Racial Formation and In-Betweenness of MENA and Mixed Race Categories: A Critical Collaborative Autoethnography

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Sessions
  In Paper Session: Navigating Raced Discourse and Policies in School

Abstract

The U.S. was constructed on a Black-white racial hierarchical system to maintain subjugation of communities of color, of which we understand through racial formation that race continues to adapt and evolve to support structures of anti-Black racist power (Omi & Winant, 2015). Our project centers racial formation and liminal third spaces as our theoretical framing for why race categories exist under a white supremacist anti-Black system that profits from hierarchical inhuman realities. This critical collaborative autoethnography explores the learning journeys of one biracial Asian faculty and one Lebanese American undergraduate, in their continued research conversations around why MENA peoples must identify as white. We urge social justice professions to recenter the literal marginal voices of mixed race and MENA peoples as essential in the relational healing and restorative journeys of our multiracial and intersecting communities of color.

Authors

• Hannah Stohry, Bridgewater State University

• Monique Hanna, Bridgewater State University