The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium

by Michele Elam

The Souls of Mixed Folk examines representations of mixed race in literature and the arts that redefine new millennial aesthetics and politics. Focusing on black-white mixes, Elam analyzes expressive works―novels, drama, graphic narrative, late-night television, art installations―as artistic rejoinders to the perception that post-Civil Rights politics are bereft and post-Black art is apolitical. Reorienting attention to the cultural invention of mixed race from the social sciences to the humanities, Elam considers the creative work of Lezley Saar, Aaron McGruder, Nate Creekmore, Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, Emily Raboteau, Carl Hancock Rux, and Dave Chappelle. All these writers and artists address mixed race as both an aesthetic challenge and a social concern, and together, they gesture toward a poetics of social justice for the "mulatto millennium." The Souls of Mixed Folk seeks a middle way between competing hagiographic and apocalyptic impulses in mixed race scholarship, between those who proselytize mixed race as the great hallelujah to the "race problem" and those who can only hear the alarmist bells of civil rights destruction. Both approaches can obscure some of the more critically astute engagements with new millennial iterations of mixed race by the multi-generic cohort of contemporary writers, artists, and performers discussed in this book. The Souls of Mixed Folk offers case studies of their creative work in an effort to expand the contemporary idiom about mixed race in the so-called post-race moment, asking how might new millennial expressive forms suggest an aesthetics of mixed race? And how might such an aesthetics productively reimagine the relations between race, art, and social equity in the twenty-first century?

Genres: Academic

308 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2011

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me there's really only one critique to make of anything around "mixed race" and it's that it implies some people are "pure races," which isn't true. But this is not the route the author takes.

I won't say this book is strawmanning, but it's responding to such a hyperspecific moment that it feels like it was written 30 years ago (I was shocked to go back and see it was only 11 years old). The author's main critique in this book is of "mixed race" people who supposedly believe their very existence is a radical act. But I really don't know many people who would identify as mixed and also claim that that alone was politically significant and Elam doesn't offer much evidence to support that this was ever a major issue either. A lot of her critiques are analyses of similar critiques other people have made, such as Aaron McGruder's critique of a fictional mixed race character whom Elam makes stand in for supposed real life interlocutors.

The moment most emblematic of my issue with this book is Elam's critique of how some people choose to mark multiple racial boxes on the census. She says that the census should not be a site for "self-expression" and that "mixed" people should instead just mark Black and nothing else. The only reasoning she gives is that doing so is less confusing for the government when they use the census to apportion funds and services to marginalized groups. But there are several issues here: 1) Why is the critique against individual people of color and not against the system of white supremacy that set up race in this way in the first place? 2) Why is calling yourself mixed self-expression but calling yourself Black is not? 3) What about people who are other sorts of mixes besides Black-white? (Elam mentions that she does not consider this and says it's because it somehow takes the focus away from Blackness, but that in and of itself is a telling assumption on her part and an unsatisfying excuse) 4) Why should people need to reify hegemonic racial logic just to get the resources they should already have a right to anyway? All these questions seem much more pressing than simply slamming on anyone who identifies as mixed, but Elam never stops to consider any of them seriously.

Like I said, I'm all for a book that critiques that idea that anyone can be categorized as either mixed or pure, but that's not what this is. Instead it reads mostly as cheap swipes against people of color who are just trying their best to navigate a racial paradigm they did not create and which I think should be the real target of critique for all of us anyway.

[Derrick Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book, full of well-developed arguments. It's refreshing to see an author acknowledge the strong link between racial politics and pop culture.

I'm not sure I agree with all of her points, and I need to re-read the book before I take an opposing stance. For example, I *think* she is excessively harsh on movements which attempt to carve out a niche for biracial people in mainstream society.

[Hannah]

I didn't get to read nearly as much of this as I wanted to do for my paper (and for my general interest) before my ILL was overdue. But what I did read is interesting, and I'd love to come back to this at some point.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Academic but still a really good read. Especially loved the discussion of the novels and Dave Chappelle. Now I want to read Caucasia by Danzy Senna.