Multiracial issues for others raised with hoopla
surrounding Tiger Woods
By Ed Timms and Thomas G. Watts
The Dallas Morning News
(KRT)
DALLAS - When Tiger Woods won golf's most celebrated tournament,
he became many things to many people.
He was lionized as the first black to win the Masters, triumphing
in a sport that has been one of the last bastions of racial exclusion.
Many Asian-Americans were proud of the young golfer's achievement
for another reason: his mother is a native of Thailand. Some felt
slighted that his Asian heritage didn't get equal billing.
And other Americans whose background is multiracial, or whose
children are multiracial, claimed Woods as one of their own.
Perhaps no other issue involving race is quite so confusing.
Across the nation, mixed-race Americans are struggling to change
how they are defined by the government and society. Some struggle
to define themselves.
Michelle Smawley's mother is white and her father is black.
At times, she has not felt comfortable - or accepted - by either
culture.
"When I'm in a room full of whites, I am a minority, and
feel that very much," she said.
Among African-Americans, "there are times I have to prove
I'm down with the cause because of my skin, and my hair, and because
my mother's white."
As a young teen-ager, Smawley, a 29-year-old field producer
for ABC, won a local Junior Miss Ebony pageant in the Washington,
D.C. area.
"Friends told me later that some people in the audience
were booing. ... There was a contingent, I'm sure, saying, 'Get
this yellow girl off the stage.'/i"
Even as a small child, Smawley always said she was "mixed."
"It never occurred to me to negate either parent,"
she said.
She says it's fine with her that some people with an ethnic
background similar to hers define themselves as African-American.
"Multiracial people are not a monolithic group,"
she said. "Our backgrounds are quite varied. Some of us will
choose to identify as multiracial, some of us will not."
Since becoming a sports phenomenon, Tiger Woods, too, has been
racially classified and defined by others. He frequently has mentioned
his multiracial background. Sometimes he talks more about being
Asian, sometimes more about being black.
Upon his Masters victory, the 21-year-old spoke of the black
golfers who fought segregation to open doors for him. Last December,
he told li Sports Illustrated, lf of a lesson he learned while
at Stanford.
"What I realized is that even though I'm mathematically
Asian - if anything - if you have one drop of black blood in the
United States, you're black," he said. "And how important
it is for this country to talk about this subject."
As an adult, Smawley is still confronted with the race question.
On Thursday, she received a juror questionaire form in the mail.
"I'm in New York City, the melting pot of the world, and
there are four categories: black, white, Hispanic and Asian."
Some suggest that a "multiracial" label will not
change perceptions of the white majority.
"Think of any African-Americans that you know. Some are
very light, some are very dark," said sociologist Halford
Fairchild, the son of a Japanese-American mother and an African-American
father. "The very light ones, from a biological point of
view perhaps may be 95 percent white and only 5 percent black.
And yet they are treated as black because of that 5 percent."
Historically, Americans with even a fraction of African blood
were considered black under the "one drop rule." The
child of a slave mother and a white slaveholder was born a slave.
"The whole idea of the racial hierarchy that puts whites
at the top and blacks at the bottom is so egregiously pernicious
... it claims that even one drop of black blood or any discernible
African ancestors renders the person black or an African American,"
said Dr. Fairchild, an associate professor of psychology and black
studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif.
Scientifically, that idea is "absolutely fallacious,"
he added, but does have merit "if you look at how people
with that background are actually treated."
Dividing people into racial groups does violence "to what
it means to be human in the first place," Dr. Fairchild asserted.
Still, when Dr. Fairchild fills out his census form or any
other form that asks for his ethnicity, he marks "black"
or "African-American."
Like many civil rights leaders, he fears that minorities could
lose political and economic power if more Americans opt to tell
the census bureau they are "multiracial" instead of
a specific minority.
"I acknowledge the political importance of being counted
within the African-American group," he said. "If I were
to say 'other' or 'mixed' ... then that would render me politically
invisible."
Susan Graham, who heads Georgia-based group that advocates
the multiracial designation, argues that concern is unfounded.
"You don't go to bed one night African-American and wake
up the next morning and say now I'm multiraical," said Graham,
executive director of Project Race.
Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, is co-sponsoring a bill that would
add a "multiracial" category to the U.S. Census form
and any other government documents that seek information about
an individual's race. Texas lawmakers are considering a similar
proposal.
NAACP spokesman Dan Wilson said his group is concerned that
such an option could affect how congressional districts are drawn,
diluting minority voting strength.
Anna Maria Gill, of Houston, is Mexican-American. Her ex-husband
is African-American. She wants her two teen-aged children to have
the right to define themselves.
"We can't go back and change history, but we can make
a difference in the lives of our chidren and the future children
that are coming, so they can truly acknowledge who they are,"
she said."
Her 17-year-old son, Marcus, said he sees himself "as
both races, races, black and Mexican," and believes that
he fits into both cultures. His friends are "all colors."
"People who I hang around with are pretty open,"
he said. "I haven't had any problems."
The Gills are part of a growing number of multiracial households.
The government counted about 149,000 interracial married couples
in 1960; in 1994 it put the number at 1.3 million.
"There is a whole generation of children who have grown
up mixed, saying, 'I'm not part African-American. I'm not Thai.
I'm both,' " said Dr. Kiyoshi Ikedo, a sociology professor
at the University of Hawaii. "I think that's healthy."
Eric Roman, 23, the student body president at the University
of North Texas, also has a Mexican-American mother and an African-American
father.
When declaring his race on educational forms, he said, "it
depends on what scholarship I'm applying for."
But in most cases, he tends to check "other." Then
he writes down "African-American and Mexican-American."
While he sometimes feels there is "too much emphasis on
race," Roman said he is proud of his heritage.
"I feel really blessed to have these two backgrounds,"
he said. His friends are from many racial groups, he said, and
he's rarely questioned about his ethnic loyalties. "I think
I've only had that question put to me two or three times."
Kansas City Royals outfielder Johnny Damon is the son of a
white father and a Thai mother. When he's filling out forms that
ask about race, he checks "white."
He said he's never really had a problem with anybody trying
to force an identity on him. Instead of adding a mixed-race designation
to forms, he would feel better "if they deleted the entire
thing."
"I think in American culture ... we should just be trying
to classify people as people instead of where they come from or
what they look like," he said.
Graham is white. Her husband is black. When she received her
1990 census form, she complained to the census bureau that there
was no place for her children. An official told her that children
take the race of the mother because " 'in cases like these
we always know who the mother is, but we don't know who the father
is.'/i"
About the same time, her son was starting kindergarten. Her
husbnd took him to school. A teacher, filling out a school form,
concluded her son was black.
"We had the same child who was white on the census, black
in school and multiracial at home," Graham said. "And
I thought there's something wrong with this picture."
Graham said her children know exactly who they are. "It's
just that society doesn't know who they are, and the federal government
doesn't know who they are."
From all appearances, Dr. Fairchild said, Tiger Woods also
knows who he is.
"What Tiger Woods is doing is possibly the healthiest
response that any person with his background can make," he
said. "...That is to acknowledge his multi-ethnic, multi-racial
heritage ... For him to be aware of that, and to claim all of
it, is extraordinarily healthy."
Staff writers Doug Swanson in Dallas and Evan Grant in Kansas
City contributed to this report.
(c) 1997, The Dallas Morning News.
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