I’ve heard that sentiment expressed many times, and I always wonder about it. To me, there’s no question that we’ve lost a generation of young people; I just can’t understand how they can blame the end of race and gender preferences for that fact. Just as slavery and Jim Crow stunted the growth of blacks living under a system of racial classification, so also do affirmative action preferences stunt the growth of black students who live under today’s racial classification system.
While many individuals before him tried, not until Martin Luther King, Jr. did the United States as a whole confront the broken promise of America. Dr. King forced us to see the savagery not just in Nathan Bedford Forrest and George Wallace, but in ourselves as well. We began to understand that our tacit assent to this system of racial classification was responsible for the violence of Bull Connor’s dogs and water cannons.
With a dawning awareness of our complicity in this great broken promise, America responded admirably. The Civil Rights landmarks of the 1960’s represent the highest ideals of our nation. They showed that America really is committed to guaranteeing “that all men are created equal.”
Unfortunately, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and the architects of the “Philadelphia plan” misunderstood Johnson’s image. They believed that the chain was racial discrimination. The racial bigotry and violence so visible on the evening news overshadowed the more subtle, enduring seed -- racial classification.
In a system of racial classification, government tracks the race of its population. In a system of racial discrimination, government, institutions and some people treat other individuals differently because of an individual’s “race.” This disparate treatment occurs because the person discriminating believes there are inherent differences between those being discriminated against, and those who are guilty of the discrimination. This belief about inherent differences may or may not precede racial classification, but a system of racial classification sanctions them. A person who did not harbor this belief would assume that such differences are natural, else why would the government use such a classification system?
Because most Americans failed to recognize that racial discrimination and racial classification are two sides of the same coin, many of our laws rely on the same system of racial classifications. For example, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) requires banks to identify the race of every applicant for a home loan. If the applicant refuses to self-identify their race, the bank is required to make their own judgement about the person’s race.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve’s Regulation B explicitly prohibits banks from even asking credit card applicants about their race. Given this tangled web, what is a bank to do when a father moves his family into a new area, and applies simultaneously for a home loan and a Visa? And which message does the federal government want to send? Is racial classification appropriate, as HMDA implies, or is it inappropriate, as Regulation B implies?
One of the great thinkers in American history gave a definitive answer. In commenting on the state of black America under Jim Crow, W.E.B. DuBois declared, “When, by proscription and prejudice, . . . Negroes are classed with and treated like the lowest of their people, simply because they are Negroes, such a policy not only discourages thrift and intelligence among black men, but puts a direct premium on the very things you complain of -- inefficiency and crime.”
A system of racial classification robs those on the wrong side of the classification of the intellectual and moral characteristics necessary for survival. In their drive to gain or maintain race privileges, they focus on things entirely outside their sphere of influence -- skin color -- and ignore what is within it -- individual development. By focusing on things they cannot control or change, they place themselves in a downward spiral. They long for that which they cannot have, and when they don’t get it, despair sets in.
Like DuBois, Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on slavery during his sojourn through America have a prophetic ring, as though he were describing our world.
The central problem of a system of racial classification is that it uses an impermissible criterion to draw lines. Of course, democracy is all about drawing lines; every law draws a line. It may not be possible to express what makes some lines impermissible and other lines merely bad. We might even disagree about whether some lines are impermissible. I am confident, however, that most everyone agrees that lines based on race -- that is, systems of racial classification -- are impermissible.
The classification system reduces people on both sides to the stereotypes created by the system. It simplifies the calculus of individual evaluation by defining away the gray areas. The most venal, lazy sycophant on the right side is, by definition, morally superior to the most caring, hard working person on the wrong side of the system.
In America, whites designed and enforced the “one-drop” rule as the governing racial classification system. This “rule” has dominated race relations in America for our entire history. It relegates to the status of blacks anyone with just one drop of black blood. Anyone with “any known African black ancestry” is black. Thus, people like Olympic decathlete Dan O’Brien and Lena Horne, whose skin color is not readily identifiable as “black,” are and were black, and subject to the same abuse that someone obviously black may face.
The “one-drop” rule has served various purposes in American history. Slave owners used this rule to insure that the children of their slave mistresses would also be slaves. Public opinion leaders in the South used it to denigrate all black people, and thereby defend slavery.
The authors and enforcers of the Jim Crow system used it to define who could sit at the front of a bus, eat at Woolworth’s or vote. Equal employment officers in the public and private sectors use it to determine who is eligible for extra points in awarding of contracts, admissions programs and hiring. Today, the “one-drop” rule is the government’s guide for determining who is eligible for various racial preference programs.
Geneticists and anthropologists are less sanguine about their ability to distinguish races in any systematic fashion. Numerous studies have tried to identify biological characteristics that separate the races. After decades of trying, scientists have concluded that race has no biological component. In fact, scientists have demonstrated that differences within a “race” are greater than the differences between the “races.”
One largely ignored set of court cases, the “Prerequisite Cases,” illustrate the divergent nature of scientific and common understandings of race. In doing so, they highlight the fictitious nature of race. In these cases, various state and federal courts ruled whether a person was white, and thus entitled to become a naturalized American citizen.
Between 1790 and 1870, federal law required that immigrants wishing to obtain American citizenship be “white.” In 1870, Congress extended this privilege to blacks. Not until 1952 did the United States drop the racial barrier from its naturalization laws.
Until the Supreme Court took up the issue in 1922 and again in 1923, the courts could not settle exactly what qualified a person as white. In a series of cases between 1878 and 1923, two theories of “whiteness” emerged: science and common opinion. The scientific theory of whiteness came from various attempts at using physical traits to differentiate various races. By studying skull structures, Blumenbach claimed to have identified five races: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian (Negro), American (Native American), and Malay (López 1996, 5-6, 76). Other scientists based their racial typologies on blood samples, jaw size, hair texture, nose size and skin color.
Common understanding theories rested simply on what most people at the time regarded as racial differences. South Carolina federal district Judge Smith ruled that the only white immigrants were “people generally known as white” (ibid., 77). This standard enshrined prevailing racial bigotry as the standard for defining who is white.
Between 1878 and 1909, both theories reinforced each other. That is, scientific theories of race and common experience reached the same conclusions as to who was white. This harmonious coexistence, however, did not last. In the first twenty years of the twentieth century, biologists, ethnologists and anthropologists rejected the earlier scientific proofs of biological differences between the races. Judges now had to choose between the common understanding definition of who is white, and the scientific opinion that rejected objective standards for determining who is white.
In 1922 and 1923, as the instability inherent in the courts’ reliance on these divergent perspectives became apparent, the Supreme Court decided Ozawa v. United States and In re Thind; they were decided within mere months of each other, both were unanimous decisions, but the second decision overturned the logic of the first.
By 1922, his case had reached the Supreme Court. Ozawa’s case for naturalized American citizenship hinged on proving that he was white. In his brief to the Supreme Court (written by himself), he explained that he had not reported to the Japanese consulate in Hawaii. He had paid his way to attend UC Berkeley. His family did not attend Japanese schools or churches, and English was the primary language in his home. Indeed, his children could not even speak Japanese. In short, he was living the life of a typical American in Hawaii.
Noting that the law restricted naturalization privileges based on skin color, he argued that the darker skin color normally associated with Japanese people came from their exposure to the sun. “In the typical Japanese city of Kyoto, those not exposed to the heat of summer are particularly white-skinned. They are whiter than the average Italian, Spaniard or Portugese” (López 1996, 81).
The Justices’ unanimous opinion rejected all of Ozawa’s arguments. Living a typical American life had no bearing on the legal standard, which was whiteness, and Ozawa’s skin pigmentation had no bearing on their decision, as skin color within the white race varied substantially. The Justices asserted,
Thind’s case was more difficult than Ozawa’s, because common opinion and science disagreed about where to pigeonhole people from India. Scientists put them in the Caucasian, not the Mongolian race. Most people at the time, however, did not consider an Asian Indian as Caucasian, let alone white.
Faced with the divergence of common opinion and science, the same Justices who just four months earlier had unanimously accepted the scientific classification of races renounced scientific racial classifications.
What emerges from these cases is a case against the reliability of science and common understanding in deciding what constitutes race. If science is unable to differentiate races in any systematic manner, if common understanding is to be the arbiter of what race a person is, then doesn’t logic dictate that race has no natural grounding, and that race is simply a figment of our imagination?
Understanding why black people might pass is not difficult. The Jim Crow laws forced them to enter restaurants and other public buildings through the backdoor. Black restrooms were neglected, while white restrooms were well-maintained. Grown black men of any hue had to endure the cold epithet of “Boy,” even from white boys. In some parts of the country, a black man who would not endure such derision put his life, and perhaps that of his family, in danger.
At the same time, fair-skinned blacks contemplating passing faced the enormous loss of friends and family. While some were able to pass during the day, and maintain ties to their black family and friends, the risk of being “discovered,” and so losing all the privileges passing granted them, was too great for most. Passing was almost always a heart-wrenching all or nothing decision.
As is all too common, her school elected a white and a black homecoming queen. Her school had each homeroom nominate two students-one black and one white-for homecoming queen. On September 10, 1996, members of her homeroom nominated Bethany for both the black and the white position.
Her teacher, a substitute as it happened that day, was unsure of what to do, and consulted with the school’s homecoming director, Ms. Holly Lovrich. Ms. Lovrich informed Bethany that she could only run for one spot: she had to choose black or white. At the urging of her classmates, Bethany chose to run as the white nominee from her homeroom.
Meanwhile, Ms. Lovrich checked the Cloverdale computers “to make sure what [Bethany] was telling [her] was true.”‡ When she found that school records indicated Bethany was black, Bethany’s homeroom elections were invalidated. Her homeroom held a second set of nominations the next day, and again Bethany won her homeroom’s white nomination. School officials, however, did not list Bethany on the school-wide ballot.
On the surface, this incident is not very momentous. Surely, there are no civil rights at stake in a junior high school homecoming election. Unfortunately, that is only a superficial look. One must ask several questions to understand why this case is so significant. First, why did the school argue so vehemently for this segregation-era policy? Clearly, they could have simply let Bethany run as a white student. After all, her classmates had encouraged her to run as a white nominee. Aside from personal or societal prejudice, Cloverdale school officials had no reason to assume that Bethany’s heritage made her black rather than white.
Second, how did they expect Bethany to react when they refused to let her participate in a school activity, just because one parent was black and the other white? This system forced Bethany to choose one of her parents above another, rather than allowing her to embrace herself. In fact, the school didn’t even focus attention on her skin color; rather, they focused on those of her parents. When they didn’t match, they resorted to America’s cherished “one-drop” rule.
Third, what possible good could such a divisive policy serve? According to the school district, segregated extracurricular activities allowed students to “feel a part of the school.” It gave them a sense of “'ownership' in the school."§ That line of reasoning, however, strains credulity. Nearly forty years after Brown, exactly how does a segregated homecoming ceremony generate greater ownership? As in so many other cases, such segregation only perpetuates the divisive system of racial classification that has marred our country from its inception.
Unfortunately, America’s political leaders have always been terrified of the country’s race advocates. They hedge their bets, looking and waiting for guidance from the self-proclaimed talking heads, rather than their own conscience, or the people they claim to represent. While waiting, they have left in place the programs that continue to decimate generation after generation of black Americans.
As long as government continues to invade Americans’ privacy by asking them to identify their race, we will continue to segregate Americans, and sap the strength of people on both sides of the line. We cannot erase America’s racial lines until people know that skin color cannot play a role in public life. And as long as government keeps asking people about their race, Americans will always suspect that race plays a role.
Eliminating the race boxes from American public life has many advantages. It gets government out of the business of defining races, a task, as we have seen, for which government is wholly unsuited. Even the latest policy of having individuals self-identify their race does not solve this problem. People still need some guidance to understand what the various choices offered to them mean. If each person checking a race box understood the choices differently, the data gathered would be meaningless.**
Eliminating these boxes from our government forms also allows Americans to protect their racial privacy. Perhaps most importantly, eliminating the race boxes allows America to clear the final hurdle in our journey to fulfill the democratic dreams of our greatest statesmen.
This is the next step in America’s quest to eradicate race from our national psyche. Until the race boxes are gone, we will continue to damn generations of black people. As has always been true, a few people will succeed despite the chains, but the vast majority can never fulfill their full potential until we renounce racial classification.
‡Bethany Godby v. Montgomery County Board of Education, 1998, 5
§Godby, p. 8
** According to the Office of Management and Budget, these self-reported choices will have little influence on how civil rights laws are applied. For civil rights enforcement purposes, anyone checking white and a minority box will be "reallocated" into the minority box (OMB Bulletin No. 00-002, Guidance on Aggregation and Allocation of Multiple Race Responses for Use in Civil Rights Monitoring and Enforcement).
1. Introduction
At a meeting of the University of California’s Board of Regents, I recently heard several scholars comment on the problems that black students at the University of California confront. Each speaker asserted that the Regents’ decision to end race preferences in admissions exacerbated the problems faced by these students. In passing, one of them contended that the end of affirmative action preferences in California portends the loss of “an entire generation of young people.”2. The System of Racial Classification
Virtually everyone agrees that slavery and the system of “Jim Crow” were wrong. I also believe most would agree that the system of racial classification inherent in them is the first thing wrong with them. Without a racial classification system, slavery and Jim Crow would have been impossible. This system violated America’s promise of equality by allowing skin color to determine the parameters of a person’s lot in life -- legally, socially and economically.Johnson’s Image
In trying to make these landmarks actual practice, politicians and bureaucrats often invoked President Johnson’s famous image:
You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “You are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
This image unquestionably described the point of departure for blacks in the 1960’s.
He sees that care for his own fate has not devolved on him; the very use of thought seems to him an unprofitable gift of Providence, and he peacefully enjoys all the privileges of his humiliation. If he becomes free, he often feels independence as a heavier burden than slavery itself, for his life has taught him to submit to everything, except to the dictates of reason; and when reason becomes his only guide, he cannot hear its voice. A thousand new wants assail him, and he lacks the knowledge and the energy needed to resist them. Desires are masters against whom one must fight, and he has learned nothing but to submit and obey. So he has reached this climax of affliction in which slavery brutalizes him and freedom leads him to destruction. (Democracy in America, A. de Tocqueville, p. 318.)
While Tocqueville ascribes this malaise to slavery, a more accurate assessment would target racial classification.3. Race in Democracy
In non-democratic societies, maintaining racial classification systems is not very difficult: there are no expectations of equality. But in the Anglo-American tradition, where equality is instinctive, systems of racial classification grate. Although we often have trouble agreeing on what those instincts mean, we really do expect our laws and mores to insure “equal justice before the law.”4. Race is about power
Whenever race is invoked, it is about power. Whether it was the imposition of the “one-drop” rule on the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, or India’s caste system, race is always about power. To preserve its power, the group establishing the classification system uses a readily identifiable characteristic to separate those with power from those without power. In nearly all cases, skin color, a.k.a. race, is the easiest characteristic to use. By grouping all individuals by race, no one needs to consider people as individuals. Racial classifications turn human beings into mere objects.5. Race is an illusion
Despite being committed to the “one-drop” rule, and despite the widespread use of racial classification in government programs, Americans generally cannot define what they mean by race. In defining it, they often refer to country of origin, or native tongue. Some people mention religion, others suggest physical characteristics like skin color or hair texture. Regardless of the feature chosen, they are certain that race can be identified scientifically. Indeed, a recent Zogby poll found that 73.2 percent of Americans believe that “race is determined by your genetics,” rather than by “societal views and perceptions.”Ozawa
A native of Japan, Takao Ozawa moved at the age of 19 to California. After earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of California-Berkeley, he settled in Hawaii. In 1914, he applied to become a naturalized American citizen. Like virtually every immigrant to the United States, Ozawa yearned for the basic privileges of American citizenship. He paid taxes to the government, but the government denied him the franchise. A jury of his peers could convict him, but he could not serve as a juror. He had made the United States his home, but could not travel abroad with an American passport. He lived like an American, and obeyed her laws, and he wanted to participate in making those laws, and enjoy their protection.
Manifestly, the test [of race] afforded by the mere color of the skin of each individual is impracticable as that differs greatly among persons of the same race, even among Anglo-Saxons, ranging by imperceptible gradations from the fair blond to the swarthy brunette, the latter being darker than many of the lighter hued persons of the brown or yellow race. (Ozawa 1922, 197)
According to A.H. Keane, the leading race scientist of the day, being of Japanese descent placed Ozawa clearly in the Mongolian race. The Justices proceeded to equate “Caucasian” with white. “The words 'white person' are synonymous with the words ‘a person of Caucasian race’” (Ozawa, 197). Since he was Japanese, and since science and common understanding agreed that Japanese people are not Caucasian, the Justices ruled that he was not white, and therefore ineligible to obtain naturalized citizenship in the United States.Thind
Four short months later, the same Justices heard the case of Bhagat Sing Thind. Thind grew up in India, and attended Punjab University. At age 21, he arrived in America on July 4, 1913. In 1920, he applied for naturalized citizenship.
It may be true that the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences between them today. (Thind, 209)
Thind, like Ozawa before him, was declared to be non-white, and therefore ineligible for naturalized American citizenship. This time, however, the Court rejected the dictates of science. They elevated “common understanding” over scientific proof. Perhaps most startling, their decision ignored the significance of their logic. In trying to understand how scientific analyses of racial classifications could come up with so many different classification systems, they argue:
The explanation probably is that the innumerable varieties of mankind run into one another by insensible degrees, and to arrange them in sharply bounded divisions is an undertaking of such uncertainty that common agreement is practically impossible. (Thind, 212)
While asserting that common agreement on racial classifications is impossible, they impose the “popular underst[anding]” of “the average man.”The Prerequisite Cases Considered
The significance of the Prerequisite Cases generally, and Ozawa and Thind particularly, is what they say about the nature of race. The Court was willing to rely on scientific evidence, so long as it reinforced their belief in racial classification. In Ozawa, the Justices were so confident of science’s racial classification abilities that they declined to even review the relevant literature (Ozawa, 198). In Thind, when scientific analysis reached a conclusion that differed from their prejudices, they simply dismissed scientific analysis.6. Racial Classification, Yesterday and Today
The place of race in American history reflects the principles outlined above. The stories of Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Sing Thind above both illustrate the terrible harm that come from a system of racial classification. A brief history of the “one-drop” rule in American history will illustrate this point more vividly.“The Tragic Mulatto”
Perhaps, the clearest example of how devastating the “one-drop” rule has been in American life is to consider the “tragic mulatto.” Between 1880 and 1925, estimates show that as many as 25,000 blacks “passed” into the white world annually (Davis 1998, p. 22). These were people whose parents were classified as black, but because of their physical characteristics, where able to pass, or be viewed as white by white society.A white Homecoming
Unfortunately, Americans have not learned the lessons of racial classification yet. We still maintain them, and they still hurt. Bethany Godby is a case in point. In 1996, she was a 13 year old ninth grader at Cloverdale Junior High School in Montgomery, Alabama. Her father is white, and her mother is black. She did not regard herself as black or white: she routinely switched racial boxes on various school forms.7. Racial Classification in the 21st Century
Americans are tired of the racial chains. That is why a beleaguered minority, oppressed under slavery and then Jim Crow, was able to overthrow the nation’s racial regime. King’s victories in the early 1960’s gave America the first opportunity to rid itself of the stain of racial classification. That is why Americans are rejecting our modern system of racial classification-race preferences. Prop. 209 passed in California by a 54-46 margin. Washington state’s I-200 passed by a 58-42 margin. At its lowest, popular support for the Florida Civil Rights Initiative has been a resounding 65 percent.
* For reasons described above, I am uncomfortable with the terms "race," black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc. However, it would be impossible to convey my message if I had to qualify my use of these terms every time I use them. Thus, I conform to these social conventions, in an effort to move the discussion where it belongs -- beyond race.
DuBois, W.E.B. 1961. The souls of black folks. New York: Fawcett.
López, Haney. 1996. White by law: The legal construction of race. New York: NYU Press. Takao Ozawa v. U.S. 1922. 260 U.S. 1978.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1969. Lawrence, George (trans.). Democracy in America. New York: Perrenial Library.
U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind. 1923. 261 U.S. 204.
On April 11, Mr. Connerly launched the RACIAL PRIVACY INITIATIVE, a ballot initiative to prohibit most California government agencies from compiling racial data. This latest measure, which he hopes will appear on the March 2002 ballot as a constitutional amendment, would remove any mention of race from California government forms and prevent most state and local agencies from maintaining such statistics.
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