Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The multiracial idea has at least two versions. One is that multiracial people are of mixed blood or mixed genetic material. The other is that multiracial people are those with parents of different recognizable races. On examination, both of these positions present problems. The first is most blatantly tied to the racist science of the nineteenth century. It suggests that a person with both black and white ancestry is not adequately or accurately described as black (or white). This assertion rests on the discredited biological model. To sustain this position, one would have to show not only that bloodlines or genes are the appropriate foundations upon which to classify races, but also that bloodlines or genetic indicators are clear. Stated more strongly, this view implies that pure blood-lines—people who are uniracial—define the current racial categories.

Many of the proponents of new multiracial categories are politically left of center and reject the overt racism of nineteenth-century biology. Yet, a number of the assumptions adopted by these advocates end up relying, unwittingly, on the same discredited science, one of the main assertions of which was that race and racial categories were based on blood or genes. Supposed racial difference cannot be sustained on this basis, however; the majority of white Americans have African ancestry, the majority of blacks have white ancestry, and a substantial number of each have American Indian ancestry. Indeed, under the old hypodescent or “one drop” rule, which asserts that “white blood” is pure and therefore contaminated by even one drop of “black blood,” most white Americans are, in fact, African American.

john a. powell, Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 39.

A Mestizaje of Epistemologies in American Indian Stories and Ceremony

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2012-04-08 18:32Z by Steven

A Mestizaje of Epistemologies in American Indian Stories and Ceremony

Nakum
Volume 2.1 (2011)
49 paragraphs

Margaret Cantú-Sánchez
Department of English
University of Texas, San Antonio

A close examination of Native American literature reveals that some Native Americans find it difficult to retain ties to their cultural epistemologies once introduced to the assimilationist pedagogies of U.S. schools. In some cases, their cultures, ethnicities, and communal epistemologies are completely rejected by U.S. school systems. Such rejections have created feelings of regret, alienation, fear of failure, and confusion. For the purposes of this article, I focus on the alienation that Native Americans, specifically members of the Dakota and Laguna Pueblo tribes, experience once they are subjected to the assimilationist, patriarchal methods of the U.S. education system. I frame my exploration of this dilemma with the following questions: how do U.S. school systems affect Native Americans’ tribal identity and the Native student’s interaction with his/her family and community, and what can Native American do to reconcile the institutional education they achieve in school with indigenous knowledge? A possible solution emerges when Native Americans encounter the education/indigenous knowledge conflict, an imbalance of epistemologies caused by the clash between U.S. institutional education and indigenous knowledge, an imbalance leading to alienation from school and/or Native students’ home/cultural communities. Acknowledgement of this conflict is the first step towards one solution embodied in a mestizaje of epistemologies, a balance of institutional education and indigenous knowledge…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Margaret Cantú-Sánchez, Margaret E. Cantú-Sánchez, Nakum

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Mixed Race Studies

A Mestizaje of Epistemologies in American Indian Stories and Ceremony

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