Multiracial Identities in the United States: Towards the Brazilian or South African Paths?

Abstract

Multiracial identities in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States all formed within White supremacist, White racist, and anti-Black social orders. Brazil and South Africa historically acknowledged multiracials in ternary racial orders with a structurally intermediate status somewhat higher than that of other nonWhites, particularly Blacks, but significantly lower than that of Whites. In contrast, in the United States, multiracial identities have historically been prohibited due to hypodescent and the monoracial imperative, which categorize multiracials according to their most subaltern racial background and necessitate single-racial identification. In the 1980s and 1990s, a U.S. multiracial movement challenged these norms. This article compares the multiracial phenomenon in the United States with historical formations in Brazil and South Africa using data from published literature, censuses, written correspondence with activists, and observations of public behavior in the United States. The objective is to theorize whether and to what extent U.S. multiracial identities function in ways similar to the historical formations of Brazil and South Africa, particularly with regards to questions of collective identity, anti-Blackness, and White adjacency.