Running? Let me tell you a story…
Once, a girl was born to a white mother and a black father. Her daddy got sent to jail. She never, until the moment she typed this, thought, “My black dad’s in jail…sounds like a lot of stuff I hear.”
She spent most of her life assuming she was black. (Black people assumed she was Mexican, which wasn’t a minority where she lived.)
Then..one day..she looked at her mom. And she looked at her hand. And she noticed, well, it’s not very dark. In fact, it wasn’t that dark at all. It may even be lighter than it is dark.
And BAM. She found out she WASN’T COMPLETELY BLACK.

I’ve assumed my whole life. And Now I wish I wasn’t. I mean, I’m uncomfortable even posting, becuase I’m mixed. I can’t do anything even remotely black (And i don’t mean stereotypical, I just lost my train of thought >..<

Good luck with that. I think I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not sure how far you’re going to get by dismissing other people of color and multiracial people as “little drops”.

As for the Indian thing, there’s as much controversy over that as there is over “African American”, “Asian American”, and any other modern name we can come up with. I’m fully aware of that. My grandmother used to insist on “Negro”, even after “Negro” went out of fashion and its use began to be regarded as an anachronism. She refused to adopt either “black” or “African American”; she dismissed them both as pointless new-fangled fads. “Negro” was the term she’d grown up with (the polite term, I mean), and in her house it was the term we had to use. So when I’m dealing with people individually I use whatever term they seem to prefer; that’s only proper.

But when I’m talking about a group of people, I use the term that seems to be most commonly accepted. I tend to use both “Indian” (or the “abbreviation” NDN) and Native American interchangeably, because that’s how they seem to use it — “American Indian” is by no means ubiquitous. But mostly I use Native American, because sometimes here at ABW we talk about Indian Americans, and it’s useful to be clear.

But as I said, you’re the second person I’ve seen lately who treated the term “Native American” as if it was a problem. I believe you called it a “slip up”, and you actually apologized for using it, as if you’d given offense. Ditto “African American”. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

I find the “Indian” thing funny too, but since I now get confused when referring to Indians-who-are-indigenous and Indians-from-India, it seems more logical to use the term they chose awhile back (Native American). Plus, *they* chose it, not the white folks, so I prefer to use the term that most of the people in question have claimed.

This has nothing to do with your one drop or my five drops or someone else’s delusion of their zero drops, it has to do with anti-black racism as all-encompasssing. combatting anti-black racism necessarily includes all the struggles in a way that “people-of-color”-ism does not. for that reason i say come into the blackness, one and all.

…And what about multiracial people who aren’t partly black? Yes, technically we’re all African, and yes, racism does seem to have a particular emphasis and intensity when it’s focused on black people. But we’re not the be-all and end-all of racism, and not all struggles *are* encompassed by the black struggle. That diminishes/dismisses every other struggle out there by every other group of oppressed people, which just doesn’t make sense to me.

It also seems dangerous, and bizarrely contradictory, for you to rant against mono-raciality… and then demand that all people of color and all multiracial people declare themselves black. This is precisely what the one-drop rule was all about — separating us all into white people and Other.

To answer your question, the question of terminology is not interesting to me. In fact, I think the entire discussion is racist accomodationist subterfuge. “Let’s all focus on what your particular “mix ” is and let’s lobby to get you your own personal check-box so we can turn away from the question of white supremacy.” I’m sure a lot of the people engaged in the debate mean well, but I’ve long ago realized that identity politics is about 99% identity party and 1% politics. I am not interested in checking politics at the door, and I am not interested in some watered down “people-of-colorism” either. I want “colorblind” people to start seeing color and go into the holy ghost convulsions and I want “multi-racial” people to jump into the blackness that they are running away from.This has nothing to do with your one drop or my five drops or someone else’s delusion of their zero drops, it has to do with anti-black racism as all-encompasssing. combatting anti-black racism necessarily includes all the struggles in a way that “people-of-color”-ism does not. for that reason i say come into the blackness, one and all.

Uh… what’s wrong with using “African American” and “Native American”?? ::confused:: You’re the second person I’ve seen in the past few days who has declared these terms racist, which makes no sense to me. I feel like I missed a memo somewhere. Please explain?

I think this concept of “multiracial” is totally non-political and absolutely accomodationist. I seriously question whether someone who is so invested in the “multi-racial” movement can really be, at the same time, committed to anti-racism as a true political gesture and not just an effort to push through tolerance legislation.

I’m not sure I understand you here. You seem to be simultaneously lambasting the idea of “monoracialism” as racist — which I agree, it is — and yet also rejecting the idea of “multiracialism” as some kind of cave-in to racism. So what terminology would you use?

I personally think “multiracial” is a perfectly acceptable term. It’s one of the terms that people who are multiracial and want to claim that as an identity have chosen, and AFAIC they have the right to name themselves (as opposed to outsiders/racist society picking a name — e.g. “mulatto”). That hasn’t been my choice — I am multiracial, but I don’t identify primarily as such — but I respect their choice, and the fact that they’ve fought for the right to make that choice. In claiming that identity they defy a number of racist ideas — the “one drop rule,” for example — so how can that be accommodationist?

Also — I’m not comfortable with the fact that you’re questioning people’s commitment to anti-racism based on their chosen identity. That’s not cool. I have met far too many multiracial people who were and are totally committed to anti-racism; why the hell wouldn’t they be?