ERASURE OF MIXED VOICES
By VCXY
All of us recognize visibly mixed identity without being taught; an identity that is not categorized cleanly into a singular race, may be easy enough to conceive at face value- but easy enough to immediately dismiss.
(In case you need a definition, a Mixed person comes from 1, parents who are genetically very different from each other , and/or 2, parents who come from different cultures and countries.)
The United States, a symbol for diversity and integration, is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world, as Americans are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various immigrants. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as president Of the United States, the son of a European American mother and a Luo father from Kenya. Barack Obama was declared world-over as the first “Black” president of the United States of America. Not the first “Mixed” president. The point is not which unprecedented representation should/ would have been more historically significant/ a more worthy title deserving of importance. It is the fact that Obama’s “Black”-ness permanently overshadowed his “Mixedness”… And when it was remembered, it was noted generally to be a lack of “completeness” in his representation.
The mixed identity gets hijacked for good or bad racial agendas.
The Voiceless Mixed Body
They speak for you before your voice is heard.
It’s not just the typical matter of people not wanting to hear you or what you really mean, but rather- it isn’t even your voice that is heard or not.
Select one or more term(s) in the below list that has been used to label a mixed person, and point out if any were truly coined by a mixed individual/ community?
· Multiracial
· Biracial
· Multiethnic
· Polyethnic
· Métis
· Creole
· Coloured
· Dougla
· Mestizo
· Mulatto
· Melungeon
· Quadroon
· Chindian
· Sambo/zambo
· Eurasian
· Hapa
· Hāfu
· Garifuna
· Honhyeol
· Pardo
Answer is none.
“Mutt” vs “Custom Breeding”
The mixed body is often seen — either as an object of admiration or repulsion. A scientific marvel or abomination with undeniable presence of genetic traits that come from distinctively different strains.
In cases such as the self emancipation of oppressed Africans in South Africa — many were released from their status of abomination. Yet it wasn’t so long ago. And does the new platform give mixed people their voice?
With many of those who have gained admiration and fame, think of actors casted as one race or another, but not a mixed person. Think Supermodels known and respected far more for their exotic mixed bodies and corresponding body metrics rather than quotes…
Think spokespeople who mouth words as seen on teleprompters that empathize implicitly or explicitly with one racial identity or the other, and whose opinions ultimately are less relevant to any one racial political platform.
Think of World Leaders who are always referenced as Black (what should be called “50 percent of his racial identity”, before Mixed (which would be 100 percent, or 0 in another argument.) But clearly, a Mixed person does not fit cleanly into 1/0 binaries.
“ It shouldn’t be that complicated”
If it complicates racial relations, then it is futile — is not a recent concept I’ve heard used to discount any over importance placed on mixed people “being the future of the planet” and “the answer to racism.”
A South Asian mother married to a Briton- was compelled to write to the Guardian UK to publish how she felt such a comment of her mixed children made her feel uncomfortable as she believed “they” (not sure if she means as symbols or humans in this case) complicate racial relations and certainly wouldn’t contribute such significance to the future.
Regardless of what has been said or not said further of Mixed people-
We represent ghosts people want forgotten and encounters at the peripheries/ margins of society. The biological byproducts of globalization bleeding in, in spite of all their attempts to physically preserve their border or stonewall all things “foreign” and not “essentially us”. Many are products of controversial interracial marriages — at times a crime in itself such as that in 18th/19th/ (first half of) 20th century US and the era of apartheid in South Africa, and etc. Whether it is in the context of War/ Migration/ Diplomacy/ unbridled True Love- these “conceptions” made “exceptional” to the norm, immediately place the mixed baby outside of societal imaginary where all axes of intersectionalities are erased in their inconceivable and unexpected identity. And as mentioned, only some are brought to the forefront when the voiceless mixed body is needed to fully shine and act as a symbolic prop or a strategic pawn for the “ethnically complete” players and audience.
Since birth, mixed people world over have had to bear more than the full burden to find their place in the racialized world and contain and sanitize anything that would make it otherwise uncomfortable for the ethnocentric to operate with their superiority.
The Mixed person’s very existence, complete with body, mind and voice- inadvertently challenges anyone who uses the categorical status quo of/ or alliance with “their” Race to enrich their livelihood.
Self identifying with race-as-culture, or biologically per DNA, who truly is NOT mixed? — Much fewer than we all would have guessed.
When the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) initially revised standards in 1997 for the collection of federal data, these revisions identified a minimum of five racial categories: White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; and Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and “Other”. Only in Census 2000, 3 years later, respondents were given the option to mark one or more of these races on the questionnaire to indicate their racial identity.
If most job applicants on recruitment platforms where Corporate American giants have long illegally asked probing questions about the disability of applicants as well, were able to be honest with their racial declarations for recruitment purposes, the selections of “Two or More Races” would soon make racial profiling in these corporate recruitment spaces and practices increasingly futile. This is a very small scale example.
So what is a Mixed Voice? First and foremost a voice, and a voice that is Race-less. It is a transparent voice whereby we gain clarity on how humanity has been fractured and reformed, as it has been naturally stripped of a certain tribal sentimentality that has characterized our justifications for liberating/ oppressing different Races/ “race-as-cultures”.
For those of you who still cling deeply to your “race”- your ethnocentricity (and yes I am saying Race is merely Ethnocentricity), where you see yourself representing some “essential” purity and beauty of some Race, I will not comfort you. What you call the Race you are proud of — we have been rendered irreverent towards. If anything, Self-Exoticization is most obvious to Mixed people and perhaps we’ve stayed too silent as to how unnatural it truly is.
We do complicate racial relations. We do represent the dissolution of “your” Race.
We are Mixed. And we are far too many.
