Abstract
Released in 2011, Multiracial Identity is a timely, well-crafted film written and directed by Brian Chinhema that presents many of the key concepts, debates, and questions surrounding mixed-race identity and multiraciality in American society. Narrated by Dieter Weber, the film integrates both scholarly and nonscholarly voices to present a number of key discussions and tensions about the place and recognition of multiracial people in U.S. society while also providing space for multiracial individuals or the parents of mixed-race children to talk about their experiences and insights on the meanings of multiraciality in the United States. Featuring prominent scholars in the field of multiracial identity, such as Rainier Spencer and Naomi Zack, as well as Aaron Gullickson and Aliya R. Saperstein, the film provides some basic historical background to contextualize contemporary discussions about multiraciality. While the numbers show an increase of 33 percent in the multiracial population between 2000 and 2010, the existence of multiracial people is not a new phenomenon. The film sets the historical and conceptual stage early, so students might ask, “What has changed in terms of (multi)race and (multi)racial identity in the United States?”
Viewers are provided with an introductory overview of the existence, status, and sociocultural dilemmas that have faced multiracial populations historically. The film does a good job showing the changing meaning of multiraciality across time and space (e.g., regional differences and across racial/ethnic combinations). Though the historically central organizing principle of the black/white binary is discussed, the film raises the question of the utility of this paradigm for understanding multiraciality as it gives attention to the experience of other multiracial individuals (e.g., Hapa-Haoles/Asian-white). Interfacing with the changing demographics associated with the repeal of certain anti-immigration laws in the 1960s, and the increase in Asian and Hispanic/Latino migration in particular, the film more than adequately links macro to micro and is useful for class discussions and lesson plans related to the socially constructed nature of race and other such sociological understandings of the structures, patterns, and politics of race and racialized oppression.
While the film does contextualize contemporary debates within key historical developments—antimiscegenation laws, the antebellum existence of a buffer class, the continuation of a postbellum color caste system, and Loving v. Virginia (1967)—it is clear that the film is leading us to a particular moment. That moment, prefaced by a history of Directive 15, is the movement for the “check all that apply” revision to the 2000 census. Prior to the change, the reporting of race and ethnicity for government forms limited respondents to a single race. Multiracial Identity does a good job tracing the development of these changes to race categorization standards during the mid- to late 1990s, introducing some of the arguments for and against the proposed inclusion of a stand-alone multiracial category, which eventually resulted in the current compromise and method of racial reporting, the “check all that apply” rule.
Nicely balanced against these scholarly explanations are the voices of everyday individuals. The first-person accounts provide students with experiential representations of issues faced by multiracial people or their parents, conveying some key tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas that multiracial individuals and the parents of mixed-race children face on a daily basis—highlighting the emotional, psychological, and interactional dilemmas multiracial individuals or their parents face in a society driven by the one-drop rule and the push to identify with one parent; among these, “What is it like to be denied the right to identify with more than one racial ancestry for yourself or your child?” “What is it like to constantly be asked if you are (or your mixed-race child is) adopted?” “What is it like to be asked “what are you?” by your peers, only to then be told “you look weird”?” These are some of the everyday realities that multiracial individuals and their families face—realities that the film illuminates very well—taking students beyond the scholarly voices.
As a pedagogical tool, though, the balance between the experiential and the social scientific is well done. Naomi Zack and Rainier Spencer provide important conceptual background, work through key concepts, and overview the key debates, tensions, and discussions. Through this strategy of scholarship, archival evidence, and the voices of multiracial persons, viewers are introduced to central concepts: miscegenation, hypodescent, the one-drop rule, identity, social construction, and so forth. Linking the social, cultural, and economic status of multiracial populations to the broader dynamics and politics of race, the film also explains how multiracial individuals fit into the overall matrix of oppression characterizing American society. It also ties historical patterns to more contemporary expectations related to race and racial identification, acknowledging that the policing of racial boundaries and identities is a function not just of whites’ maintenance of white supremacy and racial purity but also of (black/nonwhite) groups who push multiracial individuals to identify with their nonwhite parent and ancestry only, as has been the custom in American society for centuries.
One particular strength of the film is its treatment of the “race is not (biologically) real, but is still socially real” paradox, which many undergraduate students have trouble grasping. After successfully decoupling the folk-science belief that race is biological or genetic, the film goes on to provide sociological explanations to fill in these gaps just created in viewers’ understanding. In looking for ways to answer the question and the paradox of race as a social construction—if race does not exist because it is not biologically real, but at the same time we say it is socially constructed and means something—the multiracial lens, and this film in particular, is one way to help answer and elucidate this complicated sociological concept. Another important element of the film and a contribution to existing social science curricula is its up-to-date information regarding President Barack Obama’s racial ancestry and identification and preliminary information from the 2010 U.S. census.
Accessible to a large range of audiences, the film is an excellent introduction to multiracial identity specifically but also to the histories, politics, and dynamics of race and racialization more broadly. Though the film could effectively be used at both the high school and graduate school level, this film is perfectly pitched for use in a college-level/undergraduate sociology, psychology, political science, or even history course that deals with issues of race, power, identity, marriage, family, culture, law and politics, American society, U.S. history, passing, or socialization. Quite student-centered, the film does a good job of anticipating the kinds of questions that students might have and thus flows very well, overall.
The most glaring issue is the potential that viewers/students might walk away from the film thinking that multiracial people today just magically get to choose whatever they want to be. While grounded in a discussion of how limited multiracial identification has been historically, we were concerned with little things like the husband’s calling his mixed-race wife a “mulatto.” There might have to be debriefings in class about that. It would have been nice to see some interaction between these various levels of understanding, maybe having some type of dialogue between the everyday people whose voices and experiences we hear and the academic scholars who help us interpret and contextualize them sociologically. And it would have been really great to talk about contemporary differences by gender.
The film winds down by posing some interesting questions for possible class discussion. While Spencer and Zack are consulted for their opinions, by this point in the film students and viewers have been given enough tools to work with, which in conjunction with what is being learned in the classroom not only could yield rich discussions related to multiraciality in the twenty-first century but also could be expanded to complicate discussion related to collecting data on race and ethnicity, tracking and defining institutional discrimination, civil rights, racial identity, race, the dynamics of race and power in U.S. society, and the differences and overlaps of race, class, gender, status, in a particular sociohistorical context. One discussion question can be linked to the beginning of the film, which states, “There is no political recognition of multiracial people.” What does this mean, and what would this look like? Who would agree, and would dissent? Why? What would it change? What would be the implications for changes?
Whether or not we want to admit it or recognize it, race is still a salient organizing feature and identity of the American sociocultural landscape. As it has historically manifested through the ideology of monoracial categories, with an emphasis on (white) racial supremacy and purity, race has been a mechanism that leverages political clout and access to social networks and resources, thus ultimately affecting life chances and life opportunities. Regardless of whether viewers agree more with the arguments of Spencer or Zack, or are steadfast believers in the postracial, color-blind era, multiracial populations continue to challenge existing racial, political, social, and cultural boundaries.
Multiracial Identity hits on many of the key concepts, questions, and contradictions in the multiracial debate and is a valuable addition to any school library and many course curricula. As such, it is a film that will resonate with those who are just beginning to think about multiracial individuals and mixed race identity - as well as seasoned scholars of multiraciality. Multiraciality may not be a new social phenomenon, nor the way to “save” America from its racial/ized and racist past, and despite their disagreements over if or how mixed-race people should be formally/politically recognized and whether it is a moral, civil, or falsely indoctrinated issue, most scholars will agree that race and racial identity continue to organize social interactions, spaces, and institutions today.