Racial Formation and In-Betweenness of MENA and Mixed-Race Categories: A Critical Collaborative Autoethnography

The U.S. was constructed on a Black–white racial hierarchical system to maintain the subjugation of communities of color, of which we understand through racial formation that race continues to adapt and evolve to support structures of anti-Black racism. Our project centers racial formation as our theoretical framing for why race categories exist under a white supremacist, anti-Black system that profits from hierarchical inhuman realities. This critical collaborative autoethnography explores the learning journeys of one biracial Korean faculty member and one Lebanese-American undergraduate in their continued inquiry about erasure/affirmation of mixed-race and MENA identities. We explored the in-between gray spaces that our mindbodyspirits move through, and revealed the systematic impact of violent structures on our racialized mind–body–spirits. Findings allude to the limits of our belonging, in relation to dominant structures that cannot hold our in-between experiences. We urge social justice professions to recenter the literal marginal voices of mixed-race and MENA peoples as essential in the relational racial healing and restorative journeys of our multiracial and intersecting communities of color.