Making Mixed Race

<p>By examining Black mixed-race identities in the city through a series of historical vantage points <i>Making Mixed Race</i> provides in-depth insights into the geographical and historical contexts that shape the possibilities and constraints for identifications.</p><p>Whilst popular representations of mixed-race often conceptualise it as a contemporary phenomenon and are couched in discourses of futurity this book dislodges it from the current moment to explore its emergence as a racialised category and personal identity over time. In addition to tracing the temporality of mixed-race the contributions show the utility of place as an analytical tool for mixed-race studies. The conceptual framework for the book – place time and personal identity – offers a timely intervention to the scholarship that encourages us to look outside of individual subjectivities and critically examine the structural contexts that shape Black mixed-race lives.</p><p>The book centres around the life histories of 37 people of Mixed White and Black Caribbean heritage born between 1959 and 1994 in Britain’s second-largest city Birmingham. The intimate life portraits of mixed identity reveal how colourism family school gender whiteness racism and resistance have been experienced against the backdrop of post-war immigration Thatcherism the ascendency of Black diasporic youth cultures and contemporary post-race discourses. It will be of interest to researchers postgraduate and undergraduate students who work on (mixed) race and ethnicity studies in academic areas including geographies of race youth identities/cultures gender colonial legacies intersectionality racism and colourism. </p>