Illusions

Happy Holidays! My family celebrates Christmas, and it has been a Christmas full of joy and family. I am writing today from our oldest son's tattoo shop. Uncle Tom, Dad, the 20 year old and the 18 year old all got tattoos from me for Christmas. Today I am thinking about the occurrences of family and community. It is weird where you find family and community. But the sense of togetherness and love that is in this shop today ... we can add tattoo shops to the list of shops where people come together to create community.

I really appreciate the culture of the hair shop/barber shop. I grew up in an Italian community where the old Italian men would go each week to get their hair done. What that really was about was building, nurturing and maintaining community. I remember the first time my Irish husband went to the barber shop, he said he felt really out of place and they all started speaking Italian. "They got me in a chair, got me done, and got me out of there" was his account. "I was clearly a customer, not part of their community". At the time I thought he was just being oversensitive. It was, after all, only a barber shop.

My memories of hair shop culture were buried deep. They were painful and unpacking them for this blog has been difficult. The hair shop was one of the places where the intersection of my physiology and the reality of my race/culture/ethnicity not only intersected, but created painful dissonance in my identity development.

I remember my first hair shop experience. My mother was not inclined towards community or beauty, so I had never been to a hair shop. My mother struggled with the nappy mess herself. Having no experience in black hair, and being convinced there was no differences in people, therefore no differences in hair, I usually looked like a misplaced version of buckwheat from the little rascals. I know now that this was a discussion amongst the few black people who were in our community, how "this is why white women should not have black children". I still would take bad hair over being an orphan... just sayin' Anyway. My mother worked with a woman at the hospital who finally had "the talk" with her about how my skin and hair needed special care. So, at 12, we went off to the hair shop.

There was no community there, not for myself and my mother. I remember feeling very out of place and no one spoke to myself or my mother except the woman who did my hair. I didn't understand it then, I do now. People like my mother and myself did not belong in an African American hair shop any more than we did a white hair shop. Dissonance. My hair came out terrible, by the way. Because my hair was mixed, the softer hair burned and I had stubble. The hair dresser covered up the damaged hair by styling this big quasi bee hive. When we got home my mother had to shave my head. My mother cried the whole time and then held me, apologizing for not being the right kind of mother. She was the right kind of mother, she was MY mother.

I didn't attempt to do anything with my hair again until high school. I was in a fashion show. The choreographer took me to her house and straightened my hair. It looked AMAZING. When I returned home, my mother was so upset that someone would do my hair and not ask her permission. It wasn't that she didn't my hair done or that she did not want me happy; it was yet again being disregarded as my mother. I remember as the choreographer was doing my hair, she was saying something like "this is why white woman should not have black children". I wish I had been able to articulate to my mother that this was not how I felt. Instead, I never had curly hair again.

When I was 28, I was making good money and wanted to get my hair professionally done. I had learned, quite by accident, that the BET girls had fake hair. Yes, I was 28 before I realized that I could have THAT hair and that African American women had been getting weaves and wearing wigs for generations. Black hair care is an epistemological knowledge, I had no access to this knowledge. Communally, people have genealogical understandings of who and how they are. That includes things like traditions, rituals, food, language, and I now know, hair. What was not lost on me however is an appreciation for the hypocrisy that weaves and wigs signal in my lived experience. If a white woman should not have a black child, why do black women pay for white looking hair? (really it is Asian and south Asian hair, but we don't have time for THAT conversation right now).

In my sales district there was a black hair shop. Clearly forgetting my earlier experiences, I eagerly stopped in one day to see if I could get my hair done. The owner was lovely and stopped what she was doing to schedule my transformation... The woman in the chair was much less impressed. She yelled at the owner "don't you leave my head to go wait on that little white bitch". My illusion of blackness and black communal membership was shattered. I left the shop and never returned. Later that afternoon, I asked our tenant if she would help me negotiate this space. She informed me that she was not going to talk "nigger" for me and that just because I was "high yellow" (which I am not) and married to a white man (which I am) I thought that people needed to bow down to me, and then she slammed her door in my face. Sometimes learning really hurts. It took me a very long time to understand that I had asked for access to a community that I was not welcome in. I didn't know the codes. Many of the mixed race individuals I have interviewed, especially women, have shared this or a similar moment in their identity development. This is the moment when you realize you don't fit, you don't belong to either of the binary possibilities; and you are left drifting in between.

One of the realities of my mixed raceness and my inter-racial family is that my racial identity has been subject to manipulation, interpretation and shifting boarders that I do not control. I am well aware that my scholarship and the dissertation are my attempt to grab a hold of something, to develop the translation tools needed, to be in my own racial skin. The hair story, which has rectified itself now that I have found a shop where my intellect and humanity is appreciated, is one of the biggest pieces of my racial evolution. While J, the best hair artist ever, was putting in my most recent illusion (they don't call them weaves anymore?) I thought about this journey. Mostly, I thought about the rejection, how I did not have access to the racial and communal codes that would gain me access to "my people". I started to rethink who "my people" were supposed to be. My first trip to this hair shop, full of warm, loud, gorgeous women of color, women of every possible shape, size, and color; I remember the "what color is your husband?" question. I almost lied. I had been passing for about an hour and a half. I had been black. I had been a well off black woman, and no one had questioned it.

When I admitted that my husband was white, J said, I thought so, your mixed aren't you. I didn't understand the correlation, but then she said, Your hair has such a great texture, I knew you were mixed. And then the conversation moved on. It just moved on. My husband, my racial identity, my children, my upbringing; they were all just part of me, not all of me. I have made myself very unpopular by sharing honest accounts of the racism that I experience inside the black community. I often don't share because the backlash has been fierce. The reason sharing these experiences is so important is because it creates a space to think about what really shapes race, community, and communal membership. I liken it to a rulebook that we don't all have access too. These codes are the birthplace of our multiplicity, this is our illusion.

More soon...

How racist is that?!

This post is being resurrected from July 2009:

The aethetics of race are a necessary reality, but they are also proof that race is at a minimum fluid at a maximum completely arbitrary. This morning, walking from my car to my office I noticed several students of color. Some may have been african american, some latina, some mixed race. I had noticed several similar students the day before but they had been to far off for me to engage, but I saw them. I saw them in a way that I do not necessarily see the rest of our student body. This morning I decided to speak to the students. I had to think about it, not because I don't speak to students; rather, my hesitation was due to my awareness of how and why I was speaking to them.

When I presented at an October conference on Race, Ethnicity, and Place, I presented my own work on mixed race identity formation in United States millenials. I am always nervous presenting mixed race scholarship in front of race scholars. Often the feed back, if not lash back, has been ferocious. This conference was different, I am different - more confident in my scholarship and in the reality of mixed race. The conference participants were not only engaged but nodding their head affirmatively. A very big deal for me. I even had classmates there who were not antagonistic to the conversation as they often are. I had several good questions that allowed me to think out loud about what mixed race IS. But the question that really made me feel like I had really settled in to THIS mixed race scholar was the one from a woman in her 60s. She asked THE question. "Well, this is very nice but if you light you white, right?" WRONG.

I may have blogged about this moment before, but what it leads me to is our thanksgiving this year. I married into an irish family and my irish niece is marrying out. At some point, after several vanilla appletinis, I decided we would get all the brown people in the family together for our own photo. My two sons and nephew to be thought this was a great idea. My daughter REFUSED to join us. Her brothers physically lifted her up and made her join the picture. You can see the pained expression on her little face. If I had let this go, as if I let ANYTHING go, this would have looked like a bad case of nine year old passing.

That night as my daughter and I lay snuggled together, I asked her about the picture. My daughter burst into tears and said "I want to be browner, I am too light to be in the picture". Are we kidding? It is so very hard for me to wrap my head around her aesthetic location. I think some of my own self-image issues keep me from EVER understanding why such a beautiful child would feel bad about how she looks. I do know her brothers tease her mercilessly about being white and she defends her mixed raceness until she cries. My child had NEVER identified as white.

So, in some weird reverse example, I am experiencing the power of aesthetic in race and identity formation. My daughter's reflected identity is not the same as her political and familial identity, just like my own. My daughter identifies as mixed race and the world keeps insisting, including her brothers, that she is white.

The last thing I want to say about this is, I wonder how much worse this would be for my daughter if mixed race identity was not an option in our family. People do accept mixed race and can reflect that back to her in an affirming way, so even though she may lose her location once in a while, she can find her center quite easily. Even at nine my daughter appreciates the importance of being able to identify as mixed race which is not only her racial identity but it is her socio-racial familial identity as well. As she was drifting off to sleep Thanksgiving night, reassured that she does belong in the brown family picture, she said "my school is so racist, they only let you pick black or white and over half the kids in my school are bi-racial, how racist is THAT?!" Very.

More soon...

There are always gifts in the things I do not finish. I was going through unpublished posts and found this entry from January 2010:

I walk into a grant writing meeting today and an esteemed colleague (and I mean that I adore and respect this woman) says to me: "Oh, you looks so beautiful with your hair up. You have cheek bones and eyes. And it is not a big fizzy mess." For those of you who are not following the subtext of this conversation, here is what I heard: You are normally a hideous black mess when you wear your hair natural. I am so distracted by your natural hair that I just realized you have the same basic bone structure every other human being has. Afros are unkempt hot messes that are not appropriate nor attractive. Thank you for doing something with your self.

Sigh... I went to the bathroom where all good brown girls go to cry. I think at times I forget what I look like to other people. Frankly, I don't look at myself very often. Maybe I am avoiding seeing myself in the mirror.

One thing did happen THIS TIME that was different. Before I left the bathroom to go cry I said something like "I just started being comfortable enough to wear my hair natural and down. It is new for me and I am very happy with it." I was happy with it.

Interestingly enough, this is the key to the anxiety I have been having since before Thanksgiving thursday. I got my hair done. I got a fun, flippy weave because I decided to have my braids cut out of my hair. I had dreads because my hair grew like crazy after my surgery... Anyway... I should be able to make choices like this without feeling bad. But, I FEEL bad.

Before I got my hair done I asked a favorite colleague what I should have done. My colleague said "I have NO idea, but I am really tired of those braids, if I am being honest". Thank you for being honest, now. And did anyone think I didn't know the braids were grown out? OK....

Then of course, I am overwhelmed by the change in my hair and feeling very self concious. My husband keeps telling me I don't look like myself. My daughter's little friend says I look like Beyonce and my mother in law wants to know "what I did to my hair". Funny thing is, except for my husband, they all thought it was MY hair, and it still wasn't right.

I had gotten my hair done because I have a job interview tomorrow and what I realize is that I have created a situation where my colleagues (I am interviewing for my own job... state regulations... blah blah) will be so damn distracted by my hair that they won't hear a thing I have to say. One could argue that anyone who had their hair changed the day before an interview would have these fears or that anyone who changes their hair would experience this kind of feedback. My colleague changed her hair and everyone told her it was stunning, no one tried to touch it, and life went on. I promise you that will not be the case here.

So not only do I have interview anxiety, I have black hair anxiety as well. I have to sign off now as I am off to the theatre... Where NO ONE cares what my hair looks like. Thank god for performers egos that dwarf my own, it keeps me sane.

More soon...

Re-Emerging, Re-Creating and Re-framing

Well Hello! I have been away since April 2010. In that time I turned 40, had a hysterectomy, lost a committee member, gained a committee member, applied for a career job, and have been dragging along this dissertation. I am sure I might have missed a few things in there somewhere. It was a neat experience to come back and read what I had written, and really like it. I came back for the purpose of cutting and pasting the work here into the final draft of my dissertation. I have decided to revive the blog instead. Thank you so much for your patience these last couple years. On ward we go...

I was working on one of my chapters for a conference presentation in October. I was presenting with faculty from the department, all faculty of color, and I had that familiar fear... All black faculty...this isn't going to fly. My fears were unrealized and there were even two classmates from my program there, who are often quite ferocious, that gave loving attention and feedback. I walked away from the experience feeling like a scholar! I also walked away feeling like my work is at a point where it has a shape of its own that is no longer reliant on my own identity. I also feel like I have stepped out of the defensive posture that I went into the dissertation with. The audience was deeply engaged and I was able to handle questions with ease. I really understood the questions this time and I was not startled or upset by the ones I didn't have full answers for.

Two questions stand out the most to me: first, from a woman who appeared to be in her 70's, "well if you are light you white, right?" (Wrong) and the second from a classmate which was something like "what IS mixed race? Aren't we all mixed race in some way or another" (Yes...but). The first question was easy to answer and just validated my own sense of myself as an academic. My response was "this is a contextual and generational understanding of mixed race as being tied to aesthetic and social location rather than identity and lived experience". My research focuses on the millenial generations understanding of race and there are significant differences between how they understand and engage race and identity politics compared to their parents and their grandparents. The second question was more helpful to what I am currently grappling with in my work. If we want to invoke biology, genetics and psuedo-scientific engagements of race then yes, we are all mixed race. But we have seen how this notion has played out, or not, with the "new found" information about genetic sameness between racial groups. Race remains a major performer in social heiarchy and identity formation. What is most important to my work is not this understanding of mixed race as a biological or genetic reality, rather the lived experience and identity formation of mixed race individuals and families that have particular characteristics that are shared with other individuals and families that identify as mixed race. My qualitative research suggests that these similarities occur regardless of which foundational mono-races a mixed race individual or family claim. Often, my research participants report that they "have more in common with her than I do my black cousins, and she's asian, but we experience the same things because we are mixed race."

Up until this conversation I had been talking about mixed race identity in my work as an emerging identity. What I realized was that, at best, mixed race is re-emerging; and that re-emergence is in discourse and political location mainly. What I am suggessting is that mixed race, espeically as a co-mediated socio-racial location, has existed as long as race has. Really, mixed race didn't come along "after" or "because of", it was there at the inception of the hierarchy that is race. There has always been us, them and the mix of the two. That said, what might be emerging, and perhaps better talked about as re-emerging, re-creating, or re-framing, is the political and politics of a mixed race identity. While mixed race people have always existed, I have been able to loosely track the emergence, suppression, and re-emergence of the naming of mixed race people as mixed race. I am trying to be careful to not locate mixed race people or identity as this new thing that I discovered. I don't want my work to be a tool that allows people to ignore the history of mixed race people and identity, and most importantly, families. The mixed race identity I am framing or re-framing, is from the millenial generation's lived experience of mixed race as a relational, familial, and intimate choices.

More soon....

Where IS the African American part of my family?

At 12:04 am this morning someone bravely... anonymously of course, posted "where is your african american part of the family in the family picture." on my blog. It was a response to the 2010 entry and I don't understand the correlation there. But I thought I would respond in a post instead of have it buried so many posts down that readers couldn't enjoy it as much as I am.

I will resist sharing the assumptions I have about this poster. You can make your own. My readers are quite astute. I will say however that this post and the way it was posted are the very validation I give for a mixed race identity. So thank you anonymous midnight poster for making my point clear. The interviews that I have done for my documentary and my dissertation always hold some element of this social reaction. Most if not all of my interviewees reported having experienced this accusation from members of the black community in particular. I did have several participants who were Asian/South Asian who also experienced this kind of defensive social response. I have some sense of where this kind of defensive response comes from; but I don't feel like defending bad behavior right now. I personally get tired of defending my social and intimate realities.

My mixed race identity was not automatic; it has been an evolutionary process that began with this kind of social interaction. This challenge of my blackness is a large part of my self-realization that I was something outside of or in addition to being black. My understanding of black identity suggested that I experienced something different than those who considered themselves mono-racially black. My understanding of myself as a mixed race person came from other black people and the way THEY framed my social and intimate locations. My whole life I have been accused of not being black enough, not wanting to be black, and denying blackness. NEWS FLASH! I cannot avoid, deny, or wish away my blackness and I have no desire to. I also do not have to avoid, deny or wish away my whiteness and my white family. MY FAMILY IS WHITE. My family is white because they chose to BE my family. My mixed race identity comes out of those two places: the social - people challenging my identity, much like the anonymous midnight poster who is suggesting I am hiding the black folk; and the intimate - the reality that the family that raised me is white.

What the anonymous midnight poster failed to notice is there ARE other people of color in the picture. I am assuming that the poster is talking about the big family picture at my daughter's first communion. There are actually five people of color in the picture (I moved the picture up so we can play my favorite mixed race came...count the quarters...or one of these things is not like the others). I will resist enumerating the racial composition of those people of color but I will say that several of them identify as black. I do apologize to the anonymous (and omnipotent) midnight poster for my family not being dark enough for easy aesthetic socio-racial location. Some people are just limited, and bigoted.

In closing, I would like to answer the anonymous midnight poster. There are no aesthetically dark African American people IN my family that is why there aren't any IN the picture. I do want to share with my readers my initial reaction to this question and the feelings that it generated. I hope the anonymous midnight poster understands the pain that a response like theirs can cause. I hope the anonymous midnight poster understands the racism and bigotry that a person like myself experiences imbedded in questions framed like this question was framed. I do believe that this was a defensive question steeped in ahistorical assumptions about myself and people like me. If the anonymous midnight poster was interested in ME they wouldn't have posted anonymously and they would have asked a question that was curious not condeming. But here is the you seek answer anonymous midnight poster:

There are no African American's in the family picture because my biological mother ABANDONED ME AT BIRTH. Thank you for asking.

More soon...

Kip Fulbeck new book...

Go Kip Fulbeck!!!!! Kip has taken portraits of mixed race kids. His theoretical framework is similar to the one that I am working through. He is fabulous! Check it out!

http://www.mixedkids.com/

Diversity, Equity and a Whole Lot of Yelling...

My department hosted its first student conference on diversity, equity and social justice: “Imagining Communities without Walls”. One panel was made up of students of mine from last year and this year who are studying in my “Examining Mixed Race Identity” class. The students had decided the content of their panel entirely on their own. I do believe my influence was present in the way they chose to share their lived experiences through a narrative articulation. They started with part of my area project documentary that many of them had been part of. After the documentary and music montage of mixed race families, the students shared each of their own mixed race identity stories. On the panel were “mixed race”, “mono-racial”, and “transracial adoptee” representations. All of the students spoke of mixed race from a place of lived experience and intimacy. Clay, a young man who identifies as monoracial and white, spoke of how he has experienced his race shift as he nears his wedding day with a mixed race African American and Puerto Rican female student. Clay talked about how his love for her and his growing love for her family and theirs' of him has changed his relationship to whiteness. This closely mirrors the experiences my husband and his family have had as well as that of my adopted family. It is this intimacy that allows a white man (enter any other race and gender here) to let go of the binary social conditioning that separates, categorizes and perpetuates the hierarchies that we understand as the racial continuum of the west. It is found in loving a child so much that it hurts when they are the victims of racism and subordination.
I had not prepared my students well. I had not told my students of the vicious attacks I have experienced in the academy by the radical black scholars who find it necessary to not only subordinate my identity and lived experience, but to negate both entirely. I can remember my first graduate class when a class mate, an African female, told me my mother could not have possibly loved me because she was white. What I know now, and wish I had been strong enough to say then is, yes, yes she does. In fact, love in its purist form and often in its more problematic forms (dating, marriage, community) is transcendent. Not only is the intimate transcendent, it is transformative. Sadly, my students were attacked as well as called confused. One student burst into tears when her lived experience was negated and labeled confused. After the panel session that student told me she was not confused; she knew what love was and that the intimate reality of her mixed race-ness could not be taken from her.
The attack that day came from an academic colleague of mine from another institution. I felt blessed that she came down to our conference, but I experienced harm from the way she chastised and belittled my students. This colleague is an aesthetically white Latina female who has invoked a politically black identity. She and I have talked about how her journey was shaped and part of that journey to blackness was, which I chose not to throw in her face, through the intimate. This colleague also experienced, and my guess is that she still experiences, resistance to her invocation of a black identity. What I want to speak to in this moment is that even though I and my students accepted her blackness without question; she refused publically to accept ours. Even after I lovingly pointed out that her argument about historical realities was not invalid; it was simply incomplete, she continued to discipline and to demean my students who were trapped behind the panel table unable to get a word in edgewise. She kept saying “there is a confusion here”. She was correct but she failed to see that the confusion was hers.
I am proud of my students. I am proud that they decided to participate in their first conference and put their intimate realities out there for what turned out to be an inquisition. What my colleague doesn’t understand is that my students left more certain that what they are thinking and writing about has merit. Their certainty comes from the reality that what they experienced was simply a validation of what they have been experiencing their whole lives. My students and I learned more than anyone else in that room. We learned that when someone reacts with such fury, you may very well have discovered a truth – yours - and theirs. I would also offer that such a performance of negation also suggests that it is an intimate truth as those have proven in my life to be the most painful.

Oreos and Banana Splits

Yesterday I did a residence hall diversity training. We did an exercise where we wrote out our names and shared where we came from and what the history of our name is. I always start at Baby Girl and work through my marriage. I offer Mom, Bird, and Professor for nicknames. As we made our way around the room, a young woman of color ended her sharing by saying one of her nicknames is Oreo. Later in the training we shared one unique thing about ourselves. This same young woman shared that she was unique because she had a black father and a white mother. This student wore her mixed raceness like a heavy, wet sweater; wet to the point that the sleeves had come down over her hands and she could not move. This student's mixed raceness was not a blessing to her, she wasn't invoking it as her identity as much as succumbing to it. I spend a lot of time talking about mixed race identity as a liberating political, emotional and intimate choice; but there are individuals who feel put upon by their mixed raceness and it plagues them for the rest of their lives. My sense of it is that the way mixed race is subordinated, as well as the mixed race person, is what makes mixed race a prison for some. Often the community of color that helped produce a mixed race individual subordinates that person, othering and often isolating them. Mine and my children's experience with this could be summed up as never being “black enough”.

The positioning of mixed race is not and should not be a subordinate position. I am not only arguing that mixed race is a separate identity, lived experience, and intimate reality; I am arguing that mixed race is an equally weighted identity to those considered mono-racial. I am suggesting that mixed race is not half this, and half that. Mixed race is not a by-product or derivative of mono-race. Mixed-race has substance and weight of its own and must be ordered as a whole identity which pushes against the recipe narrative (1/2 this, 1/4 that, 1/16 the other) articulation of mixed race most commonly understood. Kip Fulbeck's 1991 video "Banana Splits" is a well produced articulation of the mixed race subordination my student was expressing. In "Banana Splits" Fulbeck pokes some fun at a system of racial subordination and racial understanding that would allow a person to be called or considered an oreo or a twinkie. I have given this student some reading, Fulbeck's "Hapa..." among them to help her understand that she is not having a singular experience. Mixed raceness and mixed race subordination is not restricted to her or to the african american mixed race person.

Of one thing I am certian, I prefer my Oreos to remain cookies ... not people.

Being...

What I remember most clearly from my conversations about race with my mother was her telling me not to worry so much about “being” black. My mother always told me that what was most important, now I know it was most important to her, was “being” a good person. My husband often suggests that I view everything, past and present, through this critical race lens. I have trouble getting him to understand that the critical race lens really only provides a language for the things I already know. Even as a child, my mother's shaping of “being” upset me. I experienced race, since I had no community of color to process with, in my belly. It is funny, both of our daughters get tummy aches. I know now that it is anxiety and so I can only guess that my processing of race, at three and five, and nine was with an anxiety so intense that I took it for granted. I understood my “being” as abnormal to the rest of the world. But my mother kept telling me that “being” different was not only acceptable but a gift to the world. My mother gave me Martin Luther King Jr. and through that I came to believe that world peace, rather racial peace, was my job and my job alone.

My mother was fond of talking about how all the races could and should live as one and she held up our family as the perfect example. While we were by no means perfect, we were a family and we were different races and race was not the thing that held us together or tore us apart. I was very aware that my mother and my sister experienced pain, much in the same way my husband experiences our children's pain, when my race and other people's reactions to my race impacted me negatively. I can remember people asking my mother if I was hers and the anger that question evoked in her and then the sadness I saw in her eyes. I often feel like the only time I knew my mother truly loved me was when she was defending my blackness.

There were inconsistencies, in reconcilable behaviors and speech that occurred around me every day. My mother could sit and tell me what an amazing person I was, or was going to be; how I was going to bring the races together one day, and then call someone on TV a nigger. My mother was a very biased and racist person, yet she held up people like MLK and myself as the ambassadors of world change. I can remember wincing as my step-father talked about “the damn Jews” and “the greasy Italians” and I can remember clearly thinking “what does he think about me”. And so, the very sense of racial harmony and justice that my mother had instilled in me became my burden.

I have a sister and brother I don't speak to and I am pretty sure they have no idea it is because of their racism. I could no longer tolerate their racist banter. The final straw was my brother's face book bumper sticker that read “Speak English or Go Home”. My sister had written on his wall “Yeah, that is what I am talking about”. I wrote under her comment “you are both racist asses” and defriended them. I don't think they have noticed. No, I am sure they noticed, but I don't think they have a clue what I was talking about. For my family, racism is against black people. No, racism was against me. There was never anything there that abstracted racism to the rest of the world nor connected it to other isms. I can remember my sister in grade school addressing racist speech with “hey, my sister is black”; instead of something more universal about blackness and black people. I was the only black person we knew. For my sister and brother, and probably my mother, I am still the only black person they know.

Oh Harry...and other random tangents

I am watching MSNBC's Morning Joe, my husband watches so I watch against my will. In the process of reviewing the new book Game Change: Behind the 2008 Election, Harry Reid's comments were front and center. Morning Joe had the good Reverend Sharpton on this morning talking about the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's racialized indiscretion. Sigh... The allegation leveled by the republican co-host is that both the President and the good Reverend consistently forgive democrats for their racialized indiscretions; while someone like Imus is held accountable for his racism. Reverend Sharpton tried to argue that what Reid said, and was forgiven, could not be compared to what Imus said, which was unforgivable. Granted, I am at the beginning of my new relationship with the word Negro, but how in any context is what Reid said...forgivable. I cannot tell others what to forgive, but Joe gave a really good argument that might call both the White House and the NAACP to better examine their 'forgiveness policies'.

I may be missing the point on ALL of this, but why isn't anyone talking about why our President has to make the decision to forgive anyone at all? Morning Joe actually said at one point "Reverend, shouldn't you be more concerned about what those in your own party are saying". The reverend's response, honestly, made absolutely no sense to me but he ended it saying something like "I am concerned...he [Reid] consistently ends up on the right side of important issues..." So saying racialized things about our President is apparently not an "important issue". Moving on...

What President Obama endures as a man of color and the first black president; in particular a mixed race multicultural black president, is heart breaking to me. The reason I specifically mention Obama's mixed race and multiculturalism is because of the particular way those of us who occupy that socio-racial location are called on to be that bridge and to be the forgivers. My empathy for the president comes from being that bridge myself. One day I told my husband I wished I had become a botanist. Many days I feel battered. I study race. I teach race. I mediate race. and I live race. Flowers would just be less painful and less personal. I know what it is like, as do most people of color in social/political positions, to choose moving forward over personal social justice. Why don't we say "America, we are killing this man" or a simple "knock it off it is 2010 damn it". And Reverend Sharpton, I am talking to you too.

It seems to be endless, and I really need to turn the TV off, but I can't. At one point Morning Joe offered up a quote from Bill Clinton to Senator Kennedy; something like "a few years ago this guy would be getting our coffee" wherein Clinton is alleged to be referring to Obama. Even Blagojevich got some play with his comment "I am blacker than Barack Obama" which was simply dismissed by Morning Joe, because...well, "it's Blago". I had to get off my elliptical and throw up. This weird framing of these comments and the lack of empathy for President Obama's emotional well being? If I am throwing up, what is he doing? AND DON'T suggest he has or needs to have a thick skin. Thick skin can only protect the soul from spears that are unable to pierce that skin. Thick skin can only keep you from bleeding in public.

According to the online news magazine Daily Beast(thedailybeast@e.thedailybeast.com)"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid engaged in some serious damage control Saturday, after a leaked passage in an upcoming book said he called Barack Obama a "light-skinned" African American who lacked a 'Negro dialect.'" The good Reverend's position is that within the context of Mr. Reid's entire comment this was not the racialized indiscretion republicans are trying to make it out to be. Lawrence O'Donnell, who suggested playing a tape of Jesse Jackson and Obama to see if there was a difference. "We would hear a certain "black cadence", and Pat Buchanan appear to agree with Rev. Sharpton. Maybe racialized statements about our President is the only place our politicos can build consensus? I need to tell you that my position, since I am not invited on national TV (probably a good thing), is that this comment and all the other comments President Obama has endured - including a few from our black leadership if I am not mistaken - are not okay.

More soon...

The 2010 Census, Negros, and Me

Apparently I stand corrected, at least on my initial reaction to the "Negro" category. It would seem that a) there is a portion of our community that does prefer "Negro" as a self identifier; and b) that most Americans do not find "Negro" offensive or are not sure if it is offensive as evidenced in the online poll below.

POLL - Do you think the term “Negro” on U.S. Census forms is offensive?(1159)
(42.28%) YES - It's offensive
(43.49%) NO - It's acceptable
(14.24%) I'm not sure

http://www.thegrio.com/2010/01/the-word-negro-in-2010-census-form-offends-some-blacks.php

I have had some fantastic conversations in the last three days about the census form. I for one am still overwhelmingly upset. I get a knot in the pit of my stomach every time I think about it; not the word per se, but the power that I believe this word will give racism at the local level. I imagine, as a student affairs professional, the following scenario:

A young person of color ends up in my office via judicial affairs. There has been a fight and in this fight the student of color has physically assaulted a white student. Upon further investigation we find out that the student of color alleges that the white student had uttered a racial epithet which resulted in the physical assault.

I have experienced this scenario over and over; both at the institution I work at and with my own sons. Different interpretations of the law, and application, have yielded different results legally. What I can say is, regardless of consequence, every incident has deemed racial epithets unacceptable AND inciteful.

How and where do we locate "Negro" when that is the word that was used in the above scenerio instead of "Nigger". I tread softly here as I have heard compelling reasons NOT to blithely connect those two words. However, my initial reaction and that of most of my peers suggests that the interpretation of "Negro" by the bottom three generations might well equal the interpretation of the word "Nigger". What I am certain of is that we don't want to create a social acceptance of generally calling people of color "Negro". But, now that the United States Government has reintroduced "Negro" as an acceptable term, in a way it has not been since about 1960, can we stop "Negro" from sliding over into contemporary and acceptable linguistics.

A wise woman, a couple generations ahead of me in her life journey, pointed out a couple important facts about the word "Negro". First, that her own birth certificate lists "Negro" as the race of herself and her parents. Second, Martin Luther King's (as well as other civil rights writers) writings use the word "Negro" as an acceptable term. If nothing else I have come to see this conversation/debate/concern as an intergenerational one. I tip my hat to the generations before me who have seen things and endured things that I never have. I do live in fear, however, that in my or my children's lifetimes we may suffer those same events again. Going back in time strikes me as a particularly dangerous proposition for the Black, African Am., or Negro community.

The one thing I will NOT take my claws out of, regardless of the excellent reasons offered by my mentors and peers for including "Negro" in teh 2010 Census, is that congress made this choice in relative secrecy. I am completely unable to find any mention of this move to add "Negro" to the 2010 Census before about January 4... 2010. I am talking about a popular culture, quasi-political, media trail of this conversation/debate; like the one we usually see when race intersects with social behavior and/or consequence. I am unable to find mention of the bill passing in congress; let alone any mention of a public/private or legal debate about the matter. I also am unable to find mention of the study that produced the data that is loosely referred to in the Census Bureau's response to inquiry in the past week. This I am not going to accept. The addition of "Mixed Race" or "Other" to the 2000 Census was public and unavoidable.

All I am asking is who had the conversation preceding the inclusion of the "Negro" on the 2010 Census? Who are we representing in the addition of "Negro"? Finally, if the intention is to make sure more people are represented accurately and in a way that compels them to self-report via census why do I have to write in my racial identity - Mixed Race, still, because it is not represented on the Census and never will be. Mixed race is NOT acceptable. Negro is???? Apparently myself and my family don't deserve the same representation in the counting of brown bodies as those who identify as "Negro" and I want to know WHY!

More soon...

Counting Negros in 2010

...Self-identified Negros of course

A student sent me this link: www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/01/06/2010-01-06_census_negro_issue_use_of_word_on_forms_raises_hackles_memories_of_jim_crow.html

This is a link to a brief article about the 2010 census. What is remarkable is that a student from over a year ago was impacted enough by the Examining Mixed Race course to still be concious of the value of such an article. I am feeling pretty good about that. It was the first incarnation of the course and students like Rachael have continued to shape the way I teach and think about mixed race. Thank you Rachael.

In Rachael's email she asked me what I thought about the inclusion of the word negro on the 2010 census. During our class we had spent time being critical of the occurrence and disappearance cycle of the category mixed race, in varying forms, on the United States census. Never in a million years did I think I would find myself talking about the word negro as cyclic or reoccurring beyond the realization of the African American identity.

I have to admit I am reacting to one online article and will spend a lot more time researching this. And, I have to say that this is what happens when we discount something like the census because we know it is flawed and systemically oppressive. I have not only not been paying attention; I have been ignoring the impending census on purpose hoping that it would not come. This is clearly something that I should have caught as the creation of the race question was being discussed. I was deeply aware of the very public debate about adding "Other" or any of its variations to Census 2000. That said, it is unfathomable to me that this has not been a more high profile conversation that would have caught the attention of even the most disconnected citizen.

I wonder if they discussed this with our new president or if there are statements or thoughts that he has already shared on the inclusion of negro in the census. What about the tenants of civil rights, are they weighing in on this? I am sure my research will uncover either a suppression of this conversation or my complete ignorance. My sense of it though, since 2010 is here, is that my committee or cohort would have rushed this to my attention knowing that I have used the census in my research and that I would be most interested in this. I am very curious about what my research will disclose about how this decision was made and by whom.

The most important thing I want to think about with all of you is this: What are we counting? What I have learned about census' role in socio-racial construction is not what the question on the form is; rather, what was the thought process and intention that led to that question. What we have learned about the race question in the United States, in its current form, is that the race question was added to count slaves; to access human property. Mulatto was added to make sure that mixed race bodies were counted as slaves and were not left out of that count because of aesthetic ambiguity. Mulatto then went away after the one-drop rule made it unnecessary to count mixed race bodies separately from black bodies. So, if negro is being recreated as a category on the 2010 census, what are we counting? If I read this article correctly, it would seem we are simply counting African-Americans over the age of 80.

More soon...

Cyborgs, Mixed-Race Bodies, and Passing...Oh My!

Reinvigoration comes from the most random places. I was talking to a keynote speaker that I am engaging for our student mini-conference in March. The conference focus is diversity, equity and social justice; our theme is imagining communities without walls. Our keynote is an esteemed scholar in Rochester; a woman of color, who captivated my students and I at a symposium she held with her students last fall. During the symposium, which was this amazing room full of women of color - academics, lawyers, doctors; I remember thinking this woman had changed my life. First, I had never been in a room full of brown women who were both successful AND welcoming. Second, she was just dynamic and engaging. When I approached her after her talk and told her how she had impacted me, because I am impulsive like that, she hugged me and welcomed me into her community. By the time I left she had given me her personal and professional contact information and offered her time and experience as I moved through my PhD journey. I felt blessed and tucked the information away. I felt I could never tell this black feminist scholar that I studied mixed race.

So... yesterday we were talking about the conference and she was letting me know that because of the immediate connection she had felt with myself and my students, she was doing our conference when she really didn't have time. She went on to tell me that she was teaching three NEW courses, something I would do to myself, and started to tell me about them. All of a sudden...WHAM (I have no better way to articulate the sensation I experienced in this moment) she is talking about mixed race. (Happy Dance by the Mixed Race Professor)

Save the fact that I became a babbling idiot, as I am want to do in the shadow of greatness, I was blown away. My own assumptions get me in trouble often; my assumption about black feminist scholars may be causing me more than trouble. My assumption that all black feminst scholars, save the few who have actually verbally attacked me in public places, reject mixed race identity is keeping me from engaging other academics and scholarship. My gift, the revelation and the validation of what I believed when I began this journey is that there is a community of scholars that not only believe in mixed race they are studying and teaching it. Our conversation continued as this amazing scholar graciously started giving me resources and pointed me toward other scholars doing this work. Then, she asked me for resources and suggestions for the teaching of her new class. This kind of peer acknowledgment always makes me incredibly giddy (and I became less and less able to communicate because of it) but I was able to fumble through the exchange.

I was up at 1:50 am this morning thinking about my dissertation. I won't admit to anyone how long it has been since I thought about my dissertation (or worked on it) but I am on fire. It is 4:37 am and I have been researching the possibilities she shared as well as a healthy jstor search for new articles. Thank you to the powers that oversee lost PhD candidates, I think I may be headed in a good direction.

More soon...