Mixed Race Studies

Shady’s Back

New Matilda
Surry Hills NSW, Australia
2011-05-02

Jennifer Mills

As Obama is called to prove his place of birth, Indigenous Australians are being asked to account for their origins too. Not black enough, not white enough: Jennifer Mills on public anxiety about biracial identity

The release of Obama’s birth certificate by the White House on Thursday has drawn a variety of responses—from conspiracists’ disbelief in its veracity to analysts’ disbelief in its necessity. Some say it arrives too late to dispel doubts about his origins, and others that Obama has cleverly sprung a right-wing trap by drawing conspiracists out.

At the same time, the case of nine Aboriginal people seeking an apology from Andrew Bolt for two columns in which he questioned their right to claim Aboriginal heritage has been fuelling public discussion, the best thing about which has been its domination by the voices of Indigenous women. The argument that Aboriginal people should be the ones who choose who gets to be Aboriginal has been made well elsewhere. But the fact that these discussions are happening with such vitriol and in the public sphere is worth noting, as it says more about the culture at large than about any of the individuals involved.

Where does this yawning discomfort and anxiety around biracial or multicultural identities come from? Are we seeing a return to blood quantums or to centralised, institutional definitions of race? Why does it matter if you’re black and white?

…The release of the birth certificate may achieve little, because it doesn’t address the real question of the birthers, to whom Obama will continue to exhibit a certain uncomfortable quality which the easily frightened are apt to label “foreignness.” There is indeed “something shady” about Obama—his colour. There is a vagueness about him which threatens those who seek to categorise and divide. That vague quality is a multicultural identity…

…Race is a fiction, an invention. It doesn’t show on a family tree, it can’t be proven with birth certificates or in a court of law. A legal definition of Indigenousness would be dangerously divisive, just as it is in the United States where Certificates of Degree of Indigenous Blood are still controversially issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Blood quantum laws in the US date back to the early 18th century and were used as a colonial tool to keep track of Indigenous populations. Now most sovereign tribes make their own definitions of Indigenous heritage and tribal membership. In Australia, the legal definition is similarly loose, autonomous and consensus based…

Read the entire article here.