919 Race Riots | Alt History - BBC (Gaika, 2019)

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'The Tragic Stories of the 1919 Race Riots | Alt History - BBC (Gaika, 2019)

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The tragic stories of the 1919 race riots | Alt History - BBC

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'Walter Tull, (1888-1918), Officer, Footballer: All the Guns in France Couldn't Wake Me' by Phil Vasili (2009)

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'Walter Tull, (1888-1918), Officer, Footballer: All the Guns in France Couldn't Wake Me' by Phil Vasili (2009)

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Walter Tull, (1888-1918), Officer, Footballer: All the Guns in France Couldn't Wake Me

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Buy Walter Tull, (1888-1918), Officer, Footballer: All the Guns in France Couldn't Wake Me by Vasili, Phil (ISBN: 9780956395405) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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‘How Can I be Too High in Rank to Dine with the Servants, but Too Low to Dine with My Family?’: Intersectionality and Postfeminism in Amma Asante's Belle' by Jessica Taylor (2018)

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A vital re-examination of a shared history, published to accompany the landmark BBC Two series.

In Black and British, award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga offers readers a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.

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'A Lady of York: Migration, Ethnicity, and Identity in Roman Britain' by Leach, Eckardt, and colleagues (2010)

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Modern methods of analysis applied to cemeteries have often been used in our pages to suggest generalities about mobility and diet. But these same techniques applied to a single individual, together with the grave goods and burial rite, can open a special kind of personal window on the past. Here, the authors of a multidisciplinary project use a combination of scientific techniques to illuminate Roman York, and later Roman history in general, with their image of a glamorous mixed-race woman, in touch with Africa, Christianity, Rome and Yorkshire.

Keywords: York, Roman, burial, isotope analysis, ancestry, rank, ivory, mortuary theory

Epigraphy is a particularly useful source of evidence for the diversity of the Roman world, as demonstrated by Birley (1979) and Noy (2000). Inscriptions from York attest to the presence of Gauls, Italians and a possible Egyptian at York, although much of the epigraphic evidence is significantly earlier than the burial discussed here (Ottaway 2004). Artefactual evidence also suggests that 'the Roman north was a casmopolitan place with a great mixing of people from all over the empire' (Cool 2002: 42). For example, Swan (1992) argued for the presence of North Africans in York on the basis of braziers and other vessels typical of North African food-ways but made in local fabrics.

Previous studies of the physical remains of the people of Eboracum (Buxton 1935; Warwick 1968) suggested that the males exhibited heterogeneous craniomorphometric traits suggesting migration from a variety of geographic locales. However, both argued that the female population of Roman York was indigenous. In their view, the diversity noted in the female crania represented genetic admixture between local women and migrant males (Warwick 1968: 155). While the methods and ideological context of some early craniometric studies were suspect (Gould 1992), these are questions worthy of study, especially given advances in archaeological and forensic science in recent years. Such techniques can be combined fruitfully with recent theoretical approaches to the diversity of the Roman Empire (e.g. Mattingly 2006), in particular the lived reality of mixed communities. Diaspora theory (Lilley 2004; Cohen 2008) may provide a useful theoretical tool, as it examines how identities are created and maintained in communities dispersed amongst other peoples.

Forensic ancestry assessment and isotope analysis are relatively new techniques in archaeology but, despite the inevitable methodological issues, both have the potential to address questions of diversity, mobility and identity that are central to our understanding of the Roman Empire. A new research project at the University of Reading, UK, has begun to address these questions by examining skeletons from Roman urban centres such as Gloucester, York and Winchester, with initial results suggesting that up to 20 per cent of the sample can be defined as 'non-local' in the sense of coming from elsewhere in Britannia, with some individuals originating from elsewhere in the Empire (Chenery et al. 2009; Eckardt et al. 2009; Leach et al. 2009).

In some case studies, the integration of different kinds of evidence applied to a single individual allows us to enlarge interpretation, confront complexity and create biographical narratives (e.g. Wilkie 2003). To illustrate the potential of this approach, we have chosen to focus on one individual from Roman York - a female found with ivory bangles in a stone coffin at Sycamore Terrace, known as ST60.

In August 1901, a stone coffin was discovered near Sycamore Terrace, Bootham (Boynton 1902: 6), north of the River Ouse and south-west of the legionary fortress (Figure 1; RCHM Ebvracvm 1962; Ottaway 2004). The coffin was aligned almost north-south, with the head to the north (Boynton 1902: 104), and the skeleton was supine, undisturbed and in a good state of preservation. Unfortunately, the exact location of the funerary artefacts was never published. The rich array of unusual grave goods found in the coffin has recently been reviewed by Cool (2006; see Figure 2). All of the objects are dated to the second half of the fourth century and relate to personal appearance and display. They include jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, pendants and beads. Also round were a blue glass jug, likely to have contained cosmetics or perfumes, and a glass mirror.

The wealth of the 'ivory bangle lady' is evident not only in the stone coffin and the quality and quantity of objects, but also in their diverse, sometimes exotic provenances (Allason-Jones 1996: 20; Cool 2006: 156). This includes the use of ivory, a rare material in Roman Britain (McGregor 1985: 38-9), although it occurred in the nearby cemetery discovered during the construction of the railway station in the 1870s (Richmond 1946: 79, Figures 12-14; RCHM Ebvracvm 1962: 82). While the elephant symbolised Africa in Roman thinking and art (Toynbee 1973: 50-54), it is currently hot possible to distinguish between African and Asian elephant ivory, and no such distinction was made in antiquity (cf. Cutler 1993: 174-5). By contrast, jet is a relatively local commodity, perhaps sourced from Whitby in North Yorkshire although other sources are now known (Allason- Jones 2002). Jet became popular in the third and fourth centuries, and may have had religious significance, being associated with the cult of Bacchus and with Christianity (Allason-Jones 1996: 17).

The most famous object from this burial is a rectangular fragmentary openwork mount of bone, possibly from an unrecorded wooden casket. It reads: S[OR]OR AVE VIVAS IN DEO, or 'Hail, sister, may you live in God' (RIB II.3: no. 2441.11). The inscription suggests Christian sentiments, but the obvious concern with personal appearance and the rich grave goods are at odds with current assumptions about early Christian burials (Toynbee 1968: 191; Mawer 1995: 87; Cool 2006: 156-7).

In 1901, little attention was given to the skeletal remains interred within the coffin (Boynton 1902; RCHM Ebvracvm 1962: 73). A re-assessment of ST60 showed that the skeleton is of a young female, aged between 18-23 years. Her height was calculated by means of regression formulae based on the correlation of limb-bone length to stature (Trotter 1970), suggesting a height of 5'1" (range: 5'0"-5'2" or 152-160cm) based on the maximum length of the femur (414mm). This makes her only slightly shorter than the average female from Roman Britain, where the average stature has been estimated at 5'2" (Roberts & Cox 2003: 142). The skeleton was gracile and did not exhibit pronounced muscle markings that would have suggested a strenuous lifestyle (Hawkey & Merbs 1995). There was no evidence of trauma, pathology or childhood stress, and no apparent cause of death.

While some early craniometric studies were tainted by racism (Gould 1992; Arnold 2006: 15-19, Pl. 1; Gosden 2006), ancestry assessment is today an established method in forensic anthropology and offers valuable additional information on the identity of an individual. Ancestry assessment methods that evaluate cranial and facial morphology (Bass 1995) traditionally use simplified categories such as 'mixed race', 'black' and 'white', but it is understood that skeletal assessment does not give information about skin colour, and that discretely defined racial groups do not exist (Brace 1995; AAPA 1996). Instead, morphological and metrical assessments of the skull tell us about phenotypical variation of humans over geographic areas (Brace 1995; AAPA 1996).

The remains of the 'ivory bangle lady' were analysed using standard methods for the assessment of ancestry in forensic anthropology (see Bass 1995; Byers 2005). During the osteological analysis it was noted that the facial characteristics of this female exhibited a mix of 'black' and 'white' ancestral traits (Figure 3). The skull exhibited a low, wide and broad nasal ridge and wide inter-orbital breadth suggestive of 'black' ancestry, while the nasal spine and nasal border demonstrated 'white' characteristics. The shape of the nasal aperture was inconclusive. Although some post-mortem damage had occurred, the cranium was complete enough to perform a craniometric analysis, which quantifies the characteristics on an objective scale in an attempt to further define the ancestral identity of an individual. Standard craniometric measurements were taken (Howells 1973, 1995; Bass 1995; Byers 2005; Jantz & Owsley 2005) and were compared to Howells' worldwide reference populations and the forensic data bank, using FORDISC 3.0 discriminant functions software (Jantz & Owsley 2005). When using these multivariate analyses, similarity to a reference population does not indicate a specific identity, but rather a physical affinity of the unknown cranium to the closest population within the reference collection. It should be noted that this reference collection comprises only early modern populations, and that the recording of craniometric data of Roman-period skeletons from Britain and the Mediterranean is clearly a research priority (Leach et al. 2009).

The degree of similarity of the unknown cranium to the populations included in Howells' samples is provided by the Mahalanobis Distance (MD), a value best expressing the overall similarity of the test cranium to the reference populations (Table 1; Figure 4). The closer the MD score is to 0, the more similar the unknown cranium is to the reference group. In the current study, scores over 10 were not considered significant. FORDISC 3.0 also provides calculations of 'typicality' and 'posterior' statistical probabilities; however, as the latter assume that the test cranium must belong to one of the reference populations, only the former are appropriate for the current investigation. Typicality probabilities express the likelihood of a cranium belonging to a particular group, based on its distance from that group, and the variability of all the populations tested (Jantz & Owsley 2005). They are represented as values from 0 to 1; the higher the number, the more similar are the values of the test cranium to the mean of the reference population. Typicality probabilities of less than 0.05 would indicate no affinity to the reference population (Jantz & Owsley 2005), whereas scores greater than 0.7 would suggest a strong association with the group.

The results of the craniometric multivariate analysis of ST60 suggest greatest affinity with two reference populations of African-American females, particularly BF19 which comprises individuals from the nineteenth-century Terry and Hamann-Todd collections (Table 1; Figure 4). The MD is under 10 at 8.3 and the typicality probability is just below 0.7 at 0.6 (Table 1). It should be stressed that similarity to African-American reference populations does not indicate a specific identity or regional origin, but rather a physical affinity to the closest population within the reference collection. The African-American populations in Howell's database are characterised by a much larger element of genetic admixture than the Sub-Saharan African groups and it is likely that ST60's affinity to the African-Americans is also the result of mixed ancestry. The suggestion of mixed ancestry for ST60 is also supported by the results of the anthroposcopic assessment of morphological traits, which gave both 'white' and 'black' traits. The fact that ST60 shows only little or no affinity to any of the 'white' populations in Howell's database further underlines her unusual ancestry within the north-west European context. Roman North Africa is well known for its mixed populations (e.g. Mattingly & Hitchner 1995: 171-4) reflecting Phoenician, Berber and generally Mediterranean influences, and individuals from Roman North Africa are therefore more likely to display mixed rather than strongly Sub-Saharan features.

Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis

Strontium and oxygen isotopes are incorporated into the skeletal tissues of humans and animals through the food and drink they ingested and allow for the characterisation of the places where individuals resided at the time of tissue formation in terms of geology (strontium) and climate (oxygen) (Longinelli 1984; White et al. 1998; Bentley 2006; Daux et al. 2008). For ST60, tooth enamel of a second premolar (age of formation ~3-6 years, see Smith 1991) was prepared for strontium and phosphate oxygen isotope analysis following the methods described in Evans et al. (2006).

The results (Table 2) can be put in the context of a large (n = 50) set of human oxygen and strontium isotope data from other Roman burials in York (Leach et al. 2009). Oxygen isotope ratios can also be compared with the isotope composition of modern UK groundwater which is relatively well known (Darling et al. 2003). Although palaeoclimate evidence indicates that the Roman period in Britain was somewhat warmer than today (Dark 2000: 19-28), recent work by Daux et al. (2005) suggests that oxygen isotope ratios of skeletal phosphate ([[delta].sup.18][O.sub.p]) are either not sensitive to minor variations in surface temperature, or that temperature-induced changes are offset by other climatic factors. In addition, samples of ground(rather than surface) water usually preserve long-term isotope signatures of precipitation which should be buffered against smaller climate fluctuations (Darling et al. 2003; Darling 2004). We therefore reason that these modern water data are valid comparisons for our archaeological samples, at least within the errors inherent in the analysis and conversion of phosphate oxygen to drinking water values (see Daux et al. 2008; Chenery et al. 2009). We chose to calculate estimated drinking water values ([[delta].sup.18][O.sub.dw]) from the [[delta].sup.18][O.sub.p] data using the equation of Levinson et al. (1987), as we have found that this formula, applied with the necessary method bias correction of 1.4 (see Chenery 2005), provides the best fit for expected drinking water values for locals from archaeological sites across the UK (Chenery et al. 2009).

Topographically York sits centrally in the Vale of York, in east central England. The geology of the Vale of York is dominated by Permo-Triassic sandstones and Triassic mudstones, which extend north-south from Hartlepool to Nottingham. Along the east side of the vale, within 30km of York in the Yorkshire Wolds, is Cretaceous Chalk. The western margin of the vale is composed of Permian Magnesian Limestone and further to the west are Carboniferous Millstone Grit and Coal Measures. A recent study of Roman Catterick produced a mean bio-accessible strontium value of 0.70942 [+ or -] 0.00126 (2s), n = 13 for plants growing within the Vale of York around Catterick (Chenery 2009). The significance of this study is that the geology (bedrock, glacial and alluvial deposits) in the Catterick area is an extension of that found around York. We expect similar [sup.87]Sr/[sup.86]Sr for the same geologic terrain in both locations and therefore that strontium isotope values between 0.7082 and 0.7107 are consistent with an upbringing in York. The reader needs to be aware, however, that Permo-Triassic strata are also found extensively throughout England and that these values are therefore not overly specific for any one location. The Vale of York is likely to have been the major source for grain and other foodstuffs consumed in York although it has to be acknowledged that military and urban sites such as York would have received food supplies not just from their immediate hinterland, but potentially from considerable distances (Stallibrass & Thomas 2008).

The strontium isotope ratio for ST60 is squarely within the range defined for the York area (Figure 5). However, at 0.7094 it is also very close to the [sup.87]Sr/[sup.86]Sr of modern seawater (0.7092) and would therefore also be consistent with a number of other places in the Roman world, including most Mesozoic terrains as well as coastal areas where marine strontium from seaspray or precipitation has significant input to the local biosphere and may depress the isotopic signal even of older, more radiogenic rocks (Capo et al. 1998; Montgomery et al. 2003, 2007).

At -4.5 [per thousand], ST60's [[delta].sup.18][O.sub.dw] ratio plots at the very high end of the British drinking water range. This result makes it extremely unlikely that she spent her childhood in the York area, where some of the most negative freshwater values in the UK are found (Darling et al. 2003; Figure 5). In fact, drinking water values ~> -6 [per thousand] have been reported only from the extreme west of Britain, the Scottish Isles, western Wales and the Isle of Man as well as modern Devon and Cornwall (Darling et al. 2003)--all places outside, or on the very periphery of, Roman control over Britain. Alternatively, such drinking water values are also consistent with various other areas in Western Europe (extreme western France and the Iberian Peninsula) and along the Mediterranean coast, both on the European and North African side (Longinelli & Selmo 2003; Lykoudis & Argiriou 2007; IAEA/WISER 2008: IDW Long-Term annual average [sup.18]O map of Europe). While we are lacking comparative human and strontium biosphere data from most of these areas, it is not possible to further constrain potential regions of origin. In summary, the oxygen and strontium isotope evidence suggests that ST60 spent her childhood either in the west of Britain or, perhaps more likely, in compatible, possibly coastal, areas of Western Europe and the Mediterranean.

All evidence (unusual burial rite, unusual ancestry, strontium and oxygen isotope data) taken together can make a convincing case for an incomer to Roman York who was of high status. The 'ivory bangle lady' was buried with rich grave goods made from both local and exotic materials. While the jet bracelets reflect her access to local trade networks, the ivory bangles may have acted as a reminder of her possible homeland, even if only in terms of the raw material rather than the place of production (McGregor 1985: 38-9). While there is still some debate about her religious beliefs, her oxygen isotope signature makes it unlikely that she grew up in York. Rather, it places her at the western edge of Britain or, perhaps more likely, an area of similar 'warm' climate on the Continent. Her strontium isotope value is not distinctive but would support an upbringing in proximity to the coast. The craniomorphometric analysis suggests that she may have been of 'mixed race' ancestry. In cosmopolitan Eboracurn, which had been home to Severus and his troops nearly 200 years earlier, perhaps her appearance was not that unusual. A similar case of a high status woman buried in a lead sarcophagus and with jet artefacts, for whom isotope analyses indicated non-British origins, is known from fourth-century Roman London (Thomas 1999; Montgomery 2002).

This paper has stressed the ambiguous information emerging from the various scientific techniques, a result that may reflect the complexities of identities in the past as well as the early state of the methodologies. The difficulties of understanding 'race' can be further explored through a reconstruction image. The scene (Figure 6) shows the funeral of the woman, depicting the recorded grave goods being placed in the coffin by various mourners. In representing these individuals we have made a deliberate choice to represent diversity in terms of age, gender and ethnic origin. For the 'ivory bangle lady' herself, the artist, Aaron Watson, used shading across her face to highlight the difficulties of reconstructing skin colour and hair style, forcing us to look again, both at her and out preconceptions.

The story of the 'ivory bangle lady' should also be viewed in the context of wider research carried out on 45 individuals from Roman York (Leach et al. 2009), which has raised a number of methodological and theoretical points. Methodologically, the use of forensic anthropology, FORDISC 3.0 and isotopic analysis is relatively new in Roman archaeology (Montgomery 2002; Budd et al. 2004: 134; Evans et al. 2006), but clearly has considerable potential. It is important to note that suggested places of origin are based on known information, but other locations with similar climate and geology cannot be ruled out. For isotopic analysis, there is a need for more comparative material, in particular from mainland Europe, North Africa and the Near East, while osteological reference collections from more diverse archaeological contexts are to be desired for the future development of programmes such as FORDISC.

On a theoretical level, this work forces us to address how archaeologists identify and interpret incomers. While the presence of racism in antiquity can be debated (Isaac 2004, 2006), there is no doubt that racist views have tainted the ways in which human remains have been studied in the past (Gosden 2006). While we have used the term 'mixed race' as shorthand throughout this paper, it is much more helpful to think in terms of population variability within a historically specific context. The scientific analysis of the human remains can be contrasted fruitfully with burial rite and finds to reveal the complexities of diaspora communities. It is not always obvious from the grave goods who is an immigrant and who is a local adopting new practices, just as there is no simple relationship between origin, status, health and diet (Evans et al. 2006; Eckardt et al. 2009). Only a combination of methods can unravel these complex patterns, and begin to distinguish between first and second generation migrants. The case of the 'ivory bangle lady' contradicts assumptions that may derive from more recent historical experience, namely that immigrants are low status and male, and that African individuals are likely to have been slaves. Instead, it is clear that both women and children moved across the Empire, often associated with the military (James 2001: 80). This suggestion of female mobility is echoed in other recent studies at Portus, Rome's harbour city (Prowse et al. 2007) and in Raetia (Schweissing & Grupe 2003).

The suggestion that ancestry assessment is racist, or that scientific techniques result in biological determinism or reductivism, is misguided. The identification of descent and geographical origin says nothing about the historically specific social identities of these individuals. The archaeological evidence can reveal information about the 'ivory bangle lady's' status, gender and religious beliefs, but it can only truly do so when combined with the osteological and isotopic data. Such an integrated approach can reveal the complexities and interplay of biological and social identities, and provide a much richer picture of the Roman past.

This paper is one of the results of a 2-year project funded by the AHRC 'Diasporas, migration and identities' programme. We would also like to thank Andrew Morrison, Katherine Bearcock and Dave Evans (Yorkshire Museum) as well as Robert Kruszynski and Margaret Clegg (Natural History Museum) for access to the collections, and Jane Evans (NIGL) for her help and support. Edeltraud Aspoeck produced the location map and Aaron Watson the reconstruction image. Margaret Mathews provided help with the other illustrations. Special thanks are due to Roberta Gilchrist and Mike Fulford, who commented on the paper and who supported the project throughout.

Received: 8 March 2009; Revised: 29 July 2009; Accepted: 24 August 2009

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--1995. Who's who in skulls: ethnic identification of crania from measurements populations (Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University 82). Cambridge (MA): Peabody Museum.

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S. Leach, (1) H. Eckardt (1), C. Chenery (1,2), G. Muldner (1) & M. Lewis (1)

(1) Department of Archaeology, School of Human and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AB, UK

(2) NERC Isotope Geoscience Laboratory, British Geological Survey, Kingsley Dunham Centre, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK

Table 1. FORDISC 3.0 results for 'The ivory bangle lady' craniometrics.

Reference population                    Typicality probabilities
(in order of closest      Mahalanobis
affinity to the            distance         Typ F     Typ Chi
test cranium)

Black American females
  19th century (BF19)         8.3           0.607     0.504
Black American females
  20th century (BF20)        12.7           0.277     0.177
White American females
  19th century (WF19)        14.5           0.198     0.106

Reference population      Typicality probabilities
(in order of closest
affinity to the                    Typ R
test cranium)

Black American females
  19th century (BF19)          0.579 (32/76)
Black American females
  20th century (BF20)          0.195 (66/82)
White American females
  19th century (WF19)          0.171 (63/76)

Table 2. Oxygen (phosphate (p) and drinking water (dw)) and strontium
isotope data of tooth enamel for ST60.

            [d.sup.18][Op.sub.VSMOW]   [d.sup.18][Odw.sub.VSMOW]
Sample          ([per thousand])           ([per thousand])

YST-60-P2      +18.7 [+ or -] 0.1          -4.6 [+ or -] 0.3

            [d.sup.18][Op.sub.VSMOW]   Sr ppm   [sup.87]Sr/[sup.86]Sr
Sample          ([per thousand])

YST-60-P2      +18.7 [+ or -] 0.1       102            0.70943

Source Citation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A lady of York: migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain

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Modern methods of analysis applied to cemeteries have often been used in our pages to suggest generalities about mobility and diet. But these same techniques applied to a single individual, together with the grave goods and burial rite, can open a special kind of personal window on the past.

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'Roman Britain: Ivory Bangle Lady' (2019)

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'Roman Britain: Ivory Bangle Lady' (2019)

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The buried remains of a woman with African ancestry from Roman York were discovered in Sycamore Terrace, York, in 1901.

The skull and teeth of her skeleton, which have been stored in Yorkshire Museum, were recently examined by scientists at the University of Reading.

Invasion, conquest and migration

Migration to Britain in the first century was part of the expansion of the Roman Empire and the outcome of colonial and imperial processes. The Roman Empire grew from the city of Rome to encompass Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Britain was first invaded by Caesar in 55/54 BC and then conquered in 43 AD by the Emperor Claudius.

The reasons for the Roman Empire's expansion are much debated. There was obvious economic gain to be had, and military security is often given as a reason for the Empire's wars, but competition for military honours and internal politics also played an important part in growth. Emperor Claudius, for example, was initially perceived as weak and tried to increase his prestige by conquering Britain.

There were not enough citizens of Rome or even Italy to control the whole Roman Empire, but there were many people in the provinces that had accepted Roman rule. Inscriptions carved into stone to commemorate the dead on tombs, or to record who set up an altar to the gods, show that people came not only from Italy, but also from Gaul, North Africa and Spain; in the later Roman period new troops were recruited from Germany and even from beyond the frontiers of the Empire. The Roman conquest of Britain led to the migration of many soldiers and administrators, merchants and also women and children.

It is difficult to estimate total numbers of people who came to Britain during the era of Roman control: troop movements are quite well-documented but there are no surviving records of how many civilians journeyed to the province. Stone inscriptions were only erected by a few wealthy individuals who had adopted Roman ways of doing things; from the whole of Britain only about 2,500 stone inscriptions survive. The analysis of skeletons offers archaeologists an opportunity to identify the origin of many more individuals by studying skull shape as well as isotope and DNA signatures (more on this below). Evidence suggests that, over time, locals and incomers intermarried, and that the populations in major urban and military sites were very diverse.

Due to the relative lack of written sources for the Roman period, we often do not know why individuals came to Britain. Some migration was voluntary, to take advantage of opportunities in a new Roman province, but there was also forced migration, for example, of slaves. We know even less about how the local population responded to incomers; while there were revolts against Roman rule there is also much evidence that suggests integration. Many of the incomers occupied powerful positions, and their practices and beliefs probably influenced the lives of local peoples.

Digging up migration history: The Ivory Bangle Lady

One way we can learn about early migration history is through the work of archaeologists, who have studied human remains to learn more about the people of Roman Britain. For example, the grave of a young woman (see main source above) was discovered in 1901 in Sycamore Terrace York; she was buried in a stone sarcophagus with very rich grave goods (objects placed into a burial for the afterlife, or as an offering to the dead) in the later 4th century. The objects placed into her grave included bracelets made from local jet and more exotic ones made of ivory. A short inscription on a bone mount, that once probably decorated a box, suggests that this high status young woman was a Christian as it says 'Hail, sister, may you live in God'. Recently, the skull and teeth of her skeleton, which have been stored in Yorkshire Museum, were examined by scientists at the University of Reading.

The shape of her skull suggests that she had North African ancestry; this is not very surprising in a place like York, where inscriptions and written sources mention Africans. People from Africa who came to Britain include the Emperor Septimius Severus, who was born in what is Now Libya and ruled from AD 193-211.

Archaeological scientists can also analyse the chemical signatures preserved in human teeth. The ratios of stable isotopes such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and strontium in human teeth can provide information about ancient diet and origin. Oxygen and strontium signatures vary depending on the climate and underlying geology of the area where an individual grew up. Individuals from hot, coastal, areas will have a different signature to those who grew up in cooler areas of continental Europe. However, it is important to stress that isotope analysis is better at excluding local origin (i.e. an individual's signature is very different from the local signatures) than pinpointing a specific area of origin (i.e. many areas have similar isotope signatures).

Studies of the remains of the Ivory Bangle Lady suggest that she was born and brought up in the south of Britain, or the continent, rather than in Africa. Archaeologists can interpret this finding in a number of ways. For example, it is possible that one parent of the Ivory Bangle Lady was from North Africa, but that she grew up in a different part of the Empire. Other skeletons from York and other Romano-British towns show that some incomers (as identified by their isotopic signatures) look almost like locals in terms of their burial rites and grave goods, while some archaeologically very exotic burials are in fact those of people born locally. Why could this be? We need to consider the fact that the dead do not bury themselves. Grave goods and burial rites might be shaped by parents or partners who had a different geographical origin to the deceased. A few hundred skeletons from the Roman period have now been studied by scientists using what is a very expensive technique, and the results show high levels of mobility and migration - up to 30% in some towns. However, the sample study is biased as it examines mostly unusual and exotic burials, so actual migration levels were likely much lower. A different picture of movement would probably emerge if countryside burials for the same period were sampled.

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Our Migration Story: The Making of Britain

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The buried remains of a woman with African ancestry from Roman York were discovered in Sycamore Terrace, York, in 1901. The skull and teeth of her skeleton, which have been stored in Yorkshire Museum, were recently examined by scientists at the University of Reading.

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'Alt History: Black British History We're Not Taught in Schools'  by David Olusoga (2019)

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'Alt History: Black British History We're Not Taught in Schools'  by David Olusoga (2019)

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Alt History: Black British History We’re Not Taught in Schools - BBC Stories

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'Does 'race' matter? A Study of 'Mixed-Race Siblings' Identification' Miri Song (2010)

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'Does 'race' matter? A Study of 'Mixed-Race Siblings' Identification' Miri Song (2010)

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Does 'race' matter? A study of 'mixed race' siblings' identifications

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Does 'race' matter? A study of 'mixed race' siblings' identifications | Miri Song | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Exploring 'Mixed-Race' Identities in Scotland Through a Familial Lens' by Megxi Pang (2018)

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'Exploring 'Mixed-Race' Identities in Scotland Through a Familial Lens' by Megxi Pang (2018)

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PhD thesis.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Exploring ‘mixed-race’ identities in Scotland through a familial lens - Enlighten: Theses

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This thesis takes ‘mixed-race’ individuals and parents of ‘mixed-race’ children in Scotland
as its subject, exploring the meanings and significance of ‘mixed-race’ and the process by
which ‘mixed-race’ identities are constructed. Contributing to the burgeoning ‘mixed-race’
scholarship in Britain, an…

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'Mixed Blessings' by Zenab Eve Ahmed (2006)

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'Mixed Blessings' by Zenab Eve Ahmed (2006)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ll my life, I've wanted to find depictions of people who look like me; I've searched for stories of those with similar life experiences to mine. My search has been fruitless. As a mixed-race woman, my story remains untold and I hit walls of indifference each time I try to raise the issue. I'm a half south-Asian, half white-English woman, and I know no one who can reflect my story back to me. So what, some of you might say. Stop navel-gazing; get over yourself, you may mutter. It's hard to explain to white people, who take their identity for granted, just how lonely it can feel when you've never met anyone else with your particular experience of ethnicity, let alone read about them or seen them on TV or in the movies.

You - the white majority - take your role models for granted. British Asians have their Rich List and people of African Caribbean origin have their 100 Great Black Britons list. I don't begrudge them their pride in their achievements but what do biracial Britons - who are predicted to become the single largest minority group in the country, overtaking those of Indian origin - have that is comparable? We have nothing - because people like me still remain largely unacknowledged, with debates around race, culture and identity excluding mixed-heritage people. It is almost impossible to find biracial people referred to in government departments or research. It seems, because we don't form a multiracial "movement" that our needs are being wilfully ignored by those in charge. Our numbers have still not reached enough of a "critical mass" to matter, as far as British society is concerned.

When I was growing up, the term "mixed race" hadn't been invented - I was regularly described as half-caste instead. There were certainly no mixed-heritage people in the public eye for me to relate to for inspiration, direction and a greater sense of community. Thankfully, as far as I am concerned, there are many more mixed-parentage people around now. In 2001, according to the census, we numbered 674,000. We are projected to be 950,000 by 2010 and 1.24m in 2020. We are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the UK, and 50% of my minority is aged 16 and under.

But while I welcome the fact that there are more people who look like me populating these isles, it's disturbing to know that mixed-race children have lower levels of attainment at school, have higher rates of exclusion from school, and are said to be 8.5 times more likely to end up in care. Anecdotally, they're said to face peer pressure on the grounds of their mixed heritage from both white and black peers - just as I did in my childhood. As adults, mixed race Britons show the highest rates of lone parenthood and family breakdown and the highest rates of drug treatment. Trevor Phillips has spoken of these being outcomes of identity stripping - children who grow up marooned between communities.

One has to acknowledge that it can be difficult growing up without a fixed identity as black or white. It makes black and white people feel uncomfortable too, because they want to know whose "side" you belong to. Many mixed-race people, in the past, would assign to themselves a black identity. At least then they were part of a large community who had pride in their colour. In the past five years or so, partly due to the US experience, where the mixed-race community is large and politicised, and partly due to the 2001 census, which gave us the opportunity to state who we were, once and for all, there's been a growing sense of biracial Brits wanting to be seen for their authentic selves. We're not black or white but mixed - special and unique.

If biracial adults start to feel proud of being mixed, it follows that mixed kids will gain a greater sense of recognition and higher self-esteem. It's for this reason that I'm putting together a book for kids and young adults on British mixed-race icons. As well as lining up some wonderfully inspiring role models, I'm collating statistics on the mixed population of the UK. But, in turning to the three bodies here dealing with ethnicity, I've drawn a blank. Can they help me put together facts and figures on the history of mixing in the UK, the current position, and its future? I've had answers along the lines of - "oh yes, we do feel we should do something for the mixed race, but we haven't and we don't know where to start, so no, we can't help you."

Society continues to turn a blind eye to us, hoping we'll go away, with our exotic good looks, seeing us all as lost souls caught between two cultures. As long as bureaucrats see us as an anomaly, as at best an add-on to the black community, not only will the reasons for the social disadvantages of being mixed continue to be under-researched and under-resourced, but initiatives like mine, to celebrate the British mixed-race experience, by providing biracial kids with stories of famous role models, will struggle to get off the ground.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ll my life, I've wanted to find depictions of people who look like me; I've searched for stories of those with similar life experiences to mine. My search has been fruitless. As a mixed-race woman, my story remains untold and I hit walls of indifference each time I try to raise the issue.

# data[].attributes.headline
'Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches' by Audre Lorde (1984/2007)

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'Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches' by Audre Lorde (1984/2007)

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Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature.
"[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware."-The New York Times
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published.

These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to "never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . "

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches | Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke | download

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Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches | Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Discourse on Colonialism' by Aimé Césaire (1955/2001)

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'Discourse on Colonialism' by Aimé Césaire (1955/2001)

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"C?saire's essay stands as an important document in the development of third world consciousness--a process in which [he] played a prominent role." --Library Journal This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements and has sold more than 75,000 copies to date. Aim? C?saire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of "progress" and "civilization" upon encountering the "savage," "uncultured," or "primitive." Here, C?saire reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and their relevance, reminding us that "the relationship between consciousness and reality are extremely complex. . . . It is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society." An interview with C?saire by the poet Ren? Depestre is also included.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"C?saire's essay stands as an important document in the development of third world consciousness--a process in which [he] played a prominent role." --Library Journal This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

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Soca Anthology: Dr. Bird - The Mighty Sparrow

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'The Social Value of Voodoo throughout History: Slavery, Migrations and Solidarity' by Rachel Beauvoir Dominique (2010) 

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'The Social Value of Voodoo throughout History: Slavery, Migrations and Solidarity' by Rachel Beauvoir Dominique (2010) 

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Rachel Beauvoir Dominique

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The Social Value of Voodoo throughout History: Slavery, Migrations and Solidarity

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Rachel Beauvoir Dominique How much do you like this book? What's the quality of the file? Download the book for quality assessment What's the quality of the downloaded files? 10.1111/j.1468-0033.2011.01741.x

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'An Epidemic of Negrophobia' by Micah Wright (2015)

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'An Epidemic of Negrophobia' by Micah Wright (2015)

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An Epidemic of Negrophobia | Wright, Micah | download

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'The Dominican Republic and Haiti: one island riven by an unresolved past' by Carrie Gibson (2013)

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'The Dominican Republic and Haiti: one island riven by an unresolved past' by Carrie Gibson (2013)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
hen Haiti was hit by the devastating earthquake in 2010, its island neighbour, the Dominican Republic, rushed to help. It was among the first to send rescue workers, food and water, and also allowed overseas relief agency flights to land at Santo Domingo airport.

But three years on, the goodwill seems to have dissipated and old tensions resurfaced. Just over a week ago the Dominican Republic's highest court ruled to revoke the citizenship of children of illegal Haitian migrant workers - a measure to be applied to anyone born after 1929, and thus affecting not only migrants' children, but their grandchildren and, in some cases, even great-grandchildren.

This is the latest legal attack on the rights of Haitians and their descendants; measures in the past few years have included reclassifying migrant workers as "in transit" rather than legal residents. This meant any child born in the Dominican Republic - which had been one basis for citizenship - also needed one Dominican parent, or one who was a legal resident.

The latest ruling could leave thousands who identify themselves as Dominican but may have had a Haitian ancestor facing an uncertain future - already some 40,000 people have been told they will not receive identity documents. Without official papers, it is impossible to access services such as schools or healthcare. Human rights groups and local NGOs have expressed their concern, and the UN will be reviewing this ruling.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola, where Christopher Columbus established the first European settlement in 1492. Despite their shared history of colonialism and slavery, dictatorship and oppression, a physical and emotional border has long separated them.

The western third of the island was ceded by Spain to France in 1697, and the entire island by 1795. By 1801 the famed former slave General Toussaint Louverture had freed all the slaves on the island and united it under his governorship, though this was short-lived.

In 1808, a group of Dominicans started the war of reconquest to drive out the French and return the eastern part the island to Spanish rule - the west by this point was the republic of Haiti. But by 1822 Haiti had established control of the whole island once more. Indeed, the Dominican Republic gained its independence from Haiti, not Spain, in 1844.

Modern times have been no less complicated. In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo - who wore makeup to lighten his skin and was obsessed with "whitening" the predominantly mixed-race island - ordered the massacre of Haitians in border areas, where many worked cultivating sugar. To determine who was Haitian, soldiers with machetes asked dark-skinned people to say the word "perejil", which is Spanish for parsley. For Creole-speaking Haitians, the "r" sound was difficult to pronounce, and a slip of the tongue became a death sentence. Estimates of the massacre range from 10,000 to 25,000 people killed over the course of a few weeks. And the bitter irony was that Trujillo's grandmother was Haitian.

Today the border continues to inspire fear. Dominican-born children of Haitian descent number around 210,000, in a nation of 10 million. Haitians have long been migrant workers, with many finding seasonal employment in sugar cane fields or other low-wage work, which has become especially crucial in the aftermath of the earthquake. And, like immigrants elsewhere, they are often blamed for taking jobs. At the same time, racialised fears of "Haitianisation" are still regularly voiced by politicians and sections of the media, though many Dominicans have expressed shock and anger over the court's decision. But violence is still directed at Haitians; crimes against them often go unreported; and many continue to live in dire poverty.

Deportations of workers who have no chance to appeal are common - the Dominican military reported it sent away some 47,700 Haitians in the past year, up from 21,000 the year before. And now tens of thousands of people who consider themselves Dominicans face a one-way trip to a country where they cannot speak the language, may not have any family, and face extreme economic hardship. The Haitian government said it " strongly disagrees" with the decision and has recalled its ambassador to the Dominican Republic for consultations on the implications of the ruling.

Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic reaches back decades, if not centuries; unacknowledged and institutionalised, it has been manipulated and put to political use. Rather than being united by their shared histories, the two sides of Hispaniola remain riven by an unresolved past. It is not yet clear how this ruling will be turned into policy, but in facing such an uncertain future, these Dominicans also carry with them a heavy burden of the past.

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The Dominican Republic and Haiti: one island riven by an unresolved past | Carrie Gibson

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Carrie Gibson: The republic's plans to revoke the citizenship of many Haitian descendants draws on a long history of prejudice and conflict

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Available: BFI Player

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Daughters of the Dust

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If Daughters of the Dust seems otherworldly, that's only because American cinema, independent and otherwise, has paid too little attention to others' worlds. // Bumped this up half a star after sitting with it longer and then writing about it: www.larsenonfilm.com/daughters-of-the-dust

This film might have one of the worst soundtracks I have ever heard. It not only features bad, cheezy, overloud synthesizers, it features them at moments that would otherwise be just fine moments of quiet contemplation. These synths interject with such unpleasant randomness that it jars you out of the film entirely. I am curious how they play without the film; would they still just be cheezy holdovers from a bad 80s prog band's worst practice session, or would they come across as some sort of deconstructive art noise? Either way, as the soundtrack to this or any film, they are agony. Had this subtitles, I might have been tempted to try it on mute, but that would have forced...

This December, a pillar of American cinema is being re-released. "Daughters of the Dust," the 1991 debut of independent director Julie Dash, has been restored and will be distributed by the Cohen Film Collection in theaters across America. In this era of Black Lives Matter, Beyonce's "Lemonade", Kendrick and the return of D'Angelo, the re-release of Dash's film deserves to be greeted with cheers and trumpet blasts. "Daughters" is a seminal, visionary, challenging work of art - a masterpiece that every American should see.

The film traces the intergenerational trials and tribulations of the Peazants, a Gullah family who are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans. The Gullahs live along the coast of South Carolina in 1902, at the dawn...

A spell cast from golden light, incredible costumes, euphoric Gullah Creole, and pure dream structure storytelling.

The poem of a family living on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where in 1803 a large group of captive Igbo people took control of the ship that was transporting them and committed mass suicide rather than live as slaves.

Now, nearly 100 years later, the islanders are in transition. Entering into a new migration phase, heading to the mainland, struggling with the changing times and the fading of old faiths.

The generational idea that a person is larger than the self - that a person is all of their people that came before them - must be maintained, even as the family scatters, seeds to the wind.

Told by an unborn child.

Movie bliss.

"We are two people in one body. The last of the old and the first of the new." - Nana Peazant

An emotional and philosophical journey into a complex history and how it could carry into a potential future. The Peazant family, about to leave for the mainland in 1902 after staying isolated on their island for generations, faces the dilemmas of memory and hope for more, tradition and progress, individual desires and family ties. Arthur Jaffa's cinematography helps make these spiritual and very real questions as ungraspable yet vivid as one of these dreams that is filled with half-memories and old stories we've only heard but that come to become our own.

Coogler's BLACK PANTHER feels like an heir to this film in the way it too grapples with the difficulty of moving on with old scars; some of his...

Visionary art, pure and simple. To call it "bourgeois", "pretentious," "self-centered"-(looking at you, Armond White, who presumes Spielbergian clarity or Lee punchiness is the only valid form of art available to artists-of-color wanting to make a difference in the world)-is to assume that art should be completely accessible, linear, easily fileable and rateable and gut-punchy the first time around for it to be deemed "good". Such a narrow definition leaves no room for shimmering mystery, not of an actually self-serving PTA/ Master kind, but of an artistic mystery and a lack of knowledge of self that is an organic choice for a film whose content is directly tied with its form. Daughters is one such work: splintered into little prismastic shards...

Beautiful film. Does anyone know if there is a database or website that houses actual film screenplays? I find myself trying to pin down dialogue from certain scenes and I sometimes spend so much time searching.

I wonder why this is considered part of the LA Rebellion movement. It makes me wonder about the criteria for classifying a film under a particular movement in general. With this film and The Glass Shield (1994) you will see them as two notable films critcs or reviewers remark on when mentioning the LA Rebellion. Both films were written and directed by two key directors who propelled the movement decades prior to the release of these films.

The underlining messages in the films are...

Black Women Filmmakers Screening #3.2:

A beautiful brushstroke of family binds, imbedded naturalism, and cultural continuum. In Illusions, Dash makes a promise as a black feminist filmmaker, and Daughters of the Dust fulfills it to the highest degree.

At a pivotal moment for the Peazants, a multigenerational African family inhabiting an island previously used for illegal slave trading, conflict arises between the promise of new opportunities on the mainland and ancestral ties to tradition and culture, all framed in softly shifting sand and sea and painterly, naturalistic cinematography. If these praises all sound vague, that's because I had a hard time following the actual narrative.

But Dash's intelligent (and difficult) multi-vocality, steeped in oral tradition, doesn't weaken the film; Daughters...

it is crazy how good and beautiful this movie is and so fucked up how long it took me to watch it!!!

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tożsamość pamięcią przeszłości, mistyka Gullah z wyspy St. Simons, na granicy czasów, independent film, 1-szy film w reżyserii afroamerykańskiej kobiety w szerokiej dystrybucji teatralnej, zdjęcia, muzyka, L.A Rebellion, NFR...

Akcja filmu rozgrywa się na wyspie u wybrzeży Karoliny Południowej wśród potomków plemienia Gullah, którzy spotykają się podczas długo wyczekiwanego rodzinnego zjazdu. Osią fabuły jest historia rodu przewiezionego do Ameryki jednym z ostatnich transportów niewolników. Pozostawieni na odizolowanej wyspie, stworzyli oryginalną kulturę. Narratorką Córek pyłu jest nienarodzona córka, owoc gwałtu na jednej z mieszkanek wyspy - koncept ten przywołuje na myśl zapoczątkowaną w kobiecej literaturze próbę utkania opowieści z urwanych, zapomnianych głosów i strzępów historii. Reżyserka konstruuje narrację historyczną zanurzoną w tradycji, a jednocześnie zadaje pytanie o afroamerykańską nowoczesność i jej...

A powerful narrative of the complex dynamics of generational differences, race, and heritage.

I did pick up on a minor anachronism, though it certainly takes nothing away from this film: the movie is set in August 1902, but the wish book advertises teddy bears. President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt's hunting trip that spurred the toy's name did not occur until November 1902. Just an interesting trivia point.

I, for one, actually dug the early '90s synths, but I might just have trash taste. Pretty sure the shots of the sky in the top half of the frame reflected in the wet beach on the bottom are objectively beautiful, though.

What a revelation! If someone told me that actual magic went into the crafting of Daughters of the Dust, I'd believe them. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that this is both the director's and the cinematographer's first feature. It is so breathtaking that it seems impossible that it even exists.

This movie has only the smallest of plot. It's more of an event on which to hang two hours of visual poetry. Of all the wondrous imagery, the think that struck me the most was the characters' skin. Never have I seen black skin filmed so beautifully without being hyper-stylized. There's a real showcase of the beauty and diversity of skin tones on display.

This was a powerhouse cinema experience for me. I'll be rewatching this sometime very soon and cannot wait to see what subsequent viewings reveal.

Conceptually, this film is fascinating. It manages to coalesce the perspectives of the grounded past, ambitious present, and reflective future by exploring the metamorphoses of cultural and individual identity that takes place across generations.

It's dialogue is filled with allegory, and it's characters are wholly reflective of these conceptual conflicts in a way that bombarded me with more answers than questions. I found the lack of conflict within the Christian characters and their beliefs to be the most disheartening. The most recurring realization of their faith on screen is found through the reprimanding of their roots, and not out of the complex understanding of those roots that these particular characters, from this island, with their knowledge, should have. And because...

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Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America.

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Available: Disney+

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'The vitriolic blood of a Negro: the development of racial identity and Creole elitism in New Spain and Spanish Louisiana, 1763–1803' by Andrew Wegmann (2015)

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'The vitriolic blood of a Negro: the development of racial identity and Creole elitism in New Spain and Spanish Louisiana, 1763–1803' by Andrew Wegmann (2015)

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The vitriolic blood of a Negro: the development of racial identity and Creole elitism in New Spain and Spanish Louisiana, 1763-1803

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The vitriolic blood of a Negro: the development of racial identity and Creole elitism in New Spain and Spanish Louisiana, 1763-1803 | Wegmann, Andrew N. | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Multiracial in America' by Kim Parker and colleagues (2015)

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'Multiracial in America' by Kim Parker and colleagues (2015)

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Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project

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Multiracial Americans are at the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the U.S.-young, proud, tolerant and growing at a rate three times as fast as the population as a whole.

As America becomes more racially diverse and social taboos against interracial marriage fade, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that majorities of multiracial adults are proud of their mixed-race background (60%) and feel their racial heritage has made them more open to other cultures (59%).

At the same time, a majority (55%) say they have been subjected to racial slurs or jokes, and about one-in-four (24%) have felt annoyed because people have made assumptions about their racial background. Still, few see their multiracial background as a liability. In fact, only 4% say having a mixed racial background has been a disadvantage in their life. About one-in-five (19%) say it has been an advantage, and 76% say it has made no difference.

While multiracial adults share some things in common, they cannot be easily categorized. Their experiences and attitudes differ significantly depending on the races that make up their background and how the world sees them. For example, multiracial adults with a black background-69% of whom say most people would view them as black or African American-have a set of experiences, attitudes and social interactions that are much more closely aligned with the black community. A different pattern emerges among multiracial Asian adults; biracial white and Asian adults feel more closely connected to whites than to Asians. Among biracial adults who are white and American Indian-the largest group of multiracial adults-ties to their Native American heritage are often faint: Only 22% say they have a lot in common with people in the U.S. who are American Indian, whereas 61% say they have a lot in common with whites.

The U.S. Census Bureau finds that, in 2013, about 9 million Americans chose two or more racial categories when asked about their race. The Census Bureau first started allowing people to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves in 2000. Since then, the nation's multiracial population has grown substantially. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of white and black biracial Americans more than doubled, while the population of adults with a white and Asian background increased by 87%. And during that decade, the nation elected as president Barack Obama-the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas.

The share of multiracial babies has risen from 1% in 1970 to 10% in 2013. And with interracial marriages also on the rise, demographers expect this rapid growth to continue, if not quicken, in the decades to come.

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Yet the Pew Research survey findings suggest that the census's estimate that 2.1% of the adult population is multiracial may understate the size of the country's mixed-race population. Taking into account how adults describe their own race as well as the racial backgrounds of their parents and grandparents-which the census count does not do- Pew Research estimates that 6.9% of the U.S. adult population could be considered multiracial. This estimate comprises 1.4% in the survey who chose two or more races for themselves, an additional 2.9% who chose one race for themselves but said that at least one of their parents was a different race or multiracial, and 2.6% who are counted as multiracial because at least one of their grandparents was a different race than them or their parents.

These findings emerge from a nationally representative survey of 1,555 multiracial Americans ages 18 and older, conducted online from Feb. 6 to April 6, 2015. The sample of multiracial adults was identified after contacting and collecting basic demographic information on more than 21,000 adults nationwide. For comparative purposes, an additional 1,495 adults from the general public were surveyed, including an oversample of non-Hispanic adults who are black and have no other races in their background and who are Asian and no race.

To be sure, not all adults with a mixed racial background consider themselves "multiracial." In fact, 61% do not. An added layer of complexity is that racial identity can be fluid and may change over the course of one's life, or even from one situation to another. About three-in-ten adults with a multiracial background say that they have changed the way they describe their race over the years-with some saying they once thought of themselves as only one race and now think of themselves as more than one race, and others saying just the opposite.

In addition to painting a portrait of multiracial Americans, the survey findings challenge some traditional ideas about race. The Census Bureau currently recognizes five racial categories: white, black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Hispanic origin is asked about separately as an ethnicity and is not considered a race.

But when Latinos are asked whether they consider being Hispanic to be part of their racial or ethnic background, the survey finds that about two-thirds of Hispanics say it is, at least in part, their race. For the majority of this report, Hispanic origin is treated as an ethnicity, rather than a race, and multiracial Hispanics are those who say they are Hispanic and two separate races (for example, someone who is Hispanic and also chooses black and white as his or her races). This is consistent with how the Census Bureau counts mixed-race Hispanics. However, because Hispanic identity is tied to both race and ethnicity for many Latinos, Chapter 7 of this report explores a broader definition of mixed race.

The Multiracial Experience

The survey finds that many multiracial adults, like other racial minorities, have experienced some type of racial discrimination, from racist slurs to physical threats, because of their racial background.

Again, the specific races that make up an individual's background matter. For example, while about four-in-ten mixed-race adults with a black background say they have been unfairly stopped by the police because of their racial background, only 6% of biracial white and Asian adults and 15% of white and American Indian adults say they have had this experience. A similar pattern is evident for other types of racial discrimination.

For multiracial adults with a black background, experiences with discrimination closely mirror those of single-race blacks. Among adults who are black and no other race, 57% say they have received poor service in restaurants or other businesses, identical to the share of biracial black and white adults who say this has happened to them; and 42% of single-race blacks say they have been unfairly stopped by the police, as do 41% of biracial black and white adults. Mixed-race adults with an Asian background are about as likely to report being discriminated against as are single-race Asians, while multiracial adults with a white background are more likely than single-race whites to say they have experienced racial discrimination.

Demographically, multiracial Americans are younger-and strikingly so-than the country as a whole. According to Pew Research Center analysis of the 2013 American Community Survey, the median age of all multiracial Americans is 19, compared with 38 for single-race Americans.

The Pew Research survey finds that multiracial adults also are less likely than other adults to be college graduates and less likely to be currently married. But when they do wed, mixed-race Americans are more likely than other adults to marry someone who also is multiracial. Mixed-race adults are also more likely than the general public to have close friends or neighbors who are multiracial.

Even so, shared multiracial backgrounds do not necessarily translate into shared identity. Only about a third (34%) of all multiracial Americans think they have a lot in common with other adults who are the same racial mix that they are, while only half as many (17%) think they share a lot with multiracial Americans whose racial background is different from their own.

The Size of the Multiracial Population

It was less than 50 years ago that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case bearing the evocative title Loving v. Virginia, struck down laws prohibiting mixed-race marriages. And it has been only 15 years since the U.S. Census Bureau first allowed Americans to choose more than one race when filling out their census form.

Since then the multiracial population has grown significantly. To measure its size, the Pew Research Center used a different method than the Census Bureau for determining an individual's racial background. In addition to self-reported race, Pew Research took into account the racial backgrounds of parents and grandparents. This approach led to the estimate that multiracial adults currently make up 6.9% of the adult American population.

Using this definition, the Pew Research survey finds that biracial adults with a white and American Indian background comprise half of the country's multiracial population-by far the country's largest multiracial group but also the one whose members are the least likely to consider themselves "multiracial" despite their mixed-race background.

Black and American Indian biracial adults account for an additional 12% of the total multiracial adult population, while those with a white and black background make up 11%. Those with white, black and American Indian in their racial background make up 6% of the mixed-race population, and white and Asian biracial adults account for 4%. An additional 11% are Hispanic multiracial adults. The remaining share of the mixed-race population is scattered across the 16 other combinations of races represented in the Pew Research sample.

The relatively small share of all U.S. adults who are mixed race obscures the rapid growth of the multiracial population. If current trends continue-and evidence suggests they may accelerate-the Census Bureau projects that the multiracial population will triple by 2060.

Feeding this growth is the increase in mixed-race couples and, as a natural consequence, births of children who have a multiracial background. For example, since 1980 the share of marriages between spouses of different races has increased almost fourfold (from 1.6% to 6.3% in 2013).

The share of multiracial children is growing at an even faster rate. In 1970, among babies living with two parents, only 1% had parents who were different races from each other. By 2013, that share had risen to 10%. Today, nearly half (46%) of all multiracial Americans are younger than 18. By contrast, only 23% of the overall U.S. population is under the age of 18.

As the multiracial population in the U.S. grows, its profile is also changing. While biracial white and American Indian is currently the predominant group among mixed-race adults, in 2013 a majority of mixed-race babies were either biracial white and black (36%) or biracial white and Asian (24%). Some 11% were white and American Indian.

The Multiracial Identity Gap

Multiracial identity is complicated, as much an attitude that can change over a lifetime as it is a genetic or biological certainty. Only four-in-ten adults with a mixed racial background (39%) say they consider themselves to be "mixed race or multiracial." Fully 61% say they don't consider themselves to be multiracial.

When asked why they don't identify as multiracial, about half (47%) say it is because they look like one race. An identical share say they were raised as one race, while about four-in-ten (39%) say they closely identify with a single race. And about a third (34%) say they never knew the family member or ancestor who was a different race. (Individuals were allowed to select multiple reasons.)

This multiracial "identity gap" plays out in distinctly different ways in different mixed-race groups. A quarter of biracial adults with a white and American Indian background say they consider themselves multiracial. By contrast, seven-in-ten white and Asian biracial adults and 61% of those with a white and black background say they identify as multiracial.

For some mixed-race Americans, the pressure to identify as a single race is a significant part of the multiracial experience. According to the survey, about one-in-five (21%) say they have felt pressure from friends, family or "society in general" to identify as a single race.

A similar share says they have attempted to look or behave a certain way in order to influence the way others perceive their race.

Being Mixed Race

A majority of multiracial adults say they are proud of their mixed racial background (60%), more see their racial background as an advantage than a disadvantage (19% vs. 4%), and they overwhelmingly say they have rarely if ever felt ashamed or like an outsider because of their mixed racial background.

While these views are broadly shared by each of the five biggest multiracial groups, the large proportion of white and Asian biracial adults who see their racial background as an advantage stands out. About six-in-ten in this group (58%) say their racial background has been an advantage to them in life. In the other four groups, only about one-in-four or fewer say their racial heritage has been as helpful.

This contrast further sharpens when white and Asian biracial Americans are compared with single-race whites and Asians. According to the survey, white and Asian biracial Americans are even more likely than single-race whites (58% vs. 32%, respectively) or Asians (15%) to say their racial background has been an advantage.

Social Connections

Mixed-race adults often straddle two or more worlds, and their experiences and relationships reflect that.

Overall, biracial adults who are both white and black are three times as likely to say they have a lot in common with people who are black than they do with whites (58% vs. 19%). They also feel more accepted by blacks than by whites (58% vs. 25% say they are accepted "very well") and report having far more contact with their black relatives: 69% say they've had a lot of contact with family members who are black over the course of their lives, while just 21% report similar levels of contact with their white relatives. About four-in-ten (41%) say they have had no contact with family members who are white.

By contrast, biracial adults who are white and Asian say they have more in common with whites than they do with Asians (60% vs. 33%) and are more likely to say they feel accepted by whites than by Asians (62% vs. 47% say they are accepted "very well"). More also say they have had a lot of contact with family members who are white than say the same about Asian members of their family (61% vs. 42%).

For biracial adults who are white or black and American Indian, their connections with the white or black community are often stronger than the ones they feel toward Native Americans; about one-in-four or fewer in each group say they have a lot in common with American Indians.

Other survey findings suggest these differences may slow the development of a multiracial group identity similar to the sense of linked fate and shared experience that unites many blacks and other minority groups. Overall, the Pew Research survey finds that few multiracial adults think they have much in common with other mixed-race Americans-even those who share their racial background.

Marriage and Friendships

As a group, mixed-race adults are much more likely than all married adults to have a spouse or partner who is also multiracial, the survey finds. Among all mixed-race adults who are married or living with a partner, about one-in-eight (12%) say their spouse or partner is two or more races. By comparison, only 2% of adults among the general public who are married or living with a partner say the same.

The survey also finds that multiracial adults with a white background are significantly less likely than single-race whites to have a white partner (67% vs. 92%). Multiracial adults with a black background are also less likely than single-race blacks to have a spouse or partner who is black only (54% vs. 86%).

A similar pattern emerges when the focus turns to the friendships formed by multiracial Americans. Mixed-race adults are more likely than the general public to have friends who are multiracial. According to the survey, eight-in-ten multiracial adults say at least some of their friends are mixed-race, compared with 62% for all adults.

The Politics of Multiracial Americans

Overall, the politics of multiracial Americans resemble the country as a whole. About six-in-ten (57%) multiracial adults identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 37% support or lean toward the Republican Party, and 6% favor neither major party. Among the general public, about half (53%) tend to favor Democrats, while 41% support or lean toward the GOP.

But just as the country is a mix of individuals and groups with different party preferences and ideological leanings, multiracial Americans are likewise politically diverse.

Multiracial Americans with a black background favor the Democratic Party, similar to the party preferences of single-race blacks. For example, about nine-in-ten biracial black and American Indian adults (89%) identify or lean toward the Democratic Party, as do 92% of all single-race blacks. By contrast, single-race whites favor the Republican Party over the Democrats by a ratio of 55% to 41%.

White and Asian biracial adults also tend to favor the Democratic Party over the GOP (60% vs. 38%), roughly similar to the 68% to 26% advantage held by Democrats among single-race Asians.

The political leanings of biracial white and American Indians-the country's largest multiracial group-closely resemble those of single-race whites. Among this group, the Republican Party holds a 53% to 42% advantage over the Democrats, making it the only major mixed-race group that tilts toward the GOP. (The sample of single-race Native Americans was too small to analyze.)

The remainder of this report examines in greater detail the attitudes, experiences and demographics of multiracial Americans. Chapter 1 traces the history of efforts by the U.S. Census Bureau to measure race and reports on the latest government estimates of the size of the multiracial population. Chapter 2 describes how the Pew Research Center used a different method than the Census Bureau to measure racial background and how that method produces a significantly larger estimate of the country's multiracial population. Chapter 3 describes how multiracial adults see their own racial identity and how they believe others see their racial background. Chapter 4 focuses on how the racial backgrounds of the country's largest multiracial groups shape their attitudes and experiences in different ways, including the likelihood they have encountered racial discrimination. Chapter 5 describes the social connections of multiracial Americans, including how much mixed-race adults say they have in common with other races and how accepted they feel by different racial groups. Chapter 6 examines the party preferences and political ideology of multiracial adults as well as their views on abortion, aid to the poor, marijuana legalization and other issues. Chapter 7 reports on the elements of Hispanic identity and the percentage of Hispanics who consider their Hispanic background to be, at least in part, their race. It also explores an expanded definition of multiracial adults that includes Hispanics who are one race but say they consider their Hispanic background to be part of their racial background.

Other Key Findings

In their ideological preferences, white and American Indian biracial adults are the only group where political conservatives outnumber liberals (37% to 18%), virtually identical to the ideological preferences of single-race whites. Biracial Americans who are white and Asian or white and black tilt toward the political left.

Few multiracial adults (9%) say a relative or member of their extended family has treated them badly because they are mixed race. But these experiences vary considerably by multiracial group. For example, white and black biracial adults are much more likely than adults with a biracial white and American Indian background to say they have been treated badly by a family member (21% vs. 4%).

Today's mixed-race parents are more likely to have talked to their own children about being multiracial. Fully 46% of multiracial parents say they talked to their adult children when they were growing up about having a mixed-race background. By contrast, about a third (32%) say their parents had similar conversations with them.

One-in-four mixed-race adults say people are often or sometimes confused by their racial background. And one-in-five (19%) say that they have felt like they were a go-between or "bridge" between different racial groups.

For multiracial adults, as for the general public, race is not the most important element of their personal identity. Some 26% of multiracial adults say their racial background is "essential" to their identity (as do 28% of all adults). Both multiracial adults and the general public are much more likely to point to gender (50% for multiracial adults, 51% for the general public) or religion (39% for both groups) as essential parts of their identity.

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Multiracial Americans are at the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the U.S.-young, proud, tolerant and growing at a rate three times as fast as the population as a whole.

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'“Nous sommes tous des créoles” (We Are Creoles)' Édouard Glissant interviewed by Odette Casamayor (1998)

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'“Nous sommes tous des créoles” (We Are Creoles)' Édouard Glissant interviewed by Odette Casamayor (1998)

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Voir aussi Glissant, l'essentiel : Poète, romancier, essayiste, signataire du Manifeste des 121, vice-président du Parlement international des écrivains, à 70 ans, le Martiniquais Edouard Glissant développe dans son dernier livre, Traité du tout-monde, sa notion de créolisation des cultures.

La créolisation est une notion fondamentale de votre pensée. Comment pouvez-vous la définir ?

Edouard Glissant : J'appelle créolisation, des contacts de cultures en un lieu donné du monde et qui ne produisent pas un simple métissage, mais une résultante imprévisible. Cela est très lié avec la notion de ce que j'appelle le chaos-monde. Un chaos-monde, caractérisé non pas par le désordre mais par l'imprévisible. On peut prévoir le métissage, pas la créolisation. On prend trois petits pois gris, trois petits pois verts, on les greffe et on sait comment sera la deuxième, la troisième génération. La créolisation qui constitue un processus impossible à arrêter n'a pas de morale. La créolisation ne permet pas de saisir mais plutôt de tenter d'appréhender ce qui se passe dans le monde. Essayer de pénétrer et de deviner la créolisation du monde, c'est commencer à lutter contre la standardisation généralisée qui atteint l'économie, le social, la culture... Il faut développer la pensée que la créolisation n'est pas une évaporation dans une sorte de gros magma, mais l'instauration, de plus en plus concrètement et de plus en plus poétiquement, de la relation entre le lieu où l'on est, d'où l'on élève la voix et tous les lieux possibles du monde. Par exemple, les multinationales capitalistes expliquent aux gens des pays où elles s'implantent de ne pas se renfermer sur eux-mêmes, de s'ouvrir au monde, mais cela n'entraîne pas une véritable relation. On connaît la suite.

Vous connaissez bien les Etats-Unis, puisque vous enseignez la littérature française à la City University of New York. C'est un poste d'observation idéal pour vous ?

E. G. : Oui. J'avais envie de voir cette espèce d'énorme chose, où tout se brasse sans pour autant se toucher. Il y a là des sociétés pluri-ethniques, où la créolisation commence à se faire, mais où elle n'est pas encore acceptée. Jusqu'à présent, ces ethnies vivent les unes à côté des autres, mais sans s'interpénétrer. Et, malgré leurs habitudes de consommation communes (le Mc Donald, les baskets...), on ne peut encore parler de véritable créolisation. Autre chose : il y a une grande vogue aux Etats-Unis de la pensée du multiculturalisme, mais, pour moi, le multiculturalisme est une manière commode d'évacuer les problèmes. On dit : c'est multiculturel donc, c'est très bien. Mais c'est faux, car le phénomène d'interchange n'existe pas encore. Cela ne fonctionne que dans un seul sens : il n'y a pas d'interpénétration. On a même vu apparaître une " world-litterature " construite sur les mêmes modèles : on prend un peu de tout, on mélange tout ça...

Mais la notion de créolisation a jeté un trouble parmi les intellectuels noirs-américains. Il semble que la négritude perde du terrain par rapport à la pensée caraïbe.

E. G. : Oui, ça commence, notamment dans les départements d'études africaines, alors que certains Américains sont en plein dans le retour à l'Afrique. Peut-être que, très prochainement, il y aura un clash entre cette notion de créolisation et l'afrocentrisme. Personnellement, je me méfie de ce retour à l'Afrique. En effet, dès la traite des nègres, ceux qui ont été déportés ont suivi une histoire, mais l'Afrique aussi a suivi son histoire. L'afrocentrisme, c'est considérer l'Afrique comme un objet que l'on peut s'approprier. Tout comme les colonisateurs qui pensaient : je viens et puis je prends, et c'est à moi. Il y a une espèce de pressentiment dans la communauté noire-américaine que quelque chose d'autre est possible, parce que l'afro-centrisme c'est très confortable, au contraire de la créolisation. Du reste plus rien n'est confortable dans ce monde.

C'est-à-dire ?

E. G. : Prenez les conflits actuels. Ils ne concernent plus des Etats ou des Nations en tant que tels. Ce sont des conflits de culture qui, souvent, prennent la forme de conflits religieux. Pour la première fois, les conflits culturels ou les harmonies culturelles sont entrés dans notre conscience : ils concernent la totalité-monde. C'est là que se trouve le difficile enclenchement des contacts culturels. C'est complètement nouveau. Et, face à cela, il faut commencer à penser le tout-monde, penser ces contacts. Ma deuxième proposition, c'est qu'on ne peut pas appréhender tout cela avec des idéologies ou des pensées de système.

Que faire ?

E. G. : La solution n'est pas l'enfermement, c'est plutôt de dire : " Il y a une relation entre mon lieu et tous les lieux du monde, et je veux essayer de mettre cette relation en poétique." Cette poétique de la relation (NDLR : déjà évoquée dans le Discours antillais paru en 1981), c'est la manière durable de lutter contre cette sorte de prédateur invisible qu'est la mondialisation. Par ailleurs, il faut en finir avec l'idée de l'identité comme racine unique. L'identité est toujours une racine. Mais ce n'est pas une racine unique, qui tue autour d'elle, c'est une racine en rhizome. La Caraïbe est un exemple. Bien sûr, il est difficile pour les gens de concevoir que leur identité puisse avoir des ramifications. Or, c'est la vérité. Un Cubain blanc peut danser aussi bien que moi, s'habiller de la même manière, manger les mêmes choses, etc. Qu'est-ce qu'on fait dans ce cas-là ? On dit : moi, je suis un Caraibéen, et lui, il ne l'est pas ?

Il faut donc changer l'imaginaire ?

E. G. : Il est vain d'essayer de s'enfermer dans une identité unique. Les gens pensent : si mon identité touche à celle de l'autre, je perds mon identité, je suis en danger. Là, il faut absolument un changement de l'imaginaire. Les autres solutions, politiques, militaires, sociales sont complètement éphémères. Il faut penser ces nouveaux problèmes et les aborder d'une nouvelle manière. Les perceptions poétiques qui sont plus incertaines, plus fragiles et plus menacées que d'autres n'ont pas la contrainte idéologique des systèmes de pensée : ces perceptions-là sont les plus appropriées pour vivre la nature de notre chaos-monde.

D'où le rôle déterminant que vous donnez à la notion de genèse ?

E. G. : Dans le Traité du tout-monde, je distingue deux sortes de cultures : les cultures ataviques et les cultures composites. Manifestement, toutes les cultures européennes à partir du Bassin méditerranéen sont des cultures ataviques. J'appelle atavique une culture qui a pu créer une idée de genèse. Il y a plusieurs conséquences quand une communauté a pu enfanter l'idée d'une création du monde. La première, c'est que cette communauté croit que sa parole a été dictée par son dieu qui a créé le monde et la deuxième, c'est qu'elle a un droit légitime de propriété sur sa terre. Ce qui légitime par exemple la colonisation. Ce que j'appelle les cultures composites, nées justement du choc de la colonisation, sont des cultures historiques dont les origines ne se perdent pas dans la nuit des temps. Ces cultures-là ne peuvent pas créer l'idée d'une genèse. Pour nous, Antillais, notre genèse c'est le ventre du bateau négrier. Nous n'allons pas créer un mythe fondateur puisque nous savons d'où nous venons. J'appelle ça une digenèse, c'est-à-dire une genèse qui n'entraîne pas d'absolu. C'est pour ça que les peuples des Caraïbes sont plus près de l'idée de créolisation : dès le départ, il y a l'absence. Il n'y a pas d'arrière-pays.

La Caraïbe peut-elle être un modèle ?

E. G. : Sans nous en rendre compte, nous vivons dans l'inattendu. Mais, inconsciemment, cela nous empêche d'avoir un esprit de système. Une pensée systématique ne peut pas naître dans la Caraïbe. Car la Caraïbe est un lieu de passage, de ravage. Si vous regardez la carte du monde, du point de vue des génocides, des purifications ethniques : même s'il y a de la misère, la Caraïbe est une tache bleue. Je ne veux pas dire que la Caraïbe est un modèle. Mais ce que la Caraïbe a vécu, souvent dans des conditions incroyables, a définitivement écarté, selon moi, l'idée d'un système du monde, d'un traité du monde. Tout change très vite : il y a vingt ans, on n'aurait jamais pensé que des écrivains hispanophones, anglophones, francophones de la Caraïbe auraient pu se réunir. Je prends un écrivain comme Wilson Hayes. C'est incroyable le nombre d'idées que nous partageons, sans le savoir. Je pense qu'il y a une sorte d'énergie qui sort de tout cela et qui nous donne le devoir d'être optimistes. C'est une urgence.
Glissant, l'essentiel :
Traité du tout-monde, 1997, Gallimard

Le Discours antillais, 1981, Folio (réédition)

La Lézarde, Points-Seuil (Prix Renaudot 1958) Tout-Monde, 1993, Folio (réédition)

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Voir aussi Glissant, l'essentiel : Poète, romancier, essayiste, signataire du Manifeste des 121, vice-président du Parlement international des écrivains, à 70 ans, le Martiniquais Edouard Glissant développe dans son dernier livre, Traité du tout-monde, sa notion de créolisation des cultures. La créolisation est une notion fondamentale de votre pensée.

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'The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820' by Kamau Brathwait (1971)

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'The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820' by Kamau Brathwait (1971)

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The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 | Kamau Brathwaite; B.W. Higman | download

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The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 | Kamau Brathwaite; B.W. Higman | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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A compelling foray into the character of Caribbean literature and the formidable role of African expression in its development.

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'The Other Windrush': the Hidden History of Afro-Chinese Families in 1950s London by Tao Leigh Goffe (2020)

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'The Other Windrush': the Hidden History of Afro-Chinese Families in 1950s London by Tao Leigh Goffe (2020)

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The hidden history of Afro-Chinese families in 1950s London - gal-dem

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In this extract from ‘The Other Windrush’, writer Tao Leigh Goffe explores the history of relative Hyacinth Lee, who migrated to the UK from Jamaica.

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‘The Other Windrush’: the hidden history of Afro-Chinese families in 1950s London

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'The Other Windrush: Legacies of Indenture in Britain's Caribbean Empire' edited by Maria del Pilar Kaladeen, David Dabydeen (2021)

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'The Other Windrush: Legacies of Indenture in Britain's Caribbean Empire' edited by Maria del Pilar Kaladeen, David Dabydeen (2021)

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Book chapter: 'Scratching the Surface' by Tao Leigh Goffe

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Scratching the Surface - Tao Leigh Goffe

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'Curry: A Global History' by Colleen Taylor Sen (2009)

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'Curry: A Global History' by Colleen Taylor Sen (2009)

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Curry is one of the most widely used-and misused-terms in the culinary lexicon. Outside of India, the word curry is often used as a catchall to describe any Indian dish or Indian food in general, yet Indians rarely use it to describe their own cuisine. Curry answers the question, "What is curry?" by giving a lively historical and descriptive account of a dish that has many incarnations.
In this global history, food writer Colleen Taylor Sen describes in detail the Anglo-Indian origins of curry and how this widely used spice has been adapted throughout the world. Exploring the curry universe beyond India and Great Britain, her chronicles include the elegant, complex curries of Thailand; the exuberant curry/rotis of the Caribbean; kari/raisu, Japan's favorite comfort food; Indonesian gulais and rendang; Malaysia's delicious Nonya cuisine; and exotic Western hybrids such as American curried chicken salad, German currywurst, and Punjabi-Mexican-Hindu pizza. Along the way, Sen unravels common myths about curry and Indian food and illuminates the world of curry with excerpts from popular songs, literary works, historical and modern recipes, and illustrations depicting curry dishes and their preparations.
A vibrant, flavorful book about an increasingly popular food, Curry will find a wide audience of cooking enthusiasts and hungry fans of Indian food.

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Curry is one of the most widely used-and misused-terms in the culinary lexicon. Outside of India, the word curry is often used as a catchall to describe any Indian dish or Indian food in general, yet Indians rarely use it to describe their own cuisine. Curry answers the question, "What is curry?"

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'The Location of Culture' by Homi Bhaba (1994)

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'The Location of Culture' by Homi Bhaba (1994)

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Rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity - one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. In The Location of Culture, he uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.

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The Location of Culture (Routledge Classics)

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Rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity - one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. In The Location of Culture, he uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent.

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'The Loving Case: Virginia's Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective' by Walter Wadlington (1966)

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'The Loving Case: Virginia's Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective' by Walter Wadlington (1966)

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The Loving Case: Virginia’s Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective | Walter Wadlington | download

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The Loving Case: Virginia’s Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective | Walter Wadlington | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?"' by Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997)

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'"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?"' by Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997)

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Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

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Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? | Beverly Daniel Tatum | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Black in Latin America' by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (2011)

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'Black in Latin America' by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (2011)

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Skip Gates travels to places in Latin America where Africa has touched the continent with lasting cultural results to explore what happens when African and Hispanic worlds meet.

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'Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States' by Winthrop D. Jordan (2014)

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'Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States' by Winthrop D. Jordan (2014)

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Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States

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Author(s): Jordan, Winthrop D. | Abstract: Winthrop Jordan, one of the most honored of US historians, wrote about racial mixing ageneration before there was a field of mixed race studies. At the time of his death, he left an unfinished manuscript: “Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in t…

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'Trevor's 10-Year-Old Brother Explains Race', Daily Show (2018)

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'Trevor's 10-Year-Old Brother Explains Race', Daily Show (2018)

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Trevor’s 10-Year-Old Brother Explains Race - Between the Scenes | The Daily Show

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'African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power' by Afua Hirsch (2020)

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'African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power' by Afua Hirsch (2020)

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Available: Box of Broadcasts

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African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power | Knowledge Network

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'Bigger Than the Sound: The Jamaican Chinese Infrastructure of Reggae' by Tao Leigh Goffe (2020)

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'Bigger Than the Sound: The Jamaican Chinese Infrastructure of Reggae' by Tao Leigh Goffe (2020)

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'The Good Immigrant' edited by Nikesh Shukla (2016)

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'The Good Immigrant' edited by Nikesh Shukla (2016)

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'Shade' by Salena Godden (pp. 181-197)

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How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport?

Or be told that, as an actress, the part you're most fitted to play is 'wife of a terrorist'? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go 'home' to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick 'Other'?

Bringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be 'other' in a country that doesn't seem to want you, doesn't truly accept you - however many generations you've been here - but still needs you for its diversity...

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How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport? Or be told that, as an actress, the part you're most fitted to play is 'wife of a terrorist'? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you?

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'Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo's Victorian archive' by Caroline Bressey (2002)

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'Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo's Victorian archive' by Caroline Bressey (2002)

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Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo's Victorian archive

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Abstract The history of black women in Britain, particularly before the arrival of the Empire Windrush, is underresearched, and the histories we do have are largely ignored. In this article, biographies of young black women in Victorian London are revealed through the photographic and written archive of Barnardo's.

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'Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness' by Paul Gilroy (1993)

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'Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness' by Paul Gilroy (1993)

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Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is,Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked. Challenging the practices and assumptions of cultural studies, The Black Atlantic also complicates and enriches our understanding of modernism. Debates about postmodernism have cast an unfashionable pall over questions of historical periodization. Gilroy bucks this trend by arguing that the development of black culture in the Americas arid Europe is a historical experience which can be called modern for a number of clear and specific reasons. For Hegel, the dialectic of master and slave was integral to modernity, and Gilroy considers the implications of this idea for a transatlantic culture. In search of a poetics reflecting the politics and history of this culture, he takes us on a transatlantic tour of the music that, for centuries, has transmitted racial messages and feeling around the world, from the Jubilee Singers in the nineteenth century to Jimi Hendrix to rap. He also explores this internationalism as it is manifested in black writing from the "double consciousness" of W. E. B. Du Bois to the "double vision" of Richard Wright to the compelling voice of Toni Morrison. In a final tour de force, Gilroy exposes the shared contours of black and Jewish concepts of diaspora in order both to establish a theoretical basis for healing rifts between blacks and Jews in contemporary culture and to further define the central theme of his book: that blacks have shaped a nationalism, if not a nation, within the shared culture of the black Atlantic.

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The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness

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Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is,Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked.

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'Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century' by Chamion Caballero and Peter J. Aspinall (2018)

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'Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century' by Chamion Caballero and Peter J. Aspinall (2018)

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"In Mixed Race Britain in the Twentieth Century, Chamion Caballero and Peter J. Aspinall critically investigate newly discovered archives, photographs, first-hand lived experiences and existing academic literature to present an unprecedentedly comprehensive history of racial mixing in Britain. ... Overall, the book is an invaluable contribution to the study of the mixed race population in the British context." (Ivana Chen, LSE Review of Books, July 24, 2019)" Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century is a fine example of incisive scholarship underpinned by detailed critical analysis of transformations in discourses of mixed race. Its examination of hidden or forgotten histories of mixed race avoids simplistic generalisations about either mixed race people or white British society. It brings the voices of ordinary people to public attention and, in doing so, situates them in history and illuminates the complex ways in which competing discourses are entangled in old and new racial projects. Its refusal to be drawn into telling a singular story--of a move from denigration to celebration--is intellectually exciting. This book is a must read for those in critical mixed-race studies and anyone interested in racialisation, gender, family life and social reproduction and change. There is no doubt that it will become a much-cited classic."(Ann Phoenix, UCL Institute of Education, UK, and Helsinki University Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland)

"Here at last is a book we have long needed: a scrupulously researched and highly readable account of twentieth century mixed-race Britain. Its range is extensive: charting the history of British racism and the slow shifts in attitudes towards and cultural representations of racial mixing, it also examines how interracial relationships have long been a part of wider communities and how 'mixed race' has finally become a positive identity. This informative, thoughtful and wise book is a landmark text." (Lucy Bland, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK)

"This important new book skilfully links both the distant and the more recent histories of mixing in Britain to 'mixing' in the here and now. With nuance and meticulous investigation, Chamion Caballero and Peter Aspinall have written a book which extends our understanding of the lives and experiences of mixed race people in Britain." (Miri Song, University of Kent, UK)

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Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century

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"In Mixed Race Britain in the Twentieth Century, Chamion Caballero and Peter J. Aspinall critically investigate newly discovered archives, photographs, first-hand lived experiences and existing academic literature to present an unprecedentedly comprehensive history of racial mixing in Britain. ... Overall, the book is an invaluable contribution to the study of the mixed race population in the British context."

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'Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain' by Peter Fryer (1984)

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'Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain' by Peter Fryer (1984)

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Staying Poweris a panoramic history of black Britons. First published in 1984 amid race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act, revealing how Africans, Asians, and their descendants had been erased from British history.
Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from the pioneering nurse and war hero Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of black presence in Britain. By rewriting black Britons into British history, showing where they influenced political traditions, social institutions, and cultural life, Staying Powerpresented a radical challenge to racist and nationalist agendas. This edition includes a new foreword by Gary Younge examining the book's continued significance in shaping black British identity today, alongside the now-classic introduction by Paul Gilroy.

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Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain

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Staying Poweris a panoramic history of black Britons. First published in 1984 amid race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act, revealing how Africans, Asians, and their descendants had been erased from British history.

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'Traveling with her Mother's Tastes: The Negotiation of Gender, Race, and Location in "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" by Sandra Gunning (2014)

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'Traveling with her Mother's Tastes: The Negotiation of Gender, Race, and Location in "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" by Sandra Gunning (2014)

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Globalization and Gender || Traveling with Her Mother's Tastes: The Negotiation of Gender, Race, and Location in "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands"

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Globalization and Gender || Traveling with Her Mother's Tastes: The Negotiation of Gender, Race, and Location in "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" | Sandra Gunning | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'"Mixed-Race" Has Its Own History' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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'"Mixed-Race" Has Its Own History' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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For a while now I have been having lots of conversations with friends and colleagues that identify a Mixed-Race. Whether they call themselves Multiracial, Mixed-Race or Biracial, there are multiple terms for the people that do not fit into the monoracial boxes society assumes for us. Whether we're talking two (bi) or multi (two or more). In the not so distant past, the derogatory term " half-caste " was a socially accepted term, and it is still used to varying degrees. However, in my love for history, pertinently the stories featuring those that are racialised as 'Black', I have found society more widely has "adopted" in a manner of speaking, Mixed-Race people as Black.

A monoracial history may not seem an issue to some, but it is doing a disservice to a race that also have a history in its own right (beyond slavery). Including Multiracial people into a Black history such as Walter Tull, says so much about society and their focus on his Blackness. Although it's not widely acknowledged, part of Walter Tull is a product of his white working class ancestry through his White English mother and the other part is from his Black Bajan father. He was a product of not only an interracial relationship, but a united one through marriage.

In "adopting" Multiracial individuals into the Black historical narratives without thinking about other parts of their racial, cultural and / or ethnic identities, we are missing opportunities to have vital discussions about not only Multiracial identity but also class and Whiteness.

What we are also missing out on are prevalent conversations on unconscious bias in the sense that there is really only one dominant narrative of what "Mixed-Race" can look like, consistent with lighter skin and looser hair. However, I have known Multiracial people to have hair textures ranging from 2c/3a all the way up to 4c, also well-depicted in the Emma Dabiri nonfiction text Don't Touch My Hair. There is also a narrative here of 'good' and 'bad' hair (but that's another conversation). Moreover, the connotations that light-skinned Black people can be stereotyped as Multiracial tells me that the common thoughts about those from Multiracial backgrounds is that they must have "lighter skin." Yet, plenty who have monoracially Black parents also have lighter skin tones. So, there is lots to unpick here, and discuss, not only in terms of identity but also the unconscious bias against Multiracial people from all ethnic groups.

I grew up thinking of myself as Black but if we take this definition of "Multiracial" into its fullest meaning, I would also fit into this demographic, having Multiracial grandmothers on both sides my family with White Irish and Indo-Caribbean heritage. Has this changed how I think of myself in relation to my race and my cultural identity?

What we also have to realise is that Black has changed meaning over time and Black is not a monolith, just as Mixed-Race is not a monolith. Blackness is fluid. It brings me to ask questions about the Caribbean diaspora and how in somewhere like Jamaica, there is an African presence. There has also been a European presence (still is) and there is an Indigenous American presence. Also to include Jewish, Chinese, Indian and Lebanese people. Jewish and Lebanese communities came to Jamaica as part of the merchant trading class, and Indian and Chinese communities came as indentured labourers after the end of enslavement in 1838 in order fill the new labour market made in the abolition of enslavement. Consequently, these immigrant settlers had interracial relationships and thus created a Multiracial community.

Within Black communities there has been contestation of who is / isn't Black and like most identities, it is not something one gets to choose. I have met Multiracial people of African and Caribbean heritage that look like me that would call themselves Black and have also met others that identify as 'Mixed-Race.' However, one of the issues I have, is not that Multiracial Black-racialised figures are included in Black History Month campaigns, but by including these individuals, there is no gesture or want to discuss Blackness as fluid, which would also mean that Black History has multiple facets and many identities.

In African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power, in the second episode, journalist and broadcaster Afua Hirsch is in Sénégal. She says "the French legacy lingers in Sénégal today: in language, in architecture, but also in the people themselves." The city Saint Louis was at the centre of French colonialism in this country. Hirsch also says "France turned Saint Louis into a grand experiment, seeding a hybrid Creole culture, like that of Havana and New Orleans. And it created a new caste that would bolster their rule."

Like what happened in places like India, European colonisers had children with Sénégalese women, thus creating a new Multiracial population, who were then called the metis(se), and became a merchant class influencing much power within the colonial structure.

Whilst Black History Month campaigns so often discuss Multiracial individuals, why is that only in proximity to their Black identity? Why do we focus on the most visible identity, often the Black identity? Much alike the one-drop rule, why do we focus on the most visible identity? Frequently, I hear things like "Mixed-Race is the fastest growing racial group." My question is, if this is the case, why are these conversations about Multiracial identities not being had on the same level and enthusiasm as that of Black identity? Blackness is fluid - and whilst lots of Multiracial people may be racialised as Black, they may not all see themselves that way in terms of racial identity.

Many of my friends and colleagues that are part of this race identify as Multiracial, especially those that grew up with their White family members away from their Black relatives. Some have been made to feel othered by both society and White and Black relatives. But some are also quite proudly Mixed-Race. In our discussions about race, more could be done to talk about fluidity of Blackness, especially historically. It is a constant and as society becomes more diverse, definitions of Blackness will shift again.

Mixed-Race / Multiracial doesn't have a face because it is diverse

Both Walter Tull and Mary Seacole have become establishment figures, indicative of 'good Black British history.' Both of them had jobs that are considered respectable - in, the military and healthcare - and names that are easy to say. On the surface of those Black postboxes, we are witness to a metaphor that 'we will celebrate you' if you are not too angry or too political - which makes talking about the history of this country within these isles and its former-colonies so difficult, as much of it is angry and very political. And even in discussing Walter Tull, there is a lot of focus on the "good history" (his achievements in football/breaking the British Army's colour bar), but not much thought or discussion goes into actively interrogating the institutional racism at the time, nor narratives of class or the history of the care system - a history that him and his brother Edward Tull were part of.

One of my biggest qualms in Black History Month campaigns is this notion that all Black History has to be positive. I disagree. Not all stories have to empower, not all stories need to. The focus on that is to varying degrees problematic. In establishment figures like Mary Seacole, an example of 'good history', there is a Mixed-Race history, coming from a White Scottish father and Jamaican mother. Mary Jane Grant Seacole was a Mixed-Race Jamaican Creole woman. Whilst it is important to show the ways Black and Black-racialsed people have positively contributed to the world, we also have to tell the stories of struggle, not only but also including transatlantic slavery, the revolts and rebellions, and the anti-racist movements of the 20th century.

Mary Seacole (Artist: Martin Jennings)

In closing, more can be done to discuss narratives of Multiracial communities, especially as it is an interesting avenue into discussing the complexities of Whiteness, class and White identity. From Barack Obama and Akala alike, being raised by their White mothers - to Frederick Douglass reportedly being the son of the White slave master, and Mary Seacole, Naomi Campbell (Chinese grandmother), Stephen Graham (mixed-race half-Jamaican father) and the Black Georgians and Black Victorians that married interracially in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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For a while now I have been having lots of conversations with friends and colleagues that identify a Mixed-Race. Whether they call themselves Multiracial, Mixed-Race or Biracial, there are multiple terms for the people that do not fit into the monoracial boxes society assumes for us.