In a comment on the last thread on Rachel’s Tavern about how biracial children affect family approval of black/white relationships Dave of mulatto.org, made the following comment:
Professor Rachel Sullivan here gives a good textbook example of propaganda that facilitates white/black biracial subordination, by making the case that white/black biracials shouldn’t be considered a population with challenges distinct from blacks except for being more privileged.
The problem is that this is not what I said, but I do think this is an opportunity to talk about some of the politics of multiracial identity. For the record, my dissertation was not on how people of mixed race identify. It was about family approval of black/white relationships, and the reason children (biracial or not) were important was because the most common reason given for opposing an interracial relationship was the idea that the children would suffer. That belief was premised on the “tragic mulatto myth.” In this study, all of the people I interviewed were couples in Black/White interracial relationships. Only one of those people self identified as biracial. I did not interview the children of these couples, so I did not get their opinions.
However, for the record I do not agree with Dave’s position, which to me reads that “people who have one black parent and one white parent are a distinct racial group and should identify as biracial, mixed race, or mulatto, not as black.” (I’m not sure how he feels about people of mixed parentage identifying as white.) Here’s a quote from his comment:
It’s logically inconsistent to say (1) white/black biracials should be identified as black because most white people will only see and treat them as black, and (2) whites treat white/black biracials better than black people because they see them as different than dark-skinned black people. Although I don’t think this makes logical sense, I think it’s crafted to be anti-white/black biracial propaganda. The first part implies that white/black biracials shouldn’t have a distinct affinity identity to organize and advocate for ourselves, because we aren’t treated differently, and the second part implies that white/black biracials are less deserving of telescopic philanthropy (definition on wikipedia) than black people.
Dave’s belief is that people with mixed ancestry should organize their own groups, and they should see themselves as distinct from African Americans. I have no objection to organizing some multiracial groups, but I also thinking that many of the needs, concerns, and issues overlap with those of other people of color. Personally, I do not think it would be beneficial to try to create a new racial group akin to the “colored’ population in South Africa.
I am tired of multiracial activists who say people should have an option to choose their race, and then these same people get mad if people do not choose “biracial” or “multiracial.” People should have the choice, regardless of their color of phenotype, to define themselves racially. I also feel that these choices may change over time or circumstances; making racial identities fluid in some cases. I feel that both the one drop rule, and the assertion that people must choose biracial are racist because they encourage essentialist definitions of race and because they do not allow the freedom of self definition.
I also think that those in the multiracial movement who continuously attack African Americans in the name of asserting their own identity, as if it is completely distinct from the African American experience, are joining a racist bandwagon. It should be duly noted that some of the biggest supporters of multiracial categories have been conservative Republicans such as Newt Gingrich (Williams 2006) ((Williams, Kim M. Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America. University of Michigan Press, 2006.)) To me this is a big red light–why would conservative Republicans, who are not generally proponents of racial Civil Rights support such a cause? One possibility it that allowing people to check multiple boxes doesn’t really change the racial order much at all. It doesn’t require a realignment of economic resources; it’s not an affirmative action program that could expand opportunities for groups traditionally left out. Another more sinister theory is that Republicans’ support multiracial activists because they see it as an opportunity to promote the idea that the US is colorblind and racism is over. For some of these Republicans the next logical step is Proposition 54 in California, which would have put an end to all collection of racial data (Prop. 54 did not pass.). This is not likely the end that many multiracial activists want, and it is my sense that multiracial activists are being used by the right in some of the cases to help prove that “racism is over.”
My other problem with Dave’s comment is that he down plays the significance of lighter skin color and colorism. There is a long history in the US and most definitely in Latin America of people being advantaged because they are lighter. Many of the first African Americans allowed in to the middle class were those people who were lighter (and presumably of mixed race). Groups such as the blue vein societies limited membership to lighter and wealthier members. Sociologist Edward Telles’ award winning book Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil highlights how colorism has shaped social inequality in Brazil. Brazil is not different from most Latin American countries where lighter people have greater prestige, power, privileges, and wealth.
My questions to Dave are– Why can’t there be an alliance between multiracial activists and African American Civil Rights groups? Why do you think the “multiracial” experience is so utterly distinct from the black experience; are they not overlapping? When a person spends an inordinate amount of time saying they are not in some group, it makes me wonder what their problem with that group is. Why have some multiracial activists made it their personal business to distance themselves from African Americans (and vice versa)? To me it seems that both groups are fighting the same problem–racism. Or are they? I’m not going to give my own answer to all of these questions, but I think these are the types of questions multiracial activists and Black American activists need to ask themselves.
I believe people at a personal level should be able to choose their racial identities, and should not be forced to choose a monoracial identity (black), a biracial identity, a protean identity, or a multiracial identity. At the personal and structural levels, I think the primary goal should be ending racism, and in my view this can best be done by building alliances, and not by trying to create more racial categories or groups. One only need to look at a country like Haiti to see that creating a mixed race group (Creoles) does not lead to racial equality. While there is no doubt in my mind, people should be given the option to choose a mixed race identity, if we are going to end racism, adding a mixed race category will not likely solve this problem. The Latin American case shows us that getting rid of race and having a large mixed race population does not end racism, and I don’t think we can expect that here either. Economic restructuring, promoting anti-discrimination laws, providing equal opportunities, and engaging in other programs that help will destroy racism will likely do more to end racism, so we have to do more than add a “mark all that apply option.”
Finally, it is way past time to call a truce between multiracial activists and African American civil rights organizations. Dave’s comment continues to fan the flames of this argument. Identifying as biracial does not have to mean a person is saying he or she is not black, and identifying as black does not have to mean that a person is saying he or she is not biracial. People can have it both ways–they can be biracial and black or black and biracial, and if we can get beyond that sticking point we can go on to flesh out racism in its cultural and structural manifestations.
Great post, Rachel. I had no idea you were a professor; it’s not surprising, but news all the same :)
Loved the post.
I don’t think that ‘official’ designations will ever diminish racism. I think that an increasing number of people who don’t think of race X as alien will help. I also think that the rise of mixed race families are a sign that things are heading in the right direction. When my parents went to high school mixed race couples were a big deal. When I went to high school they weren’t a Big Deal (but for some reason were rare) In my younger sister’s class they weren’t rare. So I think they’ll help to whatever extent they make people view members of another race as basically similar to themselves. But that leads to another point. There’s a difference between belonging to a racial group and a cultural-racial group. A good example of this is some of the criticism that’s been directed against Barak Obama for not being ‘black enough’ or authentically black. I think that difference is the center of the conflict.
I’m biracial, although not black/white biracial. The very first thing I thought upon reading some of those arguments was, “why is this being set up as an either/or situation?” So I’m really glad that you strongly hit home in this post the idea that you can be both biracial AND black. Setting up exclusionary dichotomies is such an obvious pitfall, seems to me, and yet it happens all the time… even to people who identify as being “bi” and therefore between, or both, or mixed! Kind of ridiculous.
I think that the situation with multi/bi racial advocated and activists and black advocates and activists might be similar to what happened in the queer rights movement when bisexuality began to emerge more prominently as an identity. GL groups became GLB groups as they began to recognize bi people and advocate for their rights and needs as the both overlapped and did not overlap with GL rights and needs. There is significant overlap there which is why the groups are still working together. But GL people needed to first respect bisexuality as a legitimate identity and then get over the idea that bi people were somehow exploiting straight privilege.
Just a thought. It might be worth looking closer at how those two groups bridged their gaps and see if any of their methods apply in this case.
Rachel, is it or is it not true that just about any American citizen who either identifies themselves as black or is indentified by others as black is in fact likely to be multi-racial? Not to mention a heck of a lot of white people, for that matter.
Joe said, “When my parents went to high school mixed race couples were a big deal. When I went to high school they weren’t a Big Deal (but for some reason were rare) In my younger sister’s class they weren’t rare.”
I can’t tell you the exact stats on dating, but I know as of 2000 about 1/2% of all marriages were between a black person and a white person. That is roughly equivalent to 1 out of 200. By the time you add all possible racial combinations (including whites and Latinos, which is the most common) the total percentage of interracial marriages is 5%. Just over half of those marriages are whites and Latinos, who are not identified as a race by the Census.
If you look at cohabitation the percentage of cohabitations, that include a black/white opposite sex partner are around 1.8%.
So I’d say interracial marriage an cohabitation are still uncommon; more common than they once were, but generally uncommon.
Thanks defenstrated. :)
PS- I thought this was a good point joe, “There’s a difference between belonging to a racial group and a cultural-racial group. A good example of this is some of the criticism that’s been directed against Barak Obama for not being ‘black enough’ or authentically black. I think that difference is the center of the conflict.”
Les, the LGB example is a good parallel. I’m sure there are some important differences.
This got me thinking about the subsequent inclusion of the T(rans) in GLBT – except that my thoughts ended up somewhere different than that. I think a more apt parallel in that case might be the current growing pains within feminism as it stretches to include the interests of transwomen and, to an apparently less problematic extent, transmen. I’m thinking primarily of examples like “women-only spaces” that overlook the inherent discrimination of specifying “birth-women-” (or whatever)-only, as well as some longass threads on piny’s recent posts over at Feministe. It strikes me as the same sort of binary thinking as is behind resistance to acknowledging the overlap of multirace and ‘x’ race categories.
That tension between (some) feminists and trans activists is something I’ve been struggling to figure out for a while now, so please excuse the tangent while I kind of mull out-loud-through-my-fingers :)
The one at UC Santa Cruz is GLBTIQ — gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, intersexed, queer
mandolin, I thought the Q was for Questioning, but I could well be wrong. There’s sometimes an A for Allied thrown in there too.
I’ve seen “Q” as Queer or Questioning. I can’t speak to that particular group at UCSC.
I thought of a big difference between these two movements (LGBTQ and Multiracial). That ewould be the way the dominant group has reacted. I would venture to say that LG folks have received greater acceptance from outsiders than BT folks. On the other hand, I think multiracial people have received greater acceptance from the dominant group.
Just a thought..not well fleshed out but a thought…..
That’s a good point, Rachel (#12). Because of exactly what you said, I’m not sure that my comment can be extended beyond the history of LG treatment towards BT people and feminists’ treatment of transfolks in particular (i.e. not so much bisexuals, who for the purposes of feminism I think can be more aptly grouped with the L and G than the T). I wonder, though, how all that relates to your observation about the wider community’s attitudes.
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Author wrote:
“It should be duly noted that some of the biggest supporters of multiracial categories have been conservative Republicans such as Newt Gingrich (Williams 2006)1 To me this is a big red light–why would conservative Republicans, who are not generally proponents of racial Civil Rights support such a cause? One possibility it that allowing people to check multiple boxes doesn’t really change the racial order much at all. It doesn’t require a realignment of economic resources;”
One could infer from this you are opposed to a multiracial category simply because the “wrong” people (Republicans) support it. And how does this square with your opening remarks that “people should have the choice, regardless of their color of phenotype, to define themselves racially”?
Many Republicans support it simply on libertarian-individualist grounds. You should have included this as one of the possible reasons for their support for a multiracial category.
Also, assigning people to groups that are presumably undifferentiated hasn’t led to any meaningful realignment of resources to the least of those groups or changed the racial order either.
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Big Man,
I bring up the issue of Republican support because I think it is not genuine, and suspicious. If you want more info. on that you can read the Williams book, which lays it out in detail.
I also agree that Pan-ethnic categories do not necessarily lead to realignment of resources. My own view is that a general fixation on identity regardless of how it is define will not have a strong effect on racial equality.
Also I read your post on back in time–I just want make it clear that I do not oppose giving people the option to check multiple racial catgories. I do oppose a “multiracial box.”
I think Rachel mischaracterized my views, and now she’s apparently using her larger microphone to spread that mischaracterization both of me and of mulatto.org.
I encourage readers to visit http://www.mulatto.org and make their own determination.
I support self-identification for everyone and I’m against racism. However, I think that constructing race in such a way that emphasizes white and black can subordinate racially ambiguous/brown voices.
Thanks to those who remain open-minded about us and visit mulatto.org or the comments section of Rachel’s site to make their own determinations about what I really say and how I really say it.
Best,
Dave
Reading over this stuff, I’m not finding any quotes from Dave saying that black/white multiracial people should ONLY identify as multiracial/mulatto and not as black. I’m also not seeing any quotes from Rachel saying that they absolutely should identify as black, or that a multiracial checkbox should be eliminated–although she’s skeptical (probably rightly so) that it would be a huge stride towards ending racism. What are you guys even arguing about?
Honestly, I think movements by and for people of color (in general, not just people of african descent) do have some “housecleaning” to do with regards to how multiracial people are seen and treated and included. I’m calling it “housecleaning” as in, get your own house in order before you go out into the rest of the world. I absolutely agree with Rachel that we should be building alliances, we should all be fighting racism, and that you’ve totally been tricked by the system if you think the best thing to do is cordon yourself off from anyone else like you so that you can fight your own battles which somehow have nothing to do with anyone else’s. There’s often a lot of shame and anger involved in going down that route. However, right now in a lot of discussions about blackness, about people of color, about racism, the voices and experiences of multiracial people are silenced, along with those of a lot of other people who have complex and “different” lives.
To give an example, I belong to a local social justice organization, doing community organizing and advocacy and direct service work, that is led by and works for people of color in this area. We’re about 20% white and 80% everyone else, and we’ve done a lot of shared political analysis about racism and how to resist racism inside and outside our organization. However, at one point a bunch of the multiracial folks — including people of Asian, Latino, and African descent, and some people of more than one of those, part Native American, etc. — decided we needed to get together and have our own discussion group. We did this because we felt like the simplistic picture of racism (white people do this, people of color do this) was erasing a lot of the complex facts of our lives. And if you want to talk about identification, we all identified as people of color, as belonging to multiple heritages, and as multiracial. But the problem was that other people were talking as if we didn’t exist, or that the complexities of having white family members, of being read or treated differently in different contexts, of being on multiple sides of things, needed to be flattened out so that we could be shoehorned into the right place in this simple analysis of racism. We ended up also talking with people of color who had been raised outside the United States, and who had a VERY diferent picture of race and whiteness as a result, too. Immigrant experiences are often also brushed aside, subsumed, or vaguely hand-waved about without trying to develop a more complex analysis of how racism works both at home and internationally.
We need to be linking arms to fight racism, to fight powerful corporations and corrupt government institutions, all of that. But we also all need to get our houses in order, so that those linked arms are stronger — so that people aren’t being left out, told that their experiences don’t matter, that they should pretend to be like everyone else. This is happening, right now, even in the most progressive organizations. Multiracial people shouldn’t be treated like funny non-euclidean shapes that have to be sliced up or planed into smoothness.
As for census boxes, I tend to get really annoyed with anything that says “check only one.” For exactly the reasons Rachel says at the end of the article. But if I do have to pick only one, I usually can’t bring myself to check “other” or “multiracial” even though it feels the most accurate. It doesn’t say anything at all, if you can’t be more specific than that, right? You just get put in the “miscellaneous” pile. It’s like a wasted vote. So I check Asian and swallow my multiracial pride, for a moment. But I shouldn’t have to do that.
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Holly,
I would add a couple things. If you read through Dave’s comments (not just the recent ones, but also the ones he posts a couple times a year on my site and at mullato.org), he consistently argues that black/white biracial people should build alliances with other brown people, including Latinos, East Indians, and Middle Easterners. Dave’s argument reads that he feels black/white people should be allied with everyone but blacks (and I also suspect whites). That troubles me. I feel that he’s is spending a great deal of time distancing himself from blackness. In the process of doing this, he is insulting those people with mixed parentage who choose singular racial identities.
Moreover, by promoting alliances with other groups and very purposely not with blacks Dave has ignored the long multiracial history of African Americans. Most African Americans are mixed race people. People of mixed black/white ancestry have existed for hundreds of years and have generally been welcomed as part of the black community.
Dave ignores that history, and that troubles me. Plus the term mulatto is also troubling; it’s akin to calling oneself a colored person, a Negro, or a Chinaman. It’s not really a contemporary term.
I think you made several important points about varieties of racial identities and ideologies in this paragraph:
I would extend it even further and say that individual people who identify singularly can also live close to the colorlinein ways that make them have less essentialist ways of acting. And to me that seems to be the heart of your point here…racial experiences are varied based on personal and cultural experiences.
That was the heart of my point, and I think it has to be born out in how we use language too. So for instance, why worry about what words people are choosing to talk about themselves? Maybe I’m missing something here, and I do know some about the history of the word mulatto, but if people who formerly would have been labeled that want to reclaim the word as something that they feel describes their identity, why object? I describe myself as a mutt or a mongrel (not as much historical connotation there, to be sure) and also as queer, which until a couple decades ago was a slur with a very long history of derogation. “Not really a contemporary term” is what you make of it.
I’m also curious,
“…individual people who identify singularly can also live close to the colorlinein ways that make them have less essentialist ways of acting.”
Less essentialist than what? I’m not sure who’s being essentialist here since nobody seems to be claiming that black/white multiracial people MUST identify as multiracial and not black, or MUST identify as black and not multiracial. That would be essentializing. Hmm… one other thing that occurs to me, I agree that multiracial folks who try to distance themselves from a huge chunk of their heritage by insisting on “not being black” at all is a problematic trend that erases a lot of history and heritage and basis for community. Is it also problematic that there are multiracial folks who identify singularly (as just “black” for instance) and don’t want to acknowledge the fact that their heritage is mixed, multiracial, comes from many different places, etc? Or does that just go in one direction, and why? For instance, if there was more discussion about the fact that yeah, most African-Americans who aren’t recent immigrants are multiracial. Does that *necessarily* dissolve black identity somehow to have both sides of that coin?
Insisting that black/white multiracial people somehow have more in common with other brown people than with blacks in their own culture, on the other hand, just sounds like a straightforward case of anti-black racism. But this is another thing that shouldn’t be either/or, right? There are a lot of growing, strengthening movements that are broadly inclusive of many people of color. And it’s not like you have to choose between that or a more specific community.
Why not just self-identify as you please, and other than that, mind your own business?
It’s crazy, but it just might work.
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Holly said, “Less essentialist than what? I’m not sure who’s being essentialist here since nobody seems to be claiming that black/white multiracial people MUST identify as multiracial and not black, or MUST identify as black and not multiracial.”
I should have specified less than those people who you were organizing with, who failed to see how many of the mixed race people were positioned in the group.
Holly said, “For instance, if there was more discussion about the fact that yeah, most African-Americans who aren’t recent immigrants are multiracial. Does that *necessarily* dissolve black identity somehow to have both sides of that coin?”
Yes, it doesn’t have to, and I have no idea how Dave feels about that.
Holly said, “Insisting that black/white multiracial people somehow have more in common with other brown people than with blacks in their own culture, on the other hand, just sounds like a straightforward case of anti-black racism.”
This is exactly what I feel like everytime I read Dave’s comments, and I think that’s what bothers me so much about his viewpoint.
As I understand it, part of this controversy is political, in that black leaders are fearful that if a lot of people identify as mixed-race this will dilute the black movement in various ways.
Nevertheless your point is a good one. Why should there be coercion in this matter? Isn’t this a question for each individual to figure out?
I don’t think it’s any more racist than insisting that black/white multiracial people ought to be considered ‘black’ for all intents and purposes. As Rachel points out, that’s just the one drop rule redux.
I think Susan and Robert’s question makes a lot of sense. Why not just leave self-identification to the individual?
Myca,
I think you are missing some important points here. Let me start with this point, “I don’t think it’s any more racist than insisting that black/white multiracial people ought to be considered ‘black’ for all intents and purposes.”
While I agree with you here, this is not what Holly is responding too. She is responding to the ideology that a black/white person is assumed to have more in common groups that he or she may have no personal connection to. If my husband who is black (and Nigerian) and I (white American) have a child, and we raise that child that child presumably would have some connection to black people in particular Nigerian and African American culture (as well as my culture). If this child grows up and decides that he or she has nothing in common with this African Americans or Nigerians, does not want to be labled as such, and would rather build coalitions with other racial/ethnic minority groups, that would be troubling to me. Because it does signal a potential rejection of one’s ancestry and parentage. Moreover, people of mixed race have generally been integrated in the African American community, and have no been accepted by the white comunity due to the one drop rule. Given this it further arouses suspicion as to why one would reject a community that has nurtured and accepted mixed race people.
Of course, I am generalizing here, and there are exceptions, but I think most African Americans have a reason to be suspect when a person says “I’m not black; I’m biracial.” On the other hand, I also think those same African Americans would not be suspect if the same person said, “I’m biracial, and I’m black.”
Now if the the same person said I’m white…that would open up an even bigger can of worms.
As Rachel points out, that’s just the one drop rule redux.
Myca said, “Why not just leave self-identification to the individual?”
Yeah, I think this is fair. However, we live in a world where identities take on political and social significance, which is why these things are so hotly contested. Many African Americans were worried that the ability to check more than one box was going to dilute political power among blacks, which was a subtext for some Black groups opposing a multiracial category. In the end, that didn’t happen because very few people of African desent marked multiple racial categories.
In my view here, the greater issue (in term of Black, Asian, Latino, American Indian political power) was not whether or not there was a box to check, but what would be done with the multiracial population after such boxes were checked. In the end many of their reports have listed the multiracial population as one racial group, so Asian/White, Black/White, White/American Indian, Black/Asian, etc. were all grouped together in Census data, and many subsequent sociological studies. If this continues for the long term, then it may lead to the creation of “multiracial” as a race in and of itself. I’m not so sure that is better or worse.
I was browsing and came across this excellent blog entry. I agree completely. I am the daughter of a Black and Jewish Mom and Italian Dad. As a light-skinned Black, I am darn proud of my African heritage. I fully support African-American civil rights groups, such as the NAACP. For years, they provided desperately needed advocacy for ALL people of color, regardless of the trivialities of their various complexions. We people of Black descent all suffered tremendously under the dictatorship of Jim Crow society instituted and fiercely defended by the White male power structure in this nation. It didn’t matter to White people, by and large, whether a person of color was yellow, “caramel”, or brown–if they were known to be Black, they were refused to be fully free and equal Americans. It is by and large a myth that light-skinned people of color receive so very many more privileges than darker-skinned people of color–my personal experience and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of other light-skinned folk can attest to that. My mother and I are both light yet we go through vicious White racism on a daily basis. Our skin tones do not spare us that. I am proud of descending from the Black community-I’m proud of being able to say that I am part African. I am a person of color, of mixed heritage, and will support Black organizations and community for the rest of my life. Thank you for your fascinating post and sharing of information on this subject!
I agree completely. I support the multiracial movement, but it is not going to end racism as many in the movement wish it would do. Hate comes from the heart and everyone is going to have to look in their own heart before racism ends.