{"id":19306,"date":"2011-12-28T02:29:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T02:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19306"},"modified":"2015-03-08T01:17:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T01:17:47","slug":"irish-and-%e2%80%98brown%e2%80%99-%e2%80%93-mixed-%e2%80%98race%e2%80%99-irish-women%e2%80%99s-identity-and-the-problem-of-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19306","title":{"rendered":"Irish and \u2018brown\u2019 \u2013 Mixed \u2018race\u2019 Irish women\u2019s identity and the problem of belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish and \u2018brown\u2019 \u2013 Mixed \u2018race\u2019 Irish women\u2019s identity and the problem of belonging<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Women’s Movement: Migrant Women Transforming Ireland
\nSelection of papers from a conference held in
\nTrinity College Dublin, Ireland
\n2003-03-20 through 2003-03-21
\npages 86-90<\/p>\n

Angeline Morrison<\/a><\/strong>
\nFalmouth College of Arts<\/em><\/p>\n

People are beginning to talk about the \u2018invisibility\u2019 of Whiteness. I am referring in particular to Richard Dyer\u2019s<\/a> project to \u2018make Whiteness strange\u2019, to hold it up for inspection and to question the tacit association of \u2018Whiteness\u2019 with \u2018the human condition\u2019 (Dyer 1997) I want to talk about another kind of Whiteness that has almost total invisibility\u2014this is the Whiteness of the Mixed Race subject. I use the term \u2018Mixed Race\u2019 mindfully, aware that the term is contested and that some find its reference to the unscientific non-sense of \u2018Race\u2019 offensive (Harker 2000). For now, I want to define \u2018Mixed Race\u2019 people as the offspring of one White and one non-White parent. Such people have, inscribed on their bodies, evidence of migration somewhere along the line. Such people have, also, traditionally had problems at the tricky task of belonging. Although visually combining a phenotypic mixture of both White and Black features, the Mixed Race subject in a White, racialised society has, overwhelmingly, tended to be read by that society as, simply, \u2018Black\u2019. I am interested in also considering the Whiteness of the Mixed Race subject, particularly since this is something that both Black and White racialised societies alike \u2013 and by \u2018racialised\u2019 I mean operating according to what Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe<\/a> has referred to as the \u2018popular folk concept\u2019 of \u2018race\u2019\u2013have tended to deny. (Ifekwunigwe 2001:42).<\/p>\n

So, the Mixed Race subject as I define her here, inhabits Blackness and Whiteness equally\u2013but in a racialised society, she inhabits Whiteness invisibly. Her whiteness is like a deep stratum; present and felt, but rendered invisible by society. Whilst scholars have written about the cultural or behavioural Whiteness of Mixed Race subjects, I am so far unaware of any work that specifically foregrounds or makes visible the actual, lived, and (usually) ignored Whiteness that the brown-skinned subject of Mixed Race may claim as a birthright, should she so desire…<\/p>\n

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

Irish and \u2018brown\u2019 \u2013 Mixed \u2018race\u2019 Irish women\u2019s identity and the problem of belonging Women’s Movement: Migrant Women Transforming Ireland Selection of papers from a conference held in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland 2003-03-20 through 2003-03-21 pages 86-90 Angeline Morrison Falmouth College of Arts People are beginning to talk about the \u2018invisibility\u2019 of Whiteness. I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,125,8,14,25],"tags":[8061,246],"class_list":["post-19306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-papers","category-women","tag-angeline-morrison","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19306","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=19306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}