ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the key findings by revisiting the original conceptual framework of the book – place, time, and personal identity. It argues that place is central to identification processes for Black mixed-race people and reflects on the benefits of scaling down the unit of analysis from the nation, to the city and local level. Reflecting on the insights that a social generational and life history approach provides, the chapter suggests that these historical vantage points highlight the temporality of mixed-race as a racialised category and personal identity and help to develop a critical understanding of how it has related to ‘race’ in general and Blackness in particular, over time. The chapter emphasises the centrality of Black identities across the multiple age groups and suggests they were often articulated as a politics of resistance, unity, culture, and community, rather than blood or biology. In this discussion, the intersections of (mixed) race and gender are foreground and the importance of comparative analyses is made clear. The chapter ends by bringing whiteness to the fore and reflecting on its ever-present non-presence in the participants’ lives.
