Product Description

High profile "mixed race" stars like Tiger Woods have brought the politics of identity into the mainstream. Here, Jill Olumide argues that we must examine the contadictions inherent in the term "mixed race" in order to reach a fuller understanding of the variety in human experience and identity. The book demonstrates that there are distinctive features of mixed race experience that span time and place. By comparing contemporary experiences of mixed race, collected through a series of interviews and workshops, with those of past populations in different parts of the world, it explains how its meanings alters with national boundary, historical context, class, gender and ethnicity. Showing how different communities are linked by social ambiguity, dependency and the denial of social space, the author reveals that mixed race is essentially a conditional state. The underlying ideology that defines each community is therefore subject to frequent transformation in the face of social, economic and political change. As mixed race groups across the world call for the right of self-definition, the book aims to reveal that it is through understanding the plurality of the category of mixed race that we are best able to transcend the idea of "race" and challenge the racial axes of social division. The book includes an examination of the folklore around racism and anti-racism, and the agencies through which ideologies of race are propagated, including social welfare groups, religious groups, scientific texts, and the family.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342578 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Jill Olumide is a researcher at Royal Holloway. She has worked as a teacher with a particular interest in bilingual education and on a European Social Fund Horizon project looking at ways of assisting asylum seekers into work or training.