Social Scientists Call Them an 'Emerging' Population. Their Ancestry May Be Black-Korean, Anglo-Eskimo, Mexican-Chinese. Some Want the Census Bureau to Recognize a New Racial Category. All Are Struggling to Preserve . . . : A Sense of Identity

By ITABARI NJERI

June 5, 1988 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The man spoke haltingly about his past--Army brat . . . child of a black American soldier and his Korean war bride . . . parents come home, 1955 . . . home . . . Spartanburg, S.C. The town’s people didn’t like it, Kook Dean recalls his father saying. “But the sheriff told people to leave them alone. They weren’t breaking any laws.”

In the racial hierarchy of America, he points out, it was tolerable--if barely--for an Asian and black to be married. The anti-miscegenation laws were aimed at keeping whites and blacks apart, Dean says, his words coming like tugged taffy, until the subject turns to what he wants now: a new, official category of race in America. His deep mumble of a voice becomes clear and swift as he explains the reasons.

A new classification would provide a group identity for multiracial people. Being able to check a box on a form that acknowledged their varied racial and cultural background would end the feeling of isolation that he and others have known, says Dean, who lives in El Sereno. “We have all experienced the same problems of people saying you are not black or white. You have a Spanish surname but you don’t speak Spanish. You’re half Korean, but you don’t know any Korean.”

It’s hard, the 34-year-old mechanical engineer says, to “educate a person of monoracial background” about this issue. They say, “ ‘Well, you have a choice. You can pick black, white or Hispanic. What’s the big deal?’ ”

‘Rejection’ of a Parent

The big deal, he says, is that a mixed-race person is forced to reject half his family. “It’s like having to choose which parent you want to belong to, and you love them both equally.”

Dean is part of what social scientists see as an emerging population of mixed-race Americans and interracial couples with multiracial children who are prepared to organize and lobby for a broadening of the nation’s racial classification system.

This so-called emerging population may be invisible to many Americans because of the nation’s historic refusal to acknowledge the mixed-race background of its citizens--especially those with any African ancestry--and instead to determine race based on physical appearance rather than genetic background.

In fact, almost 80% of the Afro-American population, socially defined as black, has been estimated to be of mixed race, says Molefi Asante, chairman of the African-American studies department at Temple University. Recent studies, Asante says, indicate most of the racial admixture among so-called black Americans is African and Native American. Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, a professor in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley and an expert on mixed-race children, points out that about 30% of the Afro-American gene pool has been estimated to be European.

Although large numbers of mixed-race Americans have existed for centuries, their numbers have skyrocketed since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 1967.

Upsurge in Interracial Marriages

In 1970, there were 65,000 marriages between blacks and whites in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1986, there were 181,000.

In 1970, there were 310,000 interracial marriages beyond those involving blacks and whites. In 1986, these marriages had more than doubled to 827,000.

As a result, there are an estimated 1 million mixed-race children in America, says UC Berkeley’s Jewelle Taylor Gibbs.

It’s probable that there are twice that many multiracial children, she says. But the exact numbers are difficult to ascertain because the racial classification system used by the census compels people to choose the racial or ethnic group they identify with most. Or, if they insist upon identifying themselves as multiracial, “the race of their mother (prevails),” says Pat Johnson, a demographic statistician for the Census Bureau. “If the mother’s race is not available, then we would take the first of the written entries” that a respondent gives on a census questionnaire.

But all that may change by the 1990 census.

Because of pressure from mixed-race individuals and interracial couples with mixed-race children, the White House Office of Management and Budget, which establishes the criteria for racial classification used by the Census Bureau, is considering a new category of race.

“The point has been made, and it bears some consideration, that if the population of the United States is of mixed racial background and the federal government continues to insist, for statistical and administrative purposes, that everybody be forced into four pure racial categories, the result will be an erroneous picture of the U.S. population,” said an OMB official involved in the new-category decision, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

On Jan. 20 the agency published in the Federal Register a public notice asking for comment on a proposed fifth racial category called “other.”

“By our standards the response we received was large,” the official said. However, instead of adding “other” to the four existing categories--black; white; Asian; and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native--”people recommended multiracial or mixed racial background,” she said.

Public commentary on the original proposal was to end on April 19 but has been extended through July 15 to enable the OMB to evaluate the large number of comments. It could take several years for a decision, which the spokeswoman said she hopes will be reached in time for the 1990 census.

It’s fair to say that the current definitions of race used in the census “provoke laughter for anybody who doesn’t work for the government,” the OMB official said.

A black person, for example, “is a person whose original heritage is among the black racial groups of Africa,” she said. “An American Indian or Alaska Native person has origins in the original people of North America (and must) maintain tribal identification or community recognition.”

Scientific Criticism

She laughs. “What do you do with a native Alaskan who does not maintain affiliation with other Eskimos . . . ?” They’re out of luck, she said.

Like the OMB official, most anthropologists recognize that all racial categories are unscientific, so why compound the problem by adding a new one?

Sociologist and anthropologist Pierre L. Van Den Berghe, for one, thinks it’s a bad idea. “This furthers the inanity of race classification . . . Afro-Americans, so-called, are in fact already mixed-race,” said Van Den Berghe, author of the classic text on race, “Race and Racism,” as well as “South Africa: A Study in Conflict.”

“It boggles my mind that the United States, in the late 20th Century, is (considering) reinventing the nonsense that South Africa invented 300 years ago,” said Van den Berghe, 55, who was born in what was the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) and has been a professor at the University of Washington for 25 years. “It’s very similar to the colored classification in South Africa, which, thank goodness, is being militantly rejected.”

There is no society, Van den Berghe said, “in which there isn’t a collective image of what constitutes the in-group or the we-group. So I think ethnic identity is universal. But racial identity is exceptional,” and a peculiarly Western, especially American, way of thinking, he added.

Nancy Brown has a different perspective. Her background is German-Jewish. Her husband, Roosevelt Brown, a 39-year-old financial services adviser, is an Afro-American. A healthy racial identity is essential for a child’s self-esteem, she believes.

The 35-year-old nurse, mother of two daughters, 8 and 3, measures her words carefully.

“I would like to be able to see a category for multiracial or biracial (people). I don’t think any of us have had the opportunity to think the whole issue through well enough to prepare ourselves for all the ramifications,” she said.

But “to me, as the parent of a biracial child, it’s only fair. I want them to be acknowledged and have a category.” And she doesn’t want them to have to choose one parent over another to do so.

A picture of her two daughters sits on a mantle in the Browns’ Culver City living room. They are smiling, golden brown children who historically would be considered black in America.

They are being raised as Jews.

Southland Support Group

Brown, chairman of Multi-racial Americans of Southern California, a cultural and educational support group for racially and culturally mixed families and individuals, is prepared to cope with whatever identity questions her children may have.

“The No. 1 thing is to talk about it,” she said. “I am telling my kids that they are mixed or biracial. (But) I don’t raise the issue unless it comes up.”

Because her oldest daughter is only 8, “it’s not at the point where I’m going to start talking much about how other people feel and society at large. That is going to come a bit later.” But her daughter has been asked about her racial background.

“In the supermarket or school situation,” she said, a child will ask, “ ‘Why is your mommy light and you’re dark?’ ”

Brown, a petite woman with dark-blond hair, says her daughter answers, “ ‘Because I’m mixed. My dad is black and my mom is white.’ She says it really matter-of-factly and proudly because (she knows) it’s an OK thing to say because we’ve talked about it.”

And in the Browns’ Westside neighborhood “there are lots of other kids with lots of other mixtures and combinations of parents.”

Venice Family

Farther west, in Venice, Maria Forbes, a Mexican-American, sits at home with her husband, Nathan, an Afro-American. She has two mixed-raced children from a previous marriage to another black man. Her husband has one son from a previous marriage to a Jewish-Mexican-American woman. All three children live with them. The couple met in 1978 when they were involved in a community effort to end gang warfare between blacks and Latinos in the Venice area.

Forbes’ daughter, Tina, is 8--the same age as Nancy Brown’s, but her short life has not been as conflict-free. Tina came home one day and asked, “ ‘How come I make love to a black man?’ ” her mother recalled. Tina, nestled between her brother David, 11, and Brandon, 13, explains that someone asked her that question at school. “We got in a big fight,” about what color she is.

When a reporter asked what color she is, she replied, “Black and Mexican.”

After a Mexican-American girl yelled a racial epithet at her on school grounds, “the teacher made the whole class” write an apology, she said.

Another time, she added softly, a girl across the street from her house “called me a black Mexican.”

David looks at her and frowns. “You are.”

Tina says she knows she is; she just didn’t like the way the girl said it.

Brandon, whose mother is Jewish and Mexican-American, says no one calls him names. “Nothing that would get me mad or anything.”

When people ask what he is he tells them, “I’m black and Mexican. I’m mixed.”

“I prefer black,” David said, “because that’s what most people think I am.”

But his birth certificate, like Tina’s, originally said white.

“In 1976, when I had David, I was going to put mixed, Mexican-black,” on his birth records, Forbes said. She was told by hospital authorities, “No. Mexicans are considered in the Caucasian category now. You are either white, black or other.”

“I started a big old mess about that,” said Forbes, who is program coordinator for a drug-abuse unit at Venice’s Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center.

She found she could have the racial classification changed at the Hall of Records and did.

“It’s black now,” she said. Her kids look black, as it is socially defined in America. “They are not going to pass as white as they grow up,” she said.

Differing Orientations

“Brandon’s mother is Jewish-Mexican and she orients him to be white. Here, it’s black. I’ve grown up with blacks most of my life and I identify more with the black than Hispanic.”

Tina used to come home and ask why can’t she have “white colored” hair. “I told her the only way you are going to have blond hair is if you use Miss Clairol.”

Nathan Forbes, a sanitation truck driver and the son of a Baptist minister, agrees that his children will be treated as black because of the way they look, no matter what their genetic background, no matter what racial category the government puts them in.

Still, he likes the idea of a mixed-race designation. “You have too many nationalities intertwined here.” California, in particular, “is the melting pot.”

David, the Forbeses’ 11-year-old, will be attending a private school for gifted children in the fall. “It will be predominantly white,” his mother said, the first time he will be in that kind of racial environment. She asked him how will he define his identity.

Passing for Black

“Mixed,” David said. Minutes earlier he had said he preferred to call himself black.

“Why?” his parents asked at once.

“Because they won’t believe I’m black.

“What will they think you are?” his father prodded gently.

David grunts, “Uh-huh.”

“But you pass for black all the way,” his mother said.

“So it depends on who you are talking to, huh?” his father said.

“Yeah, sometimes black, sometimes mixed-race.”

Maria Forbes says that all her children are still grappling with their identities. “There’s still work to be done.”

Levonne Elder, a psychotherapist, knows the work to be done from a personal and professional perspective. She is ethnically an Afro-American, genetically mixed-race, and phenotypically could pass for white. She created the Center for Interracial Counseling and Psychotherapy in Los Angeles in 1986 and co-founded the Multi-racial Americans of Southern California last year. She knows that many members of that support group favor a multiracial label, but she is ambivalent.

Denying a Part of Self

The “multiracial label can support some people denying a part of who they are,” usually the minority part, held in less esteem by society. “It can be used as an escape . . . another way to perpetuate a color or racial hierarchy. That really scares me,” says Elder, 33.

She is not the first-generation offspring of a mixed marriage, but like many Afro-Americans cites African, Cherokee and European ancestry. For such a population, appearance is a game of genetic roulette.

Her younger brother used to torment her by telling people “me and my father are the only black ones in the family; the rest of them are white.”

In the all-black schools she attended until the seventh grade in Montgomery County, N.C., she was harassed because of her appearance. She recalled how one boy looked into her greenish-gray-blue eyes and said, ‘You have cat eyes.’ I started crying,” she said. “That really hurt me.”

She felt different. “And I didn’t want to feel different.”

“I don’t think my parents had a real positive image of being of mixed heritage,” Elder said.

Discrimination by Blacks

She decided to attend North Carolina Central University, an all-black school, because “I thought I’d find my true identity. I’d never be asked my race again,” she said. But “I got asked more than I ever had in my life and I was confronted with some very unpleasant things.”

It was the early 1970s, the height of the black-pride era, she said. “It was real tough for me being on an all-black campus when light was not in.”

But the turning point came “when I went into a Black Muslim temple with a friend. I was 18 or 19 and the (minister) was up there talking about blue-eyed devils and about how green and blue eyes were very ugly and straight hair is very ugly. . . . And how pale skin or white skin is very bad. I’m sitting there listening to all this and he is describing me.”

She didn’t feel any better, Elder said, when the minister looked out at the audience and said, “You light people out there, don’t worry about your situation cause it’s not your fault. This whiteness was raped into your blood.”

Shaken and Angry

Elder said she “was shaken. But I was angry, too.” That’s when she began to trace her complete racial heritage and acknowledge it.

She admits that she was ignorant about the racial diversity of black Americans growing up because her family never talked about it and, in fact, seemed ashamed of it.

Elder now counsels people with similar problems.

Even those who would like to see an official mixed-race category don’t agree on who it should include.

Though Elder suffered the same type of identity crisis and feelings of isolation that first-generation mixed-race people experience, she shouldn’t be in the category if it becomes a reality, said Kook Dean, the Korean-Afro-American engineer and a member of the Multi-racial Americans of Southern California.

Restricting the mixed-race category to first-generation children of interracial and intercultural marriages would keep it “more distinct,” said Dean, who married the Korean-born sister of a friend and now has a 14-month-old daughter.

“That sounds like a very fine definition of mixed race,” said Carlos Fernandez, president of the San Francisco chapter of I-Pride, Interracial/Intercultural Pride. Formed in 1979, it is the oldest multiracial, multicultural support group in the country. “I don’t see a need for a new category,” said Fernandez, who describes his background as Mexican and Caucasian.

Part of the New World

“It’s I-Pride’s position, and my personal opinion, (to adopt) a laissez faire attitude. We are not in charge of society’s definition of people.”

His group’s major purpose is educational, he said--to make people aware that American society is part of the New World. As such, its people and its culture are a blending of diverse elements, he said.

“It’ll never happen anyway,” said Prof. G. Franklin Edwards, referring to a new racial designation. The Howard University sociologist is the author of studies on color and class among blacks. “All the (social) indicators point in the other direction,” a declining significance of race, he said. “People who argue otherwise (should) be aware of the fact that” they are turning “the clock back at the moment blacks are beginning to be accepted for who they are.”

‘Vicious Cycle’

Van den Berghe added emphatically, “If you create a (new) racial category, you can’t get out of the box. You create a self-perpetuating, vicious cycle (of racism).”

He has long advocated the “deletion of all ethnic and racial categories on any government form. It is unethical for the (government) to ask ethnic or racial questions.”

Asked how that would affect programs such as affirmative action, aimed at mitigating the effects of past racial discrimination, he answered: “No program should be based on race or ethnicity,” Such remedial programs should be based instead, he said, “on class.”