Multiracial?
May. 12th, 2009 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asterrocTwo 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 10:48 am (UTC)I never said otherwise.
150 years and more ago, my ancestry would have been considered 'mutt' category:
As would have my mother: Shanghai and Cantonese.
It's possible that 150 years ago my parents would have been forbidden to marry due to miscegenation laws. (I've never been clear if it applied to blacks and whites only.) Not to mention that my (Jewish) father would not have been considered white.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 04:27 pm (UTC)I don't know what the history of US miscegenation laws is. I know that there would have been significant cultural barriers against such marriages (and I believe that there still are, in some places anyway).
Just to be clear: I don't think of myself as 'multiracial' or any variant thereof. It's not that I reject such labeling, just that the distinction between those ethnicities in the context of the US is really not a matter of great interest or controversy at this point. Since there are still cultural barriers and prejudices against certain ethnic mixtures, it would feel pretentious to make a point of my own 'mixed' heritage (unless I was being confronted by someone who was reveling in his supposedly 'pure' ancestry and denigrating mixed-ethnicity folks).