While advocates in the multiracial movement never explicitly indicate distaste for the minority that constitutes part of a mixed race individual, the insistence on the development of a new racial designation inadvertently associates this minority with inferiority. African-American studies professor Jared Sexton argues that the implicit rejection of the black race in multiracial discourse is due to the fact that the multiracial movement casts the black race as the reason for the woes of the multiracial ethnicity.179 To compensate for these woes, the black race must be rejected and replaced with the multiracial ethnicity. Recognizing the negativity of the black race, and creating distance between black and multiracial alienates the marginalized minority.180 As Sexton argues, the multiracial movement draws a line between black and multiracial, and allows privileges to one group over the other, similar to what occurred in Bacon’s Rebellion.181 By abandoning the black race rather than incorporating the struggle of blacks into the movement for respect for and recognition of mixed race individuals, self-identified multiracials position themselves parallel to the Irish who similarly excluded blacks from their struggle for labor rights.182
Alynia Phillips, “The Multiracial Option: A Step in the White Direction,” California Law Review, Volume 105, Issue 6 (2018), 1875-1876. https://dx.doi.org/10.15779/Z38H98ZD1S.
Tags: Alynia N. Phillips, Alynia Nicole Phillips, Alynia Phillips, California Law Review, Jared Sexton