My Blog

From Essence.com

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 20:21:19 -0500

Originally published October 21, 2009 at Essence.com
http://www1.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/new_commentary_growing_up_black_and_white

By now you've heard the story: Beth Humphrey, who is White, and Terence McKay, who is Black, were denied a marriage license earlier this month by a white justice of the peace in Louisiana.  "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Keith Bardwell told the Associated Press. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

Maybe now people will stop referring to 2009 as the dawn of the "post-racial era." Even the election of a biracial President couldn't completely sweep away long-standing prejudices against interracial couples and their offspring.

For years, biracial children were seen as tragic outcasts doomed to a life of racial confusion—a view Bardwell apparently still holds. Others, perhaps caught up in Obama-mania, now see biracial children as the wave of the future and view being multiracial as hip, in vogue, and exotic.

Neither view captures my reality.

Race mixing has been going on in my family for generations. My father's birth certificate actually listed his race as "mulatto," an archaic and somewhat offensive term referring to someone who is half-Black and half-White. My mother, who is also of Black and White ancestry, is so racially ambiguous in her appearance that she is often mistaken for Filipino. I guess you could say we were biracial before biracial was cool.

Growing up in the 1970's and 80's, I had my share of run-ins with race. The conventional wisdom back then encouraged Black-White biracial children to adopt a Black identity starting at an early age. It was supposed to forge a sense of community and, oddly enough, mitigate the sort of alienation that Bardwell was talking about.

But that "Black-only" approach to racial identity never quite worked for me. In the fourth grade, Black classmates described me as a "half-breed." At a family get-together, a dark-skinned uncle once referred to me as "White boy." In middle school, a White kid called me a "White n----r." In other words, I was either Black-with-an-asterisk, or not Black enough at all.   But none of these encounters was fatal. I survived them and I turned out just fine. The journey became easier when I began to meet other mixed-race people who shared similar stories. In the end, many of us came to embrace a multiracial identity because that's the only label that truly fit us, both in terms of ancestry and personal life experience. Finally that label is growing in acceptance along with public support for interracial couples and their children.

We may not have arrived at the post-racial era yet. But I've always believed race relations in America behaves sort of like the stock market. There are ups and downs over the short-term, even an occasional crash. But the long-term trend is positive.

Just look at the swift reaction to the situation in Louisiana. A growing chorus of public officials is calling for Keith Bardwell to resign, or face removal from office.

Now that would be change we could believe in.
UPDATE: Keith Bardwell has resigned as justice of the peace.

Census 2010: New Twist on Race Question

Sun, 4 Oct 2009 22:02:31 -0400

The 2010 U.S. Census is just around the corner, and the government’s made some changes to the census form in how it’s asking about race. I stumbled upon a sample 2010 questionnaire on the Census Bureau’s website. The differences between this form and the one used in 2000 are subtle and would probably have gone unnoticed had I not lived and breathed this issue in the course of writing Fade. (Scroll down to compare the two.)
In Fade, I make a big deal of the 2000 census for good reason. It was the first time in American history that multiracial people could check multiple racial categories on the census form and have our answers tabulated that way. Prior to 2000, when multiracial people attempted to mark more than one box, say “black” and “white,” or “white” and “Asian,” the Census Bureau would ignore the multiple check-offs and arbitrarily assign those individuals to a single racial group. That all changed in 2000 when the Census Bureau actually began recording the numbers of people who checked more than one category and the various racial combinations that they marked. (See my previous post if you want a further explanation of the numbers.)
Contrary to popular belief, the census form did NOT ask respondents to “check all that apply.” It drives me nuts when people refer to it that way, because in fact, there was no such language on the questionnaire. Instead, the form asked people to “mark one or more” based on what you “consider” yourself to be.
As I point out in Fade, that language was chosen specifically because the statisticians did NOT want people to check all that apply. The question was worded so that people would answer based on the racial group or groups that they “consider” themselves to be, recognizing that in many cases, that’s not the same thing as “all” of the racial groups present in someone’s family lineage. The question is about racial identity, not racial ancestry.
Here’s why that matters: Historians tell us that the vast majority of “black” people in the United States are racially mixed. Go back far enough and you’re likely to find either a white person or a Native American hiding out somewhere in the family tree. But certain social realities lead mixed race people to think of themselves in certain ways, even when our genealogy suggests something more complex. Some of us embrace a multiracial identity. Others, not so much.
Even when the racial mixture is evident only one or two generations ago, many black-white biracials still identify as black, and black alone, as is their choice. They acknowledge their white ancestry when talking about their heritage, but their bottom-line identity is black. Black is what they “consider” themselves to be, in contrast to those of us who think of ourselves as multiracial.
But based on my 2010 sample questionnaire, the new form removes the word “consider” from the race question altogether. Instead, it simply asks people to “Mark one or more boxes.” Period. All of the subsequent language which directed respondents to check one or more, “based on what this person considers himself/herself to be,” is gone.
Like I said, it’s a subtle thing, and I don’t know how much of a difference it will make in terms of how people will interpret the question. We probably won’t know the answer until 2011, when the Census Bureau is expected to release such data. As changes go, it’s a small one to be sure. But it’s a little change worth noting.

Hello Akron, Ohio!

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:38:31 -0400

It's true. After 10 years in Washington, DC, I've packed up and moved to northeastern Ohio to attend law school at the University of Akron. Why Akron? Well, that's kind of a long story. The short answer is that the law school here has affordable tuition, part-time evening classes, a well-regarded program in intellectual property (one of my interests as an author, journalist, and broadcaster), and a low cost of living. In fact, my new apartment in Akron is roughly the same size as the one I left, but I'm paying about a third of what I was spending on rent in DC.

Nixon Tapes Reveal Stance on Mixed Kids

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:56:06 -0400

It took more than 35 years before the comments became public, but newly released audio tapes show President Richard Nixon expressing support for abortion rights in the case of interracial couples. Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times:

On January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement.
But the next day, newly released tapes reveal, he privately expressed ambivalence. Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.”
But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said. “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”
Kinda makes you wish Richard Nixon had lived to see November 4, 2008, when Barack Obama - the child of “a black and a white” - would be elected President of the United States.

As the Times’ article notes, Nixon’s statement was made in 1973. Six years earlier, the Supreme Court had issued another landmark ruling, one that legalized interracial marriage nationwide. On June 12, 1967, the court struck down a Virginia law banning such marriages and reversed the convictions of Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and black woman who were ordered to leave the state because they had married interracially. The case is known - in a stroke of poetic justice - as Loving v. Virginia, and the ruling wiped out similar bans in more than a dozen other states at the time.

“Loving Day” was founded to mark the anniversary of the historic decision. For the last two years, I’ve celebrated Loving Day by attending the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival in Los Angeles, where dozens of people who are the descendants of a black and a white, or an Asian and a white, or a black and an Asian, or whatever, turned out to celebrate the mixed race experience. Photos from this year’s event are now posted in my photo gallery. So, go have a look-see!

The New Multiracial Head Count

Wed, 3 Jun 2009 22:14:19 -0400

You may have seen the headlines recently trumpeting the results of the Census Bureau’s latest population report, declaring multiracial Americans the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States. The federal government’s latest population estimate places the number of multiracial people (or perhaps more accurately, the number of people who identify with two or more races) at 5.2 million. As an Associated Press story noted, “Americans who check more than one box for race on census surveys have jumped by 33 percent” since 2000, the first year that respondents even had the option to mark more than one category.

But hold on. Not long ago, news organizations were reporting the multiracial population stood at roughly 6.8 million, a figure I also cite numerous times in Fade, based on data from the 2000 census. If that’s the case, that would mean the number of Americans identifying as multiracial has dropped in the last nine years! So what’s going on here?

Well, after spending some time poking around the Census Bureau’s website, it all became clear to me. The discrepancy has to do with a category on the census survey labeled “some other race.” Bear with me here, because this requires some explanation, and as we say here in DC, the explanation can get kinda “wonkish”...

Prior to 2000, people who marked more than one race were reassigned to a single racial group based on the whims of the Census Bureau. Census 2000 was the first time that Americans could check multiple boxes and have our answers tabulated that way. Today, you can actually go to the Census Bureau and find the number of black/white biracial Americans, Asian/white biracial Americans, black/Asian biracial Americans, and so on. Keep in mind, though, that this does not measure the overwhelming number of Americans who are multiracial in terms of ancestry, only those who express being multiracial in terms of their personal “identity.”

The census questionnaire asks respondents to select among five racial categories:
white
black/African-American
American Indian/Alaska Native
Asian (broken down into subcategories of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian Indian, etc.)
Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander

Then there is a sixth choice, the box marked “some other race,” which in 2000 was followed by a blank line for the person to write in the name of the “other race” they belonged to.

Some 2.2 million people checked “white” and “some other race,” and were therefore counted as multiracial because, well, they marked more than one racial category. This caused the multiracial population numbers to swell to 6.8 million. But it was apparently an over-count.

An analysis of the write-in answers revealed that large numbers of respondents checking the “some other race” box were then writing in things like “Mexican” or “Puerto Rican” for their race. Hispanic origin, however, is considered an “ethnicity” and is a separate census question altogether from that of “race.” (The world has white Hispanics, black Hispanics, etc.)

So after including the “white/some other race” combination in the multiracial numbers for 2000, the Census Bureau decided to rethink that methodology. It now reallocates the “some other race” answers to one of those first five racial categories.

When the 2000 census results are then recalculated using this new methodology, effectively eliminating the “some other race”option, the multiracial population drops from 6.8 million the agency originally reported to just under 4 million.

Now then, using the readjusted figure for 2000, the multiracial population has indeed risen by 33 percent. It’s jumped from roughly 4 million up to 5.2 million today!

Is your head spinning yet?

I thought so. Mine, too.