Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix [Review: Harman] |
Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix [Review: Harman]
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Available online: 2011-10-21
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.623133
Vicki Harman, Lecturer in the Centre for Criminology and Sociology
Royal Holloway, University of London
Rainier Spencer. Reproduction Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, Boulder, CO: Lyne Rienner Publishers, 2010, 355 pp.
From the outset, Reproducing Race promised to be a controversial read. The repeated use of the term ‘mulatto’ (not confined to historical discussions, as is conventional) stood out and created a sense of anticipation at the arguments to follow. This book centres on the significance of Generation Mix, defined as ‘people (typically, but not necessarily, young people) who consider themselves to be the immediately mixed or first generation offspring of parents who are members of different biological racial groups’ (p. 2). Young people who have parents from different racial backgrounds have been celebrated in the media and within much sociological literature as representing a more tolerant and potentially post-racial future. This book offers a critique of celebratory accounts of multi-racialism in the USA and the ideas underpinning the American Multiracial Identity Movement. Rainier Spencer argues that ‘racial ambiguity, in and of itself, is no guarantee of political progressiveness, racial desiabilisation, or, indeed, of anything in particular’ (p. 3). Furthermore, Generation Mix does not radically change the racial order; it simply adds another category because whiteness is still at the top of the racial hierarchy while African-Americans remain at the bottom.
The book is divided into three parts representing different temporal spaces. In part one, ‘The Mulatto Past’, Spencer considers historical portrayals of mulattoes in the USA from the late nineteenth century, drawing on novels, plays, films and academic literature. Chapter 4 is an absorbing discussion of literature by mulatto writers about marginality and racial passing. Such accounts are used to critique the adoption of the marginal man thesis by sociologists, such as Park, Reuter and Stonequist…
The second part, ‘The Mulatto Present’, introduces more contentious arguments about the current racial landscape. Spencer contends that Generation Mix is not new and is in fact indistinguishable from mulattoes, although the American Multiracial Identity Movement attempts to deny ‘mulattoness’. Furthermore, despite celebratory media and academic accounts, members of Generation Mix are not special because African-Americans are also mulattoes, and there is no real difference between those who are recently and historically mixed…
…Notwithstanding the caricature of white mothers, this is a challenging and thought-provoking book, presenting a number of intellectually stimulating and sometimes unusual arguments. In teaching the sociology of race and ethnicity, such a text is likely to act as a useful stimulus. It has the potential to encourage critical engagement with competing perspectives on the significance of racial categories and racial mixing in the past, present and future contexts.
Read or purchase the review here.
Tags: Ethnic and Racial Studies, Rainier Spencer, Vicki Harman