Cross-border critical race theory: Black and Native fiction, American and Canadian legal policy

My dissertation presents a comparative critical race theory, contrasting the ways people are classified into race or ethnicity in the United States and Canada. It defines differences in group categorization in governmental policy, looking especially at the evolution of the federal census, and it shows how the changing definitions of race and ethnicity affect the national literatures even as these works may influence changes in federal ideology.; I propose a range of differences in American and Canadian modes of categorization, in particular the following: exclusive races versus optionally multiple and self-determined ethnicities, a clear dividing line with Blacks as the primary disenfranchised Other versus a subtle racism not based primarily on skin color, and strong racial cohesiveness versus a weaker resistance resulting from multiple divisions and affiliations. Paradoxically, each national census recently moves in the direction of the other's paradigm of division, yet neither country's debate takes into account the mode of categorization of the other. My dissertation discusses the national differences I outline in a representative selection of influential American “passing” and “tragic mulatto” narratives as well as works about “mixed” heritage characters by Black Canadian, Native American, and Native Canadian authors.; I show how Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, George Schuyler, and Toni Morrison expose and challenge the Black/White binary and one drop rule, targeting their respective contemporary audiences with a specifically American understanding of race. Contemporary Black Canadian writers, Mairuth Sarsfield, Suzette Mayr, André Alexis, and Lawrence Hill, react against the American writers by overturning readers' expectations and multiplying the ethnic affiliations of their characters. I then examine works from both sides of the border that comment on the government's rhetorical redefinition of Native peoples in order to remove privileges granted in treaties. Exposing this slippery and self-serving legal categorization, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor target an audience with an American understanding of exclusive racial categories whereas Beatrice Culleton, Joan Crate, and Thomas King address Canadian beliefs in multiculturalism.