Racial Identity in America: Why Is It Still Important?

The other night, CNN had a special program about racial identity in the United States. As a Canadian of Irish and Scottish descent, and as someone who has never lived anywhere but Canada, I was (as the Brits would say) completely gobsmacked!

In the Canada where I grew up, my parents taught me by word and example not to judge people by their ethnicity. That said, I certainly saw other people do it, but it varied a lot depending on where I lived. I have seen discrimination against French-Canadians by Anglophones (non-French) and against Anglophones by French-Canadians, by Ukrainians against non-Ukrainians and the opposite, by non-Natives against Natives and Natives against non-Natives — well, you get the idea. It was a case of equal-opportunity discrimination. Someone always felt that someone else was somehow "less" for being different.

Even so, during my childhood, I saw little of this. I attended nine different schools in 12 years, and lived in four different provinces. I went to school with quite a few kids who were mixed race (part black or part Native) and some that were full-blood Native. In university, there was more diversity, and in the work force, I worked with many mixed-race people. Some looked mixed race, some didn't. But I never heard anyone question what race or mix of races someone else was, and if it came up, it was just mildly interesting. No doubt that was partly due to living mainly in small towns, but I don't think that completely explains it. I think it must be because Canada has a much different history than America.

In any case,  that is the perspective that I brought to the CNN show about ethnicity. I was quite shocked to discover that America, ethnically speaking, still has its head buried in the remnant of a slave culture, and that it is still affecting everything that people do. It seems that everyone still needs to be pigeon-holed into one race or another, even to the extent of determining whether a person is black enough to be a black American, or descended from the right black family line (in other words, from former slaves or "free persons of colour") to qualify as an African-American. The old One Drop Rule from the days of racial segregation may no longer be in force, but its effects still linger.

Why is it so important to Americans in 2012 that people publicly identify with a particular ethnicity and ignore the rest of what makes them who they are?

What identifies a black person? As a Canadian, I always thought it referred to people whose skin colour and features are similar to those of people from sub-Saharan Africa. The host of the show, Soledad O'Brien, just looks like an ordinary woman to me. Her multiracial background has produced a complete mixture of features that do not instantly identify her as being of any particular ethnicity, but because her mother is black, she says she is a black woman. A young girl of North African ancestry who was interviewed on the show looks middle Eastern, has no African-American or Sub-Saharan African blood at all, and yet she also identifies herself as black. Clearly, skin colour and facial features aren't what make them feel black.

If the term African-American is used, that makes more sense, since O'Brien is part African-American. But the girl from North Africa checked "white" on her college application (why do colleges care what ethnicity a person is?) because that is how the American government classifies her. Is she white? Is she black? Does it matter? It does to her, but why does anyone else care?

To make things even more complicated, a young man whose parents are from different parts of Africa said on the show that he is constantly told he is neither "black" or "African-American" because, despite his race and skin colour and facial features, he isn't descended from slaves or free American black people. The same comments have been directed at American President Barack Obama, who is of mixed race, because his father is African, not African-American.

It's not just the American black community concerned with this racial identity. The same issue has been raised on Native Internet forums, where people have complained about those who call themselves Indian when they only have a single great-grandparent who was Indian. Apparently, to be Indian, you need to be full blood, or nearly so, kind of a reverse of the One Drop Rule.

What does it matter to the rest of the world whether a person identifies with one race or ethnic group and not another? People should not have to choose to check a little box that says they are this race or that race, because in the end, it is meaningless. Many Americans, regardless of skin colour, are actually a mix of African, European, even Asian and American Indian genes. Some, like golfer Tiger Woods, have many difference races and ethnic groups in their backgrounds. Some mixed-race people self-identify as black, others as white, and some latch onto their Native or Asian roots. Surely it isn't anyone else's business what they consider themselves to be.

Why can't we see differences in our faces and hair and skin colour simply as features that make each person one of a kind, instead of trying to put people into artificial categories?

Isn't it time to just see people as individuals, all different and all equally valued?