Who Gets Told They're Not REALLY Black
Aug. 10th, 2007 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhAck! I'm behind! So I'm letting things stay up and then backdating them for posterity as though I did them actually on time. I'm not sure this is really about racism per se, except around the edges, but it's what I think about when given this prompt.
This Is Dedicated to That One Black Kid, comic by Keith Knight
Monday: who lives in that tiny ass town off the highway, in the middle of nowhere
Tuesday: who was not into hip hop in high school
Wednesday: who gets used as the reason why someone isn't a racist
Thursday: with hair people want to touch all the time
In 1980, the summer I turned 11, we got a census form in the mail, and being that I was a sort of nerdy and hyperorganized little kid and the form was rather long, my mother gave it to me to fill out. There were spaces for all sorts of things about our house and our family, but up at the front there was an exhaustive list of racial categories. My white adoptive parents had always merely told me that I had one black birth parent and one white birth parent and we usually referred to it as "mixed," but that day, my mother pointed to a word on the census form and said, "that's what you are, Clio."
The word was, of course, mulatto. I remember thinking that it sounded sort of odd, mostly because it didn't seem to come from anywhere. It didn't describe a place, like French or Italian or even the word we still used for Asians then, Oriental; nor was it a color like black or white or red. And I thought, well, I guess that's what I am. Huh.
Years later I learned the word "biracial" and decided I liked it better. I even went, briefly, to a discussion group for fellow biracial students at my college. But one of the students really lit into me about my white parents and how they must have felt very racist toward me and that interracial relationships are always about power (this seemed to be more of a point about her own parents). After, the moderators of the meeting apologized to me and hoped that I'd come back, but I didn't; I didn't really know how to talk about race yet, didn't have enough confidence to be able to know what I was willing to defend and what I wasn't.
Which is to say, we all learn as we go.
I was in my doctor's office some time after I'd moved to New York, in the mid-90s, and saw that Ebony had an article about biracial stars such as Tiger Woods, Mariah Carey and Halle Berry. But the article was very critical of all of the biracial stars who had not followed the centuries-old tradition of identifying black, talking about Tiger and Mariah as though they thought they were "passing" for something other than black. To my eyes they were openly acknowledging all of their racial heritage, a position that felt comfortable to me, but which I'd never really thought was possible given the internal politics of the black community. I found the article upsetting, especially as it pinged my own fears of not being "black enough," and stopped thinking about the whole mess for a while.
Leading into the 2000 census, a movement of biracial Americans (and, often, their parents) lobbied to put mixed-race as a category. Some in the black community were strongly against this, fearing that a decline in numbers would lead to a decline in the small amount of power they had, and while I understood that reality in a country with a two-party system, I was all for it. I'd always felt more comfortable identifying as biracial. Even without the whole growing up in the sticks with white parents bit, saying I was "black" felt like a lie, like something I hadn't earned, didn't deserve.
These days, the numbers of biracial-identified folks is swelling. Sometimes I wonder if it's because identity politics seems to have taken us about as far as it can, and we need to find a new way to talk about rights and responsibilities in a multi-everything society. Of course it's also a factor of there just being more biracial people around because there are more interracial relationships; hell, they've only been legal for 40 years.
I can't tell if the new confidence that I have now in my own racial identity has come with age, or with cultural shifts, or with living in a large city, or with the greater visibility and viability of being "biracial". I know that I feel more in common, at times, with friends who are biracial than those who are black, and I think that's probably okay.
I'm rethinking that "tragic mulatto" icon, though. Maybe I'll cross out the tragic and the mulatto and put in "triumphant biracial."
This Is Dedicated to That One Black Kid, comic by Keith Knight
Monday: who lives in that tiny ass town off the highway, in the middle of nowhere
Tuesday: who was not into hip hop in high school
Wednesday: who gets used as the reason why someone isn't a racist
Thursday: with hair people want to touch all the time
In 1980, the summer I turned 11, we got a census form in the mail, and being that I was a sort of nerdy and hyperorganized little kid and the form was rather long, my mother gave it to me to fill out. There were spaces for all sorts of things about our house and our family, but up at the front there was an exhaustive list of racial categories. My white adoptive parents had always merely told me that I had one black birth parent and one white birth parent and we usually referred to it as "mixed," but that day, my mother pointed to a word on the census form and said, "that's what you are, Clio."
The word was, of course, mulatto. I remember thinking that it sounded sort of odd, mostly because it didn't seem to come from anywhere. It didn't describe a place, like French or Italian or even the word we still used for Asians then, Oriental; nor was it a color like black or white or red. And I thought, well, I guess that's what I am. Huh.
Years later I learned the word "biracial" and decided I liked it better. I even went, briefly, to a discussion group for fellow biracial students at my college. But one of the students really lit into me about my white parents and how they must have felt very racist toward me and that interracial relationships are always about power (this seemed to be more of a point about her own parents). After, the moderators of the meeting apologized to me and hoped that I'd come back, but I didn't; I didn't really know how to talk about race yet, didn't have enough confidence to be able to know what I was willing to defend and what I wasn't.
Which is to say, we all learn as we go.
I was in my doctor's office some time after I'd moved to New York, in the mid-90s, and saw that Ebony had an article about biracial stars such as Tiger Woods, Mariah Carey and Halle Berry. But the article was very critical of all of the biracial stars who had not followed the centuries-old tradition of identifying black, talking about Tiger and Mariah as though they thought they were "passing" for something other than black. To my eyes they were openly acknowledging all of their racial heritage, a position that felt comfortable to me, but which I'd never really thought was possible given the internal politics of the black community. I found the article upsetting, especially as it pinged my own fears of not being "black enough," and stopped thinking about the whole mess for a while.
Leading into the 2000 census, a movement of biracial Americans (and, often, their parents) lobbied to put mixed-race as a category. Some in the black community were strongly against this, fearing that a decline in numbers would lead to a decline in the small amount of power they had, and while I understood that reality in a country with a two-party system, I was all for it. I'd always felt more comfortable identifying as biracial. Even without the whole growing up in the sticks with white parents bit, saying I was "black" felt like a lie, like something I hadn't earned, didn't deserve.
These days, the numbers of biracial-identified folks is swelling. Sometimes I wonder if it's because identity politics seems to have taken us about as far as it can, and we need to find a new way to talk about rights and responsibilities in a multi-everything society. Of course it's also a factor of there just being more biracial people around because there are more interracial relationships; hell, they've only been legal for 40 years.
I can't tell if the new confidence that I have now in my own racial identity has come with age, or with cultural shifts, or with living in a large city, or with the greater visibility and viability of being "biracial". I know that I feel more in common, at times, with friends who are biracial than those who are black, and I think that's probably okay.
I'm rethinking that "tragic mulatto" icon, though. Maybe I'll cross out the tragic and the mulatto and put in "triumphant biracial."
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 03:36 am (UTC)I really like that idea. ♥
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 03:47 am (UTC)I like that and I think triumphant is a great word for describing who you are all around.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 04:27 am (UTC)I've found your posts on racism interesting and they've got me thinking about things I've never put much time or energy into considering. It makes me wonder if we'll ever live in a truly post-racism world where people like Wayne Brady will be judged just for who they are and not for the color of their skin.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 07:19 am (UTC)(Though if one's counting, Tiger Woods is quad, isn't he? African American, Thai, Chinese, Native American, and white European? I'm supposed to go to sleep, not look this up, but that's what I recall.)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-13 12:56 am (UTC)I love that!
Also, thanks so much for all your posts; I've really loved reading them.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 04:34 pm (UTC)