Originally posted at Too Sense:
As my kids have gotten older, we've had more frequent family discussions about race. When my oldest daughter was born, I sincerely thought I could just raise her without any labels, never calling us "black" or "white" since I consider both terms to be invalid. I gradually realized that the world's continued reliance on those terms would make it impossible to raise my kids without any reference to them, and I further realized that if I tried to do that I would be denying them the chance to learn about who they are and from where they come.
That conclusion was partly based upon my own experience growing up: two of my grandparents grew up speaking Cajun French (my mother's father and my father's mother), yet they raised their kids completely without that language, and they in turn raised my generation as completely Anglo, culturally speaking. My siblings, my cousins and I have no connection at all to that part of our heritage, other than the clinical knowledge that it exists, somewhere back there in the mists of time.
In the 80s we learned that my grandmother, who grew up speaking French, was actually almost 100% Spanish by heritage (which actually happened quite a bit in Cajun-speaking areas, people just adapted to the majority language). The fact that that came as any kind of surprise tells you what kind of cultural disconnect exists in my family. We honestly had no idea where we came from, which is particularly ironic because my father and I look so very Spanish. I always used to think my dad looked like Desi Arnaz when he was younger (he had that Club Babaloo haircut going on back in the 50s), I just never knew it was because we have a similar background to Arnaz (our family came to America through Cuba and the Island of Hispaniola during the Spanish colonial era). When I've traveled to Mexico, I've been able to blend in as long as I keep my mouth shut (I only speak enough Spanish to politely order food).
When we learned about my grandmother's real heritage, I didn't feel any kind of confusion. More to the point, I did not feel like I was suddenly less Anglo, or less anything. I felt like I was more, in the sense that my family had a richer history than I knew, a more complex story. Of course, telling any of my Honduran friends that I was actually Hispanic, in the literal sense of the word, got nothing but laughter from them. I'm just way too culturally Anglo to be able to claim Hispanic heritage, even if it's mine by blood.
I have been trying to learn more about my own background, because the older I get the more of a sense of loss I feel at the extent to which the family has assimilated into purely Anglo culture. I can feel a personal connection to the English, Irish, and Scotish parts of my heritage, because I speak the language and was educated in that literary tradition. Shakespeare is a hell of a cultural marker to be able to claim, as are Milton, Chaucer, etc. I have no desire to "lose" any of those aspects of myself. Yet I wish that I could feel that same personal connection to our Spanish heritage, or our French heritage.
I have none of the language, and none of the customs, no personal frame of reference. It is a matter of history, not something that I can incorporate into my identity. We were more than Anglo, we have a larger cultural tradition that we could have claimed as our own (not larger in comparison to Anglo culture, but larger in the sense of being an addition to the known Anglo culture). Yet we cannot make that claim, cannot feel that connection, because of the assimilation that took place in my granparents' generation.
As much as I can, I want to prevent my kids from ever feeling that disconnected from their heritage. I cannot give them their French and their Spanish cultural legacies, because I do not have them myself. And I cannot "give" them their Creole heritage (which is where their being "black" comes from), because that is not mine to give. The most that I can do is to make sure that they know who they are and where they come from, and to expose them to that side of the family as much as I can, so that they will always know, firsthand, just how diverse the family is. That Cosby Show rainbow family is pretty much my wife and her cousins in a nutshell: all different hues, all different features, but one common heritage.
When I talk to my kids about race I always tell them that they are both white and black. They can claim whiteness both because I am white and because my wife has a great deal of European ancestry (probably the majority, to be honest). And they can claim blackness because my wife has African ancestry. We very specifically do not tell our children that they are one thing or the other. That is a false choice, because one does not lose white heritage by the fact that one's heritage is also black, any more than one loses black heritage by the fact that one is also white. The two do not subtract from one another or diminish one another. They add to one another.
Now, I'm sure that there are a good number of people who would disagree with the notion that white heritage and black heritage add to and complement one another. Some of them are relatives of mine. But consider this: if a person says that they are both French and Spanish by heritage, no one is going to argue that they have to be one or the other, that somehow French lineage cancels out Spanish blood, or vice versa. Similarly, if someone says that they are English, Scottish, and Irish, that statement is not going to be challenged. The three are not seen as being mutually exclusive.
I specifically chose the European examples that I did because they reflect intermingling between groups with a great degree of historical animosity. The French and the Spanish have been at war numerous times, often with quite bloody results. Similarly, the English have been fighting with the Scots and the Irish for control over the British Isles for hundreds of years. Yet we do not think of these groups as having heritages that are so different as to be somehow incompatible. The person with French and Spanish blood is never asked (in America, at least) to "pick" one of "choose a side" between France and Spain. The person with English and Irish blood is not asked to decide which one to claim on a census. The history of conflict does not lead to the conclusion that mixing of these particular blood lines somehow introduces an impurity into one or the other
That being the case, there is absolutely no basis to argue that somehow white and black heritage nullify each other, or that one takes precedence over the other. American history is deeply polluted with the conflict between white and black, or rather the legacy of white oppression of black people. There is no running from or denying that history, it simply is what it is. However, if the bloody history between the French and the Spanish does not mean that Spanish blood "taints" French blood, and the recurrent fights between the English and the Irish, or the English and the Scots do not mean that Irish blood somehow "weakens" English blood, then America's own sordid history of relations between whites and blacks cannot mean that a mixture of the two heritages somehow leads to one lineage or the other being diluted.
The current election obviously implicates this issue. The press has to describe Obama as being black, as if his African heritage is the dominant heritage, and his European heritage has been sidelined. Questions of whether Obama is "black enough" still subscribe to this worldview, this notion that he is by definition "black" because of his African father. Obama, who is equally white and black, still has to be placed into a category because our mainstream culture expects him to fit into such a box. That expectation of easy categorization is fundamentally ignorant, and incorrect. Defining Obama as one or the other reinforces the false choice, the idea that one half or the other half of Obama's heritage must be the more significant one, the one that he claims.
When I've talked to my daughters about this election, I've tried to tell them how Obama is just like our family in the sense that he is both white and black. He cannot choose one side or the other in an argument about race, because both are part of him. And I tell my kids that we cannot choose one "side" or the other, we have to choose both, because both are a part of us. I include myself in that statement, not because I have any African heritage (of which I'm aware, at least) but because by the act of marrying a black woman, I have loyalty to the black community that I must consider when "debates" about race crop up (not to mention the fact that almost all of my closest friends are black). I cannot make a choice that denies my wife, or denies my children, or my friends. And I cannot make a choice that denies my own heritage. Thus, no picking of sides
What I find very interesting is that my girls are completely comfortable with the notion that they are both white and black. We've never asked them to choose, because we have explained that there is no choice to make. As such, they do not have any inner conflict about their identities, at least none that I can detect (and I make it a point to discuss these things with them). Granted, my youngest daughter, who is so blonde and blue she could have posed for a Hitler Youth propoganda poster, was extremely skeptical the first time I tried to explain to her that her mother is black. When I told her that, her response was "you mean I'm black too?", to which I answered "yes." That prompted her to say "Come on, daddy, look at me." I explained to her that being black just means you have African ancestry, not that you necessarily look like other black people. I'm not sure she buys it even now, she may be playing along to humor me
I don't think that calling oneself "both" black and white is to somehow remove oneself from these cultures. If you are aware of your white roots, and you embrace and accept that history and participate in that culture, it is yours to claim. The same applies to black roots, at least it should. I don't buy into the notion that claiming both heritages and cultures means that one is less authentically a member of either culture. If I accept that, I accept the false idea that blackness and whiteness are really alien to one another, that there is some fundamental difference between us that goes down into the core of our very beings.
The people who built up this entire racial fiction of ours did not, I think, do so because they actually believed that there was such a divide. Why do I say this? Because a real divide between the races would not have had to be enforced by laws against intermarriage, or laws that define how much African blood was necessary to make one legally black. You don't create laws to stop from happening things which are impossible in the first place. There are no laws defining how much canine blood is necessary for a person of mixed human and canine heritage to be considered a dog, because the distinction between dog and man actually exists. There is no possibility that the two are going to intermingle and have children together. There was always intermingling between Europeans and Africans, whether through masters raping their slaves, through semi-coercive systems like plaisage, or through voluntary inter-marriage between whites and free blacks (which did happen). If there was no system built up to impede these unions, to deligitamize this intermixture, it would logically have not only continued but increased in frequency as the number of Africans in America increased
Had the groups been allowed to freely intermingle, without societal interference, the slave economy could not have been reconciled with "All men are created equal." Blackness would have become closer to whiteness, and vice versa, and the sole justification for allowing slavery to continue would have been eroded. That justification, of course, was the notion that Africans were inherently different from their European counterparts, that enslavement by Europeans was their natural condition. Remove the African from the definition of "men" and you escape the "are created equal" part of the problem. Such removal could not be sustained if the groups were mingled. Thus the fallacy of the "one drop," and the different treatment of people with mixed European heritages and people whose heritage mixed European with African
Those of us who are part of these interracial unions today, or who are the products of such unions, cannot be compelled to accept the racist terminology, the racist world-view of the past. We did not create the system that seeks to force us to choose between one heritage and the other. We have given no consent to be bound by that thought-structure. No government or institution has the power to compel us to do so. We have the right to claim, and to embrace, both cultures and both histories at the same time, and to do so without any divided loyalty.
This is the basic power of self-determination, and self-identification, the power to declare which labels we will and will not allow to define us. Ownership of one's heritage, one's history, is fundamental. If your heritage is left to the whims of others, so is your identity. One who can name your history, without your consent, can categorize you however they see fit. One who can categorize you can ultimately control you, by saying that this category is allowed to do "x", but that category can only do "y." I will not allow anyone or anything to have that kind of power over my children's lives, and I will teach them not to submit to that power being in someone else's hands.
There is no choice to be made. There is no "one" or "the other." There is only "both."
As my kids have gotten older, we've had more frequent family discussions about race. When my oldest daughter was born, I sincerely thought I could just raise her without any labels, never calling us "black" or "white" since I consider both terms to be invalid. I gradually realized that the world's continued reliance on those terms would make it impossible to raise my kids without any reference to them, and I further realized that if I tried to do that I would be denying them the chance to learn about who they are and from where they come.
That conclusion was partly based upon my own experience growing up: two of my grandparents grew up speaking Cajun French (my mother's father and my father's mother), yet they raised their kids completely without that language, and they in turn raised my generation as completely Anglo, culturally speaking. My siblings, my cousins and I have no connection at all to that part of our heritage, other than the clinical knowledge that it exists, somewhere back there in the mists of time.
In the 80s we learned that my grandmother, who grew up speaking French, was actually almost 100% Spanish by heritage (which actually happened quite a bit in Cajun-speaking areas, people just adapted to the majority language). The fact that that came as any kind of surprise tells you what kind of cultural disconnect exists in my family. We honestly had no idea where we came from, which is particularly ironic because my father and I look so very Spanish. I always used to think my dad looked like Desi Arnaz when he was younger (he had that Club Babaloo haircut going on back in the 50s), I just never knew it was because we have a similar background to Arnaz (our family came to America through Cuba and the Island of Hispaniola during the Spanish colonial era). When I've traveled to Mexico, I've been able to blend in as long as I keep my mouth shut (I only speak enough Spanish to politely order food).
When we learned about my grandmother's real heritage, I didn't feel any kind of confusion. More to the point, I did not feel like I was suddenly less Anglo, or less anything. I felt like I was more, in the sense that my family had a richer history than I knew, a more complex story. Of course, telling any of my Honduran friends that I was actually Hispanic, in the literal sense of the word, got nothing but laughter from them. I'm just way too culturally Anglo to be able to claim Hispanic heritage, even if it's mine by blood.
I have been trying to learn more about my own background, because the older I get the more of a sense of loss I feel at the extent to which the family has assimilated into purely Anglo culture. I can feel a personal connection to the English, Irish, and Scotish parts of my heritage, because I speak the language and was educated in that literary tradition. Shakespeare is a hell of a cultural marker to be able to claim, as are Milton, Chaucer, etc. I have no desire to "lose" any of those aspects of myself. Yet I wish that I could feel that same personal connection to our Spanish heritage, or our French heritage.
I have none of the language, and none of the customs, no personal frame of reference. It is a matter of history, not something that I can incorporate into my identity. We were more than Anglo, we have a larger cultural tradition that we could have claimed as our own (not larger in comparison to Anglo culture, but larger in the sense of being an addition to the known Anglo culture). Yet we cannot make that claim, cannot feel that connection, because of the assimilation that took place in my granparents' generation.
As much as I can, I want to prevent my kids from ever feeling that disconnected from their heritage. I cannot give them their French and their Spanish cultural legacies, because I do not have them myself. And I cannot "give" them their Creole heritage (which is where their being "black" comes from), because that is not mine to give. The most that I can do is to make sure that they know who they are and where they come from, and to expose them to that side of the family as much as I can, so that they will always know, firsthand, just how diverse the family is. That Cosby Show rainbow family is pretty much my wife and her cousins in a nutshell: all different hues, all different features, but one common heritage.
When I talk to my kids about race I always tell them that they are both white and black. They can claim whiteness both because I am white and because my wife has a great deal of European ancestry (probably the majority, to be honest). And they can claim blackness because my wife has African ancestry. We very specifically do not tell our children that they are one thing or the other. That is a false choice, because one does not lose white heritage by the fact that one's heritage is also black, any more than one loses black heritage by the fact that one is also white. The two do not subtract from one another or diminish one another. They add to one another.
Now, I'm sure that there are a good number of people who would disagree with the notion that white heritage and black heritage add to and complement one another. Some of them are relatives of mine. But consider this: if a person says that they are both French and Spanish by heritage, no one is going to argue that they have to be one or the other, that somehow French lineage cancels out Spanish blood, or vice versa. Similarly, if someone says that they are English, Scottish, and Irish, that statement is not going to be challenged. The three are not seen as being mutually exclusive.
I specifically chose the European examples that I did because they reflect intermingling between groups with a great degree of historical animosity. The French and the Spanish have been at war numerous times, often with quite bloody results. Similarly, the English have been fighting with the Scots and the Irish for control over the British Isles for hundreds of years. Yet we do not think of these groups as having heritages that are so different as to be somehow incompatible. The person with French and Spanish blood is never asked (in America, at least) to "pick" one of "choose a side" between France and Spain. The person with English and Irish blood is not asked to decide which one to claim on a census. The history of conflict does not lead to the conclusion that mixing of these particular blood lines somehow introduces an impurity into one or the other
That being the case, there is absolutely no basis to argue that somehow white and black heritage nullify each other, or that one takes precedence over the other. American history is deeply polluted with the conflict between white and black, or rather the legacy of white oppression of black people. There is no running from or denying that history, it simply is what it is. However, if the bloody history between the French and the Spanish does not mean that Spanish blood "taints" French blood, and the recurrent fights between the English and the Irish, or the English and the Scots do not mean that Irish blood somehow "weakens" English blood, then America's own sordid history of relations between whites and blacks cannot mean that a mixture of the two heritages somehow leads to one lineage or the other being diluted.
The current election obviously implicates this issue. The press has to describe Obama as being black, as if his African heritage is the dominant heritage, and his European heritage has been sidelined. Questions of whether Obama is "black enough" still subscribe to this worldview, this notion that he is by definition "black" because of his African father. Obama, who is equally white and black, still has to be placed into a category because our mainstream culture expects him to fit into such a box. That expectation of easy categorization is fundamentally ignorant, and incorrect. Defining Obama as one or the other reinforces the false choice, the idea that one half or the other half of Obama's heritage must be the more significant one, the one that he claims.
When I've talked to my daughters about this election, I've tried to tell them how Obama is just like our family in the sense that he is both white and black. He cannot choose one side or the other in an argument about race, because both are part of him. And I tell my kids that we cannot choose one "side" or the other, we have to choose both, because both are a part of us. I include myself in that statement, not because I have any African heritage (of which I'm aware, at least) but because by the act of marrying a black woman, I have loyalty to the black community that I must consider when "debates" about race crop up (not to mention the fact that almost all of my closest friends are black). I cannot make a choice that denies my wife, or denies my children, or my friends. And I cannot make a choice that denies my own heritage. Thus, no picking of sides
What I find very interesting is that my girls are completely comfortable with the notion that they are both white and black. We've never asked them to choose, because we have explained that there is no choice to make. As such, they do not have any inner conflict about their identities, at least none that I can detect (and I make it a point to discuss these things with them). Granted, my youngest daughter, who is so blonde and blue she could have posed for a Hitler Youth propoganda poster, was extremely skeptical the first time I tried to explain to her that her mother is black. When I told her that, her response was "you mean I'm black too?", to which I answered "yes." That prompted her to say "Come on, daddy, look at me." I explained to her that being black just means you have African ancestry, not that you necessarily look like other black people. I'm not sure she buys it even now, she may be playing along to humor me
I don't think that calling oneself "both" black and white is to somehow remove oneself from these cultures. If you are aware of your white roots, and you embrace and accept that history and participate in that culture, it is yours to claim. The same applies to black roots, at least it should. I don't buy into the notion that claiming both heritages and cultures means that one is less authentically a member of either culture. If I accept that, I accept the false idea that blackness and whiteness are really alien to one another, that there is some fundamental difference between us that goes down into the core of our very beings.
The people who built up this entire racial fiction of ours did not, I think, do so because they actually believed that there was such a divide. Why do I say this? Because a real divide between the races would not have had to be enforced by laws against intermarriage, or laws that define how much African blood was necessary to make one legally black. You don't create laws to stop from happening things which are impossible in the first place. There are no laws defining how much canine blood is necessary for a person of mixed human and canine heritage to be considered a dog, because the distinction between dog and man actually exists. There is no possibility that the two are going to intermingle and have children together. There was always intermingling between Europeans and Africans, whether through masters raping their slaves, through semi-coercive systems like plaisage, or through voluntary inter-marriage between whites and free blacks (which did happen). If there was no system built up to impede these unions, to deligitamize this intermixture, it would logically have not only continued but increased in frequency as the number of Africans in America increased
Had the groups been allowed to freely intermingle, without societal interference, the slave economy could not have been reconciled with "All men are created equal." Blackness would have become closer to whiteness, and vice versa, and the sole justification for allowing slavery to continue would have been eroded. That justification, of course, was the notion that Africans were inherently different from their European counterparts, that enslavement by Europeans was their natural condition. Remove the African from the definition of "men" and you escape the "are created equal" part of the problem. Such removal could not be sustained if the groups were mingled. Thus the fallacy of the "one drop," and the different treatment of people with mixed European heritages and people whose heritage mixed European with African
Those of us who are part of these interracial unions today, or who are the products of such unions, cannot be compelled to accept the racist terminology, the racist world-view of the past. We did not create the system that seeks to force us to choose between one heritage and the other. We have given no consent to be bound by that thought-structure. No government or institution has the power to compel us to do so. We have the right to claim, and to embrace, both cultures and both histories at the same time, and to do so without any divided loyalty.
This is the basic power of self-determination, and self-identification, the power to declare which labels we will and will not allow to define us. Ownership of one's heritage, one's history, is fundamental. If your heritage is left to the whims of others, so is your identity. One who can name your history, without your consent, can categorize you however they see fit. One who can categorize you can ultimately control you, by saying that this category is allowed to do "x", but that category can only do "y." I will not allow anyone or anything to have that kind of power over my children's lives, and I will teach them not to submit to that power being in someone else's hands.
There is no choice to be made. There is no "one" or "the other." There is only "both."
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