Transcending “The Box”: Multiracial Subjects as the New Face of Reality

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2010-09-04 04:29Z by Steven

Transcending “The Box”: Multiracial Subjects as the New Face of Reality

CSW Update Newsletter
UCLA Center for the Study of Women
February 2008
pages 24-27

Kunti Dudakia

I hate it. I hate the feeling I get when I am forced in online surveys, job applications, or school admissions to check a box to identify my racial background. A feeling of confusion and uncertainty overwhelms me in an internal battle to check just one box.

I am not one box.

I am two. Maybe three or four if I want to be completely accurate. But I wonder: what is the purpose of “the box”? When we check a box, we are claiming a race, an ancestry, and even a status. Race as an organizing principle in society has been a source of hegemony and hierarchy for centuries. Its origins are unknown and unreliable. Historically dominant groups have used race as a basis to divide and distinguish themselves from “the other.” In the United States, the legal and scientific definition of race has continued to alter according to societal standards. In some ways we have moved forward from the “check one box only” of the 1850 census, which included three categories: white, black, and mulatto. However, we still attempt to check one box when many of us are biracial or multiracial. The reality in America is hybridity. In the definition that I use, hybridity means the blending of two or more cultures into a unified whole. Hybrids are chameleons adjusting to the shifting landscapes and isms that may reject nonconformity. Moreover, evidenced by the increasing amount of interracial marriages and ethnically ambiguous subjects is the realization that racial purity is a myth…

…Authenticity is constructed within the racial paradigm as both a marker and tool for inclusion and exclusion. We hear statements like “He isn’t really black” as assumptions based on essentialist ideas of race—usually and unfortunately reinforcing biases, stereotypes, and prejudices. Multiracial subjects are the ‘antithesis of authenticity’ inasmuch as they do not fit into one group or culture. This begs the question, are multiracial subjects changing the landscape of racial classification?…

Read the entire article here.

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