{"id":12103,"date":"2011-02-15T02:12:11","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T02:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=12103"},"modified":"2014-09-08T16:00:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T16:00:40","slug":"the-coming-miscegenation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=12103","title":{"rendered":"The Coming MiscegeNation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coming MiscegeNation?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

TruthDig
\n<\/a>2011-02-13<\/p>\n

Marcia Alesan Dawkins<\/a><\/strong>, Visiting Scholar
\nBrown University<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s official. We\u2019re a \u201cmiscegeNation.\u201d The 2010 Census results<\/a> are reminding us that multiracialism is not only our destiny but our reality. We\u2019re seeing the rise of the most diverse cohort of youth in the nation\u2019s history with a record low white population\u2014the millennials. According to The New York Times<\/em>, \u201cYoung Americans are far less white than older generations, a shift that demographers say creates a culture gap with far-reaching political and social consequences.<\/a>\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Does today\u2019s focus on multiracialism mean that we\u2019re finally seeing the end of racism? Or does it mean that racism has simply gone underground?<\/p>\n

The answer depends largely on talking and to whom we talk. Many would like to believe that our comfort with categorizing people as multiracial has erased racism and the stigma of interracial relations. Here is a perfect example: In defending herself and the tea party against the NAACP\u2019s<\/a> charges of racism, Sarah Palin<\/a> calls on her own multiracial family as evidence in a Facebook post titled \u201cThe Charge of Racism: It\u2019s Time to Bury the Divisive Politics of the Past\u201d:…<\/p>\n

…Translation: Multiracial families bestow the skill of racial reconciliation that will result in the end of racism. What is more, multiracial families can even promote the end of race. Palin is not the only one who expresses such views. The politically correct lip service that says that multiracial individuals and families are not racist and naturally racially progressive abounds in the press and blogosphere.<\/p>\n

This sexy-but-flawed way of thinking is based totally on appearances. Because of our nation\u2019s history of slavery, segregation and interment, racism is conflated with physical racial separation. As a consequence racial progress is conflated with racial mixing.<\/strong> Multiracial individuals and interracial families are touted as icons of racial healing because they are thought to have special insights based on what they are\u2014mixed. In his 2008 \u201cA More Perfect Union\u201d speech, President Obama<\/a> addressed how absurd this kind of thinking is. He said that his grandmother \u201conce confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.\u201d The president also implied that the idea of multiracials ending racism ignores the fact that interracial romantic relationships still experience higher rates of failure and divorce than same-sex relationships (i.e., his own parents\u2019 divorce; Halle Berry\u2019s and Gabriel Aubry\u2019s custody battle over their daughter, Nahla<\/a>).<\/p>\n

If we still think that being multiracial or being part of a multiracial family automatically ends racism, then we must consider the cases of Lawrence Dennis<\/a> and Leo Felton<\/a>. Dennis, the multiracial right-wing fascist<\/a>, was charged with sedition for allegedly seeking to establish a Nazi<\/a> regime in the U.S. during World War II<\/a>. Felton, a multiracial white supremacist, was convicted of bank robbery and plotting to blow up Jewish and African-American landmarks around Boston<\/a>. The child of an interracial couple, Felton wrote a letter in which he criticized his parents and said he is \u201can unrepentant enemy of the multicultural myth.\u201d Multiracial backgrounds did not encourage these men to become racial healers…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Coming MiscegeNation? TruthDig 2011-02-13 Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar Brown University It\u2019s official. We\u2019re a \u201cmiscegeNation.\u201d The 2010 Census results are reminding us that multiracialism is not only our destiny but our reality. We\u2019re seeing the rise of the most diverse cohort of youth in the nation\u2019s history with a record low white population\u2014the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,394,20],"tags":[1925,6180,3083,2408,2406,4274],"class_list":["post-12103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-lawrence-dennis","tag-leo-felton","tag-marcia-a-dawkins","tag-marcia-alesan-dawkins","tag-marcia-dawkins","tag-truthdig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}