…we argue that this knowledge has haunted Americans, who have always almost known about their biracial past.Posted in Excerpts/Quotes, History on 2011-11-18 06:37Z by Steven |
We argue that evidence of America’s biracial heritage exists in discursive clues that always almost remind Americans that race was never as pure a distinction as the lexicographers and teachers of official language and histories once inculcated. Though recent scholarship has recovered some of this heritage, we argue that this knowledge has haunted Americans, who have always almost known about their biracial past. Double meanings, oral histories, “fictions,” fantasies, and epithets perpetuated an almost awareness of this heritage even as successive discursive formations obscured its memory.
Greg Goodale and Jeremy Engles, “Black and White: Vestiges of Biracialism in American Discourse,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Volume 7, Issue 1 (March 2010): 70-89.