Race, Nation, and Place

Abstract

This research aims to establish a theoretical foundation through which we might to begin to understand and problematize the intimate relationship between racial identity and cultural context in the lives of racially ambiguous people. In combining the historical narratives of Irishidentified people's experiences in the Americas with current research on mixed race identity, a pattern of (re)designation emerges in the lives of those whose social identities are more conceptually fluid. During the colonial history in the Americas, Irish-identified people experienced cultural and socioeconomic shifts that regularly designated them to both oppressive and privileged positions in a given context, and they sometimes occupied these spaces simultaneously. This pattern of (re)designation happened as African slavery became more central to the colonial economy, and as a need for Europeanness and whiteness to prevail in space that was becoming increasingly nonwhite arose. (Re)designation serves as a point of convergence and divergence in the narratives of racially ambiguous individuals. In exploring the ways in which racially ambiguous people negotiated their identities historically in varying contexts will shed light on both the fluid nature of racial ambiguity and the privileges whiteness incurs.