About MCRC

The Mourning the Creation of Racial Categories (MCRC) Project, founded in 2016, brings a unique lens to the national dialogue and conversation surrounding race. The MCRC Project brings together creative, performing and visual artists to tell the stories of how people in the United States were (and still are) broken apart into unequally-valued racial categories.

It was not easy to break apart hundreds of millions of people into a handful of racial groupings such as Asian, Black and White. To do it, even family members, ancestors-descendants, and intimate partners “had” to be broken apart. Everyone participated: they orchestrated, enforced, acquiesced, grieved, resisted and perished in this breaking apart.

MCRC tells stories that allow audiences to explore the origins of what feels like an irreconcilable racial divide. One hallmark of the MCRC Project is that the stories told are infused with art, which promotes engagement, not defensiveness.

we invite audiences to:

• fully grasp the force involved in breaking apart people;

• recognize how the weight and emotion of this history weighs us down today;

• understand ways this history interferes with our ability to form healthy relationships across racial lines–to securely feel and express love, care and trust.

Accepting this invitation allows us to mourn this intensely emotional history, including its lingering and toxic effects. Mourning prepares us to engage in constructive conversation, healing and repair.

The MCRC Project is a collaborative project facilitated by Joan Ferrante and Lynnissa Hillman, both of whom are sociologists at Northern Kentucky University.

Why Mourn?

Everyone who lives (or has ever lived) in the lands we call the United States shares in this experience of breaking apart. The resulting traumas find expression in the disjointed, uncomfortable, illogical ways we talk about race. The traumas find expression in our body language and the way we gaze (even lovingly) at those we perceive as belonging to racial categories other than our own. These traumas have built up across centuries such that they have been welded into the fabric of society, households, neighborhoods, and other spaces.

The MCRC Project asks us to mourn the breaking apart. Mourning does not mean being crippled by sadness. Rather, mourning is an acknowledgment that this breaking apart, which even extended to families, ancestor-descendant, and friendships, was immoral and unjust. Mourning allows us to see the wounds and acknowledge the weight of centuries that people in each category carry around still today. When we recognize the lasting effects of the dividing, we can begin the work of healing.

The US has no language for talking about how our identities reflect the ways in which we were divided. MCRC offers that language. The US has no rituals for channeling this grief—no national monuments, no support groups, no memorial services. MCRC offers the tools to plan and carry out such rituals.