Thank God for core classes. As I was cramming for my Philosophy final next week, I came across an interesting piece that, in light of this election cycle's historic status, carried some extra depth and weight.
The piece of which I speak is Naomi Zack's "An Autobiographical View of Mixed Race and Deracination". Funny how the spell check of Mozilla doesn't recognize the word deracination. She posits that in America, the binary opposition of black and white creates inner turmoil for those of mixed race. Historically, "whiteness is nothing more than the absence of any black forebears, and blackness is nothing more than the presence of one black forebear." And thus, "According to the accepted schema of racial inheritance, everyone with at least one black forebear is black and everyone with all white forebears is white. Therefore everyone is either black or white. There are no people of mixed race."
However, what happens when someone with a black forebear, therefore by the aforementioned schema black, is raised in a predominately white background?
"From a black ethnic perspective it is not plausible that someone who
is designated as of mixed race in white contexts, might have spent so
much of [his] life in white contexts that [he] does not have a black
ethnic identity. The (authentic) racial and ethnic black person will
hold the person of mixed race responsible for not having had the
courage (and good faith) to acquire a black ethnic identity."
We saw this argument from the media early in this contest: that somehow Obama was not
black enough. Zack's solution to this is a "position of deracination"
"This is the position of deracination: The schema of racial inheritance in the USA is racist and unjust. As a rational [man] with both black and white forebears, I do not accept this schema. I refuse to be pressured into denying the existence of black forebears to please whites, and I refuse to be pressured into my white ethnicity and my white forebears, to please blacks. There is no biological foundation of the concept of race. The concept of race is an oppressive cultural invention and convention, and I refuse to have anything to do with it. I refuse to be reasonable in order to placate either blacks or whites who retain nonempirical and irrational categorizations. Therefore, I have no racial affiliation and will accept no racial designations."
Many commentators have described this as a post-racial view, but I contend it is something different. While the author decries the institution of race, she does not deny that these institutions play roles in her life. Her deracination solves her inner-turmoil allowing for "self-emancipation", but it remains a problem for "people who belong to races and wish to categorize everyone else in racial terms as well". The "problematization of deracination" as she calls it has to do with the viewpoint of a deracinated person.
"People will still insist on categorizing [him] racially and [his] explicit refusal to participate in their (racializing) attempts will only add to their scorn and dislike of [him]."
We have seen this now over the course of the primary, and I fear we will continue to see it throughout the course of the general election, as Obama is now the presumptive nominee. Zack calls for antirace as a solution, but sees it only serves its purpose as a theory and has no real world application (in my opinion the problem with most philosophy). However, I find this article prescient, and will continue to review other work of hers, in the context of the continuing election cycle.
