{"id":37036,"date":"2014-08-11T00:20:16","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T00:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37036"},"modified":"2014-08-11T00:20:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T00:20:16","slug":"skewing-the-data-mixed-race-identity-the-problem-of-counting-for-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37036","title":{"rendered":"Skewing the Data: Mixed-Race Identity & the Problem of Counting for Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skewing the Data: Mixed-Race Identity & the Problem of Counting for Race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Lucia Lorenzi: the body politic: musings and meanderings<\/a>
\n2014-04-13<\/p>\n

Lucia Lorenzi<\/strong><\/a>
\nUniversity of British Columbia<\/em><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I attended a panel hosted by the Institute for Gender, Race, and Sexuality at the University of British Columbia, entitled \u201cCWILA and the Problem of Counting for Race<\/a>.\u201d CWILA (Canadian Women in the Literary Arts) is a non-profit organization, founded in 2012, as a \u201cdiscursive space to address gender disparities in Canadian literary culture, as well as the wider politics of representation, the critical reception of women\u2019s writing in the literary press, and the ways in which we can foster stronger critical communities.\u201d Through their first two annual counts, CWILA demonstrated that there is a significant imbalance when it comes to gender representation in Canadian literary culture. Considering the myriad ways in which these imbalances continue to circulate, (as evidenced by statements from the likes of David Gilmour<\/a>, whom I have written about here<\/a>) the collection of data seems to serve a useful purpose in providing some numerical and concrete grounding to what often feels like an abstract and unquantifiable problem. Data can help to back an argument, to lend \u201ccredibility,\u201d when people would otherwise dismiss lived experiences or personal narratives as \u201cmere anecdotes.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…I am deeply aware that I am, in so many ways, a question mark. A fully Italian name, with seemingly-matching olive skin. My mother tongue is German. My mother is white and my father is black. When my parents separated, my sister and I were raised by our mother in a primarily-white suburb of Vancouver<\/a>. And, in many moments in my life, I have had the privilege of passing<\/a>. While my sister and I share the same parentage, the rolling of the genetic dice meant that while I was born with lighter skin and straight hair, my sister was born with darker skin and curly hair. Even now, when my sister and I are out together, it is she who is more readily-racialized than I am. It is because of this complexity that the question of race, and accounting for my own racialization, has always been fraught. I am genetically, biologically, half-Black, and yet I have had virtually no connection to \u201cBlack\u201d culture for most of my life. What is \u201cBlack\u201d culture, anyway? I did not inherit the stories of my father\u2019s family, the stories of growing up in Barbados, growing up Black on an island with a history of British colonization and the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, that history is still mine, somehow. It\u2019s in my skin. Do I count in percentages? Half-half? 70%-30%?…<\/p>\n

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

Skewing the Data: Mixed-Race Identity & the Problem of Counting for Race Lucia Lorenzi: the body politic: musings and meanderings 2014-04-13 Lucia Lorenzi University of British Columbia A few weeks ago, I attended a panel hosted by the Institute for Gender, Race, and Sexuality at the University of British Columbia, entitled \u201cCWILA and the Problem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,33,125,394],"tags":[17715,17714],"class_list":["post-37036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-census","category-identitydevelopment","category-socialscience","tag-lucia-lorenzi","tag-lucia-lorenzi-the-body-politic-musings-and-meanderings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37036","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=37036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}