Abstract
In his 2017 Netflix standup special, “3 Mics,” comic Neal Brennan claims to have found the solution to racism: multiracial babies. In Multiracialism and Its Discontents, Strmic-Pawl investigates whether multiracialism has the potential to improve race relations, and the identity processes among multiracials. She interviews 70 part-white mixed-race individuals, to compare and contrast the experiences of Asian-white and black-white individuals in Chicago and New York.
The methodological decision to choose New York and Chicago is purposeful: They are both considered socially progressive cities and have relatively large populations of multiracial individuals. Asian-white and black-white individuals constitute an interesting comparison: By most social measures—wealth and income, education attainment, and residential integration—Asians are closer to whites than blacks on the social hierarchy. Would multiracials’ whiteness lessen the experiences of racism for them and highlight the possibility of moving the country past racism, or does it continue to be a salient factor for those considered nonwhite? Though Strmic-Pawl wonders whether multiracialism can move us past racism, this book offers us the opportunity to examine this only through part-white mixed-race individuals.
The first two chapters effectively establish the significance of the author’s work. Chapter 1 highlights the rise in the multiracial population and popular culture’s interest in this group, leading to the guiding questions and methodological approach. Chapter 2 provides a brief, but broad, overview of Asians and blacks in the United States, contextualizing Asian-white and black-white multiracialism.
Chapter 3 investigates how the author’s respondents racially identify. The vast majority of them identify as multiracial; however, this is the only commonality she finds among the two groups. Chapter 4 seeks to understand how her respondents experience and understand discrimination. Strmic-Pawl finds that Asian-whites experience and perceive racism as less burdensome than their black-white counterparts. In addition to interview data, she deploys a series of vignettes to help get her respondents to discuss racism. Although they do elicit great responses, these scenarios have their shortcomings, which she acknowledges. Chapter 5 is a theoretical chapter that investigates what she refers to as the group’s “racial logic.” In chapter 6 she notes how respondents’ multiracial identity intersects with other social statuses, namely, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Chapter 7 is the conclusion, and the Epilogue is used to present respondents’ answers to the interview question, “What advice would you give someone who is of mixed race descent and is trying to figure out how to identify?” As Strmic-Pawl suggests, the epilogue may be especially useful to multiracial individuals and organizations.
Chapter 5, on racial logic, is the strongest—and would do well in college and graduate classrooms. Strmic-Pawl defines racial logic as “a set of values and beliefs adhered to by a group and are used to make sense of a group’s racial positioning” (p. 79). This is similar to Bonilla-Silva’s concept of racial ideology—“the ideological structure of a social system that crystallizes racial notions and stereotypes” (Bonilla-Silva 2001:43). Both concepts seek to grasp how members of different racial groups understand themselves racially and the larger racial order.
Strmic-Pawl posits that Asian-whites adhere to a racial logic of deracialization, which allows their status to become “white enough” (p. 89). Although she mentions Waters’s (1990) concept of “ethnic options” and Gans’s (1979) work on “symbolic ethnicity” in a footnote, more on this could help us understand how Asian-white respondents symbolically call to their Asian or white identity as part of their racial logic. Nonetheless, deracialization allows them to see whiteness as the norm and whites at the top of the social hierarchy, with them close to, if not already in, this category.
Black-white multiracials adopt a logic of black exceptionalism, placing them closer to black Americans in the social hierarchy. Strmic-Pawl refers to this status as “salient Blackness” (p. 98). Her respondents express solidarity with black Americans and their awareness and sensitivity to racism. Despite their multiracial identity, they are not far removed from their blackness.
In sum, “the power of the racial hierarchy restricts the ways in which Asian-whites and Black-whites are able to resist race and assert a multiracialism that challenges the racialization process” (p. 104). Chapter 5 links data to theory and helps us understand that despite multiracials’ defying our simple categories of race, the power of race prevents multiracials, even when mixed with white, from escaping racism.
These findings complement Lee and Bean’s (2010) The Diversity Paradox. Based on interviews with interracial married couples and their children. Lee and Bean observe that Asian-white, and Latino-white, individuals and parents are more likely to identify as white whereas black-white individuals and parents are more likely to identify as black. Lee and Bean (2010:32) call this “Black exceptionalism,” whereby the boundaries of whiteness seem to be expanding, much like they have in the past for European ethnics, but only to include Asians and Latinos. More discussion on these similarities and how Strmic-Pawl’s work builds on them would help us understand the pervasiveness of race in America despite the increase of multiracial individuals.
Overall, Multiracialism and Its Discontents shows how multiracialism is still bound to the larger structure of racism, as opposed to some popular thinking. Shortcomings within the text include the scenarios offered by vignettes, a centering on whiteness despite being interested in multiracialism more broadly, and limited references to other work—particularly that of Lee and Bean (2010). Despite these limitations, this book broadens our critical conversations regarding race in the twenty-first century.