Abstract
Race Policy and Multiracial Americans, edited by Kathleen Odell Korgen, provides a much-needed ensemble of work focused on policy implications for multiracial people in the United States. As the social conceptualization of race becomes more fluid, individuals with multiple racial backgrounds identify in a wider variety of ways. Their multiracial identities are being acknowledged by both scholars and policy-makers, and the studies included in this book foster conversations between the two.
The book begins with chapters that examine the history of multiracial Americans, leading to contemporary demographics and relationships between multiracial identity and public policy. The opening chapter, from Tyrone Nagai, discusses how racial categorizations were historically enforced to maintain the racial hierarchy. Although the United States officially implemented anti-miscegenation laws and the one-drop rule, multiracial people were recognized and treated very differently by marginalized indigenous groups, such as the Seminoles and the Navajo, prior to the 1990s when the United States finally began to recognize multiracial identities.
In the book’s third chapter, Raúl Quiñones-Rosado details the multiracial identities subsumed under the umbrella term “Latino” (or “Hispanic”). He discusses the importance of understanding the racialization and now re-racialization of Latinos, as he points out that many are being redefined and reclassified as “white.” This is particularly significant given that, historically, Latinos in the United States were neither perceived nor treated as white people. They were subjected to discrimination via treaties, laws, and other policies due to their perceived “non-white” racial backgrounds. Redefining some segments of the Latino population as “white” ignores these histories of discrimination in favor of maintaining white hegemony. The chapter by Nikki Khanna examines the influence of social class on racial identity, concluding that middle-class multiracial Americans are more likely to identify as multiracial or in non-racial terms than those in lower classes. Together, these leading chapters introduce the reader to a wide scope of varying multicultural identities and the factors that influence them.
The chapters that follow further detail racial policies and their influence on multiracial identity. The chapters range in their focus on specific policies, including those affecting education and health. Several chapters stand out here, in particular the chapters on affirmative action and prisoners in the “color-blind” era.
Daniel N. Lipson’s chapter asks, “Should all (or some) multiracial Americans benefit from affirmative action programs?” (p.101). While that might seem like a trite question, Lipson makes it clear that it deserves our attention, as multiracial people are generally lost in the overly simplified black/white dichotomy of discussions over affirmative action. Affirmative action is heavily scrutinized by opponents to programs that account for race. Adding multiracial Americans to the conversation increases the scrutiny, which comes from not only these opponents, but also civil rights leaders, who worry that multiracial identities will endanger civil rights projects aimed at specific racial groups. As multiracial people are now being allowed to choose more than one identity on public forms, some skeptics argue that opportunities for fraud are increased. With so much cynicism surrounding multiracial Americans and their right to affirmative action, this relationship needs to be further examined to ensure that individuals are able to self-report their identities to the best of their abilities without the condemnation of doubt for their realities and experiences.
Gennifer Furst and Kathleen Korgen’s chapter acknowledges the “color-blind” perspective: the idea that the United States is a post-racial society. However, the authors state up front that the increase of people identifying as multiracial “indicates that racial identity and boundaries have become more fluid. It does not mean that racism no longer exists” (p.173). They conducted a quantitative analysis of prisoners in order to ascertain whether it is possible to identify as multiracial in prison. In addition, they gain insight on how prison affects racial identity and whether color-blind ideology has filtered into prisons. The authors point out that interesting insights might surface if they had been able to interview their respondents while in prison and also outside of prison to see if their experiences within and without might yield different results.
The book’s final chapters introduce discussions regarding the future of multiracial people and policies. Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl and David Brunsma highlight increased cultural approval of interracial relationships and multiracial children. However, they are quick to point out that this increased acceptance has not dismantled the racial hierarchy. In fact, in some ways it has reinforced the hierarchy, as competition between racial groups at times exalts multiracial individuals over their minority monoracial counterparts.
The book’s final chapter, written by Andrew Jolivette, argues that as more multiracial advocates enter social justice work, they have the potential to transform traditionally monoracial organizations and influence public policy. The arguments advanced here by Jolivette lend themselves to broader discussions of intersectional identities in social movements and policy creation and reform. Jolivette suggests a new social justice framework that incorporates public visibility, multi-issue organizing, shared ethnic leadership, and transformational programming as a potential strategy to be adopted by monoracial and multiracial organizations and advocates for moving forward toward social justice.
Overall, this book achieves its goal of filling a gap in the literature by introducing policy implications for multiracial Americans. Though some of the writing is redundant at times, the major points of emphasis are clear to the reader and backed up with sufficient details to initiate policy conversations. Korgen’s conclusions offer a variety of suggestions for policy-makers at various levels. The book, read either in part or as a whole, presents studies that would complement any gathering of works aimed at policy formation for racial social justice in the twenty-first century.