Generation Mixed and the One Love Club

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The multiracial idea has at least two versions. One is that multiracial people are of mixed blood or mixed genetic material. The other is that multiracial people are those with parents of different recognizable races. On examination, both of these positions present problems. The first is most blatantly tied to the racist science of the nineteenth century. It suggests that a person with both black and white ancestry is not adequately or accurately described as black (or white). This assertion rests on the discredited biological model. To sustain this position, one would have to show not only that bloodlines or genes are the appropriate foundations upon which to classify races, but also that bloodlines or genetic indicators are clear. Stated more strongly, this view implies that pure blood-lines—people who are uniracial—define the current racial categories.

Many of the proponents of new multiracial categories are politically left of center and reject the overt racism of nineteenth-century biology. Yet, a number of the assumptions adopted by these advocates end up relying, unwittingly, on the same discredited science, one of the main assertions of which was that race and racial categories were based on blood or genes. Supposed racial difference cannot be sustained on this basis, however; the majority of white Americans have African ancestry, the majority of blacks have white ancestry, and a substantial number of each have American Indian ancestry. Indeed, under the old hypodescent or “one drop” rule, which asserts that “white blood” is pure and therefore contaminated by even one drop of “black blood,” most white Americans are, in fact, African American.

john a. powell, Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 39.

Generation Mixed and the One Love Club

Generation Mixed and the One Love Club

Gino Michael Pellegrini: Education, Amalgamation, Race, Class & Solidarity
2012-06-03

Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

The popular media and specifically the Race Remixed series in the New York Times propagate the myth of multiracialism. According to this social myth, the increasing number of interracial families and multiracial children in America is transforming race and paving the way for a post-racial future. This myth assumes the existence of a growing mass of mixed youth who both identify with their multiracial heritage and who have a clear conception of its significance and transformative potential. At best, writers and audiences (popular and academic) who believe in this myth are engaged in wishful thinking. From my experience and observation, they confuse a few individuals for the many.

For instance, I remember that Timesia is colorful. She wears yellow, purple, red, and taupe colored tops with brown, indigo and maroon pants. She is awkward and sweet, sixteen or seventeen. She’s from the neighborhood and probably poor. She is brown, black, copper, beige, and she wants to start a club for mixed kids like her.

Or at least this is what she initially tells me when she asks me to be the faculty sponsor for her club. The year is 2006, and I am working as an English teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Van Nuys High School. I recall that it’s my future wife, her counselor, who suggests to her that I might be the right teacher to sponsor her club.

I am more than happy to sponsor her club, but there’s a hitch. She has to complete an application: Describe the club. Explain its purpose. Give it a name…

Read the entire essay here.

Tags: Gino M. Pellegrini, Gino Michael Pellegrini, Gino Pellegrini, Race Remixed

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013 at 00:10Z and is filed under Articles, Campus Life, Media Archive, Social Science, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Generation Mixed and the One Love Club

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