A Loving Critique

A Loving Critique

Brendon M. Soltis

 

Content warning: This post discusses sexual violence and assault.

 One June 12th, we celebrate Loving Day to commemorate when the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional in the United States (U.S.). This landmark case was brought to the Supreme Court by Richard and Mildred Loving (a white man and a Black woman) against the state of Virginia, challenging a law that made it illegal for them to marry (Loving v. Virginia, 1967). This year marks the 56th anniversary of a decision that had profound demographic implications in the U.S.

Loving Day is significant because it led to greater rates of interracial marriages and some scholars point to the biracial baby boom as a direct result from this decision (Root, 1999). In fact, many of us who identify as multiracial, biracial, or mixed race may attribute this day to the reason why our parents or grandparents were able to get married—in other words, we may attribute our very existence to the decision of the Supreme Court back in 1967. I know every Loving Day I think about how that decision may have impacted my parents almost two decades later as well as my own mixed race relationship and family. However, only focusing on Loving Day as the beginning of multiraciality constructs an ahistoric narrative of racial mixing (Harris, 2016). 

 

Settler Colonialism and Multiraciality

Racial mixing has been happening since colonial times, with roots in forced miscegenation where white male settlers raped Black and Indigenous women (Wilder, 2013; Wilkinson, 2020). Although Loving Day seems far away from our violent and colonial past, these historical instances of racial mixing still shape present discourses about race. Using Loving v. Virginia as a reference point for modern multiraciality ties multiracial identity to state-sanctioned interracial heterosexual marriage. This does two things: first, modern multiraciality is built on the colonial gender system (Lugones, 2007), mandating that multiraciality is predicated on heterosexual sexual relationships. By positioning multiraciality as movement to a post-race world and the solution to end racism, we erase queer and trans futures in our so called fight for racial justice.Moreover, marriage portrayed as a consensual relationship obfuscates the violent past (and present) of racial mixing. 

Second, Loving v. Virginia constructs modern multiraciality as a product of the nation-state.Further, the changes to the U.S. census in 2000 entrenches legitimation by the nation state by validating a self-concept of (multi)race through racial categorization. However, our current iteration of the U.S. census is not the first to acknowledge mixed race people. Mulatto, octoroon, and quadroon were used on various censuses from 1850–1920 to enumerate any individuals with traces of “African blood” (Parker et al., 2015). Colonists created those categories to legitimate their rule of hypodescent, in their attempt to maintain “racial purity.” Anti-miscegenation laws were created to protect white women from interracial sexual relations with men of color, whereas white men in the colonies could rape and assault women of color without penalty (Pascoe, 2009). Mixed race categorizations and laws have historically protected white interests and supremacy.As multiracial is once again recognized by the nation-state, we should question why this is happening at this moment. 

 

The Multiracial Community? 

A look at the mixed race movement in the 1990s calls for us to more critically examine our own self concepts separately from racial categorization (Rockquemore et al., 2009). Activists in the movement saw the power of racial enumeration to secure resources and influence policy (DaCosta, 2007). While the public argument might have stemmed from the mixed race “Bill of Rights” (Root, 1996) arguing that multiracial people have the right to choose their identity, the efforts to change the U.S. census was political. Political in this sense means disrupting monoracial government systems by interjecting notions of multiraciality through coalition action.The goal was to gain political footing and influence through multiple race census data. Therefore, selecting racial categories on demographic forms is inherently a political act rather than about one’s internal racial identity (Ford, 2023). Because of this, I suggest we question conceptualizing multiracial as a community.

The Transracial Adoptee and Multiracial Knowledge Community is a community. But I hesitate to characterize all our work as community work. Community signals a particular type of relationship between a group of people who may share similar lived experiences and have similar goals. As multiracial individuals, we may or may not have shared experiences, identities, orfamily life. We may have nothing in common except for having parents of different racial categories. We may face different challenges based on our “mix,” such as colorism, particular multiracial microaggressions, and differential micro-racialization (Harris, 2016). And because of this vast variation of experience, we all have different needs. We can and should form community when we can but should be cautious of calling it the “multiracial community” with a collective identity.

To form a collective identity (e.g., the multiracial community) risks essentializing the many diverse experiences of individuals who may identify within, across, and through racial identities (Harris, 2016). Already, the modern characterization of the multiracial community evokes an image of a biracial individual with white heritage—and our current research and theories in higher education on multiracial people overwhelmingly focuses on the biracial population (e.g., Black/white or Asian/white). This image excludes the lives and realities of those with multiple minoritized racial identities. Moreover, to form a collective identity risks forming and enforcing a multi(racial) rubric, determining who is “multiracial enough” (Chang, 2016). Maybe instead, we think of our collective work as a coalition (Ashlee & Combs, 2022). I draw from the Asian American coalition that brought vastly diverse communities together under one banner for political action (Espiritu, 1992). Coalitions recognize that true justice and liberation must be pursued across groups with different needs. Liberation for one group supports liberation for all groups. With coalition thinking, we can work towards shared goals while also maintaining our unique needs and identities (Ashlee & Combs, 2022). We can open up opportunities for intragroup solidarity (i.e., solidarity within and across multiracial experiences) that would not be possible in community framing and create stronger bonds across our differences.

I write this loving critique of because I care deeply about the mixed race / multiracial / mixed heritage people in and beyond our Knowledge Community. I have met and interacted with many who are working tirelessly for equity and justice within our institutions of higher education. However, if we are truly going to dismantle systems of racism and unsettle the foundations of colonialism in our universities, then we must actively disrupt how we construct and continue to reconstruct modern notions of multiraciality (Stein, 2022). As we engage in student development theory and practice with multiracial students, we should think about how our work both challenges racial boundaries and reifies racial rubrics (Chang, 2016). I truly believe this Knowledge Community is the place to have these critical conversations, challenge out own perspectives on multiraciality, and learn and grow together in our work.

 

Let’s celebrate Loving Day! Let’s celebrate our families that have been made possible by this decision. And let’s also commit to continuing to recognize and foreground the colonial past and present of multiraciality in our work.

 

References

Ashlee, A. A., & Combs, L. D. (2022). Identity interconnections: Pursuing poststructural possibilities in student affairs praxis. Stylus.

Chang, A. (2016). Multiracial matters—disrupting and reinforcing the racial rubric in educational discourse. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(4), 706–730. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2014.885427

DaCosta, K. M. (2007). Making multiracials: State, family, and market in the redrawing of the color line. Stanford University Press.

Espiritu, Y. L. (1992). Asian American panethnicity: Bridging institutions and identities. Temple University Press.

Ford, K. (2023). Contesting categories in survey data [Paper presentation]. American of Educational Researcher Association Annual Conference. Chicago, Illinois, United States. 

Harris, J. C. (2016). Toward a critical multiracial theory in education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(6), 795–813. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1162870 

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186–219. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2007.tb01156.x

Osei-Kofi, N. (2012). Identity, fluidity, and groupism: The construction of multiraciality in education discourse. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 34(5), 245–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2012.732782

Parker, K., Morin, R., Horowitz, J. M., Lopez, M. H., & Rohal, M. (2015). Multiracial in America: Proud, diverse and growing in numbers. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/06/2015-06-11_multiracial-in-america_final-updated.pdf

Pascoe, P. (2009). What comes naturally: Miscegenation law and the making of race in America. The University of Chicago Press.

Rockquemore, K. A., Brunsma, D. L., & Delgado, D. J. (2009). Racing to theory or retheorizing race? Understanding the struggle to build a multiracial identity theory. Journal of Social Issues, 65(1), 13–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01585.x

Root, M. P. (1996). The multiracial experience: Racial borders as the new frontier. SAGE.

Root, M. P. (1999). The biracial baby boom: Understanding the ecological constructions of racial identity in the 21st century. In R. H. Sheets & E. R. Hollins (Eds.), Racial and ethnic identity in school practices: Aspects of human development (pp. 67–90). Routledge. 

Stein, S. (2022). Unsettling the university: Confronting the colonial foundations of US higher education. Johns Hopkins Press.

Wilder, C. S. (2013). Ebony & ivy: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America's universities. Bloomsbury. 

Wilkinson, A. B. (2020). Blurring the lines of race and freedom: Mulattoes and mixed bloods in English Colonial America. The University of North Carolina Press.