First off let me state: I'm a product of my times. I'm a millenial. We try hard to hang on to those foggy late 80s early 90s memories, pretending we weren't drooling Gerber mush over our bibs the night the Berlin Wall came down-- all in vain attempts to separate ourselves from our younger text-happy, equally tech-junky, mass media dependent, Disney Channel-fed, over-stimulated siblings born after 1990. We're all the same. Part of the newly christened "Boomerang Generation" of wandering twentysomethings who were raised partly, in the boomtown years of Clinton, but who really came of age under the dumbing apathy and silencing control of Bush Jr. We've gotten a pretty bad rep for being coddled, apolitical, just a touch nihilistic and downright lazy (Look! in our defense, try graduating from college right at the start of one of the greatest recessions in our country's history!)
And yet, we were the generation credited as most responsible for getting the first black president in the White House. We're the generation with the largest number of college graduates in the nation's history-- though we're now making history as much for being degreed as we are for being indebted and jobless. We're among the first children of the Internet age, though we vaguely remember early life without it. We're the "Ism" kids-- growing up amidst more (inter)national and societal ideological shifts and trends than we could imagine.I myself was spoon-fed a good amount of liberalism... I blame that mostly on my New York roots and liberal arts education. The most activist and progressive among us have a nostalgic leaning towards revolutionary iconography of the 60s and 70s-- because if truth be told, we have few contemporary heroes... We were born at the height of multicultural politics only to currently find ourselves right on the cusp of colorblindness and post-raciality. We've been called Generation Mix- with a growing number of us choosing to claim multiple racial and ethnic identities. All of these things among many others have informed the type of young adult I've become and (most relevant to this conversation) how I see myself as a woman of color, as a mixed person in the U.S.....It's to my generation and those that follow that I often find myself speaking.
Mixed-Consciouness: In Search of a Political Education
I developed the "Mixed Dreams" Experimental College course at Oberlin in a humble attempt to patch together a Mixed History 101 and to start to provide a “political education”--tools with which young mixed folk and transracial adoptees could explore who we are, where we’re coming from and how to feel empowered enough to locate ourselves in those histories and identities. I’ve also had students who identify as monoracial and my greatest hope is that we can use discussions on mixed identities, to also break open myths of monolithic identities, cultural & racial authenticity and purity. Isn’t being a 'hyphen American' in key ways also a “mixed” experience? Can we also discuss queer identities as parallel to if not linked to “mixed” experiences as well? What about issues of socioeconomic class and access. In the course, we speak very specifically about mostly “first generation mixed-race experiences post 1967 (acknowledging all the while the limitations of that)-- but we also use multiraciality as a lens through which we can engage with a wider range of issues concerning identity, belonging and perhaps most significantly social justice. In doing so, the discussion changes from some unique, community-specific discussion on our experiences that happens behind closed doors, into a wider, more powerful dialogue we can all deeply benefit from having.
Living on the Color Line: Fighting for Social Justice
I’m mixed and proud, my mixed identity is rooted in the legacies and struggles of people of color in this country and transnationally and I recognize the privileges that can effect the ways I move through this world in relation to white supremacy and power. I won’t collude or be coopted by disguised white supremacy and its insidious henchmen Multiculturalism, Colorblindness and Post-racialism. I’m no mixed-up, confused, tragic anything, nor am I some hybrid, superhuman. I’m family, a legitimate member of various communities--I’m a partner, an ally, and I stand and act in solidarity.
