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A Postscript to the Twentieth Century: Mainstream and Celebrated Limitations, and Counter-narratives

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Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century

Part of the book series: Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series (( CAL))

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Abstract

From 2000 onwards the image of racially mixed families and people in Britain has been one firmly coalesced around new dominant understandings, where mixedness is posited as both mainstream and celebratory as well as a ‘new’ phenomenon. This postscript chapter offers some thoughts on the factors propelling this continued shift in perspective and how such representations are actually often at variance with lived experiences and statistical reality, as well as how the twenty-first century ‘mixed race project’ fits into the wider historical context of racial mixing and mixedness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, the SCOPUS corpus of literature reflects scholarly attention, UK-attributed articles including the lemmatised term ‘mixed race’ increasing from 9 articles (1993–1999) to 21 (2000–2006) and 49 (2007–2013). Commensurate counts (for England) in Web of Knowledge increased from 14 articles (1993–1999) to 26 (2000–2006) and 40 (2007–2013). Two-thirds of the key British ‘foundation texts’ on ‘mixed race’ show an upward or stable trend in citations till 2010 (Aspinall 2015).

  2. 2.

    For example, between 2008 and 2010, an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded seminar series ‘Thinking About Mixedness and Mixing: International and Interdisciplinary Dialogue’, held at London South Bank University, brought together speakers from Britain, Europe, North America and Australasia; similarly the Critical Mixed Race Studies journal launched in 2011 has an international board.

  3. 3.

    See: Aspinall 2015.

  4. 4.

    http://www.pih.org.uk/images/documents/mr_js_09.pdf [date accessed 19.06.2017].

  5. 5.

    For example, Intermix’s online forums having attracted around 25,000 posts by 8000 members. The Mix-d Museum website has received over 116,000 views from 180 countries, and the UK blog www.mixedracefamily.com has registered 70,000 page views (see Aspinall 2015).

  6. 6.

    See Mail on Sunday, 8 December 2002; The Observer, 11 July 2004.

  7. 7.

    Through Agyeman’s character, the time travelling series has explored the longstanding black presence in Britain several times, including in Elizabethan and Edwardian England.

  8. 8.

    https://ikon-gallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Gillian-Wearing-chosen-family-PR-FINAL.pdf [date accessed 19.06.2017] (see Aspinall 2015). Criticism of the statue seems mostly to have centred on the fact that it represents single mothers as a ‘real Birmingham family’ rather than the fact that the mothers are of mixed race. See Birmingham Post, 6 November 2014.

  9. 9.

    Newsweek, 9 November 2003.

  10. 10.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8618606.stm [date accessed 19.06.2017].

  11. 11.

    Broadcast, 2 November 2009.

  12. 12.

    The Observer, 23 July 2003.

  13. 13.

    Channel 4 announced that ‘today mixed race is the fastest growing demographic predicted to become Britain’s largest ethnic group by 2020’ (Channel 4 Corporation, 2009).

  14. 14.

    See Aspinall (2015).

  15. 15.

    www.mix-d.org/museum/timeline/london-2012-olympics [date accessed 19.06.2017].

  16. 16.

    The dataset had 130 ‘Other Mixed Heritage’ verbatim descriptions (81.3% of those who selected ‘Other Mixed’). These were individuals who eschewed the census pre-designated ‘mixed’ categories to provide a write-in response and so were a residual group (see Aspinall 2015).

  17. 17.

    For some accounts of abuse suffered by interracial couples in the UK, see also The Sunday Express, 12 May 2002; The Sunday Times, 9 April 2000; The Herald, 7 December 2000; The Mirror, 2 September 1998. Also, the BBC2 documentary Love Thy Neighbour, aired 13 August 2003.

  18. 18.

    Guardian, 4 October 2011.

  19. 19.

    The Voice, 28 November 2008.

  20. 20.

    Similarly, as Camacho points out, if more racially mixed people equals greater tolerance, then Brazil—and most of Latin America—should be a racial paradise. [Yet] Indigenous and Afro-descendent people in Latin America remain disproportionately poor, discriminated against, and locked out. The Guardian, 1 April 2017.

  21. 21.

    The Guardian, 1 April 2017.

  22. 22.

    See for example, Bellos (2007) and Lewis (2009: 21).

  23. 23.

    SuAndi, ‘The Truth in Knowing/Now: A Conversation across the African Diaspora’, University of Hull, 12 October 2007, cited in McNeil (2010: 144). With thanks to SuAndi for the full quotation.

  24. 24.

    Like Donnette Francis (2015) we co-opt this phrase from Thompson’s (2009) discussion of African American middle-class sexuality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics, London, UK

    Chamion Caballero

  2. Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

    Peter J. Aspinall

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Caballero, C., Aspinall, P.J. (2018). A Postscript to the Twentieth Century: Mainstream and Celebrated Limitations, and Counter-narratives. In: Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_14

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