Bi-or-Multi-Racial People: The Root of Their Identity Issues
I don’t believe that is logically or legally sound for multi-racial people who are part-Black to be labeled as “BLACK” or self-identify as Black. To be honest, it is rather insulting to me and it should be insulting to those from which they inherit the other aspects of their genotype (genetics) too. I believe that they should be labeled as “multi-racial” or at least "bi-racial".
Before you accuse me of all the bad names in the book, please be open minded enough to read the article first. So many people seem to want to be conveniently Black without being directly linked to the plight of Blacks either historically or genealogically. But being BLACK is an experience, a reality, a struggle, a plight, an adventure and an inconvenient truth. And being a Black man requires that one relates to Blacks at large and Black men and do something about their plight.
Ok let’s start by defining “Self-identity”. “Self- identity” is defined as the recognition of one’s potential and qualities as an individual, especially in relation to social context.
It is a known issue that multi-racial people can experience an identity crisis, and can get flat out annoyed at being asked “WHAT ARE YOU?” I believe that everyone can imagine that it must be difficult for someone who is the product of multi races to pin point the race with which s/he should identify. It is rather based on genetics (inheritance), phenotype (physical appearance) and how others react to such people’s genotype and phenotype in a specific culture or environment.
It is no surprise that some of such people LOOK WHITE, but feel BLACK while others LOOK BLACK yet feel WHITE. People like Tiger Woods are well known for identifying themselves as a combination of the two race “Black-Asian”, and he is actually the most accurate of most people in those category because just because one self-identifies as one, it doesn’t disqualify his/her genotype or genetics. It is refutable that unless there is a genetics issue, we all get 50% of our 46 chromosomes from each parent (i.e., 23 chromosomes from each parent.) In nutshell, we’re a combination of our parents, who are a combination of their parents and so on and so forth. This is why we can inherit or share traits with grandparents, uncles and cousins based on whether the genes are dominant and recessive and encounter similar genes in other partners.
However, even though a person who looks Black may actually be more Caucasian/White than one who looks Whiter, most people identify people based on what they look like (i.e., their phenotype), such as their facial structure, skin tone, hair type etc. YES, most of us are naturally discriminatory and shallow bastards. LOL
In America and other Eurocentric parts of the World the race discussion took a different dynamic as race became a construct particularly as it was linked to slavery to justify the ill-treatment of Black slaves by identifying as less than a White person or a fraction of a White person, the effects of which permeates until today into what we can call “RACIAL EQUITY”. In other words, no matter how intelligent and genius you are, the initial presumption was based on the fact that most people in your race are boxed in a certain category and that may in and of itself decrease your worth in the eyes of people of other races. It is not different from doing a comparative market analysis when buying real property (e.g., land or a house.)… See my article entitled “IS STILL A NIG**, SPI*CK… etc The Way Whites Still look at Non-Whites”
The ONE-DROP Jim Crow Rule
The turn of the century saw states across the south maliciously creating Jim Crow laws, affecting every section of daily life. Such laws were geared towards SEGREGATION. Segregated waiting rooms in professional offices were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows etc.
Such laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped. Likewise, under the old Jim Crow discriminatory laws of the land (U.S.) whenever a person had ON DROP OF BLACK BLOOD in him/her that qualified him to be called NON-WHITE because the BLACK BLOOD (genes) was (were) deemed to be so inferior that it was tainting the pureness of the WHITE BLOOD, something that Whites still value until today, which is the very reason why we are still having a WHITE SUPREMACY ARGUMENT.
The Jim Crow laws in essence were meant to criminalize any relationship between any Black and White person as it went against the fabric of the commerce and capitalist characteristic of the country at that time (i.e., slavery) and created confusion as to how to categorize the children that emanated from such relationships. The laws understood that relationships are the progenitors of communities and culture etc. Accordingly, the best way of so preventing was through SEGREGATION of Blacks and Whites as to prevent such occurrences. But those that were brave enough to go against such laws were severely punished as to create deterrence for others.
ABOLITION OF THE JIM CROW LAWS – AS DISCRIMINATORY and RACIST
The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment freeing four million slaves. Such Black codes were strict laws detailing when, where and how freed slaves could work, and for how much compensation.
However, thanks to people like Ida B. Well, eventually, the Jim Crow laws were abolished as racist and patently discriminatory. But there remnants remain until today, even though no one should be seen as “JUST BLACK” just because s/he has one drop of Black blood in him/her.
YET people like Obama or Mariah Carey or Halle Berry or Dwayne Johnson or Dwayne Johnson or Alicia Keys self-identify as BLACK even though they are at least 50% WHITE. The latter is in support of the old RACIST Jim Crow Laws and just shows how both Black and White minds struggle to get away from the shallow way in which they view each other, UNLESS they are IN LOVE or in a business, personal, or heart-based relationship or simply happen to like each other.
Ida B. Wells was a Black Memphis teacher, who became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a train car designated for whites only. As a conductor forcibly removed her, she bit him on the hand, but a judge ruled in her favor, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court. Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting the oncoming Jim Crow laws in Memphis and used newspaper writing as a vehicle for her dissent to such laws. In 1889 she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment. In Chicago and other parts of the country, there are beautiful streets dedicated to this beautiful lady accordingly.
WHY ARE MULTI-RACIAL PEOPLE CONFUSED? WHY ARE THERE “RACIAL IMPOSTORS”?
1. They feel the need to erroneously pick one race over all the others based on their understanding and affinity to that particular race… (e.g., Obama has a White Mother and an African Father and despite being from two highly educated parents who were never slaves themselves, he chooses to identity himself via the Black race and marries a Black woman, even though on paper, he should have more affinity to the White race as he was raised mainly by his White side of his family and had almost no interaction with his Black side of the family.)
2. They took can discriminate via a false aura of superiority because others can label them as White-like or can pass for White or beautiful or exotic and they can in turn get privileges that are normally denied to Blacks or other Non-Whites. For instance, in Haiti after the Whites left, the Mulattoes became the new Whites and they started behaving like the Whites even though they had united with the Blacks to oust the Whites from power.
3. Racial impostors are people that are not of a particular race but self-identifies as such. They are trying to benefit from the something (e.g., the pity or victimhood or even privilege) that people that fall under such a group inherit. They are fake people and rather shameful people to be honest. There was a lady from Washington State (Spokane specifically), named Rachel Dolezal, who posed as black and led the Spokane NAACP and passed as Black by wearing heavy make ups and “curlying or nappying her hair”. And Blacks were tolerant and stupid enough to accept her as a Black person.
4. Multiracial children are also often subject to institutional discrimination from government, private and public organizations. Many schools do not permit multiracial students to choose more than one race on demographic forms (Renn, 2009; Sanchez, 2010; Townsend, Markus, & Bergsieker, 2009). This lack of control in being able to properly self identify has been shown to affect one's mental health (Sanchez, 2010; Townsend, Markus, & Bergsieker, 2009).
5. Until federally overturned in 1967, most U.S. states banned marriages and relationships between White and non-White people. Biracial and multiracial children were thus once considered illicit results of such illegal marriages and relationships (Root, 1996).
6. Multiracial children and adolescents are resilient. Researchers show that multiracial identity increases an appreciation and empathy for cultural diversity among others (Shih & Sanchez, 2009). Moreover, multiracial adolescents and young adults are less likely to be subject to stereotype threat that causes poor performance on tasks. This may be because the multiracial participants are more likely to understand that race is not biological, but rather, is a social construct (Shih et al., 2007).
7. In a pew survey, when asked, “Do you consider yourself to be mixed race or multiracial, that is, more than one race, or not?,” a substantial majority of Americans with a background that includes more than one race (61%) say that they do not consider themselves to be multiracial.
8. In the same pew survey, when asked why they don’t identify as multiracial, about half (47%) say it is because they look like one race. An identical proportion say they were raised as one race, while about four-in-ten (39%) say they closely identify with a single race. And about a third (34%) say they never knew the family member or ancestor who was a different race. (Individuals were allowed to select multiple reasons.)
9. This multiracial “identity gap” plays out in distinctly different ways in different mixed-race groups.A quarter of biracial adults with a white and American Indian background say they consider themselves multiracial, for example. By contrast, seven-in-ten white and Asian biracial adults and 61% of those with a white and black background say they identify as multiracial. Multiracial adults with a white, black and American Indian racial background (50%) or a black and American Indian biracial background (33%) fall between these groups in terms of the share who say they identify as multiracial. Among Hispanics who count two or more races in their background, about six-in-ten (62%) say they consider themselves to be multiracial.The survey also finds that the way in which people describe their own racial background doesn’t always match the way they believe others see them. About nine-in-ten white and American Indian biracial adults (88%) believe that a stranger passing them on the street would say they were single-race white; only 2% say they would be seen as multiracial and 7% as American Indian only.
10. According to the same survey, by contrast, six-in-ten Americans with a white and black background (61%) believe they are seen as black; only 19% say they would be seen as multiracial (an additional 7% say they would be perceived as white only). Among white and Asian biracial adults, 42% say others would perceive them as white and 23% think others see them as Asian. Two-in-ten say they would be seen as multiracial.
Number 10 proves the impact of the Jim Crow laws in the psyche of Blacks and those that have direct Black ancestry. In other words, even modernly, both Blacks and Whites judge each other according to those abolished laws and thus are PATENTLY RACIST to each other subconsciously because in so doing they are exercising their POWER to self-identify both individually and in society at large (systematically).
In other words, we are ALL RACIST! Again, being BLACK is an experience, a reality, a struggle, a plight, an adventure and an inconvenient truth. Despite being the ORIGINAL RACE, many view of as the PRIMITIVE RACE. And being a successful Black man requires that one relates to Blacks at large and Black men and do something about their plight. This is my issue with multi-racial people, they want the benefits and exposures linked with being Black, but they do not always follow through in their day to day action especially if they can pass for a non-Black. For instance, Obama ran as a Black man, and became elected as the first BLACK MALE POTUS, yet did not have on policy that was dedicated to reforming laws that are unjust to Black men, while he did have ample policy reforms for women and homosexuals. Enjoying the benefits, but not truly loving or looking out for the source of the benefits. Someone like TRUMP might end up doing more for criminal justice reforms than he did and there should have never been an opportunity to compare the two on that topic in anyway. That in and of itself tells you a plethora of IMPLIED THINGS about the hypocrisy of far too many MULTI-RACIAL PEOPLE. In the end, they don't belong to any group, but they PICK ONE based on convenience and run with it and hope it works out for them all while trying to please both sides. They are amazing at posing like they are PLEASING ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, an often impossible feat; but they have mastered it as they had to act like a person that can relate to both sides.
YET, perhaps, if they realize that they don't fall on EITHER SIDE, their presence may end up helping in NEUTRALIZING many of the differences that exist between both sides as they can ARGUE: "HEY, one of my parents is White or one of my parents is BLACK"... I am not RACIST... I just want you guy to CO-EXIST and realize what makes us the same is a lot more important than what makes us different. Should they fail to do so, then they are just PRODUCTS of a FORMERLY LEGALLY FORBIDDEN TRANSACTION that is still somewhat socially AWKWARD for far to many BLACKS and WHITES! But they can't be traitors... they can't pull the "OBAMA BLACK MALE CARD" only to abandon Black males in the end... in his case, perhaps he is still mad at his Black Father for not being there after he was forced to leave for Africa. His book, "dream from my father left some telling things out..." I' d love to personally ask Mr. Obama about this someday!
IN A RUSH!
Dr. Pete Lorins is the Chief Editor of LorinsPost.com… this article is sponsored by RapidGigsPlus.com