Symposium: Critical Perspectives on “Transrace”

This symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to critically assess the concept of transrace. Shifting the discussion away from the controversial comparison with transgender, speakers will deconstruct the idea of transraciality, asking whether it has any value when it comes to understanding processes of racialisation, the politics of racial assignment and the role of diversity and inclusion in society. Key questions include:

• What is “transrace”?
• Are claims of transraciality new, or is this merely a new term for an old concept?
• Is it ethical to attempt to change one’s “race”, whether through social and psychological transformation or through physical alteration? Is it possible?
• Do the answers to these questions depend on which group one wishes to transition from and to, or on the motivations of the particular individual?
• Does the concept of “transrace” problematise racial classification, or does it reify race?
• What are the ethical duties of people that are read as “racially” ambiguous?
• What is the relationship between “transrace” and “passing”?
• What role does ethnicity play in claims of transraciality?
• How can the social justice interests of affirmative action and reparations programs be balanced with the dignity interests of individuals who wish to self-classify?
• What are the differences between the North American and the Australian context when it comes to the politics of racialisation and the question of identity choice?

WHERE: Rigpa Sydney (158 Australia Street, Newtown)
WHEN: 29th of November, 9am-5:30
RSVP: adam.hochman@mq.edu.au by the 25th of November. All welcome!

SCHEDULE:

8:45-9:00	Registration
9:00-9:10	Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:10-10:05	[KEYNOTE] Associate Professor Ann Morning – “Passing versus Transrace: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”
10:05-10:50	Dr Adam Hochman – “The Real Reason You Can’t be Transracial”
10:50 – 11:20	Morning Tea
11:20 – 12:15	[KEYNOTE] Professor Camille Gear Rich – “Transrace, Post-race and Other Myths of the New Racial Order”
12:15-1:30	Lunch at Thai Pothong Newtown – 294 King St
1:30-2:15	Dr Yves Saint James Aquino – ““Ethnic Cosmetic Surgery”: Naturalising identification and transformation of racialised bodies in medicine”
2:15-3:00	Dr Bindi Bennett – “Why non-Indigenous people cannot become Aboriginal”
3:00-3:30	Afternoon Tea
3:30-4:15	Taylor-Jai McAlister and Dr Albert Atkin – “Racial Passing and Transracialism”
4:15-5:10	[KEYNOTE] Assistant Professor Rebecca Tuvel – “What are the Limits to Self-Identification? On the Metaphysics of Race, Age and Species Membership”
5:10	Short Closing Remarks

FULL PROGRAM:

8:45-9:00 Registration

9-9:10 Welcome and Opening Remarks

9:10-10:05 [KEYNOTE] Associate Professor Ann Morning – “Passing versus Transrace: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”

Abstract: After a century of inquiry into race, U.S. sociologists have only recently begun to grapple seriously with the fluidity of its categories and to attempt to convey their insights to the public. Scholarly and popular reactions to the advent of “transracialism,” however, reveal that the malleability of racial identity can still provoke heated emotional responses in some instances, in contrast to the dispassionate clinical gaze it usually elicits in the academy. Drawing on depictions of varied American racial boundary-crossers, I explore how “passing” became good, “transracialism” bad, and the ugliness of the enduring conceptions of human difference that underpin them both.

Bio: Ann Morning is an Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University (NYU) and the Academic Director of NYU Abu Dhabi’s office in New York. Her research interests include race, demography, and the sociology of science, especially as they pertain to census classification worldwide and to individuals’ concepts of racial difference. She is the author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (2011) and is currently completing ‘An Ugly Word’: Talking (and Not Talking) about Race in Italy (co-authored with Marcello Maneri, University of Milan-Bicocca). Morning holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and was a 2008-09 Fulbright research fellow at the University of Milan-Bicocca, a 2014-15 visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, a visiting professor at Sciences Po, Paris in 2019, and a member of the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations from 2013 to 2019.

10:05- 10:50 Dr Adam Hochman – “The Real Reason You Can’t be Transracial”

Abstract: The broad academic consensus is that transraciality is impossible because ancestry is central to how “race” is constructed. In this paper I show that this argument against transraciality fails because racialization is not always strictly determined by ancestry. I argue that transraciality is impossible for a different reason. Namely, one cannot be transracial because there are no races. There are groups misunderstood to be races—racialised groups—but no actual races. Race, and other concepts that rely on race (such as passing) are best understood as categories of practice, and rejected as categories of analysis. In order to understand cases of purported transraciality we should think in terms of racialisation and ethnicity, not in terms of “race”. One cannot migrate across races, occupy a position between races, or transcend race altogether if races do not exist.

Bio: Adam Hochman is a philosopher who works primarily on “race”. Trained in the philosophy of science, he has offered extensive critiques of arguments for the existence of human biological races. In his recent work, Adam has turned his focus to the use of “race” to describe social groups. He argues that there are no human races—biological or social—only groups misunderstood to be races: racialised groups. Adam is a lecturer at Macquarie University and currently holds a DECRA fellowship for his project “Social Constructionism About Race, Deconstructed”.

10:50 – 11:20 morning tea

11:20 – 12:15 [KEYNOTE] Professor Camille Gear Rich – “Transrace, Post-race and Other Myths of the New Racial Order”

Abstract: Omi and Winant’s theory of racial formation warns us to remain attentive to the social, political and historical conditions that produce changes in the language we use to talk about race. What accounts for the current emergence of discussions of transracialism, and the desire to claim a transracial identity?  How do these conversations diverge from discussions of passing in a prior racial era? Professor Rich’s talk explores the emergence of transrace, its tense relationship to the concept of post-raciality, and the lines between these two concepts and the rhetoric of passing. New constructs are critical opportunities: they offer us different ways of framing and imagining the world.  These new approaches can either prepare us to engage structural inequality, embedded racism and the obdurate nature of racial hierarchies or variously they can distract us or challenge our very commitment to these key understandings.

Professor Rich’s talk begins this conversation on critical takes on transrace, fleshing out the current racial formation that has produced this concept. In the course of the discussion she will consider the relationship of race and race performance to gender and gender performance, the challenges of stark binary systems of identity and the promise of fluidity, as well as future directions conversations on race might take.

Bio: Camille Gear Rich is a Professor of Law and Sociology at USC Gould School of Law. Her research and teaching interests include constitutional law, feminist legal theory, family law, children and the law, and the First Amendment. She is the founder and Director of PRISM: The USC Initiative for the Study of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. Rich is widely known for her research on race and gender discrimination and identity-formation issues related to race, class, gender, and sexuality. Notable publications include Reclaiming the Welfare Queen: Feminist and Critical Race Theory Alternatives to Existing Anti-Poverty Discourse and Elective Race: Identifying Race Discrimination in the Era of Racial Self Identification. Rich was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School in Winter/Spring of 2017 and was a visiting professor at Yale Law School in Spring 2019. She is working on a book on multiracials and race relations in the Trump era.

12:15-1:30 Lunch (not provided. BYO and picnic in Camperdown Park or purchase from cafes in Newtown)

1:30-2:15 Dr Yves Saint James Aquino – ““Ethnic Cosmetic Surgery”: Naturalising identification and transformation of racialised bodies in medicine”

Abstract: Ethnic cosmetic surgery refers to a set of surgical practices that aim to modify or enhance features associated with ethnic groups. Feminist critics argue that ethnic cosmetic surgery exemplifies the problematic ideals of beauty founded on normative whiteness. In this paper, I explore both the aesthetic and medical traditions that inform the practice of modifying ethnic features. First, I argue that aesthetics and medicine substantially contributed to the societal perception that race is a naturalistic human trait with apparent biological markers. Medicine, for example, maintains that race, which is conflated with ethnicity and cultural identity, is a relevant biological variable in medical practice. From the perspective of disease evaluation and diagnosis, racial groupings are thought to help identify risk factors and predispositions to certain medical conditions. Second, I argue that ethnic cosmetic surgery instantiates medicine’s naturalistic conception of race through surgical practices that propose to modify, enhance or minimise markers of racial identity. Here, I focus on Asian blepharoplasty or upper lid surgery, which is the creation of upper lid crease on patients with East Asian heritage. Critics argue that Asian blepharoplasty not only reifies factitious markers and categories of race, but promotes the problematic notion of racial transformation. Rather than an exception, ethnic cosmetic surgery is thus a paradigmatic example of the ways in which medicine naturalises the identification and transformation of racialised bodies.

Bio: Dr Yves Saint James Aquino recently finished his PhD in Philosophy at Macquarie University, under the supervision of Prof Wendy Rogers and Prof Jean-Philippe Deranty. His doctoral thesis investigated the ethical issues arising from medical practices that pathologise ugliness, drawing on various disciplines that include medicine, philosophy of medicine, medical ethics, philosophy of biology and medical sociology, among others. Yves has a BA in Philosophy and a Doctor of Medicine from the University of the Philippines, and a Master of Bioethics from the European Erasmus Mundus Programme. He currently teaches philosophy of biology and bioethics at Macquarie University.

2:15-3:00 Dr Bindi Bennett – “Why non-Indigenous people cannot become Aboriginal”

Abstract: Can we use the term trans race for people who ‘feel’ Aboriginal in Australia? Identity and identity formation for Aboriginal people, particularly those of light skin has been a topic non-Aboriginal peoples have weighed in on for some time. The Aboriginal community have particular views about white people appropriating an Aboriginal identity to get the alleged benefits attached to this. This talk discusses why non-Indigenous people cannot and will not be Aboriginal or transrace.

Bio: Dr Bindi Bennett is a Gamilaroi cis-gendered mother, researcher and social work lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her interests include equine therapy, trauma, Aboriginal social work, Aboriginal identity and wellbeing as well as increasing cultural responsiveness in social work education. Bindi has over 20 years practice experience in the fields of Aboriginal social work, child and adolescent mental health, schools and health.

3:00-3:30 Afternoon Tea

3:30-4:15 Taylor-Jai McAlister and Dr Albert Atkin – “Racial Passing and Transracialism”

Abstract: Racial passing is commonly referred to within the context of White/Black mixed-race individuals who pass for White. In this paper, we will widen the focus of passing to include narratives of passing in two unique contexts: light-skinned Aboriginal Australians, as well as Romanichal “Gypsies” within the UK. By widening the scope of what we consider as white-passing, we can further explore the relationship between Whiteness, aesthetics, privilege and deception among people who pass for white. This discussion on passing can inform our understanding of transracialism, by exploring normative standards for transracialism, how passing fits into this, and what transracialism could really mean for our society.

Bios: Albert works on the philosophy of race, pragmatism, and the social and political dimensions of language and epistemology.

Taylor-Jai completed a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) with a Bachelor of Human Sciences, and minored in Philosophy. Although Taylor-Jai has mostly been published in the area of Aboriginal mental health and suicide intervention, her honours study investigated the impact of skin colour on Aboriginal identity for light-skinned people, titled: “Colouring” the modern day Aboriginal identity: Exploring skin colour and its’ relationship to identity in light-skinned Aboriginal people. Taylor-Jai aims to complete a combined Masters in Clinical Psychology/PhD, to further focus on identity issues within Aboriginal communities.

4:15-5:10 [KEYNOTE] Assistant Professor Rebecca Tuvel – “What are the Limits to Self-Identification? On the Metaphysics of Race, Age and Species Membership”

Abstract: If you can be transrace, can’t you be transage? Or transspecies? Online forums were abuzz with such queries following the 2015 outing of Rachel Dolezal ­­– an American white-born woman who identifies as black. Similar reasoning has found its way into scholarly critiques of transracialism, raising important questions about the metaphysical status of race – or what race fundamentally is. Is race more like age or species than like class or religion? Is it more like sex than gender? Or, is it comparable to none of these categories? The answer to these questions is important; it tells us 1) whether a transracial person can literally transition her way into another race, 2) whether she can only hope to identify as a member of a race from which she is, in fact, metaphysically barred entry, or 3) whether any attempt to transition into another race is futile, because races do not exist. In this talk, I argue that a proper understanding of the metaphysical status of race reveals that transracialism is neither comparable to transageism nor transspeciesism. In so doing, I aim to defend the metaphysical possibility of transracialism against some of its most powerful critiques.

Bio: Rebecca Tuvel is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. She specializes in ethics, feminist philosophy and philosophy of race. Her current book project, Changing Identities, argues for a novel approach to membership criteria for social categories such as gender, race and culture.

5:10 Short Closing Remarks

RSVP to adam.hochman@mq.edu.au by the 25th of November. All welcome!