Legacy and the Politics of Racial Terminology

ABSTRACT

When a term carries a sordid past, it is tempting to think it should have no future use. Yet the normative life of a word is rarely exhausted by its origins. This article develops legacy analysis as a method for enriching evaluation of what should be done with historically burdened terms. Rather than treating origins as decisive, the framework examines how a term's past is inherited, how its residues reverberate at present, and whether it retains the capacity to change. I offer this approach through the case of ‘mixed‐race’, whose colonial beginnings sit in tension with its present role as a self‐chosen identity. The analysis reveals that its legacy is fractured: oppressive in some contexts, enabling in others. No single verdict can apply across the board.