Explosion! Mixed Race Conference

Explosion!, the 9th National Mixed Race Student Conference, will take place on April 22-24, 2005 at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

For too long, mixed race bodies and images have been co-opted by both ends of the political spectrum for the purpose of diminishing the racism all people of color experience on a daily basis. Conservatives have argued that the blurring of racial lines eliminates the usefulness of race as a distinguishing social category, while liberals claim that the interracial relationships that produce mixed children are proof that people of color are well integrated into a multicultural society and racial tensions are minimal or nonexistent. Ignited by this gross misappropriation, Explosion! seeks to re-politicize mixed race (self) representations by contextualizing the existence of multiracial people within radical racial discourses.

Through a series of workshops, lectures, and discussions, Explosion! will reclaim mixed experiences as a political reality and problematize the use of our identities to further a global capitalist agenda. By reflecting on our own racial privilege and/or our positions in other progressive social movements, we hope to explode outdated modes of mixed race representation, allowing us to reclaim our voices and further decolonize our collective consciousness.