Eric Hamako

College and community anti-racist education programs -- and related strands of multicultural, diversity, and social justice education -- aim to teach students about race and racism.  But some approaches also perpetuate discrimination against Multiracial students, whether through their theories, pedagogies, curricula, or simply teachers’ own prejudices.  Lessons that omit or pathologize Multiracial people’s existence.  Caucus group pedagogies that create nonsensical, risky forced choices.  Racial identity development models that issue accusations of internalized oppression or false consciousness.  Binary models of racial privilege and racial oppression that erroneously locate all Multiracial students “between” privilege and oppression, if they imagine them at all.  How might concerned educators recognize monoracism in anti-racist curricula, before it erupts in anti-racist classrooms and trainings?  And how might we improve such programs, so that Multiracial students -- and many others -- can gain the benefits of a new anti-racist education that is also anti-monoracist?  I put these questions to dozens of anti-racist Multiracial educator-activists.  In this paper, I share and critique some of their observations, concerns, and suggestions.

This dissertation explores how anti-racist education might be improved, so that it more effectively teaches Multiracial students about racism. A brief history of anti-racist education and a theory of monoracism – the systematic oppression of Multiracial people – provide context for the study. Anti-racist education in communities and colleges has supported U.S. social movements for racial justice. However, most anti-racist education programs are not designed by or for students who identify with two or more races. Nor have such programs generally sought to address Multiraciality or monoracism. Since the 1980s, Multiraciality has become more salient in popular U.S. racial discourses. The number of people identifying as Multiracial, Mixed Race, or related terms has also increased, particularly among school-age youth. Further, the size and number of Multiracial people’s organizations have also grown. Anti-racist education may pose unintended challenges for Multiracial students and their organizations. This study asked twenty-five educators involved in Multiracial organizations to discuss anti-racist education: what it should teach Multiracial students; what is working; what is not working; and how it might be improved. Qualitative data were gathered via five focus group interviews in three West Coast cities. Participants proposed learning goals for Multiracial students. Goals included learning about privilege and oppression; social constructionism; historical and contemporary contexts of racism; and impacts of racism and monoracism on Multiracial people. Participants also called for education that develops interpersonal relationships, self-reflection, and activism. Participants also discussed aspects of anti-racist education that may help or hinder Multiracial students’ learning, as well as possible improvements. Participants problematized the exclusion of Multiraciality, the use of Black/White binary racial paradigms, linear racial identity development models, and the use of racial caucus groups or affinity spaces. Participants also challenged educators’ monoracist attitudes and behaviors, particularly the treatment of questions as pathological “resistance.” Suggestions included addressing Multiraciality and monoracism, accounting for intersectionality and the social construction of race, validating self-identification, and teacher education about monoracism. The study then critically analyzes participants’ responses by drawing on literature about anti-racist education, social justice education, multicultural education, transgender oppression (cissexism), and monoracism. Based on that synthesis, alternate recommendations for research and practice are provided.

The multiracial people’s movement in the United States has expanded significantly in the last 10 years (Douglass, 2003). Historically, community-based education programs have supported social movements in the United States (Collins & Yeskel, 2000; Sarachild, 1974/1978), yet little has been written about how educational programs might serve the social and political movements of mixed-race people. This case study describes two community-based multiracial education programs by and for mixed-race people and suggests ways that each supports multiracial community organizing. The conclusion offers recommendations for shaping future multiracial education programs for multiracial people.

Since 2001, US popular culture has produced a glut of material about zombies: including movies, books, toys, games, and graphic novels. How can we understand this surge in interest? I suggest that zombies currently contain displaced Orientalist anxieties about Arabs, Muslims, and East Asians – particularly Chinese. Various authors have explored Orientalist representations of these groups in film. However, I connect analyses of Orientalism in film to the zombie subgenre of horror film and fiction. I explore similarities between current representations of zombies and Orientalist representations of various groups. Symbolizing the racial and socioeconomic “Other,” popular culture is imbuing zombies with Orientalist qualities such as an insatiable yet asexual hunger for the flesh, unintelligibility, implacability, and a horde-like social-structure that threatens to pollute heteronormative White family structures and racial purity. Such stories often implicate state and corporate entities in the creation of the threat, yet also exculpate zombies’ creators and suggest archly conservative solutions. I also point out counternarratives in the zombie subgenre that play with and resist these Orientalist ideas.