ASA 115 week 6, Ben Alto

In week 6 of ASA 115 "race traitors," we were asked to look into the new frontiers in mixed-race studies. This topic is brought about as mixed-race studies are a relatively new and underrepresented study and current mixed-race studies professors are becoming known. To approach this topic I read Molly Littlewood Mckibbin's article "The current state of multi-racial discourse". In this article she describes how mixed-race is currently studied in academia as well as how it is addressed in civil discourse.

One main topic that she brings up in the article is how mixed-race people must not fall into the fallacy of a colorblind world and support social movements that ignore racial problems. She instead argues that mixed-race people involve themselves in civil rights movements made up of any of their ingrained races and fight for their rights first. From this, she theorizes that mixed race people will gain their own social standing with support from typically monoracial groups. Another topic that is brought up in the article is that the fallacy of the “tragic mulatto” as well as other negative stereotypes about mixed-race people are still present in mixed-race discourse. She argues that modern scholars must fight against these stereotypes and try to show how any individual mixed-race person must be different and not conform to any pre-conceived notion of a negative standing coming from a confusion of identity.

Attached below I have attached a movie poster for the film “I passed for white”, where the typical stereotype of a tragic mulatto was portrayed in the form of a film. This film shows how mixed-race people were portrayed in media as well as the supposed societal problems that came along with a mixed-race heritage. In addition this film portrays a historical view as it was made in the united states in 1960.