I was going to post this same image! It comes up in Ifekwunigwe's book but receives surprisingly very little description (it does, however, receive some treatment). While Ifekwunigwe does not mention this, the "very attractive woman" (39) is a composite of 15% Anglo-Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern, 17.5% African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern European, and 7.5% Hispanic. As Ifekwunigwe notes and as I agree, "The presumption here is that the 'races' that are being mixed are themselves discrete and pure" (40). That is, this image suggests that certain phenotypic features (she is an image after all, and we are therefore prompted to 'look at' the "new face of America") distinctly categorize each "race." The paradox here is that the image was (implicitly) intended to demonstrate the degree to which racial "categorization" (by phenotypic features or by other means) is problematic at best. (Our discussion of the Census strikes a chord here.) It seems as though media attempts to treat/problematize "racial" or "racialized" issues only propagate, codify, and crystallize (pseudoscientific) notions of "race," to say nothing of racism.
Just to add to the previous comment, not only is racial categorization problematic with regard to the notion that hybridity is the combination of "races" that are "discrete and pure," but also that the mixing of races is rooted in power relations, most clearly evident in the colonial constructions of power, that give rise to an "oppositional relationship" between ideas about whiteness and blackness that become embedded in "phenotypic markers." This is a crucial aspect of hybridity that is addressed by Ifekwunigwe.
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I was going to post this same image! It comes up in Ifekwunigwe's book but receives surprisingly very little description (it does, however, receive some treatment). While Ifekwunigwe does not mention this, the "very attractive woman" (39) is a composite of 15% Anglo-Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern, 17.5% African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern European, and 7.5% Hispanic. As Ifekwunigwe notes and as I agree, "The presumption here is that the 'races' that are being mixed are themselves discrete and pure" (40). That is, this image suggests that certain phenotypic features (she is an image after all, and we are therefore prompted to 'look at' the "new face of America") distinctly categorize each "race." The paradox here is that the image was (implicitly) intended to demonstrate the degree to which racial "categorization" (by phenotypic features or by other means) is problematic at best. (Our discussion of the Census strikes a chord here.) It seems as though media attempts to treat/problematize "racial" or "racialized" issues only propagate, codify, and crystallize (pseudoscientific) notions of "race," to say nothing of racism.
Just to add to the previous comment, not only is racial categorization problematic with regard to the notion that hybridity is the combination of "races" that are "discrete and pure," but also that the mixing of races is rooted in power relations, most clearly evident in the colonial constructions of power, that give rise to an "oppositional relationship" between ideas about whiteness and blackness that become embedded in "phenotypic markers." This is a crucial aspect of hybridity that is addressed by Ifekwunigwe.
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