The Study of Racialism

mixedmom · Moderator Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 782 }

I haven't read this book but it looks like it's an interesting read even though there seems to be some ODR ideology expressed by the author.

New People
Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States

Joel Williamson

In New People, Joel Williamson has tackled the most difficult and sensitive topic in the history of American race relations. It is beautifully written and infused with a kind of deep feeling and human concern that is too often lacking in scholarly works on race relations.Reviews in American History
New People is an insightful historical analysis of the miscegenation of American whites and blacks from colonial times to the present, of the new people produced by these interracial relationships, and of the myriad ways in which miscegenation has affected our national culture. Because the majority of American blacks are in fact of mixed ancestry, and because mulattoes and pure blacks ultimately combined their cultural heritages, what begins in the colonial period as mulatto history and culture ends in the twentieth century as black history and culture. Thus, understanding the history of the mulatto becomes one way of understanding something of the experience of the African American.

Williamson traces the fragile lines of color and caste that have separated mulattoes, blacks, and whites throughout history and speculates on the effect that the increasing ambiguity of those lines will have on the future of American society.

This is a remarkably rich book. Williamsons graceful style and cogent arguments about race, culture, and American identity make this a major essay on American character.Library Journal

This provocative work is really two books, one a solid historical monograph, the other a more speculative and at times even mystical account of the Afro-American experience and the nature of race relations in America.Journal of American History

Joel Williamson is Lineberger Professor in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of several books, including After Slavery: The Negro In South Carolina During Reconstruction, 18611877; The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation; and William Faulkner and Southern History.

fwsweet · Posted: Tue 24 May 2005 21:49 Post subject:

If you can buy only one book on the history of U.S. racialism, this is the book to buy. It says it all. Its first 70 pages so dramatically contradict the myths taught in K-12 that I recommend that every member of OneDropRule read at least the first 70 pages.

In a nutshell, this is the book that dragged me into the study of U.S. racialism, even after I was committed to a masters' in the military history of the Civil War. It changed the direction of my studies.

Let me give an example of the kind of data this book presents. Williamson shows that North America's intermarriage rate was comparable to Latin America's until it began to wane in the early 1800s. It dropped steeply in the 1840s and 50s, levelled off after the Civil War, then plumetted to virtually zero during the Jim Crow era (1890-1920) and has stayed essentially at zero ever since. Meanwhile, Latin America's intermarriage rate continued to rise until homogeneity made the term meaningless. William conclusively shows that today's dramatic contrast between the admixture demographics of North- and South-America is simply the accumulation of 300 years of slight rate difference followed 100 years of U.S. non-mixing.

This is a great book.