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It has been a challenging week for Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP. Dolezal, who has long passed herself off as black or mixed-race, was revealed by her parents to be of Czech and German ancestry with a dash of Native American. They provided a picture of Dolezal as a fair-skinned, freckly-faced, straight-haired teenager, a stark contrast with her current darker-skinned, curly haired appearance. When confronted by a reporter with the question, “Are you African-American?”, her response began with “I don’t understand the question…”, and shortly thereafter she walked away from the interview.
There is also evidence that suggests that Dolezal fabricated a series of “hate crimes” against her family and herself. Her motivation for her deceptions could be inferred from the facts and the current climate surrounding race issues, but I won’t speculate on this specific case. The resulting kerfuffle does serve to demonstrate the silliness and diminishing utility of racial classification in America.
Much effort is invested in determining which race bin in which each of us belongs. These efforts to divide and categorize are not being perpetrated by white-hooded, swastika-tattooed neo-fascists. Federal, state, and local governments, educational institutions and other entities are gathering the data for the purpose of collecting demographic data and discriminating in favor of racial minority groups. The data is all self-reported, so it represents how each person identifies him or herself. Here are the choices from the 2010 US census form:
Note that it is possible to make multiple selections for race. It is not clear why Asians and Pacific Islanders have so many race choices, while “White” and “Black” are aggregations of many nationalities.
Although relatively few Americans identify as multiracial (2.9% in the 2010 census), the genetic data tells a different story. For instance, the National Geographic’s Genographic Project reports that the average African-American is 80 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 1 percent Native American. There are undoubtedly many in the US who check the “white” box who are carrying genes from Africa, picked up from American or European ancestors.
But what does it really mean to be black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.? Is it actual genetic makeup? Or is it more of a cultural affiliation? President Barack Obama is a prime example of this dilemma. Almost universally referred to as “black” or “African-American”, it is well known that his background is more complicated than that. Born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother of English descent, he saw his father only once after the age of 3. He spent 4 years in Jakarta with his mother and Indonesian stepfather before returning to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His influences were undoubtedly more from the European-American segment of his family than any other. So what is it, exactly, that makes Barack Obama “black”? Why is he not “biracial”, “white”, or just “Barack Obama”?
There is no established legal definition of “black” although courts have had to weigh in on the subject from time to time. So how does one determine someone’s “blackness” or “whiteness”? Genetic testing? Is that a place we really want to go as a society? The idea that possession of any African ancestry makes one “black” hearkens back to the “one-drop” laws that were used during the slavery and Jim Crow eras. These laws defined a black person as anyone having “one drop” of African blood, i.e. one African ancestor, no matter how remote. It was a most vile and offensive standard, because it embodied the idea that any African blood tainted the “purity” of the white race.
Interestingly, the City of Spokane is investigating whether Dolezal violated the city’s code of ethics in her application to serve on the city’s citizen police ombudsman commission. On her application for the position, Dolezal identified herself as black, white, and native American. Which begs the question, how can the city prove that Dolezal is not African-American, if there is no law that defines the term? If racial classification is self-defined, how can benefits and preferences be granted based on that definition?
Since the election and re-election of President Obama, there has been a lot finger-wagging and lecturing from activists about America not having entered a “post-racial” era. The idea of a color-blind society, described by Dr. Martin Luther King in his most memorable speech, is being dismissed by many prominent civil-rights leaders in favor of an increased consciousness of race in everyday life. Color-blindness is, in fact, the only way to remove racial injustice. Those who derive power and profit from creating division among groups of people are threatened by progress in that direction.
And one can’t move toward a colorblind society and be obsessed with racial classification. Those opposed to this idea claim that racial consciousness is all in the cause of universal justice. Historically, measures such as Jim Crow laws, South African apartheid, and anti-Jewish laws in Europe were all designed to arbitrarily divide peoples and sow division, fear, and violence between them. Does today’s obsession with racial definition and classification serve the same purpose?
