Shannon Jones

Symposium Topic

Title: Negotiating Liminality: The Multiracial Experience in America

Theory: The theoretical foundation for my paper is Victor Turner’s discourse on liminality. In The Ritual Process: Structure and anti-structure, Turner asserts that the balance between the structured and the unstructured is necessary for social maintenance. In a society of defined social positions, structure is comprised of individuals whose identity and social positions are based on distinct status divisions, measured against the others within the structure. Opposite structure, is anti-structure, where individuals lack social identities, therefore everyone is equal. A component of this anti-structure is the ambiguous liminal entity, which falls between place and position. As liminal entities challenge social boundaries and classifications, they become targets of taboos and prohibitions. I apply this theory of liminality to the multiracial population in America. America’s social construction of race attempts to phenotypically, socially, and politically categorize people. This racial structure has created a population of liminal entities, who fall between the categories we have designed.

Bibliography:

Bradshaw, Carla K.

            1992 Beauty and the Beast: On Racial Ambiguity. In Racially Mixed People in America.

                        Maria Root P.P., ed. Pp 77-88. California: Sage Publications.

Brunsma, David L.,  and Daniel Delgado, and Kerry Ann Rockquemore

2013 Liminality in the Multiracial Experience: Towards a concept of identity Matrix. Identities:

            Global studies in Culture and Power 20(5): 481-502

Jones, N. A. and Bullock, J. J.

2013 Understanding Who Reported Multiple Races in the U.S. Decennial Census: Results From Census

            2000 and the 2010 Census. Family Relations, 62: 5–16. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00759.x

Rockquemore, Kerry Ann and Davis L. Brunsma

            2008 Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America. Rowman & Littlefield: Sage Publications

Turner, Victor W.

1969  Liminality and Communitas . In The Ritual Process: Structure and anti-structure.    

Pp 95-103 Chicago:Aldine

Elevator Pitch:           I explore how the American multiracial population negotiates their racial identity in a society determined to racially categorize them.  How one’s identity is socially perceived may not correspond with how one actually identifies.  Our national history has shaped our ideologies and assumptions about race, but this generation of multiracial Americans is blurring the lines of racial identity. Will the multiracial discourse in our country have an impact on our social structure?