Black/white mixed-race experiences of race and racism in Poland

ABSTRACT

Whilst literature on race and ethnicity in Poland is growing, it has yet to fully grapple with the diverse range of racial identities in Poland. Simultaneously, despite calls for Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) to develop into a more global field, there remains a paucity of literature focusing on racial mixedness in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and no substantive consideration of the lived experiences of mixed-race people in Poland. Taking these absences as our entry point, we bring Critical Mixed Race Studies into conversation with pieces of literature on race and ethnicity in Poland in order to extend the theoretical and empirical terrain of both fields. Drawing upon data from interviews conducted with black/white mixed-race people in Poland, this article casts light on the lives of this nascent group, and specifically on their experiences of racism and exclusion in a society imagined as homogenously white.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed-race
• Poland
• racialization
• Critical Mixed Race Studies
• CEE

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term “black/white mixed-race” to refer to those who have mixed Black (African Diasporic) and White (typically European) parentage.

2 As Gawlewicz (2016) has shown, there is some difficulty in translating this term due to its contextual specificity. It is for this reason that we have chosen not to translate. We do note, that for some, the term might translate as “Black people”, whilst for others, it might be something more derogatory. For many of the study's participants, the term was seen to be derogatory.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by The Leverhulme Trust [SAS-2017-046] through the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds.