{"id":14196,"date":"2012-06-12T22:15:53","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T22:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14196"},"modified":"2016-10-22T23:26:32","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T23:26:32","slug":"14196","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14196","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Pass on Context: The Importance of Academic Discourses in Contemporary Discussions on the Multiracial Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Don&#8217;t Pass on Context: The Importance of Academic Discourses in Contemporary Discussions on the Multiracial Experience<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"web.archive.org\/web\/20120429010145\/http:\/\/www.mxroots.org\" target=\"_blank\">Mixed Roots Film &amp; Literary Festival<\/a><br \/>\nJapanese American National Museum<br \/>\nLos Angeles, California<br \/>\n2011-06-11<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:steven@stevenriley.com\">Steven F. Riley<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The following is the slightly modified text from my opening remarks.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">Civil War<\/a>, ponder about re-electing our first black President, and begin the remaining 99 decades of the so-called \u201cMixed Millennium,\u201d never in any point in time have there been so many ways to disseminate and share information about the multiracial experience: online, offline, YouTube, iPhones, blogs, podcasts, self-publishing, publishing on demand, etc. Thoughts and ideas that in the not too-distant past, that may not have been published until after death; can now be broadcast to the world before breakfast.\u00a0 Never have so many, been able to say so much, so quickly. But while we marvel at the quantity of the information about multiracialism, I ask that we pause and consider the <em>quality<\/em> of the information about multiracialism.\u00a0 Never have so many, been able to <em>publish<\/em> so much\u2026 and say so little, so quickly.<\/p>\n<p>The purpose of this workshop is to encourage writers, filmmakers, and activists to consider discourses and texts outside of their own\u2014or their subject\u2019s\u2014personal experiences during the formation of their respective projects.\u00a0 The ideas discussed during the workshop should not be seen as mandatory or even suggested guidelines for projects, but rather topics for consideration to help an writer or artist present and communicate their ideas in a more meaningful way.<\/p>\n<p>Just a quick question for the audience&#8230; What is the year of the first census that tabulated data on individuals of two or more races? [Audience responses were mostly \u201c2000\u201d, there was one \u201c1890.\u201d\u00a0 The correct answer is \u201c1850.\u201d]<\/p>\n<p><em>[By the census of 1850, the aggregate number of slaves in the United States was 3,204,313. Of this number, 246,656 were of mixed blood, mulattoes, The number of unmixed negro blood was, therefore, 2,487,455. The free black and mulatto population was 434,495, in the following proportions; blacks, 275,400; mulattoes, 159,095.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There are three interconnecting areas of discussion that I find lacking in these contemporary discourses.\u00a0 I will speak briefly on each of them and explain their importance and at the same time use the narrative of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mildred_and_Richard_Loving\" target=\"_blank\">Richard and Mildred Loving<\/a> as a central point of focus.<\/p>\n<p>Our celebration of the Lovings is an excellent entr\u00e9e into an examination of co-option and the distortion of an American historical narrative.\u00a0 Similar to the reduction of the legacy of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s<\/a> life into his famous 1963 \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I_Have_a_Dream\" target=\"_blank\">I Have a Dream<\/a>\u201d speech in Washington, DC, the narrative of the Lovings has been reduced into the story of \u201clove denied.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. King did not die because he <em>dreamt<\/em> of what America could be; he died because he demanded that America be what it should be.\u00a0 Few remember Dr. King\u2019s criticism of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vietnam_War\" target=\"_blank\">Vietnam War<\/a> when he said,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Georgia_(U.S._state)\" target=\"_blank\">Georgia<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/East_Harlem\" target=\"_blank\">East Harlem<\/a>. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Detroit\" target=\"_blank\">Detroit<\/a>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Like King\u2019s legacy, the popular narrative of the Loving saga has often been crafted in a way that ignores historical facts and denies persistent inequalities.\u00a0 Like in many stories, there\u00a0are truths, lies, and omissions. The story of the Lovings is no exception.\u00a0 It is not that the celebration of the Lovings is inappropriate, it is that it is inadequate.<\/p>\n<p>On the site <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.Lovingday.org\" target=\"_blank\">www.LovingDay.org<\/a><\/em>, the creators state that,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe Loving Day name comes from <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=415\" target=\"_blank\">Loving v. Virginia<\/a><\/em> (1967), the landmark Supreme Court decision that <em>legalized interracial marriage<\/em> in the United States. We found it quite perfect that a couple named Richard and Mildred Loving won their right to marry, and we know a good thing when we see it. So, Loving Day refers to two kinds of loving: the couple in the Supreme Court case, and the original definition of loving.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Loving<\/em> did <em>not<\/em> legalize interracial marriage in the United States.\u00a0 It legalized interracial marriage in the 15 remaining states that still had anti-<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=450\" target=\"_blank\">miscegenation<\/a> laws.\u00a0 (There were 16 states with such laws at the begining of the trial but\u00a0the state of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maryland\" target=\"_blank\">Maryland<\/a> repealed its law while <em>Loving\u00a0v. Virginia<\/em> was still pending.) \u00a0To its credit, <em>LovingDay.org<\/em> does give the visitor a state-by-state and year-by-year breakdown of anti-miscegenation laws throughout the United States, nevertheless, the inaccuracy of this paragraph remains.\u00a0 <em>Loving<\/em> neither increased the number of interracial marriages in the South nor did it create a so-called late-20th century \u201cmultiracial baby boom\u201d\u2014the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965\" target=\"_blank\">Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965<\/a>\u00a0did that by increasing immigration from Asia and Latin America.\u00a0 In fact, ten states have <em>never<\/em> enacted anti-miscegenation laws.\u00a0<em>Loving<\/em> did, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/stanford.academia.edu\/VictorThompson\" target=\"_blank\">Victor Thompson<\/a>, \u201csend a signal to the U.S. population that, in the eyes of the state, interracial marriage was no longer the \u2018sin\u2019 that it used to be\u2014even if it still remained a sin in the minds of some.\u201d\u00a0 Yet even today in 2011, the state of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mississippi\" target=\"_blank\">Mississippi<\/a> with the <em>lowest<\/em> ratio of white-to-black residents, and as a result the <em>highest<\/em> potential of interracial unions and multiracial births, reports the <em>lowest<\/em> rate of self-identified multiracial individuals in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Our preoccupation and celebration with <em>Loving<\/em>\u2014and in the case of <em>LovingDay.org<\/em> with the <em>word<\/em> \u201cloving\u201d\u2014diverts our attention away from the institutional inequities\u2014that are still with us\u2014that created \u201crace\u201d and racism as we know it and forced the Lovings to spend over half of their marriage <em>fighting for<\/em> their marriage.\u00a0 While we may remember Richard Loving\u2019s famous, \u201cTell the court I love my wife,\u201d few remember their lawyer Bernard Cohen\u2019s eloquent argument to the Supreme Court where he said,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe Lovings have the right to go to sleep at night knowing that if should they not wake in the morning, their children would have the right to inherit from them. They have the right to be secure in knowing that, if they go to sleep and do not wake in the morning, that one of them, a survivor of them, has the right to Social Security benefits. All of these are denied to them, and they will not be denied to them if the whole anti-miscegenistic scheme of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Virginia<\/a>&#8230; [is] found unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Race is a Social Construction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cRace is a social construction.\u201d Though it has been nearly a century since scientists began to recognize that the concept of race has no basis in biology, yet race\u2014or rather the belief in race\u2014remains a salient force in our world today.\u00a0 As most have you have already heard before, human beings are the most similar species on earth. When we speak of race, we speak of a concept originally designed for the commoditization, exploitation, oppression and near extermination of African, indigenous (and later Asian) populations. Race as biology is fallacious and we know it.\u00a0 If we teach our children to tell the truth, then we should do the same.\u00a0 I ask that writers and artists consider whether embracing an identity that is based in whole\u2014or in part\u2014on these social constructions merely reinforces those constructions.\u00a0 As author Cedric Dover stated so eloquently in 1937, \u201cToday there are no <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=440\" target=\"_blank\">half-castes<\/a> because there are no full-castes.\u201d Additionally, little attention is paid to the role class has in self-identification.\u00a0 It would be interesting to see projects that take leave of the college campuses, suburban enclaves, and coffee shops and investigate the lives of individuals in poorer rural and\/or urban settings.<\/p>\n<p>While multiracial identities give the appearance of a deconstruction of a social order based on race, I suggest otherwise. For example, many multiracial Americans of African\/European descent understandably attempt to claim and reassert their non-African ancestry; reminding us how they are \u201ca little French, a little Scottish, Italian, etc.,\u201d few of us stop to ponder the near utter destruction of their African ancestry and how it has-even with the inclusion of European ancestry-been reduced to \u201cblack.\u201d\u00a0 While some may embrace a \u201cBlack\/White\u201d identity, I ask where are the \u201cLuba\/Lithuanians\u201d, \u201cShona\/Scottish\u201d, \u201cEwe\/Estonians\u201d, \u201cIgbo\/Icelanders?\u201d\u00a0 It used to be our identities told us and others, where we came from, what we did, how we hunted, how we fished, where we pressed our wine, how we made cheese, when we planted, how we worshiped, and how we lived.\u00a0 Only a few seem to know or notice these nearly infinite identities (even from Europe) have been reduced through the centuries by the onslaught of white supremacy to just a handful of exploitable commoditized categories. We think we can manipulate the morally corrupt framework of \u201crace\u201d into a modern utopia, but even the so-called \u201cnew\u201d hybrid identities may be reabsorbed or discarded back into the oppressive essentialist elements.<\/p>\n<p>Individuals and groups today in 2011 that insist and demand we all tell our whole \u201cracial truth\u201d, are no less misguided and insidious than the Virginians who insisted and demanded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=14135\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cracial integrity\u201d in 1924<\/a>.\u00a0 While some criticize <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=14135\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama<\/a> for identifying as Black, who here knows that \u201cblack\u201d Mildred Loving had European ancestry along with Native American ancestry on <em>both<\/em> sides of her family tree?\u00a0 What even the most ardent racists in Virginia knew\u2014that apparently some activists today do not\u2014was that \u201cracial integrity\u201d was and is pure nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>I ask the creators in this room if they could create projects that consider what life in our society would be like <em>without<\/em> race.<\/p>\n<p><strong>History<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My second area of discussion is by far, my personal favorite, and unfortunately completely neglected in the non-academic contemporary discourses.\u00a0 Hopefully those in the audience will make my complaint\u2014excuse the pun\u2014history.<\/p>\n<p>No serious discussion about multiracialism can begin without an understanding of history.\u00a0 History is not merely important, it is essential.\u00a0 Without an understanding of the past, we shall not only fail at transforming the future, we shall merely repeat it.\u00a0<em>Loving v. Virginia<\/em> was the final battle in a 50+ year struggle to repeal all anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. For many, the history of multiracial America\u2014if one even bothers to discuss history\u2014<em>begins<\/em> in 1967 with <em>Loving<\/em>.\u00a0 Yet even the history of this one case suggests that the genesis of multiracial America began much earlier.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.noblemaillard.com\/Academic_homepage\/Home.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kevin Maillard<\/a> has stated,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cLooking back to <em>Loving<\/em> as the official birth of Multiracial America reinforces the prevailing memory of racial separatism while further underscoring the illegitimacy of miscegenations past. By establishing racial freedom in marriage, <em>Loving<\/em> also sets a misleading context for the history of mixed race in America. Even though <em>Loving<\/em> instigates the open acceptance of interracialism, it unintentionally creates a collective memory that mixed race people and relationships did not exist before 1967.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Loving<\/em> did not create an explosive growth in the multiracial population.\u00a0 The heterogeneous residents of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caroline_County,_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Caroline County, Virginia<\/a> would have scoffed at such a notion just as the inhabitants of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Bahamas\" target=\"_blank\">San Salvador<\/a> would have scoffed at <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christopher_Columbus\" target=\"_blank\">Christopher Columbus\u2019s<\/a> \u201cdiscovery\u201d of <em>their<\/em> island.\u00a0 Just as Columbus was a thousand of years too late to claim a \u201cdiscovery,\u201d those that suggest a post-<em>Loving<\/em> \u201cmultiracial baby boom\u201d are 300 years too late.\u00a0 If we are to use a point in time as a demarcation of the beginning of multiracial America, we should consider <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?page_id=5936\" target=\"_blank\">the year 1661<\/a>, when the then <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Province_of_Maryland\" target=\"_blank\">colony of Maryland<\/a> codified the first anti-miscegenation statute.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that Richard Perry Loving and Mildred Delores Jeter began their courtship in 1950\u2014when he was 17 and she was 11\u2014clearly indicates that their relationship was not transgressive as far as their families were concerned.\u00a0 In fact, the Jeters made it clear that \u201cRichard [wasn\u2019t] the first white person in our family,\u201d indicating that Mildred\u2014like most \u201cblack\u201d Americans\u2014had heterogeneous ancestry.\u00a0 Perhaps the reason that the 1950\u2019s Loving-Jeter courtship was non-transgressive within their families, was because such relationships were non-transgressive within their community of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caroline_County,_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Caroline County, Virginia<\/a>; which was known as the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">passing<\/a> capital of America\u201d because so many light-skinned blacks were mistaken for whites.<\/p>\n<p><strong>White Supremacy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>LovingDay.org<\/em> provides us with what, as far as I can tell is the only interactive state-by-state map of anti-miscegenation laws that I know of. It is indeed\u2014as they put it\u2014\u201ccool\u201d.\u00a0 Yet despite the information given about these statutes, we are presented no overarching reasons why these laws were enacted in the first place.\u00a0 Nor are we told <em>who<\/em> wrote these laws. The site does, correctly state that, \u201cThe judiciary system played an important role in regulating interracial relationships.\u201d\u00a0 Yet something very important is missing from these texts.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately for us we have a scholar like <a href=\"http:\/\/history.uoregon.edu\/faculty\/profiles\/index.php?name=ppascoe\" target=\"_blank\">Peggy Pascoe<\/a> to tell us the whole truth.\u00a0 The very first paragraph of her multiple award winning book, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=520\" target=\"_blank\">What Comes Naturally, Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America<\/a><\/em>, states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThis book examines two of the most insidious ideas in American history. The first is the belief that interracial marriage is unnatural.\u00a0 The second is the belief in white supremacy. When these two ideas converged, with the invention of the term \u201cmiscegenation\u201d in the 1860s, the stage was set for the rise of a social, political, and legal system of white supremacy that reigned through the 1960s and, many would say, beyond.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>No one should celebrate another \u201cLoving Day\u201d without reading this magnificent book.<\/p>\n<p>In my last of the three areas of discussion, this perhaps is\u00a0the most difficult to discuss, yet perhaps the most pervasive.\u00a0 No force in American society has had\u2014and continues to have\u2014a stronger influence on identity than that of white supremacy.<\/p>\n<p>While it is tempting to frame the narrative of the Lovings as a case of love denied by racial difference, there is more to the story.\u00a0 Anti-miscegenation laws did much more than prevent the marital unions between men and women of different races.\u00a0 Anti-miscegenation law in fact; transformed the fiction of race into a social reality.\u00a0 Their enforcement meant that a persons racial identity had to be determined in order to receive a marriage license. Furthermore, the variation in punishments\u2014based on the determined race of the litigants\u2014reinforced the idea of racial hierarchy. Whereas for example,\u00a0a white person and Indian would both face a $200 dollar fine and two years in prison for illegally getting married, while a white person and a black person would face a $500 fine and five years in prison for the same offense.\u00a0 Anti-miscegenation laws also disenfranchised spouses and children.\u00a0 To make matters worse, the <em>idea<\/em> of racial hierarchy was embraced even in states that had no anti-miscegenation laws. These laws adversely affected all people of color regardless of their marital unions. In short, anti-miscegenation laws were the cornerstone of white supremacy.\u00a0 Yet despite the multitudes of non-academic discourses celebrating the demise of these laws, <em>absolutely no<\/em> mention is made in them about white supremacy.<\/p>\n<p>The first anti-miscegenation statutes enacted in Maryland and Virginia in the 1660s were part of the broader strategy of supporting the growing institution of slavery.\u00a0 The presence of interracial couples and their mixed-race offspring threatened the belief in racial difference, black inferiority, and notion of slavery altogether. To counter this perceived threat, these laws were enacted to create a physical, moral and psychological barrier between the whites and blacks and made the concept of the ownership of another human being acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>On January 6, 1959, just six months after police officers entered through the unlocked front door of the Lovings and arrested the sleeping newly married couple for violating the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=14135\" target=\"_blank\">Racial Integrity Act of 1924<\/a><\/em>, they were sentenced to one year in prison. The sentence was suspended on the condition that they leave the state of Virginia for 25 years.\u00a0 After passing sentence, the trial judge in the case, Leon M. Bazile infamously proclaimed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAlmighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although Judge Bazile\u2019s statement is ostensibly about the prevention of what he saw as putative marriages, a closer examination reveals a more sinister agenda. For him, not only did Mildred and Richard Loving <em>not<\/em> belong in the same bed, they\u2014and all of their respective racial cohorts\u2014did not belong on the same continent.\u00a0 Although <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=4781\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Crow<\/a> segregation could not send the \u201craces\u201d back to their separate respective \u201chome continents,\u201d it did the next best thing by consigning the races to their separate schools, separate theaters, separate hospitals, and separate water fountains.\u00a0 Much like his predecessors almost 300 years before, Bazile reaffirmed the framework of white supremacy and the oppression of people of color via the ruse of anti-miscegenation laws.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While we all owe a debt of gratitude to the courageousness of Richard and Mildred Loving that can never be repaid, we should use care on how we celebrate their interracial marriage.\u00a0 The increased attention towards multiraciality has brought\u2014appropriately\u2014more scrutiny, particularly from the academic community.\u00a0 More scholars than ever before are examining the role of multiraciality within the framework of racial justice in the United States and abroad. In the case of Latin America, critics have begun to argue that \u201cmultiracialism, like the firmly discredited concept of Brazilian racial democracy, functions as an ideology that masks enduring racial injustice and thus blocks substantial political, social, and economic reform.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The clever positioning by multiracial identity activists of the Loving marriage as the 1960s vanguards of multiraciality, promotes several troubling ideologies that should exposed and examined.\u00a0 These ideologies effectively distance the Lovings\u2019 saga from the greater <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1955-1968)\" target=\"_blank\">African-American struggle for freedom and justice<\/a>.\u00a0 Firstly, the emphasis on the \u201cmarriage\u201d of the Richard and Mildred Loving implies that these unjust anti-miscegenation laws had no adverse impact towards Black-Americans and other people of color as a whole.\u00a0 Finally, and most importantly, the continual dissemination of the myth of increased multiracial births since the <em>Loving<\/em> decision, is an insidious maneuver that illogically seeks to erase the history of over\u00a0three centuries of interracial marriages and the <em>millions<\/em> of descendants from those unions.\u00a0 As I have stated before, we are not becoming a multiracial society, we already are a multiracial society and we have been so for centuries.<\/p>\n<p>By the time the <em>Loving<\/em> decision marked its first anniversary on June 12, 1968, there was no sign of either a multiracial baby boom or an\u00a0interracial marriage boom. While the Lovings were finally able to live quietly\u2014and legally\u2014as husband and wife in their Virginia home town, the racist attitudes that inspired the creation of anti-miscegenation laws were still very salient. (In fact, Alabama did not remove its unenforceable statute until 2000).\u00a0 What \u201cbooms\u201d that could be seen and heard were near and far and were those of dismay, protest and death.\u00a0 Booms were heard loudly in January, 1968 when the North Vietnamese began the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tet_Offensive\" target=\"_blank\">Tet Offensive<\/a> that despite its military failure, shocked policy makers in Washington, D.C. enough that they became convinced that the war\u2014even with its black and white comrades in brutal solidarity\u2014could not be won.\u00a0 Booms would be heard in cities like Newark, New Jersey\u2014exactly one month after the decision, with riots over racial injustice. Then more <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1967_Detroit_riot\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cbooms\u201d in Detroit<\/a>, just days later which would be just another one of the <em>159<\/em> race riots in the \u201clong hot summer\u201d of 1967. The most ironic and tragic \u201cboom\u201d would come from the shot of a rifle across the street from a Memphis, Tennessee hotel on April 4, 1968, which would fell Dr. King, America\u2019s true non-violent symbol of racial reconciliation.\u00a0 From hence \u201cbooms\u201d would be heard in violent protest all over America.<\/p>\n<p>The past two years have brought forth an unprecedented amount of critical examination of multiracialism.\u00a0 Articles, books, live programs, even a conference\u2014The first critical mixed-race studies conference\u2014are forcing us to ask serious and important questions about how multiracialism and multiracial identities may impact\u00a0 racial dynamics here and abroad.\u00a0 Even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uoregon.edu\/~uophil\/faculty\/profiles\/nzack\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Naomi Zack<\/a>\u2014who many of you have just seen in this morning&#8217;s movie <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=13076\" target=\"_blank\">Multiracial Identity<\/a><\/em> <em>defending<\/em> the political recognition of a multiracial identity, has since, <em>retracted<\/em> that position in her article titled \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=7108\" target=\"_blank\">The Fluid Symbol of Mixed Race<\/a>\u201d in the Fall 2010 issue of the journal <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www3.interscience.wiley.com\/journal\/121572180\/home\" target=\"_blank\">Hypatia<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>She states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe recognition of mixed race that I have advocated would proceed from where we are now, in a society where many people continue to think that human racial taxonomy has a biological foundation. Recognition of mixed race would be fair, because if racially \u201cpure\u201d people are entitled to distinct racial identities, then so are racially mixed people.\u00a0 Also, the false belief in biological races logically entails a belief in mixed biological races. But, of course, in true biological taxonomic terms, if pure races do not exist, then neither do mixed races (Zack 1997, 183-84; Zack 2002, chap. 7).<\/p>\n<p>However, by the time I finished writing Philosophy of Science and Race (Zack 2002), I had come to the conclusion that broad understanding of the absence of a biological foundation for \u201crace,\u201d beginning with philosophers, was more urgent than mixed-race recognition or identity rights.\u00a0 Against that needed shift away from the false racialisms to which many liberatory race theorists still clung, advocacy of mixed-race recognition seemed self-serving, if not petty. And I think that the shift is still a work in progress. But still, the ongoing historical phenomena of mixed race and the distinctive experiences of mixed-race people continue to merit consideration, and I am grateful for this opportunity to revisit my earlier confidence and enthusiasm that mixed-race recognition was on the near horizon, with the full-scale undoing of race soon to dawn.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She continues with,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c\u2026The 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 apartheid in South Africa, there was not only a robust mixed population known as \u201ccolored,\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. 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\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With the next two years promising even more scrutiny of the discussion surrounding multiraciality, it is more important than ever that we all read the academic texts to help us create projects that can produce greater impact.<\/p>\n<p><sup>\u00a9<\/sup>2011, <a href=\"mailto:steven@stevenriley.com\" target=\"_blank\">Steven F. Riley<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don&#8217;t Pass on Context: The Importance of Academic Discourses in Contemporary Discussions on the Multiracial Experience Mixed Roots Film &amp; Literary Festival Japanese American National Museum Los Angeles, California 2011-06-11 Steven F. Riley The following is the slightly modified text from my opening remarks. As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[459,1467,8,9139,14,6940,20],"tags":[4652,4330,4329,70,359,343,2729,2728],"class_list":["post-14196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-pov","category-papers","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-cedric-dover","tag-kevin-maillard","tag-kevin-n-maillard","tag-loving-v-virginia","tag-naomi-zack","tag-peggy-pascoe","tag-steven-f-riley","tag-steven-riley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196","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=14196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47485,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196\/revisions\/47485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}