In his essay, “As Black as We Wish to be,” author Thomas Chatterton Williams tries to paint a picture of a world where the sight of interracial families was still considered an oddity and shows how, over the decades, society has slowly became more acceptable towards the idea. He begins the essay briefly discussing the ignorance of people during the late 1980’s while also elaborating what hardships African Americans have dealt with over the past century. He explains that even with the progression of interracial families and equality of African Americans, a new problem has now risen for interracial children of the future. While either being multiracial, African American, or White, what do they decide to identify themselves as? This is the major question that arises throughout Williams’s argument. While Williams’s supports his argument with unreliable environmental evidence, as well with other statistical evidence. His argument is weakened by an abundance of facts, disorganization, and an excessive use of diluted information.
Williams introduces his argument by briefly explaining the ignorance he has dealt with while growing up as an interracial child. Even though he grew up in a time period of unequal rights, he acknowledges in his argument that nowadays “Some of 35 percent of Americans say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race.”(Par 3). While this argument is completely hearsay and very broad, it does
In 1971, William E. Cross, Jr., Ph.D., a Black psychologist and prominent researcher (specializing in Black psychology) developed a framework for assessing how black Americans come to understand what it means to be Black. Dr. Cross introduced his ideologies as the “Nigrescence Model of Racial Identity Development“. He asserts that every black American must undergo a series of identity stages to develop a healthy and balanced understanding of the Black experience and become well-rounded in our global society. This model encompasses five stages of identity development, which Dr. Cross emphasizes, must be performed in order to successfully accomplish this goal.
There was a time when America was segregated; Caucasians and African Americans were forced to attend different restrooms, restaurants, and water fountains. However, the era of segregation has been terminated; now America embraces and appreciates the various cultures and ethnicities that create this melting pot several people call home. Likewise, it is this melting pot, or mosaic, of races that multitudes of individuals have identified themselves with. Thus, race and ethnicity does matter for it portrays vital and crucial roles in the contemporary American society. Furthermore, ethnicity and race brings communities together in unity, determines which traditions and ideals individuals may choose to value, and imposes an impediment for it categorizes humans unjustly.
One of Beverly Tatum's major topics of discussion is racial identity. Racial identity is the meaning each of us has constructed or is constructing about what it means to be a white person or a person of color in a race-conscious society. (Tatum, pp Xvii) She talks about how many parents
In his article, “Children of Interracial Parents Face Special Difficulties”, Frank A. Jones argues that biracial children, especially black males, face difficulties due to their parents raising them based on white parenting standards without considering the way modern society will treat them. Jones describes how biracial children think they are different, which builds up the fear of getting judged and leads to racism. Frank emphasizes the need of not just love and affection in raising a child or more specifically a biracial child but “guidance, discipline, self-perception, and survival perspective” and also the importance of education being a must and not an option. Biracial
Of the four panelists in the C-Span Panel Discussion on “Who is Black” I am going to focus on Tiya Miles and Deborah Grey White’s presentations on the topic. Tiya Miles is professor of African and Native American history at the University of Michigan, and a main point of her presentation is the idea that the African American community and culture share many similarities with the original inhabitants of the Americas. Miles gives detail to the significant historical interactions between Native Americans and the Africans brought to their lands, and how this allowed for the absorption of native culture and ethnicity into the African American population. For Miles, African American identity is fluid, sharing many ethnic, religious, and cultural
Cross’ book Shades of black: diversity in African-American identity (1991) depicts a perceived metamorphous of black identity through five stages of development—his ideologies are now termed as the Nigrescence theory. In simple terms, this philosophy refers to the process of becoming Black. It also demonstrates daily struggles that the black community may have in developing a healthy personal identity. Over the years, many authors attempt to define what the word black means. Eventually, many came to begin using the politically acceptable term widely applied today to regard black people; that word is known as Negroes. As different historical events occurred, one being the black power revolution on the 1970’s the experience called for a fresh definition of the term negro. Blacks or Africans in America began to be more conscious of their identity and more aware of the differences separating them. This is the experience that Cross (1971) illustrates and is primarily referenced in his five-stage progress including: pre-encounter, encounter, immersion/emersion, internalization, and internalization-commitment. This book highlights some very vital topics relating to mental health, which has been carefully disregarded by other researchers. Nonetheless, it has strong affiliations to the black experience and can positively explain a more normal psychological behavior through logical and very thought provoking
In her book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” , Beverly Daniel Tatum, explores the identity of racial development in the United States. She analyzes the definition of racism as well as the development of racial identity. Along with these topics she in turn offers possible solutions to racial problems that plague us today.
The psychological work of both Clarks is focused in the area of racial identity among black youth (Gibbons & Van Nort, 2009, p. 29). They sought to provide evidence of the detrimental effects of a society where social norms are biased toward white culture. Though the Clarks are most widely recognized for their
As a Mexican-American, Du Bois’ quote, “What after all, am I? Am I an American or am I Negro? Can I be both?” (1897) is something I have personally struggled with all my life. This question can be answered in two different time periods. To Du Bois the ideal, what Negroes should strive for, would be to be both. But in his time this was impossible due to institutionalized and taught racism. Today I feel like it is possible to be both; however it is not exactly what I feel Du Bois had in mind. Du Bois argues in his book The Souls of Black Folk, that the gap between being black and American is far too wide. This is not an unjustified view especially in his time period, where laws were set in place purposely to prevent equality of the freedman. But even today, where those laws are no longer in place, a non-white American is too ethnic to be American and is simultaneously too American to be ethnic. Du Bois entertains the idea of a Negro being both black and American but unfortunately his blackness cannot be unseen. However from personal experience, I am convinced that today ethnic Americans have created their own identity where they are not exclusively either, and they are not both, they are their own individual category. Not black or white, or black and white, but grey. In this essay I will explore what race is, whiteness, and blackness. Within the discussion of race, I will
For many parents, it is in their nature to do everything in their ability to protect their children from the peril of the outside world. Most of these parents will go to extreme lengths to ensure that their children are equally and respectably. In the mid-1900`s, it was difficult for many Negro and mixed parents to raise their children with these standards as whites frequently viewed themselves as superior. At times, light-skinned Negros pass as white and raise their children as white. For instance, in the movie Lost Boundaries (1949), the light-skinned parents, Scott and Marcia Carter, raise their children, Shelley and Howie, as white so that the children will be able to reap the benefits of whiteness.
Young’s description of the Obamas as a black family contradicts the images and the stereotypical portrayal of black families. The black family
I recently stumbled upon a short video published by The New York Times in 2008 during the pinnacle of Barack Obama’s presidential run. This video, entitles Being Multiracial in America, featured a group of young, mixed-race College students elated that the United States would potentially elect a man that grew up in a blended culture comparable to their own. There was this conspicuous desire shared among these students to live in a society understanding of the intricacies of one’s racial identity. None of these students wished to identify themselves as only one of their races. They wanted to eliminate this illusion of racial choice. To these young people, one person shouldn’t choose what sole race they are because they exist within this category of “both”. The complexity of their own genetic makeup was something they felt would be eradicated by aligning themselves with only a percentage of themselves. Seeing a man run for president who made it known to the country that his mother was White and his father was Black overjoyed these individuals. There was an astounding sense of hope that Barack Obama provided for this group. Their prospect was that once the people of this nation understood that mixed-raced individuals can acknowledge themselves as such, we would be on our way to eradicating this intense racial divide, leading to so much violence and anger, that exists within our country.
Tatum’s description of the formation of racial identity among children and young adults helps me understand why races self-segregate. She categorizes the steps of the psychological process by which individuals recognize their “place” in society as part of a racial group and seek identity within that racial group, often to the point of conforming to negative stereotypes. This reaffirms racial minorities’ sense of identity and community and the value of their culture even though it differs from “mainstream” (white, middle-class) American culture, or what Delpit would call the culture of power. On the other hand, self-segregation reinforces the notion that races are different and that race is a valid characteristic to use to distinguish between people.
In the article, “Children of Interracial Parents Face Special Difficulties”, Frank A. Jones asserts that a flawed parenting model for biracial children, based on prerogative, can lead to numerous struggles. He claims that the white parents, in general, like to believe that race is not real and thus instill the notion of white privilege in their interracial offspring unknowingly. No matter how much they pretend to not see the color, these children are going to deal with the very social ramification of their race and color, which may ultimately throw them into depression, and even death. Jones strongly endorses that it is of paramount importance for parents to teach such children to navigate through such gray spaces and push them to their highest
Race is a particularly salient socially-constructed identity in American society. To describe race as socially constructed is not to reduce the concept to being “made up”, i.e. fictional; rather, social construction is the intentional assignment of social meaning to some characteristic that carries no intrinsic meaning. The construction of blackness and whiteness occurred in tandem, but blackness was defined in terms of what whiteness is not, while whiteness itself remained undefined in an explicit sense. Instead, whiteness provided the racial standard against which other groups were defined [as inferior] (McDermott & Samson 2005; Swidler 1986, on