Mixed Race Studies

2024 Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference

OSU Union
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
2024-06-13 through 2024-06-15

Welcome to the 7th biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, taking place both virtually and in person at The Ohio State University (OSU) in the OSU Union. We are hosting the conference during the week of Loving Day, the anniversary of the June 12, 1967 Loving v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down remaining laws banning interracial marriage. The conference will also concurrently take place during Columbus, Ohio’s Pride weekend. In this spirit, we can mobilize love as an act of radical resistance against white supremacy and forms of intersectional oppression. Within the structure of white supremacy, people identified or identifying as multiracial or mixed have often been placed in “liminal spaces,” or forced to navigate between two or more worlds, identities, and places that are at times conflicting. It is for this reason that we center the idea of liminality or “betwixt and between,” as a productive space from which to form solidarities and foster a “beloved community.”

Within Critical Mixed Race Studies, “betwixt and between” holds meaning as the title of the longest running college course on multiracial identity, taught by the late G. Reginald Daniel (aka “Reg”), Professor of Sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara. The idea of multiracial people living “betwixt and between” was also debated in his groundbreaking text, More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order. While we wish to elevate and honor Reg’s life and scholarship by centering liminality, the framing can also be limiting. Therefore, we invite expansive thinking around questions of “betwixt and between” toward liberating our emerging field of study. We suggest this liberation could happen through solidarity and in or through beloved community. Borrowing from the late bell hooks in Killing Rage: Ending Racism, the “transformative power of love” can be wielded to cultivate cross-racial solidarities amongst ourselves as “beloved community [which] is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world. To form beloved community we do not surrender ties to precious origins. We deepen those bondings by connecting them with an anti-racist struggle.”

For more information and to register, click here.

Building a Mixed Race Community: The People, Building, and Sites of the Winton Triangle

Photoworks at Glen Echo Park
2024-02-09 through 2024-03-31
7300 MacArthur Blvd.
Glen Echo, Maryland

Photoworks is delighted to host the work of acclaimed photojournalist and historian, Marvin Tupper Jones, in the exhibition, Building a Mixed Race Community. The show will be on display from February 9th – March 31st.

The history covered in this exhibit spans from 1851 to 1973 and takes the viewer from the antebellum time through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the modern Civil Rights eras. It tells stories about over 30 people along with photographs and text. Four women are featured, as well as business people, farmers, carpenters, educators, church leaders, soldiers (Civil War and WWII), Civil Rights activists and organizations.

For more information, click here.