Beyond the Color Lines: A Duoethnography of Multiraciality and Unhooking
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Abstract
What does it mean to unhook from whiteness, specifically in academic spaces, when one self-identifies as a multiracial scholar of mixed white heritage? Beyond the Color Lines is an exploration of this question and means locating oneself or being located by others on the margins or outside of a color line that, in the U.S., is historically Black/white. As a self-identified biracial Mexicana and a multiracial Filipino, the authors share the complexities and nuances of their racialized experiences and identifications through Duoethnographic methodology. (Re)tellings of their lived experiences unearth difficult truths that bring into focus moments where racism, monoracism, colorism and differential micro-racialization (as explained through a MultiCrit framework) made each question their own identities in relation to their whiteness (e.g., passing, code-switching) as well as their affinity for and comfort in their avowed identities—those which most feel “like home.” Through dialogic exchange, where they co- and de-constructed complex ‘landscapes’ of identity, they emerged with deeper ‘sensemaking’ not only of their own ‘mixed’ identities, but also of ways to examine fluid typologies of multiracial identity and their connection to “unhooking.”