{"id":22168,"date":"2012-04-27T00:48:27","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T00:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22168"},"modified":"2013-07-20T17:07:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-20T17:07:15","slug":"as-racist-as-we-wish-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22168","title":{"rendered":"As Racist as We Wish to Be: Project RACE, \u201cThe Talk\u201d, Obama and the Fear of Blackness"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Racist as We Wish to Be: Project RACE, \u201cThe Talk\u201d, Obama and the Fear of Blackness<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

MixedRaceStudies.org<\/a>
\n2012-04-10<\/p>\n

Steven F. Riley<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Late last year, I opined about the inability of some activists in the multiracial identity movement to combat racism<\/a>.\u00a0 It is difficult to combat racism if you are not anti-racist and quite impossible if you\u2014or at least your rhetoric\u2014is actually\u00a0racist<\/em>. Such is the case in a March 29, 2012 blog post by Susan Graham at Project RACE titled \u201cWalking While Black<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0(also here<\/a>) that epitomizes racist anti-black ideology.<\/p>\n

Graham, a white woman who purports to represent the interests of multiracial Americans, has written the most inane commentary on multiracialism you will find anywhere.\u00a0 Her\u00a0\u00a0pseudo-scientific commentary reads as if it\u00a0were written in the early part of the previous <\/em>century,\u00a0deploying\u00a0ideologies long since abandoned\u00a0by\u00a0anthropologists and biologists alike. For instance, in \u201cThe Obama Racial Identity Factor and Saving Multiracial Lives<\/a>\u201d (June 7, 2008)\u00a0she opens with, \u201cBarack Obama can call himself black, white, magenta, green, or whatever he wants, it really does not matter socially. However, genes are genes and his genes are multiracial<\/em>.\u201d Seven months later, when millions of Americans have moved from doubting that a black man can become president and actually electing one, Graham continues with her mindless foray into genetics\u00a0in \u201cJanuary 2009 \u2013 Is this President Obama\u2019s Post-Racial America?<\/a>\u201d (January 20, 2009) where she says, \u201cWe have our first multiracial president, Barack Obama, and even if he does self-identify as black, he cannot deny DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years later and not a day wiser, in a still pre<\/em>-post-racial America, Graham uses the tragic and racially motivated shooting death of Trayvon Martin as an entree into her racist \u201cWalking While Black<\/a>\u201d about the travails of the lives of African American males.\u00a0 She partially <\/em>describes the concept of \u201cDriving While Black\u201d and the so-called “Black Male Code” of conduct when one is confronted by the police.\u00a0 She neglects to mention that \u201cDriving While Black\u201d also involves being targeted to be pulled over in the first place.\u00a0Graham goes on to\u00a0describe her then-husband\u2019s habit of always carrying identification no matter where he went just in case he was confronted by police. Finally, she describes how when her son reached driving age, she and her then-husband had \u201cthe talk\u201d with him about what to do when confronted by police.\u00a0 Graham says, \u201cshe gets it.\u201d\u00a0 She does not.<\/p>\n

Despite the death of Trayvon Martin, the indignities and civil rights violations of \u201cDriving While Black,\u201d and the \u201cBlack Male Code,\u201d Graham is neither, angry, concerned or even bothered about the daily aggressions directed at black men in American as they try to live as decent citizens.\u00a0 She is\u00a0unwilling to speak out against even the most explicit forms of racism that still exist in America.\u00a0 So what does bother her? What \u201cbothers\u201d her is the fact that President Obama, chooses to proudly<\/em> identify\u00a0as \u201cblack.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many view the multiracial identity movement in America as a way to transcend race and to remove the proverbial millstone of racialized identities off of all our necks, scholars like Jared Ball,\u00a0Minkah Makalani, Lewis R. Gordon, Ralina L. Joseph<\/a>, Jared Sexton, Rainier Spencer and others, see a movement with a primary goal of transcending blackness<\/em>. As blogger Summer McDonald eloquently states in her essay \u201cCanon Fodder: \u2018The Girl Who Fell From the Sky\u2019 and the Problem of Mixed-Race Identity<\/a>\u201d (August 18, 2011),<\/p>\n

Accepting and embracing a mixed-race identity hardly reveals racial progress. As it is currently constructed, mixed-race identity does not dismantle racial hierarchies. Rather, it reiterates white supremacy by attempting to etch a space for itself somewhere under whiteness\u2013which it knows it can never access\u2013and definitely above blackness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Susan Graham and Project RACE, without a doubt, prove these writers correct. When her son asks \u201cwhat does \u2018driving while black\u2019 mean to me?\u201d She explains, \u201cself-identification is one thing, but how he appears <\/em>to someone can be completely different and yes, someone could assume he was black, so he had to act accordingly. Be on the safe side, son.\u201d Again, what bothers Graham is not that black men are\u00a0\u201cperceived as a threat,\u201d but rather, that her son will be\u00a0perceived as a black man.\u00a0Thus in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin tragedy when multitudes of commentators of all racialized identities proclaim\u00a0 \u201cWe are Trayvon,\u201d Graham and Project RACE, proclaim \u201cWe are not black.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Graham does seem to accept the fact that one\u2019s self-identification can be different from how one appears to someone else, she refuses to grasp how one\u2019s appearance to others can and does influence one\u2019s self-identification<\/em>.\u00a0Scholar Nikki Khanna’s excellent article, \u201c\u2018If You\u2019re Half Black, You\u2019re Just Black\u2019: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule<\/a>\u201d describes the role of self-reflected appraisals\u2014how we think we are seen by others\u2014on the identity of those of mixed-ancestry and shows how these identity choices, like one made by President Obama, are honest, common\u2014and despite Ms. Graham\u2019s continual protestations\u2014valid.\u00a0Phil Wilkes Fixico said it best when he stated on Mixed Chicks Chat<\/em> (September 14, 2011), \u201cRacially, I\u2019m an African-Native American. Culturally, I\u2019m an aspiring Seminole<\/a> Maroon<\/a> descendant. But to the people of America who see me on the street, I\u2019m just another flavor of Black.\u201d<\/p>\n

As countless commentators continue to appropriately\u00a0condemn the prevalence of white supremacy that demonizes people of color (like Trayvon Martin)\u00a0and white privilege that provides license to the demonizers, Graham says nothing whatsoever about these evils, but rather chooses to take offense exclusively President Obama when he suggested that if he had a son, \u201che would look like Trayvon.\u201d Though she is correct in stating that the President\u00a0\u201cdoesn\u2019t know that his son would look like Trayvon or anybody else,\u201d it is clear that her anger at Obama is magnified, not just by his identifying as a black American, but now, identifying with <\/em>black Americans. Furthermore, the resemblance of Obama\u2019s imaginary son to Trayvon Martin is irrelevant because more importantly, it is Obama himself who would \u201clook like Trayvon\u201d if he were seventeen. As\u00a0Leila McDowell put it so aptly in Associated Press columnist Jesse Washington\u2019s\u00a0\u201cBlack or biracial? Census forces a choice for some<\/a>,\u201d \u201cPut a hoodie<\/a> on him and have him walk down an alley, and see how biracial he is then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Graham fails to see that the things we ultimately pass down to our children are more important than genes; they are our values and attitudes, hopes and fears, our love and our hate.\u00a0In short, these are the things that define us. Hopefully, one of those things\u00a0won\u2019t be race. Until then, Graham may discover that in passing down the \u201cBlack Male Code\u201d to her son, he may one day choose to identify, like President Obama and Phil Fixico, as \u201cjust a another flavor of Black.\u201d In the meanwhile, perhaps it\u2019s time someone had \u201cthe talk\u201d with Ms. Graham and suggest she move on to a new project.<\/p>\n

\u00a9<\/sup>2012, Steven F. Riley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Racist as We Wish to Be: Project RACE, \u201cThe Talk\u201d, Obama and the Fear of Blackness MixedRaceStudies.org 2012-04-10 Steven F. Riley Late last year, I opined about the inability of some activists in the multiracial identity movement to combat racism.\u00a0 It is difficult to combat racism if you are not anti-racist and quite impossible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,125,8,9139,394,20],"tags":[5958,1471,1357,1994,5269,2878,45,1444,3887,10143],"class_list":["post-22168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-pov","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-jared-ball","tag-jared-sexton","tag-lewis-r-gordon","tag-minkah-makalani","tag-phil-wilkes-fixico","tag-project-race","tag-rainier-spencer","tag-ralina-l-joseph","tag-susan-graham","tag-trayvon-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}