Julian Leus Week 6 Blog

McKibbin’s article “Current State of Multiracial Discourse” traces the evolution of multiracial academic and activist discussion from the nineteenth century to present. This author agrees with other scholars that the nineteenth and first half of the 20^th centuries viewed multiracialism in an “Age of Pathology”, in which many Western scientists tried to attribute multiracialism as some sort of social and biological disease. The explosion of multiracial discourse in the late-twentieth-century marks what many scholars call the “Age of Celebration,” when mixed-race individuals gain more visibility because of landmark court cases like Loving v. Virginia (1967) barred the prohibition of mixed-race marriages. Finally the current age in which we live is called the “Age of Critique”, in which many scholars focusing on multiracialism deal with questions of racial categorization and structure and multiracial agency.

This current age in multiracial scholarly discourse examines political institutions that fail to or are being reformed to include multiracial citizens in society, such as the choice for individuals to check off multiple boxes for racial identity in the U.S. Census (185). This idea of multiracial individuals to “choose” among their many races reveals deeper implications about race as a social construction that is now being dismantled in our post-colonial society. I find this movement very fascinating and can see how it will further the aims of racial minorities in the U.S. to achieve social justice and equality.