The Internet Speaks Back: What Advice Would You Give to This Tragic Mulatto Upset at My Critique of CNN's "Black in America" Series?

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Today, I am going to feature a few posts on issues related to mental health, race, and identity. There is a big question looming over some of our many conversations here on We Are Respectable Negroes that I have never engaged in the depth it deserves. Earlier this week, one of our commenters stated the puzzle and question very plainly.

It really is worthy of explicit engagement--and I would like remedy that oversight today

In response to the latest CNN Black in America special, I wrote an essay on how the most recent installment in the series was actually an investigative report about tragic mulattoes--and a spectacle centered on "outing" black folks' private business around issues of "colorism" and racial identity before a national audience.

Given that the black community has still not worked through such issues in private, I suggested that how a major network would make such matters a topic of public discussion was deeply problematic on any number of levels. Alas, as it always does, profit trumps good considerations of empathy or discretion.

As I wrote about here and on the Daily Kos, last Sunday CNN offered up a human zoo of tragic mulattoes who desperately want to "pass," and thus become "white." 

I intentionally used the phrase "tragic mulatto" because while it is a literary trope, said language does a great job of capturing the real human dynamics of how some folks choose to navigate the colorline in this country. 

There are in fact tragic mulattoes in the black community (as well as among other "raced" groups) who will make a "rational" calculation to overly identity with Whiteness (see: Clarence Thomas and Michelle Malkin), and in if possible to "pass" because life as a person of color is just too damn difficult in their eyes. 

They want to seek a novel and special identity as racial middlemen and middle-women. They understand that being a member of the "colored" classes can be both financially lucrative and beneficial in terms of day-to-day life chances. 

The joke is ultimately on them: "multiracial" identity is prefaced on a lie. Why this claim?

There are no "pure" races. Moreover, the multiracial movement in the United States is driven by a desire to be anything other than black, to distance themselves from the Black Freedom Struggle, and by implication, African-Americans (as well as other people of color).

This is especially true for those "mixed race" or "multiracial" folks who are the product of pairings between African Americans and whites--where the former is not present in the lives of their children. As research has suggested, white parents, especially mothers, desperately want to access some type of white privilege for the children they have produced with a person of color.

A broad, humanistic, and all encompassing understanding that black folks in the Americas are for the most part "multiracial" because of chattel slavery's legacy is an obstacle to that vision. Here, the rule of hypo-descent--or what is known in common American speech as the "one drop rule"-- is overturned. For many "multiracials" their location in the social hierarchy is now determined by one's relationship to Whiteness as opposed to their blood ties to Black America. 

I enjoy writing online because the Internet speaks back to you. Abstract sociological concepts become real in such moments. Libraries are great. Journal articles are essential. Empirical research is indispensable.

Having the sociological imagination quite literally email you is priceless.

When these concepts "speak" they can be authentic, i.e. a "real person" who is personally invested in these ideas because they are an actual member of the group being discussed. Online commenters can be frauds too: however, in their performance of a lie, they are revealing how some dimension of the public's collective consciousness understands said idea or concept.

A real tragic mulatto spoke back to me over at the Daily Kos. Out of almost 300 comments, their voice rang clear and true. I would like to share the exchange.

What advice would you have given to this person? Where is their pain coming from? In thinking through race in the post civil rights era and the Age of Obama, are tragic mulattoes, and others who will do anything to distance themselves from people of color, becoming more or less influential, "outing" themselves, and no longer hiding behind a mask of shame? 

A question. How does a person become a trope out of a Harlem Renaissance novel? What happened in "Miss my village's" life to make him act this way? Which parent failed? 

Do enjoy. I have added italics to the sentences which I felt were particularly rich and illustrative.

My POV 

I am mixed race. Any further attempt to define myself as belonging to one group or another simply disrespects 1/2 of my heritage AND defines myself by the ham handed racial groupings of simpletons basking in the warm glow of the comfort of past history. I cant live in the luxury of a past, I am a precursor of the future. Tragic indeed.

According to the "math" presented here I can either be part of "blackness" (because my pigmentation defaults me into this), or "pretend" to belong to whiteness. As someone who was raised entirely in a white community that welcomed and nurtured me, and not by my black father who failed to show up or be around me growing up so he could hang out, may I say I find the "invitation" to be black a day late and a dollar short. Nor do I feel I belong to being white, but I do know in my experience who had my back. And and I bet there are a ton of bi-racial kids being raised by white moms who go through this same thing. I don't think your racial assumptions about how other people should approach this help(nor do the shows you cite), that just my opinion, thanks.

by Miss my village

textbook, can i borrow your story? 

an article on much of what we are talking about here re: tragic mulattoes, identity issues, and why so many try to opt into whiteness because of personal pain or the like.

the mixed race movement is being driven by white mothers who are trying to access white privilege for their children. your example is further proof of what the research suggests on the topic. thanks for sharing.

you are not a precursor of the future. you are part of a long old story. do some research; you may be pleasantly surprised.

by chaunceydevega

NO I do not belong in your predefined box 

I AM NEITHER white nor BLACK. YOU have the problem. MY research is my life, which you want to ever so intellectually suggest I discard in favor of your racial chains. You are simply wrong about me, my experiences and my motivations. The tragedy is the fact you think you speak for "real" biracial people, the "not confused"ones who have "accepted they are essentially black" which is as goddamned foolish as pining to be white. What I am saying is I identify with the way I was RAISED, and ALSO accept and LOVE the color of my skin because I have the ABILITY and right to do BOTH as a BI-racial human. Something you apparently are both jealous and afraid of. There is no "mixed race movement" this theory is being driven by your fear of being lower on the "racial ladder" you so despise, yet need to justify your own antiquated racial views(I don't believe in this ladder, but without it how could YOU write this stupid fucking post?).

White mothers and their biracial children have had to survive and define themselves WITHOUT the help and support of the black (or white) community in many(most?) cases, why does that piss you off/make you tremble so much? I don't need to ask a black person what to make of my bi- racial identity, they cant help me define it EITHER. Sorry you lose. Please just fuck the hell off, I think you want to make a case for the benevolence of the black race toward bi-racial people they helped create which in many cases is NOT REALLY THERE. Color IS only skin deep, after all. No reply needed, its your theories against my reality. Reality wins. Goodbye.

by Miss my village

suck my textbook brown dick. I'm proud of what I am and amused by your inability to accept it.

There are many white people that call me brother that will call you a n-word to your face, why is that?

There are many places I go where because of my mannerisms and speech I am welcome, and you are not. Why is that?

Are all of us deluded, because your theory says no? Jesus fucking christ NO, YOU ARE SIMPLY WRONG!!!!

Please get over your fucking opinion. Go tell bisexual people they must choose to be gay only, or something else constructive. You and I are not the same, we don't share the same racial societal acceptance (except for in the minds of race-fetishists like yourself, which counts for shit except when speaking to the like minded)and I'm neither lost or trying to merge with your identity.

I'm not looking to think or act like you, or any white person for that matter, why does that make you sad? I don't NEED your black culture to love myself. I don't NEED white culture either. Some of us CAN be fine without a definition to fall back on. Jesus Christ are you fucking stupid.

by Miss my village

you need some hugs.

bit more mature in discussing these matters. as I said you are a textbook case of what we are discussing here. please do share more. i am learning a great deal from you.

by chaunceydevega

in what way do you assume I am textbook? 

by Miss my village

These are your words:

"As an antidote to such tragic mulattoes, Soledad O'Brien's Black in America special also profiled some well-adjusted black people who understand that race is a fiction. Despite the "race" of their not black parent, they understand that the one drop rule prevails in the United States, and these individuals gain strength and grounding from their identities as Black Americans."

I submit these people cannot be black and are not black, any more than they can choose to be (tragically) white. Yo posit that only one can be legit. in fact you attempt to belittle my statement of my reality and experience by repeating the word textbook. your simply a black racist, the dark side of the overvalued coin.

by Miss my village

overvalued coin. you are really in self-hating 

tragic mulatto mode now. did you get that out of a Harlem renaissance era novel or something?

by chaunceydevega