Race, Choice and Consequence

Christine had a long, interesting comment on yesterday's post on race and identity. I'm not sure if we disagree or agree. I understand the point that race is not just what other people think you are.

I'd phrase it more this way. Race is first what other people think you are. If you think of the formation of racial identity as a process in time, the first step in that process is that other people assign you a race. You have absolutely no choice in this step. In the second step, you comprehend that other people are assigning you a race. It builds from there, and gets more complicated.

For people of color who are also members of a minority, the first step is often violent (emotionally), and the second step is wounding. It was definitely that way for me. I think of ethnicity and culture are positive forces that connect me to my family and my ancestry... but race was not. Race was initially a force that violently worked against my connection with ethnicity and culture. I tried to explain my Japanese heritage; they would say, "go back to China."

I later went through a third step (or maybe it was the fourth or fifth) where I accepted race and racial solidarity. In other words, since I'd been insulted for looking Chinese, I should be able to find allies among people who looked Chinese, whether they were actually Chinese-descended or not. That concept then extended to "people of color" consciousness: the idea that all people of color, while very different, have something in common because they're harmed by racial hierarchies.

I think white people experience race in a much less violent manner. Though if they have loved or greatly admired people who are not white in their lives, and they become aware that other people are treating them as "white", that second step -- the comprehension of racialization -- creates a sense of melancholy and loss. It means there is something huge that will forever separate them socially from their loved ones.

There is no choice in being initially assigned a race, but after that first step, choice does come into play. I'm reminded of Sunny's friend, the older boy with Asperger's syndrome. His mother is a light-skinned African-American woman, his father is white. Their son happens to look white. While he's brilliant on many levels, I don't know if he's ever going to have the social intelligence to form a racial identity. He can barely read basic emotions like happiness, sadness, irritation or interest. He can understand that people are having these emotions if they state them, in words, clearly, but then he forgets soon after. He's probably never going to make it past the second step, even though race has played a large role in his family's history and they talk about it freely.

One example: his mother told me that when her son went through an especially difficult period as a child -- head-banging, I think -- they were taking him to the emergency room almost every week. She stopped taking him because the hospital officials looked at her, a black mother, much more suspiciously than they looked at his white father. So his father had to become the one responsible for all emergency room visits... otherwise she was worried she'd be reported for child abuse and their son would be taken away.

I'm not sure if being unable to form a racial identity means he's lucky or unlucky!

Once people comprehend the range of their assigned identity, they can choose to present themselves more as certain race than another race, deny they have a race at all, or identify primarily as people of color, or identify primarily as multiracial. There's a lot of choice involved beyond the second stage. But making these kinds of choices presumes understanding what race is being assigned to you. You have to make it past the second stage.

There's a lot of choice, but once you start to consider the sacrifices involved in making these choices, the realistic range starts narrowing drastically. Here's a few examples.

• If a white person denies they have a race, in most environments, they don't face any penalty. Many people of color will be privately irritated with them, but not say anything about it to their face.


• If someone whose racial presentation is ambiguous, possibly white, chooses to present as white -- perhaps changing their hair, changing their name, etcetera -- they will gain benefits, especially economic benefits, but possibly also lose support among people of the race who feel rejected.
  
  (The name thing is especially huge. Because I happen to have such an Anglo name, I've gotten a lot of unknown benefits from that over my lifetime. If I'd had my dad's last name, which is almost unpronounceable in English, a small but consistent percentage of people would have thought, "I don't want to call on this girl, it's too embarrassing to have to try and pronounce this name" or "she probably doesn't speak English well, I'd better not take the risk." As long as contact is restricted to the phone and internet, I totally have white privilege... something that's in marked contrast to this fascinating account: a white woman with a "black name" and her experiences of racism.)


• When Tiger Woods claimed a primarily multiracial identity and called himself a "Cablinasian", he infuriated a lot of black people. Whether people have white ancestry or not, choosing one side or even refusing to choose a side means certain consequences. Since Tiger Woods is also filthy rich, the social penalty he paid probably wasn't terribly onerous, but it can really add up for people in more normal circumstances.


• Barack Obama chose his primary identity as African-American, not multiracial. He had an ethical reason for doing so, and I don't disagree with his choice in any way. But it was also a politically convenient choice. If he had not identified as African-American, he would have alienated many of his most passionate supporters: other African-Americans. Early in the election his African-American support wasn't guaranteed, by any means; he had to work hard at it. And he would have had to work much, much harder if he'd made a Tiger Woods kind of statement. Calling himself primarily biracial would have alienated some supporters, and it wouldn't have gained him any extra gratefulness from white people.


• If you are a multiracial person with white ancestry, but you don't look white, can't make yourself look whiter, and still claim to be white... you're regarded as pathetic and potentially insane by both white people and people of color.


• If you're not instantly identifiable by race, but visibly not white, you have the dubious freedom to say almost anything you want, and strangers will believe you. For example, I once meet a Chinese-Cuban-American who used to claim he was a "full-blooded Seminole Indian" because it dramatically increased his sexual attractiveness to white women. Of course, only a few people are so sleazy, and most want to give true and ethical answers when they're questioned. Unfortunately, the multiracial person is still going to be under a constant cloud of suspicion. Often, when they answer truthfully, they will be accused of lying. "There's no way you're ___. You look more ___!" Just by existing, they confuse people. And instead of saying honestly, "I'm confused", people often react by projecting a stereotype onto the multiracial person: "They must be confused. The fault is theirs, not mine."


• If you choose not to identify as white, but look white, you will also invoke the "confused" stereotype in people. You will sometimes be accused of "passing" even though this is the opposite of your intent.


• If you look white without making any special effort, and choose to identify as white, though without denying your non-white ancestry, because that's what strikes you as the most ethical and non-appropriative choice... honestly, I don't know enough to detail what kind of consequences are involved in this case. I think this choice might have major psychological implications, but few social ones.
  

Then add to these general consequences the group-specific consequences of choice:

• African-Americans, because of the history of slavery in this country, were subjected to attempts that tried to strip away every trace of their African ethnicity: language, customs, religion. The combined ethnicity they have in the present day is inextricably tied to racial solidarity in a way that is not true for, say, a second-generation Ethiopian-American. So for African-Americans, race is like a two-sided coin: a violent force reinforcing a vicious hierarchy on one side, a positive source of common culture and heritage on the other. Rejecting race without rejecting culture is almost impossible.


• Asian-Americans have more freedom in that it's possible to identify primarily as your ethnicity and not your race... sometimes. I say I'm a Japanese-American to my friends and my family and in certain communities, and I can be reasonably sure that my statement will be accepted and understood. But in other settings, my statement is irrelevant and will be ignored. I'll be treated as an Asian. In those other settings, no one really cares about my ethnicity, and my assigned race totally subsumes it.


• Being ethnically Latino means having to come to terms with two different sets of racial rules: the white-majority U.S. rules, plus the rules of the Latino family/local culture. Sometimes a single choice will mean two entirely different consequences in each rule set.


• Native Americans... oh boy, this most be complicated. I don't even want to go there because the rules and consequences are so mind-bending.

And then on top of these race-specific consequences, add the family-specific consequences. The mother that feels you are rejecting her if you identify strongly as a different race from her. The cousins that feel you are setting yourself up as "better than them"... and so on.

I think the process of choice in racial identity is like a feedback loop. Social acceptance/rejection influences personal choice, personal choice influences social acceptance/rejection.

Because the first steps of race are so violent, I don't want to participate in that violence by telling my son, "you are black." I don't think he has a very wide range of practical choice; I don't want to take away the small degree of choice he does have. But I don't see any realistic, positive scenario under which he rejects racial solidarity and says "I'm not black."

Right now I'm just trying to lay the groundwork for the choice he's going to start making. I want him to be aware of the depressing reality of these racial rules, but be able to consider them without fear or shame. I especially don't want him to feel that identifying as black would mean rejecting any of the people in his life that are not black... such as myself, Guy, his biological mother and his foster family.