Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Like [Shikha] Dalmia, I self-identify as belonging to more than one culture. I have fought for at least a decade with newspapers about how my national and ethnic origins should be described. I reject the hyphen (the term “hyphenated identity” was first struck by Horace Kallen in his 1915 essay “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot”), which looks far too much like a minus sign to me: black minus British, Irish minus American. Always, I ask to be described as British and Sierra Leonean. I did this after many years of being described in various ways: British-born Sierra Leonean, British of Sierra Leonean origin, or—erasing my Scots mother from the picture altogether—simply as Sierra Leonean. (Notably, never have I been described by British papers as Scottish.) But I am both. I belong to both worlds; not just culturally but physically, I move between them. I have family in both, own property in both, have paid taxes in both. I now live in the United States, where I also pay taxes. As a so-called transnational, I belong to a growing class of people.

Aminatta Forna, “Your Nationalism Can’t Contain Me,” The Nation, August 25, 2015. https://www.thenation.com/article/your-nationalism-cant-contain-me.

“Generation Mix:” Is All This Talk of “Multiracialism” An Advance?

Posted in Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States, Videos on 2015-11-20 03:04Z by Steven

“Generation Mix:” Is All This Talk of “Multiracialism” An Advance?

i MiX WHAT i LiKE
The Real News
2015-11-12

Jared A. Ball, Host/Producer and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Artist, activist and creator of the multimedia comic book (H)afrocentric Juliana “Jules” Smith and Dr. Rainier Spencer, author of Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix discuss their various critiques of popular approaches to “multiracial” identity.