More Thoughts on The Magic Mulatto Myth |
More Thoughts on The Magic Mulatto Myth
The Magic Mulatto: Bringing the fine art of Race Talk straight to the people
2013-01-29
Brett Russell Coleman
Elsewhere on this blog I have described the trope or myth of the magic mulatto (see the “about” page, for example, or this post about Frank Schaeffer). To my surprise, some people have asked me to expand on this myth (that is, I’m surprised that anyone reads any of this, but glad you do). Far be it from me to shirk my duty to my loyal readers, so expand I shall.
One of the ways in which this myth gets perpetuated is through research, scholarship, and sometimes everyday talk about mixed-race identity. In these discourses, you will often hear some clap-trap about mixed people being peculiarly skilled at “cultural adaptation” or “boundary spanning”, even “cognitive flexibility” (I’ve been guilty of this myself, I must admit, which is why I feel so free to criticize). It is clap-trap not because it isn’t or couldn’t be true (it may very well be true for some mixed-race people, under some circumstances), but because it could not possibly be true for all mixed-race people, or even some of them all of the time. It is especially ridiculous because it implies (perhaps inadvertently) that there is something magical about the intermingling of gene pools that predisposes one for cultural adaptation, as opposed to opportunities or demands of the sociocultural situation. More importantly, it implies that a “mixed-race” person would have an advantage over a “mono-racial” person in a similar sociocultural situation which demands the ability to “adapt” or “code-switch” or change like a “chameleon.” I suppose one could argue that familiarity with two or more racial or ethnic groups, plus a racially ambiguous appearance, might socialize one for this special ability in a way that is unlikely for a mono-racial person. I would argue that such an argument is absurd, but I suspect that neither you nor I am are temperamentally equipped for the conceptual and methodological nightmare that such a study would entail. So lets leave it at the level of argument for now. My argument is this: there is no good reason to believe that any given mixed-race person would be more adept at cultural adaptation, code switching, etcetera, than any given mono-racial person, given similar socializing conditions for both. That is to say, if the situation demands that the mono-racial person make some sort of psychological or behavioral leap across the racial or cultural boundary, he or she will be just as able to make that leap as the mixed-race person would be. To argue otherwise is to uphold the belief in “race” as something essential to the human “personality” and puts unfair demands on mixed-race people to do the hard work of bridging the racial divide that the majority of humanity are unwilling to do. Put another way, if you’re so interested in bridging the racial divide, do it yourself…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Brett Russell Coleman, The Magic Mulatto