In the quest for political allies in our struggle for a recognition of multiraciality, we need to be mindful of when our emotions get in the way of our common sense. The tug on the heartstrings from many of our relatives and friends "of color" compels some within our community to assert, "Yeah, I'm multiracial, but you know I'm still down with the struggle against the white man!" Others suggest that, "We're at odds with the black leadership on this issue, but we don't want the white man to overhear the argument!" Why the hell not? Whites have as much to learn if not more than anyone else on this issue of "racial" superiority versus inferiority; they need to understand the racial brainwashing they've undergone as have the rest of us. Not wanting whites to witness "in-fighting" between blacks and multiracials buys into the political color continuum completely.
Obsessing with preserving the civil rights of others while allowing our own to be sacrificed is ludicrous. Likewise, government bureaucrats and politicians -- no matter how originally well meaning -- should never have transformed the Census into an instrument whose sole purpose is to monitor race-based entitlement programs. It's supposed to truthfully and accurately reflect this country's citizenry. Relative to the inane argument that a "stand-alone" multiracial category represents the mixed-race community "separating" itself from monoracial folk, just ask yourself a commonsense question. Can anyone honestly say that the black category is not separate from the white category is not separate from the Asian category is not separate from the Native American category is not separate from the nebulous Hispanic category? Nome sane?
If one of the tenets of libertarianism is that individuals should have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and that they should have the right to live in whatever manner they choose -- so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose -- then I identify as a mixed-race libertarian, having extended that philosophy to my own "racial" self-identification.
That said, a further manifestation of the aforementioned hypocrisy is the unconscionable slight of the late Anatole Broyard by the AMEA/HAPA Forum bosses and their allies, while they simultaneously trip and fall over themselves in a licentious bumrush to embrace Gregory Howard Williams. Let me explain.
Broyard (photo left courtesy of Vintage Books; also see Publisher's Notes/Media Reviews on "Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir" by Anatole Broyard), a New York Times book critic, columnist and editor now seven years in his grave, was "outed" -- based on the one drop of black blood rule -- by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the June 17, 1996 edition of The New Yorker magazine. In the article, "The True Lies of Anatole Broyard," Gates defiled Broyard's character by accusing him of being "really black" and only "passing" as white. Many of us who can claim African ancestry but who "look white," involuntarily "pass for white" every day of our lives. The rap on Broyard is that he consciously passed. This raises some interesting questions, though. Do we know with one-hundred percent certainty that he intentionally passed, or should we take Gates' word for it? Even if Broyard did pass, how is it anyone's business? The only thing we know for sure is that he did not identify as black, and we all now understand that so identifying is not synonymous with identifying as white. Would Broyard have availed himself of a mixed-race identifier if that were possible back in the '40s, '50s and '60s? Perhaps. Is it possible that he identified more as a "universal man" beyond racial demarcation (to steal a page from Jean Toomer)? Yes. Is it possible that, as Gates suggests, Broyard deliberately passed for white? Yes, but, again, whose business is it?
Where is the righteous indignation we would expect to emanate from the AMEA/HAPA Forum camp if they truly believe that "If people cannot call themselves what they want, they cannot call themselves truly free"? Truth is, these people don't give a damn about the Anatole Broyards or the Jean Toomers of the world, because universal men beyond racial demarcation and multiracial libertarians view ourselves as more than mere statistical abstractions. We are more than nameless and soulless numerical contributions to a particular political agenda. I resent being viewed solely as part of a government demographer's collection of "racial" data, no matter how "rich" that information. At the same time, I understand and respect that there are many multiracial Americans who don't mind being so viewed. God bless 'em.
The paramount reason that few challenge Gates (photo right) on this matter is simple: he is the preeminent representative of the contemporary black academic elite and many see any challenging of his pronouncements as an attack on "blackness." (Even many white reporters and commentators affectionately refer to him by the "all-American boy" sobriquet "Skip".) In defense of his New Yorker article, Gates told the Boston Globe Magazine on September 22, 1996 that he deplores the one-drop rule and that, concerning Broyard, "I was not trying to reclaim him for my race. I was exploring complexity." Skip lied, y'all.
Random House promotes Gates' newest book, "Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Black Man" in this manner: "In these stunning portraits of prominent black American men, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us behind closed doors and into the lives, minds, and experiences of some remarkable people to reveal, through stories of individual lives, much about American society and race today." The book focuses on James Baldwin, Colin Powell, Harry Belafonte, Bill T. Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Albert Murray and -- you guessed it, sports fans! -- Anatole Broyard. Gates refers to the latter as one who "chose to hide his black heritage so as to be seen as a writer on his own terms."
Gregory Howard Williams is the Dean of the Ohio State Law School and author of "Life On The Color Line" (Plume/Penguin 1996), the story of a young lad born in Virginia who thought he was "white" until he moved to Indiana and then suddenly found out he was "black." Williams is quite the darling of the hypodescent crowd (hypodescent: the inheritance of only the lowest status racial category of one's ancestors), as they see him as someone more than willing to play the game of looking very white yet steadfastly identifying as black. Having read his book, however, I believe Williams is genuinely sincere about owing a debt of gratitude to the black side of his family in Indiana who raised him when many of his white relations shunned him, ergo his solid "black" identity.
What's unsettling about Gregory Howard Williams (photo right) is that those on this country's political left who have opposed any discussion of multiraciality from the movement's inception have manipulated him -- with his tacit consent or not -- and employ the Williams paradigm to further bash both Broyard's memory and those of us who eschew a false "black" identity. They proudly point to Williams as an example of how a loyal and obedient "light-skinned black" should act, while decrying Broyard as the quintessential "race-traitor," running away from "blackness." (Personally, I believe Broyard made the decision that, being the intellectual that he was, he was going to do what he wanted to do in life and was going to travel in those social circles in which he wanted to travel and to hell with anyone who objected.)
A couple of months before last year's Multiracial Solidarity March in Washington, D.C., Williams appeared on ABC's Nightline program with Ted Koppel. In short, Williams stated that he views race as an artificial, social construct, yet strongly proclaimed that he was "black" primarily based on the one drop rule. Not once, however, did Williams speak to the validity of a multiracial identifier that many of us have adopted.
I don't care how Gregory Howard Williams identifies. He can call himself a Martian, a Venusian or a Jovian, because, after all, that's his business. I submit, though, that he has a moral responsibility -- due to his high-profile status not only as an Ivory Towers type but as an author enjoying national attention and notoriety -- to not leave the impression with those who read his writings, hear him on radio or view him on television that hypodescent is still the rule of thumb vis-à-vis identity formation in mixed-race individuals.
Many are also tired of having the traditional "civil rights" organizations, by way of their appointed mouthpieces scattered throughout the "mixed" community, preach to them about how, because racism still exists, multiracials should not ignore the impact on civil rights "history" as that would serve to ignore their own roots in all the communities "of color."
First, you root out still-lingering racism by deconstructing "race" -- not by intentionally furthering the canard that keeping "race"-based statistics does anything other than perpetuate the same "race"-consciousness that we seek to jettison. (Likewise, two-thirds of the respondents to IV's survey question regarding abolishing racial categories altogether have responded affirmatively.)
I and others have written this before, but it bears constant repetition for the benefit of those whose cognitive abilities inexplicably shut down whenever someone dispassionately discusses "race." A belief in not only the existence of separate "races" -- with all the attendant "differences" -- and a "racial" hierarchy but also in the appropriateness of grouping Homo sapiens into arbitrary "racial" and "ethnic" categories is the primary cause of racism and discrimination. You cannot take seriously anyone who rails against racism yet is perfectly willing to see the belief system, the "race"-consciousness -- which spawns racism, "race"-hatred and "race"-based violence -- remain intact.
Second, it is racist itself to posit that one should only feel love for or meditate upon one's relatives or roots "of color" and ignore what left-wing pc defines as one's invisible relatives. (Well, if they are not "of color," and I've yet to see a human lacking same as even albinos have some, what are they? Bleached?)
Similarly, consider the case of the late mixed-race New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard who chose not to identify as "black." While Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. now defends himself by saying he was merely "exploring complexity," conventional wisdom -- particularly within the multiracial community -- holds that he "outed" Broyard in the June 17, 1996 edition of The New Yorker magazine by accusing him of passing for "white." What Gates, Lowery and other self-identified "blacks" are ever-so-slowly beginning to realize is that their choices of identity, philosophy, political affiliation and religious belief are not necessarily other people's choices. With respect to Broyard, they need to understand that they are not reacting to his decision to not identify as "black" but to their own feelings about that decision. The Anatole Broyards of the world are not responsible for the feelings of indignation and jealousy that individual "blacks" experience. When they recognize and understand this completely, they will be ready to take individual responsibility for how they feel and to change it.
You've mentioned Broyard before, A.D., and it is true...people accuse him of "passing".
I read excerpts of the book his daughter Bliss wrote. The cover photo of him is that of a man who appears white. It is no one's business how he identified himself, esp. now that he is dead, but people feel that they're entitled to dictate the identity of others.
Posted: Mon 03 Dec 2007 04:00 Post subject: Dictating identity
pianoplayer111 wrote:
You've mentioned Broyard before, A.D., and it is true...people accuse him of "passing".
I read excerpts of the book his daughter Bliss wrote. The cover photo of him is that of a man who appears white. It is no one's business how he identified himself, esp. now that he is dead, but people feel that they're entitled to dictate the identity of others.
Moreover, when a few brave souls point out the racist illogic and injustice of the "passing" accusation, the defenders of hypodescent start whining that WE are trying to deprive so-called "light-skinned blacks" of their "choice" to be "black" (They never claimed to have a choice before the Multiracial Movement came along).
That's a hoot because if anything, WE are the ones being deprived of our true identity! No one is forcing a multiracial identity onto so-called "light-skinned" people.
My sentiment on this issue is that some people have an inferiority complex and they feel/believe/perceive that by identifying yourself differently, you're saying you're above them. This is what I've noticed. It isn't about that at all. This is the reason so many mixed children have identity issues, because of people trying to tell them who they should be instead of accepting them as they are.
It is a different matter entirely if one self-identifies as black and ONLY black. But if that identity is not of one's own free will (it has been imposed) then that does cause problems, IMO...esp. when you and most others around you can clearly see European ancestry. I have literally been mocked for claiming a black identity. This was years ago and I never understood it until I became an adult and realized that whoa...I'm not "black"! I'm a person of multiracial heritage who appears Caucasian. I was pretty much passing myself off as "black" until I learned to think outside the box. I never knew I could define myself because so many people had told me: "It doesn't matter what you look like, you're still one of us." Meaning, black. But that was not my reality and I couldn't relate to what they were saying.
Broyard did not look "black". He did not live "black". He did not identify as "black". That was his life and back then, many other people like him decided to live that way too. It takes balls to be who you are. With that being said, people like you and I are the voices of dissent.
Moreover, when a few brave souls point out the racist illogic and injustice of the "passing" accusation, the defenders of hypodescent start whining that WE are trying to deprive so-called "light-skinned blacks" of their "choice" to be "black" (They never claimed to have a choice before the Multiracial Movement came along).
pianoplayer111 wrote:
That's a hoot because if anything, WE are the ones being deprived of our true identity! No one is forcing a multiracial identity onto so-called "light-skinned" people. ... With that being said, people like you and I are the voices of dissent.
The last two posts are over the line. They make value judgments outside of the two political advocacy forums in violation of 1.3. I would move them to Maya's "Issues for Biracial Americans" forum, but then they would violate 2.7 there by generalizing about African Americans. I cannot find any forum where you can both generalize and complain in the same place. Hence, please choose. If you want to generalize about African Americans, you may continue here but refrain from suggesting that any phenomenon is good or bad. On the other hand, if you want to criticize those who impose forced identity upon others, please take it to Maya's forum, but then refrain from generalizing.
Joined: 02 Oct 2007 {Posts: 226 } Location: Seattle
Posted: Wed 19 Dec 2007 22:41 Post subject:
Quote:
This is the reason so many mixed children have identity issues, because of people trying to tell them who they should be instead of accepting them as they are.
THIS is The Undeniable Truth and this is why Powell's book is
SO very essential to the advancement of GLOBAL YOUTH CULTURE:
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