A new collective of mixed-race scholars confront their own experiences of race and identity to examine what being mixed race really means.
What happens to people that do not fit within conventional social groups? How might this experience of not fitting in shape a person’s thoughts, ideas and actions? Can this friction ever become valuable and positive?
Dr Andrew Sanchez, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, is tackling these important questions to better understand the experiences of people who “don't fit into the orders of race”.
Societal attempts to sort citizens into standardised racial categories can be challenging and alienating for mixed-race people. “By mixed race,” he explains, “we mean people whose identity is comprised of races traditionally considered to be distinct.” And that experience of falling between fixed groups, of not fitting in, “can sometimes make it hard for you to understand yourself.”
Sanchez has, until now, focused his research on labour and economy, particularly in relation to Jamshedpur, the Indian ‘company town’ dominated by Tata steel. But, as movements like Black Lives Matter gathered pace, Sanchez saw people thinking about race in an entirely new way on an unprecedented scale. “That was a really welcome development. But at the same time, I was starting to sense the hardening of racial categories.”
Mixed-Race Thought
To think more critically about what being mixed race means, Sanchez has taken the lead on a new research project, positioned under the concept of Mixed-Race Thought. A new collective of mixed-race academics from around the world is now harnessing their own experiences to examine the true nature of living outside conventional norms.
With anthropologists joining from the US, the Netherlands, Mexico and the UK, this is clearly a diverse group. But they also share collective experiences. “We had identified a gap in how people, in an everyday sense, understood race. Initiatives and policies for addressing racial inequality and prejudice were not able to respond to a mixed-race experience.”
Our own place in the world
“It is a collective anthropological attempt to understand things that we are part of”, he says. This ‘auto-ethnographic’ approach – considering the perspectives and experiences of the researcher – has a strong history in anthropology. “Our own place in the world shapes the way we engage with data. It's integral that we reflect on who we are and where we come from.”
It’s a personally important project for Sanchez, fuelled by his own experience of “not making sense in racial terms”. He is candid about his own search for identity and belonging at points in his life as a mixed-race man of Afro-Caribbean, White-British and Romany heritage.
“Growing up I felt I had a range of different racial repertoires to draw on. At some point I was supposed to pick at least one of them that made the most sense. My father’s family is Afro-Caribbean and there was a time when I was really committed to this identity. I tried very hard to inhabit it. The problem is that a person with a body like mine cannot.”
The turning point came with the realisation that his racial ‘indeterminacy’ – the term he uses to define this sense of living between worlds – could be liberating. “That ability to stand outside of categories is helpful. It helped me realise that large parts of identity and belonging are things you have to develop yourself. You can't take them as templates from somewhere else.”
Creativity and optimism
It is this liberatory, optimistic potential that has captured the collective. How this sense of difference might become intellectually and politically productive. How the unique perspectives of mixed-race people can inspire more insightful conversations about racial identity and inequality.
“We're not saying race doesn't exist or race doesn't matter, or that people can't define themselves as black or white because that's their experience. We're asking, what can we add to an understanding of race by considering a critical deconstruction of those classifications?”
This creative approach is at the heart of Mixed-Race Thought: the collective’s “mode of analysis” for looking at the world in radically new ways. Sanchez credits a collection of poetry by Joelle Taylor – as a spark of inspiration for this way of thinking. “It has a discussion of what it's like to be in a Butch lesbian body and how that experience just doesn't make sense to some people. I was really struck. A lot of people feel like that in relationship to a whole range of things, and that's something that inspired me to start this project.”
Sanchez has taken further inspiration from scholars of Queer Theory and the assumption that we can generate new ideas when we consider experiences outside traditional gender identities.
Outcomes
To officially launch Mixed-Race Thought, each of the 7 members has contributed to a collection of essays published next year in the journal, Critique of Anthropology. This is just the beginning. Academic aspirations include plans to extend the topic to disciplines outside of anthropology. But the collective also wishes to connect with the public at large.
“I see this as a resource for everybody. I'd like to create a series of short films with high-profile mixed-race people. We would ask them to reflect on what being mixed race means, how they came to know themselves, and whether policies and institutional practices around race speak to them.”
“The job of an academic isn't purely to point out that some things don't work. The job is to figure out why they don't work, then to start a conversation to generate more productive ideas.”
Joanne Dodd, Communications Coordinator in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, wrote this piece after interviewing Andrew about this project.