Abstract
Historically, minority status has been linked with visibility as a non-White person, and such phenotypical visibility has marked people in terms of racial stigmas and discrimination. But definitions and claims to minority status are increasingly complicated (and contested) by immigration and the growth of multiracial people, many of whom are racially ambiguous, and some of whom look White. As the multiracial population in various multi-ethnic societies continues to grow, and diversify, to include multigeneration multiracial people whose non-White ancestries are more distant, questions about recognized minority status will become more pressing. Do we need to rethink the link between minority status and visibility as a non-White person? To what extent should lived experience (as a multiracial person) matter for our understandings of minority status, if one is not a ‘visible’ minority?
Highlights
In a recent email invitation for a talk given about ‘perceptions of internal and external spaces’ sent around my university, the registration link states: ‘This workshop is open to People of Colour ONLY’
As I argue below, while the meanings and boundaries of such categories have always been contested to some degree, debates about the use of such terms, and how they are related to our understandings of ‘visibility’ and minority status, are becoming even more salient, given both immigration and demographic diversity
When we examine the findings of qualitative studies, what we learn about part Asian multiracial people is less conclusive
Summary
In a recent email invitation for a talk given about ‘perceptions of internal and external spaces’ sent around my university, the registration link states: ‘This workshop is open to People of Colour ONLY’. With the growth of diverse multiracial populations, the idea of visible ethnic minorities (who are assumed to be straightforwardly non-White) cannot capture the varied phenotypes, racialized identities and experiences of multiracial people (see Edwards, Ali, Cabballero, & Song, 2012; King-O’Riain, Small, Mahtani, Song, & Spickard, 2014; Williams, 1996).
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