Mireya Navarro, New York Times, March 31, 2008
Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.
“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.
“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”
Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.
‘What are you?’
{snip}
Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.
“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”
The old categories are weakening, however, as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population.
Sticking to one-race label
Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent, researchers say, sometimes because of strong identification with one racial group, and occasionally because of a conscious effort not to dilute the numbers of the group they most identify with.
In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity.
{snip}
“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”
{snip}
While many mixed-race people say they see their heritage as a plus, they also say they often face pressure from others who want to pigeonhole them. Mr. McBride said his books invariably were shelved in the African-American sections of bookstores. “Why can’t I be a white author?” he said. “I’m half white.”
{snip}
Increasingly visible
Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today.
{snip}
The mixed-race terrain is full of such bumps and tricky balances. But at least, many multiracial Americans say, they are no longer seen as oddities. Ms. Zaloom expects that her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son will experience a different journey to self-identity than she did. At times while growing up, Ms. Zaloom recalled, she struggled with questions about whether she was white enough or attractive. She rebelled against Chinese language lessons, her mother’s Chinese food and eating with chopsticks.
{snip}
“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.”
Original article
(Posted on March 31, 2008)
Comments
“The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples.”
They left out the fact that only 1/3 of these couples involved Whites.
Posted by at 6:17 PM on March 31
There may be a dialogue on mixed race somewhere but it is not here.
The only discussion with blacks is how the white race is to be diminished. Perhaps, other relationships are possible with other races. But with blacks you are black or like Obama you are “half black/white” I’m sure you can see the differance; or you look like you are white; you could “pass” for white but you are black.
I think most black people understand this and only some white people understand. Many, many white people are fooled or they are just confused with all this talk.
There was another story about race, blackness and “passing” in Sunday NYT’s. It was in the art sections. One part pretty much sums up what every white person should understand.
Adrian Piper:
. A few years later Ms. Piper, who is light skinned, began to selectively distribute a printed calling card at similar social events. It read:
Dear Friend,
I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative or socially inappropriate. Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are not black people present, and to distribute this card when they do.
I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me.
Sincerely yours,
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper
In this spectrum where is the place for the white race?
Posted by max3a at 6:28 PM on March 31
“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.”
I certainly agree with that. But does she really think that protected minorities—people who have something to gain from that ‘checked box’—are ever going to let that happen??
Posted by kitty at 6:44 PM on March 31
There is a saying about the rule governing line-calls in tennis that says “99 percent out is 100% in.” In other words, if any part of the ball so much as touches the line, it is in. Same holds true with race - even a miniscule admixture of black blood makes an individual 100 percent black (or at least 100 percent non-White). Our forefathers - who were prone to the archaic notions of common-sense and a need to see empirical data - recognized and accepted this. Living prrof of this is found in Portugal, where the 10 percent admixture of black genes among the population make Portugal the least literate and most inefficient nation in Europe.
A question for these mixed persons who wish to think of themselves as White: Have any of them ever declined to accept a race-based preference that gave them a leg-up on Whites, simply by virtue of their black blood? Of course they haven’t. Hence, they are what they are. Black. Game, Set, Match.
Posted by Legal Eagle at 6:57 PM on March 31
“Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past.”
It seems most people in publishing and advertising have a fetish for mixed race people. Mulattos are extremely overrepresented in media - even more so than blacks.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 7:12 PM on March 31
More dire news. Interracial marriage was the last barrier that still held firm after everything else was integrated. Now it too is weakening.
Posted by Diamed at 8:17 PM on March 31
So…her argument is that because she is mixed race or bi-racial…then race in and of itself must not actually exist??? This is like saying that there is no real black or white as colors, because when you mix them you get grey!! I’m fairly certain most would not accept such a silly premise for an instant. But when it comes to race - all common sense, logic, reason and apparently even science, goes out the window!
Posted by HH at 8:41 PM on March 31
“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”
Yes, how true. This is something selfish inter-racial couples, especially white women, never consider. The mixed race kid belongs nowhere and is the mutant of the modern era.
How torn between two worlds these people must feel.
I think it is imperative that a third race (mixed) is recognized in this country, so these people can have some kind of grounding. They will, however, still be regarded as outcasts by all races.
I wonder if the poor fools who begat them don’t realize the harm they’ve done or if they just don’t care.
Posted by ice at 8:58 PM on March 31
A tshirt with the phrase “100% white woman” would be burned at the stake with its wearer.
Posted by Spartan24 at 9:35 PM on March 31
we have a name for pups that are mixed breeds which would seem to fit here too?
Posted by Ima Vet at 9:35 PM on March 31
Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.
I wonder what would happen if I, a White male, wore a T-Shirt in college that said “100 percent White male.”? I would probably either be expelled or sent to some diversity training re-education camp so I could see the error of my ways. I’m sick and tired of double-standards. Sick and tired.
Posted by at 9:50 PM on March 31
“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”
—-
The sad thing is, it is NOT absurd, since most people know there are behavioral and reasoning differences between the races. This explains why each group is inclined to flock together as birds of a feather. I have long learned that the “one drop” rule of black blood is enough to tarnish the ability for most black/White mulattos, such as Obama, to reason to the extent that the non liberal Whites are capable of; therefore, they are incapable as a candidate for the President’s seat.
~Rande
Posted by Rande at 11:13 PM on March 31
Far from demonstrating “how absurd this business of race is”, the difficulty these people obviously have in establishing their own identity and fitting in is proof that race is real. There’s no doubt there is a social dimension to this — that societies establish paradigms of such things as race. But why do societies do this? The tired old environmental explanations of Marx simply do not go far enough in addressing more fundamental realities underlying social structures themselves.
Posted by at 11:17 PM on March 31
““But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.””
Translation: “Race won’t matter when we’re all one nice shade of light brown”.
Posted by Obscuratus at 11:32 PM on March 31
Actually it is BLACKS WHO ARE OBSESSED with race. They are the most racially conscious of all people and make everything a racial issue. They filter EVERYTHING - EVERYTHING - through the prism of race. There is nothing blacks cannot turn into a racial issue. Add to this an unacknowledged inferiority complex - blacks have the racial equivalent of a short man’s Napoleon complex - and the results are guaranteed trouble.
Posted by at 12:33 AM on April 1
Most of the world, the US included, is beset with ever-growing racial tensions and hostilities, yet “the business of race” is “absurd.” What a silly, solipsistic little hothouse world these people inhabit. You’d think their own inner troubles would suggest to them that race is not absurd but a fundamental part of anyone’s makeup. True to form the little dears draw exactly the wrong conclusion.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 1:47 AM on April 1
Basketball fans all have recently rooted for the slight, boyish sharpshooter Stephen Curry of Davidson. His parents have both been repeatedly shown on CBS TV. Father’s “black” (very light); mother appears to be white. So, to us he would be 75-90% white-blooded. Yet, all media references to him are as a “black” hero.
Same as:
Halle Berry; Derek Jeter; Joakim Noah; Grady Sizemore; Mariah Carey; etc, etc.
In this PC era, it’s the “blacks” who are eager & happy to enforce the “one-drop” rule & claim these mostly white high achievers as “theirs”
Posted by Cousin Charlie from TN at 7:48 AM on April 1
Although I’m part Hispanic, I’m more concerned with protecting the American way of life than I am in aligning myself with one ethnic group or another. I want to be able to say Merry Christmas at Wal-Mart. I don’t want our kids being taught that the founders of this country were horrible b/c they owned slaves or b/c they displaced Indians. I want my congressperson to swear in on the Bible, not the Quran. I want everyone to be able to speak English properly.
You don’t have to be 100% Caucasian to want these things.
Posted by at 7:58 AM on April 1
I see an unconscious advocacy for the “great dream” of liberaldom in this “absurd” article. Of course, the great dream is the elimination of racism through miscegenation. This has never worked and never will work. People will anyways made distinctions among themselves based on appearance. This is even the case in mixed race populations—look at Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Dream on diversity liberals, race will never be irrelevant or “absurd”
Posted by Sardonicus at 8:05 AM on April 1
Did anyone catch that ABC John Stossel piece last week on 20/20? They had on a story about some Blacks that had a skin ailment where they would get splotches of white on them. One was a Black woman who’s skin totally chaged to White. She said that she was treated better by Whites (getting asked if she need help by store employees) and apparently WORST by her FELLOW BLACKS!
I had a good laugh over that one; how ABC let the cat out of the bag there beggers belief.
Posted by at 11:33 AM on April 1
“Adrian Piper:
. A few years later Ms. Piper, who is light skinned, began to selectively distribute a printed calling card at similar social events. It read:
Dear Friend,
I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative or socially inappropriate. Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are not black people present, and to distribute this card when they do.
I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me.
Sincerely yours,
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper”
If I EVER got handed one of these cards, I’d spit on it and throw it on the floor in the giver’s presence. (After I put my hand on my lock-blade knife in my pocket, of course.) Then I’d step back and let the chips fall where they may.
More and more, I’m getting REALLY sick of some people’s presumption that they have the right to tell me how to and what to think.
Posted by Return The Hate at 12:54 PM on April 1
Does race matter? I am 3/16 Cherokee and Tuskarora, and thus basically white. My wife is Japanese, and hence partly Ainu. I am partly Asiatic, and she is partly Caucasoid. Our parent races are so far removed from Africa that we prefer to be considered separate species from the inhabitants of that continent.
Race might not matter, but if “race” is an artificial creation, species still matter.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:33 PM on April 1
Most blacks/African Americans aren’t “100% black” unless they’re recent immigrants from Africa. African-Americans have around 25% European/Caucasian genes on average.
Just because someone is half-black, half-white or half-white, half-asian does not mean that categorization by race is meaningless. It means that the person is half-black or half-Asian.
Posted by at 1:37 PM on April 1
I have to note that the most vicious of black criminals are of mixed race. They feel their “blackness” is constantly questioned. The book “Zebra” by Howard which describes the Zebra Killings in San Francisco talked constatly about lighter skinned blacks who would lead the way in the most dispicable acts to increase their street “cred” (credibility). It was a neurotic, never ending display of self-hatred and hatred of all things white.
Posted by Gun Runner at 1:49 PM on April 1
I am red-haired, blue-eyed with pale, freckled skin. I am 1/32 Cherokee and the rest white. Does this make me a “mongrel?”
Posted by at 2:06 PM on April 1
Although I’m part Hispanic, I’m more concerned with protecting the American way of life than I am in aligning myself with one ethnic group or another. I want to be able to say Merry Christmas at Wal-Mart. I don’t want our kids being taught that the founders of this country were horrible b/c they owned slaves or b/c they displaced Indians. I want my congressperson to swear in on the Bible, not the Quran. I want everyone to be able to speak English properly.
You don’t have to be 100% Caucasian to want these things.
Posted by at 7:58 AM on April 1
Welcome to the club. You don’t have to be 100% Caucasian to be a good, decent people. Most of the problems in this country stem from 100% Caucasians ‘helping’ 75-100% Africans at the expense of other 100% Caucasians. I also have no ill will toward Hispanics in general but the problem of Mexico exporting its entire underclass to the United States has to be resolved.
Posted by at 2:16 PM on April 1
“I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me.
Sincerely yours,
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper”
Here’s my card in return:
Your presence doesn’t discomfort me so much as what comes out of your mouth, which reveals what goes through your mind.
If your resentment at who you are or who you want to be troubles you so greatly, isn’t it possible you would feel more at home in Africa on the Serengeti Plains, where you don’t feel compelled to pass out cards and make a total ass of yourself?
Posted by Ranger at 3:16 PM on April 1
No, you don’t have to be 100% white to appreciate and desire the blessings of civilization, but you will have to admit that these things are most likely to be found in 100% white countries. We whites must rule in our own countries, or be ruled by minority races. There is no middle ground.
Posted by at 3:25 PM on April 1
Race DOES matter… but for a reason non-Whites can’t bring themselves to admit. That nearly everything that makes today’s civilization and its benefits possible was due to the intelligence and work of White people.
Thus non-Whites find saddled with an inadmissible but very real inferiority complex. I’m surprised no psychologist ever considered this aspect of race consciousness. Granted non-White races have made contributions to knowledge and technolgy… which range from miniscule to moderate. Africans and their American counterparts contributed virtually nothing before 1865.
But this is HISTORY, not the fictitious history the Afro-centrist crowd would dearly have us believe.
Posted by Fed Up at 5:52 PM on April 1
Just as Obama’s background makes it next to impossible for him NOT to be neurotic, so for all mulattos. The interior uncertainty about who they are and where they stand makes them even more mercurial and more explosively dangerous to whites than unmixed or barely mixed blacks are. Halfbreeds are notoriously untrustworthy. For good reason.
Posted by ricpic at 7:13 PM on April 1
Return The Hate at 12:54PM 0n 04/01.
I agree. however we must bide our time for the the right moment. Not just waste energy on jerks like this. When the time is right, you’ll know it.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron... at 8:10 PM on April 1
Lol….if she was 100% black, she wouldn’t be in college. That is the cold, hard fact of genetics. Which is, of course, why, other races mixing with blacks is undesirable and, in many places in this world, simply not allowed (even more places put so much social pressure against it that it might as well be outlawed).
Mix racing is bad for a society, in general. But there is always a small group of people that simply insist on this in choice of partner. Society bears the burden for the sake of the individuals right. But mixing with blacks has its own special brand of problems. Unlike other races, which are merely different and sometimes problematical, blacks are inferior. Not just mildly so but to such a dramatic extent that their societies simply fail. To be blunt, they are not capable of maintaining, by themselves, the hallmarks of civilization and direct evidence of that is seen in modern day africa and haiti. On a personal level however, choosing a black for a mate is a disaster. Violence, criminality, drug use, murder, rape, torture and even cannibalism are the result as evidenced in day to day news reports on crime. The situation is ridiculously extreme and the amount of effort and energy devoted to our society being in denial over it, is incredible. Now, I am not saying it should be outlawed. We are an enlightened democracy, not an islamo-fascist state. But, the truth needs to become widespread. Most people would choose differently, if they knew the likely consequences.
Posted by at 10:15 PM on April 1
Does the existence of the color orange negate the reality of red and yellow, and the difference between them?
Does anyone deny that differing breeds of dog have differing temperaments and behaviors? Interbreeding them doesn’t erase the reality that that difference exists, or existed.
Posted by Irish at 11:42 PM on April 1
10:15PM
“If she was[sic]100% black, she wouldn’t be in college”. This is just factually wrong and it’s puzzling that anyone could make such a statement knowing fully well that it would be easily refuted.
1)There are thousands of Africans who have been accepted into elite Western universities such as Cambridge University, Oxford University, MIT, Caltech, Imperial College, Harvard, Swiss Institute of Technology, Ecole Normale Superieure(Paris),University of Munich, etc, and read subjects where ones competence or incompetence is easily detected. I refer to physics, mathematics, engineering, etc. What I say is easily confirmed by examining the relevant statistics.
2)There are millions of U.S. blacks who have graduated from college in the U.S. Given that some 70-75% of U.S. blacks are “100% black”—to use your quaint and scientifically nonsensical phrase—then explain why they were admitted to college and have graduated.
Posted by OCCAM at 4:21 AM on April 2
“There are millions of U.S. blacks who have graduated from college in the U.S. Given that some 70-75% of U.S. blacks are “100% black”—to use your quaint and scientifically nonsensical phrase—then explain why they were admitted to college and have graduated.”
Blacks are the poorest academic performers in the United States. They attend college at a rate far lower than do whites or asians. When they are admitted it is generally because, like Mrs. Obama, they are the objects of racial preferences. When they graduate, which they do less often than whites or asians, they do so in what are generally the easiest courses of study; in fact colleges in the US have spent the last four decades crafting failure-proof “majors” specifically for blacks who could not otherwise cope with genuine academic study. The numbers of blacks who take degrees “physics, mathematics, engineering, etc.” is laughably miniscule, as one can confirm by consulting the relevant statistics. In fact at least one university mathematician has pointed this brute reality out to you on these very boards.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 11:06 AM on April 2
Well, let’s follow the careers of a couple of these “university educated” blacks, shall we. Robert Mugabe and Jomo Kenyatta for starters. The prosecution rests.
Posted by at 1:23 PM on April 2
“2)There are millions of U.S. blacks who have graduated from college in the U.S. Given that some 70-75% of U.S. blacks are “100% black”—to use your quaint and scientifically nonsensical phrase—then explain why they were admitted to college and have graduated.”
Posted by OCCAM at 4:21 AM on April 2
The percentage of white blood within American blacks varies, of course, but it involves more than 30%, unfortunately. And, I might add that I’m sorry to have to report that, because nothing degrades a white more than having a black relationship of any kind. I, like tens of millions of other people of all races, find it disgusting.
But if we allow you the privilege of using your own wishful statistics, what difference does it make to black proficiency figures to say that blacks are accepted to institutions of higher learning and receive accreditation from them when they were accepted ONLY because of affirmative action? They’re graded the same way, and they are “awarded” certification in order to oil the squeaky wheels so blacks won’t riot and start Civil War II.
As it has been pointed out on here many times, other races have to EARN their academic accomplishments. Blacks are AWARDED theirs.
And no amount of false stastistics will ever change that.
Posted by w.r. at 8:55 PM on April 2
>>>There are millions of U.S. blacks who have graduated from college in the U.S. Given that some 70-75% of U.S. blacks are “100% black”—to use your quaint and scientifically nonsensical phrase—then explain why they were admitted to college and have graduated.
If nothing else, at least OCCAM provided us with irrefutable proof that there is virtually NO DISCRIMINATION against Blacks. That Blacks even have the edge on Whites regards college admissions — translatable as lowered standards, extra financial help.
So those perpetual Black failures apparently do have only themselves to blame. Which also gives the lie to those Jeremiah Wright types and their anti-White racist rantings! Which which those of us with even minimal reaoning ability have figured out for ourselves long ago.
Posted by Fed Up at 8:23 AM on April 3
Occam: Some years ago, Thomas Sowell wrote an article bemoaning the fact that most doctoral degrees that go to Blacks are in education. He pointed out that in the year prior to his writing, a grand total of three Blacks had earned degrees in mathematics, zero in astronomy, etc. BTW, degrees in Math Education don’t count. The dumbest teacher on our faculty had a Master’s in Math Ed. This is not, I realize, an ironclad statistical proof, but it is the familiar experience of tens of millions of Whites.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 6:00 PM on April 5
