Wrangling with the Black monster: young Black mixed-race men and masculinities.

Abstract

In recent times there has been a proliferation of scholarship exploring 'mixedness' and mixed-race people. This is evidenced by the emergence of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) as a distinct field of academic inquiry. However, despite the growth of CMRS, there remains a scarcity of scholarship that considers mixed-race experiences from a disaggregated, intersectional perspective. Where CMRS has been attentive to the intersection of gender, the focus has largely been on women and femininity. By way of a response, in this article I draw upon data from semi-structured interviews with Black mixed-race men in the UK and the US in order to explore how Black mixed-race men negotiate their raced and gendered identities, particularly in the context of schooling. Drawing upon George Yancy's (2017) theorizations of the Black monster, I argue that a sense of double consciousness (and even multiple consciousness) means Black mixed-race men are acutely aware of how the white gaze threatens to fragment and erase them. Yet rather than being passive victims of racism, I show that, through hybridity, the imposition of the Black monster stereotype is something that Black mixed-race men are able to resist, modify and manipulate for their own ends.