Then those who look "white" but are black probably don't announce that fact and can even check the "white" box for race, if there is such a box. And it's a really good thing because if that person has to take their “blackness”—including long blonde hair, slim figure, and educated manner (talking white), fair skin, and blue eyes—anywhere else but to the “hood,” they may make it as black, but will probably get the loan or the job they desire. I know from familial experience that blacks who look white cannot pass for black, but can make and marry into whiteness. These multiracial people cannot make other blacks welcome them as part of the tribe. There is wisdom of the crowd.
Even anthropologists, it seems to me, have backtracked on the issue of “race,” with this advice to the federal government:
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) recommends the elimination of the term "race" from OMB Directive 15 during the planning for the 2010 US Census. During the past 50 years, "race" has been scientifically proven to not be a real, natural phenomenon. More specific, social categories such as "ethnicity" or "ethnic group" are more salient for scientific purposes and have fewer of the negative, racist connotations for which the concept of race was developed.
As a student of anthropology I respectfully disagree. Their statement sounds more like pandering to the knee-jerk liberal PC crowd than to what centuries and tomes of anthropological studies have written to the contrary. If the government took this advice, which by the look of the 2010 census, it did, the effect is to contract race and ethnicity and to marginalize blacks—again. The Federal footprint also made its way into recent surveys given to public school students in Texas (maybe other states as well) which allowed for only ONE ethnic group—Hispanic, and five races: white (this definition of white, not the skinhead one), black, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American. An informant’s ability to mix and match was limited in order to reduce the impact of race and to elevate the significance of ethnicity—for some.
Let’s consider a recent racial example. Throughout the public schools last year the staff and parents of all students were asked to fill out federal forms about their racial identification. If they were Mexican they were “white” regardless of skin hue. Latino or Hispanic was set aside as an ethnic designation only, not as a race. This angered many Mexican students because they wanted to continue to use “Hispanic” as a racial class. It angered whites, on the form and the census, because it appeared that now only ONE ethnic group was the glue for all others. Mexican parents did not want to check the “white” box. There have been litigation and precedents set over the racial classification and treatment of Mexicans living legally in America regarding education and Jim Crow laws.
Article comments
1 - Joanne Huspek
Interesting article. I also don't see the point of the "one-drop" rule. It only works for those who are black, but not for anyone else. Why should that be? Because I am 1/8 American Indian, by that standard I should be considered American Indian. But according to the tribe, both I and my father are not considered so. And in my father's case, who was born in the 1930s, my grandmother put "white" on the birth certificate for the obvious reasons that she didn't want him to be discriminated against since she was half Ojibwe.
I do not consider our President to be Black, nor Tiger Woods, or anyone who is of mixed ethnic heritage. Why isn't Obama just as white as he is Black? Why isn't Tiger just as Asian as he is Black?
In my mixed up pedigree (including white, Asian and native American)- where do you put me? I participate in many survey web sites and the first thing they ask after age is what race you consider yourself to be. I am annoyed when I cannot check more than one box.
And what is really difficult to comprehend is that when a person is of mixed racial background, their life experiences are like no other, no matter what box you try to put them into, this from personal experience.
Thank you for your article. It was worth the read.
2 - Heloise
It is called hypo descent. And it should also apply to native Americans. It don't bcz money is involved. And we all got some Indian in us my friend but we all don't have African blood. Least ways we can trace. Not talking about the motherland as cradle here. Hypodescent means the raciest mix that is the least powerful politically or in the eyes of the world. Blacks would be the least or last. Only if your race but only if that race is non white does the rule apply.
Joanne you are white end of story. One good friend from a while back had long blond braid down her back and a cute square nose her mom was half Cherokee and they did not want to be white. But they and you are white. Her dad was Anglo too. That should be races above.
It is quite clear I think.
3 - Jean
My goodness, tri-racial people in the South have been dealing with this issue for generations, and we considered it no big deal, we knew the majority of the country was not enlightened, and we didn't care. We knew of our tri-racial mixture, so we talked among ourselves of our own family traditions- where it mattered the most. On my mother's side her maternal grandmother was the daughter of an African slave man and a Choctaw "cook" - full blood from the Anderson Plantation in Mississippi. Her grandmother, married a German logger in Mississippi. So on my mom's side, she is African, Choctaw and German. Her father, was African, Cherokee and Chinese (many Chinese men took African American wives down in Mississippi - see the book "Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton") So my mom passes on African, Choctaw, German, Cherokee and Chinese DNA. On my father's side we bring in African/Cherokee/Irish on his father's side and African/Cree on his mother's side. So in effect our family diverges on many racial lines. We're proud of it, and we pass it on.
4 - Chicano
Joanne Huspek You dont consider Barack Obama to be black?
Studies published by the peer review Journal pnas found white people are the product of admixture or mixing between Africans and East Asains, therefore white people are the product of mixed and mixed haveing mixed. So im guessing as white people owe there existence to mixing your gonna now demand all white people stop calling themselves white, and u no longer view whites as white due to the fact white people came from mixing between two non white people?
Some how i dont think you will stop viewing people as white, despite the fact white people only exist because East Asians and Africans began haveing mixed race children and we now call them white.
5 - Heloise
I agree that is how mexicans have become classified, not just labelled as white.
6 - Keith Beckles
Hilarious that Halle Berry thinks her daughter is black. I don't even consider Halle to be black far less her kid. I have two mixed race kids, they consider themselves brown and leave it at that, but we live in Canada and are pretty much over the racial hair splitting. My parents from the caribbean considered my first wife (french irish) to be white but not my second wife (100% italian canadian). Point being, eventually we will mostly be people of indeterminate ethnicity and everyone can relax.