Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Yet, just as Douglass had done in his own time, the multiracial movement exaggerates the extent to which the post-civil rights increase of interracial marriages and their mixed-race offspring constitutes a solution to the problem of racism. As critics of multiracial ideology have noted, positive perceptions of mixed-race people as less threatening are often rooted in pejorative assumptions about blacks as angry or inferior. In other words, this idealised view of ‘bi-racial’ people reinforces, rather than challenges, prevailing notions of racial difference, of white superiority and black inferiority. The fascination with Obama as a seemingly ‘raceless’ mediator, once praised by a news presenter who gushed after a major presidential speech, “For an hour, I forgot he was black,” is a far cry from the resentful perception in some quarters of his wife, Michelle, as an “angry black woman.” The belief that a mixed race president heralds an era of racial harmony seems not just naïve, but misguided…

Kevin Gaines, “Vision Turns to Division,” American Review, Issue 2 (May 2010): 12-15. http://americanreviewmag.com/opinions/Vision-turns-to-division

Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory

Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory

University of Toronto
Geography (B.A.) Program
2010-2011
Course Number: GGRD19H3

From Tiger Woods to Mariah Carey, the popular mixed race phenomenon has captured the popular imagination and revealed the contradictory logic of categorization underpinning racial divisions. We will explore the complexities of racial identity formation to illuminate the experiences of those who fall outside the prevailing definitions of racial identities.

For more information, click here.

Tags: geography, University of Toronto

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 03:58Z and is filed under Canada, Course Offerings, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory

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