What does Rosa Parks have to do with my son? I’m getting there, give me a second.
I’m sitting with my 7-year-old tonight and I suddenly realized that me and his mother’s efforts to teach him about his biracialness (is that a word?) might not have worked quite as well as we wanted.
He was eating and I was watching a rerun of “The Colbert Report” when someone on the show said something about Black History Month.
My son asks, “Dad, it’s Black History Month?”
I told him yes. And he said, “That reminds me. Since I’m part black and part white, back when what’s his name was alive. What was his name?”
I had no idea. Eventually he figured it out and continued, “Oh yeah, Martin Luther King. Back when he was alive I could have ridden on the front or the back of the bus. That’s why I’m glad that I’m part black and part white.”
Now you know and I know that this isn’t exactly how being biracial worked back then. On one hand I’m appalled at the absurdness of his idea. On the other hand, I’m happy that he’s feeling his biracialness (again, no idea if that’s a word). He’s in bed now and I have to admit, all I could muster from my conflicted state was an “Oh yeah, buddy?”
Just a quick reminder that this biracial child business is harder than it looks.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Now, as a black person, my initial reaction is to say, “biracial, shmiracial! that kid is black!” This is not my personal opinion so much as it is that of the US government. Remember Plessy v. Ferguson? Homer Plessy, if you recall, was a “biracial” man who demanded to sit in a white only trolley car because he was part white. History remembers him as the black guy who tried to sit in the white seats. Why? Because the term “biracial” is somewhat imaginary, as is the concept of race itself. Americans have, by both law and custom, elected to consider all people who are identifiably of African descent as black. I didn’t make the rules, but I accept them.
Why do I accept this? Because race is bullshit. It divides people, as was the original intent of institutionalized racism. Unlike, say, culture or religion, there is nothing about race that informs as to what kind of person you are, so identifying and judging people based on race will almost certainly lead to some injustice.
Why, then, do I bother to call your son black? I don’t think that sharing a common racial distinction unifies people, but sharing a common history certainly does. Black people have some solidarity not because our skin is dark (in fact, not all of us have dark skin) but because we have a common struggle in overcoming the effects of the African holocaust. We are all victims if one of us is a victim. In that sense, it is important to know that you are black. It is important to know that this struggle belongs to you and to be able to identify others who share your burden. Allowing people to “opt out” of being black if they can identify their non-black relatives is irritating to those of us who are “all black”. It’s like doling out uneven shares of pain based on phenotype.
But I know you know all of this. You probably know it better than I do. So I guess I should be asking you, why does your son have to be biracial? What is the value in that?
March 11th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Quite frankly, he can pass if he so chooses. I personally hope he doesn’t choose it. I really hope the first time someone who doesn’t know his background says some crazy racist nonsense that he will fill them in on who and what he is. If he chooses that route I have a feeling he will lose both black and white friends at various points in his life.
But no matter what a racist and antiquated Supreme Court’s one-drop rule may have argued, my son is not one or the other. He is both. As both, he doesn’t have an option to “opt out” of either. He is forced to own, not just the history of being an oppressed minority, but also of being an oppressive majority. Essentially, he will share not just the “black struggle” but also the “white guilt” and he will have to deal with both at some point.
Right now, he feels good about who he is. At some point, someone will take some part of that from him. At some point, he’ll be dating a girl and one of her parents will say something that will offend one part of his family or another. As a matter of fact, it may not even be from outside his family. At some point, it’s very likely that some great-grandparent or great-uncle or aunt will say something crazy that will offend one of his “halves.”
Far from allowing someone to “opt out” of something, a mixed heritage means that a child can never “opt out” of anything. They have to deal with the entirety of something that the rest of us only see from one side or the other. The best of them do this with something approaching grace and manage to find their own place in the world that lies somewhere between the rest of us. The worst of them are forced into one camp or the other and abdicate half of themselves for the sake of belonging. In that vein, I hope my son never chooses to belong.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Word.