Mixed Race Amnesia

A critical look at what lies beneath superficial celebrations of multiraciality in the global north.

Mixed Race Amnesia explores how contemporary “progressive” attitudes toward multiraciality actually serve to obscure complex diasporic family histories while reinforcing colonialism.

Mixed Race Amnesia is an ambitious and critical look at how multiraciality is experienced in the global north. Drawing on a series of interviews, acclaimed geographer Minelle Mahtani explores some of the assumptions and attitudes people have around multiraciality.

She discovers that, in Canada at least, people of mixed race are often romanticized as being the embodiment of a post-racial future – an ideal that is supported by government policy and often internalized by people of mixed race. As Mahtani reveals, this superficial celebration of multiraciality is often done without any acknowledgment of the freight and legacy of historical racisms. Consequently, a strategic and collective amnesia is taking place – one where complex diasporic and family histories are being lost while colonial legacies are being reinforced.

Mahtani argues that in response, a new anti-colonial approach to multiraciality is needed, and she equips her readers with the analytical tools to do this.