The Multiracial Movement:
An Uncomfortable Political Fit<\/H1><\/center> ![\"Nathan](\"http:\/\/www.multiracial.com\/images\/columnists\/douglas.jpg\")
<\/p>\nby Nathan Douglas<\/A><\/I>
October\/November 2003<\/h3>\n <\/p>\n
NOTE:<\/b> What follows is the text of a speech prepared by Nathan Douglas for the \u201cAnatomy of Multiracial Politics\u201d conference, originally scheduled to be held October 10, 2003, in Washington, D.C., by the Interracial Women\u2019s Political Consortium. The conference was canceled due to apparent apathy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Greetings, everyone. I\u2019d like to begin by thanking Valerie Wilkins-Godbee, of the Interracial Women\u2019s Political Consortium, for inviting me to speak. I have a reputation of shooting from the hip, so she exhibited some degree of courage by including me.<\/p>\n
To get started, I\u2019d like to recite a prayer of sorts. One that you\u2019ve probably heard before, in one version or another. It goes like this: \u201cLord, please give me the courage to change what I can; the serenity to accept what I cannot; and the wisdom to know the difference.\u201d May you all take that to heart.<\/p>\n
Today I\u2019m here to share with you as much as I can of wisdom accumulated from seven years of directly participating in, and critically observing, the so-called Multiracial Movement. If you walk away with nothing else from my talk, please remember an observation I made in May of 1998, during a heated exchange on C-Span with Harold McDougall. He\u2019s a Catholic University law professor and the former representative of the NAACP in their fight against the multiracial category. For those of you who don\u2019t know, the NAACP was our primary opponent in the push for a multiracial category to be added to all government forms and surveys.<\/p>\n
During the broadcast, I challenged McDougall to explain some incendiary remarks he made in front of Congress during the hearings. In particular, I was incensed by his reference to a \u201ckinky hair machine\u201d device used in South Africa to determine the race of an individual. McDougall mentioned it to Congress, as if the device would find a place here, should the multiracial category be established. Yes, I realize this probably sounds bizarre to you, but he said it. It\u2019s documented and I\u2019ve written about it at the Project RACE<\/a> and Interracial Voice<\/a><\/i> websites. Check out their archives.<\/p>\n Anyhow, McDougall immediately accused me of being from \u201cthe extreme right wing of the multiracial movement,\u201d to which I replied, \u201cthere is no right wing of the multiracial movement\u201d-a statement I believed to be true at the time. Certainly I didn\u2019t consider myself to be right wing or conservative. One look at my life, and the way I\u2019ve chosen to lead it, would reinforce this. Plus I never perceived the movement to be about political identity anyway, internally or externally. It was an individual identity movement. That\u2019s idealistic, perhaps, but to me it was always about something much grander than the crass nature of politics.<\/p>\n
Be that as it may, things escalated from there and Clarence Page, the panel moderator, stepped in to cool down the rhetoric. Page asked me, \u201cWhy is it so important to have a multiracial category?\u201d<\/p>\n
I said, quite extemporaneously, \u201cIt\u2019s to give these kids a sense of identity that allows them to be more than one thing at one time, and it states it clearly. It\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d I went one to clarify, and this is what I hope you\u2019ll remember, so I\u2019ll say it twice: \u201cPeople are uncomfortable with the concept that somebody could be more than one thing at one time.\u201d Again, \u201cPeople are uncomfortable with the concept that somebody could be more than one thing at one time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s try putting that observation into a political context. As I\u2019ve stated before, I\u2019m not from the right wing. But guess what? I\u2019m not a liberal, either. Which is also to say I\u2019m neither Republican nor Democrat. Call me an independent. Or, building on my prior observation, I\u2019m more than one thing at one time, and that makes political people, like Harold McDougall and the NAACP, very uncomfortable. Because they see the world as \u201ceither\/or.\u201d Either you\u2019re a liberal Democrat like them or you\u2019re a conservative Republican, like whom they perceive all their opponents to be.<\/p>\n
And when McDougall tried to label me as \u201cright wing,\u201d he was basing his assessment solely on one issue. I submit to you that it is impossible to accurately determine where someone resides politically from his-or-her position on one issue. And instead of answering my questions about his previous statements, McDougall tried to place me on the defensive to prove that I was not from the \u201cright wing.\u201d When he failed to elicit the response he desired, he just refused to answer my questions.<\/p>\n
Deborah Tannen, a popular author and avowed Democrat, wrote an interesting book in 1998, entitled The Argument Culture: Moving From Debate to Dialogue<\/a><\/i>. Let me give you a few quotes that relate to what I\u2019m talking about\u2026<\/p>\n\u201cThe argument culture urges us to approach the world-and the people in it-in an adversarial frame of mind.\u201d (p. 3)<\/p>\n
\u201cOur determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between two sides leads us to believe that every issue has two sides-no more, no less.\u201d (p. 10)<\/p>\n
\u201cBut opposition does not lead to truth when an issue is not composed of two opposing sides but is a crystal of many sides.\u201d (p. 10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She goes on to address the race issue by saying that there\u2019s a \u201ctendency to reduce our understanding of race to a simple black\/white dichotomy. This tends to obscure, first of all, the existence of many other races: Asian, American Indian, Polynesian, Semitic, Arab, East Indian, Mongolian, and so on. Even within the framework of Americans of European and Americans of African ancestry, there are many who are biracial or multiracial.\u201d (p. 43)<\/p>\n
She concludes by stating, \u201cno sooner do we conceive of something composed of two-and just two-elements than we begin to think of those elements as more different than they are, opposed to each other, and potentially in conflict.\u201d (pp. 43-44)<\/p>\n
Okay, let\u2019s talk about the elephant in the living room. No, it\u2019s not me; it\u2019s the Republican Party. Let\u2019s face it, this figurative elephant makes many of us uncomfortable. But he\u2019s just too damn big to ignore. Not only is the elephant in charge of government right now, whether we like it or not, it is also true that the elephant was virtually our only ally during the struggle for a multiracial category. Congressman Petri, a Republican, was the principal sponsor of the so-called \u201cTiger Woods Bill,\u201d H.R. 830, which would have mandated a multiracial category. And Newt Gingrich, a Republican who is perennially portrayed by Democrats to be Lucifer personified, was also a supporter.<\/p>\n
Yes, in the crazy world of racial politics, our supposedly natural allies, the civil rights establishment, became our enemies; and our supposedly natural enemies, the right wing establishment, became our allies. Or at least, so it appeared. Let me give you some more political observations.<\/p>\n
In June of 1997, I was a guest on Kweisi Mfume\u2019s Baltimore-based TV talkshow, The Bottom Line<\/i>. I substituted for Susan Graham, the head of Project RACE<\/a>, who asked me to take her place on the show. As previously established, I\u2019m a feisty fellow, so not long after taping began, I got involved in a somewhat heated exchange, not with Mfume, who was on his best behavior throughout the show, but with an audience member. She raised the Republican specter with me by saying, in reference to H.R. 830, \u201cThe people behind it want to gut the enforcement of civil rights laws and that\u2019s what\u2019s behind the issue.\u201d She also said, \u201cWhen you have a conservative Republican sponsoring this kind of bill, you have to think twice.\u201d<\/p>\n I replied that I thought hers was a mischaracterization, saying quite candidly, \u201cYou\u2019re defining this in political terms.\u201d Let\u2019s stop there a moment. Because that is, perhaps, the greatest irony of the debate that swirled around the establishment of a multiracial category. You see, as hard as it was for others to understand, and as difficult as it may be for some of you to realize even now, the quest for a multiracial identifier was, for me and many others, NEVER political in nature.<\/p>\n
This was and is an identity issue, pure-and-simple. We just wanted the ability to answer truthfully the question being proposed: what is your race? To do so required an option or options not available at the time.<\/p>\n
I felt a tremendous affinity for the plight of multiracials wanting to self-identify. Not just because my son is multiracial, but because for all practical purposes, I am multiracial, meaning I draw from eclectic sources to be who I am. I may appear to be one thing physically, but there are plenty of other cultures swirling around inside me. At the very least, I\u2019m multicultural. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I testified before Congress in 1997<\/a>, on behalf of a multiracial category. Although I had given a speech<\/a> at the 1996 Multiracial Solidarity March<\/a> on the Mall in Washington<\/a>, after being invited to participate by Charles Byrd; when I showed up to testify alongside Ramona Douglass of the Association of Multiethnic Americans (\u201cAMEA\u201d)<\/a> and the aforementioned Susan Graham, I was met with some skepticism. The two of them, who were getting along well at the time, wanted to know how I had secured a spot to testify, since they had hoped to include some other, higher profile, more established representative from the movement. (I think it may have been Maria Root.)<\/p>\n We were at lunch, and they asked me directly, how had I gotten a slot on their panel? I declined to say precisely how I had aced out a member of their emerging multiracial political establishment. I just said I was testifying because \u201cI asked politely.\u201d Well, that was the truth! Although I can\u2019t help but think they assumed I was some kind of a Republican spy or operative placed by Stephen Horn, the Republican congressman in charge of the congressional subcommittee overseeing the debate on the multiracial category.<\/p>\n
Well, up until now, I\u2019ve never publicly revealed how I got on that panel. Would you like to know? Okay, when I was in college at Cal State, Long Beach, I was a member of an honor society called the Mortar Board. One of the community service jobs we performed for the Mortar Board was to help the university president and his wife host a reception being held at their house. And you\u2019ll never guess who the president of Cal State, Long Beach was back then. Stephen Horn, the same guy who would end up being a Congressman years later. Life is miraculous, isn\u2019t it? Praise God.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s how I got on the panel. Just a polite letter reminding him of our past encounter, and requesting consideration to be included in the congressional debate. I wasn\u2019t a Republican then or now. And his staffer never asked if I was. He screened me to be sure I was presentable and not a nut, I guess, and then I was on board. Because I had something relevant to add. And what was that? Let me give you a quote from my testimony\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cNo organization or individual has the moral authority to impose racial patriotism over others. Some of our opponents appear to have commissioned themselves as members of a \u2018racial border patrol.\u2019 They dutifully stand guard over America\u2019s imaginary borders between the races, scanning the horizon for \u2018illegal racial immigrants.\u2019 And when they see one, they swoop down with all their might and unrighteous indignation. Well, it is sometimes said that \u2018the truth shall set you free.\u2019 If our opponents are truly interested in freedom, then why are they afraid of the truth?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Okay, let\u2019s move on from dealing with externals and talk about some of the internal political and philosophical struggles that have occurred within the Multiracial Movement. Hopefully, you all know who the key players have been.<\/p>\n
Essentially, there were and are three factions: Susan Graham and her Project Race<\/a> followers; Ramona Douglass and the Association of Multiethnic Americans<\/a> coalition; and, God bless him, Internet publisher Charles Byrd with his loose band of racial iconoclasts. (You can count me among these radicals, if you\u2019re looking for some place to pigeonhole me.)<\/p>\n Susan\u2019s efforts were initially at the local level, where her organization was successful in establishing some versions of a multiracial category in several states. Ramona, working with Carlos Fernandez, was able to establish herself as an official representative serving on a Census planning committee. It should also be said that Susan and Ramona, for a time, worked together tirelessly to lobby Congress and other political powers-that-be on behalf of a multiracial category. Although it should be acknowledged that the AMEA group and Project RACE ended up not agreeing on a choice of format and wording, to include, believe it or not, the term \u201cmultiracial.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Charles Byrd, editor of the cyberzine Interracial Voice<\/i>, became a very visible spokesperson on behalf of multiracials. As an aside, the most exciting moment for me during this period was when Charles appeared on the nationally televised PBS program, The NewsHour<\/i><\/a>, making his case for multiracial recognition. Man, that was great! I even gave him one of my ties to wear. Every time I watch a tape of the show and see that tie, I chuckle. It\u2019s like an inside joke, you know?<\/p>\n Okay, so for a limited time I was fortunate to be associated with this grand triad. My inclination, at least initially, was to remain independent and non-aligned, as is my nature. I had extensive interactions with all of them. But let me assure you, the content of the e-mails that used to fly among us serves as a telling reminder of the political and philosophical conflicts apparently inherent in this issue. In other words, many of the battles that were going on outside the movement were also going on internally, as some of us were being pulled and pushed among opposing camps or positions of interest.<\/p>\n
October\/November 2003<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
NOTE:<\/b> What follows is the text of a speech prepared by Nathan Douglas for the \u201cAnatomy of Multiracial Politics\u201d conference, originally scheduled to be held October 10, 2003, in Washington, D.C., by the Interracial Women\u2019s Political Consortium. The conference was canceled due to apparent apathy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Greetings, everyone. I\u2019d like to begin by thanking Valerie Wilkins-Godbee, of the Interracial Women\u2019s Political Consortium, for inviting me to speak. I have a reputation of shooting from the hip, so she exhibited some degree of courage by including me.<\/p>\n
To get started, I\u2019d like to recite a prayer of sorts. One that you\u2019ve probably heard before, in one version or another. It goes like this: \u201cLord, please give me the courage to change what I can; the serenity to accept what I cannot; and the wisdom to know the difference.\u201d May you all take that to heart.<\/p>\n
Today I\u2019m here to share with you as much as I can of wisdom accumulated from seven years of directly participating in, and critically observing, the so-called Multiracial Movement. If you walk away with nothing else from my talk, please remember an observation I made in May of 1998, during a heated exchange on C-Span with Harold McDougall. He\u2019s a Catholic University law professor and the former representative of the NAACP in their fight against the multiracial category. For those of you who don\u2019t know, the NAACP was our primary opponent in the push for a multiracial category to be added to all government forms and surveys.<\/p>\n
During the broadcast, I challenged McDougall to explain some incendiary remarks he made in front of Congress during the hearings. In particular, I was incensed by his reference to a \u201ckinky hair machine\u201d device used in South Africa to determine the race of an individual. McDougall mentioned it to Congress, as if the device would find a place here, should the multiracial category be established. Yes, I realize this probably sounds bizarre to you, but he said it. It\u2019s documented and I\u2019ve written about it at the Project RACE<\/a> and Interracial Voice<\/a><\/i> websites. Check out their archives.<\/p>\n
Anyhow, McDougall immediately accused me of being from \u201cthe extreme right wing of the multiracial movement,\u201d to which I replied, \u201cthere is no right wing of the multiracial movement\u201d-a statement I believed to be true at the time. Certainly I didn\u2019t consider myself to be right wing or conservative. One look at my life, and the way I\u2019ve chosen to lead it, would reinforce this. Plus I never perceived the movement to be about political identity anyway, internally or externally. It was an individual identity movement. That\u2019s idealistic, perhaps, but to me it was always about something much grander than the crass nature of politics.<\/p>\n
Be that as it may, things escalated from there and Clarence Page, the panel moderator, stepped in to cool down the rhetoric. Page asked me, \u201cWhy is it so important to have a multiracial category?\u201d<\/p>\n
I said, quite extemporaneously, \u201cIt\u2019s to give these kids a sense of identity that allows them to be more than one thing at one time, and it states it clearly. It\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d I went one to clarify, and this is what I hope you\u2019ll remember, so I\u2019ll say it twice: \u201cPeople are uncomfortable with the concept that somebody could be more than one thing at one time.\u201d Again, \u201cPeople are uncomfortable with the concept that somebody could be more than one thing at one time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s try putting that observation into a political context. As I\u2019ve stated before, I\u2019m not from the right wing. But guess what? I\u2019m not a liberal, either. Which is also to say I\u2019m neither Republican nor Democrat. Call me an independent. Or, building on my prior observation, I\u2019m more than one thing at one time, and that makes political people, like Harold McDougall and the NAACP, very uncomfortable. Because they see the world as \u201ceither\/or.\u201d Either you\u2019re a liberal Democrat like them or you\u2019re a conservative Republican, like whom they perceive all their opponents to be.<\/p>\n
And when McDougall tried to label me as \u201cright wing,\u201d he was basing his assessment solely on one issue. I submit to you that it is impossible to accurately determine where someone resides politically from his-or-her position on one issue. And instead of answering my questions about his previous statements, McDougall tried to place me on the defensive to prove that I was not from the \u201cright wing.\u201d When he failed to elicit the response he desired, he just refused to answer my questions.<\/p>\n
Deborah Tannen, a popular author and avowed Democrat, wrote an interesting book in 1998, entitled The Argument Culture: Moving From Debate to Dialogue<\/a><\/i>. Let me give you a few quotes that relate to what I\u2019m talking about\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe argument culture urges us to approach the world-and the people in it-in an adversarial frame of mind.\u201d (p. 3)<\/p>\n
\u201cOur determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between two sides leads us to believe that every issue has two sides-no more, no less.\u201d (p. 10)<\/p>\n
\u201cBut opposition does not lead to truth when an issue is not composed of two opposing sides but is a crystal of many sides.\u201d (p. 10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She goes on to address the race issue by saying that there\u2019s a \u201ctendency to reduce our understanding of race to a simple black\/white dichotomy. This tends to obscure, first of all, the existence of many other races: Asian, American Indian, Polynesian, Semitic, Arab, East Indian, Mongolian, and so on. Even within the framework of Americans of European and Americans of African ancestry, there are many who are biracial or multiracial.\u201d (p. 43)<\/p>\n
She concludes by stating, \u201cno sooner do we conceive of something composed of two-and just two-elements than we begin to think of those elements as more different than they are, opposed to each other, and potentially in conflict.\u201d (pp. 43-44)<\/p>\n
Okay, let\u2019s talk about the elephant in the living room. No, it\u2019s not me; it\u2019s the Republican Party. Let\u2019s face it, this figurative elephant makes many of us uncomfortable. But he\u2019s just too damn big to ignore. Not only is the elephant in charge of government right now, whether we like it or not, it is also true that the elephant was virtually our only ally during the struggle for a multiracial category. Congressman Petri, a Republican, was the principal sponsor of the so-called \u201cTiger Woods Bill,\u201d H.R. 830, which would have mandated a multiracial category. And Newt Gingrich, a Republican who is perennially portrayed by Democrats to be Lucifer personified, was also a supporter.<\/p>\n
Yes, in the crazy world of racial politics, our supposedly natural allies, the civil rights establishment, became our enemies; and our supposedly natural enemies, the right wing establishment, became our allies. Or at least, so it appeared. Let me give you some more political observations.<\/p>\n
In June of 1997, I was a guest on Kweisi Mfume\u2019s Baltimore-based TV talkshow, The Bottom Line<\/i>. I substituted for Susan Graham, the head of Project RACE<\/a>, who asked me to take her place on the show. As previously established, I\u2019m a feisty fellow, so not long after taping began, I got involved in a somewhat heated exchange, not with Mfume, who was on his best behavior throughout the show, but with an audience member. She raised the Republican specter with me by saying, in reference to H.R. 830, \u201cThe people behind it want to gut the enforcement of civil rights laws and that\u2019s what\u2019s behind the issue.\u201d She also said, \u201cWhen you have a conservative Republican sponsoring this kind of bill, you have to think twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
I replied that I thought hers was a mischaracterization, saying quite candidly, \u201cYou\u2019re defining this in political terms.\u201d Let\u2019s stop there a moment. Because that is, perhaps, the greatest irony of the debate that swirled around the establishment of a multiracial category. You see, as hard as it was for others to understand, and as difficult as it may be for some of you to realize even now, the quest for a multiracial identifier was, for me and many others, NEVER political in nature.<\/p>\n
This was and is an identity issue, pure-and-simple. We just wanted the ability to answer truthfully the question being proposed: what is your race? To do so required an option or options not available at the time.<\/p>\n
I felt a tremendous affinity for the plight of multiracials wanting to self-identify. Not just because my son is multiracial, but because for all practical purposes, I am multiracial, meaning I draw from eclectic sources to be who I am. I may appear to be one thing physically, but there are plenty of other cultures swirling around inside me. At the very least, I\u2019m multicultural. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I testified before Congress in 1997<\/a>, on behalf of a multiracial category. Although I had given a speech<\/a> at the 1996 Multiracial Solidarity March<\/a> on the Mall in Washington<\/a>, after being invited to participate by Charles Byrd; when I showed up to testify alongside Ramona Douglass of the Association of Multiethnic Americans (\u201cAMEA\u201d)<\/a> and the aforementioned Susan Graham, I was met with some skepticism. The two of them, who were getting along well at the time, wanted to know how I had secured a spot to testify, since they had hoped to include some other, higher profile, more established representative from the movement. (I think it may have been Maria Root.)<\/p>\n
We were at lunch, and they asked me directly, how had I gotten a slot on their panel? I declined to say precisely how I had aced out a member of their emerging multiracial political establishment. I just said I was testifying because \u201cI asked politely.\u201d Well, that was the truth! Although I can\u2019t help but think they assumed I was some kind of a Republican spy or operative placed by Stephen Horn, the Republican congressman in charge of the congressional subcommittee overseeing the debate on the multiracial category.<\/p>\n
Well, up until now, I\u2019ve never publicly revealed how I got on that panel. Would you like to know? Okay, when I was in college at Cal State, Long Beach, I was a member of an honor society called the Mortar Board. One of the community service jobs we performed for the Mortar Board was to help the university president and his wife host a reception being held at their house. And you\u2019ll never guess who the president of Cal State, Long Beach was back then. Stephen Horn, the same guy who would end up being a Congressman years later. Life is miraculous, isn\u2019t it? Praise God.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s how I got on the panel. Just a polite letter reminding him of our past encounter, and requesting consideration to be included in the congressional debate. I wasn\u2019t a Republican then or now. And his staffer never asked if I was. He screened me to be sure I was presentable and not a nut, I guess, and then I was on board. Because I had something relevant to add. And what was that? Let me give you a quote from my testimony\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cNo organization or individual has the moral authority to impose racial patriotism over others. Some of our opponents appear to have commissioned themselves as members of a \u2018racial border patrol.\u2019 They dutifully stand guard over America\u2019s imaginary borders between the races, scanning the horizon for \u2018illegal racial immigrants.\u2019 And when they see one, they swoop down with all their might and unrighteous indignation. Well, it is sometimes said that \u2018the truth shall set you free.\u2019 If our opponents are truly interested in freedom, then why are they afraid of the truth?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Okay, let\u2019s move on from dealing with externals and talk about some of the internal political and philosophical struggles that have occurred within the Multiracial Movement. Hopefully, you all know who the key players have been.<\/p>\n
Essentially, there were and are three factions: Susan Graham and her Project Race<\/a> followers; Ramona Douglass and the Association of Multiethnic Americans<\/a> coalition; and, God bless him, Internet publisher Charles Byrd with his loose band of racial iconoclasts. (You can count me among these radicals, if you\u2019re looking for some place to pigeonhole me.)<\/p>\n
Susan\u2019s efforts were initially at the local level, where her organization was successful in establishing some versions of a multiracial category in several states. Ramona, working with Carlos Fernandez, was able to establish herself as an official representative serving on a Census planning committee. It should also be said that Susan and Ramona, for a time, worked together tirelessly to lobby Congress and other political powers-that-be on behalf of a multiracial category. Although it should be acknowledged that the AMEA group and Project RACE ended up not agreeing on a choice of format and wording, to include, believe it or not, the term \u201cmultiracial.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Charles Byrd, editor of the cyberzine Interracial Voice<\/i>, became a very visible spokesperson on behalf of multiracials. As an aside, the most exciting moment for me during this period was when Charles appeared on the nationally televised PBS program, The NewsHour<\/i><\/a>, making his case for multiracial recognition. Man, that was great! I even gave him one of my ties to wear. Every time I watch a tape of the show and see that tie, I chuckle. It\u2019s like an inside joke, you know?<\/p>\n
Okay, so for a limited time I was fortunate to be associated with this grand triad. My inclination, at least initially, was to remain independent and non-aligned, as is my nature. I had extensive interactions with all of them. But let me assure you, the content of the e-mails that used to fly among us serves as a telling reminder of the political and philosophical conflicts apparently inherent in this issue. In other words, many of the battles that were going on outside the movement were also going on internally, as some of us were being pulled and pushed among opposing camps or positions of interest.<\/p>\n