Eugene Chen
http://www.ijebu.org/conquerors/eugeneChen/
Several years ago, I met the great-nephew of Eugene Chen (1878-1944). I was the first person he had met who knew who his great-uncle was. Eugene Chen was the personal secretary and advisor of Sun Yet-sen, the founder of Nationalist China. I read about Eugene Chen in World’s Great Men of Color by J.A. Rogers. He was born in Trinidad of Black, Chinese and Spanish ancestry. He had three identities (besides Trinidadian) to choose from. In my lifetime, I have met men and women of similar backgrounds who had migrated to the United States and identified as African Americans. He could also have identified as Hispanic. Instead, he chose to identify with his Chinese ancestry, migrated to China, and helped to make Chinese history. What was his race?
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Jean Toomer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Toomer
Jean Toomer (1894-1967) was a grandson of the Reconstruction-era African American governor of Louisiana, P.B.S. Pinchback. He was of mixed racial and ethnic descent (Dutch, French, Native American, African-American, Welsh, German and Jewish). During his childhood, he attended segregated black schools and segregated white schools. He contributed his novel Cane (and other writings) to the Harlem Renaissance. Ultimately, he abandoned identifying as an African American and lived the last decades of his life, for all practical purposes, as a white man. What was his race?
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Willie Sutton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton
In 1953, a man appeared on a television game show entitled The Name’s the Same. His name was the same name as the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton (1901-1980). The game was for the panel of four celebrities, by asking indirect questions, to figure out what his name was. Everyone involved with the show (and most of the viewers) saw a white man and found out eventually that his name was Willie Sutton. What they didn’t know (and never found out) was that William Sutton was my mother’s Uncle Bill, son of a slave-woman, and proudly (and stubbornly) Black. He was probably the spittin’ image of the damned redneck who had begot him by raping his mother. In every nation on earth but the United States and South Africa under the apartheid regime, he would have been white. What was his race?
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Anatole Broyard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_Broyard
Anatole Broyard (1920-1990) was a writer and a literary critic for The New York Times. He was a Louisiana Creole (of color) who chose to pass for white. After his death, his children were greatly disappointed to find out that the great family secret was merely that they were Black. Most of his associates had known for years, and couldn’t understand why he kept his background a secret. What was his race?
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Donald Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Jones_(actor)
My brown-skinned cousin, Donald Jones (1932-2004), was born African American and died Dutch. He fathered a Dutch son and a French daughter. His grandchildren would probably be regarded as Dutch and French white people, if they migrated to this country. Donald Jones was arguably the most famous entertainer in the Netherlands. He settled there in the 1950s. He was a dancer and an actor. He had a minor role in Murder at 1600 (starring Wesley Snipes), and roles in several Dutch films, mostly during the 1950s. My brother and I did not know he existed until my brother traveled to Amsterdam about twenty-five years ago. Our mother’s sister mentioned him, apparently without realizing that her cousin had become quite successful in his adopted country. To this day, most of our family hasn’t a clue. I think that this young man who wanted to dance professionally did not fit in with his old-fashioned small-town North Carolina family. Apparently, the Dutch thought better of him. What was his race?
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Tiger Woods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Woods
As best I can tell, Tiger Woods (b. 1975) is 25% African American (on his father’s side), 25% Thai (on his mother’s side), 25% Chinese (12.5% from his father and 12.5% from his mother), 12.5% Native American (on his father’s side), and 12.5% Dutch (on his mother’s side). He is only one-fourth African American, but one-half Asian. Based on ancestry alone (which would not be important to the Dutch or most Native Americans), Tiger Woods could be any of those things – African American, Thai, Chinese, Native American, or Dutch. Living in the United States, he is protected by his fame and wealth from being forced to identify as an African American. Any ordinary person with such a background (and brown skin) would find the attempt to identify otherwise a wearying and ultimately futile struggle. African Americans find his unwillingness to identify as an African American irritating. Why? What is his race?
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For over 300 years this nation has defined, and African Americans have accepted, what constitutes a black person: if either of your parents is a black person, then you are a black person.
Every culture has its own way of identifying their own. For example, Arabs define an Arab as someone whose father is an Arab. Such a person is considered 100% Arab, whoever the mother might be.
Only in recent years has it become possible for public figures in the U.S. to identify as biracial or multi-ethnic, if they choose to do so. Many do not. In everyday American life, I have met several individuals with one white and one black parent, every one of whom identifies on a day-to-day basis with African Americans.
If Barack Obama had grown up in England or continental Europe, he could have opted to accept his national identity as his own. This may even be true in Canada. But in the United States, for anyone over 30, people of mixed parentage would exhaust themselves attempting to identify as other than African American (or Hispanic) – unless, of course, they look white.
22 Muharram 1433
December 17, 2011
Which Way Is Up? 