Despite the best efforts of some to overlook this still harsh and ugly racial reality in America, many of the approximate 6 million persons — 2 percent — who routinely designate themselves on the census as multiracial, share their own bitter experience with the sting of racial bigotry in the streets and the workplace.
This is irrefutable, painful proof that simply checking the multiracial box on the census is little more than a symbolic exercise in racial correctness. The majority of African-Americans, overwhelmingly have some near or distant family ancestor who is white, given the rampant sexual abuse of slaves during that era.
Some of the most celebrated African-American icons such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and even Martin Luther King, Jr. have well-documented white ancestry. Most blacks, like Berry, recognize this and have avoided pigeonholing themselves as “multiracial.” Their reasons for this range from political to cultural and social. They say that they fear that this will weaken the political clout of African-Americans. Others, like actress Paula Patton, simply say they feel more comfortable identifying socially and culturally as African-Americans.
However, there's another side to the contentious issue that Berry raised:
Is it necessarily a bad thing to designate oneself as biracial or multiracial, particularly if one parent is non-African-American?
The argument could be made that giving individuals the option of whether to designate themselves as something other than African-American is a healthy step forward in race relations.
In time, it would free Americans from their rigid, in-the-box stereotypical thinking (and actions) about who is or isn't black, white or the literally dozens of other racial and ethnic mixtures and ancestry in America.
What Do You Think?
According to census experts, there's no truth to the claim that having large numbers of blacks check off the “multiracial” or other racial designations on the census form will dilute African-American political numbers or influence or diminish federal funding or resource allocation in urban communities.
Some even bristle at the pressure put on blacks of mixed racial parentage to conform to a hard racial standard and designate them as African-American. They call this just another form of discrimination against mixed racial persons. The issue of race has muscled out the nasty and prolonged custody fight between Berry and the father of her child. This is a sad reminder that race still does matter. It and matters a lot to many Americans, no matter what they or others call themselves.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hutchinson-report-tv
