The Multiracial Experience

Racial Borders as the New Frontier

Maria P. P. Root

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9781506319490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How might a multiracial concept dismantle our negative construction of race? How do we redefine `ethnicity' when `race' is less central to the definition? The Multiracial Experience challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race using the multiracial experience of individuals as a tool for examining these and other questions. Each contribution opens with a personal sketch of the multiracial experience. Topics explored in the book include: the differences between race and ethnicity; colour, gender and sexuality in a multiracial context; and ethnicity and its role in identity formation.

PART I

Human Rights

1

A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People

MARIA P. P. ROOT

Countless number of times I have fragmented and fractionalized myself in order to make the other more comfortable in deciphering my behavior, my words, my loyalties, my choice of friends, my appearance, my parents, and so on. And given my multiethnic history, it was hard to keep track of all the fractions, to make them add up to one whole. It took me over 30 years to realize that fragmenting myself seldom served a purpose other than to preserve the delusions this country has created around race.

Reciting the fractions to the other was the ultimate act of buying into the mechanics of racism in this country. Once I realized this, I could ask myself other questions. How exactly does a person be one fourth, one eighth, or one half something? To fragment myself and others, “she is one half Chinese and one half white,” or “he is one quarter Native, one quarter African American, and one half Spanish” was to unquestioningly be deployed to operate the machinery that disenfranchised myself, my family, my friends, and others I was yet to meet.

At some deep psychological level, the mechanics of oppression derive from insecurities. When oppression is directed at whole groups of people, the mechanics are similar regardless of the type of oppression. First, a system of beliefs is constructed to preserve the self-interests of a group that has economic and judicial power. These beliefs are then spread by word of mouth. Second, data are collected, often by respected, intelligent people, to establish the beliefs as factual so that those in power may continue to think of themselves as moral and ethical. Together, the beliefs and data are used to rationalize superiority of one group over another. This rationalization justifies the fourth and last mechanism, social distance; social distance makes it easier to depersonalize and dehumanize the group that is viewed as inferior, so that there are few if any opportunities to observe oneself in the other. Together, social distance, rationalization, biased facts, and entrenched attitudes about race relegate multiracial individuals to object status, unconnected to humanity. Subsequently, otherwise sensitive, intelligent people are relieved of the moral obligation to resist or object to oppressive thought or action.

Most systematic oppression is based in paranoid delusions—a tightly gathered system of beliefs and rationalizations and biased data gathering that create a fractured and illusionary reality that allows one to stave off one’s fears, even unconscious ones. Racism is the result of a delusion about the meaning of differences in the service of coping with disproportionate fears of inferiority to or harm by the other. Racism is simultaneously ambivalent, arbitrary, and rigid. Thus, a phenotypically European person with an African American parent is seen as black, whereas a person who looks phenotypically white with two parents of European ancestry can be judged as white. Millions of people have been unwittingly drafted into collaboration with an insidious destruction of human life and spirit. Deep in our psyches, racism feeds on crumbs of ignorance, insecurity, and fear.

Irrationality and economic incentive guide changes in the meaning of race (Omi & Winant, 1986; Takaki, 1993), rather than a moral incentive toward bettering the collective society. Therefore the boundaries and labels defining the disenfranchised by race shift over time, as demonstrated by the history of the U.S. Census (Lee, 1993). The purpose of the classification system, which insists on clean lines between groups, always remains the same: to establish and maintain a social hierarchy in which the creators and enforcers of the system occupy a superior berth. Consequently, members of some group are always “deserving” of inferior status, until they are arbitrarily elevated to a higher status or a change in status provides economic advantage to those in power.

Although the mechanics of racism seem to start with those in power, the system is also maintained by the oppressed’s internalization of the mechanics; for example, an insistence on singular ethnic or racial loyalties, colorism, and discrimination against multiracial people across all ethnic and racial groups in this country. Paradoxically, this internalization of the mechanics of oppression is a version of the hostage syndrome observed in prisoners of war. Prisoners take on characteristics of their captors and even defend their behaviors as their plight and ability to make sense out of an irrational reality are integrally linked with survival.

When race is constructed through the mechanics of racism, oppression chokes multiracial people from all sides (Root, 1990). This throttling and stifling takes many forms: forced to fit into just one category from school registration to U.S. Census surveys; affiliations forced with oppressive questions (e.g., “Which one are you?”); forced to “act right,” “think right,” and “do right” in order to belong; and forced to prove ethnic legitimacy in order to have an identity in an ethnically diverse society.

Chao (in press) thinks of racism as the “original sin” in America. Ironically, the descendants of the Europeans who came to the United States spawned the delusion around race (Spickard, 1992), replete with one-drop rules of hypodescent, classification of a biracial child’s race by mother’s race to increase slave holdings and absolve white slavemasters of paternal responsibility, anti-Asian legislation, displacement of Native Americans, and so on. Unquestionably, race is invidiously intertwined with most major U.S. institutions and social policies. For example, consider the power the U.S. Bureau of the Census has in reconstructing race every 10 years. It would also have considerable power to slowly deconstruct race.

Unfortunately, the oppressive squeeze created by the mechanics of racism has historically relegated multiracial people to deviant status or “mistakes,” has minimized our contributions to society (despite the evidence), and/or has ignored our existence. Subsequently, the human rights of a growing segment of the U.S. population are compromised by the imaginary borders between social races.

The Bill of Rights proposed in this chapter was developed in the historical context of three interacting factors and the social forces that enable them:

1. a critical number of multiracial people of an age and in positions to give voice to concerns and injustices;
2. a biracial baby boom; and
3. a continued social movement to dismantle racism.

The affirmation of rights below reflects resistance, revolution, and ultimately change for the system that has weakened the social, moral, and spiritual fiber of this country. This chapter offers a set of affirmations or “rights” as reminders to break the spell of the delusion that creates race to the detriment of us all. (See Bill of Rights, p. 7.)

RESISTANCE

Resistance is a political act. It is also a nonviolent strategy for changing a status quo that perpetuates race wars and violates civil rights. To resist means that one does not accept the belief system, the data as they are presented, or the rationalizations used to perpetuate the status quo around race relations. In fact, the final test case that overturned all remaining state laws against interracial marriage in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia) came about because two individuals, Mildred Jetters and Perry Loving, resisted the laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Subsequently, the Supreme Court invoked an interpretation of the 14th Amendment to repeal these laws because they interfered with a basic civil liberty in this country, the pursuit of happiness.

Resistance also means refusing to fragment, marginalize, or disconnect ourselves from people and from ourselves. This is accomplished by refusal to uncritically apply to others the very concepts that have made some of us casualties of race wars. Four assertions listed following the Bill of Rights embody this resistance.

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BILL OF RIGHTS FOR RACIALLY MIXED PEOPLE

I have the right

not to justify my existence in this world

not to keep the races separate within me

not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity

not to justify my ethnic legitimacy

I have the right

to identify myself differently than strangers expect me

to identify to identify myself differently than how my parents identify me

to identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters

to identify myself differently in different situations

I have the right

to create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial

to change my identity over my Iifetime—and more than once

to have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people

to freely choose whom I befriend and love

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I Have the Right Not to Justify My Existence in This World

Multiracial people blur the boundaries between races, the “us” and “them.” They do not fit neatly into the observer’s schema of reality. Questions such as “What are you?” “How did your parents meet?” and “Are your parents married?” indicate the stereotypes that make up the schema by which the other attempts to make meaning of the multiracial person’s existence.

Many people still have a limited understanding of the racially mixed person’s place in society. Images abound of slave masters raping black women, U.S. military men carrying on sexually illicit relationships with Asian women during wars along the Pacific rim, and rebels and curiosity seekers having casual affairs.

The multiracial person’s existence challenges the rigidity of racial lines that are a prerequisite for maintaining the delusion that race is a scientific fact. The multiracial person may learn to cope with these questions by asking questioners why they want to know or how this information will be useful, or by simply refusing to answer.

I Have The Right Not to Keep the Races Separate Within Me

The original racial system has been transformed and embedded into our country’s political system by both the oppressors and the oppressed. A five-race framework adopted by the Federal Office of Management and Budget drives the categories of racial classification throughout the United States (Sanjek, 1994), leaving no room to acknowledge self-identified multiracial people.

Resistance means asking yourself the questions, Do I want to fit into a system that does not accommodate my reality? What would I be fitting into? What is the price? Will I have to be less than a whole person? Change often requires th e presentation of extremely different realities and strategies (Freire, 1994) in order to break free from rigid realities. Multiracial people have a place and a purpose at this point in history to cross the borders built and maintained by delusion by creating emotional/psychic earthquakes in the social system. Declaring multiple racial affiliations and/or ethnic identities may have this effect on other people.

The biracial baby boom, the debate over racial classification for upcoming decennial census taking, and contemporary research on biracial children clarify the question: What about the children? This question is based on the belief that race dictates differences in human needs and problem solving, that racial differences are irreconcilable. To prove otherwise, the biracial or multiracial person challenges the delusional biases upon which racism is maintained.

I Have the Right Not to Be Responsible for People’s Discomfort With My Physical Ambiguity

The physical ambiguity of many multiracial people, as well as mistaken identifications about their heritage, clearly challenges the notion of “pure race.” The physical look of some racially mixed people is a catalyst for psychological change in how race is understood and employed. For example, many Eurasians are misidentified as Latino or Native Americans. Some words, such as exotic, referring to the physical appearance of multiracial people may be used as tools to reduce discomfort. Unfortunately, such terms declare social distance between people in the guise of something special or positive being offered (Bradshaw, 1992; Root, 1994a).

Jean Paul Sartre (trans. 1976) suggests that people define self in terms of the subjective experience of the other. In this case, multiracial people are the inkblot test for the other’s prejudices and fears.

I Have The Right Not to Justify My Ethnic Legitimacy

Tests of ethnic legitimacy are always power struggles, demonstrating the internalization of oppressive mechanisms. They employ social distance through the use of rationalized interpretation of behavior understood within an oppressive system of beliefs. These tests serve purposes of increasing divisiveness around ethnicity and delusions around race. These tests usually require that multiracial people exaggerate caricatures of ethnic and racial stereotypes. Those who initiate such struggles usually win, because they create the rules—or change the rules to suit themselves. Anyone who unquestioningly accepts these tests, begging for acceptance, remains a prisoner of the system (Freire, 1970). Belonging remains fragile.

The existence of multiracial individuals requires that the common definition of ethnicity be revised. Specifically, race must not be synonymous with it. We must also challenge the notion that multiracial people will be the harbingers of doom to ethnic solidarity or ethnic continuity. Research shows that ethnicity to some extent is dynamic over time and that multiracial people are variable to the degree to which they are ethnically identified (Mass, 1992; Stephan, 1992).

REVOLUTION

Everyone who enters into an interracial relationship or is born of racially different heritages is conscripted into a quiet revolution. People who voluntarily cross the border are often viewed in such strong terms as “race traitors,” a sure sign that they have unwittingly created a emotional/psychic earthquake with emotional reverberations. They have refused to confirm the reality predicated on a belief in racial immutability and segregation at the most intimate level. Their resistance suggests that another reality exists. This suggests choice. Choice is frightening for some—often because it opens the door to the unknown in social relations and redefines self in relation to others.

The second set of four assertions further challenges the social construction of race in relationships. The individual has the right to resist this oppressive construction, as Paulo Freire (1970) observes:

[The] marginal [person] has been expelled from and kept outside of the social system. . . . Therefore, the solution to their problem is not to become “beings inside of” but . . . [people] freeing themselves; for in reality, they are not marginal to the structure, but oppressed . . . [people] within it. (pp. 10-11)

I Have the Right to Identify Myself Differently Than Strangers Expect Me to Identify

Asserting this right meets with tremendous social resistance in the form of comments such as, “You can’t be . . .” or “You don’t look . . .” Such declarations of self-identity challenge the classification schema of the reactor. The declaration also exposes the rules that this person follows. More and more people took this tack in responding to the 1990 U.S. Census question about race. Almost a quarter of a million people wrote in a multiracial identifier (Waters, 1994).

I Have the Right to Identify Myself Differently Than My Par...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Glossary
• The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations
• Part I: Human Rights
• Part II: Identity
• Part III: Blending and Flexibility
• Part IV: Gender and Sexual Identity
• Part V: Multicultural Education
• Part VI: The New Millenium
• Appendix 1: Executive Office of Management and Budget
• Appendix 2: AMEA Proposed Revised OMB Minimum Reporting Standards with Multiracial, Multiethnic Categories
• References
• Index
• About the Authors