"The reasonable man adapts to the world around him. The unreasonable man expects the world to adapt to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable men."

-- George Bernard Shaw

I stumbled across an article about "mixedness" on the web the other day. "You told us all along that we had to call ourselves black because of this so-called one drop. Now that we don't have to anymore, we choose to. Because black is beautiful. Because black is not a burden, but a privilege." This is a quote from author Danzy Senna, a woman of mixed-race who is the daughter of a black/Mexican man and WASP mother. She is a very talented woman, a gifted writer. She also shows open disdain for people who choose a mixed-race identity. (See: "Salon Mothers Who Think | Mulatto millennium") This is nothing new, but it is very curious.

Her perspective seems to be that it is cowardly for the mixed to adopt their own background as a reality. It is ironic, because it seems to me that there really are no fireworks (maybe some quizzical looks) when a phenotypically "white" woman, such as Ms Senna (photo right), says she's "black", but if a phenotypically "white" woman, like Mariah Carey (photo below), injects a dose of reality into the world by pointing out that she appears "white" because she predominantly is, she gets flak from just about everybody. This is because she will not "choose sides" in our increasingly irrelevant national "race war". Asserting reality lands a mixed person in the position of being accused of fomenting every negative feeling imaginable, including racism and self hatred.

Let's be frank for once, which seems to take more chutzpah than anything else. The honest person in a political environment is usually setting themselves up for a rocky ride. Accommodating the squeakiest voice is the path of least resistance, and while I do not dispute the right or motivation of any person choosing to say "I'm black", when they pretty much are "white", I will, however, point out that it doesn't take much "courage". Historically, it did take tremendous force of character, because acknowledging one's black relatives, when one was phenotypically Caucasian, meant giving up all fundamental liberty and self-actualization in an American past that was an even more rampantly racist society than the current one. Amazingly, "black" friends and relatives would frequently assist the "mixed white" person in disguising their complete identity, so as not to rob them of the only opportunity for advancement they would have. It was a tremendous sacrifice of self on the parts of both the phenotypically "white" and phenotypically "non white" members of the community. There is one town, in Virginia, where this was so common it was named Passing, Virginia.

What of today, though? In the post-civil rights era, and the moment of the greatest waves of immigration from developing (i.e. "darker") nations to the U.S., the adoption of a "black" identity by a phenotypically Caucasian person is really more of a luxury. Maybe a way of expressing a deeply held personal political philosophy or, perhaps, just of "getting over" in one's community environment, pleasing one's parents, or "atoning" for their bodily advantage... a host of things. Walking around the world in a "white" shell, that is rarely questioned, (You look like a "white" person so you must be. After all, "white" people can't have "black blood", right?), is an unavoidable privilege in this society. No one "assumes" you will steal their purse and cross the street when they see you coming the other way. No one will put their house up for sale if you move in next door. No one will follow you around a store to see if someone "like you" is about to shoplift. No one will shoot you on the sidewalk in a racist drive by attack. You will not be stopped by the police for driving a new car that is either presumed to be stolen or paid for with drug money. You will not be denied a promotion to a "more visible" job because of the way you look. In fact, you will more likely be embraced -- when it suits them -- as a "darling child" in the "black" community because you deign to loan your Caucasian looks to "blackness" and give self-loathing people a "bridge" to "whiteness". Oh, and what a wonderful acquisition in the work environment, increasing "minority hiring" statistics for industries that don't have to have an actually "black" face around to tout that they have a "black" person working there. When a "white" person says "I'm black" today, socially speaking, they have virtually nothing to lose.

Most mixed individuals are of other blends. "Asian" and "white; "Hispanic" and "white". I really am interested to hear from such individuals about how they are "expected" to "identify" by their respective minority communities. Perhaps they function in a saner environment, the specter of slavery not hanging over their heads. Then again, perhaps not.

Many "black" mixed individuals look "mixed-black", or "Hispanic", or, with that Native American ancestry dominating the features, "Asian". All of these people face marginally less discrimination than people who appear wholly "black", but would still be targets of white supremacist violence and all other forms of racist persecution, subtle and overt. They acknowledge a mixed identity not because they have shame over, or denial of African, or Asian, or "other" roots of color. They have a mixed identity because they really have no other. They own their mixed identity because it is true. They claim their mixed identity because they are tired of a world that is getting away with patently stupid judgments about people based on facts not in evidence. They are asserting their truly blended selves, rejecting convolution, and will not "play along". They claim their "multiness" because they sincerely want things to be better in the future for everyone. They seek to love their uniqueness, as a refuge, when they are not truly accepted as "full" members of the groups single race advocates would have them identify with. Numerous members of those groups make a point of making the mixed individual's "outsider" status clear to them, whenever the desire to hurt others to the quick suits them. Mixed people live with their own reality. It is pointed out to them everyday when they are "mistaken" for ethnic groups they do not even remotely have a relationship to. They stand alone, truly rational in this irrational "Bizzaro world" of "race".

The truth is that the civil rights movement is unnerved by its own successes. The mixed identity exists because everyone of us is human and can be no more or no less than what we are. It is a real life, personal experience and every mixed person, no matter what they choose to call themselves, or why, knows it -- no matter how reasonable it is to say otherwise.

Also by Eleanora Hill:

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