Interracial-Voice
Guest Editorial

What we're up against:
A rebuttal to Eleanor Holmes-Norton

By Liam Martin

(Post Facto Testimonial To The Subcommittee On Government Management, Information And Technology)

In 1997, three hearings were held (April 23, May 22, and July 25) before a subcommittee of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight for the House of Representatives. The purpose was to consider petitions to revise the system of racial categories which the U.S. Government employs. Of the various testimonials that were given, that of Representative Eleanor Holmes-Norton is clearly the most earnest and complete statement of the opposition to a multiracial identifier. I have set myself the task of rebutting the arguments in the Representative's two speeches. So that the reader may better judge how successful I have been, I have placed the main parts of these two speeches to run side by side with my own rebuttal.


Once we can all identify ourselves any which way we want to, then I want to know who in fact should and who should not be counted when we are enforcing laws that allow affirmative action.

About the only thing that American racism did for us is saying no, you are one or the other. Let us look at societies where that is not the case. South Africa, and the Caribbean. Visit those places. And we have in triplicate what we had duplicate here. Go to Haiti. Go to Jamaica. Go to Brazil.

If you go there, you will find the blacks, those are the darkies. There are those who have escaped being black, because they can now claim something else, and then they (sic) are whites. The only thing worse than what we have in America is that.

So I sit here as a light skin black woman and I sit here to tell you that I am black. That people who are my color in this country will always be treated as black. And calling yourself a multiethnic will get people walking down the street to say you [are] a multiethnic, so I do not regard you as like those blacks that I see on television that steal from people or who murder people, you are multiethnic.

We have got to join together, people of color. We who are Asian, we who are Hispanic. We who are black have got to say look, we are people of color, and we are readily identified. Any discrimination against one of us is discrimination against another...

If you do not do that, you are right now creating a different America. There are going to be whole groups of people who are going to drop out of the black race. That is how pitiful it is going to be, if we go to these various categories. People who do not have any immediate heritage of black and Hispanic, they are going to drop out.

At the last hearing, Mr. Chairman, where I was privileged also to sit, it was not then clear whether the census was going to move us to a new category, a multiracial category. They have come to their senses and understood, it seems to me, the rank confusion that such a category would impose upon the census.

Now they come, apparently, with a set of categories that may pose some of the same difficulties. I have come this morning particularly, to hear about the new proposal to allow people to check multiple boxes. All I can say is watch out. I can't imagine what kind of confusion may come from multiple boxes.

I know this much: Those who come forward wishing a category to recognize their mixed parentage are very sincere, and I very much sympathize with what they are doing. They come forward seeking a real solution to their dilemma. My problem is, I do not believe that solution is found in an official document of the United States.

As to several categories, indeed as to the multi category, I hope we do not now bring down upon us fun and games in the census, as people try to identify themselves in multiple ways and in ludicrous ways. We have to not only ask ourselves what are we after, but how will Americans receive this question.

... the multiethnic question or the multiracial question, not to mention the ability to check off as many boxes as you feel like checking off. This is serious business. There is much at stake here.

I am also interested in finding a way for people of mixed heritage, or at least mixed parentage, if they desire, to indicate that mixed parentage. I don't believe we want to intrude on these categories that we have learned to live with.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me say this: We are not, when we talk about a multiracial category, in this country, only talking about a category. We are talking about not a new category, but a new race. And if you do not believe that this is the case, I invite you to look at the history of the West Indies, of Brazil, and of South America where, indeed, there has long been a multiracial category.

That is not a category. What attaches to that category has been a whole set of distinctions, privileges, benefits, and lack of the same. The last thing we need in this country, given the role race has played, is a new category that develops into a new race.

I ask that we understand that we are not dealing with this unrelated to history, either of our country or the world, and that we not plunge into new racial directions in an official way, without understanding all the implications.

The Representative Eleanor Holmes-Norton and others have made their passionate appeals in opposition to a multiracial identity. Judging from the results, I am forced to look beyond this committee and make my case to the nation at large.

I

Ms. Norton proclaims her racial identity. My first instinct was that this was wholesome. But it turns out her identity is the creation of others. It was constructed from their treatment of herself. She admits as much. And she sees no way out of it. Now, on what basis does she presume that I share her experience and so must have the same identity?

Having one's identity instilled by the fear, hatred and ignorance of strangers, is like having one's children learn about sexual matters on the street. Yet that is exactly what the Representative is offering the mixed race. For those who did not acquire a black identity at home, the Representative's offer is sadly inadequate, especially so when it is meant to replace a mixed-race identity that was acquired in as natural a manner as any other.

Is the Representative a modern-day Pharaoh, that she refuses to let the mixed race go? But they go anyway. Take for instance Ward Connerly of California and his sponsorship of Proposition 209. This ended all affirmative action initiatives for blacks and other minorities. Mr. Connerly imposed his personal experience upon the black community. His lifelong interaction with whites was that of a mixed-race person's. Contrary to what the Representative thinks, it does not take a multiracial identity to differentiate the attitudes of whites toward blacks and the mixed race. But a legally recognized mixed-race identity would have done two things. First, it would have given Mr. Connerly the option of removing himself from the stigma of racial handicap which he has said offended him, without him taking the entire black community along. And secondly, it would have taken away his presumption to speak on behalf of blacks or as a black. The Representative should be aware of the fundamental conflict between not differentiating between blacks and the mixed-race, and preserving her cherished minority entitlements: renaming the mixed-race experience as black will not change it, but merely conceal its erosion of black reality.

I must admit, I was vehemently opposed to Mr. Connerly's program. I thought it was a simple enough matter to exempt oneself from racial handicap. But I was naive about the American reality. I had never seen myself as being injured by history as America says. And so I had never sought out reparations for history's errors. When once it was suggested that I was eligible, I was devastated. I had always seen history as my liberation. I was brought up to find in it my manhood. But America says I am injured by it, even though I do not value what the self-professed victims value, nor do they value what I value. I had thought that I could have one standard for myself and another for others. I had thought that I could live and let live. Yet how can I, when others will not let me live?

I have always thought that if the Democrats were in power when the question of States' rights to own slaves was debated in the last century, that there would never have been a civil war. You see, I have always thought that the fundamental principle of the Democrats was live and let live. The Republicans, on the other hand, I thought that once they get it into their heads that something is right, then they seek to impose it on the nation; they do not recognize a distinction between private and public morality; they do not recognize one standard for the individual and another for the society. Hence the Civil War and the end of slavery. Yet I had always thought that such a position was hypocritical. What is the point of all this?

The Representative gives the reason for denying me my free will as the need to preserve minority entitlements. This requires the collecting of accurate statistics and hence the need to affix me with a label against my wish. But as I have said, I have never wanted or sought out such entitlements. In fact, I never thought that I could justify them for myself. Yet I have passionately defended it for others, defended it for those who themselves passionately seek to deny me freedom of choice.

Such a glaring contradiction in one who always prided himself in his rationality. I took steps to correct my error. I cannot wait for the world to call me by my proper name. I must live my life. There are always options. Though I cannot go to my freedom alone, freedom I will find, even if I have to free the entire society along with myself. So I am now a firm supporter of Ward Connerly's efforts to abolish all considerations of race in school admissions, and government employment and contracts. And I must say, the Republican Party's position is now a valid one to me. If the Representative's reason for imposing herself on me is eliminated, how can she continue to do so? Maybe this will simply flush out the real masterminds behind her and the real reasons. But then I will be further ahead in my struggle, for I would be confronting a greater reality and not mere shadows.

II

The Representative is concerned that those who do not have any immediate links to her heritage will drop out of her race. And why not? What is there so compelling about this heritage that it remains so potent in its faintest traces? Is it gold? Or is it poison? And who is to tell?

What could be the value in preserving an identity where it has lost all basis in reality? And why would anyone insist on deliberately distorting the relationship between name and reality? But who are they trying to fool anyway? It is not their name that they are so in love with, but the contrary reality which their name ferries across to them. They love everything mixed race but the name. Only they have no courage to say so. Yet in refusing to call me by the name I choose for myself, do they think I will answer to the one they foist upon me?

The Representative declares that the only good thing that hatred has produced is the tyranny of the one-drop rule. But not so in my understanding. It was not hatred which spawned the one-drop rule. It was the one-drop rule which spawned hatred. It was to compel samsara's lopsided cartwheel of births that hatred was invented.

The committee and the nation will probably be surprised to hear that I have no quarrel with biological blacks. It is true. There is no need to argue a racial disparity that is infinitely greater than that which unmixed whites claim against mulattos. I know -- the government disclaims any scientific basis for its categories. But it has thereby jumped from the frying pan into the fire. For if not science, then religion; as indeed I have been saying all along. And here the government has even less solid ground to stand on, for it has pledged itself to not favor one creed over another. Yet here it is putting its full weight behind the Representative's racial ideology and discrediting my own.

This nation was founded by those of the Christian faith. But the founding fathers, in their enlightenment, did not see fit to give this faith of their ancestors primacy over any other. As precious as its adherents think it is, they have no right under the laws of this nation to impose it on anyone. Everyone has the legal right to dissent from any and all declarations of absolutes. Everyone has the right to reject medical treatment, even when that treatment claims to give eternal life. So I say here today, that no matter how precious the Representative thinks her hypodescent creed is, she has no right to impose it on anyone else. There is nothing imperative in a black racial identity that is based in the rule of hypodescent, not biologically, not culturally, not morally. Such an identity is an ideology, of the nature of religion. Neither is there anything impervious in a white racial identity that makes it inaccessible to those whom the government does not ascribe it as birthright possession. I bear witness here today that this government stands in violation of its founding principles. History will bear me out that I am being forced by this government to conform to religious dogma against my expressed will.

No. My quarrel is not with blacks. My quarrel is with mulattos -- those light skin blacks -- who are so insecure in the choice they make that they need everyone else's complicity for validation. My quarrel is with those for whom African ancestry is a stain, the indelible mark with which they pollute every other ancestry; the dirty brush with which they purify every other but their own. My quarrel is with the children of samsara who search far and wide to find new crucifixes to adorn their rosary of births.

The Representative invokes an inter-racial front in opposition to hatred. Now the Irish were discriminated against, but she is not asking them to join her resistance movement. The Jews too were discriminated against, but they are not invited. Who created this federation of races, this people-of-color? Did the Asians give their consent? Did the Hispanics? I only hear two races trumping this new league of justice -- one in and one out. All those others who are supposed to make it up, I do not hear them bandying it about. Could it be they are ashamed of it? Could it be they are conscripted against their will? I am not at all convinced that the Chinese relish the association, or the East Indians, or the Hispanics. But if their identities could exist within this anti-discriminatory federation, why could not a multiracial identity? What is there about this identity that would preclude its resisting injustice?

And since when is the Representative's own racial prerogative the criterion of virtue? In taking away my free will, in dispossessing me of myself, doesn't it forfeit whatever virtue it could have claimed? Who is this woman to tell me what words I can use of my own language to define myself? Who is this woman, an avowed alien to my heritage, to disinherit me, to dispossess me of myself and my own? Am I a child to be protected from myself? Am I her child? Where could this self-proclaimed foreigner to English heritage have come upon such arrogance? Do you get the feeling this woman was programmed hundreds of years ago? Do you get the feeling she is a mere mouthpiece for others?

She sits before her hosts and she lets them know that they are evil, even against their will, and she must protect herself from them. And they agree. They agree wholeheartedly. She rallies all the people to her cause, but her rallying only gives strength to her abusers. She reinforces the very thing with which she is hypnotized and in the name of which she has been abused -- the purported exclusiveness of those who can only be white by making others black.

Why must this government be fought tooth and nails, over and over again, for every just thing? Is there a crisis of virtue in this Constitution that it is portioned out so meagerly?

Didn't we rail against the Communists for stifling individual freedoms? Didn't we call them the Evil Empire? Now you sit there and tell me I cannot dissent from this commune of your own making. But I do not need anyone's permission to be what I am; nor to dissent from hypocrisy; from cowardly evasions; from birth-clubs. So here I am once again flouting caste rules. Here I am once again sitting out race games and resisting evil empire. But this I declare is my true nature; in dissension is my home. So it is up to you now to find your birth-nature in me. The world is watching and waiting. It is up to you now to find your black atman in me. History is watching and waiting.

The Representative betrays herself. She does not sympathize with us, as she says, nor does she believe we are sincere. For why would she argue for our illegitimacy?

Does she think that in renaming this heritage she will save it from the evil nature she thinks it to be? Is it knowledge of itself she would protect it from? But in preventing the mixed race from leaving, isn't the good lady taking her fair share of this same heritage?

Who or what gives this woman the right to represent me to the world and to history? Am I a savage? Am I an illiterate that she demands to write my name? Is it only her liberation that is worthy of formal statement and legal protection? In calling me names I do not approve of, doesn't she give me the right to call her names she disapproves of for herself? And can there be any communication if we do not agree on our respective names? Must this good State of ours fall into discord for want of a noun?

The Representative denounces distinctions, privileges and benefits for others, but defends the affirmative action which secures all of these for her own caste. Her logic falls apart; she can barely contain her hatred of non-Hispanic mulattos. Obviously the lines were drawn a long time ago. Obviously she fights a fait accompli. Yet I cannot help wondering why she would respect Hispanic mulattos but seek to demoralize all others. And why would the United States government give such a platform to her demonization of non-Hispanic mulattos? Am I to believe that of all mulattos, those with Hispanic heritage are the only virtuous ones? What laws do they obey, that they are rewarded in perpetuity with the Buddhist practice of anatta? There is no doubt, the Representative holds that most pernicious of prejudices, that mulattos are immoral not for the reasons others are, but because they are mulattos who say they are mulattos.

The Representative claims non-Hispanic mulattos are defined by privilege. But since when is conformity to one's reality a privilege? As I am from the West Indies, I can testify that there I never had racial stigma placed upon me, though it was placed upon others. But so also have most of this committee never had racial stigma placed upon them, at the same time that it was placed on their fellow citizens. But since when is the absence of stigma a privilege? Or is this reserved only for members of the present committee? If the absence of stigma is a privilege, then can stigma be morally imposed. Is this why the Representative would impose her State sponsored atman upon me? But why doesn't she seek to impose it on members of the committee? What law did I break--but not the honorable members -- that she would revoke my practice of anatta? Is there then some deep collusion between these two? And is she simply pulling the wool over my eyes?

I see that the committee proposes that I be allowed to claim as many identities as I wish, though I think the Representative is skeptical and would have this become defunct after the first generation. Clearly she has respect only for monoracial parents, and then only for the unmixed white ones. There can only be one response to all this: I do not live in my parents; my parents live in me. Yet I am not afflicted with multiple personalities. My mixed blood has not confused me. And this old stereotype, raised to State law, will not. I know who I am. And I am one person. And no one will build obsolescence into what I am.

The woman is right about one thing: there is a lot at stake here: our freedom: it is everything: without it we would be slaves to be kicked and whipped by every lowly thing that presumed to call itself master. It is known that an abused child will grow up in turn to abuse. If she is looking for revenge for her own enslavement, she had better look elsewhere: we would not be slaves if the salvation of the world depended on it. But our freedom can in no way be inimical to the world's salvation. For are we not part of humanity? And isn't our freedom the world's freedom? And our enslavement its own enslavement?

We are a community. And one that has become conscious of itself. Refusing to name our reality will not make us go away. Contrary to what the Representative thinks, names come out of reality. Reality does not come out of names; only sorcerers believe that. I remember when not long ago they were complaining that they were an invisible people, how no one would acknowledge them. Now they are determined not to acknowledge us. Surely we are a community more wronged than do we wrong others.

Who is this woman that would take away my free will? Did my parents make a blood pact with her? Did our ancestors? Yet I do not know her from Adam. Does she think that in imposing herself on me, I would comply? That I would see the errors of my way and take up her caste duties? But these I scatter to the winds. Her caste rewards I turn my back upon. Let the caste fall to disrepute. Let it fall into disrepair and disarray. Let it sunder like the dark skies of a thunderstorm.

Some will say it is all too harsh. But others will know it is a mild antidote to the great presumption it is meant to cure. Though for ages we were voiceless, their abhorrence still consumed them. They demonized our silent dissension. But it was never a stain if for fear of persecution one pursued a way of life in secret. Though yet it was never a virtue to acknowledge what does not exist. That is history, for those who know. It was never a blot to have a way of life that differed from siblings. Such is the vein of true piety; it will bear what it will bear. So now that they have roused this dharma, let them scream their misgivings. Unto them their allegiance. And unto me my own.

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, Article 20, Section 2, states: No one may be compelled to belong to an association. What is this identity but an association? It is not biology. We are asking to be defined by biology because that is what you say you are asking for, and that is what a multiracial category is. I have heard some say that such an identity would give no meaningful information. O, the lengths of illogic to which some will go to preserve the stain of birth. What meaningful information does the identity they wish to retain provide about the mixed race? Not biological or cultural. These are all in fact distorted by the current category. It must be the whereabouts of the atman that they so anxiously need to keep track of. So the question still remains: what is there so compelling about this heritage that it obscures every other even in its faintest traces? Is it gold? Or is it poison? And is the committee answering this question for me?

I recall some very famous words: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. I have duly stated my reasons, here and elsewhere. For it has long become necessary to dissolve this band of slavery that binds to asphyxiation, to revoke this tyranny of names. I am no foreigner looking in on myself. No atman, however tenacious, will claim this Arahant. I arise, freedom secure, in this dharma of the Shakya.


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