{"id":30857,"date":"2013-05-07T17:09:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T17:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=30857"},"modified":"2013-05-07T17:09:48","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T17:09:48","slug":"race-doesnt-fit-in-a-checkbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=30857","title":{"rendered":"Race doesn’t fit in a checkbox"},"content":{"rendered":"

Race doesn’t fit in a checkbox<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Arkansas Times<\/a>
\nLittle Rock, Arkansas
\n2013-05-02<\/p>\n

Gene Lyons<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lamentably, the Boston Marathon bombing<\/a> re-opened some of the most poisonous arguments in American life. Specifically, are the Tsarnaev brothers “white”? It’s a meaningless question.<\/p>\n

Some hotheads couldn’t wait to declare all Muslims suspect. Certain thinkers on the left (David Sirota<\/a>, Salon<\/em>) argued against collective guilt while oddly lamenting that “white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated” for the crimes of Caucasian psycho killers.<\/p>\n

Should they be?<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’d previously treated the theme of ethnicity as destiny in a column about which racial ID boxes President Obama<\/a> should have checked on his 2010 census form.<\/p>\n

Everybody knows Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas<\/a>, his father an exchange student from Kenya<\/a>. But there’s no box labeled “African-American.” So the president checked “black.” He could also have checked “white,” but chose not to.<\/p>\n

This decision disappointed a unique student group at the University of Maryland, although most understood it. Recently profiled in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association<\/a> could with equal accuracy be called “Students Whose Mothers Were Asked Insulting Questions by Busybodies at the Supermarket.”…<\/p>\n

…But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Maryland group strikes me as entirely benign. Asked which boxes she checks, vice-president Michelle Lopez-Mullins, age 20, says “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.”…<\/p>\n

…Anyway, back to President Obama, who’s written books about his mixed inheritance<\/a>. It appears to me that along with his great intelligence, Obama’s mixed background helped make him an intellectual counterpuncher \u2014 watchful, laconic, and leery of zealotry, a born mediator.<\/p>\n

Like a man behind a mask, Obama watches people watch him.<\/p>\n

Checking the “black” box on the census form, however, was the politically canny choice. Americans aren’t far from the days when absurd categories like “mulatto<\/a>,” “quadroon<\/a>,” and “octoroon<\/a>” could determine people’s fate. Sadly, had he checked the “white” box too, many voters would have resented it.<\/p>\n

My own choices were simpler. Raised to think of myself as Irish before American \u2014 all eight of my great-grandparents emigrated during the late 19th century, hunkering down in ethnic enclaves within walking distance of salt water \u2014 I was taught that there was a proper “Irish” opinion on every imaginable topic…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Race doesn’t fit in a checkbox Arkansas Times Little Rock, Arkansas 2013-05-02 Gene Lyons Lamentably, the Boston Marathon bombing re-opened some of the most poisonous arguments in American life. Specifically, are the Tsarnaev brothers “white”? It’s a meaningless question. Some hotheads couldn’t wait to declare all Muslims suspect. Certain thinkers on the left (David Sirota, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,33,8,394,20],"tags":[14623,14622,14624],"class_list":["post-30857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-arkansas-times","tag-gene-lyons","tag-michelle-lopez-mullins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30857","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=30857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}