Black vs. "black"

Barack Obama is black -- he just isn't "black." And if his candidacy helps take the quotation marks off race in America, it's a good thing.

By Gary Kamiya

Read more: African-Americans, Gary Kamiya, Opinion, Barack Obama

Jan. 23, 2007 | Barack Obama's candidacy has brought the issue of race back to center stage in America. A provocative shot was fired by Debra Dickerson, who in the Jan. 22 issue of Salon argued that because Barack Obama is not a descendant of African slaves, he is not black. Dickerson's piece raises a number of important issues. And it should be read in the context of her other writings on race, in which she takes a courageous and admirably free-thinking position, refusing to kowtow to received racial definitions or etiquette. But I think she has it wrong about Obama's blackness, or lack thereof. Obama is black -- he just isn't "black."

To explain what I mean, let me delve a little into my own racial background. I started a part-time teaching gig last week at the University of California at Berkeley, and part of the paperwork (which included a form on which you had to pledge allegiance to the state of California, an entity I had not thought needed my vassalage) was a form that asked what my ethnicity was. You had to identify yourself as white, black, Asian or Latino. I think there were a few others, though I can't remember. I'm half-Japanese, so I looked for a mixed-race box, but there wasn't one. I asked the woman who was doing the paperwork if I could put down that I was half-white and half-Asian, but she said, "No, you just have to choose one." Even though I knew I was probably bumming out some U.C. diversity honcho, I put an X in the box marked "white."

Why did I choose "white"? It was a matter of intellectual honesty. This takes a bit of explaining.

The truth is, I don't think of myself as either white or Asian. In fact, I don't think of myself in racial terms at all. If asked, I of course identify myself as what I am -- mixed-race, or Eurasian, or half-Japanese. I try to work the Scottish part of the mix in as well, because I like trumpeting my weird mongrel gene pool. But although I know I am a person of mixed race, that fact plays only the most minor role in my sense of myself. I am a mixed-race person, not a "mixed-race person."

What's the difference? People whose race or ethnicity defines their identity, or at least makes up a major part of it, are what I think of as quotation-mark people. They are not only mixed-race, they are "mixed-race." Those whose race or ethnicity has little or nothing to do with their identity, with their sense of themselves, are non-quotation-mark people. They may recognize themselves as black or Latino or Asian, be whatever race or ethnicity they are to the core, and proudly affirm they are such, but they aren't "black" or "Latino" or "Asian."

For me, my racial background has never meant anything one way or the other. There are no doubt many specific reasons for this, including my parents' unconcern about race, not having had any kind of a Japanese upbringing (whatever that means), growing up in Berkeley in the '60s, and so on. The bottom line is that no one ever really paid any attention to my race, so I didn't either. If I do think about it, it's with a smug, slightly juvenile sense of satisfaction that I'm different from just about everybody else and in a "cool" way. Beyond that, though, my racial background is meaningless. It plays no role in my sense of myself.

What this adds up to for me is that when I am forced against my will to make a reductive choice, as I was at U.C., the most honest thing is to choose white. I do that not because I see whiteness as a positive identification, or as my identity, but for precisely the opposite reason: because whiteness is the marker of racial invisibility in America. White, in other words, means no race, not the master race. I don't "feel" either Japanese or white. To feel either would involve some bad-faith reduction of my identity. But if forced to choose, I choose white, because that category, inaccurate as it is, reflects the fact that my racial background does not form my identity.

This is, in fact, how most white people in America -- unless they subscribe to some virulent form of identity politics, whether on the Ku Klux Klan right or the I-am-a-member-of-the-oppressors left -- see themselves. White people don't go around feeling "white" unless they are either racists or have just come out of a corporate diversity consciousness-raising session.

Of course, the fact that white people are the majority in America makes it easy for them not to feel "white." A majority group's racial identity, since it encounters no external obstacles, singling out or bigotry, is always invisible to itself. But -- and now we come to the interesting racial questions posed by Barack Obama -- I would argue that not all members of minority ethnic or racial groups, even ones that have historically been subject to racism, necessarily see themselves as "Asian" or "Latino" or "black." They may just see themselves as Asian or Latino or black. This doesn't mean they necessarily reject any cultural traditions or community ties: It simply means they see themselves first and foremost as human beings who happen to be a certain race or ethnicity.

Let me be clear. I am not talking about disavowing one's culture or background, acting "white," or any other external actions. I am simply talking about an inner freedom from a superficial definition imposed by others. This freedom can -- and in the case of blacks, probably usually does -- coexist with a stronger consciousness of one's racial identity than exists for white Americans, whose racial status is invisible to themselves. For many minorities -- even though their minority status makes their ethnicity more visible to others, and thus to themselves, and even though they may have suffered from racial or ethnic prejudice -- visibility and prejudice alone do not necessarily create a race or ethnicity-based identity.

And if that's the case, they're lucky. Because who wants to go around carrying the burden of being "Asian" or "black" all the time? It's a burden because it's a phantom, an abstract concept, that nonetheless weighs you down. To feel "Asian," for me, would be to embrace an entirely political definition of myself, one simultaneously empty and all-encompassing. I would become a caricature of myself, a spokesman for a "myself" entirely constructed by others. Having no racial self-identification is a utopian state because it allows you to escape this malignant mirror. In America, the white majority is fortunate to enjoy this. But so are many minorities.

Next page: I find Colin Powell's racial credo admirable