Mixed Race Studies

Towards a Dialogic Understanding of Print Media Stories About Black/White Interracial Families

University of Georgia
2003
160 pages

Victor Kulkosky

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS

This thesis examines print media news stories about Black/White interracial families from 1990-2003. Using the concept of dialogism, I conduct a textual analysis of selected newspaper and news magazine stories to examine the dialogic interaction between dominant and resistant discourses of racial identity. My findings suggest that a multiracial identity project can be seen emerging in print media stories about interracial families, but the degree to which this project is visible depends on each journalist’s placement of individual voices and discourses within the narrative of each story. I find some evidence of a move from placing interracial families within narratives of conflict toward a more optimistic view of such families’ position in society.

Multiracial People’s Quest for Voice

People in interracial/multiracial families are engaged in a struggle to find their voice. More accurately, they are trying to establish both an inner voice, to talk about themselves to themselves; and a public voice, to tell their stories to anyone who will listen. Dalmage (2000, p. 20) describes the search for the inner multiracial voice: “Because they do not quite fit into the historically created, officially named, and socially recognized categories, members of multiracial families are constantly fighting to identify themselves for themselves. A difficulty they face is the lack of language available to address their experiences.” This story is my story. I am White (Lithuanian, German, Irish, born in New Jersey, raised in New York City) and married to a Black woman (African, English, Cherokee, born and raised in Georgia). We have a son (born and raised in other parts of Georgia). My wife has a “white looking” half sister, who has seven nieces and nephews, some of whom add Dutch to the family tree. Finding answers to the question, “What are we?” is a family affair. Answering the question “What are you?” is a public matter…

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Towards a Dialogic Understanding

Politics And Culture
2003-07-08

Victor Kulkosky

Good morning. I’m talking today about a work in progress, so you’ll get more questions than answers this time around. Maybe you’ll get the answers at the next CSA conference, if there is one. I think most of us here agree that one of the main missions of cultural studies is to tell or listen to amplify the untold or undertold story. So for me, that brings up this question: How to tell an emerging story that’s still in search of the language for telling it?

People in interracial or multiracial families find themselves facing this challenge. I find myself in this situation. I’m married to a Black woman, who has a half-sister many people assume is white, who in turn has among her children two girls with red hair and blue eyes and two boys many people would label black. Our little Rainbow Coalition claims African, Lithuanian, German, Irish, Cherokee, English and Dutch descent, and we share genes. What are we?

Heather Dalmage, in her book Tripping on the Color Line, (1999) observes: “Because they do not fit into the historically created, officially named, and socially recognized categories, members of multiracial families are constantly fighting to identify themselves for themselves. A difficulty they face is the lack of language available to address their experiences.” Dvora Yanow (2003), in her study of the relationship between racial/ethnic category making and government policy, writes: “Individuals who cannot find their identity in available categories become invisible, in a sense: without a label, without a vocabulary, their stories are untellable and they themselves are unnarratable.”

…A lot of law and discourse and violence have gone into policing America’s racial borders. White supremacy in the U.S. depends on certainty about who is and who isn’t White. Omi and Winant (1994) refer to the continuing efforts to draw and police racial borders as racial formation, which is carried out through a series of what they call racial projects. They define race as: “a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies.” They make this major point, “we should think of race as an element of social structure rather than an irregularity within it; we should see race as a dimension of human representation rather than an illusion.” So I would add that it’s not a question of whether we can and should become color blind – it’s neither possible nor desirable — but about what we see when we see color. Omi and Winant see the concept of race evolving through racial formation, “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed.” They tell us that, “racial formation is a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized.”…

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