Spaces Between: Racial and Ethnic (Mis)Conceptions and Transformations

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Mixed Race Studies

Abstract

The research discussed here is based on forty semi-structured, in-depth interviews with black, white, and mixed race people from Louisiana who have shared roots in eighteenth and nineteenth century St. Domingue/Haiti. The stories of the racial and ethnic misconceptions and mis-categorizations they deal with help us to see the enduring impacts of alternative Carribean understandings of race among descendants who are several generations removed from the immigrant experience. The paper connects their stories to current debates within race and immigration theory concerning the potential choices of mixed race people, the political implications of increased black diversity and the potential for expanding borders of whiteness. In these interviewees’ stories, which tell the racial and cultural results of past migrations, we are able to discern the broad outlines of what we might expect for the future as a new generation of immigrants—black, white, and mixed race—makes its own choices.

Author

• Angel Adams Parham, Loyola University-New Orleans