When I was in the eighth grade, I sat with the rest of my class preparing to take the state standardized achievement test with pencils sharpened, heart pounding, mind and body tense and ready-to-go. We diligently filled in circles after circles of background information as the teachers mingled around making sure that no one was coloring too far outside the circles. Amid all of the questions that go to studies designed to link performance to television viewing, parental education, and “broken” homes, one seemingly simple item bothered me, and I raised my hand to get my teacher’s help. “Which circle do I mark?” I asked her, because none of the answers seemed to fit. She looked over my shoulder to where my finger was pointing. Caucasian. African American. Native American. Hispanic. Asian. Without pausing for a second, she replied matter-of-factly, “You mark Asian.” “Okay,” I said, and I went on with the test. When I was 13 I accepted the way others categorized me racially. Now I do not.

My mother is from mainland China. Her family escaped the communist takeover in the 1940s and moved to Hong Kong. Later, she came to the United States to go to college, where she met my father. Consequently, I am one of those multiracial kids that resulted from the loosening of racial boundaries during the late 1960s, but my brother and I grew up in a small town in East Tennessee. We were the ethnic oddballs — there were the whites, the blacks, and then there was us.

Society certainly identified us as Chinese kids, which worked to our advantage as well as our disadvantage. Playing on the stereotype of Asian child prodigies, we were always placed in the advanced classes and pushed into concert piano. My elderly neighbors felt sure I would be a gymnast because of my petite frame. Likewise, I was confronted in the coatroom by an older boy who expected me to use kung-fu in retaliation against his physical assault, and an incredulous classmate asked me in all seriousness how Chinese people could tell one another apart — after all, we all look alike.

Sometimes I identify with the Chinese culture and refer to myself as a Chinese American, but just as often, I do not. Sometimes I mark the wrong boxes on tests and job applications concerning the question of race, partly out of fun and partly out of seriousness. Over the years I have marked them all — Caucasian, African American. Native American. Hispanic. Asian. Other. I have taken it as one of my missions to dismantle society’s perceptions of race.

I do not speak Chinese, nor can I read Chinese characters. I was born and raised in America and grew up on pizza and MTV. By the time I was in eighth grade, I wore big hair and blue eye shadow like the other American teenage girls who shopped at the mall and flirted with boys. Growing up where I did, I wasn’t part of a Chinese community and didn’t know any Chinese people outside our immediate family. Why did my teacher tell me to fill in the circle next to Asian on that test?

Ultimately, I have witnessed the multiracial application of the one-drop rule first hand. This rule is arbitrary, racist and irrational, and it’s time society questioned the validity of having such rigid racial classifications at all.

The whole idea of race is a social construction. The term originated in very broad terms in the 16th century to describe large groups of people, and later in the 18th century, scientists attempted to isolate particular differences, such as skin tone and facial characteristics, to distinguish between “races.” Of course, this research was mainly conducted by Caucasians, and their results conveniently managed to justify and support the economics of social class division. Slavery and other forms of inhumane treatment were justified because of racial divisions, and people of other races were even thought to have different blood. Blacks were thought of as a different species altogether, and thus the word mulatto, from the Latin root word mulus meaning mule, demonstrates this line of thinking.

Despite these manufactured divisions between races, people manage to get together and copulate nonetheless. The result of miscegenation is multiracial children, who — like me — blur the clear divisions between races. To maintain order and keep the white majority at the top of the social hierarchy, the one-drop rule was invented.

When we think about it, the entire concept of the one-drop rule makes absolutely no rational sense. If I close my eyes and think about the Chinese blood in my veins flowing somehow separate and apart from my white blood in some sort of biological segregation, I laugh. According to the one-drop rule, the Chinese blood/genes/whatever seem to somehow overpower and thus negate the white blood/genes/
whatever. If I am 50-50 (which is a silly concept itself), why am I more one than the other?

Historically, African Americans have embraced those who have been labeled as “black” even if the racial link is 1/32, even if the racial link is one-drop. So have Asians. So have Native Americans. Because of the cultural acceptance, multiracial individuals fall into thinking they are of the minority race when really they are of no race, at least the way the racial lines are drawn now.

I feel that other multiracial individuals and I are in unique positions to challenge the way people think about race and racial purity. I refuse to play into the one-drop rule. Because it is often hard for people to pinpoint “where I’m from,” I go along with different racial identifications at different times.

Since I have moved to this area, sometimes people assume that I have Cherokee ancestry because of my eyes and cheekbones. When I got my marriage license at the Bryson City courthouse, the choices for race were Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Native American. I laughed and told the receptionist I was none of the above and that she could arbitrarily mark “African American.” When she came back, there was an “H” in the racial box. “What’s this?” I asked. Somewhat embarrassed, she replied, “Hispanic.” I laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, and so did she.

(Esther Godgrey teaches English at Western Carolina University. She can be reached at egodfrey@wcu.edu)

 

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