What’s in a name? Exploring the employment of ‘mixed race’ as an identification |
What’s in a name? Exploring the employment of ‘mixed race’ as an identification
Ethnicities
Volume 2, Number 4 (December 2002)
pages 469-490
DOI: 10.1177/14687968020020040201
Minelle Mahtani, Professor of Geography and Journalism
University of Toronto
In the last 20 years, we have witnessed an explosion in scholarship and popular media accounts about the experience of ‘mixed race’ identity. Despite the increasing numbers of people who now identify as ‘mixed race’, relatively little research has been conducted on how ‘mixed race’ individuals consider this particular label of identity. Through qualitative, open-ended interviews with self-identified women of ‘mixed race’ living in Toronto, this article interrogates attachments to the identification of `mixed race’. The article begins by examining the popular discourse surrounding `mixed race’ identity, suggesting that the public imaginary positions the ‘mixed race’ woman as ‘out of place’ in the social landscape. It then explores how many women create cartographies of belonging by identifying as `mixed race’, reading the label as a `linguistic home’. It can provide a way to identify outside of constraining racialized categories of identity. The article also points out that many of the same women in this study effectively challenge, contest and discard the identification, dependent on a myriad of factors.
Read or purchase the article here.
Tags: Ethnicities, Minelle Mahtani, Toronto