Identity Depends on Perspective: Thoughts on Interracial Identity

Published August 15, 2000, The Post-Tribune.

"You probably thought I was Asian the first time you saw me."
"Yeah, I guess," I confessed meekly.
"Besides, you'd never go out with anyone who isn't white. You've probably never even been attracted to a woman of color."
"How can you say that?" I protested.
"Simple," she smiled. "You're too conservative... and you're from Indiana."

My best friend's perspective on race was something quite unfamiliar to me. I'd never openly discussed race with a multiracial individual like her, and I'd never openly discussed interracial dating with anyone. Brianne forced me to confront both at once.

When in a good mood, Brianne describes herself as hapa, Japanese for "mixed." The daughter of a Japanese father and a white mother, she is herself the product of an interracial union. In Brianne's home state of Hawai'i, Asian-white marriage is quite common, and some say that having an Asian wife is an informal requirement for white men to hold elected office.

Brianne's freshman year on the east coast was one of being blindly lumped together with all other Asians and "students of color." Until I knew better, I too made the mistake of thinking Brianne "just another Asian."

This past school year for me was--like the previous year--one of being lumped together with all other white middle-class Midwesterners. My love of The Jerry Springer Show did nothing to dissuade people that I was anything other than a typical Hoosier. (I found Hoosiers to be stereotyped as doing little but throwing chairs at people on stage or at players on basketball courts, depending on whether we're redneck guests on a TV show or a red-turtleneck-wearing coach.)

The question of "what are you?" comes up quite a lot for Brianne and another biracial student on our floor. It's an easy question for me, but for Brianne and another friend, Erica, it's anything but.

Erica, whose accent tells anyone where she's from long before she can say "Lon gIsland," is mulatta, forcing her to straddle an even deeper racial gulf than Brianne.

"When I was in high school, race was no big deal," Erica told me one day. "Here, it's a big deal. In high school, I was white; here, I'm labeled as black."

"Separate but equal" dominates universities today, and that is just fine with pretty much everyone, thank you. Minority Scholars Programs, de facto African-American-only dorms with names like "W.E.B. Dubois," separate "African-American" dining areas, and even separate "Minority" Greek chapters force the racial gulf even wider for people it affects the most, multiracial people like Erica and Brianne.

For all the lip service the various races give racial integration, we feel a huge need to classify and force people into roles they might wish not to assume. The concept of an interracial individual, someone loved equally by two races and a joint product of the two, throws our classification into a jumble.

To blacks, a mulatto is white. To whites, he is black. You can check as many boxes as you want on the census's race question, but society will still "check one" (and only one) for you.

Answering the question what are you? becomes most difficult for people who ideally should have the best comprehension of cross-racial understanding; indeed, society still has yet to conceive of a multi-racial individual as anything other than "strange."

And society probably won't change until a critical mass of such individuals is achieved. One hundred years ago, society shunned "old wave" immigrants intermarrying with "new wave" immigrants. Could I conceive of being considered "strange" because I have both Polish and British ancestry?

It won't be but 50 years until there will be no majority race in the United States, and by that time, the number of Ericas and Briannes in the world will have exploded. Indeed, this boom of multiracial individuals marks the greatest hope for increased racial understanding since the Civil Rights movement.

On an individual level, however, we can begin today by rejecting as presumptuous the labeling of interracial individuals anything other than the label they chose. Black, white, Asian, hapa, or mulatto, I don't care: Brianne and Erica are my friends, and that's all that matters.

Reader-Columnist Adrian Jones of Valparaiso is a senior finance and real estate dual-concentration at the University of Pennsylvania.