Mixing it up: Multiracialism redefines Asian American identity
Note: Dedicated to my son as I watch him developing his own identity.
The mainstreaming of multiracialism hasn't just made it harder to define identity; it's raised the question of whether it makes sense to try to define it at all. More and more mixed-race individuals are calling for an end to the tyranny of racial algorithms, of the blood quantum that measures us by inherited fractions.
They're not, however, suggesting that race should be erased entirely: Attempts at "color-blindness" miss the practical realities that lie behind racial identities -- the historical narratives they recount in shorthand, the social and political challenges they serve to benchmark, the cultural contexts they illuminate and enrich. As Quashie points out, race may simply be a construct, but so is a brick wall -- and you ignore either at your peril.
There are other ways, as my friend TzeMing Mok notes; in her native New Zealand, the Maori determine identity not by name, appearance or percentage, but by whakapapa -- the act of narrating lineage.
To be accepted as Maori, you must be able to recount your ancestral line back up to an iwi -- a tribe -- and then beyond that, to the atua, the gods. You can be 1/1024th Maori by blood, but if you can speak the story of your family's descent from the Earth Mother Papatuanuku to the present, you're as Maori as anyone. It's a viral rather than dilutive interpretation of race; a way of looking at identity as a story, of which each individual is a chapter.
The bottom line: Race is complicated, and only getting more so. Why shouldn't it be an essay question, rather than multiple choice?
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Mixing-it-up-Multiracialism-redefines-Asian-2381990.php#photo-1911549