“I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” former President Trump said in July about Vice President Kamala Harris. As harmless as this statement may seem, Trump’s comments reveal a greater issue regarding identifiers and how multi-ethnic people, like Harris, are often forced to choose between two identities.
“[It] goes to the way in which [people] understand mixedness,” said Dr. Curtiss Takada Rooks, a multi-racial studies professor of Loyola Marymount. “[Harris] identifies with being Indian heavily. She was raised by a single Indian mom, but her life experience [was] walking through the world as a Black girl.”
Society has constructed rigid binaries that prevent people from simply being themselves. In Harris’ case, she is expected to be either Black or Indian, as if identity is mutually exclusive. While 33.8 million people nationwide identify as multiracial according to the 2020 U.S. Census, these binaries still form well before adulthood.
“My brother had to give a photo of him being in an Indian outfit for one of his friends to believe him and it’s like you need to prove [yourself] … just for you to be accepted,” junior Marisela Morel said.
The way we perceive race started explicitly for discrimination. When America was still forming, poor white laborers were treated the same as enslaved African people. By the 1700s, however, race had become a legalized system, and slavery had become a social status bound to the color of one’s skin to delineate white laborers from enslaved African people. To cement a boundary, a series of anti-miscegenation laws were passed to prohibit interracial marriage which not only impacted Black people but also excluded South and East-Asian people. All of these efforts served to alienate multi-ethnic people who fell outside of the binary, and they have had long-lasting impacts.
This binary has personally impacted me and my family members due to our multi-ethnic background. People coming up to my brother and inquiring about “what he was” seemed absurd. Asking personal details about those who appear ethnically ambiguous feels entitled and intrusive. What was more striking, though, was his answer. Depending on who asked, he identified himself differently. His answers were either “mixed” or “Black,” neither of which helped him feel comfortable.
However, my brother’s response is not an isolated one. In 2015 a Pew Research report found that 21% of multi-ethnic people said that they have felt pressure from friends, family or “society in general” to identify as a single race. Ethnically ambiguous people are questioned while simultaneously their answers are never enough.
Identity invalidation is not just constricted to a social aspect though. On government-sanctioned surveys, like the 2020 Census, people who do not fit under the seven options that are provided are prompted to select “some other race.” If they choose to type out their identity, they are funneled under “some other race.” While identifying as an “other” seems invalidating, the census did not even allow for a person to identify as mixed until 2000.
Black, Asian, Alaskan Native, Latino — all these identifiers serve to indicate a cultural background or shared identity. No matter how diverse each respective culture is, those identifiers still point to lived experiences or countries that people can associate with. There is no shared country or culture for people who are mixed, biracial or multi-ethnic. To accommodate this, society must recognize that identity is not Black and white. For mixed people, identity is an eternal gray.
“I identify as Black,” Rooks said. “I identify as Black Japanese. I identify as Japanese. One plus one for me equals three.”
Society must rupture the identity binary, accepting the fact that multi-ethnic people can be multi-ethnic. Mixed people are entitled to their identity as well as their privacy and should not have to deal with uncomfortable questions. Identity-based questions that seek to categorize people lead to unproductive discussion, as more often than not, multi-ethnic people feel obligated to choose the path of least resistance. These questions then place the responsibility on the reply rather than addressing society’s pressure.
“ … Being counted as multiracial is of both personal and national significance,” wrote professor of law at Georgetown University Naomi Mezey Georgetown Law Faculty Publications. “That is, a person can only sustain [their] identity if others recognize [them] as [they] recognizes [themselves] and that [they are] only included in the national community to the extent that the government classifies [them] in a recognizable way.”
