Census time inevitably gets people talking about race. (Those blasted check boxes.) This week’s furor surrounds how President Barack Obama chose to define himself. From The New York Times:
It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.
A White House spokesman confirmed that Mr. Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, checked African-American on the 2010 census questionnaire.
The president, who was born in Hawaii and raised there and in Indonesia, had more than a dozen options in responding to Question 9, about race. He chose “Black, African Am., or Negro.” (The anachronistic “Negro” was retained on the 2010 form because the Census Bureau believes that some older blacks still refer to themselves that way.)
Mr. Obama could have checked white, checked both black and white, or checked the last category on the form, “some other race,” which he would then have been asked to identify in writing.
There is no category specifically for mixed race or biracial. Read more…
Interesting. Totally his choice and I have no opinion about that whatsoever. It does make me wonder about the estimates of multiracial families and children, however.
It’s his business how he identifies, and I can certainly see him having a lot of reasons to simply identify as “black”.
There is no category specifically for mixed race or biracial.
This seemed to me to be a major oversight, because I tend to feel that bi/multiracial/mixed race is its own racial identity. The nuances of having to navigate a mixed identity are different from simply having multiple racial/ethnic bloodlines or even multiple racial/ethnic identities. The way in which I navigate the world as a Filipina is different from the way in which I navigate the world as a mixed-race woman, which are both different from the ways in which I navigated the world when I was younger and identified as white.
*sigh*
I’ve heard talk of the furor over President Obama’s racial identity, but I haven’t actually seen any evidence of it. Any links?
I have to agree with Montclair Mommy. It’s interesting, but I also wonder about how accurate racial estimates are. And perhaps how pertinent they are.
The commercials airing in our area are pushing the census as a way of identifying where funding needs to go, because of the number of people. For that reason anyway, race shouldn’t be a factor.
Just something else to think about, I suppose…
Scratch my last comment. I just came across some blogs/articles that do express disappointment/anger over the president’s self identification.
I’m actually kind of surprised by the hullabaloo over his census considering Obama has a book that details how he came about his racial identity.
Ugh – I keep going back and forth over this. I’m not entirely sure how I feel. I think his choice of box is generational to a certain extent. He has self-identified (and been identified by others) as AA for many years now, so it may not even have occurred to him to check off more than one box (he does have a lot of other things going on!).
On the other hand, as a mother of multi-ethnic children, I feel as if an opportunity was lost. Maybe it’s being from the South, but part of me is uncomfortable with the President’s choice of only AA – it’s that old “one drop” rule (which drives me nuts because, um, what about all those OTHER drops – but that’s a different post). Another part of me feels like it’s a bit disrespectful of his mother, who was not AA, so why not acknowledge that heritage, too?
Finally, as FireWife pointed out above, it calls into question the reliability of demographic figures. One day, perhaps ethnicity won’t be an issue but until then, let’s at least be as accurate as possible. For the reason stated in the above paragraph, as long as ethnicity remains on the census, I would love to see a multiracial category, because I think this country would be quite surprised by the numbers.
I think this kind of shows why the Census is going to be inaccurate in estimating the numbers of multiracial (or, for that matter, single race) families. Everyone has the right to self-identify and each person is going to come to their own decision. Two people with the exact same background might identify in two totally different ways. It just reminds me to take the Census results with a grain of salt. I hear a lot in the media about ‘black wealth’ versus ‘white wealth’ and ‘black families’ versus ‘white families’…what is a ‘white family’ and what is a ‘black family’? What color is a family with two white parents and an adopted black child? Or…for that matter…an adopted Asian child? Are they white families? Or are they now Black or Asian because there is a person within in them that fits that catagory? What about a family with a white parent and white child from a previous relationship and a black parent and black child from a previous relationship? Are they black or white? What about a family with two parents of different races and biracial children? I guess most families fit more neatly into those catagories than mine, but I do wonder: which ‘type’ of family are we?
Interesting article on the subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/04/well-tell-you-if-your-black-or-not/38684/
I have to say that this caused me to be a little angry. Becasue he is not black!!!! I am white and my hubby is black, so obviously our kids are biracial. By picking black he is leaving out a part of his identity. Unless of course it is a part he wants to forget about, but that is a different story. And it seems to me that that would not be the case because from what I have seen he was raised mainly by his white mom.
And as a white person, I can’t just check asian because I would (hypothetically) rather be asian. To get an accurate census he would have had to check both boxes.
@Alexandra, Wow. Uhm. He’s WRONG and that makes you ANGRY? Wow.
It would seem that in your mind there is only one way to determine racial identity and that is YOUR way. The way of someone who is of the dominant race in the US (and the world, actually.)
It’s not about his mom and it’s not about you (or your kids either). It’s about him and his life experience. He has lived in his body his whole life. He sees his reflection in the mirror, in his family, and in greater society. Let him do the calculation of how all that adds up. Do you really think he’s so unthinking?
Even if you detect some kind of unsavoury ulterior motive in his “picking black”, which your word choices belie, that’s problematic, too.
Alexandra, it’s his choice. He must identify more strongly as being African American. It’s really up to the person in question to decide, based on their life experiences where they feel they fit in on something like a census.
I wonder how many more posts would have fluttered this thread had the president picked another box, like “white” or “other”.