{"id":38392,"date":"2014-11-18T20:13:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T20:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38392"},"modified":"2014-11-18T20:13:14","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T20:13:14","slug":"dr-rainbow-johnson-tracee-ellis-ross-and-mixed-race-on-black-ish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38392","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Rainbow Johnson: Tracee Ellis Ross and Mixed Race on Black-ish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Rainbow Johnson: Tracee Ellis Ross and Mixed Race on <\/strong><\/em>Black-ish<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Kaleido[scopes]: Diaspora Re-imagined<\/a>
\nWilliams College Student Research Journal
\n2014-10-27<\/p>\n

Michelle May-Curry<\/strong><\/a>, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n

Mixed race women. The tragic mulatta<\/a>, the jezebel<\/a>, the code-switcher, the new millennium mulatta, and the exceptional multiracial are terms and ideas that audiences subconsciously pull from to index mixed race identity. Some of these tropes are centuries old \u2013 the tragic mulatta calls to mind a woman who cannot find a home in either of her identities and as such meets her downfall through racelessness. Other terms like the \u201cnew millenium mulatta\u201d are new, and describe a woman who constantly seeks to transcend her blackness and climb the racial hierarchy. But these terms do not quite begin to describe who Dr. Rainbow Johnson is on ABC\u2019s new show Black-ish<\/em><\/a>. What role Rainbow plays within the black experience, however, is a question that Black-ish<\/em> might not know the answer to just yet.<\/p>\n

Tracee Ellis Ross<\/a>, the mixed race actress of Girlfriends<\/em><\/a> fame, plays Rainbow (Bow for short), a 21st century working mother of four. As the show might imply, Ross\u2019 character is black\u2026ish. Bow is a self identified mixed race woman and the matriarch to an upper class black family in the suburbs. The product of hippie<\/a> parents, as her rather eccentric name might suggest, Bow\u2019s upbringing was progressive and far less \u201ctraditionally\u201d black compared to her husband\u2019s, who grew up in Compton<\/a>. As for Ross, the actress is a self-identified black woman who simultaneously acknowledges both her black and white identities. Ross\u2019 identity is rather abnormal for a mixed woman of her generation- most mixed race people born before the 1980\u2032s recount stories of how black was the natural and only identity choice they had to make. The most famous example we can look to today who shares this opinion is our president, Barack Obama<\/a>…<\/p>\n