Mixing of Races Will Make Us All One Again

• Commentary
• Open up Access
• Published: 14 March 2022

"This is not how we talk well-nigh race anymore": approaching mixed race in Commonwealth of australia

Comparative Migration Studies volume 10, Article number:11 (2022) Cite this article

Abstract

Discussions nigh how to talk about race are ubiquitous among academics seeking to balance the recognition that race is a social construct with the very existent effects of racial stratification. Naming race is seen equally potentially reifying it, but ignoring it invisiblises its furnishings. Pathologising, celebratory and critical approaches to talking about mixed race can all exist found in how mixedness is talked nearly in Commonwealth of australia (among the public and in scholarly work), and there are differences depending on whether mixedness is Indigenous or migrant. Using my experience of being challenged for speaking besides positively about the experience of being mixed in Commonwealth of australia, and a Facebook give-and-take about Census categories, this paper explores the ways in which mixed race is talked nigh (and non talked most) in Australia. Information technology argues that nosotros can't move 'beyond race' earlier actually acknowledging it, something Commonwealth of australia has been very reticent to do, due to its race-based history of colonisation, immigration, and Indigenous child removals. Acknowledging race would enable diversity, and mixedness, to exist counted, and therefore to 'count', in a context where multiculturalism provides a socio-political environs somewhat supportive of diversity, but where actual measurement is limited. It is argued that acknowledging race may be a necessary intermediate step on the route beyond race, and, for that matter, nation.

I concluded up walking out of my ain session at the inaugural Journal of Intercultural Studies conference at City University of New York. Information technology was 2015 and I had just presented some work from Australia reporting the experiences of mixed race migrant families and how they negotiate race and cultural difference in the socio-political context of a multicultural settler gild. A mixed race male Professor of African American Studies publicly angrily berated me, saying: 'This is not how we talk about race whatever more'. My talk was based on a small qualitative sample (plus a piddling car-ethnography) showing that mixed Asian-European migrant families in Western Commonwealth of australia announced to valorise mixedness, and that the offspring of such families engage with their mixedness in a playful way, recognising that it is often cause for envy among the white mainstream in the context of multicultural Commonwealth of australia (see Meyer & Fozdar, 2016). For these families, within their families, race was non generally salient, although culture sometimes was (Meyer & Fozdar, 2020). Interactionally exterior the family in that location were occasional experiences of racism (generally for the Asian migrant parent), but far more than common were positive encounters that generated a sense of pride among the mixed offspring particularly, merely also their parents. Their outlook was more often than not cosmopolitan. I argued this is perhaps partly explicable because Australia's policies of multiculturalism over the concluding few decades have to some extent modified Australian identity and attitudes to diversity in a positive direction. I likewise recognised that this feel may be influenced by the particular racial mix beingness studied.

The scholar who was offended by this (anonymised hither) has focused on the concept of mixed race in the UK and The states, arguing that it is fundamentally linked to White supremacy and racial animosity in those countries. He had tracked the position of mixed black communities to testify that even after generations, which really entrench social immobility, the structural barriers to inclusion and recognition as members of the nation-state remain. I had offended him by providing testify that the situation in Australia might be somewhat different, more than positive and cosmopolitan in terms of everyday identities and experiences of migrants who are mixed, rather than the overt racialized stratification that this academic had observed in the United states and UK.

Shocked past the vehemence of his reaction, subsequently walking out I wandered effectually Times Foursquare, wondering who is the 'we' who can speak about race and mixedness (both from the individual, national and global perspectives); when is the 'anymore' and at what point did ways of speaking change; and what was the 'this', in terms of the vocabularies and themes permitted when talking well-nigh mixed race? Was I so very out of touch with what was happening in the world of mixed race scholarship? Or were nosotros only talking past each other? There is no denying the structural and interpersonal effects of racism, which I also take written nearly extensively, but there are differences in experiences depending on 'types' of mixedness, perspective and socio-politico-historical context (King-O'Riain et al, 2014). It is these questions I wish to explore in this paper, in the Australian context.

In work undertaken by myself and colleagues, equally well as personal reflection, we have demonstrated how mixedness in Australia is complex and inconsistent—it is both valorised in terms of beingness seen to add a bit of spice to an otherwise ho-hum White identity in the context of a multicultural settler nation somewhat embarrassed past its colonial past, in increasingly diverse concrete representations of dazzler, and in the penchant for proof of diverse origins through beginnings DNA testing; while it is also treated with suspicion and ambivalence for naming race, for non conforming with mono racial norms, and for reminding the population of histories of colonial dispossession (Abidin, 2016; Ford & Purdon, 2016; Fozdar, 2016, 2019; Fozdar & Perkins, 2014; Guy, 2018; Katz, 2012; Meyer & Fozdar, 2016, 2020; Tilbury, 2007). Just this diversity and complexity of experience is non unusual. Scholars have been tracing it globally for some years now (Aspinall & Song, 2013; Caballero, 2012; Edwards et al., 2012; Male monarch-O'Riain et al, 2014; Parker & Song, 2001; Tizard & Phoenix, 2002).

This special upshot invites date with the question of the value and challenges associated with moving theoretically 'beyond' the concept of 'race' in terms of possible futures with a majority population consisting of people of mixed origin, standing inequalities based on colour lines, the potential for anti-racist political mobilization, and the possibilities of decoupling race from biological science and civilization. It asks whether it is becoming possible "even to stop thinking in racial categories altogether, nevertheless without de-politicizing Black's, or any subjected group's, history and experience." The editors have perfectly encapsulated some of the key themes reflected in the current state of thinking in this circuitous area. Here I wish to explore these themes through the lens of mixedness in the Australian context, and the question of how 'we' talk about race now. I argue that Australia needs get-go to recognise and speak about race earlier moving 'beyond' it.

Race counts: but who is 'nosotros'?

Mixed race studies are dominated by studies undertaken in the US and Britain. Given the importance of social and cultural location and policy context, this is a problem. The history of slavery in the Usa, and in the UK its colonial legacy, generate item structures, identities and experiences for those of mixed backgrounds, making generalisation elsewhere problematic. There are also differences in the means sociological debates about race and mixed race have played out in these spaces (Parker & Vocal, 2001). While race is an important social issue, the terminology is relatively simple in the Us, whereas in Europe, the influence of neo-Marxist and critical thought means race is treated with suspicion as a potentially reifying construct. This argument, made two decades agone by Parker and Song, may be less salient now, given the strength of critical race theory globally. Certainly, over the last decade the publication of books such equally Global Mixed Race (Rex-O'Riain et al, 2014), International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing (Edwards et al., 2012) and Mixed Race Identities (Aspinall & Song, 2013) have begun to shift this Britain/US focus to other regions, and work in my ain region is burgeoning (Fozdar & McGavin, 2016; Rocha & Fozdar, 2017). If race is a story nearly power that is written on the torso (Spickard, 2015), these stories from elsewhere, with different power relations, historical and political trajectories, and types of bodies, are of import. These voices from other parts of the world are beingness added to the 'we' of the academic due north.

When thinking about the 'nosotros' who is able to speak, because who 'counts' as mixed is as well important. Elsewhere I have written nigh my ain experience as quite a white-looking mixed person with a strong identity equally mixed (Tilbury, 2007), and then will non repeat these reflections here, but instead utilise an instance of how others in Australia engage with the question of counting mixedness.

In a Facebook word recently, on the eve of the 2021 Australian Census, friends criticised the ethnic identification options bachelor. Many were themselves of mixed backgrounds, or married to partners of different racial backgrounds, making their children mixed, or multiply mixed. They railed confronting 'Australian' as a response option for the ancestry question, suggesting it implies a coloniser nationalist identity. But they were besides somewhat dubious about my suggestion, added into the comments, that a race question was needed in the Census. This reflects the general distaste, indeed taboo, Australians feel virtually naming race (Guy, 2018). Those commenting on the post suggested alternatives they might use, such as 'world denizen', 'earthling', 'Chindian', 'Eurasian', using multiple categories (English Iraqi in one box, Indian European in another), and more. Comments included 1 (white male) individual who noted their own DNA test showed multiple ancestries spanning the globe (listed by nation) to show their own complexity. Most participants noted they felt uncomfortable being forced to choose just two ancestries over others.

One white Australian new parent of a mixed child posted the following:

"I know y'all are tagging me because of how this relates to [son] but I was like should I annotate on this? Considering actually I'm simply white af

Love white people that, when talking well-nigh backgrounds, go "well I'm a quarter Welsh, a quarter english, and my dad grew up in Australia but he was actually born in New Zealand but his parents were Cornish and Australian, then I'yard pretty mixed..."

No mate. Ya merely white (the above background is mine)"

This young man's tongue-in-cheek analysis, which he gave me permission to reproduce, suggests a recognition of the limitations of mainstream Australians' engagements with the pregnant of race, merely also demonstrates that some are able to critique the assumptions on which such claims are made, and recognise the realities of race equally both fabric and a social construct. This Welsh English Australian pokes fun at those who seek to represent themselves equally diverse, something Spickard (2015: 291) has chosen 'me too ethnicity'. He refuses to 'speak', because he is white. And he names the un-nameable in Commonwealth of australia, whiteness.

Indeed, the Facebook discussion continued, in response, with challenges to the very thought of whiteness (in the form of 'my skin is not white, information technology'due south pinky beige, and I've lived overseas' type arguments). This refusal to name race is part of the problem, and the Australian Census categories encapsulate, and materially perpetuate, this. Census categories are of import considering they actively construct identity. Many other countries include race categories in their census; and the provision of mixed race categories in some censuses acknowledges mixedness equally a legitimate identity (Rocha and Aspinal, 2020; Guy, 2018). This allows researchers such as Kaufmann (2018: 31), as noted in the introduction, to predict that the US will exist 'majority minority' by 2040, and that within the next 100–150 years many regions of the globe will be predominantly mixed race (Kaufmann, 2018; see also Alba, 2020). We have no such power in Australia. The inability to identify the extent, composition and rate of growth of mixed populations in Australia ways scholars, policy makers, and ethnic communities cannot accurately understand demographic trends, target and measure outcomes of multicultural service provision (Fozdar & Stevens, 2020; Stevens & Fozdar, 2021), or critically engage with the many dimensions of identity construction.

Guy (2018) argues this omission is evidence of the cocky-congratulatory 'color-blind' arroyo Australia takes to variety. In not 'seeing' race, Australia pretends that it prioritises universal humanity over racial stardom, and that racism is a thing of the past. This omission is not simply an oversight therefore, suggests Katz (2012), but a key part of Commonwealth of australia'due south race relations milieu, a wilful unseeing.

Rather than colour-blind, Australia is race averse. Every bit a colonial settler nation it carries some guilt at its dispossession and continuing oppression of the Ethnic peoples. The infamous 'White Australia Policy', introduced in 1901 as the first piece of legislation of the federated colonies, was a suite of legislative instruments designed to stop immigration by non-whites, and to remove those non-whites already in the land. This explicitly race-based policy, enacted through a dictation exam, continued until the tardily 1960s. Simultaneously, mixed Indigenous children were being removed from their families, to be raised in institutions. The Stolen Generations is the name given to those Aborigines and their descendants who, over generations, were removed, based on the logic that the coloniser should keep the nation 'pure' for British settlers and 'brood out' Aboriginality (see Guy, 2018; McGregor, 2002). Racial mixing was seen as an opportunity to gradually extinguish colour and culture, in these children. As well every bit leaving Australians averse to naming race, Guy (2018) argues this history has left a legacy of  a 'preference for whiteness', even if that whiteness is minimal (as in the example of some mixed race people). These related histories are central to how mixedness is experienced and engaged with currently.

Merely there is a fourth pillar to be considered along with the legacies of colonisation, the White Commonwealth of australia policy and the Stolen Generations, and that is the legacy of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism became policy in the early 1970s and has come to be the foundation of a distinctive Australian identity (Brett & Moran, 2011). However rather than jubilant racial diversity, the selective 'color incomprehension' that invisibilises Australia'due south colonial history of dispossession, racist migration policy, and the removal of Ethnic mixed children, was also the basis of policies of multiculturalism, which privileged civilization over race, and recognised cultural divergence while ignoring the very real effects of racial disadvantage (Perkins, 2004). This became axiomatic when onetime Prime Government minister John Howard said he would prefer Australia had a multiracial policy rather than a multicultural one (Norrington, 2010). Howard's preference was for a nation made up of people of unlike colours sharing a unmarried culture, with national identity primary.

In terms of policy and practice, multiculturalism was a fashion of invisibilising race. At that place remain limits to Australian multiculturalism, as Ghassan Hage (1998) noted in White Nation, with the ability to 'tolerate' divergence and govern inclusion into the national community still resting in the hands of the (unnamed) White majority. Rhetorically, though, Australia equally 'the almost successful multicultural country' is a strong theme in representations of the nation (Busbridge, 2020), and, I have argued, frames how mixedness is seen. While Hage's critique is valid, there are very high levels of support for multiculturalism in Australia (consistently at most 84% according to the Scanlon surveys overseen by Andrew Markus, see Scanlon Institute, 2020). Australians like to run into themselves as multicultural and perceive that this is what is distinctive well-nigh them every bit Australians, as opposed to those from other countries (Brett & Moran, 2011). This fourth legacy creates a particular social and political surround that allows pride to exist taken in mixedness, at least of a certain type.

The concern with naming race generated past colonisation, White Commonwealth of australia, the Stolen Generations, and perpetuated by multiculturalism policies, has meant that acknowledging racial difference, and being able to count race-based mixedness, remains limited. In practice, scholars attempting to identify levels of mixed race from the Australian Census information, to identify the mixed 'we', must creatively combine ancestry, language spoken at home, land of birth of parents and other measures. This shows mixedness on the rise (Fozdar, 2019; Fozdar & Stevens, 2020; Khoo, 2011). Higher proportions of young people identify as having mixed ancestries, and the actual proportions of those identifying equally mixed are increasing overall. Thus, of the Australian population, 28% in 2006, 30% in 2011, and 34% in 2016 identified equally having multiple ancestries. This is non mixed race data however. Calculating the proportion of those with Australian/European and non-European ancestries, only 7% of the total population (simply over a quarter of those with multiple ancestries), are mixed but this ethnic and racial diversity is growing (Fozdar, 2019; Fozdar & Stevens, 2020). Compared with the increase in multiple ancestries overall (which would include our Facebook correspondent), however, we find a slower rate of increment for European/non-European mixes, suggesting race remains a barrier to intimate relations. While this calculation uses a proxy for race, it does suggest that a significant proportion of the population have racially and/or culturally mixed backgrounds. Thus, a demographic trend seen as "1 of the most powerful indicators of integration of immigrants" and an "indicator of the progress of multiculturalism" (Khoo, 2011: 101–102), demonstrating credence of cultural difference, is occurring in Australia.

In that location is also a small, but growing, number of people who identify as of mixed Ethnic heritage; an even more hard calculation given Indigenous people tend to identify as Indigenous rather than mixed (Gardiner & Bourke, 2000). In the 2016 Census, 40.2% of the ii.eight% of respondents who listed Aboriginal ancestry reported existence of mixed ancestry. Walker and Heard (2015) demonstrate high rates of out-partnering (80% or more) for Indigenous Australians. Such calculations are difficult and dangerous yet, equally Kowal warns (2016), and even these opportunities for cocky-classification may work to invisibilise populations and their oppressions. Since the 1960s Indigenous Australian activists have encouraged a pan-Ethnic identity, considering "all Indigenous people as a diverse but unified cultural, racial and political grouping", regardless of mixedness or otherwise (Kowal, 2016: 20). Here, Aboriginality is seen as a combination of self-identification, descent and customs credence, regardless of other racial ancestries. Kowal goes on to argue that for Indigenous people "their 'mixedness' is irrelevant to their indigeneity" (2016: 20). Thus computing Indigenous mixedness should not minimise self-identified membership of the Aboriginal customs, and ongoing oppressions and disadvantage must exist acknowledged regardless of 'proportion' of ancestral background.

This has been of some controversy where Aborigines who are non easily recognisable equally Aborigines have been challenged as inauthentic (Fozdar, 2019; Kowal, 2016), and condemned for opportunism, particularly in relation to use of affirmative action policies. The equivalent in the US is what Spickard (2015: 344) has called 'passing for Black'. Bodies are recognised as raced by others, and thus "intercorporeality positions identity as an actress-individual accomplishment" (Klocker & Tindale, 2021: 212)—not existence 'seen' as Aboriginal may invalidate one's own sense of identity.

Just some people of Indigenous background claiming this position. Yin Paradies (an academic who describes himself every bit an Aboriginal-Anglo-Asian Darwinian [as in the city of Darwin] living in Melbourne) suggests that the strategic essentialism of pan-Aboriginality, while useful politically, has had some negative impacts, including leaving "an increasing number of Indigenous people vulnerable to accusations of inauthenticity" (Paradies, 2006: 355) due to a lack of cultural markers such as language, class, morality, cultural knowledge, and virtually importantly 'Indigenous looks'. He refuses to privilege i aspect of his ain identity over others, despite an imperative "that dissonant individuals choose to be either exclusively Indigenous or exclusively non-Indigenous" (Paradies, 2006: 357). Paradies' preference is to create a hybrid infinite of multiplicity.

And so the 'we' in Commonwealth of australia is messy and complex and unclear, and the fact is that the Census information can but tell united states of america and then much. This lack of Demography categories affects identity, as noted, and may feed into the lived feel of inclusion or exclusion. Katz (2012) suggests the missing race category obscures racial identity, perpetuating the myth of White Australia, making information technology hard to monitor discrimination and racism, and reducing the ability of non-white groups to develop their own identity, bureau and politics of resistance (see also Luke & Luke, 1998). Guy argues leaving out the race question in the Census means mixed people "practice not have a state-sanctioned space to identify" (Guy, 2018: 477), leaving them unable to "fully inhabit a mixed race identity" (Guy, 2018: 470). Whereas in the U.s.a. there is an established mixed race community, with its own association, website and activities, and indeed a multiracial motility, in Australia there is no recognition of mixedness every bit an identity and no collective identity category available every bit the foundation for in-group solidarity. As Guy says "the racial ecology of Commonwealth of australia does non recognise …mixedness every bit a whole identity" (2018: 477). Those of mixed race disrupt the assumed singularity of race, threatening dominant majority norms, hence the default to whiteness. This presumption of whiteness perpetuates the 'convenance out' logic of Commonwealth of australia's history—information technology 'de-racializes' those of mixed backgrounds.

It could be argued, however, that the lack of a atypical customs and 'whole' identity is not surprising given the range of mixed identities, and the differential experiences associated with being, say, African/White, versus Asian/White, versus African/Asian, and and then on, and offset versus 2d generation experiences. Add intra-Asian mixedness to the list and things get even more complicated in terms of identification and homogenizing (Abidin, 2016). Add Indigenous mixed and a whole new range of complications ascend (Trigger & Martin, 2016). And does it even make sense to talk about a mixed community and identity, given the other cantankerous cut axes of nationality, language, culture, religion, class, gender, sexualities and and then on? Paul Spickard (2015: 352) has been request this question for over 2 decades now, contemplating "is there a groupness in mixedness"? He concludes that sharing common experiences every bit mixed does not provide the basis for enduring group identity.

When is the anymore and how do 'we' talk well-nigh mixed race now then?

So how is race and mixed race talked about at present, and how does the Australian situation compare to elsewhere? Ifekwunigwe (2004) identified three stages through which theorising mixed-race has occurred—the age of pathology, the age of celebration and the historic period of critique. Since the 'marginal human' thesis (Stonequist, 1937), which argued that mixed people are disturbed, excluded, and will never fit in to either identity until absorbed into the ascendant group, theorising the position of mixed race people has moved on. In fact, Park'due south (1928) original conceptualisation of the marginal man, from which Stonequist elaborated, was actually not as negative and deterministic. Equally Daniel et al., (2014: xvi) argue, Park recognised that marginality, while it may exclude mixed individuals from full participation as members of either grouping, does allow identification with more one racial or cultural grouping, providing individuals with a "broader vision and wider range of sympathies. …[their] breach …could be counterbalanced past the role such individuals might play in facilitating common understanding betwixt groups and between individuals from different groups." (see too Newman, 2021).

Nigh a hundred years on, and we are still debating whether the mixed person is an outsider or a bridge. A range of typologies have been developed, generally based on the US state of affairs, to complexify this binary. Rockquemore and Brunsma (2002), recognising individual and contextual differences in how those of mixed race experience their mixedness, adult a four-way typology of biracial black-white identity: atypical (monoracial), edge (biracial), protean (situational and shifting), and transcendent (nonracial). Such boxes are a helpful heuristic to empathize the range of experiences and identities, merely they are commonly 'platonic types' in Weberian terms, and people mostly don't stay in the boxes we theorists provide. Spickard's (2015) outline of 5 models of theorising regarding racial hierarchy and multiracial social positioning is not particularly useful outside the Americas. To counter the valorisation or 'mixed race chic' perspective (Spencer, 2012), Disquisitional Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) has become popular, using a critical lens that seeks to overcome the sentimentalism, superficiality and sensationalism of some analyses that focus on the potential bridging office (Daniel et al., 2014). Its focus is on critically examining systemic injustices associated with processes of racialization and social stratification, and to interrogate and challenge essentialism and racial bureaucracy (Daniel et al, 2014: eight). This disquisitional arroyo has dominated Usa mixed race studies in recent years, particularly Black/White mixedness, and tends to focus on exclusion through macro and micro aggressions.

In Australia, this critical approach is adopted by some. Ford and Purdon'southward (2016) stories of racism experienced every bit white mothers with chocolate-brown daughters (run into also Kwasi's story in Fozdar, 2016), which they understand using a Bourdieusian analysis, as the outcome of their perceived transgression from the orthodoxy of racial purity, is a case in point. They observe that "newer racial narratives that apparently embrace indigenous and racial variety have not necessarily replaced older, more racist narratives. Rather, they have become layered and nuanced" (2016: seventy). For them, Australian multiculturalism is a veneer, minimally and temporarily masking these narratives. Similarly Klocker and Tindale's (2021) participants experience invisibility at home, simply hypervisibility in public, although this is not necessarily negative, and in terms of responses to mixed children these are often "well-intentioned and friendly" (2021: 216). Such experiences may make mixed families uncomfortable and hyper-vigilant in their anticipation of 'race encounters', fifty-fifty if these are not negative. They sometimes are, notwithstanding, with a range of stereotypes employed by the public in their interactions with mixed families. Reading the quotes from these families, it is clear that many encounters are 'raced' simply because the Australian public is not used to seeing mixed families.

Erica Chito Childs (2019), an American scholar using the critical mixed race approach, reports more often than not negative attitudes to mixing in her analysis of focus group discussions across Australia, with a dominant narrative of racial hierarchy where some groups more desirable than others. Some relationships are tolerated, some unspeakable. This hierarchy is framed, she argues, within a full general discourse of Australia as a multicultural space embracing of diverseness. For many of the white participants, mixedness was limited to interethnic/cross-national (and even interstate) white unions—such every bit a White Australian marrying an Irish person (echoing the Facebook parody quoted above). Childs suggests this "reflects an inability or unwillingness to even consider other mixes in intimate relations, instead offer a color-blind, yet still white, multicultural Commonwealth of australia" (Childs, 2019: 429). Cultural assimilation was the required qualification for acceptance—participants in her study stated a nonwhite would exist acceptable if they were 'true blue' (an Australian phrase used to describe a person who is genuine and expressing Australian values). For Aborigines and non-white participants, intermarriage was understood as tied to oppression (for the former), and rejected by the latter over concerns of how the not-white partner would be treated. This is odd, however, given the growing rates of mixed relations amidst each grouping. Childs argues ideologies of racial purity and miscegenation remain strong.

In other work, Guy (2018), using a sample of 6, argues those of mixed race experience invalidation of self-chosen identity, through the imposition of honorary whiteness, rooted in Commonwealth of australia's history of provisional acceptance of otherness. The issue is simplification of racial complexity by denying otherness. Official terminology reinforces the invisibility of race, she argues, and national identity norms limit the recognition of multifariousness beyond banal, mundane, not-threatening elements of cultural difference such as food, clothing and music. Guy reports her participants did not feel accepted as 'Australian', non quite plumbing fixtures in in the way they desired.

In the higher up nosotros see limitations on inclusion of racial others, with the majority White population dictating the terms. Only in that location is another stream of inquiry and analysis which, while seeking non to reinforce celebratory narratives, tells a more than positive story. Every bit noted, internationally a range of studies demonstrate that mixedness is no longer seen as an aberrant state. Newman (2021) recently offered prove from the The states that specially for mixed people of migrant heritage, the linear expectation of assimilation that mixedness was supposed to betoken is no longer relevant (if it ever was). Mixed race immigrant children blur, cross and disrupt racial boundaries, just assert strong multiracial identities to merits connection to multiple ethnic and racial groups. Far from being marginalized, their mixedness is a source of pride. She finds, echoing Park, that "Rather than eroding their claims to grouping membership, multiracial identity allowed participants to assert their membership in each category. … multiracial identity assertion was a mechanism … to merits connection and belonging to multiple ethnoracial groups rather than be rendered marginalized, distant, or partial with respect to their immigrant heritage(s)" (2021: 27). Alba (2020) finds similarly positive experiences of immigrant group integration in the mixed race experience, although experiences for Black/White mixes are more negative.

This hints that the manifestly naïve expectation of the 'dandy large melting pot' turning out coffee-coloured cosmopolitan people comfy in their ain skin, may non be every bit naïve as it appears at outset glance. A growing body of literature from a range of sites finds that being mixed is coming to be seen every bit an nugget (Tizard & Phoenix, 2002), and a form of cultural majuscule (King-O'Riain et al., 2014). And this is so for Australia likewise. In Commonwealth of australia in that location is increasing representation of mixed race actors and models and mixed families in the media and advertising, suggesting not only a recognition of the growing proportions in the population, only also a valorisation of this identity, and perhaps more importantly, a dawning acceptance that Australian-ness does non necessarily have to expect White. Some qualitative studies find Australian mixed-race families do non experience stigmatised or disadvantaged, and tend to encounter hybridity as a 'third space' (see Bhabha, 1996), experienced as positive and empowering (Luke & Luke, 1999; Meyer & Fozdar, 2016, 2020). Unlike the 'Guessing Game' verse form quoted by Spickard (2015: 180–182) where the 'what are you' question generates anger and unbelonging, many of mixed backgrounds in Commonwealth of australia savour beingness neither this nor that. They are citizens of everywhere rather than of nowhere—every bit some of the Facebook posts suggest. In the Australian context, because of Australia's visible diversity, they do not necessarily experience out of identify, and indeed their identities are experienced as 'ordinary'. They use terms such as 'normal' and 'at ease', and see themselves equally fitting 'in anywhere' (Meyer & Fozdar, 2016: 56–57). There is playfulness and pride in their mixedness, not exclusion and marginality. Their divergence is celebrated, with a rejection of unitary racial and indigenous identities signalling neither exclusion nor unbelonging, and they themselves bask existence recognised as dissimilar and engaging in the 'big reveal' to 'ain' their circuitous identities (Abidin, 2016; Meyer & Fozdar, 2016). Even though this is sometimes a shallow engagement, and may feed into the mainstream'southward desire for a little departure to 'spice upwards' their 'slow' whiteness (Guy, 2018; Klocker & Tindale, 2021; Meyer & Fozdar, 2016), it does not homogenise as 'white' in the manner Guy describes. A number of theses have made like arguments in terms of representations of mixedness in Australian novels (Dickens, 2014) or art (Bolatagici, 2004). They suggest that recognition of 'mixed race', particularly its ability to resist and disrupt concepts of race and colonial worldviews, has transformative potential, and tin can promote alternative ways of being in the world and engaging with others beyond racial categorising. Klocker and Stanes (2013), for example, plant contempo Australian films represent a hierarchy of inter-racial and intercultural unions. While some are tolerated, and a few are represented equally dangerous, undesirable or invisible, some are celebrated every bit evidence of successful multiculturalism. Piece of work by Tindale and colleagues (Tindale & Klocker, 2017; Tindale et al., 2014) demonstrates that mixed couples living in Australian capital cities defy ethnic spatial separation patterns (ghettoization), again demonstrating a positive bridging function. This is quite a different story from that told by Childs and Guy.

Ultimately then, fifty-fifty without a Census category from which to build a unique identity and potentially a customs, mixedness is not necessarily seen as a sign of unbelonging, but indeed is used by those of mixed backgrounds every bit a means to connect across difference (Meyer & Fozdar, 2016; Paradies, 2006; Tilbury, 2007). Crystal Abidin has noted that in the Australian context, those of mixed race reference their heritage in a range of ways: "in celebration every bit 'special', 'unique', and a 'rarity'; in humor as a 'weird mix' and 'fun fact'; in pathology every bit 'not pure' and 'non normal'; and in dialectics as beingness 'complex' and 'complicated' (2016: 97). This range recognizes the complexity of the lived experience of mixedness, and covers the experiences of mixed Indigenous and migrant mixed racial settlers.

Every bit touched on before, it has been suggested that these more than positive experiences may accept something to do with several decades of (more or less) explicit multicultural policies and rhetoric which, as noted, have generated a sense of national identity linked to multiculturalism (even if this is a somewhat shallow and superficial appointment). The positive reaction may owe something to bell hooks' ascertainment most diversity more generally, "ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven upward the dull dish that is mainstream white culture" (hooks, 2006: 366). It may be that recognising mixedness makes diversity less dangerous, where mixed people are seen every bit exotic but however 'us', providing evidence of the potential for assimilation while livening up Whiteness, without erasing information technology. This terminology shows up in how people talk virtually mixed-ness: 'We are a multi-racial nation and we should flaunt it' (Duncan-Owen (2002: 167), 'a mini-United Nations' (Meyer & Fozdar, 2016), 'Well we don't phone call it [mixedness] something because we are a multicultural society' (Childs, 2019: 428–9). This environment, that values multiculturalism, just also tends to expect migrant assimilation, may be more than amenable to those who vary slightly from the (white) norm (encounter Hatoss, 2012; Guy, 2018), such equally those of mixed-race, when compared with those more visibly and culturally different, Merely such a hypothesis requires empirical study. It is besides possible that this commemoration of partial difference reduces settler guilt and has a deflecting function, drawing attention away from the fact that non-White people were dispossessed through colonization, and keep to experience disadvantage and bigotry.

Decision

So how do 'we' talk nigh race? Who is the 'we' who can speak nearly race and mixedness? Have ways of speaking virtually race and mixedness changed? Accept populations go so mixed as to point that we are moving 'beyond race', and to what extent does this enable an anti-racist political mobilization, or does race go depoliticised and irrelevant? Is the future 1 of boundary crossing, boundary blurring or boundary shifting? What does this mean for societal boundaries more broadly, delineations of power, and other social cleavages? And what does it all hateful for the concept of the 'nation', when individuals of mixed backgrounds trace identities and connections to multiple nations while also being grounded in ane? What is the collective and individual issue of the growth of mixed population in terms of imaginings of national identity? And to what extent are borders still policed in terms of who can claim race, mixedness and authenticity? How do nosotros talk about race and mixed race now?

It is impossible to engage in depth with all these question, but I do wish to brand two points in conclusion. How we talk about race and mixed race will, and should, differ depending on socio-historico-political context. While there are points of similarity in the raced experience and identity globally, there are meaning differences that must be best-selling. In the case of Australia, it is vital to recognise that race has real effects, and that counting race and mixed race is valuable to better sympathise who counts and why. Australia'southward particular history of race relations and configuration of mixed race identities and experiences, means that rather than moving away from the language of race, there are growing calls to acknowledge race and mixed race, and its impacts on lived experiences and identities (Fozdar, 2019; Fozdar & Perkins, 2014; Guy, 2018; Katz, 2012). The differences that exist depending on whether people are of migrant versus Indigenous mixed backgrounds; and the different types of mixedness (due east.g. Asians as acceptable 'others' in Commonwealth of australia (Lee & Bean, 2010) when compared to those of say Heart Eastern or blackness African backgrounds) are vital to empathise.

The second bespeak is virtually national identification. Rather than 'mixedness' being invisible in the racial and cultural landscape of Commonwealth of australia because national loyalty is paramount, equally argued past Perkins (2004), national identity (as multicultural) appears to assist with recognition and inclusion (Meyer & Fozdar, 2016; Childs, 2018). It is worth asking how mixedness every bit an adequate face up of divergence in multicultural Australia relates to mixed individuals' sense of identity, as singled-out from their reception by the wider population. Is Australian-ness important to them? And how does it relate to their own potential multiple transnational connections? At that place is some bear witness of cosmopolitanism (openness to deviation, world citizenship) in contempo studies of Australian mixed race. It may be that mixed-race individuals are more likely to hold cosmopolitan identities oriented to global perspectives, partly considering of their visible ambiguity, partly due to their power to negotiate different cultural influences, and partly because of a range of international affiliations (Fozdar & Perkins, 2014; Meyer & Fozdar, 2016). Mixed-race Ghanaian/British philosopher Kwami Appiah has pointed to what he sees as the inevitability of his own cosmopolitan outlook, given his advent (ABC, 2015). But information technology is not just virtually appearance. For the migrant mixed, it is the ongoing relational and historic connections with other places and people. This raises interesting questions about the value of the nation state in providing an overarching identity for those of mixed race to exist included, and the breaking down of the value of the nation state as the primary site for belonging and inclusion. Mixedness is a constant visible reminder of global connection and the lack of exclusivity of intimate relationships. Then although national identity appears to offer a context for positive experiences of mixedness, this is not the endpoint. The Facebook annotate about beingness a world citizen may be prescient, in this respect. Being mixed-race of migrant background in Australia enhances Commonwealth of australia'due south claims to beingness a successful multicultural state, even as being mixed Ethnic is a reminder of its history of colonization. What is necessary is some ways for talking about these experiences of race that acknowledges these histories, which may be an intermediate pace on the road across race, and, for that thing, nation.

Availability of data and materials

ABS information is bachelor from https://www.abs.gov.au/.

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Fozdar, F. "This is not how we talk about race anymore": approaching mixed race in Australia. CMS 10, eleven (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-022-00285-1

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• Received: 06 October 2021

• Accustomed: 02 March 2022

• Published: 14 March 2022

• DOI : https://doi.org/ten.1186/s40878-022-00285-1

Keywords

• Mixed race
• Australia
• Census
• Cosmopolitan

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