In contrast to discourses of multiraciality as leading to a future beyond race, this commentary looks at how multiracial discourses and symbols underline race. Taking an overview of multiracial discourses and identities in relation to Blackness in the United States and Brazil, this commentary examines the deployment of multiraciality to maintain white supremacy. Under global capitalism, United States multicultural discourses, and Latin American foundational narratives, multiracial peoples are often propped up as a solution to racism, the eradication of race, or reduced to racial binaries centering whiteness. The section ends with considerations of how fears of racial passing and fraud coincide with multiracial identities. Questions for further consideration on the nexus of political identities and racial identities are proposed in relation to multiraciality.

In this article, I examine how political and media discourses of multiraciality are deployed to justify guilt and innocence. I trace the deployment of multiraciality to determine who is deserving of life or death in media coverage, political rhetoric, and court records during Obama’s presidency, in George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal, and in the 2021 killing of Daunte Wright. I examine the weaponization of discourses of multiracial identities as tools of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Through such weaponization, the construction of the multiracial man as an index of racial progress and post-racism evident in the Barack Obama era enabled the violence and miscarriages of justice in the killings of Trayvon Martin and Daunte Wright. I consider how transnational and U.S. narratives of multiraciality, joined with anti-Blackness and white supremacy, enabled the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Furthermore, I examine how white womanhood and fears of Black masculinity facilitated the sympathy garnered towards Kim Potter. In considering the killing of Daunte Wright, this paper shows how multiraciality and racial malleability are valuable only when utilized for preserving racial hierarchies.

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