{"id":13310,"date":"2011-04-17T03:11:18","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T03:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13310"},"modified":"2017-02-03T20:57:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T20:57:23","slug":"the-dangers-of-insisting-on-black-and-white-mixed-race-political-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13310","title":{"rendered":"The dangers of insisting on black and white mixed-race political recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The dangers of insisting on black and white mixed-race political recognition in a system in which blacks are disadvantaged is that a mixed-race group could act as a buffer between blacks and whites and re-inscribe that disadvantage. It is interesting to note that under\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Africa_under_apartheid\" target=\"_blank\">apartheid<\/a> in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Africa\" target=\"_blank\">South Africa<\/a>, there was not only a robust mixed population known as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=9281\" target=\"_blank\">colored<\/a>,\u201d but individuals were able to change their race as their life circumstances changed (Goldberg 1995).\u00a0 From the perspective of mixed-race individuals, this example may seem as though even South Africa was more liberatory on the grounds of race than the one-drop-rule-governed U.S. (This is not to say that South African coloreds had full civil liberties under apartheid, but only that they were better off than many blacks.)\u00a0 But from a more broad perspective, in terms of white\u2013black relations, recognition of mixed-race identity, while it may advantage mixed-race individuals and add sophistication to a black and white imaginary of race, does little to dislodge white supremacy overall<strong>.<\/strong> The public and political recognition of mixed-race identities could be quite dangerous to white\u2013black race relations overall if the position of blacks remained unchanged (Spencer 1999).\u00a0 But continued obliviousness about mixed-race identities holds the immediate danger of denying the existence of injustice for some presumptively pure blacks who do not have the advantages of white parentage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Naomi Zack, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=7108\" target=\"_blank\">The Fluid Symbol of Mixed Race<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0<em>Hypatia<\/em>, Volume 25, Issue 4, (Fall 2010) 875\u2013890. <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1527-2001.2010.01121.x\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1527-2001.2010.01121.x<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The dangers of insisting on black and white mixed-race political recognition in a system in which blacks are disadvantaged is that a mixed-race group could act as a buffer between blacks and whites and re-inscribe that disadvantage. It is interesting to note that under\u00a0apartheid in\u00a0South Africa, there was not only a robust mixed population known [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2986,359],"class_list":["post-13310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-hypatia","tag-naomi-zack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13310","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=13310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51393,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13310\/revisions\/51393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}