The Affects Of Race: Millennial Mixed Race Identity In The United States

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2018-05

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At the turn of the millennium, there has been a particular emergence of mixed race discourse in the United States concentrated on identity. While there has been a significant amount of criticism regarding Millennial Mixed Race Identities, there has been less attention given to the continued investments in these identities well into the new millennium. This dissertation implements Affect Theory as a means to better understand not only the development of the Mixed Race Identity Movement at the end of the twentieth century and the persistent desire for these types of identifications in the new millennium, but also as a means to reformulate mixed race identification to avoid complicity in structures of white supremacy and colonialism. A perspective of affect allows a more thorough understanding of how mixed race identities have been heavily influenced by the affective attachments to the people we surround ourselves with; the affective responses to our past experiences of race and racial encounter; the affective relief developed to combat past affective experiences; and the racial affects that continually circulate within a racialized society and attach to differently raced bodies during moments of encounter. Specifically looking at some of the major texts of the Mixed Race Identity Movement underscores the way in which affect heavily influences understandings of identity and the problems that arise from seeking out the state to solve affective conditions. Continuing with a more precise Millennial Mixed Race Identity, Hapa, this dissertation examines the continued investments in these more specific identities and what a politics of recognition based on affect can problematically produce or uphold. Lastly, this dissertation implements Affect Theory in an attempt to refocus mixed race identity formation as an iterative and recursive process shaped through the constant contact with other bodies, other spaces, and other times. Yet, unfortunately, despite the ways in which affect produces alternative perspectives on the development and investment in Millennial Mixed Race Identity, this perspective does not salvage mixed race discourse from being complicit in structures of colonialism or white supremacy in the new millennium.

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Mixed Race, Multiracial, Racial Identity, Affect

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