Mixed Race Mess: Alicia Keys and Unthinkable Interracial Dating [Mixed Media Watch]

Yet reactions to IRs are immensely complex: sometimes the forces of racism actually encourage interracial relationships, where people of colour are boiled down into dehumanising sexual stereotypes to be collected. Meanwhile, Keys’ presentation of IR reactions seem to fall into only one category: people are hateful towards mixed race pairings because they are mean racists; anyone who accepts or encourages an IR therefore, is an enlightened anti-racist.  (Just take a look at responses to “Unthinkable”: Vibe calls Keys “socially conscious” for advocating for black/white relationships.)

This kind of black and white (haha) telling of an interracial affair runs dangerously close to the “let’s hump to end racism” campaign.  Hands up if you’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing someone say “Everyone should date out of their race, because the more we mix, the less racism there will be.”

The idea that interracial relationships are anti-racist, and having a mixed race family will fix racism is not only naive; it may even go hand in hand with racial fetish.  A few weeks ago I met a freshman college student – a good-looking black guy with a bright future – who told me that he doesn’t want to date black women because he has a thing for mixed race girls*, specifically ones that look like Alicia Keys. (So of course I emailed him CVT’s article about how mixed race people on the whole may actually *not* be that hot.)  When I suggested that his racial dating preference was messed up, he said that the bad balanced out the good, because isn’t dating outside of your race a way to end racism? The more we mix up, he reasoned, the less there will be reason for people to hate.

Please! Yuck! No. Date someone because you like them inside and out, not because a) you have a racial preference or b) you think that dating out will end racism when you have little beige babies. That’s just asking for parental trouble when your beige babies have their own consciousness and their own desires, and don’t want to be poster kids for your personal crusade. And anyways, racism is not truly about racial phenotypes; it’s a social campaign to assign power based on ethnocultural group.  There will always be ways to demarcate ethnocultural group, even when people are “all mixed up.”

I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked that this is coming from Keys – she is after all, the co-founder of the Keep A Child Alive campaign, which created this sorry set of ads a few years back:

So maybe her racial politics have always been a little bit obtuse.

3. Mixed Race Masquerading

The cherry topping on this mixed race mess comes in the final scene of the video, when Keys’ family watches as Murray pulls up in his car.  You see her black brother (a familiar face, but I can’t find the actor’s name anywhere) and her black mom, played by Adina Porter, her black father is silhouetted in the foreground.  In other words, Keys’ character does not have immediate family members who are white.

Why does this matter? Even though Keys herself has a white momma, usually I would have no problem with a first gen mixed race person playing someone who is not first gen mixed race. Hey, more power to them.  But considering the interracial content of this video, and its grossly simplistic presentation, it puts me off that Keys chooses to simplify even her own genealogy at the end.

Drake, who is also black/white wrote “Unthinkable” and provides back-up vocals. Some fans have asked why Drake is not in the video, saying he should’ve been cast as her brother – is it because having a light-skinned black and white man in the video would throw off Keys’ wall of hate-filled blackness?  A real life mixed race person would apparently complicate the coarse racial dynamics of this video; Keys hides both Drake and her own mixed roots in the video.

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