Transcript: Mixity and How Social Categories Change
Miri Song on Mixed Identities, Assertion and Assignment, and the Future of Human Diversity
▶ Watch and listen to Episode 4
Conversation Highlights
On what mixity really means
“Mixity is not a singular thing in itself, but it’s an opening to a kind of multiplicity and a range of experiences.”
— Steven Vertovec
On assertion and assignment
“And I think one set of ideas or perspectives or concepts that I’d like to get on the table, particularly for this episode, are what in the social sciences sometimes we talk about as the difference between assertion and assignment by way of categories and identities. So assertion refers to the category that I put myself in and that I assert, that I project. I am a member of this category or group.”
— Steven Vertovec
On the fiction of monoracial thinking
“So I guess all of this goes to the heart of our episode now, the fiction of monoracial identities in some ways. That people ascribe to people they see as different in that sense. And Miri has a lot of really interesting insights into this question.”
— Georg Diez
On lived experiences and family heritage
“It’s actually lived experiences, family heritage, it’s memories, it’s longings, it’s dreams that they talk about.”
— Georg Diez
Chapter Overview
00:00 Understanding Mixity and Human Diversity
01:57 Assertion and Assignment: A Conceptual Framework
04:14 Fieldwork in Northern England: Young British Muslims
12:08 Miri Song on Mixed Identities and Monoracial Thinking
22:51 The Future of Mixed Identities
31:52 Why Monoracial Templates Persist
Full Transcript
00:00 — Understanding Mixity and Human Diversity
Georg Diez (00:00)
In public discourse there’s really a lack of understanding of what mixity is.
Steven Vertovec (00:05)
Mixity is not a singular thing in itself, but it’s an opening to a kind of multiplicity and a range of experiences.
Georg Diez (00:15)
It’s actually lived experiences, family heritage, it’s memories, it’s longings, it’s dreams that they talk about.
Steven Vertovec (00:22)
Yes, these are discursive categories and classifications that we carry in our heads, but they have absolutely real world consequences.
I’m Steve Vertovec and this is the Futures of Difference podcast series. And I’m joined once again by my friend, Georg Diez.
Georg Diez (00:49)
Pleasure.
Steven Vertovec (00:50)
And in this episode, we’re going to be talking about how social categories change and particularly how social categories changed by mixity, by the mixing of categories. And that can mean a lot of different things.
Georg Diez (01:06)
No, it’s super interesting at this time where identity is such a contentious topic. I think people, as we discussed, it’s really at the core of so much political debate and is super relevant for political debate in countries all over the world. And it’s actually seen as a problem. Difference is more and more seen as a problem. And you make the case and we discussed it with your friends and colleagues. So this is actually a constructive element in how to think about the future of society. Not only futures of differences as this podcast is called.
Steven Vertovec (01:43)
And I think one set of ideas or perspectives or concepts that I’d like to get on the table, particularly for this episode, are what in the social sciences sometimes we talk about as the difference between assertion and assignment by way of categories and identities. So assertion refers to the category that I put myself in and that I assert, that I project. I am a member of this category or group. Assignment is what we put others in, the category. So, I think you belong to this or that category and I’m going to treat you accordingly. And sometimes the meanings of those categories align. And we roll on in our engagement with people according to that. Sometimes there are very different meanings attached to assignment and assertion, even if it’s the same social category. A racial category, sexuality, having to do with gender, age, disability or whatever. We constantly classify others in our environment. That’s how we proceed through the world, trying to make sense of things. And we consider ourselves, all of us have multiple identities and categories that we bring into play in our social world and our engagement all the time. So, this dynamic between assertion and assignment is a crucial way of understanding social categories. And now particularly in this episode, we’re gonna be talking about how those categories are changing by people mixing different assertions of identity or different assignments of identity and creating effectively new categories.
01:57 — Assertion and Assignment: A Conceptual Framework
Georg Diez (03:34)
And for Miri Song, who is part of this episode, that’s a personal story in sort of ways her kids are of mixed background in that sense. For you in some ways also a personal story to go back to your research in the late 80s, early 90s in Northern Great Britain, UK. I think you explored those. I mean, because this is going back, in lot of ways, to your earlier research and trying to connect ,as we are always try to do here, this past and the future and how it’s based on your field experience as an anthropologist. Can you share a bit about that?
04:14 — Fieldwork in Northern England: Young British Muslims
Steven Vertovec (04:14)
Absolutely, this is one thing I learned through ethnographic work I did in Northern England, particularly the cities of Keighley and Bradford, where you have people from a background largely Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims, but now living for generations in Northern England in these contexts. And I worked particularly with young Muslims, young British, Pakistani, British, Bangladeshi individuals and learned a lot about the ways that they construct identity and social category and whatnot. And I really learned quite a bit about this relationship between what I talk about as assertion and assignment through them. So, this was back in the 1990s when, particularly after the Rushdie affair and the Iranian revolution and so forth, particularly in Britain, but in many places around the world, the category of Muslim was ever more stigmatized, even villainized as something potentially dangerous at odds with British values or something. There were all sorts of stereotypes being laid upon the category of Muslim. And working together with these young Muslims in Keithley and Bradford, I learned about the ways that they chose, particularly during this contested period, to vehemently and powerfully assert their identity as Muslim. We are Muslim. You British, particularly you, perhaps, racist British, are putting us in this category and villainizing us and we are going to use this category to contest your stereotype. Your racism against us. And by the way, they would tell me straightforwardly, we don’t particularly say our prayers. We never go to the mosques. We may not be particularly good Muslims. We want to be later in our lives. But right now we are young British people and we want to live as young people in British society. However, we are going to assert this identity as Muslim, as a kind of anti-racist identity. Because, you see what I mean, they were being assigned a packaged identity. And their own assertion was going to rise and meet that and contest that and push back upon that.
Georg Diez (06:57)
And how was that done? So was that through culture in a lot of ways or through music, film or passion?
Steven Vertovec (07:03)
And through sport, would call themselves, their team would be called the Young Muslims of Keithley. They would wear clothing, absolutely, in music, in gathering, in social protests and so forth. All the while admitting to themselves, well, I’m not a particularly good Muslim right now, but I want to be later in my life. But right now, I’m a young man and I’m going to live as that. But I assert this identity as a young Muslim because of the way youÕre pushing me.
Georg Diez (07:37)
And is that the same sort of situation today or how has that sort of changed to today, this view of, I guess, that more mixity sort of now? Is that difficult to assert mixity or...?
Steven Vertovec (08:04)
I think you’ll findÉ And again, we’re moving away from the Muslim case particularly. I think we’re finding a lot of people adopting a mixed identity as a thing in itself. So again, in a previous episode, I talked about the importance of a Black British identity. So that is a mixed thing. We are coming from a Caribbean heritage or a Nigerian or other African heritage, but we are born and raised in Britain. We are both. And so asserting mixity becomes a new important category of identity assertion in itself. So again, these are just ways that categories themselves, we have to recognize, are not fixed. But are subject to change, particularly through this dynamic of assertion and assignment. And people placing themselves vis--vis how these categories are portrayed.
Georg Diez (08:51)
And how has that changed? We talked about social imaginaries in the previous episode and you talk right about social complexity and we talked about Nigerians in the UK versus maybe Jamaicans in the UK. How would you describe these group identities, how they create society or how they negotiate difference within such a space? It gets more more complex in that sort trivial sense as well, but maybe also in the academic sense.
Steven Vertovec (09:27)
Well, this is a real dynamic moving on and on and this will relate this to the topic of mixity, which we’ll talk about with Miri Song. That is that obviously everyone has multiple categories. Again, across the spectrum of ethnicity, race, language, sexuality, gender, age, subculture - all kinds of identities. And people assert these identities in different contexts and are assigned by others identities and categories. And again, it’s a kind of dance about how these categories meet up or completely bump into each other or run past each other. So yes.
Georg Diez (10:19)
So blackness would be a unifying category against whiteness, but then among that category you have different cultural backgrounds.
Steven Vertovec (10:40)
Exactly, so, it’s notion of situated identities. Depending on the particular context individuals find themselves in or social groups. They will assert one of their identities. And often, we talk about, self-essentialization. That sometimes even though no one likes a stereotypic portrayal of any social category, sometimes in order to argue for a particular set of rights or recognition of a particular part of our identity, they will indeed come forth and say, we are X, recognize us as X. Even with the risk of stereotyping or overly condensing and bounding a particular group. In order to make that point of a demand for respect and recognition, they will pull out one identity and say, please, this is who we are.
Georg Diez (11:29)
So I guess all of this goes to the heart of our episode now, the fiction of monoracial identities in some ways. That people ascribe to people they see as different in that sense. And Miri has a lot of really interesting insights into this question.
Steven Vertovec (11:49)
Well, indeed, Miri Song, who’s an emeritus professor at University of Kent and at the London School of Economics, is a world-renowned scholar specifically on this topic of mixed identities and so forth. So, when I was talking with her, I first asked her how did she come to this topic anyways that she’d become a specialist in? Now let’s hear what she has to say.
12:08 — Miri Song on Mixed Identities and Monoracial Thinking
💬 MIRI SONG — University of Kent / London School of Economics
“I’ve been interested in issues around ethnicity and race and migration pretty much forever because I was a migrant. I was born in Korea. I moved to the US when I was very young. And then I migrated to England in my mid-20s to start my PhD. And so I was always aware of that status. And I was always interested in going back to categories, how as social scientists, most social scientists acknowledge that categories and racial and ethnic categories are socially constructed. Anthropologists like you, Steve, yeah. And yet I think what’s so interesting is how easily and often we as people, including social scientists, fall back into a monoracial way of thinking about things and a kind of essentialist way of thinking about categories. That we are still somehow essentially defined or defined by these categories, even if we can sit there and say, oh, but it’s socially constructed, of course. I think that there is a tendency for people to be, I think, in monoracial terms. And so I was very interested in how, of course, there’s a long history of white colonial powers and other people have always tried to limit membership into particular categories and not wanting to end the obsession with racial purity. So that was a large driver, of course, for how people would think about mixed people and miscegenation. So that then connected also to discourses of racial fraction, one drop rule. And these are things, of course, that were used by various regimes and governments to control access to privilege, protect white privilege and status, all of those things. So intellectually, I was always interested in those things anyway. But then when that connected with the fact that I have mixed children and my husband is white and we have mixed kids. And I’m always interested in how they think about things. And it’s not just that, I know so many people who are mixed. So demographically, it’s kind of hard to ignore because in terms of a number of growing populations around the world, you can’t ignore it.”
Georg Diez (14:13)
No, it’s interesting because we discuss so much in categories of, more or less clear categories, even though we acknowledge the complexity. Just listening to Miri, I realized that there is, in public discourse, there’s really a lack of understanding of what mixity is. And I find that, yeah, just startling listening to her. Also thinking ahead, like what the future is of more and more mixed people. So, I don’t know how you see that.
Steven Vertovec (14:45)
Well, I think this helps us or gives us a springboard to thinking about the future. And I talked with Miri a bit more about that and we’ll hear from that. But a couple of things I want to say surrounding what she was just talking about. The first is, you know, this idea of, well, we all know that categories are social constructions. And, you know, when we talk about that sociologically, we want to emphasize, you know, as we’re talking about constantly, the malleability and changeability of these things, the difference between assertion and assignment, like I say, and each side of that equation, the meanings of categories change and so forth. But for some people, when you say, they’re socially constructed, it seems to sound like, they’re not real. They’re just something that we talk about and so forth. And I find that unfortunate because that’s not what we mean by them. And I always think back to being really irritated one time back during the genocide in Rwanda. I’ll never forget a fellow anthropologist indeed being talked to on a talk show and he said, well, these Hutus and Tutsis, we have to realize. Those are just social constructions, those identities. They’re just imposed by colonial authorities and they’re just social constructions. And in the meantime, tens of thousands of people were being massacred because of those social constructions. And that is to say, and especially with categories like race, and we always emphasize there is no biological basis to race. Race is a socially constructed category. However, the real world effects of this social category are there clear as day in terms of inequalities and treatments and discriminations and so forth. So that’s one thing we have to get straight about the notion of social construction. Yes, these are discursive categories and classifications that we carry in our heads, but they have absolutely real world consequences in social relations and people’s status and people’s life courses. So that’s one thing. And then Miri also raises this idea of assumptions of monoracialism. Either you’re this race or that race. And that’s this kind of old style, indeed colonial thinking, the so-called, as you mentioned, one drop rule. That you’re either white or you’re non-white. And if you’re non-white, if you have anything, you are a completely different category. And this is something being very much contested because, again, the boundaries between such categories are not clear cut at all. And indeed people are adopting more and more identities that reflect their mixed backgrounds. Indeed, I was really amazed and this was a big news issue a few years ago. In the 2020 United States census there was a big discussion around the fact that the largest most rapidly growing social category in the United States was mixed. That is people who ticked multiple boxes as to what identity they asserted. And the big question was, what? How did that happen? Was it because the census was changed and it allowed people to tick more boxes? Or was it because simply more and more people had a mixed background? Or because more babies were being born to mixed couples? And the collective answer was, well, it’s all three of those things. There are more people with those sorts of backgrounds. There are more people asserting an identity that reflects confluence of heritage. And the census has, and this is not just the US census, the censuses around the world are starting to allow people to tick multiple boxes. Those are, unfortunate notions, we could talk about that another time. But these again social categories, people allowed to tick multiple boxes because it reflects who they are. So, we’re having many more people with multiple backgrounds and actually that’s a new mode of assertion that they are asserting, I am mixed, I am neither one thing nor another, I am multiple.
Georg Diez (19:19)
This is already a category that creates identity, you’re saying?
Steven Vertovec (19:22)
Absolutely.
Georg Diez (19:23)
Why would you think do we even still cling to these categories then? So, I mean, going also towards looking towards the future. And MiriÕs, it’s interesting that she says, acknowledges that there is this essentialist urge. So even among social scientists, this fallacy to reduce them, themselves or others to these categories. So, there are like three or four categories and it’s always race in some ways. That seems to be the strongest pull. But it’s a fiction in how to look at, I mean, this is most obvious in politics of like, this Hispanic vote goes this way, that way. So, it’s like really childish view of both society, politics, individuals, but it’s still talked about that, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, while there is no Hispanic vote, actually.
Steven Vertovec (20:24)
Hispanic itself is a mixed category
Georg Diez (20:26)
So what does it mean about public discourse, language, our view of society, our simplified notions of how things work actually in the real world? And how can you twist that? How can we move towards something more enlightened, I guess?
Steven Vertovec (20:44)
Well, this reflects back to a theme we talked about in the first episode and continues throughout. And that is, you know, for many in societies around the world today, there is a greater recognition of our individual multiplicity. We are many things. And that might refer to these categories presumed to be biological, one or another. No, we are many. In terms of culture and cultural practices and sets of values and so forth. Many more people are saying, no, I come from many backgrounds. I know how to behave with my grandparents from the old country and I know how to behave with my schoolmates at school. And these are different cultures and I’m competent in both of these things. So that’s another kind of cultural identity multiplicity. And we are, or we have been, moving more and more into recognition, people asserting that kind of identity. The problem is on the assignment side, many people find it hard to assign other people to a multiple mixed category. It’s much more easier for people, especially when dealing with things like race or so-called visible appearance, to assign people into presumed mono categories. As I say, there was a trend underway. We talked about this in the first episode, some years ago of moving towards recognition of multiplicity. Now, especially with a lot of populists and new right discourse and categorization and assignment of people, they are trying to move back to more simplified categories, mono categories, rather than complex multiple ones. And this is the great tension of this moment that we’re at right now. Recognizing that or another. But Miri also had interesting things to say about the future of these sorts of categories as well. Let’s listen to what she has to say.
Miri Song 00:22:54:18)
I think that there is going to be more mixing in terms of interactions between people who are regarded as being of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. I think the data bears that out. And I think there will be more mixed people. They’re the progeny, the descendants of these relationships. One of the things I think we have to think about which is really important is that, let’s say going back to the U.S. where I most recently did research on mixed people, there’s so much regional variation, huge, right? So you’re gonna have pockets of societies where it’s quite common, and then you’re gonna have pockets where people are just not mixed at all. And interracial unions would raise eyebrows. So there can be huge, huge differences. I think also, it would be a mistake for people to think, when they say, oh the future is going to be mixed. We want to step away from some neat linear, ineluctable understanding of how we go from A to B. It’s not going to be like that. It’s not like we’re all unmixed now and then we’re going to become cablination in the future. There are going to be so many different ways that this could go.
22:51 — The Future of Mixed Identities
Georg Diez (24:02)
So for me as a journalist, I think this is hugely interesting and important what we do here actually, and to just reflect on that again, and what Miri said. We are in this period of transition. We talk about the past, the present and the future, which has a meaning. So, because this is actually the space that’s negotiated ItÕs that space towards a future, that she says rightly, importantly, is not a linear projection of what we think will happen. So,listening to her, I think it’s really important to understand that the forces that we see in society, like opposing a lot of changes in social categories or in a whole mix up or build up of society, are caused by that reality of the transition, that people have difficulties to acknowledge, actually. So, I think that is for one thing and then it is almost in a novelistic way, interesting to start reading and to start really understanding the, for lack of a better word, again, complexity of people. And it’s a bit humbling in some way to understand how simplified one’s vision is of who you think people are. And that a white person, sort of, having a relationship with a non-white person it is neither clear what this white person is. Very essentializing this person in that way, nor what this non-white person allegedly is. So it’s a bit mind boggling. So we have to understand that actually every person is a living novel. And it’s so interesting in its nuances and layers. And it’s interesting also thinking about, like, a systemic way politically, what does it mean to create a public sphere around that where everybody is like different in a good way, different? How can you create some commonality in that difference? But I think this transition period is important to really open up that question and to really negotiate that. And it’s contested, but that has a reason why it’s contested, because it is happening.
Steven Vertovec (26:28)
A transitional period to what is the big question. And that lies at the heart of this whole futures of difference thing. We could be transitioning into one path or another or multiple paths or as Miri says, regionally, even from city to city or city versus countryside or whatever, they will have their different pathways in this. But I like when you say that this is mind-boggling as it should be, because this relates to the idea of our brains are classification machines, effectively. We classify the world, we classify people all the time. And there are kind of received templates that people learn and gather. And one of those received templates is the idea of mano racial. This this kind of biologized notion of people. We’ll talk more about the nature of essentialism in the next episode. But people have this template about race and about belonging. And this is all in terms of the assignment idea that we get. People assign people to races in their heads. And the idea of mixity, not just as a third new category, but as an opening to multiple possibilities of combination, of meaning, of self identities and so forth. That is something that breaks that template. And that’s part of where we are right now and part of the struggle. And there are voices out there and movements afoot trying to say, no, no, no, we don’t want to break this racial template. This is the way we classify the world and it helps us underline a particular hierarchy because there’s again, there’s moralities and values and assumptions made to this kind of template. And why Miri is talking about how this idea of mixity and the variations included in that. In a lot of her work, she talks about how even within the same family, the identifications, the portrayals, the self-assertions of different kinds of identities and practices can be myriad, even amongst siblings. And this goes beyond so-called racial mixing as well. We talk about language, people being able to be multilingual and have different ways of relating to people linguistically or in terms of meanings and so forth. In other sorts of cultural practices as well. We all have situated identities and situated practices. So, I know how to behave in a bar in Chicago and at high table at an Oxford college. That is part of the mixity and multiple competence that all of us are starting to be able to exercise a lot more. But you see what I mean? This is breaking from a simplified template. No, this is where you belong and this is how we expect you to behave.
Georg Diez (29:47)
What’s the meaning then at all of categories?
Steven Vertovec (29:52)
Well, categories still have this important function of assertion and assignment. So, we don’t want to say that all categories should be disregarded because they’re flexible, and all of this. And theyÕre ways of discriminating against people. I mean that’s true. But we do go through the world and it helps us make sense of the world. It helps us relate to other people on the assignment side. We just, the ideal is to have a more nuanced complex view and not a stereotypic homogenizing template for assignment. And in terms of assertion, we have to recognize that, yes, for many people and many so-called communities, a particular category, their religion, their ethnicity, their language, their nationality, has real emotional meaning to people. And we have to recognize and respect that. And that was part of the shift in language. We will call you what you prefer to be called. Whether that regards your sexuality, your national background, your racial identification. We will respect that. So you see what I mean? There’s still a real role for social categories. The idea is not to dismiss them, but to understand them in their full complexity and meaning and social effects.
Georg Diez (31:15)
I guess it’s what was contested then. Or what the argument about identity politics was a lot about that. So, what is the liberal view of society where everybody is equal, which is a fiction. And then this assertion, no, I am of this and this identity and I can describe myself as such. This has an emancipatory function actually to do that. I guess the contention was a lot about that liberal view, which can be sort of repressive in a way.
31:52 — Why Monoracial Templates Persist
Steven Vertovec (31:53)
So, Miri Song, when I talked to her, also had some interesting things to say about what I just called this kind of racial template, monoracial template, and why that seems to persist so much. Let’s see what she has to say.
💬 MIRI SONG — University of Kent / London School of Economics
“There’s no linear, neat, you know, kind of pathway into mixedness because what can happen, of course, is you could partner with a white person, you could have a child. If you want to use in racial fraction, blood quantum terms, who’s mostly white in their genealogy, but they might partner with somebody that’s completely different. So, you know, for generation to generation, you just don’t know what is going to happen. And I think that to the extent that there are going to be more and more mixed people. And in diverse urban centers, it’s more and more common and socially accepted to be in mixed relationships. You can have these blips, whether it’s across generation with siblings or down the generations. You don’t know what’s going to happen. So, to talk about there being a kind of ineluctable, neat pathway, not true. And also, I think that projections about the census that say that the growth of part white mixed people is such that, you know, it’s gonna somehow enlarge the white population or the so-called mainstream. I think that that is pretty problematic, actually, because most of those projections are based on quantitative research, not based on qualitative research where you talk to people about their experiences. And what I found, of course, these are non-random samples, so they’re biased samples in these qualitative studies. But I think that there’s a lot of evidence in my research to show that there are very, very varied interests and degrees of cultural exposure, commitment, racial consciousness to people’s white and minority backgrounds. And a huge amount of variation in racial phenotype in one’s appearance. So I think that we can’t make generalizations about part white people sort of enlarging the white population. I think that we’re really, really far from that, in my opinion.”
Steven Vertovec (33:47)
So as Miri is saying, this kind of, you know, what I call the template, this kind of monoracial classification that people put on the world is not going away anytime soon. It’s, I suppose, what people are going to do with that. And, as I say, for a lot of people, it’s an important part of their self-assertion, their identity as well. So, we shouldn’t try to dismantle it or dismiss it. But I suppose, again, as she’s saying in her work and what many others are saying too, mixity is not a singular thing in itself, but it’s an opening to a kind of multiplicity and a range of experiences that don’t neatly fall in monoracial categories.
Georg Diez (34:39)
No, what she’s also saying, I think that’s relevant for this discussion that we’re having is that it’s going to remain an important category in a political sense. So it’s going to be the space where a negotiation takes place and it’s going to be important for people to adopt certain identities and, in a way, to make, as she says, also claims about themselves. So really to find their space in their history. So, she says personal spiritual for lack of better words, which is really important because we talk so technically always about actually categories, but it’s actually lived experiences, family heritage, it’s memories, it’s longings, it’s dreams that they talk about.
Steven Vertovec (35:30)
For recognition of who they are as well. There’s always this question in a lot of work around social categories and the political sense is, you need to recognize me for who I am, for my own self-assertion. And perhaps I’ve been historically discriminated against because of this identity. And this is what I’m making calls for. Some sort of recognition of the fact that there has been discrimination in the past.
Georg Diez (35:57)
And this is not essentialism. I think that’s what we’re going to talk about in the next episode. This is something more strategic in some ways.
Steven Vertovec (36:05)
It’s a mode of what’s talked about as anti-essentialism in itself. Breaking through to third and open in multiple categories as well. Exactly the content of the next episode.
Georg Diez (36:17)
Yeah and I’m curious. It’s going to be Ann Phoenix, I think. So, yeah, looking forward to that debate. okay. See you.
About the Guest
Miri Song is Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent and at the London School of Economics. She is one of the world’s leading scholars on mixed identities and the dynamics of race and ethnicity.