&#8220;The Fixity of Whiteness&#8221;: Genetic Admixture and the Legacy of the One-Drop Rule

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

As we attempt to imagine our American future, an eventual postracial future in which racelessness is the norm and anyone advocating the assignation of racial identities is considered as strange and as beyond the fringe as someone today would be in asserting that some people are broom-riding witches and that others are animals who have been turned into people and given the power of speech, we must accept responsibility for bringing that dream to fruition. If we say that we desire a nonracial future, then we should be willing to do the work needed to bring it about, rather than pretend that incorporation of a new biological (multi)racial category will destroy the present system of racial categorization. We must become racial assassins, beginning with our own racial suicides, in order to bring a true postracial future into reality, a future in which “‘racial’ identities—hegemonic or oppositional—are no longer thought useful or appealing, even to those who have historically been most disadvantaged by racism.” Part of being a racial revolutionary is refusing to accept a biological racial identity; that part of the revolution is internal and quite simple once one makes the mental commitment.

Rainier Spencer, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner, 2011), 324.

“The Fixity of Whiteness”: Genetic Admixture and the Legacy of the One-Drop Rule

“The Fixity of Whiteness”: Genetic Admixture and the Legacy of the One-Drop Rule

Critical Philosophy of Race
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2018
pages 239-261
DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.6.2.0239

Jordan Liz

There has been increasing attention given to the way in which racial genetic clusters are constructed within population genetics. In particular, some scholars have argued that the conception of “whiteness” presupposed is such analyses is inherently problematic. In light of these ongoing discussions, this article aims to further clarify and develop this implicit relationship between whiteness, purity and contemporary genetics by offering a Foucauldian critique of the discourse of race within these genetic admixture studies. The goals of this article, then, are twofold: first, to unearth some of the presuppositions operative in this genetics discourse that make possible a biological conception of race; and second, to examine some of the social and historical origins of those presuppositions. To this end, this article provides a brief genealogy of racial purity beginning with its formal legal codification in the one-drop rule.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: Critical Philosophy of Race, Jordan Liz, Whiteness Studies

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2018 at 02:25Z and is filed under Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History, Media Archive, Philosophy, Social Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Mixed Race Studies

“The Fixity of Whiteness”: Genetic Admixture and the Legacy of the One-Drop Rule

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