Post by blackviking on Jun 15, 2006 19:50:49 GMT -5
It ain't easy being brown
A growing multiracial movement struggles to redefine race
By Francis Wardle
A growing multiracial movement struggles to redefine race
By Francis Wardle
"Do... you... s-p-e-a-k...
E-n-glish?" the flight attendant asked my son in a loud voice. He was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte, in Brazil. She wanted to know if he spoke English, because he looks like the typical Brazilian-medium, athletic build, brown skin, dark hair and dark eyes.
But he's not Brazilian.
He's American, and what most people in this country call black. He's black, or African American, even though his father is white. In this country we have the one drop rule-one drop of black blood makes one black.
Black blood is very strong stuff.
But in Brazil you are considered mixed -- what they term 'brown.' Brown is the largest government category in Brazil, with more than 60 percent of the population comprising the multiracial community. Recently a Brazilian college student attended Louisiana State University. A typical Brazilian, he was constantly asked by other students and professors, "What are you, anyway? Hispanic, Native American, African American?"
"Brazilian," he kept replying, puzzled at their puzzlement.
We are absolutely fixated on racial and ethnic labels in this country. This is particularly perplexing now that we know all people are, biologically, 99 percent the same. There simply is no biological difference: Racial categories are social and political constructs, maintained by society.
But in this society, they are set in stone.
Baby boom
Census categories are the way we officially catalogue our racial groups. Based on these categories, the government creates forms for schools, and all other state and federal programs. This is a state mandated system to categorize and sort Americans. Ironically, absolute support of this system comes from the very groups one would expect to least trust the government -- traditional minority groups. You'd think they'd be the first to challenge the system; but they are its strongest advocates.
The multiracial movement discovered this when its members pressured the Census Bureau to include a multiracial category. Chief opposition came from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), La Rasa and Asian advocacy groups. As Eric Rodriguez of the National Council of La Rasa said on this issue, "the census has a distinct purpose to collect broad data on populations... It's not there for collecting people's identity." (Actually, the only constitutional function of the census is to determine the number of representatives from each state, based on raw population data of one person, one vote).
Despite pressure from the multiracial movement, the 2000 census went forward without a multiracial category. However, it did "allow" people to select more than one racial box. It's still not clear how this information will be sorted. Many believe the Census Bureau will go back to the one drop rule, and classify all those with any black heritage as black.
Pressure to include a multiracial category on the census came from the rapidly growing number of multiracial people in this country, and a variety of groups that support them. Since 1989, 100,000 biracial (black/white) babies have been born each year. More than a million biracial babies have been born since then. While the number of monoracial babies has increased 15 percent since the 1970s, the number of multiracial babies has increased 260 percent. According to Princeton University, some 16.5 million multiracial and multiethnic people call this country home.
But, according to our government, this population is zero.
This is because of the one-drop rule. When a parent registers her child in Head Start, the public school system or other programs, the parent must select one of the five census categories for her child. If she refuses, at best she will be accused of being uptight about her child's identity, and at worst she'll be told her child cannot be admitted. When a child is in middle and high school, the child must fill out these forms. And she must select the identity of one of her parents -- almost always her minority parent (thus effectively denying half her heritage), or check "other." Ever met a self-identified "other"?
It's not easy being brown
We were visiting my friend Sonny, at the Taos Pueblo. Sonny's my age. He has long, dark hair in two neat braids; he's handsome, with high-cheeks, a dark face and a wonderful smile. As we caught up on the latest news with him, in the corner of my eye I glanced tourists taking pictures of local kids playing among the adobe ovens -- a typical scene at the Pueblo. I continued talking to Sonny, but then suddenly realized the "Indian" child being photographed was one of my own.
When Eirlys was young she looked like a "typical" Indian child. In fact, my boss, after seeing a picture of her on my office wall, exclaimed, "I didn't know you adopted an Indian child." Eirlys got her Native American genes (Choctaw and Chickasaw) from my wife. Like many African Americans, my wife's heritage includes Native American, Asian and white, as well as African. But in our monoracial system, she's black. (She refuses to call herself African American.)
As parents of four biracial children, my wife and I have struggled with all the issues parents in today's society must face. But we have had an additional obstacle-trying to raise our children to feel positive about their heritage in a society where they are, at best, invisible, and at worst, assumed to have all sorts of problems.
"What about the children?" is the most common argument against interracial marriage today. As a society we still believe a biracial child can't grow up normal. Some years ago I took a call from the producer of a children's talk show on Nickelodeon. They were planning a show on biracial children. The producer talked to my children.
"Your children are wonderful... They're intelligent, articulate and match the demographics of our show."
"Great," I replied.
"But we can't use them for the show..."
"Why not?" I asked, in mock surprise, knowing full well her reason.
"Because they don't have any problems."
I have talked to producers of the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Shirly Show (Canada), and many other talk shows. All were looking for an "expert" to testify to the problems biracial children face. I'm considered an expert by some. But, when I say biracial and multiracial children can be raised to be healthy and happy, the phone clicks dead.
Wolf in sheep's clothing
Raising healthy, happy children in a country so polarized by race, racial categories, and racial labels, is difficult. What's astonishing about the resistance we've met is the nature of the players it comes from. It's not from white racists, ignorant poor whites or conservatives. Rather, we get static from the academic community, schools, minority groups and white liberals.
This was the biggest surprise to me-a died-in-the-wool liberal once called "left of Castro" by my boss.
A central issue for all these groups is a biracial child's identity. They insist mixed-race children belong to the minority group of the parent of color, period, end of discussion. My wife and I insist -- as does much of the multiracial movement -- that our children are individuals made up of the collective genetic and cultural heritage of both families, and extended families. Thus my children are African American, Native American, English, Irish and Asian.
This insistence of a total heritage for multiracial children challenges the one-drop rule. But it challenges much more: The assumption and need for our society to be clearly divided into distinct, non-overlapping, homogeneous racial and ethnic groups.
As Hettie Jones, the white mother of two biracial children wrote in Essence magazine, "my mixed-race children were black -- on the street, in the school, in America." This is the perennial argument against raising our children as multiracial: "Society sees them as black, so they are black."
And then there all the myths, including: Our multiracial children are weak, they are confused, they are "marginal," and they are accepted and embraced by the black community, while totally rejected by the white community.
But most importantly, raising mixed-race children as biracial blurs the lines between the races; the battle lines between opposing forces, the tension between black rage and white hatred.
Ebony and ivory
Biracial children are products of white and black people who actually love each other. This idea is inconceivable to many. As the black author J. Adams declares in an article in the New York Times Magazine, "(whites) perceive us only when they're looking down their noses or recoiling in fear or disgust." Clearly people who believe this cannot comprehend that blacks and whites could engage in equal, loving relationships.
But, more importantly, liberals and minority groups don't want to destroy these neat, exclusive groups. They gain and maintain political power by keeping the groups apart. Thus, biracial children must accept the label and identity of their minority parent, to maintain the model of oppressed and oppressor, hated and hater.
So in the struggle to raise healthy biracial children, my wife and I could not count on groups we assumed would help us.
Like so many interracial families, we gained support and advice from a growing multiracial movement. Interracial families across the country have formed support groups, held conferences, developed websites, and found other ways to support each other, challenge our society's narrow view of mixed-race children, and raise healthy children in a societal and institutional vacuum.
While those opposed to acknowledging a fully multiracial identity have traditional avenues, such as the New York Times, Essence, Ebony, multicultural textbooks, and all the talk shows that exhibit us as freaks to the nation, we rely on newsletters, occasional publications and the Internet.
Schools don't know what to do with our children. To schools, our kids don't exist. Books, activities and school celebrations that focus on minority contributions either fully ignore our children, or force them to select the minority parent as their only heritage and identity.
Loyalty and hostility
Marta is a good friend. She is biracial, black and Hispanic. She grew up in Puerto Rico, where she struggled to overcome a racist society that preferred light skinned children, and ignored people of mixed heritage. Today she's a college professor actively involved in diversity issues. But her colleagues constantly harass her. Her Latina sisters cannot understand her concern for African American students, and view this as a weakness to the cause. When her African American sisters discovered she speaks Spanish, they accused her of disloyalty.
Mixed-race people are caught in no-man's land. Not simply a land between whites and blacks -- two groups the politically correct academicians and "leaders" insist on keeping further and further apart -- but the no-man's land of cultural and racial diversity. As minority groups continue to crystalize ways to define their unique identity -- often at the expense of other groups -- mixed-race people who are proud of their heritage are seen as embarrassments. If whites and blacks are so different, how can someone be proudly black and white?
This dilemma can be easily seen in the context of the recent elections, where blacks who voted Republican are considered unfaithful to their race. We have created this neat concept of group belonging, insistence that each member subscribe to the group's ethos. If a Hispanic does not support bilingual education, she's really not Hispanic; if a black person is not supportive of affirmative action, he's an Uncle Tom. And if one is married to someone from another group, and raises his child with some of that group's heritage, he has clearly rejected any claim to loyalty and belonging.
Diversity is a mantra in this society, especially in the enlightened academic and liberal circles that feel empowered to make our society less racist and more equitable. And this is great. The problem is how we define diversity. The word has been taken over by the field of sociology. It's about groups. We no longer care about individuals. Personal diversity exists only when someone represents the stereotypical characteristics and attitudes of the group. I just read an article in a professional journal correctly advocating the need for schools to be sensitive to students and families from Tibet. But the entire piece focused on adding this group to our definition of diversity.
Our view of diversity has no place for someone who embraces or straddles more than one traditional racial or ethnic group (or, for that matter, challenges any part of the ethos of a group). The diversity movement has no place in it for children and people who are truly multicultural and multiethnic.
Further, our view of diversity expects the individual to adapt to the group. The sociological view of society is that groups of people produce change, not individuals (the psychological view). Thus, to support change of society for your group, one must adhere to the group's political agenda. To challenge that agenda weakens the group's ability to produce change: to make society less racist. Thus, those who challenge their group's philosophy are, in essence, siding with the enemy.
Couples under fire
It's still totally acceptable to openly criticize interracial couples. Bill Cosby does in his latest book. Black men are accused of marrying, "a trophy" -- the ideal beauty queen -- blond and blue eyed, because they're (black men) so insecure. But these assumptions are not limited to black men. Black women who marry white men are criticized for wanting "to get ahead." The stereotypes are endless.
Dismissing for a minute all the other reasons people marry -- religion, money, status, power, position, love -- the disheartening thing is the acceptance and support of this open criticism.
I sat in the middle of a dark studio in Denver, with a spotlight in my eyes and an ear piece in my ear. The producer from a public TV station in L.A. cued me on the program, then the program began. I could not see anything, but could hear the dialogue in my ear. The first guest was a black social worker who declared angry opposition to interracial couples and families. I was infuriated! He directly attacked me and my family. Before I agreed to be a guest on this show, I had been assured this kind of hatred would not be allowed.
Parents who insist on raising their children as proudly biracial are accused of setting them up to fail in a racist society, or worse. The black parent is accused of being disloyal to her race, group and political cause; the white parent of wanting her child to be called biracial, because she supposedly objects to the idea of having black children.
Recently, I attempted to present a session at a state-wide mental health conference in Columbus, Ohio. My topic was how to work with biracial and multiracial adolescents in counseling situations. But I never got to my presentation. The African American participants protested the idea of looking at these children as any different from black adolescents. One participant seemed to express the opinion of the others.
"The only reason we are now even considering these children biracial, instead of black, is because their white mothers don't want their children to be black," I was told. "When black women were forced to have biracial babies of white slave owners, they were automatically considered black." (While the numbers of white women/black men interracial families still is more than black women/white men, there has been a strong shift in recent years).
What are you, anyway?
"Do you speak Spanish?" the middle-aged white stranger asked my college daughter at a 7-11 in Ft. Collins.
"No," my daughter responded, her dark hair framing her "ethnic" looking, brown face. "Why?" she continued, almost instinctively, as she paid for her candy at the counter, and wondered, perplexed.
"Your parents should be ashamed for not teaching you Spanish," responded the women in self-righteous indignation, not bothering to answer my daughter's questions. "Don't they know it's important for Hispanic children to know their language, and to preserve their culture?"
My daughter's second language is French. But, based on her brown skin, long black hair, ethnic features and small stature, this lady automatically, and with apparently no hesitation, placed her in the Hispanic category. Furthermore, she felt free to impose her view of diversity onto my daughter.
The most frequent question heard by mixed-race children is, "Well, what are you, anyway?" While this most naturally comes from their peers, it's also asked in many different ways by adults, especially teachers, counselors, psychologists and mental health experts.
As these children move up into middle and high school, they're challenged regarding their identity. "You are not black enough"; "You think you are better than us, because your mother is white"; "You are not Hispanic, you are black, because of your black father."
These challenges are often accompanied by direct harassment, both for being multiracial, and because of overt racism within each group.
But mixed-race children report an upside, as well. They claim to be able to move between the isolated racial and ethnic groups in school; they have a variety of friends from a variety of backgrounds; they are comfortable with all sorts of people; they are truly diverse and multicultural.
And mixed-race adults have reported the same phenomena: an ease at moving between groups, developing friends across hardening racial lines; an ability to select friends of different backgrounds; and an ability to understand a range of cultural backgrounds and unique experiences.
I'm not black?
Mr. Fish's daughter is black. Her boyfriend, while darker, is not black. Further, Mr. Fish's daughter's race changes from black to brown, based on an airline flight. This state of affairs was reported in a 1995 article published in Psychology Today.
As you may have guessed, Mr. Fish's daughter is a American biracial women; her fiancé is Brazilian. And yes, when she got on a plane in the U.S. she was black; when she got off in Rio, she was not. In truth, she's biracial. And in a country so obsessed with race, it's time our government -- and the political powers that control it -- take note of our huge and growing multi-racial population that's neither black nor white.
www.webcom.com/intvoice/wardle.html
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Black Viking's Commentary...[/i]
I don't agree with everything this guy says, but he does make a lot of very good points.