Why none of us want a “multiracial” box
CVK
(Thanks to Geraly for this tip!) The Columbia Missourian just ran a long article about the politics of racial classification of mixed race people. Unfortunately, the story makes it seem as if time froze in 1997. The article is fully of shoddy research and the reporter completely misses the point.
The focus of the article is whether or not there should be a separate “multiracial” box on the Census. Um… anyone who has done even the most basic Google search on the mixed race movement will know that we fully support the current “check one or more” option on the Census, and that no one is interested in pursuing a separate multiracial box.
No one that is, except for the anti-affirmative action folks like Ward Connerly who see a multiracial box as one step in the direction of doing away with racial categories altogether - thereby also eliminating our ability to track racial discrimination.
A responsible journalist would quickly be able to ascertain that the active, major players in the mixed race community are organizations like Swirl, Mavin and the umbrella group AMEA. Most recently, all three groups — shout-out to Alfredo Padilla especially, who has worked tirelessly on this — have been heavily involved with the Senate Bill 1615, which would have allowed individuals in California to “mark one or more” categories to identify their race(s).
But instead, the reporter chose to speak to … Project Race??? I’ll leave it up to those most familiar with the activism leading up to the 2000 Census (that means you, T and daddyinastrangeland!) to explain why Project Race has been defunct and irrelevant for years now.
Then to make it even worse, out of all the possible academics the reporter could have spoken to, she chose to showcase David Brunsma. That’s the same guy who inspired this odious column back in April. Basically, Brunsma is of the “running from your blackness” school of thought: he believes that people who identify as mixed do so as a way to escape discrimination and disadvantage.
From the article:
Brunsma thinks parents of biracial children recognize the inequalities and are taking matters into their own hands. “They realize that economic opportunity and rights are unequal, and by checking ‘multiracial,’ they’re distancing their kids from the racial designation that will give them the least opportunities.”
While he acknowledges that many opportunities in the U.S. are reserved for historical minorities, he believes that multiracial individuals in some cases have both sets of choices, “to avail themselves of race-based scholarships as well as to attempt to distance themselves from solidarity with their brothers and sisters when the recognition of the racial distribution of privilege and resources remains,” Brunsma says.
“Parents see the effects of race,” he says. “They are buying into notions of white privilege and, by default, into notions of racial inferiority. Success is perceived as white.”
…Brunsma recognizes that many forces may be at work in parents’ decisions to identify their biracial children as “white” or “multiracial.” But ultimately he thinks that the multiracial movement is an attempt by parents of biracial children to create distance between their children and historical minorities.
I guess they haven’t let Brunsma out of the ivory tower in awhile because clearly he hasn’t been paying attention to what’s going on today. Yes, at the beginning, the mixed race movement was led by mostly white parents of mixed kids. (And in case you’re wondering, Project Race falls neatly into that category.) But in the last 5 to 7 years, it’s mixed people themselves who have rosen up to assume leadership positions in these organizations and thus, the politics have changed — a lot.
As if all of these mistakes weren’t bad enough, the reporter completely misses the point of why we should be opposed to a multiracial box. The real reason we should oppose it is because it blurs the racial data and would make it impossible to track civil rights violations. Most people are targeted for racial discrimination not for being mixed (although there are certainly cases where that’s happened), but for being part black, or part Latino, or part Asian. Without the “check one or more” option, we have no way of tracking that.
This seems like an obvious point, but instead, the reporter argues against the multiracial box by quoting — I kid you not — a 1997 senate testimony by then-NAACP Washington bureau director Harold McDougall. The reporter says that McDougall’s remarks “echoed Colin Powell’s ‘when you look like me, you’re black’ comment. In other words, the multiracial box should be scrapped because we uppity mixed folks should abide by the one-drop rule. WTF?
(By the way, her interpretation of McDougall’s remarks are laughably off the mark. If you actually read the quotes, that’s not what he’s saying at all.)
I guess the lesson here is that there is a TON of misleading out there about racial classification, the Census, civil rights monitoring, etc. If you want to get the real scoop, check out Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Census Gearing Up For 2010. It’s an FAQ document that New Demographic and Swirl collaborated on, in which we ask Census expert Professor Ann Morning the questions we hear most often, and in which she dispels many of the myths that are circulating out there. If you’d rather download the PDF version, right-click here.
–CVK
Still at it, still stuck in the kind of mindset that leads otherwise sensible people in the public eye to suggest that the best way to fight racism, if it still exists, is to basically pretend it doesn’t (you know who I’m talking about).
July 2006 New Demographic Newsletter at New Demographic - an anti-racism training company on 01 Sep 2006 at 1:47 pm
[…] Carmen rips apart a recent article about how mixed race people should be classified on official forms. This is just one example of the rampant misinformation out there about racial classification, the Census, civil rights monitoring, etc. If you want the real scoop, check out Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Census Gearing Up For 2010. […]