For what has been designated name and clan in the world is indeed a mere name. What has been designated here and there has arisen by common assent. The false view of the ignorant has been latent for a long time. Only the ignorant tell us that one becomes a brahman by birth.'

--Sutta Nipata (III.9), in K.R. Norman's The Rhinoceros Horn and other Early Buddhist Poems.

The American government employs five categories to classify its population: white, black, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaskan native. These are not racial categories in the most traditional sense, but they inevitably become imbued with racial significance. The criterion for inclusion in any one of these is quite arbitrary and ranges from language-culture as in Hispanic, to geography as in Asian-Pacific Islander. The category which is defended as the most traditional example of race -- uniformity in phenotype and in genotype -- is that of white. All others are defined against this purported standard of uniformity and most fall far short.

This is not to say that the white category is racially pure. It is really quite diverse. Probably its most disparate element is the Semitic subcategory. Members of this population may vary from a blond, blue eyed European Jew to a black skinned Yemenite. The Semitic population also includes historically recent mulattos (mixtures of sub-Saharan Africans and Semites) who, because of cultural association, are members of the white category. However, mulattos whose cultural heritage is English are never included in this category. To understand why persons of the same general racial composition are attributed different racial identities it would help to look at the different identities -- cultural and otherwise -- that are subsumed under the major legal categories.

i

Under the SEMITIC subcategory we find a variety of identifiers: Arab, Hebrew, Jewish, Muslim. ARAB refers to a language-culture; it does not refer to race since it excludes Hebrews, a fellow Semitic population. HEBREW is technically an identity of language (and the culture that goes with it). SEMITIC is the racial-ethnic identity; while JEWISH and MUSLIM are religious/ideological identities, technically nonracial/nonethnic.

ARAB and HEBREW are really corresponding terms. However, in the West we are likely to think of Hebrew as more strictly a language. We tend to think of the word Arab as referring to people, giving it overtones of race. This may be because of a certain cultural proximity. Our Christian heritage is a direct offshoot of Judaism. By contrast, we have taken almost nothing from the Arabs and their religion of Islam. But it is also true that during their long sojourn in Europe the Jews largely abandoned Hebrew as a living language. The larger society could not then use it as an identifier. Their Semitic cousins, on the other hand, remaining in their native lands, kept their Arabic language and thus were readily identified as such.

It is also true that Western Jews promote their principal identity as the nonracial one of Judaism. They de-emphasize the racial-ethnic identity of Semite, insisting that once they have renounced Judaism as personal faith there remains no differentiation between themselves and ethnic Europeans.

Of course, we know that anti-Semitism targets this very ethno-racial distinction. The anti-Semite does not believe that renunciation makes a Jew any less a Jew. Historically, the Spanish Inquisition (from the 14th to the 18th centuries) also distrusted the possibility of Jewish renunciation/conversion. Though imposing conversion to Christianity, the Inquisition yet distrusted the Marranos or conversos, who were accused of reverting to Jewish worship in secrecy and consequently persecuted.

Yet in renouncing Judaism as personal faith, modern Jews wish to be acknowledged as purely European, as being completely devoid of a Semitic character. Such a desire is in no way different from the mulatto's rejection of the one-drop rule. Both have a racial-ethnic component that is distinct from the European pool proper. Yet Jews have been able to convince American society that Semitic ancestry does not possess racial essence, as anti-Semitism asserts. Mulattos have received a deaf ear to a similar assertion concerning African ancestry.

ii

HISPANIC is an identity of a language-culture. If the Hispanic world was the prosperous one and north Americans were the ones immigrating to Latin countries, one can be certain that black and white Americans would be given the same cultural-language identifier. They would be left, then, to sort out among themselves ethnic and racial demarcations; just as Anglo-America leaves it up to the Hispanic world to sort out its own racial distinctions. Anglo-America is only concerned with preserving its own racial-cultural purity and does not feel equally obligated to preserve the purity of Spanish heritage.

The cultural identity of Hispanic is thus acquired by default. This does not take away from its positive nature. As a cultural-language identifier it exempts the bearer from the one-drop rule. It is interesting that Americans, of either major race, will acknowledge the negroid features of a Hispanic but refuse to identify this person as black. But a mulatto of English heritage, infinitely less negroid, will be emphatically identified as such. Thus the legal category of Hispanic, comprising such disparate elements, acquires the social reality of race, becoming seamless and impenetrable even to the very educated. Applied to the black legal category, this social reality of race denies the English mulatto's own reality and free will. Yet the only difference between the two categories is in language-culture. Logically, if blacks claim a mulatto because of similar language-culture (as in fact is done), then this person can just as naturally be identified as white, since unmixed whites also share the same language-culture.

As regards Americans, the counterpart to a Hispanic identity would be English or Anglo. Yet blacks, laying claim to English mulattos on the basis of language-culture, define them as racially African. The desire of the mixed race to be identified by cultural-language context is no more irrational than the desire of others to assert a Hispanic identity. The cultural-language context of American mulattos is not by the greatest stretch of the imagination African. The only way one can justify the name African in relation to the mixed race is in the sense of ideology or religious identity, where one's association is a matter of choice. And in fact, by refusing to impose it on Hispanic mulattos, this is what black identity logically is.

Non-English populations present a cultural threat to Anglo-America, and hence must be identified as such. They are thus exempted from the one-drop rule by default. Hispanic mulattos are exempted because of the perceived threat that their allegiance to Hispanic culture holds for Anglo-America. However, if they should lose their Hispanic language and culture, they would become indistinguishable from English mulattos, and would thus be subject to the one-drop rule. This alone is a very strong incentive not to assimilate.

The dilemma for English mulattos is that THEIR sources for a default exemption from the one-drop rule -- language, geographical origins and culture -- are all shared by those who do the defining -- unmixed whites. Because English mulattos cannot be differentiated from unmixed whites by language or culture, the latter must resort to notions of racial essence -- what is more commonly called the one-drop rule -- to maintain an exclusive status for themselves.

Of course, to allot a realistic cultural-language identity to the mixed race would mean that unmixed whites cannot pride themselves as the only inheritors and defenders of English culture and ancestry. But like every thing else, identity is a commodity, and must be fought over. One must remember that the identity shared by all -- the nationalist one of American -- had itself to be fought for. Citizenship was not always a given. But identity is like neighborhoods. Every time there is an encroachment by the less privileged into the neighborhoods of the most privileged, the latter takes flight to preserve its exclusivity. American identity was reluctantly shared. But this simply means that exclusivity will be transferred to another arena. Thus race becomes so important and so exclusive. White racial identity is the last refuge of those who seek privilege based on birthright. And even a mixed-race identity is a threat to this status of exclusivity. A mixed-race identity would mean that others shared whiteness in part. In part. But even this is too much for advocates of birthright privilege.

iii

A WHITE identity is an appeasement of poor whites. With it the most uneducated can feel superior to the most accomplished who lacks it. The possessor can feel that no matter what barriers members of other ethnic groups may cross, his kind (and thus himself in his essence, so the holder of racial identity thinks) has been there first. This may seem a poor substitute for real accomplishment, but it is a great comfort to many.

The most exclusive aspect of whiteness is referred to as Aryan. But what is the origin of this? This word comes from the Indian languages -- the ancient Sanskrit and Pali and their modern offshoot, Hindi. In Sanskrit and Pali it means noble or aristocrat. Understandably so. This was the self-designation of the Caucasian tribes which in the second millennium BCE had invaded northern India from Central Asia. One cannot deny its racial origins, for the invaders meant to distinguish themselves from the dark-complexioned Dravidian natives that they encountered. But it would lose its racial character over time. In Buddhism (the scriptural language of which is Pali, itself an offshoot of Sanskrit) an Aryan is really what we would call a Buddhist, that is, someone who has dedicated himself or herself to this way of life. This word is usually translated as noble. When it is transliterated, the spelling Aryan or Ariyan may be used, the first letter sometimes lowercased or carrying diacritics. After the second world war which brought the Nazis to prominence, transliteration was less politically correct. A similarly related word is swastika. This is from the Sanskrit and means good health or good luck. The favorite symbol of the Nazis, the swastika is also a mainstay of Hindu and Buddhist iconography.

The adoption of these two words has an illuminating history. In the 17th century, British scholars working in India discovered the close relationship between Sanskrit and the European languages. This inevitably led to a search for the reasons why this should be so. The migrations of European tribes were eventually traced from Central Asia to India. This would lead 19th century European racialists (the Compte de Gobineau and his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain) to promote the notion that Europeans were morally superior to other populations and had brought civilization to the rest of the world. The Nazis would seize upon this, adopting a few cultural symbols of the original Aryans.

The appropriation of the word Aryan and the swastika symbol by the Nazis raises some important questions about heritage in general and its defilement; not only the Hindu and Buddhist which were indirectly tainted by the infamy of the Nazis. More closely at home there is the Southern United States and the desire of unmixed whites to preserve their Confederate heritage, something which blacks oppose. A little reflection will reveal another celebrated heritage with a slave history. This is ancient Greece. This was a true slave society. Yet we celebrate it for the democracy that only a very small portion of the population enjoyed. The Southern United States was itself an integral part of a democratic United States. Is Southern heritage defined entirely by its enslavement of blacks? Is there nothing in the Ante-bellum South that an unmixed white person can look to with pride and honor? But is a mixed-race person's heritage defined entirely by its slave portion? The two cannot be separated, not if one believes in principles. Both are tainted by slavery. And consequently, the liberation of one is tied to that of the other. For both, salvation can only come by removing the taint on slavery. Unmixed whites cannot celebrate the positive dimension of the Ante-bellum South without conceding that mulattos can also celebrate their Caucasian heritage.

Some may object to such considerations. But as the old adage goes, knowledge is power. The mulatto experience is not alien to the human condition or impervious to historical precedent. It is to the benefit of the mixed race to see themselves as an integral part of history.

iv

Another pertinent identity is WEST INDIAN. This is most often subsumed under the black legal identifier. It is itself nonracial, being based in geography, history and culture. Like NEW YORK, it was named after an Old World location. The Indies were originally the Far East cultures of India and China. These were at first thought to have been reached by Columbus. When the error was discovered, the New World naturally became the WEST Indies. From the designation for the entire New World, then, this identity has shrunk to its present place in the popular imagination as the identity of a mere portion of the English speaking Caribbean. There is nothing intrinsically derogatory about all this. Yet some negative stereotypes have become attached to it -- lack of education, ill-breeding, indelible blackness. At the same time (for a different set of persons), it can have an aura that is exotically mixed race. The negative stereotype predominates, leading many West Indians (both black and non-black) to distance themselves from it.

Yet as many retain a West Indian identity even after half a lifetime in America and becoming U.S. citizens. Why? The answer is simple enough. They recoil from the option that is given to them. As West Indians, no one imposes racial identity. There is no way that one could leave such freedom for the black ethnic identity that America offers the mixed race. The negative stereotypes of the islands -- lack of education, ill-breeding, indelible blackness -- are very easy to dispel from the vantage point of a West Indian identity. A black American identity is by contrast complete suicide. Nothing of a West Indian's past or heritage, nothing of his or her family experience would be preserved in it.

v

The mixed race wish to distinguish themselves from blacks. What can be the nature of this distinction? We have already noted that it cannot be within the context of language and/or culture as a Hispanic identity is. Or based in geographical origins as Asian identity is. Is it then class, which critics have accused previous generations of confusing with race? If the critics were right, then equally so have unmixed whites confused class with race. For the genetic/racial distinction between unmixed whites and mulattos is no more than that between mulattos and unmixed blacks.

Is the distinction between mulattos and blacks, then, to be found in genetics/race -- like that asserted by unmixed whites against mulattos? One would be prudent to reject this criterion, simply because many if not most of those asserting a black identity are also mulattos. The mixed race cannot morally oppose anyone (as unmixed whites have done), however monoracial their phenotype might be, from identifying wherever they so choose. That would be to deny to others the free will they are claiming for themselves.

Instead, the mixed-race experience is a religious experience in the best sense of the word. It embraces ways of life, shared identities and social forms that are based in freedom of choice. This has a very clear historical precedent in the Indian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. These systems were simply the language of the society's racial experience, what is more commonly referred to as caste. They would not have been subordinated to the larger social reality as they are today. The two would have been equivalent. In other words, these religious realities in their pristine forms were the same as political reality. This is also the case in American history. The United States was founded on a religious vision -- that of the Pilgrims. The later political independence from Britain was just the fruition of the religious divide between the Pilgrims and the larger orthodox British population.

Race is the most intuitive religious experience. Like its more ritualized expressions, it has both positive and negative aspects. To reject it as always negative is the same as rejecting religion as always negative. Irrational, since religion has probably been the single most positive catalyst for civilization. To define the mixed-race experience as fundamentally a religious one is to take a morally and legally defensible position. Morally, because by giving religious status to race one bases it in free will, thus denying any connection between biology and culture. Legally, because in denying the mixed race a legal mixed-race identity, the U.S. government denies them freedom of religious expression, a fundamental principle of the nation's Constitution.

A religious distinction will seem superficial to some. It will just as likely seem too extreme to others. The religious mode can overcome racial distinction as well as establish a distinction more severe than any racial divide. However, even in its most extreme, because its boundaries are formed out of moral principle, it remains porous to race. In the case of the mixed race, the rejection of the one-drop rule determines its boundaries. Conformity to this will permit anyone of whatever race, including black, to be a part of the mixed-race community.

For the government's part, it must refrain from coercing its citizens from identifying against what is essentially their creed. Or conversely, of foisting what is only a creed upon unwilling citizens. There is nothing imperative in a black racial identity based in the rule of hypodescent, not biologically, culturally, or morally. Such an identity is an ideology, of the nature of religion. The government must refrain from second guessing identity choices, however much the subject's phenotype violates conventional notions of category type. This does not require a change in the present five categories of classification, but would not and should not stand in the way of the inclusion of a new multiracial category.

Also by Liam Martin:

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