Not that it matters, mostly, but I do want to get the words right. So we are reading a book on someone who is mixed Native American Ojibwe and white.
Some people in my class, let’s say, are Indian (from India) and white. We agreed that would be mixed, but for example, someone who is English and Swedish would not be because they are just white.
Would they not be mixed race, mixed ethnicity, or be neither?
It’s not a hang up. It’s a tool. It was created in Portugal and adopted by the Catholic Church and spread across the colonies because it was an effective tool for dividing the poor and working class against itself by creating privilege for whites and harm for the non-whites. It got baked into every structure in colonial society over centuries.
It’s not a psychological problem. It’s a structural power problem. It will ultimately only end when the colonial states are dismantled by a rainbow coalition and new structures are built from healthier foundations.