triracial

An interesting study...

http://linux. library.appstate .edu/lumbee/ 18/DANI003. htm

Provides a brief, helpful discussion of "triracial isolate," a social 
science term, noting at the outset that "many of their members reject 
such labeling, and they are not a single identifiable group. . . . 
The common attributes of these communities have less to do with 
cultural bonds than with similarities in experience and in living 
conditions that unite them in their refusal to accept the United 
States binary racial project" (p. 68). Daniel also notes, in defining 
this concept, that there are approximately two hundred triracial 
isolate groups in the eastern United States (especially the 
southeast); that they have varying amounts of Native American, 
African American, and European American ancestry; and that they tend 
to live (at least, they did during the formation of the community) in 
the edges of towns and in isolate rural areas. He characterizes them 
as pluralistic in terms of their stance toward race, meaning that 
they believe an oppressed group should work to "recover its own sense 
of itself and become more effective as a collective force in the 
world. They envision . . . a process of dissimilation that would 
create intergroup accommodation, or a mosaic of mutually respectful, 
separate social and ethnic pluralities with equal status both in law and in fact" (pp. 119-120).

The specific discussions of the Lumbee are brief, recounting basic 
historical facts. In another section, Daniel discusses an incident in 
1954-1955 involving Allen Platt and family, who moved from Holly 
Hill, South Carolina to Mount Dora (Lake County), Florida. When 
Platt's children started attending school, their classmates 
speculated to their parents, who then talked to the county sheriff, 
about their racial background. The White supremacist sheriff visited 
the Platt home, urging the children to stay out of school until the 
matter could be investigated. The principal, school board, and 
superintendent agreed. The matter escalated into a court case (Allen 
Platt et al. v. the Board of Public Instruction of Lake County, 
Florida). The defendants' case alluded to the fact that on some 
public records, the Platts were called Croatian (Daniel's error for 
Croatan) Native Americans, ". . . and Webster's dictionary defined 
Croatians (sic) as people of blended Native American, European 
American, and African American ancestry" (p. 71). See PLAT001 for 
more details on the Platt case.  

July 23, 2008