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mixed_race_multiracial_erasure

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Mixed Race / Multiracial Erasure:

Multiracial people do not identify generally with one race over another. See: White Passing We are not fractions of a race. We don't disregard any 'piece' of our identity. How we identify is up to us and our experiences. But that doesn't mean that people don't try to label, categorize, or erase parts of our identity when convenient.

What ways would it be convenient for a multiracial person to be erased?

  1. Voice & Opinion
  2. Identity

When a multiracial individuals voice is taken away it is usually done because they are standing up for a minority group. Their voice or opinion may be silenced for standing up for an individual, a group, an ideology, a culture, a language, a movement, or just correcting a historical fact. Why? Because it activates white fragility and white supremacy.

Individuals who are white passing have a choice under white supremacy to either totally destroy parts of themselves, their culture, their identity, etc. in order to 'conform' and strengthen white supremacy within themselves and outside of themselves or fighting to have their voices heard and working within their communities to build a more equal and just world.

But that's not all white passing multiracial individuals have to contend with. They also have to work against being labelled and perpetuating white supremacy through unintentionally learned behaviors due to privilege. Human beings are constantly being labelled by society around them and assigned or removed privilege according to presentation, wealth, health, skin color, accent, orientation, etc. White passing multiracial individuals have to deal with the category of fluctuating privilege based on how they are perceived and the choices they make. We cannot control what labels we are given but we can choose how to leverage them (for equality or supremacy).

Below you can find an example of how someone's identity and voice was assigned privilege based on the color of their skin.

Ex. “Yeah, people shouldn't immediately discredit him because he's white, or assume that he is white, but you are going around says 'AKSHUALLY he's asian and pacific islander!!' is also erasing his mixed heritage??? why are you implying that he's not more white than anything else, even though he literally is? Just because he's not 'just' white doesn't magically make him better than if he WAS a generic white guy.” This will take some time to unpack, but it's possible. Here's the issues with this comment.

  1. It doesn't ask how the person identifies.
  2. It assigns the individual an overarching race.
  3. It uses blood quantum.
  4. Then it disregards the individual completely.

But

mixed_race_multiracial_erasure.1602350200.txt.gz · Last modified: 2020/10/10 17:16 by radioangel