Mixed Race Studies

How ‘mixed-ish’ Failed To Tackle Biracial Identity and Chose To Rely On Tropes

Wear Your Voice
2019-10-02

Nylah Burton

Set in the 1980s, ABC’s mixed-ish, the newest black-ish spin-off, tells the story of Dr. Rainbow “Bow” Johnson’s (Arica Himmel) experience growing up biracial. The Johnson family — white father Paul (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), Black mother Alicia (Tika Sumpter), Bow and her siblings Johan (Ethan William Childress) and Santamonica (Mykal-Michelle Harris) — are also former members of a “hippy” commune, where presumably, neither race nor racism existed.

The show’s premise is that being forced into the “real world,” where race and racism do exist, is a major source of culture shock that the entire family must now navigate.

As a Black multiracial woman who doesn’t have a white parent, I’m tired of portrayals of mixedness that mock Blackness, portray multiraciality and interracial marriages as the more “righteous” path, and ignore experiences that don’t fit into POC/white binaries.

Unfortunately, mixed-ish embodies all this and more…

Read the entire article here.

The very first time I became aware of how my ethnicity affected me was when I was asked what my race was on a form when I was in elementary school. Ten to twenty years ago, official documents didn’t give you the option to say that you were multiracial or choose more than one race. I remember being a little confused because I knew my skin was Black, but both my parents weren’t. In the end, I chose “Black” and sometimes I still just choose “Black” when I think my ethnicity is too complicated for others to understand.

Latonya Pennington, “Being Proud of my Blasian Identity Didn’t Come Without Some Pain,” Wear Your Voice, May 30, 2018. https://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/race/proud-blasian.

Being Proud of my Blasian Identity Didn’t Come Without Some Pain

Wear Your Voice
2018-05-30

Latonya Pennington, Pop Culture Writer

Despite the ongoing trauma I’ve experienced and the toxic things I’ve had to unlearn, I wouldn’t trade being Blasian for anything.

Until recently, I thought that being a biracial Black and Asian person was no big deal. I look Black and was always closer to my African American dad than my Vietnamese mom, so I thought that nullified my biracial heritage somehow. However, certain experiences, new stories, and media have reminded me that no matter how Black I appear to be, I will always be Blasian.

The very first time I became aware of how my ethnicity affected me was when I was asked what my race was on a form when I was in elementary school. Ten to twenty years ago, official documents didn’t give you the option to say that you were multiracial or choose more than one race. I remember being a little confused because I knew my skin was Black, but both my parents weren’t. In the end, I chose “Black” and sometimes I still just choose “Black” when I think my ethnicity is too complicated for others to understand…

Read the entire article here.

White Supremacy Has a Deep Impact on Interracial Families

Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media
2017-11-04

Savannah Lee-Thomas
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

For interracial Black and white families, honest discussions about racism need to be had in a white supremacist world.

While I recognize that we are all the same species, due to pigmentation and a white supremacist culture, some of us are treated differently than others, and some of us are treated unfairly. In the ninth grade, our class read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and I remember reading that the children of a mixed couple were considered nothings. Non existent.

As a mixed child, I had to stomach that that situation would have been a reality for me during that time. With a West Indian mother and a White father, I grew up knowing that I was mixed but never understanding.I didn’t understand why I was bullied for no reason or not liked by my teachers. I didn’t understand why dolls didn’t look like me or why I didn’t see myself on television.

And then, there was my family. I was brought up under the impression that we are all the same. I was never taught about Trinidadian culture or tradition and lived with a father who had spent his entire life in a small suburban town outside of the city. There was no access to my culture and I was never taught about it in school. Because of this, I had an extremely difficult time connecting with others and getting to know myself as an individual…

Read the entire article here.

Upholding interracial marriage as proof that we have overcome racism reinforces the idea that racism is primarily about individual acts of prejudice, rather than about systemic (and collective) vulnerability to state violence.

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, “No, Interracial Love is Not “Saving America”,” Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media, June 12, 2017. https://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/race/no-interracial-love-not-saving-america.

Biracial and Bisexual – Our Identities are Important.

Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media
2017-06-07

Lara Witt, Senior Editor

When bisexuality isn’t being mischaracterized as being indecisive or greedy, it is being erased by cisgender, heterosexual folks which is partially why bisexual women face some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

As someone who has written thousands of words about sexual assault and been vocal about being the victim of rape, I am not going to describe my pain or how I was raped – I am not here for a voyeuristic lens focused on violence inflicted upon my body – I am here because I want to discuss being bisexual and multiracial and how those two parts of my identity are pushed against in similar ways.

They take what they see as being a fracture within ourselves and exploit it to diminish our words. Sometimes, or oftentimes, this can bring up years of trauma. Multiracial or biracial identity and bisexuality are nuanced and complex, and can be difficult to navigate depending on how we are raised or what resources we have available to us…

Read the entire article here.

No, Interracial Love is Not “Saving America”

Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media
2017-06-12

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda

This year is the 50th anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia, the famous Supreme Court case that officially overturned state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Predictably, this has been accompanied by a flurry of events, films, articles, and even songs celebrating this moment as a milestone in the history of America’s journey toward racial equality.

At a mixed race conference I recently attended, larger-than-life photographs of Richard and Mildred Loving, the white man and black woman whose relationship inspired the court case in 1965, adorned the walls. There and elsewhere, the Lovings were portrayed as “heroes” whose love valiantly overcame the racism of their time.

Just today, the New York Times proclaimed that interracial love was “saving America.”.

Statistics show that interracial marriages in the U.S. are on the rise, and this undoubtedly reflects a shift in attitudes toward race in the American population overall. However, there are several reasons why using interracial marriage as proof of racial progress in our society is not only misleading, but harmful.

First, state recognition of partnership often functions as a superficial symbol of progress, obscuring deeper issues of violence and inequality for the most marginalized members of a community. For example, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015, many heralded this as proof that queer people had finally been accepted into mainstream society…

Read the entire article here.

Being biracial or multiracial doesn’t stop white parents from teaching their kids internalized racism and colorism. Not all interracial relationships begin with a white partner who has a deep understanding of systemic racism, white privilege and colorism. Undoing privilege and anti-blackness is a lifelong endeavor.

Lara Witt, “Stop Weaponzing Biracial Children,” Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media, March 16, 2017. http://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/race/stop-weaponzing-biracial-children.

Stop Weaponzing Biracial Children

Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media
2017-03-16

Lara Witt
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Raising biracial or multiracial children isn’t a band-aid you can slap onto the festering wound that is racism.

Hi! It’s your local multiracial feminist here to remind you to stop weaponizing biracial and multiracial kids for the sake of making white supremacists angry. We have our own experiences, traumas and perceptions. We don’t simply exist to make people angry, so stop dehumanizing us as if we were grenades.

It’s been a common theme for a while now, and I remember hearing it countless times growing up: you have the best of both worlds and it’s people like you who will end racism! Cool. So, um, nope. It doesn’t work that way, in fact, it never has — and, very often, children with multiple ethnicities have identity issues and face a specific type of discrimination and racism.

I have always struggled with feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere: not white enough, not Kenyan enough, not Indian enough. I’m stuck at a crossroads where my understanding of blackness and whiteness is unique, and so it is rather alienating. I have dedicated my life to dismantling white supremacy, misogyny, colonialism and capitalism, but I don’t weaponize my racial identity to do so…

….It’s hard to ignore the underlying current of antiblackness when discussing bi-racial kids: when you want cute brown babies with European features and 3B curls, you’re talking about a dilution of blackness as a response to white supremacy, and frankly that doesn’t make sense. Frankly, I don’t want to be used as an example for your fetish of “exotic women.”…

Read the entire article here.

Fetishizing mixed-race children is always antiblack.

Ashleigh Shackelford, “PSA: Mixed Black Babies Will Never Put An End to Antiblack Racism,” Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media, July 21, 2016. http://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/race/psa-mixed-black-babies-will-never-end-antiblack-racism.