Nonetheless, no matter how it is parsed, "race" remains a powerful social mechanism for distributing status and privilege in the U.S., and the growing numbers of so-called mixed, biracial, or multiracial individuals are likely to remain an interesting and complex problem of taxonomy and identity, for some time to come. Readers of this journal are likely to approach the subject of race from legal backgrounds with expectations of concrete arguments and specific advocacy. As a philosopher, however, I offer a discussion that is more conceptually-driven.
In Part I, I consider the treatment of race and, in particular, mixed race in the U.S. census. The logical and empirical weaknesses of common sense beliefs about race and mixed race become evident through an examination of the Census 2000 questions pertaining to race. If common sense and the census are vague and erroneous about the biological basis of race, this raises the question of what is precisely true. Therefore, in Part II, I offer a summary of current scientific findings about biological race. These findings indicate that the main problem with "race" in common sense is a failure to recognize that there is no biological basis for racial categories. But, since such common sense illusions about race exist, it is important to note that they have been accompanied by a general denial of official recognition of mixed-race identity. This denial has supported ungrounded notions of racial purity. If race is (falsely) believed to be real, then mixed race ought to enjoy the same social status. Therefore, so long as beliefs in pure races persists in society, there would seem to be a need for a theoretical foundation that could be used for political and policy arguments that allow for the recognition of mixed-race identities. In Part III, I consider how neither the traditional individual-based model of pluralism, nor its group-based multicultural contender, support mixed-race identity claims. Returning to the gap between common sense and science, in Part IV, I consider education and activism as ways of achieving mixed-race identity recognition, on the heuristic grounds that such recognition will ultimately disabuse Americans of their false beliefs in the biological reality of race.
In all of the census counts through 1990, an individual's race was supposed to be indicated by checking only one of the boxes presumed to correspond to the main social racial categories. Thus, there was no allowance made for mixed-race identification, although the category "other" was recognized in the 1980 and 1990 censes, and on many local record-keeping forms. During the early 1990s, advocates for the federal recognition of mixed race identities succeeded to the extent that the "check only one box" rule for race was rescinded in the 2000 census.5 This appeared to be the beginning of official recognition of mixed race in the United States. Consider the text of the Census 2000 short form questions eight and nine, which pertain to ethnicity and race.
In question nine, the phrase "considers himself/herself to be" clearly bases racial categorization on self-identification. It is remarkable in this regard that no guidelines are available for making this identification, for instance: race of ancestors, culture of origin, geographical origins of ancestors, or appearance. The list of racial boxes does not distinguish between presumptive biological racial groups, and racial groups based on national origin. That is, "white" and "black" are presumptive biological groups, whereas all of the other listed groups refer to national origin. The designation "other Asian" suggests that respondents already know that the group names from "Asian Indian" to "Samoan" refer to Asians, although "Asian" itself is nowhere defined.
The lack of either explicitly structured taxonomies or criteria for membership in specific categories suggests that those who composed the census form assumed that Americans have unequivocal and ready answers to questions about their identities in the Spanish/Hispanic/Latino category, and in terms of race. And since these answers were deemed worthwhile to collect, it must have been further assumed that they were accurate according to some unstated criteria for ethnic and racial categorization. If there are no independent criteria for racial identification, apart from ordinary practices and perceptions, which as we shall see in the next section, are not coherent, then the data collected through the census cannot be informative as it purports to be.
While mixed race is not mentioned explicitly in question nine, those who identify as mixed usually do so on the basis of known ancestry of more than one race. Therefore, the Census 2000, almost explicitly, and for the first time in American history, allows for mixed-race identity in ways that appear to do more than create subcategories within nonwhite races, i.e., the one-drop rule does not appear to be active in this enumeration. Although, without an application of a one-drop rule, or rules, there is a dizzying array of possible racial categories. In March 2000, when government began distributing the census forms, the New York Times reported that the five racial categories and their possible combinations would yield sixty-three recognized racial categories, a number that would be doubled by the options in the "Spanish/Hispanic/Latino" category. Official plans, however, for interpreting the data tell a different story. Anita Hodgkiss, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, commented on the Clinton administration's policy concerning interpretation of the data: "The first allocation rule is that if you are white and anything else, you are allocated to the minority." Sally Katzen, Counsel to the Director of the Budget Office, reported that this allocation rule "reflected a determination that people who have suffered discrimination in the past should be subject to certain protections."7 Thus, the justification for this application of the old one-drop rule is that it is a response to lobbied requests by civil rights groups that the new classifications not "dilute the power and protection of minorities in the enforcement of anti-discrimination and voting rights laws."8 The pill of hypodescent is thus turned into a placebo, sweetened by referring to all of the racial categories other than "white," as "minorities," rather than "nonwhite." One local paper went so far as to paraphrase Hodgkiss's statement in a headline that turned "minority" into a noun: CENSUS WILL COUNT MIXED-RACE PEOPLE AS MINORITIES.9 While the word "minority" may now be a euphemism for "nonwhite racial group" or even "member of a nonwhite racial group," its traditional literal meaning is "the smaller number in a political body" or "the group having less than the number of votes necessary to control."10 But few who work towards and hope for racial egalitarianism in the United States believe that when nonwhites, both presumptively pure and mixed, are no longer numerical minorities, racial equality will thereby automatically be achieved. Indeed, in South Africa, as well as many locales in the American South, blacks have been racial majorities, under conditions of extreme antiblack racism and oppression.11
It should be noted that despite the rich array of possibilities for racial identification, the Census 2000 does not allow respondents to reject racial identification completely, or even to identify as "mixed" without specifying how they are mixed. The use of the one-drop rule in interpreting biracial and multiracial categorization will be received as supportive of the rights of those who belong to groups that have suffered race-based discrimination in the past. But, the new one-drop rule, like the old, which was instigated to ensure that everyone who might possibly qualify for race-based discrimination would be forced to do so, does not seriously allow for the recognition of mixed-race identity. Paradoxically, an examination of the flimsiness of all presumptively biological racial identity will illuminate how the recognition of mixed-race identities is important.
The recognized environmental and historical causes of those cultural and psychological traits which are associated with distinct racial groups means that the human capital represented by culture is in principle attainable to all human beings, regardless of their designated racial groups. This "equal opportunity" view of human culture is widespread among scholars, scientists and others who are concerned with social justice and remedies for racism. A recent expression of this view is the 1998 American Anthropological Association Statement on Race. Prior to this promulgation, the United Nation sponsored statements on racism which were published in the 1950s and 60s.15 During the last third of the twentieth century, however, the egalitarian view of the acquisition of cultural assets was often opposed by members of nonwhite racial groups who sought to support the identities of their groups on the basis of cultural traditions and practices valued by them. The right to distinctive race-based group cultural identities has come to be generally accepted as a necessary component of democratic pluralism, and it is usually referred to as "multiculturalism."16 In ordinary usage, except when the term "ethnicity" is used as a synonym for "race," the cultural aspect of group identity is called "ethnic" if the group in question is racially white (e.g , Italian, German, Jewish ethnic identities as developed in the United States), and "racial" if the group is African American, Asian American or American Indian (e.g., black, Asian, Indian, racial identities). Some contemporary scholars view ethnicity as a matter of culture and race as a matter of (presumptive) biology. Insofar as race is biologically false, but ethnicity is pervasive in daily life and universal as a narrative and social science subject, the restriction of biology to "race," and culture and psychology to "ethnicity" is useful for analytic purposes.17 This line having been drawn, it can safely be said that distinctive ethnic practices, which are often assumed to be linked to distinctive racial identities, are in themselves worth preserving. The right to participate in, maintain, and pass on the distinctive ethnic practices of what are, mistakenly or not, thought to be different racial lineage is often part of what is claimed by those who advocate for the recognition of mixed-race identities.
Just as there is independent evidence of the causal separation between race and culture in ways that preclude biological determinism, there is also evidence of great (relative) biological diversity within the main socially determined racial groups. Contemporary biologists agree that there is greater diversity within so-called racial groups than between them. Within Homo sapiens, there is an average genetic difference of .2% or 1/500. The racial part of this difference is 6%, which is .012%, or less than 1/8000 of any human's genetic material.18 Furthermore, the physical traits in which human beings differ in ways identified as racial do not all get inherited together but disperse and recombine at conception when individuals are formed with half of their genetic material coming from each parent. The lack of racial essences, the high degree of variation of presumptive racial traits within racial groups, the great genetic similarity of all humans, and the facts of genetic recombination preclude the possibility of an empirical foundation for biological racial identity.19
Thus far, I have discussed the possibility of a biological foundation for race based on similarity or difference among human groups and individuals existing at the same time. Population genetics tracks human migrations since the origination of modern Homo sapiens in Africa. As a result of this migration, or diaspora, the traits of skin, hair and skeletal structure associated with race are viewed as clines, because they vary continuously over large geographical areas and on that basis, exist in continua rather than discrete categories. Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues who worked on mapping human evolutionary history, have found it possible to identify human geographical groups in ways that roughly correspond to races.20 But since the classifications are based on probable ancestry, rather than similarity or difference, they do not provide an objective foundation for race unless location in a certain place at a certain time is arbitrarily used to indicate racial identity. For instance, the current evolutionary account posits original ancestors of modern humans as occupying Africa approximately 140,000 years ago. About 70,000 years ago, some members of that group are believed to have migrated to Asia and after that, to Europe and the Americas.21 On this model, there is no independent way to divide humans into blacks, whites and Asians. The question of how to classify human beings based on the continental origins of their ancestors can be answered only by making arbitrary classifications based on time spans of habitation. Neither can it be claimed, without begging the question, that we are all Africans because our ancestors originated in Africa, if by "African" is meant "black" or "Negro" in a racial sense.22
Given the great degree of human migration and intermixture between groups with different ancestral origins, some writers have claimed that we are all of mixed race. (But note that there cannot be mixed race or mixed races unless there are races beforehand). Had human history been different, with less migration and more isolation between groups, human races might have evolved. But this did not happen and not even stringent regimes of white purity and segregation have succeeded in accomplishing it. Most writers on the subject of American black-white miscegenation, for instance, estimate that seventy to ninety percent of African Americans have white ancestry -- whatever that could mean in racial terms, given the lack of any biological foundation for race itself.23
Despite the lack of biological foundation, what is thought of as racial distinction continues to have a powerful social effect on reality in American life. This is because the social categories of race are the result of history. The modern concept of biological race was invented during the period of European colonialism in order to establish and perpetuate European domination over the inhabitants of Africa, Asia and the Americas.24 It is in this social, economic, and political context that claims by individuals who view themselves or their children as mixed-race for a different system or order of racial recognition must be addressed.
The discourse of rights in American history has always focused on the rights of individuals and not even individuals as members of particular groups. Thus, both the civil rights legislation and revision of immigration laws in the 1960s addressed the rights of individuals to be free of discrimination. For example, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against individuals on the grounds of race in all major American institutions. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 protects the voting rights of all Americans as individuals, and The 1965 Immigration Act forbids the exclusion of individuals based on race or national origin.27
In recent decades, this individual subject of rights in situations of racial discrimination has been criticized as a symbol of an impossible ideal because positing such a subject assumes a nonexistent neutrality. The critique is that individuals do not appear in public and civic contexts with undetermined racial identity, so that it can be stipulated that their race is not to be a reason for discrimination.28 Rather, racial identity is believed to be immediately attached to individuals at all times, in all places, and in ways that shape how laws are created and applied. This belief has led to arguments that the subjects of egalitarian legal discourse ought to be affirmatively identified by race from the outset rather than negatively protected on the basis of race, after the fact.29
The Census 2000 becomes even more interesting in terms of the individual model as compared to the group model. The census form is meant to be filled out by individuals about themselves. The protest against the interpretation of multiple boxes without the application of one-drop rules was brought, not by individuals, but by an organization, the NAACP.30 The NAACP has vested privileges to protect and represent the rights of the group of African Americans. African Americans are a recognized racial group with a social history, traditions of liberation, and at this time, hard-won recognition of their civil rights. In recent years, the arguments against official mixed race identities have often been implicit within racial scholarship, varied discussion fora, and the media. These arguments include: a multiplicity of recognized mixed-race categories will create social confusion; in the case of black and white mixed race, individuals allowed to be "not-black" will defect from membership in the black community to the detriment of neighborhood and family ties; the recognition of people who are mixed with black ancestry will deprive blacks of political representation and moral power as a special interest and advocacy group because they will be fewer in number; and mixed-race people have a long history of wanting the best of both worlds, both white privilege and special consideration for being members of minority groups -- and it is not fair that they should have these unique advantages.31 A critique of these objections to mixed-race identity include: social confusion about race is not a bad thing if racial categories are confused and unfounded to begin with; special interest coalitions are possible among nonwhite groups; the historical advantages of mixed-race people occurred before black Americans had a recognized voice, which is no longer the case; and mixed race people tell a different story about their alleged advantages.32
Most important is the question of whether mixed-race individuals have a right to be recognized as members of groups different from the nonwhite groups in which they have partial ancestry. On an individualist model of pluralism, they would seem to have the same right to claim racial identities as do individuals who identify as members of groups falsely believed to be racially pure. The 126 possible categories of mixed race enabled by the current census, however, do not yet exist as recognized groups. Therefore, on a group-based model of pluralism, mixed-race people have not yet been constructed as rights-bearing subjects. This is partly why mixed-race identities are at this time perceived as deviant and anti-social by the "mainstream." Another reason is that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all remaining state laws against racial intermarriage in its 1967 opinion in Loving v. Virginia, and the national phenomenon of mixed-race individuals born in legal marriages is relatively new.33 But despite its newness, this group of mixed-race children has been both publically visible and fast growing -- estimated to have increased from 500,000 in the mid-1960s, to over two million in the late 1990s.34
A comparison of the majority opinion in Loving v. Virginia, with the decision in the Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana [hereinafter the Phipps case], brought in opposition to the one-drop rule, is instructive in regard to the workings of the individualistic model of pluralism. In Loving v. Virginia, the appellee argued for retention of anti-misegenation law in the state of Virginia on the grounds of the desirability of "racial integrity."35 The court's decision was based on the premise that marriage is a basic social liberty, which could not be regulated on what Justice Warren called the "invidious" basis of racial difference alone.36 Insofar as a liberty is what individuals are not constrained from doing by law, this decision would seem to be an application of a more general doctrine of individual rights.
Now, consider the Phipps case, decided by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana and refused review by the Louisiana Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court.37 Susie Guillory Phipps was denied white identity because, at the time of her birth, her parents had considered themselves and her to be "colored."38 This ruling was made despite the fact that Phipps looked white, thought of herself as white, and "had twice married as white."39 The Louisiana Appellate Court noted that racial classification of individuals was "scientifically insupportable," and claimed that racial perceptions were purely social.40 The relevant question was taken to be whether Phipps's parents had correctly recorded her race based on social perceptions and it was concluded that they had.41 The higher courts apparently did not disagree. In this case, an individual's choice of racial identity is not accorded the same protection from regulation as is the choice of a marriage partner. Neither is a racial identity claim or denial taken to be justified or not justified on the basis of group rights. If Phipps is black as an adult, because according to social perceptions at her birth, it was correct to consider her black at that time, then the courts seem to be implicitly deferring to tradition as a basis for the assignment of racial identities.
A judicial deference to tradition in matters of racial identity puts mixed-race identity claims in a kind of legal limbo between the individual and group-based models of pluralism. Individual rights are not recognized and protected from the invidious bias of race, as they were in Loving. But, group rights do not exist. There cannot be claims on behalf of members of the group(s) of mixed race Americans, unless the existence of the group(s) is recognized. Phipps, to be sure, was going beyond a claim for mixed-race identity, because she believed that her racial identity was white. But the recognition as white of someone who appears to be white but who has black ancestry, is in fact less transgressive of the social racial order than the recognition of that person as mixed, because the category of white is already recognized. It is amazing and often overlooked that the courts are willing to acknowledge the social and nonbiological nature of racial categories. There is no indication that beyond this, however, that they are willing to oppose custom. There is no basis on which to expect that remedies for either false notions of race or lack of recognition of mixed race identities will be developed through common law.
Nevertheless, widespread realization of the scientific emptiness of human racial taxonomy would be a great social good, because it could undermine human interactions based on the belief that some groups are different from others in the manner of subspecies. Despite the celebration of diversity and its positive private and political uses, when diversity has been racial in the United States, it has never been viewed as mere variety, but as natural-kind type difference lending itself to comparison in terms of human worth.
The reality of human biological diversity is both subtle, in that we are all overwhelmingly similar, and vast, in that no two of us are exactly alike genetically (except, perhaps for identical twins). The rules for established racial groupings differ according to the race at issue: whites have no nonwhite ancestry;42 blacks have at least some black ancestry;43 Asians encompass a multiplicity of national origins;44 and Indians have recorded Indian ancestry to an approved "blood quantum."45 Despite the different bases for the received racial identities, appearance is the rough guide, which is considered to be the normal indicator of racial identity. In this sense, the major racial groups are socially intelligible. Recognition of even a fraction of possible mixed racial identities, however, will render racial identities unintelligible, at a glance, at least to those who take the new complexity of categories seriously. If racial identity is widely accepted to be something that cannot be accurately determined at a glance, racial divisions will begin to crumble on epistemological grounds alone.
Even if mixed race identities are not officially recognized, mixed-race identity advocacy is not likely to go away. There are two national organizations devoted to mixed-race recognition, AMEA [Association of Multi-Ethnic Americans]46 and Project RACE [Reclassify All Children Equally],47 as well as numerous local organizations and groups on college campuses. Also, magazines and Internet sites increasingly serve as a virtual community for mixed race individuals and their families. Although self-identified mixed-race Americans are likely to remain a small (numerical) minority for some time to come, their existence is subversive to the imaginary taxonomy. What exists only in the imagination may be vulnerable only to what disturbs the illusion on the same imaginary level. However, mixed-race identity tends to support the family-history aspects of racial identity, which are real. Many of the narrative accounts of mixed-race heritage attest to this, particularly famous cases, such as: James McBride's novel, The Color of Water; A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother;48 the story of Thomas Jefferson's paternity of Sally Heming's children;49 and Tiger Woods's self-designation as "Calablasian."50
In conclusion, it should be noted that there is no constitutional provision, body of law, or established case precedent according to which Americans must identify themselves racially. Also, the racial categories which are offered as choices on official forms are not established by law, but by the vague dictates of administrative policy. In the past, such policy has followed what administrators have understood to be custom and public opinion, and the courts have upheld these understandings. But custom and public opinion are never as stable as traditionalists would like them to be, and the twenty-first century may very well sustain exactly those historical processes which will unravel the false taxonomy of race established during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and attenuated during the twentieth. And if the past is a guide, as custom and public opinion change in these matters, so will the courts.
2. Id. at 240. See also JOEL WILLIAMSON,
NEW PEOPLE 98-129 (1980).
3. See F. James Davis, The Hawaiian Alternative to the One-Drop Rule, in AMERICAN MIXED RACE, supra note 1, at 115-32.
4. See Goldberg, supra note 1, for further citations on the history of the census. On the legal history of the application of the one-drop rule to mixed-race categories, see NAOMI ZACK, RACE AND MIXED RACE 77-85 (1993). For discussion of the empirical and logical problems with the one-drop rule, see id. at 9-18 and NAOMI ZACK, THINKING ABOUT RACE 5-6 (1998).
5. For discussions of the grounds for mixed-race recognition, see the following articles by Carlos Fernandez, founder of The Association of MultiEthnic Americans, and Susan Graham, founder of Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally): Carlos A. Fernandez, Testimony of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans, in AMERICAN MIXED RACE, supra note 1, at 191-200; Susan R. Graham, Grassroots Advocacy, in AMERICAN MIXED RACE, supra note 1, at 185-90.
6. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, U.S. DEP'T OF COMMERCE, UNITED STATES CENSUS 2000 Form D-1 (UL) (2000).
7. Steven A. Holmes, New Policy on Census Says Those Listed as White and Minority Will Be Counted as Minority, N.Y.
TIMES, Mar. 11, 2000, at A-9.
8. Id.
9. Steven A. Holmes, Census will count mixed-race people as minorities, ALB. TIMES UNION, Mar. 11, 2000, at A4. (This was substantially the same as Holmes's article in the New York Times, but condensed slightly and given a slightly different title, which reads as though "minority" is not only a name for a group but for an individual member of a group.)
10. WEBSTER'S NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY 536 (1960).
11. ROGER OMOND, THE APARTHEID HANDBOOK: A GUIDE TO SOUTH AFRICA'S EVERYDAY RACIAL POLICIES (1985).
12. Discussion and sources for the blood-based essentialist notion of race can be found in IVAN HANNAFORD, RACE: THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA IN THE WEST (1996) and in ZACK, supra note 4, at 14-15, 121-22. For direct sources, see excerpts from: François Bernier, A New Division of the Earth (1684), reprinted in THE IDEA OF RACE 1 (Robert Bernasconi & Tommy L. Lott eds., 2000); François-Marie Voltaire, Of the Different Races of Men (1765), reprinted in THE IDEA OF RACE, supra, at 5; Immanuel Kant, Of the Different Human Races (1777), reprinted in THE IDEA OF RACE, supra, at 8. See also W.W. Howells's 1940 historical survey of attempts to construct scientific racial classifications in W.W. Howells's, Physical Determinants of Race (1940), reprinted in THIS IS RACE: AN ANTHOLOGY SELECTED FROM THE INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE ON THE RACES OF MAN 654-65 (Earl W. Count ed., 1950).
13. Naomi Zack, Race and Philosophic Meaning, 94 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER ON PHILOSOPHY AND THE BLACK ENTERPRISE 114 n.1 (1994), reprinted in 99 id. 141 n.2 (2000).
14. See Claude Levi-Strauss, Race and History, in RACE, SCIENCE, AND SOCIETY 95-134 (Leo Kuper ed., 1965); UNESCO, Four Statements on the Race Question, in RACE, SCIENCE, AND SOCIETY, supra, at 341-64.
15. See UNESCO, supra note 14, at 341-64; American Anthropology Association, AAA Statement on 'Race,' 9 ANTHROPOLOGY NEWSLETTER 3 (1998). See also Naomi Zack, Philosophical Aspects of the 1998 AAA Statement on 'Race,' ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY (forthcoming Dec. 2001).
16. For an analysis of multiculturalism in this sense, see the introductions to the following: David Theo Goldberg, Introduction to MULTICULTURALISM: A CRITICAL READER 1-41 (David Theo Goldberg ed., 1996); YEHUDI O. WEBSTER, Introduction to AGAINST THE MULTICULTURAL AGENDA: A CRITICAL THINKING ALTERNATIVE 1-11 (1997).
17. On the contemporary distinction between the terms 'race' and 'ethnicity,' see Walter Benn Michaels, Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity, in IDENTITIES 32-62 (Kwame Anthony Appiah & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. eds., 1995); J. Angelo Corlett, Parallels of Ethnicity and Gender, in RACE/SEX: THEIR SAMENESS, DIFFERENCE, AND INTERPLAY 83 (Naomi Zack ed., 1997); Zack, supra note 4, at 67-75.
18. K. Anthony Appiah, Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections, in COLOR CONSCIOUS 68-69 (K. Anthony Appiah & Amy Gutmann eds., 1996); Alan R. Templeton, Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective, AM. ANTHROPOLOGIST, 632-50 (1998). See also Natalie Angier, Do Races Differ? Not Really, Genes Show, N.Y. TIMES Aug. 22, 2000, at F1.
19. Ashley Montagu, The Concept of Race in the Human Species in the Light of Genetics, 23 J. HEREDITY 243-47 (1941), reprinted in THE IDEA OF RACE, supra note 12, at 100. The facts about genetic recombination can be found in contemporary high school biology textbooks, although Ashley Montagu first applied them to presumptions about racial heredity in the early 1940s.
20. See L. LUCA CAVALLI-SFORZA ET AL., THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF HUMAN GENES (1994).
21. L. LUCA CAVALLI-SFORZA, GENES, PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES 57-66 (2000).
22. See LEWIS GORDON, EXISTENTIA AFRICANA: UNDERSTANDING AFRICAN EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT 82-83 (2000).
23. Daniel G. Blackburn, Why Race is not a Biological Concept, in RACE AND RACISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 3 (Berel Lang ed., 2000).
24. See AUDREY SMEDLEY, RACE IN NORTH AMERICA: ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF A WORLDVIEW (1993).
25. See Michael Walzer, Pluralism: A Political Perspective, in THE RIGHTS OF MINORITY CULTURES 139-54 (Will Kymlicka ed., 1995).
26. See Nathan Glazer, Individual Rights Against Group Rights, in THE RIGHTS OF MINORITY CULTURES, supra note 25, at 123-38.
27. Id. at 136.
28. See PATRICIA WILLIAMS, THE ALCHEMY OF RACE AND RIGHTS (1991).
29. See Amy Gutman, Responding to Racial Injustice, in COLOR CONSCIOUS, supra note 18, at 110.
30. HOLMES, supra note 7, at A-9.
31. See Ursula M. Brown, Between Two Worlds: Psychosocial Issues of Black/White Interracial Young Adults in the U.S.A., in LEADING ISSUES IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES 89-104 (Nikongo BaNikongo ed., 1997).
32. See Naomi Zack, Mixed Black and White Race and Public Policy, in 10 HYPATIA 120-32 n.1 (1995), reprinted in LEADING ISSUES IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES, supra note 31, at 121-34. See also ZACK, supra note 4, at 20-28.
33. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1968).
34. See Maria P.P. Root, The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations, in THE MULTIRACIAL EXPERIENCE xiii-xxviii (Maria P.P. Root ed., 1996). It will be interesting to compare the figure of two million, based on children with married parents of different races, with the data gathered from the Census 2000 questions, BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, supra note 6, which includes adults.
35. Loving, 388 U.S. at 11.
36. Id. at 12
37. Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana, 479 So. 2d 369 (La. Ct. App. 1985).
38. Id. at 371.
39. Id.
40. Id. at 372.
41. Id. at 372. To view Walter Benn Michaels's interpretation, with which I agree, see Walter Benn Michaels, The No-Drop Rule, in IDENTITIES, supra note 17, at 401-12.
42. See JAMES RIDGEWAY, BLOOD IN THE FACE (1990).
43. See F. JAMES DAVIS, WHO IS BLACK? (1991).
44. See Yoko Arisaka, Asian Women: Invisibility, Locations, and Claims to Philosophy, in WOMEN OF COLOR AND PHILOSOPHY 209 (Naomi Zack ed., 2000).
45. Terry P. Wilson, Blood Quantum: Native American Mixed Bloods, in RACIALLY MIXED PEOPLE IN AMERICA 108-25 (Maria P.P. Root ed., 1992).
46. See FERNANDEZ, supra note 5, at 192. (Fernandez founded AMEA.)
47. See GRAHAM, supra note 5, at 185. (Graham founded Project RACE.)
48. JAMES McBRIDE, THE COLOR OF WATER: A BLACK MAN'S TRIBUTE TO HIS WHITE MOTHER (1997). See also KEVIN R. JOHNSON, HOW DID YOU GET TO BE A MEXICAN: A WHITE/BROWN MAN'S SEARCH FOR IDENTITY (1999).
49. ANNETTE GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN CONTROVERSY (1997).
50. See, e.g., JOHN STREGE,
TIGER: A BIOGRAPHY OF TIGER WOODS (1998); BILL GUTMAN, TIGER WOODS A BIOGRAPHY (1997).
Introduction
The average American, and many scholars as well, still believe that there is some coherent biological basis for the racial categories of black, white, Indian and Asian, and that relevant scientists have specialized information about the nature of that basis. Race, however, is a social construction on all levels. Not only are the links between so-called biological race and culture the result of history, tradition, and current norms, but the existence of biological racial taxonomies is itself the result of such social factors. If human races existed, then more people would be properly described as mixed race than are commonly thought to be. But, since human biological race is a fiction, so is mixed race.I. The U.S. Census
As David Goldberg argues, although the U.S. Census is now broadly regarded as a valuable resource for corporate planning and a basis for various government allocations and representation, it has not provided a stable system of racial categorization from decade to decade.1 There is, thus, no precise numerical basis for historical comparison of racial demographics. The shifting racial taxonomies have not reflected changes in scientific consenses about race, but have expressed political power, social attitudes and economic interests. Racial categorization first appeared in the 1850 census, when under the general group of free persons, whites were not counted by race, under "Color" and mulattoes were counted separately from blacks. By the 1890 count, distinctions were made within the mulatto group down to "one-eighth or any trace of black blood." The "one-drop rule," whereby black designation resulted from any black ancestry, no matter how remote, become the social rule of the land by 1900 and it was adopted by the census in 1930.2 Anthropologists use the term "hypodescent" to describe practices, such as the one-drop rule, for categorizing children with mixed racial parentage by assigning them to the parental racial category with the lowest social status.3 Hence, the American one-drop rule also required that any degree of blackness in mixtures between black and Chinese or black and Indian ancestry, result in black designation. As applied beyond the black category, the one-drop rule required that mixtures of white and Asian or white and Indian, result in Asian or Indian designation, respectively. In the 1980 and 1990 censuses, a new formation developed -- ethnicity, as Hispanic or non-Hispanic (replacing what was formerly labeled "Spanish") came to be counted separately from race, but the one drop rule remained in effect for racial categorization.4
Note: Please answer BOTH questions 8 and 9.
8. Is Person 1 Spanish/Hispanic/Latino? Mark X the "No" box if not
Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.
__ No, not Spanish/Hispanic/Latino __ Yes, Puerto Rican
__ Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano __ Yes, Cuban
__ Yes, other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino ---- Print group __
__________________________________________________
9. What is Person 1's race? Mark X one or more races to indicate what
this person considers himself/herself to be.
__ White
__ African Am., or Negro
__ American Indian or Alaska Native - Print name of enrolled or principal tribe. __
_________________________________________________
__ Asian Indian __ Japanese __ Native Hawaiian
__ Chinese __ Korean __ Guamanian or Chomorro
__ Filipino __ Vietnamese __ Samoan
__ Other Asian __Print race __
__________________________________________________
__ Some other race - Print race __
_________________________________________________
Several aspects of questions eight and nine are theoretically interesting, if not fascinating. In question eight, the general category, "Spanish/Hispanic/Latino" is not identified as racial or ethnic, and it is presumed that respondents already know the criteria for self-inclusion in one or another of the subcategories. Common sense alone yields many such criteria: language, national origin, culture of origin, culture of marriage or adoption, ancestral national origin, name (both given and surname) and appearance. No allowance is made that a person might identify as more than one of the subcategories, such as Cuban and Puerto Rican, or that a person might be both Spanish/Hispanic/Latino and not-Spanish/Hispanic/Latino, for instance German and Spanish.II. Contemporary Science and Race
The contemporary biological human sciences do not support common sense notions of racial taxonomy. While such notions vary and cannot often be stated with precision, until very recently, American school children have been taught that there are three main human racial groups -- black, white, and Asian -- a taxonomy which was upheld in anthropology texbooks and general-reader encyclopedia entries s.v. race, throughout the twentieth century. Obvious biological facts that are now broadly accepted undermine such notions, as do more sophisticated accounts of the history of Homo sapiens in population genetics. Let us begin with the broad facts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, biologists posited racial essences inherited through the blood as a physical as well as psychological and cultural determinant of racial identity.12 This notion has never found empirical support. No specific essences of race have ever been identified for the main social racial groups either in the blood or any other component of human physiology or genetics. The lack of proof for the existence of racial essences makes it highly improbable, if not impossible, that there is any general racial factor for each of the racial groups, which determines more specific traits associated with racial membership.13 The lack of general racial factors means that there is no known biological method by which racial identities could cause either specific physical racial traits or nonphysical psychological or cultural traits associated with race. There is also independent evidence that the nonphysical differences associated with race are the result of historical events, tradition and culture, evidence that anthropologists have accepted since the
1930s.14 For instance, human talents are distributed irrespective of racial groups. Many traditions develop as the result of historical events, and there are cultural commonalities between racial groups and diversity within them.III. Models of Pluralism
Keeping in mind that racial categories are social constructions, two models for pluralism in American contexts emerged in attempt to provide justice for those whose group identities are disadvantageous. The first model was developed in response to ethnic diversity during the great waves of European immigration in the early twentieth century. Ethnic pluralism, at that time, was based on a melting-pot ideal of equality and nondiscrimination in public life. Individuals of different national origins, languages, and customs, were expected and encouraged to adopt the identity of generic, non-ethnic Americans in public and civic life.25 The second model of pluralism was driven by race-based egalitarian projects beginning in the 1960s. Members of nonwhite racial groups, particularly African Americans and Native Americans, have argued for the right to retain and recognize their nonwhite identities as fully functional in civic and public life.26 It is not accidental that the subject of the first model is an individual who can be conceptualized as ethnically neutral. Whereas the subject of the second model is a group defined by its ethnicity or race. Thus, the first pluralistic model emphasizes public neutrality of ethnic identity and the second pluralistic model emphasizes public distinctiveness of racial identity. Insofar as the first model has individuals as its subject, it has been closer to the legal model for rights in the United States. The second, group-based model has functioned more as a moral critique of the individual legal model, than as a legal model itself.IV. Mixed Race Recognition as a Heuristic Device for Social Change
The First Amendment allows people to think and say what they choose. One result of this right is that there is no legal basis on which false beliefs can be excluded from the domains of public or private discourse. This is a good thing insofar as it limits government propaganda, censorship, mind control, and so forth. But, the First Amendment creates challenges for those who have reason to believe that the public is in error about a major aspect of life in the society. Such error can be corrected by education, which is easily accomplished when students are consensual adults. But, the education of children depends on the consent of their parents and false ideas about race, taught early in life, are often defended by parents on emotional and moral grounds. The public has never been taught either informally in public fora or systematically on different levels of the educational system, that contemporary biology offers no support for its persistent anachronistic belief in the existence of human racial divisions. And at this time, any wide-scale primary and secondary school instruction about the scientific flimsiness of race is likely to be strongly opposed by the same established interests who have opposed relinquishing one-drop rules in interpreting the Census 2000 data. Anything that disturbs the ontological premises underlying the racial status quo, no matter how liberating it may be in principle, will at this time be perceived as a threat to the gains justly secured by nonwhites on the group-based pluralistic model. That a wide-scale revision of received opinion about the existence of race may undermine racist thought and behavior is almost beside the point, insofar as it appears to be either a merely theoretical enterprise or a threat to what is desirable about the status quo in terms of liberation.
Endnotes
1. David Theo Goldberg, Made in the USA, in AMERICAN MIXED RACE: THE CULTURE OF MICRODIVERSITY 237-57 (Naomi Zack ed., 1995).
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