Centering the Voices of Mixed-Race Peoples and Eradicating Racism: A Critical Multiracial/Mixed-Racial Autobiographical Inquiry

• In Event: Pushing Methodological Boundaries and Performing Dissertation Writing

Abstract

Michael Williams explores his mixed race heritages and identities. Being trapped between two races, Black and White is a struggle for most people because they cannot fully relate to one race or the other. Sometimes this is due to society’s rejection of them in either race and sometimes it is a feeling held deep inside and sometimes it is a combination of both. His identity is further complicated by the fact that he is not biracial but multiracial. Michael Williams is fifty percent Ethiopian (as society and governmental institutions would identify him as African American or Black), part Italian, part Choctaw Indian, and part Puerto Rican. He has been trapped between four races. Growing up in Chicago as a young boy and living in the South in his adulthood, Michael Williams’ racial identity has become so complex that affect how he sees the world. Race is an entity that is used by the government to keep people divided, which highly troubles him. It is embedded in societies on multiple levels. The white race, for instance, has been given the upper hand and is considered the privileged race. Many white people in our society hold fast to this notion and place themselves above people of other races. Michael Williams claims that he is not attempting to fight the institutional racism; rather, he is attempting to reclaim his identity as a mixed race person. Identifying with mixed race does not create a third category of race nor does it help promote a healthy identification of the Black race, which is already suppressed by the White race (Joseph, 2013). Michael Williams has realized that opening the door to his mixed race identity only aligns himself with the White race and that further exacerbates the black race, which he is definitely a part of it. So it is best for him to forget about speaking of his mixed race in an attempt to transcend blackness. His “mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto [are] trapped between two worlds” (Joseph, 2013, p. 161). Most multiracial people tend to fall in whatever social class they fit in and keep their mouths shut about who they are, which continues to perpetuate monoracial categories. With the intent to discover his own identity as a multiracial person, Michael Williams seeks to open doors for freedom of self-identification for others who are multiracial but have been mis-educated by the government’s goal of monoracial categories. Michael Williams hopes that his dissertation inquiry into his mixed race heritages and identities could open the door to a more peaceful and humane existence when people can see themselves for who they truly are racially, they can be free of social and governmental labeling which is another form of oppression, repression, and suppression.

Author

• Michael Williams, Georgia Southern University