Mixed Race Studies

Is race mixture an antidote to racism?

Monitor: Global Intelligence on Racism
2018-12-03

Monica Moreno-Figueroa, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge; Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

There is a tendency for commentators situated towards the political right to claim that we are living in a “post-racial” age. They point to the fact that since the Second World War, the institutional racism of the US South and of South African apartheid has been dismantled, that scientists now agree that all humans are genetically almost identical, that many societies have officially adopted multiculturalist policies, recognising and respecting the cultural differences that characterise racially diverse societies, and that rates of inter-racial marriage are rising fast as societies become more integrated.

Within this “post-racial” view, the presence of racism is not necessarily denied, but it is minimised and seen in a certain way. Overtly racist people are deplored as far-right fanatics who are not representative of the main trends in society. Those who protest against racism are accused of being over-sensitive “snow-flakes” who “can’t take a joke”, of unfairly demanding special treatment, or creating counter-productive divisiveness and discord in society.

In this scenario, post-raciality and racism are seen as being in an either/or relationship, a zero-sum game in which the more post-racial a society is, the less racism it must have. However, Latin American societies can teach us, both in historical and contemporary experiences, that this scenario is misleading. The region shows us that post-raciality and racism can co-exist, with both aspects forming simultaneous dimensions of the same context. What is more, it is not that post-raciality is a mask behind which the workings of racism lurk: they are both deeply-rooted aspects of society…

Read the entire article here.

Racism ‘won’t go away’ even if we’re all mixed-race in the future

METRO.co.uk
2019-06-18

Natalie Morris, Senior lifestyle Reporter

The idea of ‘divide and conquer’ harks back thousands of years.

Whether it is by gender, class, wealth or race, humans love walling themselves into distinct categories then using those categories to create hierarchies.

In the case of race, this hierarchical distinction ended up with slavery, countless programmes of ethnic cleansing and the retention of ‘othering’ based on the colour of skin even to the present day.

But what happens if we take away these racial categories that divide us into subgroups?

If, instead of defining as black, white, Asian or any other singular category, we defined ourselves as a little bit of everything, would it herald the dawn of a more accepting, ‘post-racial’ age?

And would that mean racism would end?…

Read the entire article here.

Chris Abani: Face Value in Brooklyn

Restless Books
Brooklyn, New York
2014-05-19

We were thrilled to welcome our friend and contributor Chris Abani to New York this weekend to participate in Lit Crawl NYC. Chris came to discuss his forthcoming contribution to our series, The Face, and to read from his work-in-progress…

…When I tell people that my mother was a white English woman and my father Igbo, they look at me skeptically. It’s a pause that really means; are you sure? You’re so dark. It’s a pause that I’ve heard only in the West. In Nigeria most people know on meeting me that I’m not entirely African. Nigeria has a long history of foreigners coming through—the Portuguese in the 14th century, North Africans as far back as the 12th century, Tuaregs and Fulani to name just a few. In fact in the late 80’s and early 90’s the civil war in Chad caused the very light skinned Chadians to pour into Nigeria as refugees. It was a disturbing sight to see hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of homeless Arab looking people begging for food in the streets and markets. The public outcry was so severe that the military government began a program of forced repatriation. Army trucks rolled into markets and soldiers would round up these refugees an, with no thought of separating families, after all they all looked alike, and drive them back to the border. I once found myself being pushed into one such truck but my fluency in several Nigerian languages saved me. I was often confused for being Lebanese, Indian, Arab, or Fulani. But not in England or America. In these places I am firmly black, of unknown origin…

Read the entire article here.