{"id":45862,"date":"2016-03-01T16:12:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T16:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=45862"},"modified":"2017-06-13T18:15:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T18:15:46","slug":"emerging-feminisms-fact-of-blackness-the-politics-of-mixed-race-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=45862","title":{"rendered":"EMERGING FEMINISMS, (F)Act of Blackness: The Politics of Mixed Race Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

EMERGING FEMINISMS, (F)Act of Blackness: The Politics of Mixed Race Identity<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Feminist Wire<\/a>
\n2016-02-25<\/p>\n

Jazlyn Andrews,<\/strong> Guest Contributor
\nColorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nJazlyn Andrews<\/small><\/p>\n

That girl doesn\u2019t have an ass.\u201d The words hurled through the thick, humid air as if lobbed by a knife-thrower and struck me for reasons I couldn\u2019t quite place at the time, reasons deeply rooted in my struggle to navigate my identity and subjectivity.\u00a0My journey of self-definition has been a long and painful one that is nowhere near finished, fraught with fear of not belonging and comments made by peers negating my existence, dissecting me by claiming that I \u201cdon\u2019t count,\u201d their focus on my parts rather than my whole.<\/p>\n

I was never \u201cBlack enough\u201d to sing, \u201cAsian enough\u201d to get As in math classes, or \u201cWhite enough\u201d to be shielded from accusations of acceptance based on affirmative action. Hence, I find myself challenging controlling images but relying on them to validate my identity. My story is not unique considering the many mixed race women who have asked themselves time and time again: \u201cAm I __________ enough?\u201d or who have been on the receiving end of \u201cWhat are you?\u201d too many times to count. In fact, these experiences are so common\u2014yet so under-analyzed\u2014that Justin Simien<\/a> created the Twitter<\/a> hashtag #DearWhitePeople<\/a> in order to examine the intricacies of being Black in predominantly White spaces.<\/p>\n

Through an examination of the 2014 film Dear White People<\/em><\/a> based loosely on Simien\u2019s experiences at Chapman University<\/a>, I examine how the Tragic Mulatta<\/a> construction makes it acceptable for mixed race women to become sites for White men to explore their fears of, and fascinations with, an eroticized Other. Such a practice perpetuates an investment in a black-white binary that essentializes mixed race people to \u201ceither\/or\u201d rather than \u201cboth\/and,\u201d which maintains the property value of, and investment in, Whiteness. Importantly, the construction of, and reliance upon, a black-white binary erases mixed-race identities and functions to mitigate the threat we pose to blending the color line…<\/p>\n

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

That girl doesn\u2019t have an ass.\u201d The words hurled through the thick, humid air as if lobbed by a knife-thrower and struck me for reasons I couldn\u2019t quite place at the time, reasons deeply rooted in my struggle to navigate my identity and subjectivity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[14271,23115,19673,6846,18347],"class_list":["post-45862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-feminist-wire","tag-jazlyn-andrews","tag-justin-simien","tag-the-feminist-wire","tag-dear-white-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45862","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=45862"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54214,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45862\/revisions\/54214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}