New People? New Politics? New Culture?
A different kind of 'Third Way'

by Daniel McNeil
M. A. History, University of Toronto
February/March 2002

Who am I? This deceptively simple question has tormented philosophers who attempt to uncover the nature of identity. Who are you? What are you? Where are you from? These are intrusive questions that torment "edgewalkers",¹ people who do not fit neatly into categories.² Such questions are often founded on suspicion, with the subtext being, are you one of us? The effect of such questions and the impact of childhood labeling are often noted in psychological studies that assert the need for belonging.³ Yet researchers on identity formation have also shown that identity is not simply formed within one's immediate social interactions, but within existing power relations and in relation to Others.⁴ My work on identity formation will focus on multiracial individuals⁵ with one "white" and one visible minority parent in the late twentieth century. For comparative purposes, examples will be taken from the United States, Canada and Britain after the establishment of multicultural state policies. Through an examination of the ways in which multiracial individuals locate themselves as "new" national citizens, unhyphenated nationals, visible minority subjects and/or as a separate "mixed" category, this paper will draw connections between research in diverse fields on multiculturalism, ethnic identity, global culture and transnational organizations.

While charting multiracial identities, I will investigate historical constructions of identity,⁶ sociological theory⁷ and political philosophy,⁸ particularly the ways in which researchers in these fields have responded to new insights from historical and geographical anthropology,⁹ postcolonial literary theory¹⁰ and cultural studies,¹¹ in which attention is placed on the multiple roles of actors' and their ability to negotiate and resist imposed terms. Yet my concern is not simply an esoteric de-construction of labels or a focus on the metropole and intellectuals, but a re-construction of multiracial identities, and an appreciation of individuals, not just as the objects of study, but as active subjects in the shaping of identity. This will help to provide an understanding of individual researchers who attempt to construct theories, as well as multiracial individuals who seek to respond to labeling, develop their identity and demand recognition of their heritage(s).

Multiracial people are not "new" and Williamson's pioneering work has documented the "mixed" ancestry of many blacks and whites in the United States.¹² Mulattoes were prominent in American late nineteenth century literature, often portrayed as tragic or troublesome figures by white authors,¹³ while black authors tended to view "in-between people" as potential leaders of the race¹⁴ or fifth columnists, desiring to "pass" into the white race.¹⁵ A pamphlet printed in 1863 by two Democrats sought to warn their fellow (white) Americans of the spectre of miscegenation and "social equality",¹⁶ and the horror ascribed to miscegenation was clear in reviews of Othello,¹⁷ and anti-miscegenation laws (only overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1967). Black codes in the Reconstruction period established the legal basis for the binary distinction between "non-black" and "black", with "one drop" of African blood signifying "blackness". Consequently, "mixed" individuals, located away from areas influenced by French laws such as Louisiana and South Carolina, tended to need to "pass" as white or were considered "black".

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Canadian and British governments have attempted to define themselves against an American Other, asserting their "tolerance" of difference.¹⁸ However, the Metis in Canada, a group composed of a mixing of white and native people were "despised and rejected by the Indian tribes, and also by the British and French",¹⁹ and the "half-caste" population in England was considered to be "degenerate bastards."²⁰ Like mulattoes in the United States, Metis and "half-caste" individuals were often viewed by others as "Marginal Men" unable to fit in anywhere.²¹ Census forms that dealt with ethnicity continued to label individuals as "white" or a visible/racial minority, and in cultural discourse "whiteness" signified the nation.²²

The development of multiculturalism as a state policy ushered in "new", vibrant and diverse images of the nation. In Canada, following the Immigration laws of 1967 and Multiculturalism Acts of 1971, a "mosaic" could be celebrated. The United States, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, has encouraged multicultural education programs and diversity, with Time magazine noting "The New Face of America".²³ Britain, with the passage of the third Race Relations Act in 1976, and the Swann Report on education in 1985, attempted to incorporate New Commonwealth immigrants into the nation and encourage knowledge of immigrant culture, and in the late 1990s Britain has moved to promote an image of "cool Britannia", incorporating all colours in a progressive vision of the nation.²⁴ The discourse of the liberal democratic states attempts to incorporate and acknowledge the changing "face" of the nation-state, yet in doing so they can reify the conception of the past as pure and "unmixed", as well as ignoring the potential backlash against the "dilution" of constructed notions of race, ethnicity and culture.

Consequently, multiculturalism has faced attacks from the left and the right. Critical multiculturalists and anti-racists on the left have attacked the failure of the state to tackle discrimination, and its false position of "neutrality", which maintains the dominant, "white" conception of the nation. Critics on the right have bemoaned the loss of coherency, insistence on cultural difference and potential for conflict, while far-right groups have made gains, not simply by perpetuating fears regarding the ravishing of white women, or the "mongrelization of the White race"²⁵ (although Gallup polls in the United States from 1991 show 66% of white Americans disapproving of interracial marriage), but also by gaining legitimacy as defenders of the "true" nature or culture of the nation, which is deemed to be under threat from doctrinaire and oppressive multiculturalism, as well as value systems, such as Islam, considered anti-democratic.²⁶ Multiracial individuals have attempted to join the debate regarding the presentation of the nation. Thus we can observe parents of biracial children and "mixed" individuals attempting to assert their strength, following the "biracial baby boom", by obtaining clearer statistics to show their numbers, and fashioning new group identities in order to make their voices heard.

In North America and Britain, work on multiracial groups has focused on presenting "an almost 'arty', avant-garde, 'new people' for…[the] twenty-first century…that is devoid of the present endemic racism and racialised labeling."²⁷ Stephens' work Beyond Racial Frontiers and the collections edited by Root and Camper,²⁸ reveal a concern with poetic expression and individual self-discovery. There is also a naïve optimism regarding the future of "nonracial democracies",²⁹ and multiracial individuals as vanguards of the new order, with statistics emphasizing the large numbers of young people with mixed racial origins,³⁰ and calling on Park's (not Stonequist's) definition of "Marginal Man" as a liminal figure able to solve conflicts,³¹ or Jung's belief in the messianic capabilities of multiracial individuals.³² This rhetoric can be accepted by multiracial individuals, who can claim that "we are more evolved",³³ and students in Wesleyan University, America, who founded a multiracial magazine called "Mavin", stemming from Hebrew, meaning "one who understands".³⁴ This work tends to be by people in interracial relationships, or multiracial individuals from affluent backgrounds³⁵ who, while calling for a move beyond race, also demand equality with "non-whites" who can choose identities,³⁶ and have lobbied for the right to tick multiple boxes or a "mixed" category on census forms.³⁷

New ways of categorizing multiracial people on census forms can allow more quantitative work to be established regarding the numbers of multiracial people. The US Census bureau does keep records of marriage statistics, so we can be treated to journalists describing how interracial marriages "skyrocketed" by more than 800 percent between 1960 and 1990 in America.³⁸ Like multiracial pressure groups, the media tends to treat the "mixing" of the races as a "new phenomenon", although this can be used to warn the public of "swamping" and "dilution", as much as encouraging them to embrace diversity. Nevertheless, accurate accounts of the numbers of multiracial individuals are difficult to obtain (and almost impossible to compare over time) because of the ways in which census forms have been framed and collected, and dominant beliefs in the "one drop rule". Even in the 2001 American census, although one could tick multiple boxes, if one of the boxes ticked was a racial minority group, the individual was classified as a racial minority, under pressure from minority group organizations concerned with voting rights and the allocation of government funds.

Similarly, in Britain and Canada, statistics on the multiracial population are possible, but far from reliable. Recent estimates by J. Haskey placed the "mixed race" population of Britain at 350,000, making them 11% of Britain's ethnic minorities, and 0.6% of the total population.³⁹ In Canada, census material can obscure the collection of data regarding multiracial individuals, for if one ticks, for example, "white" and one of the visible minority groups "Black", "Chinese", "South Asian", "Filipino", "Southeast Asian", "Japanese", "Korean" or "Pacific Islander", one would have been included in the visible minority group reported, while if one checked "white" and either "Latin American" or "Arab/West Asian" one would have been excluded from the visible minority population and placed in the variable called "All others". However, we do have data on those who ticked more than one visible minority box, because they are placed in the "multiple visible minority group", which amounted to 61, 575 individuals in 1996.⁴⁰

Although a new multiracial category would aid the sociologist in defining the numbers of individuals who are willing to identify with the multiracial label, Spencer, in his response to the work of Stephens and Zack,⁴¹ calls for multiracial people in America to avoid creating a new racial category on the census form, warning of a South African fate. Instead of creating a "Cape Colored" category, Spencer calls on mixed race individuals to embrace their nation.⁴² Writers concerned with assimilation,⁴³ and the strengthening of the nation state, can applaud such attempts to avoid the creation of new categories or "hyphenated" people,⁴⁴ who may fail the infamous Tebbit test,⁴⁵ or lack "sufficient" loyalty to the nation. Consequently, the multiracial movement can be perceived as "avant-garde" middle class interracial couples threatening the foundation of the nation state, or an incoherent ensemble of individuals, co-opted by right-wing groups that wish to remove race as a category, without tackling racism.

The perception of the "multiracial movement" outlined above is not attractive to many individuals with parents from different racial backgrounds in lower-class areas. Instead many do not consider themselves part of the nation as they face the objective reality of "not being white".⁴⁶ Craig David, a British "mixed race musician" from a working-class council estate in Southampton feels that "I tend to fall more onto the black side: if you've got any colour in you, that's automatically what happens."⁴⁷ In Canada and Britain the main concern for lower-class multiracial individuals is to combat racial discrimination, and the increased levels of racial violence.⁴⁸ This can lead many of the individuals surveyed by Christian in Liverpool to emphasize their identity as "Black British", or "Liverpool-born blacks", and several of those interviewed by Hernandez-Ramdwar to describe their identity as "Caribbean-Canadian".

Nevertheless, the creation of minority group political movements to challenge racial discrimination is fraught with difficulties. Wilson has noted the "declining significance of race" in "late capitalism",⁴⁹ but the situation of multiracial individuals reveals complications beyond class in ethnic identity politics. For while multiracial individuals can be committed to challenging white supremacy and are often claimed as "black" by ethnic organizations, "mixed race" individuals often find it difficult to enter ethnic identity political groupings that can absolutize racial difference in order to gain "critical mass" and "recognition".⁵⁰ Multiracial individuals with a non-visible minority parent can note, "[T]hey [Africans, Jamaicans, Somalis] would not consider us to be black. And I think they have difficulty in understanding why we persist in calling ourselves black".⁵¹ Multiracial groups, feminists of colour, homosexual and bisexual groups have also opposed fundamentalism in ethnic organizations. As a result, the inability for multiracial individuals to "proudly wear the banner of race"⁵² has not only led to an attack on state policies that label them as "black", but also an attack on civil societies and local community groups that label "mixed race" individuals "black", especially in regard to adoption regulations for multiracial individuals.⁵³ One can observe the ways in which the state, capitalism and ethnic identity politics, can create "oppressed groups" that are divided and unable to formulate a coherent policy.⁵⁴ With an awareness of multiple roles and division in a local and national context, one can, and must, investigate global culture and its construction of "blackness".

Gilroy's work on "The End of Anti-Racism", Cashmore's on "The Black Culture Industry" and Haymes' on "Race, Culture and the City", expose essentialised constructions of blackness that pervade the global culture industry.⁵⁵ Gilroy, Cashmore and Haymes note the creation of black, "urban" culture as a commodity, and the ways in which this can be presented as "authentic", while representing a selective vision of the community. Alongside feminists of colour, they have attacked the misogynist construction of black male identity, especially in gangster rap music, and exposed the emphasis on "mixed race" black women as sexual objects. Yet figures such as Peter Tosh have also attributed the success of multiracial individuals in reaching a mainstream audience, such as Bob Marley and Bruce Lee, to their "Caucasian" features.⁵⁶ The nature of the global culture industry is critically important for those hoping to shape new patterns of allegiance and empower peripheral groups, and debates about its form and content reveal wider concerns regarding the fetishization of difference, and mistrust between "pure" blacks who attack the "privilege" of "mixed" individuals, and/or attempt to claim their success for the black community, and multiracial individuals who are concerned about embracing all sides of their heritage, and engaging with the mainstream and minority cultures.⁵⁷ A number of people in interracial relationships have sought to use developments in technology to create support groups on the Internet for the exchange of ideas and experience, demanding recognition of their children's right to identify with more than one culture, while "mixed" individuals have began not simply to explain where their parents are from, but to forge a new identity or culture.⁵⁸

The creation of new forms of culture is crucially important for artists and writers craving originality and a global culture industry that desires "fresh" images. A detailed consideration of the role of multiracial artists and "edgewalkers" in demolishing the myth of purity and creating a "mixed culture" is provided in Mixed Blessings,⁵⁹ and the favourable reception given to Zadie Smith's first novel, White Teeth, considered a testament to multiracial Britain, reveals reviewers concerns with "mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that", which "is how newness enters the world".⁶⁰ Salmon Rushdie considers White Teeth "about how we all got here [Britain, or more accurately London, England]…and about what 'here' turned out to be". "Here" Rushdie, like Smith, reflects the dominant conception of the capital city as reflecting experiences of the national experience, merely expanding the traditional view of the city to include its new immigrants.

The location of the critic, and their removal from the "here and now", as well as the social memory of multiracial communities outside the dominant city, must be noted in order to understand the writings of cultural theorists and literary critics of imperialism, (post-) colonialism, diasporas and immigrant communities. While these critics can deconstruct assumed forms, and the process of forming new assumptions in the mainstream metropole and urban colonial periphery, they can ignore agency and autonomy in provincial settings or within non-intellectuals. Bhabha has described the formation of a "third space" and mimicry by "respectable" natives, which can destabilize colonial constructions of the Other,⁶¹ while Gilroy focused his concerns on the "Black Atlantic", referring to the influence of black intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic.⁶² Both authors have helped to challenge beliefs in isolated cultures and races. Nonetheless, they privilege intellectuals and can overstate the role of black or subordinate professionals and artists in challenging the status quo,⁶³ as well as their own significance, as they are not creating original theories.

Eric Williams, with his pioneering doctoral work of 1938, linking the growth of the metropole to the periphery,⁶⁴ Latin American theorists who developed dependency theory following World War II, "Hispanic" immigrants to the United States,⁶⁵ and black theorists in the 1960s, who described the American Negro as a "little bit coloured and a little bit white,"⁶⁶ are examples of "edgewalkers" established before the intervention of the pervasive postmodern critic, and the benefits of literary theory and its complex (and convoluted) concepts. Multiracial groups are not the first to question and challenge the socially constructed oppositions of "nonblack" and "black". Moreover, a consideration of historical and geographical anthropology⁶⁷ can allow the researcher to discover the various ways in which cultures interact and identities are formed among non-literate groups and individuals, allowing a study of the shifting of identities (and the constraints of movement for certain actors) in historical contexts traditionally characterized by binary oppositions.

Thus, Said's concern to show "generalized condition[s] of homelessness,"⁶⁸ where "no one today is purely one thing"⁶⁹ can also be traced to dispossessed groups in previous situations of conquest and colonization. Yet this is not to say that identity or dominant discourses are static. Rather, an appreciation of critical discourse analysis, alongside investigation into actors' levels of resistance and negotiation, is crucially important in the study of imagined global communities in "late capitalism", for just as print capitalism helped the creation of a national community,⁷⁰ developments in technology can allow the formation and invention of imagined "global villages". Following the 1971 Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment, and its report, Only One Earth, there has been increasing concern with global issues by politicians and the media in North America and Britain, whether in dealing with (or failing to avoid) epidemics like Aids, the environment, economy or ethnic conflict.⁷¹

In a "global village" questions of control, ownership, inclusion and exclusion remain, especially as "neutral", "democratically racist" states (which can be transformed and empowered by globalization) and global media cultures can underline difference at the same time as they homogenize and incorporate it. We can continue to observe the ways in which multiracial Others are created by journalists and "primary definers" despite their attempts for normalcy: "Though Sade shies away from interviews and hasn't addressed that issue [mixed race identity] directly, it's a tension of cultures that percolates through her music nonetheless."⁷²

I have not wished to simply locate multiracial individuals as objects of study, but as active subjects, with different objectives and world-views; however, I have also been concerned with the pernicious consequences of dominant groups labels. Noting the classification of Others, we can note levels of racial violence and prejudice, so as to prevent describing nefarious institutions as ineffective and benign, pace Fogel and Engerman,⁷³ and avoid simply labeling all historical actors as employing agency. For a more sophisticated analysis we can investigate the levels of autonomy individuals have had by discovering their self-definitions, employing Christian's research in Liverpool to find that half of the older generation considered the label "half-caste" inoffensive, while all of the younger generation considered it offensive.⁷⁴ This suggests a movement to classify the self as a full person, and encourages further investigation into levels of discontinuity and continuity – we also need to investigate the meaning of labels, and see the ways in which, for example, "mixed race" women, whatever the term used to describe them, can continue to be portrayed as licentious and sexually deviant, the harm this can cause, as well as the ways in which multiracial females can exploit the perceived images of their sexuality.⁷⁵

Consequently, the labeling of multiracial individuals by groups in North America and Britain, particularly in periods such as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which racial characteristics and binary oppositions have been crucial in constructing mentalities, provides useful insights for research on identity.⁷⁶ By paying attention to "late capitalism" and the post-1970s world one can also observe increasingly vocal and visible challenges to binary oppositions, as well as the determined defence of order, tradition and essentialised groupings by figures who fear the "dilution" of ethnic groups and individuals "picking and mixing" cultures, or "concerned" individuals objecting to "mindless relativism",⁷⁷ and "neo-Marxist orientated multiculturalism" destroying the "belief in objective, transcendent truth, on which American institutions are built".⁷⁸

One must note Henry et al's warning that "the achievement of racial equity will not come about as a result of a rational, intellectual process of understanding",⁷⁹ yet it is imperative to also recognize the ways in which neo-conservatives such as Schmidt can employ such language to present themselves as defenders of peace, warning their readers of violence and "ugly, bloody rebellion" comparable to that of Yugoslavia as a result of the pernicious, "leftist threat" of multiculturalism.⁸⁰ Schmidt ignores the ways in which groups on the left also document the ways in which the backlash against multiculturalism and globalization can harm multiracial groups without high levels of social or geographical mobility, or access to technology to allow them to participate in global communities. The "mixed race" individuals outside of the mainstream national and global culture, ethnic identity groups, and transnational multiracial communities, can consider such communities distant and dealing with issues irrelevant to those in lower class or non-Western areas. The alienation of such individuals is not remedied with esoteric discussions that fail to engage the "objects" of research.

I began this paper with an elaboration of researchers deconstruction of dominant discourse, noting resistance and negotiation, while revealing the difficulty of group mobilization. New power relations that stress ambiguity and flux will not easily replace traditional definitions that emphasize binary oppositions, yet there remains hope regarding the re-construction of identities on individual, group, national and international levels on the basis of "unity in diversity".⁸¹ In order for multiracial individuals to forge a shared identity, they need to be made aware of their links to other "edgewalkers" in the past and present. In doing so, they can create an inclusive community, by working with ethnic groups and other groups committed to attack discrimination on a local, national, transnational and global stage. We are left with the question, who is ready for such a community?

Author's bio

I am a graduate student at the University of Toronto. My research interests include observing how inclusive rooted or indigenous Black communities are of newer immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, and looking at the rhetorical use of 'Americanisation' in Canada and the US.

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Footnotes

¹ N. B. Krebs, Edgewalkers: defusing cultural boundaries on the new global frontiers (Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press, 1999).
² The prevalence of these questions is documented in interviews with multiracial people in M. Christian, Multiracial Identity: an international perspective (Hampshire, UK: Macmillan Press 2000); Y. Alibhai-Brown Mixed feelings: the complex lives of mixed-race Britons (London: Women's Press, 2001); Miscegenation Blues: voices of mixed race women, (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1994) ed. C. Camper; Racially Mixed People in America, (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1992) ed. M. P. P. Root; What are you?: voices of mixed-race young people, (New York: Henry Holt, 1999) ed. P. F. Gaskins; as well as S. Satris, "What Are They?" in American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity, ed. N. Zack (Rowman & Littlefield: London, 1995).
³ G. K. Kich, "The Developmental Process of Asserting a Biracial, Bicultural Identity." in Racially Mixed People in America, ed. M P.P. Root; A. H. Maslow Towards a Psychology of Being (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1968), in which belonging is rated only after food and shelter in human desires.
⁴ S. Hall, "Ethnicity and Difference" in Radical America, vol.23, no. 4, Oct-Dec, 1990, 9-21.
⁵ The terms "biracial", "interracial", and particularly "multiracial", are preferred in the North American literature, "mixed race" in the British literature, to describe people who identify with more than one "race", especially those with parents from different "races". The notion of mixed races, assuming the notions of separate or "pure" races, is problematic, but the term is not considered derogatory in the current British context, unlike the label "half-caste". Therefore, it shall be employed when studying the British case, although the term "multiracial" will be preferred.
⁶ B. Anderson Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
⁷ F. Henry, C. Tator, W. Mattis, T. Rees, The Colour of Democracy (Toronto: Harcort Brace, 2000).
⁸ W. Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: an introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); C. Taylor, Multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1994).
⁹ J. Comaroff, and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); J. Comaroff, and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); A. Gupta and J Ferguson, "Beyond 'Culture': Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference", Cultural Anthropology, 7 (1) 1992, and A. Gupta "The Song of the Nonaligned World: Transnational identity and the Reinscription of Space in late capitalism" ibid.
¹⁰ H. Bhabha, The location of culture (London: Routledge 1994).
¹¹ P. Gilroy The black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (London: Verso, 1993).
¹² J. Williamson New People: miscegenation and mulattoes in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1980).
¹³ See character of Toinette, heroine of A. W. Tourgee, A Royal Gentleman, 'Zouris Christmas (New York Fords, Howard & Hulbert, c1881).
¹⁴ See character of Dr. Latiner in F.E.W. Harper, Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, Pittsburgh, 1893).
¹⁵ See character of John Walden in The House Behind the Cedars (Boston, Mifflin and Company, 1900).
¹⁶ D. G. Croly and G. Wakeman, "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro."
¹⁷ "The theatergoer in our day who feels rising anger and disgust at the first sight on stage of the black Othello and his fair bride is no modern degenerate…[H]e is instead the true descendent of his Elizabethan ancestor…and inherits a repugnance of intermarriage." W. Given, A further study of Othello: have we misunderstood Shakespeare's Moor? (New York: The Shakespeare Press, 1899)
¹⁸ J. Reitz, "Less Racial Discrimination in Canada, or simply less racial conflict? Implications of Comparison with Britain", Canadian Public Policy 14,4 (1988), pp. 425-427.
¹⁹ F. J. Davis, "The Hawaiian Alternative to the One-Drop Rule" in American Mixed Race, ed. N. Zack, p. 117.
²⁰ Liverpool Investigation into Half-Caste children in 1930, cited in Y. Alibhai-Brown Mixed feelings, p.57.
²¹ E. V. Stonequist, The Marginal Man: a study in personality and culture conflict. (New York: Scribner, 1937).
²² See D. T. Goldberg, Racist Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993).
²³ Time, 141, no. 2, Special Issue (Fall, 1993).
²⁴ The Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, Runnymede Trust, 2000, http://www.runnymedetrust.org/meb/TheReport.htm
²⁵ The Thunderbolt, January 1979, p. 12.
²⁶ See D. D'Souza, The End of Racism: principles for a multiracial society (New York: Free Press, 1995), who believes that Muslims in the US, "should be allowed to practice their religion, but not to the point where it threatens the religious freedoms of others", p. 547. Also note the increase in Islamophobia in many liberal democratic countries following September 11th and Henry et al's concept of "democratic racism" in The Colour of Democracy.
²⁷ M. Christian Multiracial Identity, p. 5.
²⁸ Racially Mixed people in America (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1992), M. P. P. Root (ed); Miscegenation Blues: voices of mixed race women (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1994), C. Camper (ed).
²⁹ See books on The Colour of Love, Y. Alibhai-Brown, and British organizations for interracial couples called "People in Harmony".
³⁰ "One in 20 pre-school children in the UK is thought to be of mixed race" T. Blanchard, "Making of a model Briton", http://www.observer.co.uk/race/story/0,11255,605343,00.html
³¹ R. Park, Human migration and the marginal man (Chicago, 1928).
³² Cited in G. Stephens On Racial Frontiers: The New cultures of Fredrick Douglass, Ralph Ellison and Bob Marley (Cambridge, 1999) p. 220.
³³ Zara in Y. Alibhai-Brown, Mixed Feelings, p. 112.
³⁴ http://www.mavin.net
³⁵ See C. Hernandez-Ramdwar's analysis of her interview with Sandra, All o'we is me: mixed race identity in the Caribbean-Canadian context, M.A. thesis, University of Toronto, 1995, pp. 99-108, 203-5.
³⁶ M. C. Waters, "Flux and Choice in American Ethnicity," Chapter 2 (pp.16-51) in her Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
³⁷ See Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), founded in 1991, as well as the Association of Multiethnic Americans (AMEA), Interrace and New People magazines.
³⁸ M. Lind "The Beige and the Black," New York Times Magazine, August 16, 1998.
³⁹ J. Haskey, Population Review (8), The Ethnic Minority and Overseas-born population for Great Britain, Population trends, 88, Summer (1997).
⁴⁰ http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Population/demo40a.htm
⁴¹ G. Stephens, On Racial Frontiers; N. Zack, Race and Mixed Race (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
⁴² J. M. Spencer, New Colored People: the mixed-race movement in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
⁴³ R. Alba and V. Nee, "Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration," International Migration Review, 31, 4 (Win 1997): 826-874.
⁴⁴ See N. Bissoondath, who asserts the need for "vigorous unity" in Selling Illusions: the cult of multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 224, and D. D'Souza, who calls on blacks to become the "first truly modern people, unhyphenated Americans" in The End of Racism, p. 556.
⁴⁵ In which Norman Tebbit, Conservative politician declared that British born ethnic minorities should support the English cricket team, not other Commonwealth countries.
⁴⁶ Christian, Multiracial Identities, p. 56, and also see M. Gonick, "Blonde, English, White: Theorizing Race, language and Nation," Atlantis 24:2 (2000), in which Lely, one of her visible minority interviewees, differentiates between Canadians (blond, white and English) and Canadian citizens.
⁴⁷ Craig David interview with B. Thompson, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/review.html?in_review_id=311586&in_review_text_id=255516
⁴⁸ The Intelligence Services Hate Crime Report in Toronto shows a 22% increase in hate crime offences from 1997-8, and a 28% increase from 1998-9, and the black community the highest group target, http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/int/hc2nd98.html. Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System in Britain show the number of racist crimes increasing by 14% from 1997-8, 40% from 1998-9, and 51% from 1999-2000 (after the metropolitan police accepted the Stephen Lawrence enquiry's definition of a racist incident as "any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person"), http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/s95race00.pdf
⁴⁹ W. J. Wilson The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and changing American institutions (Chicago: university Press, 1978).
⁵⁰ C. Taylor, Multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition.
⁵¹ Adrian in M. Christian, Multiracial Identity, p. 65.
⁵² D. Achong in Miscegenation Blues, ed. Camper, p. 16.
⁵³ See resolution of National Association of Black Social Workers, 1972, passing a resolution against the adoption of black children by white parents, and insisting that mixed children be taught to acknowledge their blackness and "raised to survive as blacks". See also Y. Alibhai-Brown, Mixed Feelings, pp. 176-182.
⁵⁴ See F. Anthias and N. Yuval-Davis, Racialised boundaries: race, nation, gender, colour, and class and the anti-racist struggle (London: Routledge, 1992), esp. Ch. 6, "Resisting Racism".
⁵⁵ P. Gilroy, "The end of anti-racism" in New Community, v. 17, n. 1, p. 71-83; E. Cashmore, The Black Culture Industry (London: Routledge, 1997); S. Haymes Race, Culture and the City.
⁵⁶ G. Stephens, "Bob Marley's Zion: a trans-racial 'blackman redemption'", On Racial Frontiers, Ch. 4.
⁵⁷ Note Tiger Woods preferring to describe himself as "Cablinasian".
⁵⁸ "I am 100% mixed" in P. Farmer, "Multiracial identity and the Meaning behind it", https://www.multiracial.com/readers/farmer6.html
⁵⁹ L. Lippard, Mixed Blessings: new art in a multicultural America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990).
⁶⁰ S. Rushdie, Imaginary homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 (London, 1991), p. 394.
⁶¹ H. Bhabha, "Of mimicry and man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse", October, 3-4 (1985), pp. 125-33.
⁶² P. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness, (London: Verso, 1993).
⁶³ See J. Lewis and S. Jhally, "Television and the Politics of Racial Representation" in P. Kristivos and G. Runbland (eds.) Multiculturalism in the United States: Current Issues, Contemporary Voices (Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press, 2000).
⁶⁴ E. W. Williams, Capitalism & slavery (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1944, based on doctoral dissertation, Oxford University, 1938).
⁶⁵ L. Alcoff, "Mestizo Identity" in American Mixed Race, ed. N. Zack.
⁶⁶ J. Baldwin in Negro Protest, ed. K. B. Clark (Boston: Beacon Press 1963).
⁶⁷ See J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 2 vols.
⁶⁸ E. Said, "Reflections on Exile", in One World, Many Cultures. ed. Stuart Hirschberg. New York: MacMillan, 1992, p. 424.
⁶⁹ E. Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Random House, 1993) p. 336.
⁷⁰ B. Anderson Imagined Communities.
⁷¹ See I. Wallerstein, Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century (New York: Academic Press, 1974) and the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations, and its quarterly journal, Review.
⁷² Bret McCabe, "Sade", Dallas Observer, July 26, 2001, http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2001-07-26/preview.html
⁷³ R. W. Fogel and S. L. Engermann, Time on the Cross: the economics of American Negro slavery (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).
⁷⁴ M. Christian, Multiracial Identity, table 2.2, p. 41.
⁷⁵ For detailed treatment of sexual fantasy see C. H. Stember, Sexual Racism: The Emotional Barrier to an Integrated Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
⁷⁶ G. B. Nash, "The Hidden History of Mestizo America", The Journal of American History, Vol. 82, No. 3. (Dec., 1995), pp. 941-964.
⁷⁷ R. W. Bibby, Mosaic madness: the poverty and potential of life in Canada (Toronto: Stoddart, 1990), p. 98, 176
⁷⁸ A. J. Schmidt, The Menace of Multiculturalism: Trojan Horse in America (Praeger, London, 1997), p.81.
⁷⁹ Henry et al, The Colour of Democracy, p. 393.
⁸⁰ A. J. Schmidt, The Menace of Multiculturalism. See also R. Hodson, K. Sekulic and G. Massey, "National Tolerance in the Former Yugoslavia," American Journal of Sociology 99, 6 (1994) 1534-58, in which the authors show highest levels of tolerance and conflict in the former Yugoslavia occurring in Bosnia.
⁸¹ F. Anthias and N. Yuval-Davis, "Resisting Racism", Racialised boundaries, Ch. 6.

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Copyright © 2001 Daniel McNeil and The Multiracial Activist. All rights reserved.