In the first philosophical challenge to accepted racial classifications in the United States, Naomi Zack uses philosophical methods to criticize their logic. Tracing social and historical problems related to racial identity, she discusses why race is a matter of such importance in America and examines the treatment of mixed race in law, society, and literature. Zack argues that black and white designations are themselves racist because the concept of race does not have an adequate scientific foundation. The "one drop" rule, originally a rationalization for slavery, persists today even though there have never been "pure" races and most American blacks have "white" genes. Exploring the existential problems of mixed race identity, she points out how the bi-racial system in this country generates a special racial alienation for many Americans. Ironically suggesting that we include "gray" in our racial vocabulary, Zack concludes that any racial identity is an expression of bad faith. Author note: Naomi Zack is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. She herself is of mixed race: Jewish, African American, and Native American.

Most Americans remain oblivious of a new racial phenomenon that may radically alter the political landscape of the United States. In recent years, dramatic increases in racial intermarriage have given birth to a generation of mixed-race children whose interracially married parents refuse to allow them to be shoehorned into neat, pre-existing racial categories. The parents, through organizations they have founded or joined, have lobbied aggressively for the category "multiracial" to be added to official racial classifications at the state and federal levels, including the United States census. Since a nonracial society is one of the stated goals of the multiracialists, Spencer suggests that the undoing of racial classification will come not by initiating a new classification - which will only give Americans the impression that mixed-race people can be neatly classified - but by our increased recognition that there are millions of people who simply defy classification.

Social scientists claim that we now live in a post-race society, where race has been replaced by 'ethnicity'. Yet racism is endemic to British society and people often think in terms of black and white. With a marked rise in the number of children from mixed parentage, there is an urgent need to challenge simplistic understandings of 'race', nation and culture, and interrogate what it means to grow up in Britain and claim a 'mixed' identity. Focusing on mixed-race and inter-ethnic families, this book not only explores current understandings of 'race', but it shows, using innovative research techniques with children, how we come to read race. What influence do photographs and television have on childrens ideas about 'race'? How do children use memories and stories to talk about racial differences within their own families? How important is the home and domestic culture in achieving a sense of belonging? Ali also considers, through data gathered from teachers and parents, broader issues relating to the effectiveness of anti-racist and multicultural teaching in schools, and parental concerns over the social mobility and social acceptability of their children. Rigorously researched, this book is the first to combine childrens accounts on 'race' and identity with contemporary cultural theory. Using fascinating case studies, it fills a major gap in this area and provides an original approach to writing on race.

Mixed race studies is one of the fastest growing, as well as one of the most important and controversial areas in the field of race and ethnic relations. Bringing together pioneering and controversial scholarship from both the social and the biological sciences, as well as the humanities, this reader charts the evolution of debates on 'race' and 'mixed race' from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into three main sections: tracing the origins: miscegenation, moral degeneracy and genetics mapping contemporary and foundational discourses: 'mixed race', identities politics, and celebration debating definitions: multiraciality, census categories and critiques. This collection adds a new dimension to the growing body of literature on the topic and provides a comprehensive history of the origins and directions of 'mixed race' research as an intellectual movement. For students of anthropology, race and ethnicity, it is an invaluable resource for examining the complexities and paradoxes of 'racial' thinking across space, time and disciplines.

THE BEIGING OF AMERICA, BEING MIXED RACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY, takes on “race matters” and considers them through the firsthand accounts of mixed race people in the United States. Edited by mixed race scholars Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, this collection consists of 39 poets, writers, teachers, professors, artists and activists, whose personal narratives articulate the complexities of interracial life. THE BEIGING OF AMERICA is an absorbing and thought-provoking collection of stories that explore racial identity, alienation, with people often forced to choose between races and cultures in their search for self-identity. While underscoring the complexity of the mixed race experience, these unadorned voices offer a genuine, poignant, enlightening and empowering message to all readers.

Patterns of migration and the forces of globalization have brought the issues of mixed race to the public in far more visible, far more dramatic ways than ever before. Global Mixed Race examines the contemporary experiences of people of mixed descent in nations around the world, moving beyond US borders to explore the dynamics of racial mixing and multiple descent in Zambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Okinawa, Australia, and New Zealand. In particular, the volume's editors ask: how have new global flows of ideas, goods, and people affected the lives and social placements of people of mixed descent? Thirteen original chapters address the ways mixed-race individuals defy, bolster, speak, and live racial categorization, paying attention to the ways that these experiences help us think through how we see and engage with social differences. The contributors also highlight how mixed-race people can sometimes be used as emblems of multiculturalism, and how these identities are commodified within global capitalism while still considered by some as not pure or inauthentic. A strikingly original study, Global Mixed Race carefully and comprehensively considers the many different meanings of racial mixedness.

Contributing to the emerging literature on mixed-race people in the United States and United Kingdom, this book draws on racial formation theory and the performativity (i.e., "doing") of race to explore the social construction of mixedness on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.