Mixed Race Studies

The Colors of Love: Multiracial People in Interracial Relationships

New York University Press
December 2021
312 Pages
24 b/w illustrations
6.00 x 9.00 x 0.00 in
Paperback ISBN: 9781479802418
Hardcover ISBN: 9781479802401
eBook ISBN: 9781479802425

Melinda A. Mills, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology; Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies
Castleton University, Castleton, Vermont

How multiracial people navigate the complexities of race and love

In the United States, more than seven million people claim to be multiracial, or have racially mixed heritage, parentage, or ancestry. In The Colors of Love, Melinda A. Mills explores how multiracial people navigate their complex—and often misunderstood—identities in romantic relationships.

Drawing on sixty interviews with multiracial people in interracial relationships, Mills explores how people define and assert their racial identities both on their own and with their partners. She shows us how similarities and differences in identity, skin color, and racial composition shape how multiracial people choose, experience, and navigate love.

Mills highlights the unexpected ways in which multiracial individuals choose to both support and subvert the borders of race as individuals and as romantic partners. The Colors of Love broadens our understanding about race and love in the twenty-first century.

Racial Mixture and Musical Mash-ups in the Life and Art of Bruno Mars

Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
November 2020
154 pages
Trim: 6½ x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7936-1982-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7936-1983-9

Melinda A. Mills, Visiting Instructor
Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

This book argues that Bruno Mars is uniquely positioned to borrow from his heritage and experiential knowledge as well as his musical talent, performative expertise, and hybrid identities (culturally, ethnically, and racially) to remix music that can create “new music nostalgia.” Melinda Mills attends to the ways that Mars is precariously positioned in relation to all of the racial and ethnic groups that constitute his known background and argues that this complexity serves him well in the contemporary moment. Engaging in the performative politics of blackness allows Mars to advocate for social justice by employing his artistic agency. Through his entertainment and the everyday practice of joy, Mars models a way of moving through the world that counters its harsh realities. Through his music and perfomance, Mars provides a way for a reconceptualization of race and a reimagining of the future.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Introducing Bruno Mars
• Chapter 1: New Music Nostalgia, Or, Is What’s Old New Again?
• Chapter 2: Blurred Boundaries, or Reading Between the Lines
• Chapter 3: The Performative Politics of Blackness
• Chapter 4: The Sonic Politics of Pleasure, Or Love and Joy in a Time of Trauma and Tragedy
• Chapter 5: (Re)fashioning Race and Music

“Who Do You Think You’re Border Patrolling?”: Negotiating “Multiracial” Identities and “Interracial” Relationships

Georgia State University
2008
348 pages

Melinda Anne Mills

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University

Research on racial border patrolling has demonstrated how people police racial borders in order to maintain socially constructed differences and reinforce divisions between racial groups and their members. Existing literature on border patrolling has primarily focused on white/black couples and multiracial families, with discussions contrasting “white border patrolling” and “black border patrolling,” in terms of differential motivations, intentions, and goals (Dalmage 2000). In my dissertation research, I examined a different type of policing racial categories and the spaces inbetween these shifting boundaries. I offer up “multiracial interracial border patrolling” as a means of understanding how borderism impacts the lives of “multiracial” individuals in “interracial” relationships. In taking a look at how both identities and relationships involve racial negotiations, I conducted 60 in-depth, face-to-face qualitative interviews with people who indicated having racially mixed parentage or heritage. Respondents shared their experiences of publicly and privately managing their sometimes shifting preferred racial identities; often racially ambiguous appearance; and situationally in/visible “interracial” relationships in an era of colorblind racism. This management included encounters with border patrolling from strangers, significant others, and self.

Not only did border patrolling originate from these three sources, but also manifested itself in a variety of forms, including benevolent (positive, supportive); beneficiary (socially and sometimes economically or materially beneficial); protective, and malevolent (negative, malicious, conflictive). Throughout, I discussed the border patrolling variations that “multiracial” individuals in “interracial” relationships face. I also worked to show how people’s participation in border patrolling encouraged their production of colorblind discourses as a strategy for masking their racial attitudes and ideologies about “multiracial” individuals in “interracial” relationships.

Table of Contents

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
  • Research Overview and Questions
  • Navigating Multiracial Interracial Borders
• CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODS/METHODOLOGY
  • How Do You Solve A “Problem” Like Racial Mixture? Making Mixture Appear and Disappear
  • What is an “Interracial” Relationship?
  • Measuring Mixture, Exploring Mixed Matters
• CHAPTER THREE: BORDER PATROLLING FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
  • When Strangers Border Patrol Identities
  • When Strangers Border Patrol Both Identities and Partner Choices
  • Conclusions
• CHAPTER FOUR: BORDER PATROLLING FROM OUTSIDERS WITHIN/INSIDER OTHERS/INSIDERS WITHOUT
  • When Significant Others Border Patrol Identities
  • When Significant Others Border Patrol Both Identities and Partner Choices
  • Conclusions
• CHAPTER FIVE: BORDERISM FROM THE INSIDE OUT
  • When People Border Patrol Their Own Identities
  • When People Border Patrol Both Their Identities and Partner Choices
  • Conclusions
• CHAPTER SIX: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
  • Conclusions
  • Future Research
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
• APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW GUIDE
• APPENDIX B: APPROVED INFORMED CONSENT FORM

Read the entire dissertation here.