Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

In contrast to the courts that openly struggle with fluid racial identities, others deal with the problem by merely assigning a category to a fluid identity individual in order to make the prima facie case analysis a simpler proposition. In cases out of Virginia, Texas, and Minnesota, courts were presented with claims brought by a mixed race plaintiff but gave scant if any attention to this complex identity, preferring to simply assign the plaintiff a category that allowed for easy application of the McDonnell Douglas protected class paradigm. In these cases, the courts typically noted that the plaintiffs identified themselves as “multiracial,” or “biracial,” and then proceeded to describe them simply as “black” or “African American” for the remainder of the opinion. This was the case even where the alleged discrimination consisted of harassing statements that seemed to have been directed specifically at the plaintiff’s mixed race status.

Leora F. Eisenstadt, “Fluid Identity Discrimination,” American Business Law Journal, Volume 52, Issue 4, Winter 2015, 817. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12056.

Why I teach about Whiteness.

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-11-08 20:24Z by Steven

Why I teach about Whiteness.

Race and Reflection
2015-11-08

Lee Bebout, Associate Professor of English
Arizona State University

I will be teaching “the whiteness class” in a few weeks, and it seems like a good time to reflect on where I’ve been and where we’re going. Last spring was simultaneously a headache and a joy. I received national media attention, became the focus of neo-Nazi vitriol, and was asked not to respond to the media. But the class was great. One of those invigorating experiences that remind you why you became a professor: 19 of us gathered each week, committed to an in-depth interrogation of how race is made, experienced, and resisted.

Last year, many folks asked me why I teach critical whiteness studies. I was not speaking openly to the media, so I often could not answer. For those who asked and for myself, here is my answer: I do the work I do because racial inequality is a very real problem in the US and globally…

Read the entire article here.

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Mixed Race Studies

Why I teach about Whiteness.

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