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.

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.”

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?

Why not just self-identify as you please, and other than that, mind your own business?

It’s crazy, but it just might work.

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?

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.

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.

It’s crazy, but it just might work.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.