Anthropology

Assigned reading 1 page summaries and 1 page outlines.

HAPTER

15

The Hazards of Visibility
“Biraciar’:t Women, Media
Images, and Narratives of Identity
CAROLINE

A.

STREETER

The republic of the United States is a society consumed by ideas of racial purity
and racial denial. Therefore, the United States is also replete with fascination
with racial mixing and racial difference.
–

I

n this chapter, I examine the topic of
biracial women through two lenses:
media images from the United States and
a small sample of creative writing and docu­
mentary videos produced by college-age
women from two University of California
campuses. We encounter an immediate
dilemma with regard to terminology because,
in media imagery, it is rarely possible to dis­
cern whether a woman depicted is “biracial,”
that is, has two parents of different “races.”!
For that reason, I often use the more general
designation “mixed-race,” especially in the
first part of the chapter, which focuses on
print media.2 A second dilemma involves
why one needs to know, and how one goes

Donna Haraway (1997)

about determining, whether a woman
depicted in a media image is of mixed race.
To bring a quality of hypervigilance to the
visual markers of race entails participation in
the discourse that makes physical features
synonymous with racial classification. Even
if the goal is to ascertain “mixedness,” one
becomes engaged in an attempt to fix what
“mixed” looks like.
The discourse of race in U.S. media is heavily
weighted toward an understanding of race
relations that is limited to African Americans
and European Americans. In a cultural climate
in which the legibility of race is restricted to
“black” and “white,” mixed-race people tend
to be imagined as black/white or “mulatto.”

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

Yet recent manifestations of racial/ethnic
conflict such as the riots/rebellions that took
place in Los Angeles 10 years ago clearly indi­
cate how inadequate that model is (Gooding­
Williams, 1993). Although in the world of
popular culture the black/white racial
dichotomy continues to be exploited, in recent
decades many have jumped onto the lucrative
multicultural bandwagon. This phenomenon
has revolutionized media images, especially in
advertising. Led by the Italian clothing
company Benetton, advertisements increas­
ingly depict a wide range of ethnicities as well
as many types of multiracial people. The
visual pleasure provided by diverse ethnic
types, however, has disturbing antecedents in
19th century racial science and the ethnographic
photography that accompanied European
colonial expansion. The assumption that
“race” and “mixed race” can be determined
through the visual evidence of physical
features has been used repeatedl y to buttress
the logic of racial hierarchies. As the black
British photographer and writer David
A. Bailey (1989) has commented:
If we look at early anthropological photo­
graphy we can see the process of categori­
sation and construction of racial difference
in which cultures were either photogra-phed
voyeuristically within their homelands
(emphasizing physical features) or pho·
tographed and measured in studies. This is
reproduced in the Benetton campaign by the
categorisation of differences and the empha­
sis on physical features such as eyes, hair and
skin color. This emphasis on physical fea­
tures is also similar to the early medical and
police photographs of mental, physical
and social deviants. Likewise the framing
and cropping of the United Contrasts [sic} of
Benetton advertisements is very similar to
these earlier photographs. (p. 65)

In addition to the troubling history
invoked by attempts to translate physical
features into racial “types,” the title of this

chapter, “the hazards of visibility” refers to
an ongoing debate about how media images
affect individuals and groups in society.
Although Census 2000 made it clear that the
United States has undergone dramatic demo­
graphic change, the implicit understanding of
an American as a white person of Western
European descent is not only deeply embed­
ded in our national narratives but also is
everywhere visible in media representations.
In other words, images of white people dom­
inate the visual culture that saturates our
everyday environment. The idea that media
images and the visual and textual narratives
they contain affect us, although seemingly a
commonsense notion, is controversial. I sug­
gest that although women and people of
color naturally enough wish to see them­
selves in the images with which all of us are
relentlessly bombarded, we must be vigilant
about the terms of our inclusion. Like ethnic
advocacy groups such as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), organizations such as the
Association for MultiEthnic Americans
(AMEA) and Multiracial Americans of
Southern California (MASC), as well as mag­
azines aimed at multiracial individuals and
families like Interrace and Mavin consistently
applaud the increase in representations of
mixed-race people in media images as a pos­
itive development. I argue here that visibility
is a complex phenomenon that should
not be uncritically celebrated. As the word
“hazard” indicates, a possible danger to
be carefully negotiated, the stream of media
images from which I analyze selected
examples can be considered a kind of traffic.
U.S. society is characterized by a formidable
traffic in media images, in which we all
may be said to participate but in which
the profits and benefits are very unevenly
distributed.
Many of the women in the media images
that I analyze can be called “virtual girls”

The Hazards of Visibility

because their personal history is unknown to
the viewer. They exist solely on the level of
the image. By contrast, in the second part of
the chapter, I discuss “real girls,” exploring
media representations of the celebrity Mariah
Carey as well as writing and documentary
video by college-age women. The use of the
term biracial is more appropriate when we
have evidence of how people identify, espe­
cially when, as in the writing and video,
women draw substantially on autobiographi­
cal material. My analysis of texts that draw
on autobiography-the narratives of identity
to which the chapter’s title refers-demon­
strates how young women deploy the tools of
feminist theory and antiracist activism to
engage what it means to inhabit a biracial
female body.

THE METAPHOR DANCE:
WHEN DOES MULTICULTURAL
MEAN MULTIRACIAL?
Print images that feature mixed-race people
are a prominent example of the multicultural
representations that have become ubiquitous
in contemporary media. The ideology of mul­
ticulturalism that is referenced by such images
emphasizes the pleasurable aspects of ethnic
diversity without engaging the challenge of
cultural differences and the existence of racial
hierarchies and racial inequality. Multicultural
images that use multiracial people envision a
future that is free of such power struggles. In a
recent example that I discuss more thoroughly
later, in 1993 Time magazine imagined the
future U.S. population as represented by a
multiracial woman created through a com­
puter program, featured on the issue’s cover.3
Time used the metaphor of the multicultural
society to update that of the melting pot.
Traditionally, the melting pot required ethnic
groups to assimilate to a generic American

model. 4 The concept of a multicultural “stew”
might appear more inclusive than the melting
pot, in that it would allow for the survival of
ethnic particularity, influencing the definition
of “American” rather than requiring the
burden of change to be fully borne by ethnic
“others.” However, multiculturalism in the
hands of corporate interests has frequently
merely facilitated the commodification of
ethnic difference.
In media imagery the idealized future­
free of troubling difference and conflict-has
often been represented by a mixed-race child,
in a move that demonstrates how multicul­
tural ideology becomes represented by
images of multiracial people. This phenome­
non of conflation is especially evident when
images of mixed-race children are deployed
to represent visions of racial harmony
deemed unthreatening because they are so
“cute.” In one example, a Baby Gap ad pub­
lished in 0 (The Oprah Magazine) in May
2000 depicting an Afro-Asian baby girl rein­
forces the tenacious myth that mixed-race
children are “naturally” the most beautiful
(Figure 15.1).
The media’s fixation on beautiful children
of mixed descent provides an example of
why the increase in the number of visibly
racially mixed bodies depicted “positively”
does not necessarily constitute a progres­
sive move in representation. Adorable images
do little to challenge the basis for social
inclusion.
Just as advertising photography deploys
strongly contrasting skin colors to signify
racial difference, it often uses “rainbow
imagery” (intermediate skin tones) to portray
people of mixed descent. s In fact, rainbow
baby is a term used to describe racially mixed
children, particularly those of black and white
heritage. The ubiquity of phrases such as
“rainbow babies” and “coffee-colored
children” is indicative of the tendency to
infantilize the subject of mixed descent.

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

I

Figure 15.1

Baby GAP, 0 (The Oprah Magazine), May-June 2000

An overriding concern for children, whether
articulated to caution against interracial rela~
rionships or to advocate for an institutional­
ized multiracial classification (Graham, 1996),

dovetails with trends in advertising and
television, which are currently obsessed with
young models and actors, and the more ado­
lescent looking, the better (Hirschberg, 1999).

The Hazards of Visibility

As well, in this climate, “everybody’s going for
the multi-ethnic girl” (Namkung, 2000).
As I have mentioned, Time magazine gave
prominent visibility to a multiethnic girl in a
special issue published in fall 1993, although
this particular cover photo was computer
generated (Figure 15.2).
Time’s cover consisted of a “morph” based
on the projected future racial and ethnic com­
position of the u.s. population. According
to Time, “the image of (their) new Eve” is
“15% Anglo Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern,
17.5% African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern
European and 7.5% Hispanic” (“The New
Face,” 1993). Apparently, as Eve’s face emerged
on the computer screen, Time’s staff members
became heartbroken that “she doesn’t exist”
(“The New Face,” 1993). However, the writer
Danzy Senna (1998) contends
Of course, anyone could see that women
just Eke the computer face they had created
did exist in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and
Spanish Harlem …. As I read the article, it
reminded me of an old saying they used to
have down South during Jim Crow: ‘If a
black man wants to sit in the front of the
bus, he just puts on a turban.’ Maybe the
same rule applied here; call yourself mixed
and you just might find the world smiles a
little brighter on you. (p. 14)

Senna’s comments echo the suspicions of
black Americans who question the purpose of
a multiracial category, a critique influenced
by historical attempts on the part of individu­
als and groups to “pass” and become reclas­
sified as anything but black (or Negro or
colored).6 Likewise, Senna alludes to the
instability of visual markers of race as well as
to the importance of historical, geographic,
and cultural factors in determining racializa­
tion. 7 Her critique of the ways that mixed-race
people can escape the social prejudice that is
aimed at people of color brings to mind what
I call the “safe hybridity,” represented by
individuals who inhabit an intermediate racial

category. In fact, my juxtaposition of the
terms safe and hybridity is intentionally para­
doxical. Hybridity as conceptualized by post­
colonial theorists such as Trinh T. Minh-ha
and Homi Bhabha cannot be safe. Bhabha
has remarked, “A strategy of hybridization
does not celebrate cultural diversity, it cele­
brates … cultural difference” (Trinh, 1999,
p. 28). However, the hybridization that is
practiced by the Time magazine cover is emp­
tied of political content through its celebra­
tion as mere curiosity-a high-tech feat. Time
reduces hybridity to horticulture; the meaning
of the woman’s face is limited to her (sexually
attractive) blended features.
The words on Time’s cover make it clear
that Eve is not racially “pure”; “Take a good
look at this woman. She was created by a
computer from a mix of several races.” When
we consider the iconic status of blue-eyed,
blonde-haired, and white-skinned femininity,
not just in the United States but throughout
western European and Latin American coun­
tries, Time’s rendering of the representative
American woman of the future as an olive­
skinned brunette with hazel eyes could be con­
sidered progressive. s Nevertheless, some have
contended that the image looks like a white
woman. 9 Like Danzy Senna, others disagreed
with the Time staff’s lament that their Eve
does not exist, finding her ethnicity conceiv­
able, albeit ambiguous. My mixed-race friends
and I concurred that Eve’s hair was quite
intriguing. While it is not wavy, its texture
hints at a fuzziness that will be familiar to the
parents of rainbow babies. Yet the magazine’s
cover elides the topic of miscegenation, allow­
ing the apparently more palatable multicul­
tural to stand in for multiracial. The magazine
text invokes the narrative of immigration to
account for the multiracial and multiethnic
composition of their cover girl: “What you see
is a remarkable preview of … The New Face
of America. How Immigrants Are Shaping the
World’s First Multicultural Society.”

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

1
!

Figure 15.2

Time Magazine, Fall 1993
The Hazards of Visibility

Time’s article explaining how the morphing
program worked was accompanied by a grid
of photographs illustrating examples of the
program’s generation of the “progeny” of 14
men and women of various racial and ethnic
backgrounds. The grid, appearing under
the title “Rebirth of a Nation-Computer
Style,” makes a cultural reference that should
give us pause. D. W. Griffith’s silent film of
1915 The Birth of a Nation repudiated the
outcome of the United States’ Civil War,
especially the Reconstruction Era, during
which newly enfranchised black Americans
voted and held office in the southern states.
The film’s vicious racial stereotypes, includ­
ing rapacious black men who preyed on
white virgins as well as corrupt and over­
sexed mulattoes, had an enduring influence
on American cinema. As Lauren Berlant has
commented, Time’s reference to the film is
simultaneously innocuous and deeply trou­
bling. 1o For my purposes here, Time’s
“Freudian slip” is especially meaningful
because it betrays the extent to which
ambivalence about miscegenation, which,
in The Birth of a Nation, was the most
depraved result of black emancipation, per­
sists in contemporary discourse about race.
Judging by the images of mixed-race prog­
eny in Time’s “Rebirth of a Nation” grid,
gender categories presented unexpected com­
plications for a computer program written to
mimic biological reproduction. Many of the
photos struggle for gender determinacy, and
it is frequently difficult to tell whether the
morph is male or female without looking
at the “parents,” in which case the hairstyle
seems most determinative of “gender.” It is
intriguing that the computer program would
create ambiguously gendered offspring from
images of men and women, undermining the
myth of heterosexual normativity, at least in
cyberspace! Because the parameters by which

the program functioned are so different from
those that drive genetic reproduction, it seems
curious that Time’s staff felt compelled to
mimic heterosexual reproduction. Why not
morph women with women and men with
men? Would “gay” and “lesbian” parents
render offspring with a more easily identifi­
able gender? In fact, Time’s unambiguously
female Eve was created by morphing the fea­
tures of all seven of the women used to pro­
duce their “Rebirth of a Nation” chart.
In addition to virtual miscegenation, Time
highlights what is actually called “crossbreed­
ing” in their tex”!: real live adults in interracial
relationships and the children born from these
unions. The subjects are presented in a format
similar to the virtual morphs on Time’s cover
image and in their “Rebirth of a Nation” grid,
photographed with seemingly nude torsos and
looking directly into the camera lens, fully
available to the viewer. ll Looking at these
images, one experiences the unsettling yet irre­
sistible urge to compare the real-life “mixed
breeds” with their morphed counterparts and
to note which physical features the children
have inherited from their parents. The com­
pulsion to focus on the physical characteris­
tics, especially the face of a person, is precisely
the impulse that advertising that features
mixed-race women plays on.

REBIRTH OF A NATION
Advertising makes explicit the routes by
which persons might individually and collec­
tively give a name to their desire (Berlant,
1997, p. 11).
An ad from the clothing designer Calvin
Klein’s campaign for the fragrance cKone
highlights the ways that ethnic mystery
becomes a sign of miscegenation in an image
that emphasizes the vulnerable and available

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

sexuality of a mixed-race woman. In this
way, the cKone ad metaphorically fulfills the
expectations raised by advertising that eroti­
cizes interracial couplesY In the full-page
photograph, three quarters of the space is
devoted to a close-up image of the face and
throat of a young woman with an Afro­
Asian appearance, flanked by a partial image
of a fragrance bottle (Figure 15.3).
Lighting in the photograph emphasizes
the model’s skin, especially its golden, lumi­
nous quality. Her skin is a shade that could
be described as maple or honey, a color that
is clearly located in the continuum between
black and white.
An image of an Afro-Asian woman evokes
a different kind of biracial subject, one whose
existence was not the object of antimiscegena­
tion law in the United States. As Phillip Brian
Harper has observed, “The centrality of the
white subject’s interest in the phenomenon of
miscegenation is indicated by the dictionary
definition of the term, which characterizes it as
denoting especially ‘marriage between white
and non-white persons”m (p. 31). Instead, the
model’s “hapa” features conjure histories of
American imperialism and military occupations
in Asia as well as relationships between Asian
women and black American soldiers. 14 The
photograph is composed to expose the model
to the viewer; the hollow in her throat and her
graceful, yet fragile neck signal vulnerability.!S
If there was any doubt as to her sexual avail­
ability, the woman’s alleged contact informa­
tion appears in the lower third of the image.
The phrase ..e-mail: kristy@cKone.com..
updates the proverbial scrawl in the bathroom
stall for the Internet age (i.e., “For a good time
call … “).16 That “Kristy” strongly resembles
a grown-up version of the little girl in the Baby
Gap ad should come as no surprise. Although
rainbow babies are celebrated as signs of racial
harmony, the taboo of interracial sexuality
lurking in their genetic make-up becomes
full-blown in erotic images of mixed-race
women.

At the same time, some advenisements
represent alternative possibilities for the Baby
Gap girl child’s future. In the winter of
1998-1999, an ad campaign by Levi’s capi­
talized on discourses of multiculturalism by
making racial ambiguity representative of a
different type of fantasy. Rather than offering
the consumer the illusion of unfettered sexual
access to a mixed-race woman, this campaign
positioned her as the embodiment of post­
civil rights era idealism, making consumption
of her image a surrogate for antiracist
activism. The campaign featured teenagers
from a variety of ethnic backgrounds holding
placards inscribed with phrases. One image
depicted a young black man with dread­
locks holding a sign proclaiming, “Conformity
Breeds Mediocrity.” Another showed a
Latino with a placard that declared, “Latinos
Presente.” In a third ad, two teenagers, one
male and one female, both of indeterminate
ancestry, held a sign saying “We Are One.”
The image that immediately drew my atten­
tion was of a young woman holding a sign
inscribed with the words, “I can’t be Prejudice
[sicJ, I’m Mulatto [sic]” (Figure 15.4). The
motto of the campaign-the phrase “What’s
True”-was visible on the lower right side of
each advertisement.
The first time I saw these Levi’s ads (in
San Francisco in December 1998), only
the “mulatto” images had been mounted.
Multiple larger-than-life sized posters of the
teenage girl were plastered over wooden
partitions that were being used to delineate
the construction site around a building in
the Mission District (a working class Latino
neighborhood undergoing intense gentrifica­
tion). The young woman’s hair made me nos­
talgic for my own teen years, when I wore an
Afro “as big as a rain cloud. “17 Only later did
I realize that the ad was one of a series. By the
time I attempted to track them down to make
photographs approximately 2 months later,
they had all but disappeared. Although I
eventually found all four images in an alley in

The Hazards of Visibility

Figure 15.3

Calvin Klein, Vibe Magazine, August 1999

. downtown San Francisco, they had been
with the word uno, which obscured
phrases on the signs held by each model. IS
My Own initial surprise at seeing the word
mulatto used in an ad is typical of the lack of

consensus about terms that mark identity. ]
joke with my friends that mulatto, unlike
words such as black, nigger, queer, faggot, or
even girl, has not been rehabilitated. By the
same token, I have encountered young

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

Figure 15.4

Levi-Strauss Billboard Photographed in downtown San Francisco by Caroline A.
Streeter, February 1999

people of mixed blacklwhite descent who
embrace mulatto, feeling that it describes
their heritage in a succinct and accurate way.
I e-mailed the office of consumer services at
Levi’s to ask how they made decisions
regarding the language used in the billboards.
They responded:

In the “What’s True” campaign we gave a
forum to all different types of people. The
campaign represents diversity in thoughts,
ideas and style, which is what the Levi’s®
brand is all about. We didn’t use models or
actors and the spots are unscripted, unedited,
and spontaneous. They were created with

The Hazards of Visibility

teens off the street-not in a studio–speaking
candidly about what “true” means to them.
The assertion that an advertising cam­
paign is “unscripted, unedited and sponta­
neous” is misleading to say the least. In fact,
Levi’s response to my query could be inter­
preted to mean that the models are not even
wearing the company’s clothing. More­
over, the girl in the mulatto ad looks very
groomed; she wears makeup and has mani­
cured nails, and her hair appears styled to
embody a particular aesthetic that is associ­
ated with rainbow babies, brushed out to
emphasize its volume and texture.
What of Levi’s claim that the ads feature
teenagers “off the street … speaking can­
didly?” Although the mixed-race girl in the
Levi’s image may indeed describe herself as
mulatto, I doubt that Levi’s had no influence in
the conception of the phrase that she allegedly
“created” herself. By composing the ad in
this way, Levi’s states that “the truth” is that
racially mixed people “can’t be prejudice,” a
statement that makes the mixed-race subject
the embodiment of liberation from racial dis­
crimination. The idea that the mixed-race child
represents the elimination of prejudice is part
of a utopian dream adopted by many political
activists during the civil rights movement.
When young people from all over the United
States went south to work in voter registration
drives (especially during the summer of 1964),
blacks and whites worked and socialized
together, and became lovers (Evans, 1979).
This was the nightmare that the segregationists
had warned about. Such activity also con­
tributed to the seductive mythology that if
people could transcend racial barriers in their
private lives, the elimination of society’s racism
would follow. In this sense, Levi’s “What’s
True” image of a mixed-race teenage girl is the
alternative grown-up depiction of the Afro­
Asian child in the Baby Gap ad. Rather than
exploiting the lure of sexual availability, the
image promises liberation from social injustice.

Yet the Levi’s notion of mulattoes relies on
celebratory and ahistorical rhetoric that elides
the vexed strategies that racially mixed sub·
jects have deployed to negotiate hierarchies of
race and color. 19 This kind of multicultural
imagery makes racially mixed people symbolic
embodiments of antidiscrimination while
using their images to mask persistent race·
based inequalities. 20 The Levi’s discourse also,
oddly enough, solidly reinforces the authority
of the “one-drop rule.” This occurs through
the spelling “error” in the sentence “I can’t be
prejudice, I’m mulatto.” The phrase evokes
Ebonies, or Black English, thus inscribing
blackness as effectively as the girl’s Afro,21
The muddled messages in the advertisement
also point to the contradictory expectations
that Americans harbor for miscegenation.
Although the outcome, mixed-race people, are
expected to free the society of prejudice, they
are as subject to being defined in racialized
terms as anyone. Because we are confused
about what racism is–Is it the articulation of
taboo words? The dissemination of negative
images?-it is difficult to gauge when racial
language or imagery is problematic.

RAINBOW BABY

In the transition to thinking about “real
girls,” I begin with an analysis of the media’s
discourse about the well-known celebrity
Mariah Carey. Carey is a unique example
because her image transformed quite literally
from white to black before our very eyes, a
process exhaustively documented in the
mainstream and African-American media
over the past decade. 22 When her first album
was released (1990), Carey’s record company
marketed her as a pop singer with no dearly
defined ethnic identity. Like the biracial
actress Jennifer Beals, Carey’s ambiguous fea­
tures enabled her to remain racially unclassi­
fied, (synonymous with being white in

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

America). As Carey’s fame grew, journalists
delving into her background soon “dis­
covered” that she is biracial, with a
European-American mother and a father of
African-American and Venezuelan heritage. 23
Much was made of Carey’s “passing,” partic­
ularly by black journalists, and articles about
her began to routinely comment on her mixed
heritage as well as her attempts to articulate a
biracial subjectivity.24 Once she had been
“outed,,25 Carey’s music videos began to shift
from rainbow imagery (with children of diverse
races26 ) to representations that prominently
featured black men. She also began collabo­
rating with male and female rap and hip-hop
artists on her albums. Carey’s divorce from
the white record executive Tommy Mottola
(almost two decades her senior) after a 5-year
marriage seems to have accelerated her emer­
gence as a black female celebrity. Since her
divorce in 1998, she has made appearances at
venues such as the NAACP Image Awards,
pursued high-profile collaborations with
African American artists, and been linked
romantically to a number of black male
celebritiesY In addition, her image on maga­
zine covers and in music videos became
significantly more sexual. Magazines in
particular repeatedly alluded to her single
status and sexual desirability.28 Like the
cKone ads using mixed-race models, refer­
ences to Carey’s biracial heritage functioned
to increase her sexual allure. 29
Mariah Carey’s racialized sexuality is the
potent and unstable flash point that renders
her image perpetually troubling. The confla­
tion of Carey’s racial heritage and her sexual­
ity became pop cultural fodder in arenas such
as the performer Sandra Bernhard’s one­
woman show, I’m Still Here … Damn It!
(which I saw live in San Francisco in 1999).30
Bernhard’s comments on Carey demonstrate
how race can be sexualized and sexuality
raced. In a voice dripping with sarcasm,
Bernhard related, “Mariah’s been getting a

little niggerish on us … she been seeing those
rap stars and saying oh yeah baby do it, do
it … give me some of that big black dick!” In
Bernhard’s discourse, Carey assumes a posi­
tion analogous to how white women are
often depicted in advertising that features
black male/white female interracial couples:
eroticized as the light-skinned vessel for a
“big black dick.”3! Bernhard’s humor simul­
taneously frames Carey as a white-looking
woman and a mulatta subject, exploiting her
racial ambiguity to fuel stereotypical images of
white women and black men in interracial rela­
tionships as well as insatiable mulatta sexual­
ity. Carey herself offered astute commentary
on Bernhard’s monologue:
Sandra Bemhard used words that every
African American I know-and definitely I,
personally, find inappropriate. If my skin
were two shades darker, she wouldn’t have
done it…. (C)alling me a “phony white
bitch” and saying I was “acting niggerish” is
acceptable because she figures, “Who’s
gonna stick up for her?” I think she perceives
me as white, which is a common perception.
And yeah, I’m a freaking mutt, I’m a triracial
freak, but

Anthropology

Assigned reading 1 page summaries and 1 page outlines.

HAPTER

15

The Hazards of Visibility
“Biraciar’:t Women, Media
Images, and Narratives of Identity
CAROLINE

A.

STREETER

The republic of the United States is a society consumed by ideas of racial purity
and racial denial. Therefore, the United States is also replete with fascination
with racial mixing and racial difference.
–

I

n this chapter, I examine the topic of
biracial women through two lenses:
media images from the United States and
a small sample of creative writing and docu­
mentary videos produced by college-age
women from two University of California
campuses. We encounter an immediate
dilemma with regard to terminology because,
in media imagery, it is rarely possible to dis­
cern whether a woman depicted is “biracial,”
that is, has two parents of different “races.”!
For that reason, I often use the more general
designation “mixed-race,” especially in the
first part of the chapter, which focuses on
print media.2 A second dilemma involves
why one needs to know, and how one goes

Donna Haraway (1997)

about determining, whether a woman
depicted in a media image is of mixed race.
To bring a quality of hypervigilance to the
visual markers of race entails participation in
the discourse that makes physical features
synonymous with racial classification. Even
if the goal is to ascertain “mixedness,” one
becomes engaged in an attempt to fix what
“mixed” looks like.
The discourse of race in U.S. media is heavily
weighted toward an understanding of race
relations that is limited to African Americans
and European Americans. In a cultural climate
in which the legibility of race is restricted to
“black” and “white,” mixed-race people tend
to be imagined as black/white or “mulatto.”

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

Yet recent manifestations of racial/ethnic
conflict such as the riots/rebellions that took
place in Los Angeles 10 years ago clearly indi­
cate how inadequate that model is (Gooding­
Williams, 1993). Although in the world of
popular culture the black/white racial
dichotomy continues to be exploited, in recent
decades many have jumped onto the lucrative
multicultural bandwagon. This phenomenon
has revolutionized media images, especially in
advertising. Led by the Italian clothing
company Benetton, advertisements increas­
ingly depict a wide range of ethnicities as well
as many types of multiracial people. The
visual pleasure provided by diverse ethnic
types, however, has disturbing antecedents in
19th century racial science and the ethnographic
photography that accompanied European
colonial expansion. The assumption that
“race” and “mixed race” can be determined
through the visual evidence of physical
features has been used repeatedl y to buttress
the logic of racial hierarchies. As the black
British photographer and writer David
A. Bailey (1989) has commented:
If we look at early anthropological photo­
graphy we can see the process of categori­
sation and construction of racial difference
in which cultures were either photogra-phed
voyeuristically within their homelands
(emphasizing physical features) or pho·
tographed and measured in studies. This is
reproduced in the Benetton campaign by the
categorisation of differences and the empha­
sis on physical features such as eyes, hair and
skin color. This emphasis on physical fea­
tures is also similar to the early medical and
police photographs of mental, physical
and social deviants. Likewise the framing
and cropping of the United Contrasts [sic} of
Benetton advertisements is very similar to
these earlier photographs. (p. 65)

In addition to the troubling history
invoked by attempts to translate physical
features into racial “types,” the title of this

chapter, “the hazards of visibility” refers to
an ongoing debate about how media images
affect individuals and groups in society.
Although Census 2000 made it clear that the
United States has undergone dramatic demo­
graphic change, the implicit understanding of
an American as a white person of Western
European descent is not only deeply embed­
ded in our national narratives but also is
everywhere visible in media representations.
In other words, images of white people dom­
inate the visual culture that saturates our
everyday environment. The idea that media
images and the visual and textual narratives
they contain affect us, although seemingly a
commonsense notion, is controversial. I sug­
gest that although women and people of
color naturally enough wish to see them­
selves in the images with which all of us are
relentlessly bombarded, we must be vigilant
about the terms of our inclusion. Like ethnic
advocacy groups such as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), organizations such as the
Association for MultiEthnic Americans
(AMEA) and Multiracial Americans of
Southern California (MASC), as well as mag­
azines aimed at multiracial individuals and
families like Interrace and Mavin consistently
applaud the increase in representations of
mixed-race people in media images as a pos­
itive development. I argue here that visibility
is a complex phenomenon that should
not be uncritically celebrated. As the word
“hazard” indicates, a possible danger to
be carefully negotiated, the stream of media
images from which I analyze selected
examples can be considered a kind of traffic.
U.S. society is characterized by a formidable
traffic in media images, in which we all
may be said to participate but in which
the profits and benefits are very unevenly
distributed.
Many of the women in the media images
that I analyze can be called “virtual girls”

The Hazards of Visibility

because their personal history is unknown to
the viewer. They exist solely on the level of
the image. By contrast, in the second part of
the chapter, I discuss “real girls,” exploring
media representations of the celebrity Mariah
Carey as well as writing and documentary
video by college-age women. The use of the
term biracial is more appropriate when we
have evidence of how people identify, espe­
cially when, as in the writing and video,
women draw substantially on autobiographi­
cal material. My analysis of texts that draw
on autobiography-the narratives of identity
to which the chapter’s title refers-demon­
strates how young women deploy the tools of
feminist theory and antiracist activism to
engage what it means to inhabit a biracial
female body.

THE METAPHOR DANCE:
WHEN DOES MULTICULTURAL
MEAN MULTIRACIAL?
Print images that feature mixed-race people
are a prominent example of the multicultural
representations that have become ubiquitous
in contemporary media. The ideology of mul­
ticulturalism that is referenced by such images
emphasizes the pleasurable aspects of ethnic
diversity without engaging the challenge of
cultural differences and the existence of racial
hierarchies and racial inequality. Multicultural
images that use multiracial people envision a
future that is free of such power struggles. In a
recent example that I discuss more thoroughly
later, in 1993 Time magazine imagined the
future U.S. population as represented by a
multiracial woman created through a com­
puter program, featured on the issue’s cover.3
Time used the metaphor of the multicultural
society to update that of the melting pot.
Traditionally, the melting pot required ethnic
groups to assimilate to a generic American

model. 4 The concept of a multicultural “stew”
might appear more inclusive than the melting
pot, in that it would allow for the survival of
ethnic particularity, influencing the definition
of “American” rather than requiring the
burden of change to be fully borne by ethnic
“others.” However, multiculturalism in the
hands of corporate interests has frequently
merely facilitated the commodification of
ethnic difference.
In media imagery the idealized future­
free of troubling difference and conflict-has
often been represented by a mixed-race child,
in a move that demonstrates how multicul­
tural ideology becomes represented by
images of multiracial people. This phenome­
non of conflation is especially evident when
images of mixed-race children are deployed
to represent visions of racial harmony
deemed unthreatening because they are so
“cute.” In one example, a Baby Gap ad pub­
lished in 0 (The Oprah Magazine) in May
2000 depicting an Afro-Asian baby girl rein­
forces the tenacious myth that mixed-race
children are “naturally” the most beautiful
(Figure 15.1).
The media’s fixation on beautiful children
of mixed descent provides an example of
why the increase in the number of visibly
racially mixed bodies depicted “positively”
does not necessarily constitute a progres­
sive move in representation. Adorable images
do little to challenge the basis for social
inclusion.
Just as advertising photography deploys
strongly contrasting skin colors to signify
racial difference, it often uses “rainbow
imagery” (intermediate skin tones) to portray
people of mixed descent. s In fact, rainbow
baby is a term used to describe racially mixed
children, particularly those of black and white
heritage. The ubiquity of phrases such as
“rainbow babies” and “coffee-colored
children” is indicative of the tendency to
infantilize the subject of mixed descent.

303

304

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

I

Figure 15.1

Baby GAP, 0 (The Oprah Magazine), May-June 2000

An overriding concern for children, whether
articulated to caution against interracial rela~
rionships or to advocate for an institutional­
ized multiracial classification (Graham, 1996),

dovetails with trends in advertising and
television, which are currently obsessed with
young models and actors, and the more ado­
lescent looking, the better (Hirschberg, 1999).

The Hazards of Visibility

As well, in this climate, “everybody’s going for
the multi-ethnic girl” (Namkung, 2000).
As I have mentioned, Time magazine gave
prominent visibility to a multiethnic girl in a
special issue published in fall 1993, although
this particular cover photo was computer
generated (Figure 15.2).
Time’s cover consisted of a “morph” based
on the projected future racial and ethnic com­
position of the u.s. population. According
to Time, “the image of (their) new Eve” is
“15% Anglo Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern,
17.5% African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern
European and 7.5% Hispanic” (“The New
Face,” 1993). Apparently, as Eve’s face emerged
on the computer screen, Time’s staff members
became heartbroken that “she doesn’t exist”
(“The New Face,” 1993). However, the writer
Danzy Senna (1998) contends
Of course, anyone could see that women
just Eke the computer face they had created
did exist in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and
Spanish Harlem …. As I read the article, it
reminded me of an old saying they used to
have down South during Jim Crow: ‘If a
black man wants to sit in the front of the
bus, he just puts on a turban.’ Maybe the
same rule applied here; call yourself mixed
and you just might find the world smiles a
little brighter on you. (p. 14)

Senna’s comments echo the suspicions of
black Americans who question the purpose of
a multiracial category, a critique influenced
by historical attempts on the part of individu­
als and groups to “pass” and become reclas­
sified as anything but black (or Negro or
colored).6 Likewise, Senna alludes to the
instability of visual markers of race as well as
to the importance of historical, geographic,
and cultural factors in determining racializa­
tion. 7 Her critique of the ways that mixed-race
people can escape the social prejudice that is
aimed at people of color brings to mind what
I call the “safe hybridity,” represented by
individuals who inhabit an intermediate racial

category. In fact, my juxtaposition of the
terms safe and hybridity is intentionally para­
doxical. Hybridity as conceptualized by post­
colonial theorists such as Trinh T. Minh-ha
and Homi Bhabha cannot be safe. Bhabha
has remarked, “A strategy of hybridization
does not celebrate cultural diversity, it cele­
brates … cultural difference” (Trinh, 1999,
p. 28). However, the hybridization that is
practiced by the Time magazine cover is emp­
tied of political content through its celebra­
tion as mere curiosity-a high-tech feat. Time
reduces hybridity to horticulture; the meaning
of the woman’s face is limited to her (sexually
attractive) blended features.
The words on Time’s cover make it clear
that Eve is not racially “pure”; “Take a good
look at this woman. She was created by a
computer from a mix of several races.” When
we consider the iconic status of blue-eyed,
blonde-haired, and white-skinned femininity,
not just in the United States but throughout
western European and Latin American coun­
tries, Time’s rendering of the representative
American woman of the future as an olive­
skinned brunette with hazel eyes could be con­
sidered progressive. s Nevertheless, some have
contended that the image looks like a white
woman. 9 Like Danzy Senna, others disagreed
with the Time staff’s lament that their Eve
does not exist, finding her ethnicity conceiv­
able, albeit ambiguous. My mixed-race friends
and I concurred that Eve’s hair was quite
intriguing. While it is not wavy, its texture
hints at a fuzziness that will be familiar to the
parents of rainbow babies. Yet the magazine’s
cover elides the topic of miscegenation, allow­
ing the apparently more palatable multicul­
tural to stand in for multiracial. The magazine
text invokes the narrative of immigration to
account for the multiracial and multiethnic
composition of their cover girl: “What you see
is a remarkable preview of … The New Face
of America. How Immigrants Are Shaping the
World’s First Multicultural Society.”

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306

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

1
!

Figure 15.2

Time Magazine, Fall 1993
The Hazards of Visibility

Time’s article explaining how the morphing
program worked was accompanied by a grid
of photographs illustrating examples of the
program’s generation of the “progeny” of 14
men and women of various racial and ethnic
backgrounds. The grid, appearing under
the title “Rebirth of a Nation-Computer
Style,” makes a cultural reference that should
give us pause. D. W. Griffith’s silent film of
1915 The Birth of a Nation repudiated the
outcome of the United States’ Civil War,
especially the Reconstruction Era, during
which newly enfranchised black Americans
voted and held office in the southern states.
The film’s vicious racial stereotypes, includ­
ing rapacious black men who preyed on
white virgins as well as corrupt and over­
sexed mulattoes, had an enduring influence
on American cinema. As Lauren Berlant has
commented, Time’s reference to the film is
simultaneously innocuous and deeply trou­
bling. 1o For my purposes here, Time’s
“Freudian slip” is especially meaningful
because it betrays the extent to which
ambivalence about miscegenation, which,
in The Birth of a Nation, was the most
depraved result of black emancipation, per­
sists in contemporary discourse about race.
Judging by the images of mixed-race prog­
eny in Time’s “Rebirth of a Nation” grid,
gender categories presented unexpected com­
plications for a computer program written to
mimic biological reproduction. Many of the
photos struggle for gender determinacy, and
it is frequently difficult to tell whether the
morph is male or female without looking
at the “parents,” in which case the hairstyle
seems most determinative of “gender.” It is
intriguing that the computer program would
create ambiguously gendered offspring from
images of men and women, undermining the
myth of heterosexual normativity, at least in
cyberspace! Because the parameters by which

the program functioned are so different from
those that drive genetic reproduction, it seems
curious that Time’s staff felt compelled to
mimic heterosexual reproduction. Why not
morph women with women and men with
men? Would “gay” and “lesbian” parents
render offspring with a more easily identifi­
able gender? In fact, Time’s unambiguously
female Eve was created by morphing the fea­
tures of all seven of the women used to pro­
duce their “Rebirth of a Nation” chart.
In addition to virtual miscegenation, Time
highlights what is actually called “crossbreed­
ing” in their tex”!: real live adults in interracial
relationships and the children born from these
unions. The subjects are presented in a format
similar to the virtual morphs on Time’s cover
image and in their “Rebirth of a Nation” grid,
photographed with seemingly nude torsos and
looking directly into the camera lens, fully
available to the viewer. ll Looking at these
images, one experiences the unsettling yet irre­
sistible urge to compare the real-life “mixed
breeds” with their morphed counterparts and
to note which physical features the children
have inherited from their parents. The com­
pulsion to focus on the physical characteris­
tics, especially the face of a person, is precisely
the impulse that advertising that features
mixed-race women plays on.

REBIRTH OF A NATION
Advertising makes explicit the routes by
which persons might individually and collec­
tively give a name to their desire (Berlant,
1997, p. 11).
An ad from the clothing designer Calvin
Klein’s campaign for the fragrance cKone
highlights the ways that ethnic mystery
becomes a sign of miscegenation in an image
that emphasizes the vulnerable and available

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308

RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

sexuality of a mixed-race woman. In this
way, the cKone ad metaphorically fulfills the
expectations raised by advertising that eroti­
cizes interracial couplesY In the full-page
photograph, three quarters of the space is
devoted to a close-up image of the face and
throat of a young woman with an Afro­
Asian appearance, flanked by a partial image
of a fragrance bottle (Figure 15.3).
Lighting in the photograph emphasizes
the model’s skin, especially its golden, lumi­
nous quality. Her skin is a shade that could
be described as maple or honey, a color that
is clearly located in the continuum between
black and white.
An image of an Afro-Asian woman evokes
a different kind of biracial subject, one whose
existence was not the object of antimiscegena­
tion law in the United States. As Phillip Brian
Harper has observed, “The centrality of the
white subject’s interest in the phenomenon of
miscegenation is indicated by the dictionary
definition of the term, which characterizes it as
denoting especially ‘marriage between white
and non-white persons”m (p. 31). Instead, the
model’s “hapa” features conjure histories of
American imperialism and military occupations
in Asia as well as relationships between Asian
women and black American soldiers. 14 The
photograph is composed to expose the model
to the viewer; the hollow in her throat and her
graceful, yet fragile neck signal vulnerability.!S
If there was any doubt as to her sexual avail­
ability, the woman’s alleged contact informa­
tion appears in the lower third of the image.
The phrase ..e-mail: kristy@cKone.com..
updates the proverbial scrawl in the bathroom
stall for the Internet age (i.e., “For a good time
call … “).16 That “Kristy” strongly resembles
a grown-up version of the little girl in the Baby
Gap ad should come as no surprise. Although
rainbow babies are celebrated as signs of racial
harmony, the taboo of interracial sexuality
lurking in their genetic make-up becomes
full-blown in erotic images of mixed-race
women.

At the same time, some advenisements
represent alternative possibilities for the Baby
Gap girl child’s future. In the winter of
1998-1999, an ad campaign by Levi’s capi­
talized on discourses of multiculturalism by
making racial ambiguity representative of a
different type of fantasy. Rather than offering
the consumer the illusion of unfettered sexual
access to a mixed-race woman, this campaign
positioned her as the embodiment of post­
civil rights era idealism, making consumption
of her image a surrogate for antiracist
activism. The campaign featured teenagers
from a variety of ethnic backgrounds holding
placards inscribed with phrases. One image
depicted a young black man with dread­
locks holding a sign proclaiming, “Conformity
Breeds Mediocrity.” Another showed a
Latino with a placard that declared, “Latinos
Presente.” In a third ad, two teenagers, one
male and one female, both of indeterminate
ancestry, held a sign saying “We Are One.”
The image that immediately drew my atten­
tion was of a young woman holding a sign
inscribed with the words, “I can’t be Prejudice
[sicJ, I’m Mulatto [sic]” (Figure 15.4). The
motto of the campaign-the phrase “What’s
True”-was visible on the lower right side of
each advertisement.
The first time I saw these Levi’s ads (in
San Francisco in December 1998), only
the “mulatto” images had been mounted.
Multiple larger-than-life sized posters of the
teenage girl were plastered over wooden
partitions that were being used to delineate
the construction site around a building in
the Mission District (a working class Latino
neighborhood undergoing intense gentrifica­
tion). The young woman’s hair made me nos­
talgic for my own teen years, when I wore an
Afro “as big as a rain cloud. “17 Only later did
I realize that the ad was one of a series. By the
time I attempted to track them down to make
photographs approximately 2 months later,
they had all but disappeared. Although I
eventually found all four images in an alley in

The Hazards of Visibility

Figure 15.3

Calvin Klein, Vibe Magazine, August 1999

. downtown San Francisco, they had been
with the word uno, which obscured
phrases on the signs held by each model. IS
My Own initial surprise at seeing the word
mulatto used in an ad is typical of the lack of

consensus about terms that mark identity. ]
joke with my friends that mulatto, unlike
words such as black, nigger, queer, faggot, or
even girl, has not been rehabilitated. By the
same token, I have encountered young

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

Figure 15.4

Levi-Strauss Billboard Photographed in downtown San Francisco by Caroline A.
Streeter, February 1999

people of mixed blacklwhite descent who
embrace mulatto, feeling that it describes
their heritage in a succinct and accurate way.
I e-mailed the office of consumer services at
Levi’s to ask how they made decisions
regarding the language used in the billboards.
They responded:

In the “What’s True” campaign we gave a
forum to all different types of people. The
campaign represents diversity in thoughts,
ideas and style, which is what the Levi’s®
brand is all about. We didn’t use models or
actors and the spots are unscripted, unedited,
and spontaneous. They were created with

The Hazards of Visibility

teens off the street-not in a studio–speaking
candidly about what “true” means to them.
The assertion that an advertising cam­
paign is “unscripted, unedited and sponta­
neous” is misleading to say the least. In fact,
Levi’s response to my query could be inter­
preted to mean that the models are not even
wearing the company’s clothing. More­
over, the girl in the mulatto ad looks very
groomed; she wears makeup and has mani­
cured nails, and her hair appears styled to
embody a particular aesthetic that is associ­
ated with rainbow babies, brushed out to
emphasize its volume and texture.
What of Levi’s claim that the ads feature
teenagers “off the street … speaking can­
didly?” Although the mixed-race girl in the
Levi’s image may indeed describe herself as
mulatto, I doubt that Levi’s had no influence in
the conception of the phrase that she allegedly
“created” herself. By composing the ad in
this way, Levi’s states that “the truth” is that
racially mixed people “can’t be prejudice,” a
statement that makes the mixed-race subject
the embodiment of liberation from racial dis­
crimination. The idea that the mixed-race child
represents the elimination of prejudice is part
of a utopian dream adopted by many political
activists during the civil rights movement.
When young people from all over the United
States went south to work in voter registration
drives (especially during the summer of 1964),
blacks and whites worked and socialized
together, and became lovers (Evans, 1979).
This was the nightmare that the segregationists
had warned about. Such activity also con­
tributed to the seductive mythology that if
people could transcend racial barriers in their
private lives, the elimination of society’s racism
would follow. In this sense, Levi’s “What’s
True” image of a mixed-race teenage girl is the
alternative grown-up depiction of the Afro­
Asian child in the Baby Gap ad. Rather than
exploiting the lure of sexual availability, the
image promises liberation from social injustice.

Yet the Levi’s notion of mulattoes relies on
celebratory and ahistorical rhetoric that elides
the vexed strategies that racially mixed sub·
jects have deployed to negotiate hierarchies of
race and color. 19 This kind of multicultural
imagery makes racially mixed people symbolic
embodiments of antidiscrimination while
using their images to mask persistent race·
based inequalities. 20 The Levi’s discourse also,
oddly enough, solidly reinforces the authority
of the “one-drop rule.” This occurs through
the spelling “error” in the sentence “I can’t be
prejudice, I’m mulatto.” The phrase evokes
Ebonies, or Black English, thus inscribing
blackness as effectively as the girl’s Afro,21
The muddled messages in the advertisement
also point to the contradictory expectations
that Americans harbor for miscegenation.
Although the outcome, mixed-race people, are
expected to free the society of prejudice, they
are as subject to being defined in racialized
terms as anyone. Because we are confused
about what racism is–Is it the articulation of
taboo words? The dissemination of negative
images?-it is difficult to gauge when racial
language or imagery is problematic.

RAINBOW BABY

In the transition to thinking about “real
girls,” I begin with an analysis of the media’s
discourse about the well-known celebrity
Mariah Carey. Carey is a unique example
because her image transformed quite literally
from white to black before our very eyes, a
process exhaustively documented in the
mainstream and African-American media
over the past decade. 22 When her first album
was released (1990), Carey’s record company
marketed her as a pop singer with no dearly
defined ethnic identity. Like the biracial
actress Jennifer Beals, Carey’s ambiguous fea­
tures enabled her to remain racially unclassi­
fied, (synonymous with being white in

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RACE, GENDER, AND HIERARCHY

America). As Carey’s fame grew, journalists
delving into her background soon “dis­
covered” that she is biracial, with a
European-American mother and a father of
African-American and Venezuelan heritage. 23
Much was made of Carey’s “passing,” partic­
ularly by black journalists, and articles about
her began to routinely comment on her mixed
heritage as well as her attempts to articulate a
biracial subjectivity.24 Once she had been
“outed,,25 Carey’s music videos began to shift
from rainbow imagery (with children of diverse
races26 ) to representations that prominently
featured black men. She also began collabo­
rating with male and female rap and hip-hop
artists on her albums. Carey’s divorce from
the white record executive Tommy Mottola
(almost two decades her senior) after a 5-year
marriage seems to have accelerated her emer­
gence as a black female celebrity. Since her
divorce in 1998, she has made appearances at
venues such as the NAACP Image Awards,
pursued high-profile collaborations with
African American artists, and been linked
romantically to a number of black male
celebritiesY In addition, her image on maga­
zine covers and in music videos became
significantly more sexual. Magazines in
particular repeatedly alluded to her single
status and sexual desirability.28 Like the
cKone ads using mixed-race models, refer­
ences to Carey’s biracial heritage functioned
to increase her sexual allure. 29
Mariah Carey’s racialized sexuality is the
potent and unstable flash point that renders
her image perpetually troubling. The confla­
tion of Carey’s racial heritage and her sexual­
ity became pop cultural fodder in arenas such
as the performer Sandra Bernhard’s one­
woman show, I’m Still Here … Damn It!
(which I saw live in San Francisco in 1999).30
Bernhard’s comments on Carey demonstrate
how race can be sexualized and sexuality
raced. In a voice dripping with sarcasm,
Bernhard related, “Mariah’s been getting a

little niggerish on us … she been seeing those
rap stars and saying oh yeah baby do it, do
it … give me some of that big black dick!” In
Bernhard’s discourse, Carey assumes a posi­
tion analogous to how white women are
often depicted in advertising that features
black male/white female interracial couples:
eroticized as the light-skinned vessel for a
“big black dick.”3! Bernhard’s humor simul­
taneously frames Carey as a white-looking
woman and a mulatta subject, exploiting her
racial ambiguity to fuel stereotypical images of
white women and black men in interracial rela­
tionships as well as insatiable mulatta sexual­
ity. Carey herself offered astute commentary
on Bernhard’s monologue:
Sandra Bemhard used words that every
African American I know-and definitely I,
personally, find inappropriate. If my skin
were two shades darker, she wouldn’t have
done it…. (C)alling me a “phony white
bitch” and saying I was “acting niggerish” is
acceptable because she figures, “Who’s
gonna stick up for her?” I think she perceives
me as white, which is a common perception.
And yeah, I’m a freaking mutt, I’m a triracial
freak, but