Why do people of color want to switch their racial categorization? Dr. Robert H. Hill, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University and chairman of the Census Bureau's Advisory Committee on the African-American Population, explained to The New York Times: "People who have been pushing this want somehow to de-emphasize the racial component, the Black component. They say they are multiracial, which means I'm less Black or somehow I can have a way of not having to check myself as Black."
The larger political Implications of the multicultural designation are profound. How do you determine compliance with affirmative action and equal opportunity programs with goals and timetables, when the size of specific racial groups is uncertain? How do you design legislative districts to reflect multiracial interests and representation? Should multiracial people benefit from minority scholarship programs? Will the multiracials ultimately forte their own Congressional caucus and advocate their own policy agenda distinct from that of Blacks, Latinos and other racialized minorities?
What's in name? Technically, approximately 80 percent of all Black Americans have some mixed ethnic and/or interracial heritage. Perhaps one-half of us have some Native American ancestry. Maybe all African Americans need to check the multiracial box next time they are asked to identify themselves. If we cannot eliminate this dangerous category, at least we can make it absurd and meaningless by all claiming it. Somehow, the Census Bureau needs to be taught that Blackness is not a biological or genetic category. Black culture is a culture, a heritage, a tradition of struggle -- not a racial designation.
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