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- Mixed Race
White supremacy is so last century. These days it’s on-trend to be a mixed-race supremacist. Unlike the BNP, mixed-race people can now point to an assortment of scientifically credible research that claims biological advantages to being mixed race. And that’s not to mention the anecdotal evidence citing young celebrities like Lewis Hamilton, Theo Walcott and Leona Lewis to prove the theory that mixed race people are healthier and prettier. If you spent your childhood being called a mongrel in the playground, the latest batch of research from Cardiff University’s School of Psychology may bring a smile to your face.
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- Mixed Race
When people ask if multiculturalism has a future, the short answer is yes. But the question of how we secure that future is more complex than anyone imagined during the passage of the Race Relations Act 1976. At one level, multiculturalism is merely a statement of fact: many cultures living side by side. But minority groups also view multiculturalism as a bulwark against assimilation, a rejection of the cultural blancmange that inevitably discards their heritage in favour of pearly kings and queens.
Multiculturalism asserts the rights of minority groups to celebrate and maintain their own cultures and, more importantly, to access resources from a state historically riddled by institutional racism. Minority groups should view with fear and trepidation the backlash against multiculturalism, and the move away from identity politics. Or should they? In fact, a move away from identity politics may actually help some minority groups escape the segregated backwaters – or inner city sink estates – that confound attempts to achieve meaningful integration.
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- Mixed Race
A concerned white person asked me recently: "Is it true you sometimes describe yourself as mixed-race? Don't you know, we don't use that term any more."
I find myself in the same boat as my white gran, whom I ticked off for calling black people "coloured". But I'm probably worse than my gran, because she was born in 1908, left school at 13, worked in a cigarette factory, and didn't sit around discussing race and multiculturalism. I have no such excuse. "So what am I these days?" I asked, curious for my identity to be revealed.
