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Illustration by Andrew Plewes, Vancouver. |
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| The "Other" Box
by Phalana Tiller, from the Spring 1997 issue. The knock came early on a lazy suburban Virginia afternoon. A day of reading, snacking and playing with my toddler sister was to be interrupted by the strange and sad weight of the unrelenting presence of race-consciousness in America. The woman at the door was a summer employee in the city's census-taking fleet, and had very little patience for someone like me, who wanted to question the value of the categories one had to choose from on the list of ethnic and racial identifications. The problem lay in the fact that her list offered little or no option for identifying oneself as bi-racial, multi-racial, by language, nationality or by any other non color-specific words. My frustration with these questions and categories, as a person of a multi-ethnic background, was brimming on this day, and I was determined to make a point with the census bureau and defend what I believed was my and my kid sister's right to be counted as what we say we are and not what a seemingly arbitrary system of boxes says we are. I took the young woman to task about her categories. It was clear that she was not happy to have me break her rhythm and to actually have to spend more than sixty seconds at my door. In retrospect it is clear that I chose the wrong place, in the process of a census --the tired and lone laborer--to make any difference in how people are identified. ___________________________________ What was really interesting about the exchange with the census taker was the sense of ire she had about my position. She had made it apparent that she only had categories for "black, hispanic, Asian, white or other" and could not mark more than one of the boxes on the form for each person in a household. Therefore my African mother, my sister and I would all be counted as "black", while my father would be counted as "white". I pointed out that in fact my sister and I were both black and white and that any census which counted my family would have to record this fact accurately. An amazing thing followed. This census taking woman, an apparently African- American woman, began to berate me for "denying" my blackness. She could not tolerate my insistence that we were as much white as black and that if she were to mark the "black" box, she was also obligated to mark the "white" box. I even tried to bargain and offered sarcastically that she might think about marking one of the boxes for the two of us as black and another as white, because in statistical terms we comprised one whole black person and one whole white person. She was not amused. At this point we were well down that ugly road which would leave me annoyed and agitated for the rest of the day, and which periodically haunts me as I negotiate life in America as a multi-national, multi-ethnic woman. There was no real resolution to the argument with the census taker, and I always imagine that even if I had won she could have very well gone down the street and written in whatever she wanted. I spent much of that day pondering what letter I ought to write to the mayor, or the governor, or the president for that matter. The size of the issue grew and grew as I sat in my home and stewed, realizing that the question of "ownership of identity" was really at the heart of my frustration, and no letter of complaint or victory over a census taker would ever really give me or my sister what I think is a basic life right; the right to self defined identity, and ownership of that identity. A recent conversation with a number of coworkers on the question of background and identity, reminded me again that the feeling of frustration with "the boxes" is not mine alone. A colleague whose parents are from the Dominican Republic spoke of the feeling she has when she has to select from the choices given by the boxes, "I know it's important, but at that very moment my gut feeling is resentment." These moments become more complex when put into the context of American social politics and economics. It is true that there is a very important need for more active and real opportunities for equity amongst socio-economic classes and ethno-racial groupings in this country, and in order for these to be efficiently and broadly implemented in the form of various affirmative action programs there is also a need for tracking numbers and groups in a somewhat uniform and consistent manner. This reality is what usually comes up hard against my desire to be labeled as what I say I am. Am I really supporting the system's attempt to self-correct the inequities of American history and race relations by asking for another box to be added, especially one which can only serve to muddy the issue? Am I only throwing a wrench into an already weak and unstable piece of socio-political machinery? The answer remains unclear. There is the pull to be supportive of an effort to improve life for more Americans; on the other hand there is the feeling of dishonesty that comes with accepting labels that one does not believe in or completely own. My colleague explained, " I get annoyed, but I also feel like I have to stand up and give credit, and be counted as one of the good 'hispanics'; I want to give them an example of another one who 'graduated college, who isn't pregnant, etcetera'". Playing the dual role of champion of the race and champion of self certainly complicates the question of ownership of one's identity. It would be unrealistic to deny that there is an external structure which determines how many and what kind of people ought to, or get to attend university or receive government funding and attention. It would also be unrealistic to deny that there is a clear need for this kind of structure. But, it is also important to recognize that within this structure, much of the richness of individual experience and value is lost. People cease being individuals with dynamic and vibrant histories, and become "a good example, a good hispanic". Another box. ___________________________________ In a structure where persons of color have to be aware of the perception of their people as a whole, and have to determine their cultural identity and social persona based on the obligations imposed by this structure, there is little room for further distinguishing between variations of ethnicity. This reality is what adds weight to something which should theoretically be very simple, the subject of identity. The desire to be seen for all that you are, or are not, should seemingly be easily resolved. The decisions one faces about when to flex their self-determining muscles or their group uplifting muscles arise frequently, and are never very easy. Finding opportunities to use one's own language becomes a skill, and for some a survival mechanism. One friend said, "I've had to pick my battles. As long as someone is not offensive then I will accept just about anything they call me, but I will try to infuse them with my language, and I can't really react every time any more because if I did I would be doing battle everyday and I'm not sure that's worth the effort". In a world beyond today's necessary structures it should be simple for someone to respond to a census taker with an answer like, "my mother is Taiwanese-American, my father is Afro-Panamanian, and you can count me as all of those things." One can hope that it will even be expected and appreciated that we would define and describe our background as something more complex than what five boxes can offer. I cannot imagine that in my lifetime a significant change will take place. In a country where illness, illiteracy, poverty and death affect people of color at vastly harsher rates than people of European-American background, and the differences in the experiences of men and women are also clearly unequal, there seems little hope that equity of experience or individual ownership of self-identifying language will be fully realized any time soon. My constant need to see some glimmer of hope or possibility does not allow this daunting reality to be entirely grim, especially when considered with the small victories that do appear from time to time. For example, the application for admission to the University of Virginia now states that students have the option to fill in a blank line describing their ethnic, racial, or national background. The opportunity to fill out at least one form which allows you to use your own words is something few of us have yet enjoyed, and a change like the one in this university's application is one small win in my personal war. Every now and then I think back to the day the census-taker came, and I remember the moment after I closed the door and went back to playing with my sister. It was in that moment that I decided I was right to keep the woman at my door, right for pulling her out of her groove, right for making her pause to think about her boxes. My sister deserves, just as the rest of us deserve, the right to be counted and to speak fully, loudly, and in our own words about who we are.
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