Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
Mestizaje is an ideology which believes that the fusion of various cultural traditions (including language, religion, food, music, etc.) in the Americas created a new and better mestizo race. This idea gained strength after the Mexican Revolution, and José Vasconcelos popularized it in his 1925 essay La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race).
Twenty-one years ago, I was interviewed for a cover story in the late, great Black Issues Book Review magazine, with fellow Mixed-Black authors Walter Mosley, Staceyann Chin, and Mat Johnson. The article, by Elizabeth Atkins, explored how we identified on the heels of the then brand-new Census category that made history by including a way for Mixed folks to designate themselves. That’s me in the upper left corner.
Times change, and with them the ways in which some of us move through once-familiar spaces. Lately, I’ve been challenged with how to respond to the new dynamic of Mixed-Black folks being gatekept out of some Black spaces…
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 at 15:59Z and is filed under Articles, Media Archive.
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