The First Blog

A few years ago when Tiger Woods spawned the phrase “Cablinasian” many African Americans became insulted.

“Who does he think he is?  He thinks he can just rename himself?  He’s black just like us; when America sees him they don’t see “cablinasian, they see a black man.”

But to many Asian Americans, Tiger Woods is one of them.   Perhaps he wouldn’t be seen as Asian if he wasn’t the top golfer in America right now, but for now he is claimed by both sides and seen by both sides as more one than the other.

So who can claim Tiger’s racial soul?

I guess not Tiger, since he already stated both and both sides have decided not to listen to him.  I would like to float the idea it’s his parents.

It’s  through our parents where we first learn about the world and then, consequently, ourselves.   In most cultures mothers are the caregivers; they cook the food, take care of the house and most often take the children to their after school activities.  Since mothers spend more time with the children than fathers, they are the ones to guide and discipline.  In these ways the mother passes along her culture to her children. 

Fathers are by no means to be discounted.  Through their interaction and guidance with their children they help influence how the child sees him/herself.

So which way is it?  And why can’t it be both?

“I personally check both boxes,” said Ai-Ling Jamilah Malone in an article in the Oakland Tribune last year.  Malone is a 21-year-old University of California, Berkeley graduate with a Chinese mother and African American father.  She gives an anology of being both when people ask what are you.  She says to think of your sister who, in addtion is also a daughter.

“People ask, do you feel more like a daughter or more like a sister?” Malone explained.

“You say, no, it’s always both. It’s really not that hard a concept to understand.”

Some think that claiming both sides is misguided. 

“It may be in vogue to do that, but all of these are social constructions,” Dr. Larry Davis said to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  Dr. Davis is the director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center on Race and Social Problems. “African-Americans are really exactly that: Africans in America. It is who we are, even if there are some who want to get away from the title by trying to create a new group so as not to suffer negative consequences. It’s been said that this country has biracial children but only black adults.”

“There’s another quote I like to use,” he added. ” ‘Reality will tolerate fantasy but won’t spare it.’ The vast majority of African- Americans, in terms of responses from the larger society, will be perceived in existing categories. When that white cop stops you at 11 o’clock at night, he’s not going to ask you about your ancestry.”

Not every biracial or multiracial child looks black.  From the many blasian children that I have seen, a lot of them look Asian. 

But with appearance aside, who gets to decide whose heritage gets discounted?  I know I would feel hurt if my child came home and said that everything that I was didn’t matter so why wouldn’t my husband feel the same way.

Besides, I would want more for my child than just a racial identity.  Their racial make-up is a part of them, but it shouldn’t define them. 

That idea is one of the underlying notes of Senator Barack Obama’s campaign.  The child of a black African father and white American mother, Obama talks about his dual race in his book “Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”.  Salon writer George Kamiya, who is also biracial (half Japanese/half White) noted how both he and Obama took different roads to come to the same conclusion.

The larger truth is that Obama is carving out a new racial terrain in America. The overall movement of the book (Dreams of My Father) is toward colorblindness. He is a living demonstration of how a universalist ethics can coexist with, and be larger than, a particularist one.

This sentiment may express where a lot of Americans are at this point in time.  Only racialpragmatists hold that the sum of a person is equal to their race.  As a mother I want my children to be seen for who they are.  At first glance who would know that my monoracial daughter was an A-student or my Korean looking son is setting sports records at school?  Looking at them and then assigning them to a racial category doesn’t tell you everything.  We need to see more than just a person’s race to see the individual.

So let Tiger call himself cablinasian if he wants to.  Hopefully by the time his daughter attends high school there will be no little sqaures she has to box herself into.