Mulatto America: At the Crossroads of Black and White Culture: A Social History

An excellent read for any African American man/woman especially if you're biracial. Though I'm not biracial, I am light-skinned. Some people have actually mistaken me for a biracial man. Anyway, Mulatto America gets into the origin of mulattos, the self-hatred of some mulattos, the favoritism that existed and to a certain extent still exists because of light skin color. It touched on how Blacks were bought and sold premised on light/dark skin color. Overall I think this book was very informative as well as descriptive. It taught me another aspect of my history. I'd definitely recommend it...

Mr. Talty has written an intelligent, wonderfully lyrical book (like a 1950s riff in two-four time). If six stars were allowed I would give it to this book. This romp through history teems with the optimistic sounds, rhythms, smells and tastes of all we have come to understand as the proverbial American "melting pot." It is a profoundly uplifting and optimistic read. It is an essential side of the untold-American story, but not the only one. Unfortunately it is as clear to us (the reader)-as it is to Mr. Talty that he has sampled only the best of America-the mélange that is, to our collective dismay, but the fringe on top.Thus, it is so very easy to be seduced by this book. It is so well written. It reflects so much of the author's passion and love for this country. It is so intelligently thought-out. In short, it is wishful thinking at its delicious best. I love the place in the heart and soul from which this book sprung. At some point in our lives, most of us share that wonderfully optimistic out look on America. We want the best for our country and we also want only to think the best about it. We all yearn for this 400-year old experiment to succeed. So it is easy to be seduced by Mr. Talty's book. Indeed we want to be seduced by it. And he wants to seduce us. But if one is not careful, he may be completely taken in by it and begin to think for instance that had Dennis Rodman and Madonna had kids their Mulattos off-springs too would have inherited the earth. We might forget that the hiphoppers are also rebelling against Louis Armstrong's grinning teeth. We might think that Elvis and Little Richard were some kind of ambassador for race-mixing. But alas it is not so! It is all a self-fulfilling mirage. There is a deeper realty underlying rock-and-roll, Jazz, hip-hop and black ghetto pimps. It is the reality of that side of America born with D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation"-which the author curiously failed to include in his very selective romp through American history.No one is more aware than the author that his romp--however lyrical and well stated it may be--is but the fringe sitting atop a burgeoning "rotten egg." One that seems always just one step away from bursting at the seam. One that after 400 years still has ("soft") white superiority--an epithet that remains the unwritten subtext of his book--written all over it. But the author cannot be blamed for that any more than a fish can be blamed for swimming in polluted waters.Of course, for cosmetic reasons (reasons of collective denial) America's ideology of racism is no longer called that any more. There are any numbers of other euphemisms, recycled, as times require, that serve that purpose-such as: multiculturalism, color blind society, paper equality, "mulatto America," etc., ad infinitum. The one in vogue today is "Social Darwinism," a generic name for "Republican and Democratic Conservatism." Social Darwinism is a "stand in" for snow white's famous "mirror

The book gets off to a great start with iconoclastic tales of antebellum life in the United States. Chapter 1 covers American 'White' slavery, something that needs a lot more attention. Page 1 includes a photo of an adorable 'White' girl of about 8 whose freedom was purchased by abolishionists in the 1850s. Chapter 2 retells stories of the early 'tent revivals' now known as the 'Great Awakening'. The twist here is to tell it in terms of the slave reaction. Chapter 2 is probably the best chapter of the book. I've never seen anyone make a case for the Great Awakening enticing slaves to 'buy' the American dream, but Talty makes a good argument for it. The Great Awakening too often gets ignored in our overly materialist ethos.The next two chapters lose a bit of energy. Chapter 3 is titled 'The Mulatto Flag: Interracial Love in Antebellum America." I'm not sure what flag Talty sees waving, because he never distinguishes 'mulatto' as a positive notion, in and of itself. Being 'mulatto' is just something that one happens to get labelled. There are some interesting stories here, though. I didn't know that there were documented cases of 'white' men drinking a few drops of their 'Black' lover's blood to claim mulatto status and get a marriage license. Apparently, this method of gaining mulatto status is written into the popular play 'Showboat.' Chapter four covers the Civil War in 6 short pages. I think this a mistake and the book never really recaptures it's narative drive.Chapter 5 is called "Memorizing Shakespeare: The Black Elite". W.E.B. Du Bois is the central hero. Du Bois reacts against being 'whiter than white' (memorizing Shakespeare) and seeks to define a 3rd way. Talty argues Du Bois' book 'Souls of Black Folk' does this, but the argument is too abstract to gain traction. With Du Bois out of the way, Talty spend the rest of the book doing musicology to avoid talking about the sexual taboos that define 'whiteness' or 'blackness.' I don't object to the detailed history of Jazz, but the music metaphor did little for me for the last 100 pages of the book. Explaining contemporary racism in terms of music history may provide a way to encode your thoughts without offending anyone, but whatever Talty's purpose, it eluded me. The last chapter is called, 'The Death of Coercion'. I don't think the word 'mulatto' is mentioned once. Instead, Talty makes the mistake of hoping we will simply forget the terms 'white', 'black' and 'mulatto'. After describing Terry McMillan's 'A Day Late and a Dollar Short,' he writes, "Black style, black tradition, black suffering, the black story: all are as vital and real as one's blood type. But 'race' in the abstract - that unseen presence that defined one's essential place in the world - has lost most of its terrors and its charms." This seems to avoid the issue. As best I can tell, despite 'race' meaning a lot of different things to different people, the notion continues to play a role in day to day