{"id":44292,"date":"2015-11-28T00:39:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T00:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44292"},"modified":"2015-11-28T00:39:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T00:39:38","slug":"i-still-consider-myself-african-american-just-mixed-african-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44292","title":{"rendered":"I still consider myself African-American, just mixed African-American."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve got a piece coming out for Buzzfeed<\/em><\/a> about the word mulatto<\/a>. I think that\u2019s a good word to start using more often. People don\u2019t like the word, but they can\u2019t point to why, or they think it\u2019s a reference to a mule. But the word is actually an Arabic word referencing people of mixed heritage. It predates the word for mule. Historically, it\u2019s the word we used for people of mixed race in this country. And the thing about words like mixed and biracial is that they\u2019re completely vague. They don\u2019t make much sense. Most black and white people who consider themselves biracial, their race is listed legally and socially as black. Plus bi- doesn\u2019t work because there are other races mixed in there, too. Part of the thing that worries me about the biracial movement is that it can be ahistoric<\/a>. And as I said the vast majority of African-Americans are of mixed racial descent. So by the definitions they\u2019re using, every African-American is pretty much biracial. It would be a miracle if they did a test and there weren\u2019t some European poking in. In my view, mulatto acknowledges that there\u2019s a larger history. And for me, the black and white mixed experience is part of my African-American experience. I still consider myself African-American, just mixed African-American. It\u2019s like, if you have a Dad whose Irish, you\u2019d be Irish, and nobody would debate that just because your Mom was Italian. But for African-Americans, we have these rigid ways of looking at the issue. We\u2019ve inherited these preconceived notions.\u201d \u2014Mat Johnson<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dwyer Murphy<\/a>, \u201cPitching Chaos, an interview with Mat Johnson, author of Loving Day<\/em><\/a>,\u201d Electric Lit<\/em>, May 26, 2015. http:\/\/electricliterature.com\/pitching-chaos-an-interview-with-mat-johnson-author-of-loving-day\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve got a piece coming out for Buzzfeed about the word mulatto. I think that\u2019s a good word to start using more often. People don\u2019t like the word, but they can\u2019t point to why, or they think it\u2019s a reference to a mule. But the word is actually an Arabic word referencing people of mixed […]<\/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":[22077,22068,2355],"class_list":["post-44292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-dwyer-murphy","tag-electric-lit","tag-mat-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44292","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=44292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44293,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44292\/revisions\/44293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}