Michelle Hughes has brown, curly hair that’s fine in texture. Depending on the season, her skin color ranges from a light olive brown to a creamier hue. When she meets someone new, that person often finds a way to ask: “What are you?” (which sounds rude, right?) or “Where are you from?” (which is sort of the same).
She admits she can be a bit of a chameleon, capable of “blending” into several racial or ethnic groups, depending on the neighborhood.
When she’s on Chicago’s South Side, she said, people assume she’s a fair-skinned African-American. In Little Village or Pilsen, she might be considered a Latina. In Little Italy, she could pull off Italian.
Hughes’ mother is white. Her father is African-American. Though her gene combination skews toward her mom’s features, there’s just enough of her dad’s to confuse people. But that confusion has to do with others, not her.
“I have two parents,” said Hughes, 41, an adoption attorney who lives in Wicker Park. “Part of who I am is my mom; part of who I am is my dad.”
Beginning Thursday, Chicago will host a four-day conference titled, “Loving Decision Conference 2007: The Next 40 Years of Multiracial Communities.” Though the event will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia — the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down miscegenation laws in several states, legalizing interracial marriage — it will focus more on the issues affecting the offspring of interracial couples.
Though Hughes is not a proponent of the “tragic mulatto” mythology, she believes issues surrounding identity remain real and complex. Biracial people often are still expected to define themselves singularly, by choosing one part of their ancestry over the other. Interracial parents, though incredibly sensitive to racial matters, may not know how to help their biracial children navigate the best and the worst of both of their worlds.
The conference is designed to address many issues, including transracial adoptions. But it’s also designed to celebrate multiculturalism.
Years ago, the furor over interracial unions and marriages was indeed about the fear of miscegenation. But it also was about what would happen to the offspring of these couples. Some believed biracial children would live a life of isolation, confusion and depression. They would crumble.
Hughes has not crumbled. But some of her experiences have been unique to being biracial. Growing up, she remembers walking into restaurants with her parents and the patrons, black and white, glaring at them.
>> Dawn Turner Trice <<
4 Comments
Sure enough, great article, I will visit this site often. On the question of ‘miscegenation’ I would however argue for the social constructed-ness of racial identities and affirm the point of the article of the complexity thereof. We also know that many of our ‘bruin’ family members have been taken up in the white Afrikaner community, by the stroke of a pen (Population Registration Act). H Heese’s book in the 80′s ‘Groep sonder grense’ and Giliomee on ‘Die Afrikaners’ and recently ‘Nog altyd hier gewees’ also bears this out. The question therefor remains, how do we re-imagine new identities today… Let me use one example: in SA children of ‘mixed’ couples (miscegenation), often don’t understand themselves as ‘Coloureds’( or ‘bruin’)-hence the construction of this identity also relates to our social history and location… Thanks for the site !
Another link for this conversation: http:bruindevelopment.blogspot.com
I have dream that one day we will see each other people rather than in shades of white and/or black.
If kids don’t see or understand themselves as ‘coloured’, I am delighted or it means that colonial slavery and apartheid will no longer define our future meaning that the social, economic and political constructed-ness is being systematically phased out.
We should stop thinking of each other in terms of opposites. Before we are anything, before we are
even born, we are people first.
For me, when someone speak about social history and location, it is akin to speaking about the history of race/discrimination economics.
In my mind I am still trying to figure why it is so important to be white, black or coloured. Being one or the other has it’s own set of advantages, disadvantage and baggage, and frankly I want none of that thinking as it perpetuates slave, colonial and apartheid thinking. We have to free ourselves from mental slavery. A new thinking for a new world.
I would also want us to be at that point- the difficulty however seems to be that we are not. Notions of white-ness and black consciousness still shape (of not determine) the destinies of people. If we follow the links on your site then it proves my point. Secondly, if we go to Facebook and type in Coloured in the search for groups, we will be amazed at the growing salience of Coloured identities, amongst younger people. We cannot live as if it doesn’t exist or as if the colonial legacy is not with us anymore. It seems to me more honest to face up to the colonial legacy and start to own up to the fact that we are all thinking in terms of racial categories (Race, Ryland Fisher) and how we deal with this without the usual stereotypes, oppressive categories and injustice. The question is: does thinking in terms of racial identities simply means, we are racist, colonial and entrapped in mental slavery? How do I communicate to my children the pride of their Griqua, German and Malay heritage without being apologetic or ashamed about it ?
The point of the links on the website is that this discussion about identity and race is raging all around the world.
I think it is wonderful that people are thinking of themselves as people rather that a color, or a racial identity. This does not mean that they are denying our colonial or apartheid history. They are signifying a big up-yours by their behavior and they are not burned by our past.