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"God is still making the American"
(--Israel Zangwill)
America has long been labeled "the melting pot" of culture, but despite this dissolution of cultural boundaries, Americans still struggle with erasing those lines drawn by race. I propose that the most effective and just way to end this struggle would be to adopt a color-blind governmental policy, rather than one that is color-conscious.
First of all, I must define what I mean when I speak of "race", "color-blind", and "color-conscious". Race, according to Omi and Winant, in their article, Racial Formation, define race as a "concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies." They go on to point out that there is no biological basis for this distinction, nor is it precise in distinguishing between races. However, despite the ambiguous nature of racial classification, Omi and Winant label it as a necessary and interminable fundamental basis of social structure. (Omi and Winant: 55)
"Color-blind" is defined as a law or policy that considers race to be a non-influence. It does not assume race to be nonexistent, merely that race is not a determining factor in the equation. "Color consciousness" encompasses such racially defined programs as affirmative action and other race-conscious government aid programs.
The reason that I favor color-blindness over color consciousness is that, first of all, the racial populace of America is too diverse and integrated to classify into racial groups. Omi and Winant declare race to be an integral part of social order, but I believe that society can exist without racial boundaries. Secondly, I believe that it is culture, rather than race, through which a person finds their identity. In America, we live within one homogenized culture that is a conglomeration of many. Thirdly, I believe that unchosen physical characteristics should not have any generalized social meaning at all. It is not the government's place to segregate people, merely to administer justice.
According to Omi and Winant, "Race is not a morally admissible reason for treating one person differently from another." (Omi and Winant: 51) I believe that racial integration is the first step to a color-blind society, and the best way to become racially integrated is to encourage interracial marriages. The US government does not advocate or disapprove of interracial marriages. People should follow the government's example. Although in some regions of the country, such activity is not completely socially acceptable, much of the country seems indifferent, as the number of biracial offspring in the US quintupled between 1968 and 1988 while the general population grew by only 12% (The Next American Nation 24). With this in mind, one could look at the family tree of almost any US citizen and find that even if s/he is not a visible product of a mixed-racial marriage, his/her ancestors were from a variety of national backgrounds so diverse that each individual can pick what nationality with which to identify at whim. This does not change the color of their skin, merely the heritage with which a person identifies. It is not fair to categorize a person by an attribute with which they do not associate themselves. I, myself, have South African blood in me. My father is a full-blooded German. My mother is Dutch, Portuguese, English, and South African. My great grandparents were first generation Americans whose parents brought them from South Africa during the Boer War. I could choose any one of those races with which to identify, and rightly, I might choose to be African-American because being an African-American woman would gain me the best advantage in life in regards to getting scholarships for school. There are many labeled "we accept applications from everyone, but women and African-Americans are most encouraged to apply". I have been encouraged by many to do so, often by people who have searched through their own family trees to find one distant relative who was Italian or Native American or Asian or African in order to gain some kind of advantage. But as it is something I don't identify with, I don't use it to gain advantage over other Caucasians who do not have African blood. It's a matter of personal identification. I was raised in a predominantly Caucasian home by Quaker-influenced Methodist standards, and though I am non-practicing, I associate myself as such. I am German. I am Methodist. I am me.
The typical American is a mutt, in coarse terms. Anglo- German- Irish- and French-Americans have mingled so much that for the most part, the individual identity has been blurred into a new, generic white American population. This country was developed by North-western Europeans, and the predominant heritage is a mixed-white culture, since it has had more time to develop. However, the "newer" races are fast catching up, and may soon overtake the white race's predominance. Race does exist, it just isn't feasible to categorize people by their racial heritage, in America.
In a society that is predominantly race-conscious, activities normally considered to be separate from the melaninal mark of race such as our various ways of talking, trust in others, taste in music, films, dance and sports, become racially coded and society begins to segregate rather than amalgamate (Omi and Winant 60).
To be fair, if one is to put labels to people, one should not stop with the obvious distinctions of color, as in "African-American", "Asian-American", "Hispanic", "Native-American" and "Non-Hispanic Caucasian". What about "Italian-Americans? Or "Celtic-Americans"? These are easily identifiable "races" lumped into the color code of "Caucasian". With color or "race" as the only designation, one neglects the concepts of nationality that are so important that countries like Bosnia and Serbia are continually in a state of war. This division into races is "an inherently arbitrary activity", as many of these governmentally defined "races" do not take into account the various cultural differences within its classification system—only the physical differences (The Next American Nation 29). As such, these divisions are generic and flawed. This evidences a certain dehumanizing attitude, as well as a system doomed to failure as the rate of intermarriage increases and the lines separating color-classes fade from black and white to gray. How does one classify an Irish-English-African-Iranian-Dutch-German-Chinese-Native American-Hispanic?
The best answer would be to classify such a person, and in fact, all Americans, by his or her personal heritage rather than their ancestral heritage. By this, I mean that immigrants should be classified by their country of birth, whereas their American-born children would be classified as "Americans". (The Next American Nation 29).
This should not be as difficult as many people make it out to be. In speaking with spokespeople for Michigan State University Biracial groups and Multiculturalism awareness groups, this very attitude has been prevalent. One black woman said, "I hate being called 'African-American'. I don't know anything about Africa. I'm an American..." A young man who was easily mistaken for Latino or Spanish descent was actually African and Irish. He spoke of several times when he had been mistaken for being of Mexican, Native American, and even Asian heritage. Sometimes it had helped him, and others, it had hurt him. "I am racial tofu. I absorb whatever race I'm next to," he claimed with a grin. A man of Italian descent from Brooklyn shook his head at this. "I'm from New York. Color has nothing to do with race, there. For us, if we see an Irish and an Italian get married, we're like 'What the hell are you doing?' That's a bi-racial marriage." A second woman, of partial Indian descent, said that she was new to the idea that being biracial was something to promote to other people. She said that she was certainly not Indian, as she went to several meetings and felt unwelcome because her skin was a shade too light and she didn't speak the language. Perhaps, if the government must categorize the American people, it can try to do so with a bit more accuracy and less subjectivity. Where the government goes, the people will follow…
When America was first discovered, there was one "race" of people, the Native American. This race was divided into many cultural sub-groups, or "nations", yet they were considered to be one race. Likewise, when people speak of the colonization of America, they generally refer to "the Europeans" rather than the individual nations of settlers. To lump them together is to ignore important cultural differences such as language, tradition and history. At this point, the US was a communal camping-ground for many separate and segregated cultures. As the country became more populated, became a nation of its own, with an identity of its own (a national language, a mentality) what emerged was not a country of European-Americans and Native-Americans living side by side, but a nation of "Americans." As a nation, and in order to succeed as a nation, the US has, and should have, a cohesive, unifying culture—particular ways of acting and dressing, defining gender identities, conceptions of religious or governmental boundaries, and ways of celebrating births, deaths and holidays. Besides that, Americans are linked by "common knowledge" or bits of American trivia, such as recognition of celebrities, historical events and places, American ideals, popular entertainment and music (The Next American Nation 11). This is the way the US should be, unified by the common practices and beliefs and similarities, rather than categorized by the differences. We are one nation, one melting-pot culture.
"The common culture is not a mere combination of racial or ethnic cultures maintaining their purity despite their proximity, like tubes of paint arrayed side by side. Rather, the colors are smeared and blended together on the palette, beyond any hope of reconstitution in their original hues." (The Next American Nation 11) This common culture is not a white culture, either. It has been shaped predominantly by Native Americans, blacks, Mexicans and Quakers. Added to this base, are the "nice-ified" cultural imports—those aspects of other cultures that are compatible with the pre-existing American culture (The Next American Nation 11). Thus, despite small sects of Americanized "ancestral culture" within the larger "American" culture, the American folkways are homogenous. There are sub-cultures, yes, but none of these sub-cultures are like those that exist in the countries from which they originated. They are time-stopped at the moment the immigrants left their country. They are Americanized to fit more comfortably with the other sub-cultures that exist here. They are a product of, and an integral part of the American lifestyle as a whole.
Being color conscious is treating people differently in ways that profoundly affect their lives because of differences for which they have no responsibility. (Boxill 13) One might argue that the homogeny proposed by color-blind policies would not promise equal treatment, that despite our similarities, people will continue to see the differences. Sharon Rush agrees, in her article "Why Can’t You See Her?" that color-blindness translates into negative color-consciousness that promotes white privilege, whereas if race and color are consciously viewed, they can be valued in ways that promote racial equality (Rush 5).
To this, I reply that bringing attention to differences only enhances them. If such "white-privilege" intolerance should prevail with color-blindness, redress should be on an individual basis. I believe that race is irrelevant, as the problem is of a personalized nature. The absence of racial and cultural labels does not automatically affect the antidiscrimination laws. It merely changes such laws from blanket, collective compensation to victim-specific justice. The reason for this is that such laws do affect race, but also affect gender, age and disability—none of which I believe should have a great social meaning.
To give such immutable characteristics a societal weight is to bring attention to the differences in people that they cannot change. This can have severe negative effects, as evidenced by the effects of general standards of beauty. Young girls who feel that they do not fit this slender "social norm" are often bothered by the fact that they are "unattractive" and may develop anorexia or bulimia in order to try and fit into this "socially acceptable" category. Judith Andre says that if a quality of the body is continually brought to attention, it becomes the center of attention. The body’s owner may become fixated upon this quality to the exclusion of other important activities or dissociate themselves from their body. Either path leads to a hatred of the body and a hatred of themselves which, if induced by societal concepts denotes a "morally defective" society (Andre 17).
"A moral society would appreciate all the ways in which our bodies are ourselves." (Andre 17) By this, I mean that I do not believe that all people should be treated equally, merely that they should not be treated differently as a blanket rule--should not fixate themselves on differentiating characteristics that cannot be changed. People should accept the fact that differences exist and that these differences in no way affect the inherent and governmental rights of people. On an individual basis, each person should be measured by his or her abilities and talents—their merits, but on a societal level, the forty-five year old, short, pot-bellied Caucasian male should be no different from the twenty-six year old, size 3 black woman with a prosthetic arm.
There is no need or real, practical way to define people by their race or color, as American society is so diverse and intermixed as to make such an endeavor almost impossible. If one must find a way to sort people into categories, as such activities seem to amuse the human being, then one should turn to culture. Culture unifies a group of people through various styles of life, forming a much more cohesive grouping than the pigmentation of one’s skin. For Americans, such distinctions are irrelevant because we are all of one culture—that of the "American". Finally, there should be no general classification of people due to inborn physical characteristics on a grand, social scale. Only on an individual, case-by-case basis should race, gender, age or disability become an issue. Perhaps then we can truly say that "all men are created equal". "Men" referring to the human race, of course…
Works Cited
Andre, Judith. "Respect for Bodies". In Mary G Winkler and Letha B Cole eds. The Good Body: Acetism in Contemporary Culture. (New haven: Yale University Press, 1995)
Boxill, Bernard. "The Color-Blind Principle." In Blacks and Societal Justice. (Totowa, NJ: Powman and Allanheld, 1984)
"Multiculturalism" Discussion groups and panels with various members of MSU Racial Awareness Groups. Shaw Hall, 4/15/98
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. "Racial Formation." In Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. (New York: Routledge, 1994 [2nd Edition])
Rush, Sharon E. "Why Can’t You See Her?" AAUW Outlook. (Winter 1998.)
The Next American Nation. Chapters 7 and 8. James Madison 202 Coursepack. (Spring Semester 1998)