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?
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