Boxball: A Sketch

Dear Gayle,

A few weeks ago, the gf dragged me to her daughter's awards ceremony. I thought I had done my spring semester duty by attending the school play, but I guess not. Frankly, I don't enjoy these events (who does?), but the kid had invited me, and how do you say no to a 9-year-old (or say yes and simply not show up) without it coming up in therapy 25 years later? So I went. It wasn't all bad. I spotted kids who I'm guessing will peak in high school, and pointed out the ones who will assuredly get picked on during grades 9 -- 12. I predicted that the girl who won the special reading award will major in women's studies. Just a hunch.

Anyway, at some point, I whispered to the gf that a lot of these kids were getting what I like to call self-esteem certificates. They're akin to the participation trophy one might receive after the tee-ball season or during youth soccer. It's sort of like saying, "You're mediocre--you might even suck--but we don't want you to feel bad, so here's a ribbon." I'm not a supporter of these things. Maybe it's because I don't have children. Or a heart. I think it turns these kids into adults (and by adults, I mean college students) who want recognition for doing absolutely nothing or merely showing up. It creates a false sense of accomplishment, totally lowers the bar--like 5th and 8th grade graduation ceremonies.

In ostensibly unrelated news, for dissertation purposes, I've set a Google alert for the term "multiracial." And apparently, nine years after the dawn of the "mulatto millennium," multiracials are still the lick. According to several news sources, the multis are the fastest growing demographic group in America. They're so hot right now, just like Hansel. They're might be trendy, but they're not the new black.

There are some who have argued that this meteoric rise is the result of some post-Loving interracial love baby boom. I suppose part of that is true. My great-grandmother could have checked a couple of boxes and identified as multiracial had she been born after the Supreme Court ruled that Mildred and Richard could safely(?) return to Virginia (officially truly for lovers after that 1967 decision, I suppose), and not in 1914. But Nannie's rather untimely birth compelled her to identify as Negro, making her yet another victim of hypodescent. But when the government allowed folks to check two or more boxes for race on the 2000 US Census, well all of that choose or lose stuff got kicked off the train like it was Homer Plessy.

Perhaps it's because I strongly and unabashedly claim American Negro always and forever, but for me, being able to check the multiracial box is like receiving a participation trophy. Let me be clear, I'm not suggesting that being multiracial sucks or is equivalent to being mediocre. Being acknowledged is cool, especially when the government recognizes five-fifths-- and not merely, say, three-fifths--of you. But what happens after that? And more importantly, what are the stakes of that?

Asserting a multiracial identity is nice, and may heighten the raw numbers, but it also requires the tide of identity to recede so far back into the political ocean, that the waves no longer crash on the shore. It makes racial and ethnic identity purely biological issues, and presumes that neither thing has or generates political purpose or meaning--or that such things never belong in the space beyond a discussion of population. And that, in my estimation, not only stands in opposition to but disrespects political blackness and the racialized blackness from which it stems. And so I contend that multiracialism is sort of like receiving a self-esteem award because it doesn't go beyond acknowledgment. Though it recognizes the individual and makes him or her feel good, it also sterilizes the power of those who have gone beyond merely showing up, and consequently questions and criticizes the latter's very existence.

To add, multiracialism refuses to understand the way privilege works in all of this. If your mother is white and your father is black but you're poor, I get the feeling you're not harping too much on being identified as multiraced. When you don't have access and money, someone else always checks the box for you. If they bother to check it at all.

Cablinasians stand up.

love,
me.