Multiracial?

[asterroc]

Two thoughts on one topic.

1) Anyone else here multiracial? It occurred to me after some discussion elsewhere that I am not aware of knowing anybody in real life who identifies as being of more than one race, and I can only think of one person that I know online. So if you are multiracial and and willing for me to know, please comment!

I have set this post to screen anonymous comments, so if you want me to know but not others to know, then log out and comment, putting your name in the comment and I'll keep it screened so no one else need know.

2) If you are multiracial, what term do you prefer to use to describe yourself? If you are not multiracial, what connotations do you infer in words such as multiracial, multi-ethnic, multicultural, mixed race, mulatto, mutt, hapa, mix-up, or even "you may check more than one" (as in the 2000 census)?

A week ago I got into a conversation with T$ and some of his friends that wandered into the term mulatto, and then D-- asked what the more appropriate word was. T$ replied "mixed-race" and I surprised myself by realizing that I myself didn't like that term. To me it has negative connotations of being even worse than a pure breed non-white. I usually use multicultural myself, b/c I do not feel most of the obvious effects of having my race stamped upon my face. However the problem with using the term is that white often throw back at me that they're multicultural b/c their background is of different groups of whites. I jokingly use mutt to describe myself to friends, but I would never accept it from others - much like "nigger" is a term that blacks can use on each other but you can't use on a black.

Comments

[framefolly.livejournal.com]

I don't remember this unless a conversation like this comes up -- because it's such a small fraction and hasn't really been a part of my life experience -- but my mother's maternal grandmother was Vietnamese. Is that multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-racial, or none of the above? I dunno.

I think the RL friend who tilted my world on its ear was a college friend from Seattle whose mother is Chinese and whose father is Japanese. I know that pairing is actually not that uncommon given recent history, but also given recent history, it's fairly taboo. I didn't realize how much I subscribed to the prejudice that this was a WHOA BAD WRONG pairing until I met her. Of course, very quickly I smacked myself over the head metaphorically many times, and have not had to relearn the lesson (so far) ;) .

A significant fraction -- I might say 1/5th -- of my UCLA students self-identified as bi- or multi-racial -- black/Asian, Asian/white, Latino/black, Latino/Asian, black/white, etc. It was particularly exciting for me because a good half of them knew what it's like to be immersed in two languages, which was very useful in teaching film and freshman composition.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, I think another friend of mine is Chinese and Japanese. My (Jewish) father often talks about the recent enmity between China and Japan, but my mother does not. I'm not sure whether it's because she doesn't care, she's oblivious, or it's too sensitive for her to discuss. She tends to bottle up things so all would appear the same.

There's a lot of my students who speak Spanish before English, and I suspect some are black Hispanic rather than white Hispanic, or even all of the above, but in a physics class this sort of discussion doesn't come up. Occasionally an Asian student will ask me about my background, and when they do I feel this is license to ask which type of Asian they are (I'm not as good about telling from appearance as I once was), but otherwise I do not feel it's appropriate to ask.

There's a few really outspoken minority women on my campus, and I always feel a bit awkward talking about race with them (we're all on the Diversity Caucus) because they have obviously had to face so much more prejudice than I.