Ethnic & Race Relations, Ethnic & Minority Studies, Discrimination & Prejudice

Race and Mixed Race

Name: Race and Mixed Race
Author: Naomi Zack
ISBN: 9781566392655

by Naomi Zack

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Overview

Race and Mixed Race is an exploration of the philosophical, social, and historical problems related to racial identity - from the perspectives of individuals of "pure" and mixed race. Tracing the history of racial designations in the United States, Naomi Zack uses philosophical methods to criticize the logic of American racial categories. She discusses why racial identity is a matter of importance; examines the treatment of mixed race in law, society, and literature; and addresses philosophical questions related to the designation of someone as belonging to a given race. In this first philosophical challenge to accepted racial classifications in the United States, Zack argues that black and white designations are themselves racist because the concept of race does not have an adequate scientific foundation. The "one drop" rule, which originally was a rationalization for slavery, persists to this day despite the fact that there have never been "pure" races and that most American blacks have "white" genes. Challenging the equation that black plus white always results in black, the author explores the existential problems of mixed race identity. The stringent bi-racial system in this country does not recognize mixed racial heritage, which generates a special racial alienation for many Americans. Discussing the possibility of eliminating all racial identities for their lack of scientific or moral underpinning, Zack analyzes American racial words to reveal their metaphorical nature. Ironically suggesting the inclusion of "gray" into the vocabulary as a designation for mixed black and white race, she concludes that any racial identity, based as it must be on false and unjust racial identification, is an expression of bad faith.

About the Author, Naomi Zack

Naomi Zack is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. She herself is of mixed race: Jewish, African American, and Native American.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Analyzing conceptions and descriptions of race, Zack offers an intriguing exploration of the possibilities of a mixed-race identity in society. The author, who is of mixed race herself, teaches philosophy at the State University of New York. Although her essay occasionally bogs down in academic jargon, she cogently argues certain important points: that genetics gives the lie to the theory that there has ever been a pure race; and that white families identify themselves as such by the absence of non-whites among their forebears. Zack surveys the more fluid race relations in Brazil and the history of mulattoes in the United States, including mixed race subcultures of rural ``racial islands'' and the ``cultural suicide'' of the mulatto elite of the Harlem Renaissance who embraced their black ancestry and rejected their white forbears. Philosophizing on the possibility of a mixed-race identity, the author suggests that even if mixed-race color words seem offensive, they ``nevertheless have more human reality than those color words `black' and `white'.'' Zack takes a cool-headed approach to this topic, although more personal reflection might have made the book more powerful. (Nov.)