Multiracial Myths and The Multiracial Advocate
The article below appeared in The Seattle Times yesterday, which is usually one of the more credible
newspapers in the country. Not this time. A columnist interviewed an academic,
who apparently included me in a book she wrote, although she never spoke to me,
so they apparently both are guilty of not fact-checking. The author said I had
my young son testify before Congress, so that he did not have to identify as
black. Huh?! Oh that crazy old
misinformed notion.
We testified so that people who wanted to recognize their entire heritage could do so. Yes, we were asking the government to give up
that old one-drop rule once and for all. The author apparently wants to hold on
to it, since she refers to herself as a mixed-race African American, which says
to me that she is still not willing to give up the one-drop rule that she
accuses me of perpetuating. As far as the columnist goes, he just needs to be
replaced with a real journalist.
The academics and their vocal mouthpieces really do need
to get a new rant. If they could only give up old tales about white mothers of
multiracial children, perhaps they could see reality.-Susan Grahamhicsaystome that she is still not willing to give up the one-drop rule that she
accuses me of perpetuating. As far as the columnist goes, he just needs to be
replaced with a real journalist.
he mics and their vocal mouthpieces really do need
to get a new . If they could only give up old tales about white women of
multiracial children, perhaps they could see reality.
Mixed race in a world not yet post-racial
The increase in the nation’s mixed-racepopulation is not a sign that the U.S. is post-racial.
Seattle Times staff columnist
Populations of humans have always been mixing genes, but we still have trouble with the concept.
Two recent books by University of Washington professors address what
mixed means in America, particularly examining the period between the
Census Bureau’s decision in the late 1990s to allow people, beginning in
2000, to choose more than one race, and the election of Barack Obama in
2008. Both books say something about how mixed race as a category is
sometimes used to further marginalize African Americans.
“
Troubling the Family:
The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism,” by Habiba
Ibrahim, an assistant professor of English, is written largely for an
academic audience.
“
Transcending Blackness:
From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial,” is
written by Ralina Joseph, associate professor in the Department of
Communications.
Both are important works, but today I’m going to focus on Joseph’s
book, which is also scholarly, but written with the general reader in
mind.
We’re not post-racial yet, Joseph told me when we talked over coffee
this week, and more mixing isn’t getting us there, because we haven’t
shaken old ways of categorizing people. The combination of black and
white, weighted with centuries of racism, raises the most issues.
Joseph noted the census change was most notably championed by Susan
Graham, a white mother who wanted her son to be able to mark down
multiracial, and, Joseph said, “had her young son testify before
Congress, so that he did not have to identify as black.”
Joseph said a mother could correctly assume being black would make
life more difficult for her child. She noted the volumes of data that
show how deeply race affects life chances in America.
She mentioned the investigation of Seattle Public Schools’
disproportionately heavy suspensions and expulsions of black students.
But seeing multiracial as a separate category, a way of transcending
blackness, is not a step forward, and it isn’t racially neutral, Joseph
said. It is, instead, a new use of old concepts, an affirmation that
blackness is something to escape.
Embracing all parts of a mixed heritage is a more positive act than
migrating to a new category. Joseph calls herself a mixed-race African
American. “One can’t think about one’s own identity choices without
thinking about power realities.”
In the book, she writes that mixing generated the first race laws.
The first anti-miscegenation law was passed in Maryland in 1661 as a
response to black and white and Native-American pairings, and it was all
about power. It was the beginning of laws that set white people apart,
and above, others across the Colonies.
And, as the institution of slavery grew, white men could have sex
with enslaved black women — but without marriage, the children who
resulted inherited no land, no money, no power.
The African-American community has long been multiracial, ranging
from milky skin and green eyes to deep chocolate, but to be counted as
white still requires “purity.” It’s a protected status.
Joseph’s parents were married in Washington, D.C., in 1972, then
lived in Virginia. The Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia
had struck down laws against black-white marriages only five years
before.
The parents never talked with their children about race. Joseph
looked for images of people like herself in magazines and on television.
In the book, she examines portrayals of mixed-race black people in
books, magazines, television and other media, and finds that often two
old patterns recur.
In one pattern, the mixed person, usually a woman, is troubled,
torn, wild. She analyzes the sad girl in the movie “Mixing Nia,” and
Jennifer Beals’ bad-girl character on “The L Word.”
In the other pattern, the multiracial person is seen as elevated
above stereotypes about blackness. That “exceptional multiracial”
category would include Tiger Woods before his fall and President Obama,
she said. The “exceptional multiracial” is enough proof for some people
that we have arrived at a post-racial time, or that with a little more
mixing we soon will.
We haven’t, but Joseph sees some bright spots in the portrayal of
mixed-race black people, and black people in general, especially because
of the opportunities online media offer.
She mentioned the comedy duo
Key & Peele, and the Web show “
Totally Biased,”
whose star W. Kamau Bell exhibits a type of black masculinity we don’t
often see in other media. He’s a big man with an Afro, a white wife and a
mixed child, and who is anti-homophobic and acknowledges America’s rich
diversity. Joseph also likes the Web series,
“The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl.”
Maybe when her two children grow up, they won’t have to look so hard for positive reflections of their reality.
Source: The Seattle Times/Jerry Large
"I had an awesome relationship with my dad, because it was so honest, so pure." — Rain Pryor
Susan Graham says: