RACE IN MIND - University of Notre Dameundpress/tocs/P03187-toc.pdf · RACE IN MIND Critical Essays PAUL SPICKARD with Jeffrey Moniz and Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly ... Jean Toomer, herald

R ACE IN MIND

© 2015 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME


R A C E I N M I N D

Critical Essays

PAU L S P I C K A R Dwith Jeffrey Moniz and Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana


Copyright © 2016 by the University of Notre DameNotre Dame, Indiana 46556

undpress.nd.edu

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spickard, Paul R., 1950– Moniz, Jeffrey, Dineen-Wimberl, IngridRace in mind : critical essays / Paul Spickard ;

with Jeffrey Moniz and Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly.Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, [2015]

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 9780268041489 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 0268041482 (pbk. : alk. paper)Race. Ethnicity. Race relations. Multiculturalism.

HT1521.S624 2015 305.8—dc232015032735

∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines

for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.


In memory of

Win Jordan



Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

R ACE AND ETHNICIT Y

1 The Illogic of American Racial Categories 15

2 Mapping Race: Multiracial People and Racial Category Construction in the United States and Britain 33

3 What’s Critical about White Studies 53

4 Race and Nation, Identity and Power: Thinking Comparatively about Ethnic Systems 85

5 From the Black Atlantic to the Racial Pacific: Rethinking Racial Hierarchy in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts 119

6 The Return of Scientific Racism? DNA Ancestry Testing, Race, and the New Eugenics Movement 142


viii | Contents

MIXED R ACE

7 What Must I Be? Asian Americans and the Question of Multiethnic Identity 177

8 The Power of Blackness: Mixed-Race Leaders and the Monoracial Ideal 210

9 Pacific Islander Americans and Multiethnicity: A Vision of America’s Future? 235

10 Carving Out a Middle Ground: Making Race in Hawai‘i with Jeffrey Moniz 261

11 Does Multiraciality Lighten? Me-Too Ethnicity and the Whiteness Trap 291

12 It’s Not That Simple: Multiraciality, Models, and Social Hierarchy with Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly 308

13 Obama Nation? Race, Multiraciality, and American Identity 330

Suggested Reading 376

Index 388


ix

Figures and Tables

FIGURES

I.1. Statue of W. E. B. Du Bois on the campus of Fisk University. Photo by DeAundra Jenkins-Holder. Courtesy of Fisk University. 2

1.1. Walter White and Poppy Cannon. Courtesy of Ebony magazine. 22

6.1. Family tree of humankind. From A. H. Keane, Ethnology (1901). 147

8.1. W. E. B. Du Bois in Sisters Chapel, Spelman College, February 1938. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 219

8.2. A darkened, stylized view of W. E. B. Du Bois. Portrait by Laura Wheeler Waring. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 220

8.3. A view of W. E. B. Du Bois darkened for the cover of an important biography of the great man. Portrait by Addison N. Scurlock. Cour-tesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. 221

8.4. Jean Toomer, herald of the Harlem Renaissance, ca. 1934. From the Marjorie Toomer Collection. Copyright Estate of Marjorie Content. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. 222


x | Figures and Tables

8.5. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Photo by Mathew Brady Studio. Courtesy of Ronald L. Harris. 229

10.1. Conceptualizing Midaltern Space 273

10.2. Local Identity Models 280

10.3. Local Identity Model Illustrating the Fluidity of an Individual’s Identity 282

12.1. US Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi. Courtesy of the Li-brary of Congress. 318

12.2. Mary Church Terrell, founder of the National Association of Col-ored Women. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 319

12.3. Belle da Costa Greene. Courtesy of the Morgan Library. 320

12.4. Governor P. B. S. Pinchback of Louisiana. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 321

12.5. Paramount chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation. Courtesy of the J. B. Milan Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division. 323

13.1. Abolitionist Robert Purvis. Courtesy of the Simon Gratz Collec-tion, Image no. 2137, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 337

13.2. Novelist Charles W. Chesnutt. Courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library. 338

13.3. Vice President Charles Curtis. Courtesy of the Kansas State His-torical Society. 339

13.4. Novelist and screenwriter Winnifred Eaton before she became Onoto Watanna. Courtesy of the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, image no. NA-4320-2. 340

13.5. Hawaiian nationalist Robert Wilcox. Courtesy of the Hawaiian His-torical Society. 341


Figures and Tables | xi

TABLES

6.1. Racial Types in Pseudoscience 1499.1. Ancestry 2419.2. Identity Choices of People Who Report Multiple Ancestries 24210.1. Types of Midaltern Expressions in Hawai‘i and Racialized Identity

by Worldview 277



xiii

Acknowledgments

As this manuscript goes to press, I find I owe debts of gratitude beyond my capacity to repay to two people. Patrick Miller has been a fellow trav-eler on many, many adventures over the years. He has never failed to re-tain his good humor while doing his best to restrain some of my rhetorical excesses. Reginald Daniel’s name appears often in the notes to the pages that follow, but he deserves special mention, for he has been a boon com-panion and is the single person to whom my thinking about race owes the greatest debt.

At the University of Notre Dame Press, Chuck Van Hof showed enthu-siasm for the project from the start. He and his colleagues Stephen Little, Rebecca DeBoer, and Sheila Berg have done a more than professional job of editing. I am grateful for both. Among those he recruited to help me make this book better are Roger Daniels, the dean of American immigra-tion historians, and Maria Diedrich, the foremost African Americanist in Europe. Each encouraged my work and helped me make key improve-ments to the manuscript.

I would not have come to many of the understandings that appear in these pages were it not for three institutions where I have done time. The people at Garfield High School in Seattle and the Central District around it nurtured me as a youth and taught me more about the way race works in America than any other single source. The people of Brigham Young University–Hawai‘i and the towns of La‘ie, Kahuku, and Kane‘ohe helped


xiv | Acknowledgments

me understand that identities are not only constructed, but complex and variable. The University of California, Santa Barbara, gave me a place to work, space to pursue my ideas, and colleagues to encourage me. I am es-pecially grateful to librarians at these institutions, among them Riley Mof-fett, Barbara Lansdon, Sherri Barnes, and Gary Colmenar.

DeAundra Jenkins-Holder of Fisk University went far out of her way to take a photo of the statue of W. E. B. Du Bois that stands on her cam-pus. Special thanks are due to Francisco Beltran and Laura Hooton, whose generous, skillful, and persistent research on another project freed me to complete this one.

For the past couple of decades I have enjoyed the company of the Hui—an endless stream of brilliant students who have taught me much and who never failed to provide entertainment as they went about their own projects. My wife, Anna Lucky Louise Spickard, has been a constant solace and source of intellectual engagement. My other debts are marked in the notes. By the time you reach the end of the book, you will likely under-stand why it is dedicated to Winthrop Jordan.


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RACE IN MIND - University of Notre Dameundpress/tocs/P03187-toc.pdf · RACE IN MIND Critical Essays PAUL SPICKARD with Jeffrey Moniz and Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly ... Jean Toomer, herald