Why Is It Not the Least Bit Surprising That Everyone Ignores Kamala Harris’ Multiculturalism?

2020/08/14 Leave a comment

While I think Harris’ biracial background has been well covered, found this commentary of interest given that the writer found it under-covered along with the implications for others with mixed identities:

On Tuesday, Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States, announced he had chosen Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. The excitement was swift. The backlash was even swifter. President Trump wasted little time calling Harris “nasty” and “disrespectful”—the man is nothing if not predictable. As was the Democratic talking heads’ praise of Biden for picking Kamala as a means of “securing the Black vote,”as if Black people are a monolith and Biden didn’t tell Charlamagne tha God on The Breakfast Club, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” Many also claimed Harris’ potential vice presidency will change “the way we view and treat women in politics forever,” as if a number of Democrats didn’t consider Harris “too ambitious” to be Biden’s running mate.

But amid the sexist, racist backlash and Democratic congratulator back-slapping, history was made. Not only was Harris the first African American and first woman to serve as California’s Attorney General and the second Black woman to become a sitting U.S. senator, she is now the first Black woman to join a major party ticket (civil rights activist Charlotta Bass became the first Black woman to ever run for office as vice president in 1952, when she joined the Progressive Party ticket). If Biden is elected president, Harris will become the first African American and first woman to hold the office of the vice presidency.

She’ll also become the first South-Asian American to become vice president. Just as she is the first South-Asian American to join a major party ticket, just like she was the first South-Asian American to join the Senate. But Harris’ multiculturalism and South Asian identity is often overlooked by a society that continues to rely on a binary way of thinking. Like former President Barack Obama, Harris’ multiculturalism is, most often, only acknowledged in a racist attempt to invalidate her Blackness. Obama isn’t really Black, Rush Limbaugh argued. He is “half white.” Harris isn’t reallyAfrican American, right-wing talking heads say. She is Jamaican. She is “half” South-Asian. She is “half” Black. She is a half, they say. She is not whole.

For those of us who are bi- or multiracial, watching Harris’ entire identity be whittled away to “this” or “that” is as painful as it is familiar. As a Puerto Rican and Norwegian woman who grew up in Eagle River, Alaska, and now lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, New York, I know what it’s like for people to assume the entirety of your identity based on how you look. I know how your identity can be white-washed, invalidated, categorized, and in Harris’ case, used to devalue who you are and the community you represent. As Americans, we often lack the ability to establish and maintain nuanced conversations about race and heritage, ethnicity and culture. And in this country, bi- or multiracial people are often described in halves—“half black,” “half white,” “half Puerto Rican,” “half Asian”—as if the rich multiplicities that embody our identity do not make us whole but fractured. It is no wonder that multiracial people often feel both within and without—for me, not Puerto Rican enough but not white enough either.

But to acknowledge Harris’ Black and South Asian identities simultaneously is to give bi- and multiracial kids who feel like they have to be all of one thing or risk being seen as nothing at all a chance to be reminded of their inherent value—that we are not fragments of our ancestries but a dream realized by those who live in a country that didn’t legalize biracial marriage until 1967.

All of Harris’ firsts have given and continue to give us an opportunity to see ourselves not as a collection of halves or a myriad of contradictions or parts to be dissected and criticized and used against us when we ascent to positions of power but as whole people worthy of respect, a seat at the table, and if given the opportunity, a shot at the vice presidency of the United States.

Source: Why Is It Not the Least Bit Surprising That Everyone Ignores Kamala Harris’ Multiculturalism?

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Mixed Remixed Festival Brings Multiracial Stories To Los Angeles : NPR

2016/06/22 Leave a comment

Given increased intermarriage, not surprising that storytelling becomes part of the experience:

A couple weeks ago, about a thousand people gathered at a museum in Los Angeles for Mixed Remixed, a free two-day festival featuring events like a memoir writing workshop, a Loving Day Wine and Cheese reception, a screening of multiracial short films and a panel on biracial hair (moderated by Code Switch’s own Karen Grigsby Bates!).

In the past, comedians Key and Peele have performed at the festival; this year, Taye Diggs, Willy Wilkinson and Natashia Deon took the stage. The performers and panelists, along with regular attendees, come together to celebrate the “mixed experience.”

As a biracial woman, I was intrigued by this description, but curious to know what exactly it meant. After all, the question of what it means to be racially mixed has been a subject of controversy in this country for hundreds of years, and there’s no consensus on what it means to have a mixed experience.

What you find when you search for "hapa" images on Flickr — "Limited Time"!

So I called up Heidi Durrow, who founded Mixed Remixed in 2014. We talked about the multiracial “family nod,” hugging our white moms, and something she calls “mulatto fatigue.” She also told me what the festival is about, why it’s important, and who exactly it’s for.

Durrow says she started the festival partly out of selfishness. She’s Danish and African-American, and her 2011 novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, tells the story of a young Afro-Danish orphan who goes to live with her grandmother in a mostly black neighborhood. While Durrow was shopping the manuscript, a lot of publishers told her there was no demographic for “an Afro-Viking coming-of-age tale.”

Eventually, of course, Durrow did find a publisher, and her book became a New York Times best-seller. But she knew lots of other multiracial folks are still struggling to be heard. So she decided to create a space to connect people who wanted to tell — and hear — these stories. The first festival was in 2014, and it’s always held at the Japanese American National Museum.

It’s important to note that this festival isn’t just for people who consider themselves multiracial. Durrow says it’s not about “mixed pride,” and one of her biggest discouragements is when people ask if they’re allowed at the festival even if they’re not mixed-race.

“Our greatest goal is for people to recognize that the mixed experience is very much the American experience,” says Durrow. “Mixed-race pride, I think, is a difficulty because I don’t want to valorize whatever someone’s idea is about that. We don’t want to buy into ideas of white privilege or light-skinned privilege. What we want to say is, we really are all part of the same story, and we don’t have to be ashamed or invisible or feel lonely in this experience. … The festival is about having a space to say, ‘I’m connected to this person who you don’t even think I’m connected to.’ ”

This year’s attendees included families of transracial adoption, the children of U.S. immigrants, a man who wanted to better understand the experience of his multiracial partner, folks who live in racially diverse neighborhoods, folks who don’t. Durrow says that all of these people are part of the mixed experience.

“I feel like my mom gets to be as mixed as I do,” Durrow says. When, say, visiting a black history museum with her white mother, she worries that some might see her mom as an intruder. In those moments, she says, “I always want to wrap my arms around my mom and make sure people know that she’s not just ‘some white lady.’ She’s connected to me. And that matters.”

Source: Mixed Remixed Festival Brings Multiracial Stories To Los Angeles : Code Switch : NPR

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Study: When It Comes To Identifying As Multiracial, Gender Matters

2016/01/30 Leave a comment

Interesting large-scale US study on how people present their ethnic identity:

In families where biological parents are of different races and ethnicities, daughters are more likely to self-identify as “multiracial” than sons, according to a new study in the February issue of the American Sociological Review. This is especially true in families with one black parent and one white parent.

“It would seem that, for biracial women, looking racially ambiguous is tied to racial stereotypes surrounding femininity and beauty,” said Lauren Davenport, assistant professor at Stanford University and author of the study. She suggests it may be easier for women to identify with multiple racial groups because they are “cast as a mysterious, intriguing ‘racial other'” as opposed to men, who are more likely to be seen as a “person of color.”

Davenport’s study was based on a sample of more than 37,000 incoming college freshmen across the county who fit into one of three mixed backgrounds — Asian-white, black-white, and Latino-white. Using data from 2001 to 2003, Davenport looked at how these individuals chose to identify themselves.

She found that a higher percentage of women than men self-labeled as multiracial across all three groups. Among black-whites, 76 percent of women identified as multiracial, compared to 64 percent of men in that group. Fifty-six percent of Asian-white women classified as multiracial, as opposed to 50 percent of Asian-white men. And 40 percent of Latino-white women self-labeled as multiracial in comparison to 32 percent of those men.

In addition to gender, Davenport looked at how religion and class affect the way people identify. Multiracial people who don’t have strong religious ties were more likely to identify as multiracial, as well as those from highly affluent neighborhoods.

Overall, those with black and white parents were the most likely to identify as multiracial, and the least likely to describe themselves as white only. Seventy-one percent of black-white study participants identified as multiracial, while only 54 percent of Asian-white and 37 percent of Latino-white participants opted for the same label.

In the paper, Davenport attributed this tendency among people with black and white parents to the “one-drop rule,” more formally known as hypodescent, which structured how part-black individuals were once legally and socially identified in the United States:

Because people in this group have so strongly been expected to identify as black, they are choosing to assert a new identity, one that incorporates both their black and white heritages. It is also likely that, for some, a multiracial label reflects a desire to socially distance and distinguish oneself from blacks.

Davenport says understanding the way people identity themselves racially is crucial for its political consequences. Not only does self-identification shape the American racial landscape, but it also impacts the enforcement of laws, implementation of affirmative action, and allocation of political resources.

But studying multiracial identity can be tricky. The Pew Research Center spent a lot of time last year researching the mixed population of America. Not only did they find that many mixed-race Americans changed how they viewed their racial identity over the course of their lifetimes, but also that self-identification was highly dependent on situational circumstances, others’ perceptions, and personal upbringing.

So does this mean we’ll all start to subconsciously assume that all wealthy biracial women with zero religious affiliations are mixed? Probably not. But if the projection that one in five Americans will be of mixed race by 2050 bears out, we’re going to need to keep understanding how people relate to being multiracial.

Source: Study: When It Comes To Identifying As Multiracial, Gender Matters : Code Switch : NPR

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