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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Mixed Race Amnesia

Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality

Racially mixed people in the global north are often portrayed as the embodiment of an optimistic, post-racial future. In Mixed Race Amnesia, Minelle Mahtani makes the case that this romanticized view of multiraciality governs both public perceptions and personal accounts of the mixed race experience. Drawing on a series of interviews, she explores how, in order to adopt the view that being mixed race is progressive, a strategic forgetting takes place – one that obliterates complex diasporic histories. She argues that a new anti-colonial approach to multiraciality is needed, one that emphasizes how colonialism shapes the experiences of mixed race people today.

288 pages | © 2014


Table of Contents

Introduction: Disentangling Our Curious Affection with Multiraciality

1 Mixed Race Mythologies: Toward an Anticolonial Mixed Race Studies

2 Mixed Race Narcissism? Thoughts on the Interview Experience

3 The Model Multiracial: Propping Up Canadian Multiculturalism through Racial Impotency

4 Beyond the Passing Narrative: Multiracial Whiteness

5 Mongrels, Interpreters, Ambassadors, and Bridges? Mapping Liberal Affinities among Mixed Race Women

6 Mixed Race Scanners: Performing Race

7 Present Tense: The Future of Critical Mixed Race Studies

References

Index

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