Ancestral Futurisms:
Embodying Multiracialities Past, Present, and Future
The issue of time has long been debated in mixed-race studies. Racist histories of anti-intermixture, anti-miscegenation, and the illegality-and at times, the selective acceptance-of interracial marriage and unions are not simply components of our collective past but continue to motivate cultural producers, theorists, and community organizers to imagine more just futures. For those of us who think, teach, and organize around multiraciality, the issue of time remains an important one to consider. The 6th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference listens to the past as it gathers under the theme "Ancestral Futurisms" in order to bind alternative histories of multiraciality with their reimagined futures. In doing so, we concentrate on the embodiment of multiplicity and the pursuit of social justice. By challenging past conceptions of multiraciality dictated by white supremacy, we seek to decolonize the politics of multiracialism by producing new practices and radical hope. The goal of our virtual convening is to build and imagine intersectional counterspaces that foster community and collective action among artists, community members, students, clinicians, and academics invested in the critical field of mixed race studies. While the conference will be online, it is important to remember that those of us in the U.S. will be engaging from Indigenous land that has been contested through migrations and racial encounters.