Mixed Race Studies

Is race mixture an antidote to racism?

Monitor: Global Intelligence on Racism
2018-12-03

Monica Moreno-Figueroa, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge; Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

There is a tendency for commentators situated towards the political right to claim that we are living in a “post-racial” age. They point to the fact that since the Second World War, the institutional racism of the US South and of South African apartheid has been dismantled, that scientists now agree that all humans are genetically almost identical, that many societies have officially adopted multiculturalist policies, recognising and respecting the cultural differences that characterise racially diverse societies, and that rates of inter-racial marriage are rising fast as societies become more integrated.

Within this “post-racial” view, the presence of racism is not necessarily denied, but it is minimised and seen in a certain way. Overtly racist people are deplored as far-right fanatics who are not representative of the main trends in society. Those who protest against racism are accused of being over-sensitive “snow-flakes” who “can’t take a joke”, of unfairly demanding special treatment, or creating counter-productive divisiveness and discord in society.

In this scenario, post-raciality and racism are seen as being in an either/or relationship, a zero-sum game in which the more post-racial a society is, the less racism it must have. However, Latin American societies can teach us, both in historical and contemporary experiences, that this scenario is misleading. The region shows us that post-raciality and racism can co-exist, with both aspects forming simultaneous dimensions of the same context. What is more, it is not that post-raciality is a mask behind which the workings of racism lurk: they are both deeply-rooted aspects of society…

Read the entire article here.

“We Are Not Racists, We Are Mexicans”: Privilege, Nationalism and Post-Race Ideology in Mexico

Critical Sociology
Published online before print 2015-06-18
DOI: 10.1177/0896920515591296

Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa, Lecturer in Sociology
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Emiko Saldívar, Associate Project Scientist
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Barbara

This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black racism in Mexico, drawing from an analysis of the 2005 controversy around Memín Pinguín. We ask what is at stake when opposition arises to claims of racism, how racial disavowal is possible, and how is it that the racial project of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) expresses a form of Mexican post-racial ideology. We argue that the ideology of mestizaje is key for unpacking the tensions between the recognition and disavowal of racism. Mestizaje solidifies into a form of nationalist denial in moments when racism is openly contested or brought up. It becomes a concrete strategy of power that is mobilized to simplify or divert attention in particular moments, such as with the Memín Pinguín controversy, when the contradictions within the social dynamic are revealed and questioned. Here is where Mexico’s “raceless” ideology of mestizaje overlaps with current post-racial politics. We explore state, elite and popular reactions to the debate to discuss how such public displays reflect an invested denial of race and racism while, at the same time, the racial status quo of mestizaje is reinforced. This, we argue, is the essence of post-racial politics in Mexico.

Read or purchase the article here.

Colloquium – Mónica Moreno Figueroa on “Naming Ourselves: Recognising Racism and Mestizaje in Mexico”

Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center
New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, New York
Monday, 2011-09-12, 18:00-20:00 EDT (Local Time)

Mónica Moreno Figueroa, Lecturer in Sociology
Newcastle University

Discussant: Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Hosted by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at NYU

Mónica Moreno Figueroa is a Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University, UK in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology. Her research is concerned with the contemporary practices of racism in relation to discourses of mixed-race identities, feminist theory and emotions, with a specific focus on Mexico. In particular, she is interested in the qualities of the lived experience of racism; the significance of racial ideologies and notions of race and nation; and the experience of racism analysed from the particular perspective of the visible, specifically the relationship between visual representations of identities, embodiment and racist practices. She teaches extensively on these topics. Mónica has published in Ethnicities, History of the Human Sciences, Journal of Intercultural Studies and the Journal for Cultural Research as well as in the edited collections Raza, Etnicidad y Sexualidades (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Porn.Com (Peter Lang Publishing Group) and Mestizaje, Diferencia y Nación (INAH, UNAM, CEMCA and IRD), and has two forthcoming chapters in Contesting Recognition (Palgrave) and Cultures of Colour (Berghahn Books).

Drawing from empirical research on contemporary practices of racism and understandings of the discourse of mestizaje, this paper presents an examination of the ambiguities of Mestiza identity as an unproblematised but racialised identity. Mestiza is a racial category that emerges as a key component of the ideological myth of formation of the Mexican nation, namely mestizaje, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In such a project of state formation Mexican is equivalent to Mestiza. Mestiza refers to those who represent Mexicaness and, therefore, those who are closer to the model of the ideal subjects of the Mexican Mestiza nation. Mestizaje, as this ideological framework, boosts an implied rhetoric of inclusiveness while concealing processes of exclusion and racism. Mestiza is then seen as term both relatively ‘neutral’ (i.e. all Mexicans are Mestizas/os) but also as highly ‘loaded’ (implies possibilities of inclusion and exclusion to the national myth). This analysis considers the limits of racial recognition in what could be considered a raceless (Goldberg 2002) context. Such setting has given way to a process of racial and racist normalization that allows Mexican people to express and be convinced by the commonly spread idea that in Mexico there is no racism because we are all ‘mixed’. Mexicans do not recognise themselves as racial subjects, but as national subjects and citizens. In this scenario, recognition of racism is not preceded by the explicit claim of belonging to the specific Mestiza racial identity but a citizenship status.

The title for the CLACS Fall 2011 Colloquium Series is Contemporary Racisms in the Americas. This colloquium will explore emergent racisms in the Americas as integral to the multicultural and what some have called “post racial” present defined within larger processes of economic and cultural globalization and transnational migration. It will also deepen the understanding of different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of contemporary forms of racism as major obstacles to the construction of intercultural relations, racial and economic justice, and democracy. In this way, it will complement the themes covered by the seminar on Racisms and anti-racist strategies in the Americas. It will become an opportunity for students to benefit from latest contributions to the analysis of racism in the hemisphere and develop a thematic and methodological comparative perspective. It will also become an opportunity for a larger audience to benefit from the information and analysis of cutting-edge scholarship which is also preoccupied with the construction of anti-racist strategies.

For more information, click here.

Distributed intensities: Whiteness, mestizaje and the logics of Mexican racism

Ethnicities
Volume 10, Number 3, September 2010
pages 387-401
DOI: 10.1177/1468796810372305

Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa, Lecturer in Sociology
Newcastle University

By analysing racist moments, this article engages with debates about the existence of racism in Mexico and how whiteness, as an expression of such racism, operates. It draws on empirical research that explores Mexican women’s understandings of mestizaje (mixed-race discourses) and experiences of racism. It assesses how racism is lived, its distributed intensity, within the specific racist logics that organize everyday social life. I build upon arguments that Latin American racist logics emerge from the lived experience of mestizaje and its historical development as a political ideology and a complex configuration of national identity. Mestizaje enables whiteness to be experienced as both normalized and ambiguous, not consistently attached to the (potentially) whiter body, but as a site of legitimacy and privilege.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Complexities of the Visible: Mexican Women’s Experiences of Racism, Mestizaje and National Identity

Goldsmiths College, University of London
2006

Monica Moreno Figueroa, Lecturer in Sociology
Newcastle University, United Kingdom

The thesis analyses the contemporary practices of racism in relation to discourses of mestizaje in Mexico. It focuses on the qualities of women’s experiences of racism and explores the significance of mestizaje in relation to Mexican discourses of race and nation. It provides a historical revision of the ways in which such discourses have developed in Mexico, emphasising the cultural conditions that make it possible to ‘think’ the nation, and relating them to the ways in which systems of differentiation amongst the population have operated. The thesis assesses the politics of difference in Mexico in relation to the ways in which notions of race and practices of racism have been detached from each other. For this, I analyse the historical development of the notion of mestizaje and the mestiza identity, and consider its impact and relevance in contemporary Mexico, calling into question official policies and public discourses that support the idea of the mestiza as the subject of national identity.

Through focus group discussions and life-story interviews based on family photographic albums, I explore how the women who participated in this study understand and experience their racialised, gendered and classed bodies and national identity, in a context where racism has been rendered invisible. The thesis then looks at the specificity of the participants’ social location and analyses how these women today in Mexico think through the notions of racism, mestizaje, and national identity. The focus on the qualities of their everyday experience of racism led me to explore the significance of the role of emotions in revealing the lived experience of racism. In this way, my analysis associates racial and class displacement with inadequacy; beauty, ugliness and ordinariness with shame; and the anxiety about family belonging with slightedness; and exposes the contradictory and ambivalent ways in which the experiences of racism are lived and understood. The experience of racism is explored from the particular perspective of the visible, specifically looking at the relationship between visual representations of identities and racist practices, and in this context the ways in which women see themselves and perceive how they are seen by others: the meanings and metaphors of their own image.

Read this thesis at the Integrated Catalogue of the British Library here.