Backintyme Essays

G. Reginald Daniel, More than Black?: Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2002). Endnotes. Index. Pp. xviii, 258. Cloth $69.50. Paper $22.95. — Book reviewed by Frank W. Sweet. This book review was originally published in Interracial Voice magazine in 2002.

This essay presents little-known, recently uncovered facts about the U.S. Black/White net-worth gap: It has been worsening at an accelerating rate for four decades. It is unrelated to income, lack of generational nest egg, overall inequality, depreciating homes, or single families. It is related to higher interest rates (which are caused by loan higher default rates). It may possibly be related to supporting poor relatives or to some aspect of oppositional culture.

The U.S. federal census was founded to apportion congressional representation among the states. In order to achieve additional goals, it switched in 1850 from recording households in summary, to recording individuals in detail. It became self-administered in 1960 to reduce costs. It has always been a political instrument of the administration in power. Today, the census encourages identity politics and so wavers between the goal of capturing “race” as a form of ethnic self-identity, and the equally desired but conflicting goal of capturing “race” as involuntary physical trait.

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Those words were spoken by a lawyer friend, who disputed my reluctant conclusion that claims by congressmen André Carson of Indiana, Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri and John Lewis of Georgia of being verbally assaulted with ethnic slurs in front of the Capitol on March 20, 2010 are factually inaccurate.

According to President Obama’s (now resigned) “green policy” advisor Van Jones, “Only suburban white kids shoot-up schools.”

These audio lectures were recorded in Second Life at meetings of “The Study of Racialism” discussion group.

The one-drop rule is the U.S. tradition that someone of utterly European appearance who rejects an African-American self-identity is “really Black,” like it or not, due to having “one drop” of known African ancestry, no matter how ancient. The notion labels such people as merely “passing for White.” Recent examples are New York Times critic Anatole Broyard (a real person) and Anthony Hopkins’s character in the film “The Human Stain” (a fictional character). Such people are involuntarily classified as members of the U.S. Black endogamous group by press and public despite their European appearance and their freely chosen non-Black self-identity.

Molecular anthropologists are often asked if DNA markers can tell what “race” you are. The short answer is “no.” Mitochondrial DNA and Y haplogroups can tell from which continent your matrilineal and patrilineal ancestors came. And if you live in the Americas, autosomal mapping can tell what fraction of your ancestors came from Africa as slaves, what fraction came from Europe as colonists, and what fraction were Native Americans. But no DNA can tell your “race.”

The United States is the only nation on earth that has preserved for over three centuries a genetically discontinuous enclave of mostly African ancestry within a larger population of European ancestry. The phenomenon demands study.

The Redbones are a triracial ethnic community centered between the Sabine and Calcasiue rivers in western Louisiana. Like the terms “Melungeon,” “Brass Ankle,” and “Jackson White,” the name “Redbone” originated as an ethnic slur spoken by mainstream society, and the label is still considered an insult by many residents of the region. This report covers the third annual Redbones Heritage Foundation conference, held in Lake Charles, Louisiana, from October 18 through October 20, 2007. It is divided into three sections: continuity and change, interesting presentations, and memorable moments.