It’s been 57 years since the landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial marriage in all 50 states. But recent news coverage of Kamala Harris seems to highlight an American fixation with being monoracial.
Harris is the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be nominated for U.S. president.
“Trying to imply that (Harris) identifying with both sides of her family is somehow nefarious is nothing new for mixed-race people,” said Karen Downing, education librarian at the University of Michigan and scholar of critical mixed-race studies.
Her new U-M Library exhibition “Being Mixed Race in a Mono-racially Organized World” is open at the Clark Library through December 2024.
“‘Monoracism’ can come from many directions and is an added layer to traditional racism,” said Downing, who identifies as mixed-race herself. “We move through the world being challenged a lot, and there is always pressure to choose one (identity) or the other.”
The U-M exhibition dives into the lived experiences of this growing demographic by utilizing research, university collections and news stories, she said.
“If you think about the period from 1967 (Loving v. Virginia) forward, it’s taken about two generations of folks to feel comfortable enough to have relationships that are interracial, and for the taboo that used to be in place to, in many ways, be ameliorated by more people dating and partnering interracially,” Downing said.
Citing a Pew study from 2017 that found 1 in 6 newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, Downing wanted to provide future generations of mixed-race students with resources that reflect their lives.
“We know that our schools, our community organizations, our universities, are going to be seeing this wave of mixed-race people in the not-very-distant future. We are already seeing it, but the numbers are increasing year over year,” she said.
“Making our resources and collections more visible, forming faculty relationships on campus to elevate these materials in courses that are already being taught, allowing established scholarly work to contribute to collective knowledge — this is the path forward.”
In 2023, the university was revisiting its diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and the 2020 census data had been freshly released. Downing said the time seemed right to move forward with this work.
She and her team of graduate and undergraduate students from the Library Engagement Fellow program worked with the U-M student organization Mixed at Michigan to learn about what would help mixed-race students feel welcome and included on campus.
“What we heard from students was that they feel a silence on these issues,” Downing said. “They feel a sense of not being included, that their identity is not reflected in courses and co-curricular things. They don’t always feel there is a space for these kinds of conversations.”
After presenting the findings to U-M’s chief diversity officer, the heads of human resources and various department chairs, Downing received funding to research and program the exhibition.
“Being Mixed Race in a Mono-racially Organized World” is the largest presentation on the mixed-race experience that Downing has curated, and the first to occupy a physical space. Her previous two exhibitions were digital-only.
A deep dive of existing library collections turned out scholarly and popular resources, newsletters from mixed-race communities, parenting and children’s books on healthy identity development and more.
The team worked for months to represent the data via colorful U.S. and world maps, along with a detailed timeline of key dates in mixed-race history from the 1800s to the present. They also showcased quotes from existing interviews with public figures who identify as mixed-race, including Harris, Barack Obama, Lenny Kravitz, Shakira, Bruno Mars, Keegan-Michael Key and others.
The researchers encourage U-M faculty to visit the exhibition with their students, and to incorporate the materials into their syllabi.
“Ultimately I’d love it if we could get to a point where the way that people identify is what we accept,” Downing said. “We shouldn’t be putting identity onto people. We shouldn’t be making assumptions about people.
“And I know that we are a long way from that at this point, but people like Kamala Harris are really opening a lot of people’s eyes to the fact that there is nothing wrong with — and, in fact, there are many wonderful things about — having multiple cultural traditions to draw from.”
