Department Colloquium: Ann Morning Presenting "Kaleidoscope: Contested Identities and New Forms of Racial Belonging"

Morning is an Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University and a demographer whose research focuses on race.

In recent years, public controversies over individuals’ “true” racial identities have repeatedly erupted over news and social media. Although the case of Rachel Doležal has received particularly sustained attention, hers is only one of many. In this talk, I draw on many such instances of public identity contestation to argue that in the early 21stcentury, claims of race-group membership are being complicated by technological developments in genetics and in cosmetics, as well as by new respect for subjective self-identification. As a result, there are more paths than ever to claiming and demonstrating racial belonging. In particular, I suggest that four new types of race-group member are emerging: genetic; cosmetic; emotive, and constructed. Should these types come to be widely accepted as genuine race members, racial groups will become more heterogeneous, resembling kaleidoscopic arrays of core and peripheral members who differ in terms of how many qualifications for belonging they may legitimately claim.