Writes Bonnie Tsui, both of whose parents are first-generation immigrants from China about her 5-year old son, whose father is Euro-American. The title of the NYT essay is
"Choose Your Own Identity."
[I]n that moment when he confidently asserted himself as “not Chinese,” I felt a selfish urge for him to claim a way of describing himself that included my side of his genetic code. And yet I knew that I had no business telling him what his racial identity was. Today, he might feel white; tomorrow he might feel more Chinese. The next day, more, well, both. Who’s to say but him?
Racial identity can be fluid....
The comment NYT readers rank highest is: "Couldn't it be time to get rid of all the racial 'boxes'? If we admit it, aren't nearly all of us Americans of mixed ancestry? And isn't that part of the attraction of this nation? Nearly all of us have ancestors from somewhere else!" Second highest: "Maybe if we spend more time on trying to be simply people, possibly even good people, instead of wasting time trying to find more ways to divide among ourselves the world would be a better place. How is a world with an infinite number of ethnic and gender identities a better one?" Third:
The claim that race is fluid seems very obvious. Anthropologists who study race say it doesn't exist. And yet we are told it is a microaggression to say we want to be color-blind. I get that White supremacy created the mess we are in, but when you need a little kid to remind you of the truth you know we are a sick society.
One answer to that is: Tsui is only saying it's for each individual to define
his/her their racial identity, not for somebody else to decide and not for there to be a canceling out of all racial identities. But it's striking that NYT readers are so eager to make that next leap. I'm pretty sure that's not what the NYT was hoping to inspire.
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54 comments:
As an Amer-Asian boy, he's a triple threat for discrimination when he reaches college age. In admissions, he'll be discriminated against for being Asian and for being white. Should he actually get admitted, he'll be discriminated against for being male if the current insanity prevails.
As for those racist forms that ask me to specify a race, I mark "Other" and write in "Human". There is only one race and that's the human race. All the rest is bullshit.
"One answer to that is: Tsui is only saying it's for each individual to define his/her their racial identity, not for somebody else to decide and not for there to be a canceling out of all racial identities "
But you can't have people identifying their own racial identity AND have benefits go to people with certain racial identities.
The kid is what's in his genes. Why not explain reality to him in a "five year old" appropriate way. It's neither good nor bad, it just is. A = A (not whatever the heck you want to make it today).
Getting rid of the racial boxes has been the conservative position now for a long, long time. Racist.
I suppose NY Times has smarter readers than writers and editors.
There was a time when it was taken for granted by the left that division and separation were bad things, and inclusion and integration and commonality were good. But somewhere along the way it turned into "cultural appropriation" and "race matters". The left has discovered the virtue of balkanization, and the racialists are on the rise.
Sarah's mind slips wistful into the past, to that One Hot Summer in 1957 in Madison County...
"Miss Sarah, I was thinking..."
"Yes, my dear Mandingo?"
"You're white, and I'm a Negro. If we was to have a baby together would that baby be white or Negro?"
"Silly Mandingo, the baby would be a Negro, of course. It takes two white people to make a white baby."
"I thought as much."
"Miss Sarah?"
"Yes, Mandingo?"
"What would happen if we was to have a baby? Would we get married?"
"Oh, Mandingo. I am from a respectable family, there is no way I could even consider marrying a Negro. Or a Chink or a Retard, for that matter. You understand."
"I guess I do. But what would happen to the baby?"
"Well, I would have to hide the pregnancy, and then after I gave birth I would have to drown the baby in the Creek that runs behind the Johnson's Farm."
"Oh no! What if I was to raise the baby by myself?"
"My Mandingo, you know the Life of the baby depends on the Mother's choice. You don't have a say in the matter."
"That just doesn't seem fair."
"There are already plenty of Negroes around, my sweet Mandingo: no one would notice if we we were to be missing one or two."
"I don't know. Maybe one day in the Future the world would be a better place, and no one would be killing no Negro babies."
"It's God's Will, Mandingo. If -- in the future -- they were able to kill Negro babies by the thousands and thousands it would be only to make the World a Better Place."
"I can't even picture that, Miss Sarah."
"I can, my sweet Mandingo. I can..."
I am Laslo.
Dolts, idiots and beyond fools. Who has time for stupid shit like that? Going sailing, then a great lunch with a good beer, a nap, an even better dinner and then that will be a complete day without the NYT. White supremacy got us into this mess indeed. I blame the ancient Greeks.
"In admissions, he'll be discriminated against for being Asian and for being white."
Presumably, he has his father's last name, so he will not stand out as Chinese and face the greatest discrimination. You don't have to check the box. But it is sad to face a situation in which you have a strong personal interest in not disclosing a heritage you may want to proudly display. And yet, college applications aren't the best place to demonstrate your ideas in your own way. It's tough for people whose core value is honesty even when it's against your interest. All but the weirdest liars tell the truth when it is in their interest.
"It's tough for people whose core value is honesty even when it's against your interest. All but the weirdest liars tell the truth when it is in their interest."
What I mean is that the most truth-based individuals are the ones who feel the need to tell the truth when it's not in their interest. Limiting truth-telling to situations where the truth serves your interest puts you in the company of all the dishonest people (except the weirdest ones).
I don't suppose it occurred to the mom to correct her son by saying "Actually, I'm not Chinese either, I'm American, just like you."
And those weird ones should get some credit for their interest-neutral devotion to lying. It's an awesome love of lying if you lie even when it would be in your interest to tell the truth.
"Tsui is only saying it's for each individual to define his/her their racial identity, not for somebody else to decide and not for there to be a canceling out of all racial identities." Tell it to the college admissions folks and the HR folks and the Census folks and . . .
"But it's striking that NYT readers are so eager to make that next leap. I'm pretty sure that's not what the NYT was hoping to inspire." They talk a good game, but when the political chips are down, they'll be back on the reservation right quick. Follow the money (and the power). Categorizing "people of color" by color serves Prog purposes; therefore, it will continue. Prog gospel is still, don't give me none of that racist color-blind there's-only-one-race-it's-the-human-race BS.
But I eat Chinese food.
Is he sure? Did he bother to ask his food what ethnicity it self-identifies as?
"I don't suppose it occurred to the mom to correct her son by saying "Actually, I'm not Chinese either, I'm American, just like you.""
Ah, but she did do that, just not in so many words. To be American is to have individual autonomy and freedom of thought and expression. She is giving him that. To instruct him that there are no Chinese-Americans, only Americans, and he should see himself only as American... sorry, but that's... un-American!
She's giving him the foundation to think for himself. She's valuing his perspective as he contributes to the dialogue about personal identity on a particular day.
"But it is sad to face a situation in which you have a strong personal interest in not disclosing a heritage you may want to proudly display. And yet, college applications aren't the best place to demonstrate your ideas in your own way." "Sad" is one way to put it. "Unjust," another. Outrageous, some would say (I forget the Chinese and Hindi and Korean words for it). Have you have tried to inspire greater honesty in UW admissions? If one of the Mismatch-related research papers is correct, nearly all black admittees to your law school have lower credentials than all whites -- what's that about (if true), and how does it "inspire honesty" in applicants?
Just as academic battles are so bitter because the stakes are so small, racial classification, grievance, and demands become ever more intense and fine grained as the concept of race fades.
Must pick that scab lest it heal.
Anthropologists who study race say it doesn't exist.
But real scientists acknowledge that it does.
The individuals who regard a color-blind society as a microaggression are precisely those individuals who lose out if judged by the content of their character.
Well I'm a proud mongrel American. My various ancestors have been here so long and came from so many different places that I wouldn't begin to know where to put the hyphen. Like Popeye the sailor man, I yam what I yam. So I will have to make it on my own.
Standard Leftism is that you are powerless to define yourself. Society defines you. Isn't that what identity politics is about? I demand that you define me the way I want to be defined? the individual as the female sex (make love to me the way I want you to make love to me!).
If we really defined ourselves, we wouldn't care how or if anyone else defined us.
"you WILL treat me as a !" isn't a micro aggression, it's a macro aggression.
Sarah's mind slips wistful into the past, to that One Hot Summer in 1957 in Madison County...
"Miss Sarah, I was thinking..."
"Yes, my dear Mandingo?"
"What would happen if a Negro and a Chinese Person had a baby together?"
"That would be God-awful, Mandingo."
"I think that's a little harsh, Miss Sarah..."
"The baby of a Chink and a Negro would be a Retard for sure. I'm not even sure if the baby would develop hands: it might just be a handless Chink Negro Retard."
"If you say so..."
"Wait. Do you have your eye on some girl Chink?"
"Well, that Chinese Girl at the Laundry is kind of pretty..."
"Do I even have to say it, my Mandingo? Even the Chink is above the Negro's station in Life."
"I guess there's that..."
"Besides, how can you be attracted to a yellow-skinned slant-eyed girl when you have me, with my beautiful white skin and my beautiful eyes?"
"Sometimes I just think another woman might -- you know -- respects me a bit more."
"Oh, my silly Mandingo: I respect you as much as any Negro can expect to be respected. At times I almost even forget that you're a Negro."
"Really, Miss Sarah?"
"Yes, but that's mainly when it's real dark..."
I am Laslo.
Most of the millennials I know feel they have transcended race. Liberal Baby Boomers can't stand the idea. The NYT is like a progressive grandmother clinging to the racial labels it uses to empower members of various victim classes. They see post-racial thinking as a challenge to their power to grant power.
I appreciate what Althouse is trying to do with this post, but race and racial benefits are explicitly tied. Self identification should be a tool to undermine the whole rotten edifice of the racial spoils system. But it is not. It is the tool by which that system will be "played" by those with sufficient ambiguity to do so. See for example, Elizabeth Warren who can turn her Amerindian identity on and off at will. The 5 year old in this story will learn soon enough which racial identity in which situations pays the most dividends, and I suspect he will choose accordingly as circumstances dictate. Althouse mentions the positive influence of surname in this case. But that can equally unjustly cut the other way for others. That it might be a positive for him just demonstrates the cynical arbitrariness of the system relative to its concrete consequences.
What mess are we in? How was this "mess" caused by white supremacy? Was it white supremacy that ran up an almost $20 trillion national debt? Was it white supremacy that created the drug culture and the inner city crime problem? Virtually all white people are working and building things and paying taxes and creating jobs or doing jobs. This racism against white people has got to stop.
"What I mean is that the most truth-based individuals are the ones who feel the need to tell the truth when it's not in their interest. Limiting truth-telling to situations where the truth serves your interest puts you in the company of all the dishonest people (except the weirdest ones)."
You mean in the company of the Clintons, right?
Comment: "I get that White supremacy created the mess we are in"
No doubt written by a white supremacist, because only whites are advanced enough to feel this guilty.
Racial identity can be fluid....
My ancestry is Irish, German, English, and Dutch, but I am 100% legally Hispanic since my step-father adopted me when I was 11-years-old. I've never checked the Hispanic box on any type of application, believing it was unfair. Plus, my step-father (Dad) is from Costa Rica, and Chris Matthews might challenge its authenticity like he does Cuban Nationals.
I have two younger brothers and a younger sister from the marriage above. They have very Caucasian features, and olive skin. I'm 5'4, and one brother is 6'5". In certain pictures my other brother looks like he belongs on a no fly list, and I had to fend off my friends from dating my Irish looking sister with the dark skin.
We have a lot of fun, and very open conversations, regarding race and culture. My Dad encouraged it. Dinner guests think we're crazy.
My Costa-Rican retired-physician father is a staunch Democrat and Obama supporter. He HATES jews and Israel like a lot of liberals. So much so, he hid from our family the fact that his Grandmother was part Jewish, and instead told us for years she was part Italian (she wasn't).
How we got the truth from him I don't know. Point is, we are a very multi-cultural family, and you can't define us with a check mark on a box.
And now that I wrote this I just figured out I'm going to buy him a Menorah for Christmas.
"She's giving him the foundation to think for himself. She's valuing his perspective as he contributes to the dialogue about personal identity on a particular day."
What a crock! Ivory tower academia thought.
She should be correcting him so he learns. We used to correct our family members when they said silly things; or get them help. Now we pat Bruce on the head and say "Yes, Caitlyn you are a beautiful woman!" and give him an award.
I don't care whether you feel white, black, yellow, brown, pink, or polka dotted. And I don't care how you describe yourself. Whatever floats your boat. But don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining.
This kid's going to get to Madison for college and have a mental breakdown. He'll feel discriminated against on the days he identifies as Chinese, and then he'll buckle under the weight of the guilt he feels about his White privilege on the days he identifies as White. When he feels Chinese, others will see him as their White oppressor (and he'll have to accept their feelings and racial/cultural identities even while they are not accepting his chosen racial/cultural identity). He'll be yelled at in the Library, and he'll be kicked out of the public quad to create a "safe space" for the [insert politically correct term du jour for the chosen racial/cultural identity of Rachel Dolezal].
Althouse is in apparent agreement with Teddy Roosevelt, that there should be no hyphenated Americans.
Now if only she could see the corruption of Hillary, well enough to repudiate her as a potential presidential candidate, there might be hope for her future. But I think some people want so very much to be fooled that nothing will ever convince them that they are being fooled.
Anthropologists who study race say it doesn't exist.
Anthropologists study something that doesn't exist?
Well, maybe those anthropologists who follow the American Anthropological Association announcement that anthropology isn't a science.
"Anti-science reactionaries are spreading nonsense among the public. Why are so many anthropologists on their side? ... They're reactionaries against science, without knowing what today's scientists do."
Why no mention of "Tiger Moms"?
Is that racist now?
Didn't take long for that meme to come and go.
Gusty Winds said...
"Racial identity can be fluid...."
My ancestry is Irish, German, English, and Dutch, but I am 100% legally Hispanic since my step-father adopted me when I was 11-years-old.
"Hispanic" is a recently contrived political category and doesn't have anything to do with race.
My two best friends are both "Hispanics", but one is Jewish and the other German: they just happened to be born in Mexico. "Hispanic" includes blue-eyed European Spaniards and jungle-dwelling Indians who don't even speak Spanish.
Bernstein@Volokh: Should Ted Cruz’s children be eligible for affirmative action preferences in state universities?
Larry J said...
As an Amer-Asian boy, he's a triple threat for discrimination when he reaches college age. In admissions, he'll be discriminated against for being Asian and for being white.
True, but as an Asian he'll qualify for racist preferences in government jobs and contracts. (I happen to think that that form of government racism is more insidious and destructive than the more discussed racism of college admissions).
Are you a small disadvantaged business? (SDB)
"A small disadvantaged business is defined as a firm that is 51% or more owned, controlled and operated by a person(s) who is socially and economically disadvantaged. African Americans, Hispanic[sic] Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, Subcontinent Asian Americans, and Native Americans are presumed to qualify. Other individuals can qualify if they show by a 'preponderance of the evidence' that they are disadvantaged."
To instruct him that there are no Chinese-Americans, only Americans, and he should see himself only as American... sorry, but that's... un-American!
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.
The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt
He is not Chinese, he is not white, he is American. Hard for racialists and racists to figure.
I see nothing wrong with racial self-identification, as long as you can actually have some legitimate claim to it. Sorry, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, Shaun King.
As a half Asian person, I can tell the boy there will likely never be a reason that it would be advantageous to check the Asian box. No one ever believes me anyway since I got mostly Anglo genes.
The good news is if we decide we can truly self-identify our race, then people should choose African American, or Hispanic. Once all the Ivy league becomes a majority of self-identified minorities (excluding Asians), then all will be right with the world in a really weird way. We are all transminority. I have a headache now.
Fernandinande said...
Bernstein@Volokh: Should Ted Cruz’s children be eligible for affirmative action preferences in state universities?
I think that everyone should be eligible for affirmative action preferences! 'Cuz this is America, baby! Yah! Rockin'!
Amy Tan used to worry about being too American for a Chinese, then about being too Chinese for an American, but eventuallyly gave up and decided she was
just a female fiend who
enjoys being a girl!
And then she jetted off to Switzerland.
"I get that White supremacy created the mess we are in"
Without White supremacy this woman would be a domestic farm animal in some warlord's rural Chinese shithole. Talk about inconvenient truths...
Let the kid be 5. Tell him to go play in the mud.
OpenID elkh1 said...
He is not Chinese, he is not white, he is American. Hard for racialists and racists to figure.
That depends on the context. Hiring the guy for a job? Yeah, so what? (ignoring racial personality tendencies and differences which exist from birth).
But because race is real and biological, medical treatment might be a different matter:
On Race and Medicine
"Until health care becomes truly personalized, race and ethnicity will continue to be important clues guiding medical treatments."
elkh1 said: "He is not Chinese, he is not white, he is American. Hard for racialists and racists to figure"
I just want to know if he is a native American like Elizabeth Warren.
Another Tiger Mom who takes to the pages of the NYT to discuss her kid. Pathetic
Some people worry about anything. American-Chinese American same-same.
Just as long as he understands and honors the concept of filial piety and the importance of the rectification of names, its fine.
I have always told my kids, that they are Americans, but I am not.
Just so they know where lie
"the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods"
That's a lot of hyphenated people. It's no wonder that they are confused about food, love, etc. and the American way. I blame the Democrat Party, social complex, class diversity mongers, and the pro-choice cult.
What a fucking stupid conversation and a waste of time! Why spend time worrying or concerned about your "Racial identity"? Live your life. Be who you are, but don't let little boxes define you.
For too many people "racial identity" actually matters, even though what they're really talking about is cultural identity. These people are are called leftists. They like to put everyone in a little category so they can divide us by handing out goodies or punishments depending on the race of the recipient. But, better make sure you hold the correct views or all of a sudden racial identity does not matter and you'll be branded a race traitor, uncle Tom or plain old "white". Oh, you're also a racist.
Leftism: the Country's biggest microaggression.
elkh1 said...
"He is not Chinese, he is not white, he is American. Hard for racialists and racists to figure."
OK, I'll bite. What is the distinction between "racists" and "racialists"? And which one applies to a person who casually tosses around racially loaded terms like "white supremacist" (the WS-phrase)? For your information, we white supremacists self-identify as "race realists". Get it straight, Bigot!
And Althouse, what's with the his/her/their? You know perfectly well that "his" is both the male and the neuter pronoun. I would hope that if you were grading papers, you would put a big red check next to that ham-handed conjunction. In any case, I would think by now you would have made up your mind, one way or the other, how you were going to get around this little conundrum.
I gather that modern universities pay people (and pay them well) to spend their entire working lives dreaming up ways around nonexistent problems like this one. Call up the Office of Serial and Cyclical Outrage and ask them what's the pronoun du jour.
There was a time when it was taken for granted by the left that division and separation were bad things, and inclusion and integration and commonality were good. But somewhere along the way it turned into "cultural appropriation" and "race matters". The left has discovered the virtue of balkanization, and the racialists are on the rise.
I figure the Klan will eventually come back. Having all of these groups decrying the INHERENT racism of white dudes is going to, eventually, make white dudes stop giving a shit. It'd be a poor thing, but it seems to be the route we're taking.
I appreciate what Althouse is trying to do with this post, but race and racial benefits are explicitly tied. Self identification should be a tool to undermine the whole rotten edifice of the racial spoils system.
True story, in my sophomore year, I was friends with a guy born in South Africa. White as can be. And when he entered African-American into all of his forms, he actually got a ton of heat. His argument, though, made sense "I'm more African than these black folks are. I'm FROM Africa". Didn't matter. He had to choose "Caucasian".
Kids by 3 or so are naturally and thoroughly race and color conscious, without inputs from adults. Brutes. Some don't outgrow this.
@ Fernandinande: "Asian Pacific Americans, Subcontinent Asian Americans" do not include people of Chinese descent, I think. The first category is islanders I think though poorly stated and the second, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and maybe Indians (and all of the various ethnic groups within these descriptions).
There is nothing wrong with being interested about ethnic and genetic ancestry as a private matter. There is no "American" ethnicity given that the concept revolves around ideas and recognition and related claims of the Federal super-state (ideas that existed before America was converted to the United States and which are no longer adhered to despite claims of some to the contrary). One can be a US citizen of different ancestries, but not just a US citizen of American ancestry.
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