Focusing on the articles “Internalizing racial identities” and “The Politics of Ethnic Authenticity: Building Native American Identities and Communities,” how does ascribed identity operate on creating a Native ethnic identity? How does internalizing a racial identity “perpetuate the policing of strangers and significant others?” (no quote allowed)

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The politics of ethnic authenticity: building native American identities and communities / Joane Nagel

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R E P R E S E N T A T I O N S O F R A C E A N D
T H E P O L I T I C S O F I D E N T I T Y

9

The Politics of Ethnic Authenticity:
Building Native American Identities

and Communities
Joane Nagel

No one knows for sure how many indigenous
North Americans were present when Colum­
bus landed in 1492, although estimates sug­
gest that numbers were in the several mil­
lions. Over the next 400 years, there was a
dramatic decline in the native population; by
the end of the nineteenth century, the U.S.
Census Bureau counted fewer than 250,000
Native Americans in the United States.1 The
decrease in the number of native people was
accompanied by a marked reduction in the
number of native societies or “tribes.” Dis­
tinct language and dialect communities at the
time of contact were estimated at more than
1,000 (Swanton 1952).2 This number has
dwindled to around 320 Indian groups or
“entities” in the lower 48 states that are offi­
cially recognized by the U.S. Department of
the Interior in the 1990s.3

In spite of these declines, the twentieth
century has seen a remarkable increase in the
American Indian population, from its nadir
of 237,196 in 1900 to 1,874,536 in the 1990
census (Snipp 1989; U.S. Census Bureau
1991). This growth is summarized in Table
9.1. As we can see, native population figures

for the past 90 years represent a reversal of 4
centuries of decline in the North American
Indian population: beginning with fewer
than one half million at the turn of the cen­
tury, climbing back up to nearly 2 million in
1990. Although these trends reflect a tragic
pattern of death and decline, they also reveal
an extraordinary trend toward recovery and
renewal. The twentieth century resurgence of
the American Indian population is a truly re­
markable story of ethnic survival and re­
birth.

Population projections undertaken by the
U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA)
in 1986 suggest that Native American demo­
graphic recovery is far from over. The OTA
projected the American Indian population
for the next century using as a base popula­
tion the number of Indians in 1980 living in
32 states with federal reservations according
to various degrees of native ancestry
(so-called blood quantum). Table 9.2 shows
these projections.

As we can see from Table 9.2, the total in­
crease in the Indian population during the
next century is expected to be twelvefold,

Representations of Race and the Politics of Identity 113

Table 9.1
American Indian Population—1890-1990

Year Number % Change

1890 248,253
1900 237,196 -5

1910 276,927 17

1920 244,437 -13

1930 343,352 40

1940 345,252 1
1950 357,499 4
1960 523,591 46
1970 792,730 51
1980 1,364,033 72
1990 1,873,536 38
Sources: 1890-1970: Russell Thornton, American Indian
Holocaust and Survival (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1987), p. 160; figures for 1980 and 1990 are from
U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of the Census Releases
1990 Census Counts on Specific Racial Croups (Census
Bureau Press Release CB91 -215, Wednesday, June 12,
1991), Table 1.

growing from 1.3 million in 1980 to 15.8 mil­
lion in 2080. What is especially interesting
about these projections is the changing inter­
nal composition of Native America. Snipp
(1989) reported on the projections made by
the OTA using Bureau of Indian Affairs blood
quantum data and taking “into account the
prevalence of racial intermarriage among In­
dians based on data from the 1980 census” (p.
166).

The OTA projection begins in 1980 with
1.1 million individuals with 50 percent or

more Indian ancestry (blood quantum),
120,068 with 25 percent to 49 percent native
blood quantum, and 46,636 with less than 25
percent native ancestry. A century later, the
demographic picture would look very differ­
ent. By 2080, the OTA projects a stable num­
ber of Indians with blood quanta of 50 per­
cent or more (1.3 million in 2080). However,
the OTA predicts a tremendous growth in the
other two categories, with 5.2 million indi­
viduals with blood quanta ranging from 25
percent to 49 percent and 9.3 million native
people with less than one quarter Indian an­
cestry. This population explosion of Indians
of mixed ancestry reduces the percentage of
the native population with 50 percent or
more Indian ancestry from 86.9 percent of
the native population in 1980 to only 8.2 per­
cent of the native population in 2080. Con­
comitantly, the percentage of the Indian pop
ulation with 25 percent to 49 percent blood
quantum rises from 9.5 percent in 1980 to
32.9 percent in 2080, and the percentage of
the Indian population with less than 25 per­
cent blood quantum increases the most, ris­
ing from 3.6 percent of the population in
1980 to 58.9 percent in 2080.

What do these predicted changes in the
ancestry of American Indians mean? This fu­
ture portrait of Native America painted by
the OTA is one of increased racial diversity,
with more and more Native Americans of
mixed Indian/non-Indian ancestry. The im­
plications of this mixing are important for
understanding what it will mean to be an

Table 9.2
Office of Technology Assessment: Indian Population Projections
(1980-2080)

Percent Indian Ance

Year 50% and above 2596-4996

1980 1,125,746(86.9%) 123,068(9.5%) 46,636(3.6%) 1,295,450(100.0%)
2080 1,292,911 (8.2%) 5,187,411 (32.9%) 5,187,411 (58,9%) 15,767,206(100.0%)
Source: C. Matthew Snipp, American Indians: The First of This Land (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988), p. 167.

1 1 4 Multiculturalism in the United States

American Indian in the next century, in par­
ticular in light of contemporary controver­
sies about Indian authenticity and debates
over what constitutes legitimate claims to In­
dian ancestry and group membership.

The puzzle of why the American Indian
population increased so dramatically in the
last decades of the twentieth century and the
implications of the racial diversity of future
generations of Native Americans are two of
the main reasons for my interest in American
Indian history and contemporary political
and social life. For a sociologist, both puzzles
and change pose a challenge. Puzzles are to be
solved, and change is to be understood. My
solution to the rising numbers of American
Indians in the post-Second World War era
can be summarized as a combination of fac­
tors involving the urbanization, education,
and political activism of American Indians,
all of which led to an increased sense of ethnic
pride and thus an increased likelihood of
identifying oneself as “American Indian” (for
a full explanation, see Nagel 1996). My analy­
sis of the implications of past and future ra­
cial diversity among Native Americans is that
Indian ethnicity will be a subject of debate
and controversy for the foreseeable future.
Questions about native ethnic group mem­
bership and who has a right to American In­
dian identity and resources are the focus of
the remainder of this chapter.

American Indian
Ethnic Diversity

Since the 1970s, more than half of all Ameri­
can Indians have lived in cities (Sorkin 1978;
U.S. Census Bureau 1992a, table 44). Al­
though tribal origin and affiliation continue
to have enormous currency among these of­
ten first-generation native urban immi­
grants, demographic differences inevitably
have emerged between urban and reservation
Indians in education, health, income, life­
style, interests, and perspective. These differ­

ences reflect the worldwide impact of ur­
banization on formerly rural populations:
increased income and employment, higher
levels of education, lower rates of fertility,
more intermarriage, and native language
loss.4

Despite a great deal of reservation-urban
circular migration, differences between ur­
ban Indians and those residing on reserva­
tions represents an important ethnic bound­
ary between the two groups, one characterized
by some strain and suspicion. One source of
this tension is the concern of reservation In­
dians that their urban coethnics have lost
touch with reservation needs and concerns
while having disporportionate access to
power and influence in national arenas gov­
erning Indian affairs. In an article tided “So
Who Really Represents Indian Tribes?” one
commentator criticized the prominent role
played by “urban Indians” in federal Indian
policy, arguing that, although educated, ur­
ban Indians are “thoroughly grounded… in
municipal bonds, capital formation, and
other esoteric topics They do not under­
stand the perspective of tribal leaders, or of
Indian people” who must contend with such
reservation problems as health, education,
housing, cultural preservation, environmen­
tal protection, or language preservation
(Chavers 1993:A5).

Urban-reservation differences, although
obviously important, represent but one
source of diversity among a socially, econom­
ically, politically, linguistically, and culturally
plural Native American population. Tribal
distinctions represent an even greater source
of variability. More than 350 Indian tribes
and communities in the lower 48 states are
separately recognized by federal and state au­
thorities.5 Each has its own government, legal
system, justice system, educational system,
and economic, social, and cultural organiza­
tion (for an overview of many tribal political
differences, see O’Brien 1989). These differ­
ences are reinforced by geographic distances
among tribes and the isolation of many res-

Representations of Race and the Politics of Identity 115

ervations. Historical patterns of conflict,
competition, or cooperation also remain a
legacy that shades contemporary intertribal
relations, as does the fact that Indian com­
munities often see one another as competi­
tors for scarce federal funding or federally
regulated resources. Competition can be­
come especially bitter when federally
nonrecognized groups seek access to Indian
resources. Challenges to tribal authenticity
can result.

For instance, in 1979, the Samish and
Snohomish tribes of Puget Sound in Wash­
ington State were judged by the federal gov­
ernment to be “legally extinct” and were ex­
cluded from native access to the region’s
fishing economy. Recognized tribes who had
won rights to half the annual salmon catch in
the landmark federal district court “Boldt”
decision in 1974 opposed the Samish and
Snohomish efforts. “It boils down to trying to
protect tribal fisheries from groups which the
Tulalips [a recognized tribe] view as not gen­
uine Indians” (Egan 1992:8).6 The impor­
tance of resource competition in intertribal
relations can be seen in the situation of the
Lumbees of North Carolina. One of the larg­
est tribes in the 1980 census, numbering
26,631 (U.S. Census Bureau 1989, table 1:26),
the Lumbees have long sought federal recog­
nition, only to receive limited acknowledg­
ment with the proviso that the tribe would re­
ceive no federal services (Blu 1980). There are
many such tribes seeking social and federal
acceptance as legitimate Indian communi­
ties. Their presence represents another level
of complexity in Indian ethnicity.

Debates over Indian Ethnic
Authenticity

Challenges to authenticity can be leveled
against individuals and their claims to ethnic
group membership. For instance, in 1982 I
visited an American Indian7 community cen­
ter in an eastern city. I was greeted by the di­

116 Multiculturalism in the United States

rector, a man wearing jeans and a plaid shirt,
whose dark hair was woven into braids
bound by beaded ties. He told me about the
Indian center’s history and about its current
activities, which were designed to provide a
sense of community for the city’s several
thousand American Indian residents. The
most successful undertaking, he reported,
was a summer camp program, where local In­
dian children from diverse tribal back­
grounds, most of whom had been born and
lived their lives in the city, were sent to spend
2 weeks on his home reservation more than a
thousand miles away to learn about reserva­
tion life and their native heritage. I found the
conversation interesting and informative.
Several months later, while I was visiting a
Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Washing­
ton, DC, the Indian center director’s name
came up in conversation. To my surprise, I
was told matter-of-factly by a person working
there (who identified himself as a member of
a recognized Indian tribe) that the director,
Sam Smith (not his name), was “not really an
Indian.” When I inquired into this statement,
the official said, “Well, maybe his grand­
mother had some Indian blood,” but, he reit­
erated, “Sam Smith is not really an Indian.”

Reading the Indian affairs literature and
listening to native people, the question of
who is really an Indian comes up again and
again. The query is often made in an atmo­
sphere of skepticism and sometimes bitter
contention.8 The question is posed to tribes
as well as to individuals. For instance, in an
“open letter” to the Governor of Georgia,
Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Principal
Chief Wilma Mankiller denounced the state’s
decision to officially recognize two groups
claiming Cherokee ancestry, expressing con­
cern these groups were “using the Cherokee
Nation’s name, history, culture, and reputa­
tion . . . and posing as Indian tribes”
(Mankiller 1993:A4).9 Such concerns often
arise because of the potential loss of scarce
tribal resources to an ever-increasing pool of
collective and individual recipients.

Individual Indian ethnicity is at least as
problematic as that of groups, due to wide
variability in the criteria and standards of
proof of Indian ancestry and Indianness.
Again, the doubts and suspicions seem great­
est when ethnically tied resources are at stake
and when benefits are seen to accrue to indi­
viduals who claim Indian ancestry or special
Indian knowledge. This challenge to authen­
ticity is extended to a wide variety of authors,
artists, scholars, and activists, and individu­
als claiming Indian identity or interests.10
Again, although the debate here focuses on
American Indian ethnic boundaries and is­
sues of authenticity, similar debates can be
found in other ethnic communities (African
Americans, Asians, Latinos, to name a few)
and among other bounded social groups
(age, gender, disabled, veterans). In some of
these cases, the issues do not center so much
on lineage or biology—who is really black or
who is really female; rather, the focus is on
what kind of upbringing, class position, or
life experience qualifies an individual to
speak for or represent the interests of the
group. In other cases, the issues center more
on actual personal characteristics (ability to
speak Spanish or not; having been in combat
or not; degree of disability).” In the case of
American Indians, the authenticity de­
bate often centers on ancestry (see Gates
1991),12 namely, just how much and what
kind of Indian background qualifies individ­
uals or groups to have the rights of American
Indians.

Another source of controversy concerns
how an individual acquires authentic Indian
ethnicity—through self-definition or by the
acknowledgment of others. Again, resources
seem to be a key issue. For instance, at its an­
nual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1993,
the Association of American Indian and
Alaskan Native Professors (AAIANP) issued
a statement on “ethnic fraud,” stressing the
importance of official tribal recognition of
individuals’ Indianness in classifying univer­
sity students and faculty. The statement was

intended to register the organization’s con­
cern about

ethnic fraud and offer recommendations to en­
sure the accuracy of American Indian/Alaska Na­
tive identification in American colleges and
universities… and to affirm and ensure Ameri­
can Indian/Alaska Native identity in the hiring
process. We are asking that colleges and universi­
ties: Require documentation of enrollment in a
state or federally recognized nation/tribe with
preference given to those who meet this criterion
(AAIANP 1993).13

David Cornsilk, assistant director of admis­
sions at Bacone College in Muskogee,
Oklahoma, provided this rationale for such a
policy:

I believe in membership as the foundation of sov­
ereignty. … I believe the authority of the tribe,
the right of the tribe, stems from the group, the
community. … I don’t believe in the right of
self-identification. I believe that’s an assault on
the right of the group. (Reynolds 1993:A3)M

Tim Giago, editor of Indian Country Today
and The Lakota Times, affirmed the tribal
membership approach to establishing Indian
authenticity and underlined the issue of re­
sources in making distinctions between
“real” Indians and others who claim Indian
ancestry.

It was in the 1970s that people claiming to be In­
dian began to take jobs intended for Indians and
to write books claiming to be authorities on Indi­
ans. These instant “wannabes” did us far more
harm than good. Not only did they often give out
misleading information about Indians, they also
took jobs that left many qualified genuine Native
Americans out in the cold. .. . Before you can
truly be considered an Indian you must become
an enrolled member of a tribe. I think most Indi­
ans would agree that this is the only way you can
truly be accepted as Indian. (Giago 1991:3)

Representations of Race and the Politics of Identity 117

Alphonse Ortiz echoed these concerns about
scarce resources allocated to self-identified
recipients:

These are people who have no business soaking
up jobs and grants, people who have made no
claim to being Indian up to their early adult­
hood, and then when there’s something to be
gained they’re opportunists of the rankest
stripe, of the worst order. … We resent these
people who just come in and when the going’s
good skim the riches off the surface. (Reynolds
1993:A1)

Although convincingly argued, this em­
phasis on official enrollment (membership)
in recognized tribes in determining Indian
ethnicity is at odds with the way in which
most Americans (and perhaps most Ameri­
can Indians) acquire their ethnicity. Though
estimates vary, somewhere between two
thirds and one half of American Indians
counted in the 1980 and 1990 census were en­
rolled members of recognized tribes.15 Thus,
the official enrollment rule would throw into
question the ethnicity of a significant propor­
tion of Americans who designated their
“race” as Indian in the U.S. census, not to
mention the millions more who identified an
Indian ethnic ancestry on census forms. This
restrictive approach to constructing Native
American ethnic boundaries is not typical of
strategies used by most ethnic groups in con­
temporary America, who often seek to widen
ethnic self-definitions to compete more ef­
fectively in local, state, and national political
arenas. Indeed, the AAIANP’s reliance on ex­
ternal (tribal) ascription represents a chal­
lenge to the widely held notion in American
society that ethnicity is, at least in part, a pri­
vate, individual choice (a notion that is
shared by the U.S. Census Bureau).

These debates can be trying to the targets
of authenticity inquiries, as critical author
and activist Ward Churchill’s comments re­
veal:

118 Multiculturalism in the United States

I’m forever being asked not only my “tribe,” but
my “percentage of Indian blood.” I’ve given the
matter a lot of thought, and find that I prefer to
make the computation based on all of me rather
than just the fluid coursing through my veins.
Calculated this way, I can report that I am pre­
cisely 52.5 pounds Indian—about 35 pounds
Creek and the remainder Cherokee—88 pounds
Teutonic, 43.5 pounds some sort of English, and
all the rest “undetermined.” Maybe that last part
should just be described as “human.” It all seems
rather silly as a means of assessing who I am,
don’t you think? (Jaimes 1992:123)16

Although many methods of calculating in­
dividual Indian or tribal authenticity are of­
ten ludicrous and sometimes offensive (anal­
yses of urine and earwax, chemical tasting
abilities; Snipp 1989:30-31), unfortunately,
the enterprise is by no means capricious. It
turns out to be deadly serious in the many
cases in which individual and community
life-sustaining resources hang in the balance
as judgments of “real” Indian authenticity are
decided. These cases routinely involve such
important matters as child custody rights,
health benefits, scholarships, legitimate
means of livelihood, land claims, mineral and
resource rights and royalty payments, politi­
cal and criminal jurisdiction, taxation, and
myriad other personal and financial matters.
The truth is embedded in the common socio­
logical fact: Although ethnicity is socially and
politically constructed and is thus arbitrary,
variable, and constantly negotiated, it is no
less real in its consequences.

Changing Definitions
of Indianness

Embedded in many discussions of Indian au­
thenticity and membership regulations is a
question about whether the rules defining
Indianness and tribal membership should be
relaxed or tightened, that is, made more
inclusionary or more exclusionary. For in-

stance, Trosper (1976) described the adop­
tion of tighter, more exclusionary enrollment
rules by the Flathead Tribe of Montana in re­
sponse to pressures to “terminate” the tribe
(i.e., dissolve the federal trust relationship) in
the 1950s. Federal officials charged that Flat­
head’s Salish and Kootenai tribal members
were acculturated and no longer needed fed­
eral services or protection. This prompted a
move by tribal leaders to pursue a kind of eth­
nic purification strategy by adopting a stricter
set of blood quantum rules to designate
membership. Thornton (1987) reported an
opposite, loosening or inclusionary strategy
on the part of some nonreservation-based
groups, mainly in Oklahoma, where groups
such as the Cherokees or Choctaws face less
competition among members for shares of
tribally held or land-based resources (Thorn­
ton 1987). In these instances, inclusion can
have positive political consequences in an
electoral system, because a relatively large
percentage of the Oklahoma population is
American Indian.17

Some critics call for the entire abolish­
ment of ancestry or blood quantum regula­
tion of tribal membership, arguing that such
rules, particularly when applied by the fed­
eral government, tend to heighten tension
among Native Americans, creating disunity
and suspicion. For instance, activist Russell
Means raised questions about the meaning
and legitimacy of ancestry tests of
Indianness:

Our treaties say nothing about your having to be
such-and-such a degree of blood in order to be
covered When the federal government made
its guarantees to our nations in exchange for our
land, it committed to provide certain services to
us as we defined ourselves. As nations, and as a
people. This seems to have been forgotten. Now
we have Indian people who spend most of their
time trying to prevent other Indian people from
being recognized as such, just so that a few more
crumbs—crumbs from the federal table—may
be available to them, personally. I don’t have to

tell you that this isn’t the Indian way of doing
things. The Indian way would be to get together
and demand what is coming to each and every
one of us, instead of trying to cancel each other
out. We are acting like colonized peoples, like
subject peoples. (U.S. Census Bureau 1991:139)

Like Means, StifFarm and Lane (1992)
challenged the assumptions underlying an­
cestry and blood quantum tests of Indianness
and tribal membership, asking whether
American Indians

will continue to allow themselves to be defined
mainly by their colonizers, in exclusively ra­
cial/familial terms (as “tribes”), or whether they
will (re)assume responsibility for advancing the
more general and coherently political definition
of themselves they once held, as nations defining
membership/citizenship in terms of culture, so­
cialization, and commitment to the good of the
group. (P. 45)

They wonder whether American Indian tribes
cannot take seriously their semisovereign sta­
tus with regard to citizenship, bringing “‘out­
siders’ . .. into their membership by way of
marriage, birth, adoption, and naturaliza­
tion” (Stiffarm and Lane 1992:45).

Such a strategy certainly would open the
door to an expansion of Indian ethnic mem­
bership, as well as tribal citizenship, which
might be resisted by Indian communities
faced with distributing already scarce re­
sources and by a federal bureaucracy at­
tempting to keep the lid on or reduce Indian
expenditures.18 However, many tribes may be
forced to come to terms with their own blood
quantum rules in the very near future. The
rate of racial intermarriage for American In­
dians is the highest of all American racial cat­
egories, with fewer than half of American In­
dians marrying other Indians, compared
with racial endogamy rates of 95 percent and
higher for whites, blacks, and Asians (Snipp
1989:157; see also Sandefiir and McKinnell
1986; Thornton, Sandefur, and Snipp 1991).

Representations of Race and the Politics of Identity 119

The consequence of this intermarriage is an
increase in the number of Indian/non-Indian
offspring with ever-diminishing degrees of
Indian ancestry. One result of tribal blood
quantum restrictions, even as low as one
quarter, is that an increasing proportion of
these children will not qualify for tribal
membership even though one or both of
their parents are tribal members, and despite
their having lived on the reservation since
birth.19

Conclusion

As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, the
Native American population is expected to
continue to grow during the next century,
and that growth will produce an increasingly
racially mixed, urban Indian population.
Contemporary tensions between reservation
and urban native communities and current
debates about the rules for determining au­
thentic Indian identity, rights, and tribal
membership have enormous implications for
the descendants of today’s native people. A
case from history might be useful in explor­
ing these implications.

The Yamasees were an indigenous group
living in the southeastern United States at the
time of European contact with North Amer­
ica. They no longer exist as an identifiable
tribe, and few individuals report Yamasee
tribal affiliation.20 The Cherokees, in con­
trast, have several federally recognized,
state-recognized, and nonrecognized com­
munities, and, in the 1980 census, they sur­
passed the historically numerically dominant
Navajo Nation as the most populous tribe in
the United States. Young (1987) noted that
the Cherokees have been described as accul-
turated, of mixed ancestry, and successful at
adopting white economic and political prac­
tices. Young challenged the underlying dis­
paragement of these characteristics: “Chero­
kee people today still have a tribal identity, a
living language, and at least two government

bodies…. That’s more than one can say of the
Yamasee” (p. 81).

It is instructive to keep this comparison in
mind as we contemplate the future demo­
graphic shape of Native America. As we saw
in Table 9.1, the 1980 census reported a 72
percent increase in the number of Americans
who identified their race as “American In­
dian.” The question has arisen: Are the
roughly one half million new Indians in the
1980 census (not to mention the 6 million re­
spondents who reported some degree of In­
dian ancestry; Snipp 1989) really Indians?
Thornton et al. (1990) asked a similar ques­
tion about the contemporary Cherokee pop­
ulation—a group whose numbers have in­
creased dramatically in recent years (more
than 300 percent from 1970 to 1980), in­
creases that account for a good deal of the
growth in the total Indian population.21 His
answer fits our question as well:

Common to all the Cherokees is an identity as
Cherokee. All of the 232,344 individuals de­
scribed here—fully 17 percent of all American
Indians in the United States in 1980, according to
the census definition and resulting enumera­
tion—identified themselves as Cherokee. So they
are. (Thornton et al. 1990:175)

This answer will not be satisfying to those
concerned with Indian racial purity and the
potential cultural change that many fear will
result from the growth and racial mixing of
the Indian population (Deloria 1986:3—4,
7-8). There is no doubt that native popula­
tion growth has mixed consequences for
American Indian ethnic and cultural survival
and change. On the one hand, Indian popula­
tion increases guarantee the demographic
survival of Native American communities
and ethnicity.22 On the other hand are those
pitfalls identified by Ron Andrade (1980), a
former head of the National Congress of
American Indians, who defended tribal mem­
bership restrictions (mainly involving degree
of Indian ancestry) to avoid a loss of tribal re-

120 Multiculturalism in the United States

sources to individuals living off-reservation
and to protect against what he viewed as the
dilution of tribal cultures and traditions
(Andrade 1980:13).23 Yet, as the comparison
of the Yamasees and Cherokees suggests, al­
though there may be social, economic, politi­
cal, and cultural changes caused by Indian
population growth and a relaxation of ethnic
boundaries, the costs these changes incur
may be considerably less than the price of fail­
ing to make them.

Notes
1. Estimates of the number of North Ameri­

can Indians at the time of European contact range
from 18 million (Henry Dobyns 1983) to fewer
than 1 million (Alfred Kroeber 1939).C.Matthew
Snipp (1989) reported that most estimates range
between 2 million and 5 million (p. 10).

2. For two reasons, this is a conservative esti­
mate of the number of precontact tribes in the
lower 48 states. First, the figure is based on coding
procedures that included only separate linguistic
groups and their major dialectic and/or regional
subdivisions. Villages or bands often were quite
autonomous (Driver 1961; Dobyns 1983), but
they were not included as separate tribes in the
coding. Second, Swanton (1952) used the early
1600s (more than a century after first contact) as
his starting point. Many researchers believe that
the first century following contact dramatically al­
tered traditional Indian lifestyles and affected the
viability of many tribes due to the virulence of Old
World diseases that swept across the continent
ahead of the waves of European settlers (Dobyns
1983).

3. In 1988, the U.S. Department of the Inte­
rior listed 309 recognized tribes in the lower 48
states (“Indian Tribal Entities Recognized” 1988).
In 1992, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Division of
Tribal Government Services, identified another 9
recently recognized tribes not appearing on the
1988 list: the Coquille Tribe of Oregon; Kickapoo
Traditional Tribe of Texas; San Juan Paiute Tribe
of Arizona; Ponca Tribe of Nebraska; Scotts Valley

Band of Porno Indians, California; Lytton
Rancheria of California; Guidiville Rancheria of
California; Aroostook Band of Micmac Indians of
Maine; and Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico
Rancheria, California (personal correspondence,
August 3,1992, from Bureau of Indian Affairs).

4. See Snipp (1989) for a survey of rural/ur­
ban, metropolitan/nonmetropolitan, and reser-
vation/nonreservation characteristics in the Amer­
ican Indian population; for a case study of one ur­
ban Indian community, see also Weibel-Orlando
(1991).

5. In addition to the 318 federally recognized
tribes in the lower 48 states, more than a dozen
tribes are recognized by individual states (e.g., the
Shinnecocks of New York and the Schaghticokes
of Connecticut).

6. In an interesting twist in this case, Samish
leaders discovered that Judge Boldt died from Alz­
heimer’s disease in 1984. They believe he was suf­
fering from the disease in 1978, a year before he
declared their tribe to be legally extinct. Other rec­
ognized tribes fear that if the Samish pursue this
issue in court, the important (and unpopular with
non-Indian fishermen) 1974 Boldt decision guar­
anteeing native tribes’ fishing rights also might be
thrown into question. See also Miller 1993).

7. I use the terms “American Indian,” “Native
American,” “Indian,” and “native” interchange­
ably in this chapter. This varying usage is consis­
tent with formal and informal designations of
Americans of indigenous ancestry by themselves
and others, and these terms are used widely and
interchangeably by both native and non-native re­
searchers and writers (see, e.g., Snipp 1993, foot­
note 1).

8. For instance, see the introduction and first
chapter of James Clifton’s edited work The In­
vented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government
Policies (1990), as well as the chapters by some of
his contributors (especially David Henige and
Stephen Feraca) for a particularly virulent chal­
lenge to the ethnic authenticity of a variety of
American Indian individuals and groups; his ear­
lier Being and Becoming Indian (1989) is a some­
what less acrid inquiry into Indian identity using
biographical sketches.

Representations of Race and the Politics of Identity 121

9. Ironically, even the Cherokee Nation itself
has been challenged on occasion because of the
patterns of intermarriage and cultural blending
practiced by many members (see Baird 1990).

10. An interesting exception to this is reflected
in the enthusiasm of Mashantucket Pequot tribal
member Joseph J. Carter’s response to tribal
growth following casino gambling successes. “He
savors the flood of would-be Indians— ‘Hey, ev­
erybody wants to be a Mashantucket”‘ (Clines
1993, p. A18).

11. For an interesting discussion of the emer­
gence of deaf culture and “ethnicity,” with its own
language, culture, outlook, and boundary dis­
putes, see Dolnick (1993).

12. In addition, questions of upbringing,
membership in an Indian community, lifestyle,
and outlook also can arise.

13. The notion of ethnic fraud appears to be
gaining some attention. In an October 1993 con­
ference sponsored by the American Council on
Education in Houston, Jim Larimore (Assistant
Dean and Director of the American Indian Pro­
gram at Stanford University) and Rick Waters (As­
sistant Director of Admissions at the University of
Colorado, Boulder) presented a session titled
“American Indians Speak Out Against Ethnic
Fraud in College Admissions.”The session was de­
signed to “identify the problem and its impact on
the American Indian community… [and to] dis­
cuss effective institutional practices for docu­
menting and monitoring tribal affiliations”
(American Council on Education 1993).

14. These concerns about ethnic fraud parallel
a wider skepticism about ethnic claims in general
(not just those of Native Americans) when rights,
jobs, and resources are at stake. In discussing the
minority status of a particular individual, a fellow
academic once told me, “I don’t know if s/he’s re­
ally a(n) , or has just found a horse to ride to
tenure.”

15. The Indian Health Service conducted a
survey of federally recognized tribes to obtain
tribal enrollment figures in 1986 and counted
746,175 enrolled members in 213 tribes in the
lower 48 states (see Lister 1987). This is a signifi­

cant undercount, because there are more than 350
recognized tribes. However, most of the more siz­
able tribes (e.g., the Navajos and Cherokees of
Oklahoma) were included in the survey. The 1980
and 1990 census figures for American Indians
were 1,364,033 and 1,873,536, respectively (see
U.S. Census Bureau 1992b).

16. Churchill has been singled out for particu­
larly virulent attacks on his ethnic authenticity
(see the series of articles, columns, and letters in
Indian Country Today beginning with the Sep­
tember 8,1993 issue). Partly to defuse the issue of
his ethnicity, in spring 1994, Churchill became an
officially enrolled member of the Keetoowah
Cherokee Tribe (personal communication, Ward
Churchill, May 1994).

17. The proportion of Oklahomans who are
Indian was 12.9 percent in 1990 (U.S. Census Bu­
reau 1991).

18. For instance, in 1986, the Reagan adminis­
tration put forth a proposal to adopt an official
one quarter blood quantum definition of “In­
dian” for the purpose of receiving services from
the Indian Health Service. Tribal organizations,
led by the National Congress of American Indi­
ans, protested and lobbied effectively to stop the
effort. There is no reason to believe that will be the
last such attempt (see Jaimes 1992, p. 133).

19. Despite a growth in the number of Na­
tive Americans of less than one half or one quarter
Indian ancestry, estimates of the total American
Indian population over the next century predict
increases among those whose ancestry is more
than 50 percent native (U.S. OTA 1986).

20. For example, in both published and un­
published lists of tribal affiliations coded from the
1980 census, there were no Yamasees, although I
have seen some native scholars report their ances­
try as Yamasee.

21. The number of Cherokees increased from
1970 to 1980 by 166,194. Although this number is
considerably less than the 571,000 increase in the
total Indian population during the 1970-1980 pe­
riod, Cherokee population growth represents 29.1
percent of the total increase (Thornton, Snipp,
and Breen 1990, appendix).

122 Multiculturalism in the United States

22. Even without massive ethnic conversions
from non-Indian to Indian, Snipp (1989) re­
ported that the OTA’s projections of the American
Indian population from 1980 to 2080 show con­
tinued growth in the Indian population: Those
with 50 percent or more Indian ancestry (“blood”)
are projected to grow slightly during the century
(an increase of about 170,000); those with one
quarter to one half Indian ancestry, to increase
from 123,000 in 1980 to 5.2 million in 2080; those
with less than one quarter Indian ancestry, to in­
crease from 47,000 to 9.3 million; and a total
American Indian population growth from 1.3
million in 1980 to 15.7 million in 2080 is projected
(Snipp 1989, p. 167).

23. Andrade referred to individuals seeking to
profit financially from Indian tribal membership
but not willing to participate in tribal life and res­
ervation development as “Indians of conve­
nience.” In contrast, critics of restrictive tribal en­
rollment criteria point out that tribal councils and
enrolled tribal members also can be seen to profit
personally from their participation in tribal life
and reservation development (M. Annette Jaimes,
personal communication, April 1994).

References
American Council on Education. 1993. Educating

One-Third of a Nation FV: Making Our Reality
Match Our Rhetoric. Washington, DC: American
Council on Education.

Andrade, Ron. 1980. “Are Tribes Too Exclusive?” Ameri­
can Indian Journal IV: 13.

Association of American Indian and Alaskan Native
Professors. 1993. “AANIAP Statement on Ethnic
Fraud.” Press release, June 28, Washington, DC.

Baird, David. 1990. “Are There ‘Real’ Indians in
Oklahoma: Historical Perceptions of the Five Civi­
lized Tribes.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 6:4-23.

Blu, Karen L. 1980. The Lumbee Problem: The Making of
an American Indian People. Cambridge, UK: Cam­
bridge University Press.

Chavers, Dean. 1993. “So Who Really Represents Indian
Tribes?” Indian Country Today, May 19, p. A5.

Clifton, James. 1989. Being and Becoming Indian.
Belmont, CA: Dorsey.

,ed. 1990. The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions
and Government Policies. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishing.

Clines, Francis X. 1993. “With Casino Profits, Indian
Tribes Thrive.” New York Times, January 31, p. A18.

Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1986. “The New Indian Recruits: The
Popularity of Being Indian.” Americans Before Co­
lumbus 14:3-8.

Dobyns, Henry. 1983. Their Number Become Thinned.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Dolnick, Edward. 1993. “Deafness as Culture.” Atlantic,
September, pp. 37-53.

Driver, Harold E. 1961. Indians of North America. Chi­
cago: University of Chicago Press.

Egan, Timothy. 1992. “Indians Become Foes in Bid for
Tribal Rights.” New York Times, September 6, p. 8.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1991. “‘Authenticity,’ or the Les­
son of Little Tree.” New York Times Book Review,
November 24, pp. 1,26-28.

Giago, Tim. 1991. “Big Increases in 1990 Census Not
Necessarily Good for Tribes.” Lakota Times, March
12, p. 3.

“Indian Tribal Entities Recognized and Eligible to Re­
ceive Services from the United States Bureau of In­
dian Affairs.” Fed. Reg. 52829-52834 (1988).

Jaimes, M. Annette. 1992. “Federal Indian Identifica­
tion Policy: A Usurpation of Indigenous Sover­
eignty in North America.” Pp. 123-138 in TheState
of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Re­
sistance, edited by M. Annette Jaimes. Boston:
South End.

Kroeber, Alfred. 1939. “Cultural and Natural Areas of
Native North America.” American Archaeology and
Ethnology. No. 38. Berkeley: University of Califor­
nia Press.

Lister, Edgar. 1987. “Tribal Membership Rates and Re­
quirements.” Washington, DC: U.S. Indian Health
Service. Unpublished table.

Mankiller, Wilma. 1993. “An Open Letter to the Gover­
nor of Georgia.” Indian Country Today, May 26,
p. A4.

Miller, Bruce G. 1993. “The Press, the Boldt Decision,
and Indian-White Relations.” American Indian
Culture and Research Journal 17:75-97.

Nagel, Joane. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Renewal:
Red Power and the Resurgence of Culture and Iden­
tity. New York: Oxford University Press.

O’Brien, Sharon. 1989. American Indian Tribal Govern­
ments. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Representations of Race and the Politics of Identity 123

Reynolds, Jerry. 1993. “Indian Writers: Real or Imag­
ined.” Indian Country Today, September 8, p. Al.

Sandefur, Gary D. and Trudy McKinnell. 1986. “Ameri­
can Indian Intermarriage.” Social Science Research
15:347-71.

Snipp, C. Matthew. 1989. American Indians: The First of
This Land. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

. 1993. “Some Observations about the Racial
Boundaries and the Experiences of American Indi­
ans.” Paper presented at the University of Washing­
ton, Seattle, April.

Sorkin, Alan. 1978. The Urban American Indian.
Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Stiffarm, Lenore A. and Phil Lane, Jr. 1992. “The De­
mography of Native North America: A Question of
American Indian Survival.” Pp. 23-53 in The State
of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Re-
sistance, edited by M. A. Jaimes. Boston: South End.

Swanton, John. 1952. The Indian Tribes of North Amer­
ica. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.

Thornton, Russell. 1987. “Tribal History, Tribal Popula­
tion, and Tribal Membership Requirements.”
(Newberry Library Research Conference Report
No. 8: “Towards a Quantitative Approach to Ameri­
can Indian History”). Chicago: Newberry Library.

Thornton, Russell, Gary D. Sandefur, and C. Matthew
Snipp. 1991. “American Indian Fertility Patterns:
1910 and 1940 to 1980.” American Indian Quarterly
15:359-67.

Thornton, Russell, C. Matthew Snipp, and Nancy Breen.
1990. “Appendix: Cherokees in the 1980 Census.”
Pp. 178-203 in The Cherokees: A Population History,
edited by Russell Thornton. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.

Trosper, Ronald. 1976. “Native American Boundary
Maintenance: The Flathead Indian Reservation,
Montana, 1860-1970.” ErAinicily 3:256-74.

U.S. Census Bureau. 1989. Census of the Population,
Subject Reports, Characteristics of American Indians
by Tribes and Selected Areas: 1980, Vol. 2, Section 1.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

. 1991. “Census Bureau Completes Distribution
of 1990 Redisricting Tabulations to States.” Press
Release CB91-100, March 11.

. 1992a. “Census Bureau Releases 1990 Census
Counts on Specific Racial Groups.” Press Release
CB91-215, June 12.

. 1992b. Census of the Population, General Popu­
lation Characteristics: United States, 1990, PC-1-1.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. 1986. Indian
Health Care. Washington, DC: Government Print­
ing Office.

Weibel-Orlando, Joan. 1991. Indian Country, L.A.:
Maintaining Ethnic Community in Complex Society.
Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Young, Mary. 1987. “Pagans, Converts, and Backsliders,
All: A Secular View of the Metaphysics of In­
dian-White Relations.” Pp. 75-83 in The American
Indian and the Problem of History, edited by C. Mar­
tin. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nagel:

1. Why is there a controversy over who is authen­
tically Native American?

2. Discuss the significance of being defined as a
“true Indian.” What are the benefits and disad­
vantages of doing this successfully? What are
some of the political reasons for altering defi­
nitions of Native-Americanness?

161

5
Internalizing Racial Identities

Some people with racially mixed parentage or heritage experience great
difficulty asserting their preferred racial identities, especially when
others continue to police these preferences and choices

.

How is it that, at
a time of increased freedom of choice, individuals with mixed race
parentage and heritage sometimes reject this opportunity to choose all
races that apply? Why do some invest in the racial hierarchy that divides
yet feel forced to choose “one and only one” race rather than claim the
sum of their parts? Why do some multiracial people buy into the false
notions of racial realness, thereby effectively disqualifying themselves
or believing that they are not “really” the races that they claim? Why do
some multiracial people internalize the racial identities affirmed by
others rather than the ones that they themselves prefer (if and when
differences exist between the two)? When will be the time for
multiracial people to freely choose their preferred racial identities
without contestation? Why do multiracial people border patrol
themselves?

That multiracial individuals support and uphold racial hierarchies
and categories based in part on their own racial ideologies and actions
means they are not immune from developing problematic, prejudicial
ways of thinking and participating in discriminatory action. It may seem
counterintuitive that many multiracial people police racial borders,
including their own. Their borders stand in contrast to the border
blending suggested by statements about multiracial people having “the
best of both worlds.”

One need only look at the ways that multiracial people encounter
borderism from strangers, family members, and/or friends to understand
auto-borderism, or a self-policing, border patrolling. Direct and indirect
lines can be drawn socially between the border patrolling people
encounter in society and their own perpetuation of that practice as
directed toward themselves and others.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
Created from ucsd on 2019-10-10 15:48:51.

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162 The Borders of Race

An observable pattern begins to emerge in which multiracial people
experience resistance or opposition to claiming their preferred identities,
thereby limiting their own choices (and those of others). In this chapter,
I discuss the process expressed by some of my respondents who policed
their own racial identities. I provide some explanations for multiracial
people choosing to patrol, rather than blend, racial borders.

When Multiracial People Border Patrol Their Own Identities

In 1967, the Loving v. Virginia decision removed the ban on interracial
marriages in the U.S. (see Alonso 2000; Noble Maillard and Cuison
Villazor 2012). Ostensibly, the increase in interracial marriages and in
the multiracial population can be attributed directly to this decision, as
well as shifting social norms that accommodates interracial intimacy and
families. What these effects of the Loving decision have revealed, and
concealed at the same time, are the complexity and varied levels of
mixture in interracial marriages and in individuals. That is, that historic
moment, coupled with another (the Multiracial Movement of the late
1990s and early 2000s), amplified attention to the existence of racial
mixture at individual and familial levels (see Dalmage 2004a). This
legislation and the subsequent collective social action of the 90s made
much of the previously “hidden” racial mixtures appear. This
appearance seemed sudden, rather than a historical residue or a pattern
that had been centuries in the making.

While multiracial identities are more easily accommodated in
general, some of the research respondents noted the difficulty in
expressing and having their preferred identities validated. Instead of
being “racial border blenders,” many respondents primarily opted for the
ostensibly easier option: singular racial identities. Based on their
accounts of borders, they felt unable to assert their preferred racial
identities. Instead, they often chose to dissolve their complex, racial
realities into tidy, racial categories. As the earlier chapters (3 and 4)
reveal, asserting a singular racial identity publicly did not always prove
a simple matter. Sometimes, it actually intensified the border patrolling
these multiracial individuals faced.

Due to a lack of information about familial histories and racial
genealogies; encountering invalidation or opposition from others; or,
wanting to evade racial surveillance from others, respondents who
border patrolled themselves seemed to internalize and perpetuate the
policing of strangers and significant others. I acknowledge these
connections between border patrolling from the outside-in, outsiders-

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
Created from ucsd on 2019-10-10 15:48:51.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 163

within, and inside-out, focusing here on the last method of border
patrolling—inside-out.

As discussed in previous chapters, I found that individuals managed
their multiracial identities in many ways. Sometimes they internalized
racial borders, imposing the rules of race and racial identity options on
themselves. The ongoing process of racial socialization and the
persistence of structural racism combined to inform multiracial identity
choices and constraints; many multiracial people described how they
policed their own racial identities. Rather than resist these racial rules
and the racial hierarchy, they sorted themselves into socially appropriate
and positively sanctioned categories. Many chose singular racial
identities in response to these social pressures instead of enjoying “the
best of both worlds.” That is, many multiracial people managed social
pressures surrounding their racial multiplicity by choosing singular
racial identities. In this chapter, I discuss the way that multiracial people
engage in benevolent, beneficiary, and malevolent border patrolling of
their own. I begin with benevolent border patrolling.

Benevolent Border Patrolling: “All of My Life, I Was Socialized
as an African American”

“Black” is the umbrella term for minorities to kind of come together
under because “black,” as it has evolved, does not necessarily just
refer to African Americans. On the other side, when you’re saying that
you’re black, you’re still keeping the dichotomy of black and white,
which aside from not being fair to other groups, I think it’s just not
realistic as well. And it also causes some limiting there as well,
because even though black is an umbrella term for minorities, it’s still
kind of rooted in some notion of an African American identity as well.
(James, a black-identified Black and Native American man)

Throughout the interview, James complicated the concept and question
of “blackness,” interrogating the term, exploring its many meanings, and
noting its expansive reach and inclusive quality. He also shared how
specifically it applied to particular people, both including and excluding
him at once.

I begin with the above quote from James because he grapples with
the multiple meanings of blackness; his narrative attempts to answer the
question posed in Brunsma and Rockquemore’s (2002) article, “What
Does ‘Black’ Mean?” In offering up his experiential knowledge of
blackness, James shared ideas that echo the authors’ discussion of what
they call the “epistemological stranglehold of racial categorization.”

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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164 The Borders of Race

These authors explore in their investigation of the meanings of
blackness. Interestingly, as the category “black” continues to expand
today to un/easily accommodate mixture, the category (to James’s point)
may reinforce a white/black binary. However, in ways that parallel the
“expanding boundaries of whiteness” (see Gallagher 2004), a similar
expansion of blackness continues. This draws attention to the mixture
embedded in both whiteness and blackness. While this seemingly
upholds these two racial categories as two-and-only-two singular and
cohesive racial groups, I refer to them to simultaneously undermine the
implicit and taken-for-granted singularity and cohesion within their
categorical connotations. That is, this multiplicity and variability exists
across all racial categories.

Racial multiplicity exists, and hides in plain sight, as “invisible
mixture.” Linguistically and socially, the terms “white” and “black”
reinforce singularity, not mixture. The terms then make mixture
situationally il/legible. Mixture largely becomes legible or visible
through usage of the very term, “mixture,” even as it exists in “single”
race categories, such as “white” and “black.” While these singular race
terms suggest specificity, they also implicitly capture a multiplicity.
That is, single race categories suggest just that, singularity, which
reinforces the idea of “one-and-only-one” race. The myth of such a
racially pure, cohesive, and coherent racial category convinces people
that racial multiplicity only exists in people who claim more than one
race. Thus, for most of the national population, this multiplicity often
remains unnamed and resides under the veil of singularity. Mixture also
disappears through the stories that families tell about themselves and
their heritage. I discuss these “sins of omission” in the socialization that
family storytelling makes possible in racially mixed families.

Mysteries of Histories

In attempting to sort out what I call the “mysteries of histories” in
families, James asks “a lot of questions” to disentangle his heritage. He
explores his family biography in an attempt to answer his many
questions; to curb the curiosities about his identity and to solve some of
those “mysteries of histories.” He wants to more fully understand his
Nigerian and Native American ancestry, especially in relation to his
blackness. Recognizing both his African American and Native American
ancestry is a practice that allows him (and other black and Native
American respondents) to acknowledge “intermarriage further back in
their family history” (Campbell 2007:926). This point follows Jessie
Turner’s (2013) work on historical and contemporary mixture and

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
Created from ucsd on 2019-10-10 15:48:51.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 165

invites us to consider what constitutes the old and the new, with respect
to racial mixture. To Jenifer Bratter’s (2007) point, “multiracial” identity
does not always survive the next generation. But when it does, it may
take on new names with old faces, or maintain old names among new
faces (see Dawkins 2012; Winters and DeBose 2003).

Despite considering the complexity of his rich heritage, James
asserted what I understood as a singular black identity. However, he
engaged in “problematizing blackness” by assigning expansive and
inclusive meanings to the term, in its chosen (not forced) form (see
Hintzen and Rahier 2003). Chosen blackness departs from the forced
blackness historically mandated through the “one drop” rule of
hypodescent; chosen blackness enriches and expands the meaning of
blackness and recognizes more of its liberatory potential, a freedom to
choose not fully afforded people with any known black African
ancestry.

Other black multiracial respondents who identify as black engaged
in this practice. That is, the term, “black,” weaved together a multiplicity
of races and ethnicities, as evidenced in other respondents like Jessica, a
black and Asian Indian woman, opting for black as James did. In doing
so, people can acknowledge historical and contemporary mixtures of
blackness (see Khanna 2010; Turner 2013). In thinking about these
complexities and contradictions of racial singularity and multiplicity, I
draw from the experiences shared by another respondent. Abigail, an
African American-identified woman (also of Native American
[Cherokee] heritage), shared that she asserts a singular black identity in
part because of her illegible identities or racially mixed heritage.

As one of the older respondents in my research sample, Abigail
grew up in a time and place that more closely abided by the rule of
hypodescent and, therefore, endorsed this “one drop” rule of blackness.
That rule canceled out, or denied, her racial mixture, and informed her
way of thinking about racial categories. Growing up in a white/black
binary supported by society meant that her mixture remained relatively
out of reach to her. She explained, “I’m not mixed race. I appear to be
more African American than anything else, you know?” Because she
believes others see her as black, or that others do not see or
acknowledge her mixed race heritage, she claims a black identity. She
minimized this mixture to adopt a black identity because she believes
that it is her blackness that is legible to others. Abigail “thinks mixture”
in traditional ways with history and family shaping her perspective;
indeed, she has internalized the “one drop” rule. Abigail’s narrative
supports a “seeing is believing,” or “believing is seeing” (Lorber 1993)
approach to racial classification in the sense that she relied heavily on

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
Created from ucsd on 2019-10-10 15:48:51.
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166 The Borders of Race

the visibility or legibility of race. Doing so invalidates her illegible
identities, instead of challenging our collective reliance on (racialized)
appearances to categorize ourselves and others by race.

Much like other respondents, Abigail offered contradictions on her
own racial location, illustrating how she benevolently border patrols
herself:

I racially identify as African American basically but I remember that
my mother told me when I was very young, she said, “Don’t ever
forget that you are part Cherokee, part Cherokee Indian, Native
American.” But all of my life, I socialized, was socialized as an
African American or black child, you know, listening to R and B, and
you know, dancing and everything was geared towards African
American culture…. At the time, I didn’t question it. It meant, as I got
older, that there’s something other than African American about me,
something different about me…. That I just wasn’t all African. That,
you know, there’s a part of me that was the “Other” if you wanna call
it that. That wasn’t defined. It made me intercept my thinking I was all
black. Well, not all black, your DNA might come back saying you’re
all black. My appearance is black. Her words made me question that.

Despite questioning those “mysteries of histories” and her partial
knowledge of racial mixture in her own family, Abigail continues to
assert a black identity.

Similar to other black multiracial respondents, Abigail learned racial
lessons, including that she should default to a black identity despite any
“body as evidence” to the contrary (see Hobson 2012). Her story reveals
what so many families work to conceal: racial mixture, then and now,
and the stories that people speak or silence (see Nash and Viray 2014,
2013; Walters et al. 2011). These stories, and the silences that
sometimes surround them, become part of the racial inheritance within
all families, not exclusively racially mixed ones.

As Abigail illustrated, and in contrast to people with known Asian,
Latino, and Native American ancestry who claim a white identity,
people with known African ancestry may feel like they cannot claim a
nonblack identity (Bratter 2007; Khanna 2010); otherwise, they opt for
blackness as an assertion of their right to choose. In the latter case, the
act of choosing is an expression of self-definition or an act of resistance
to borderism. In the former case, multiracial people may sense some
social constraints to available choices, such that the particularities of the
geographies of race expand or limit their options; they may feel like they
are “forced to choose” or effectively “passing as black” (see Khanna

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 167

2010), or they may actively choose a preferred black identity,
experienced not as limitation but in terms of liberation.

The challenge in this choosing involves consideration of the history
of individual and collective mixture; current and historical mixture; and,
consensual and forced mixture. These considerations thus include
acknowledgment of the variations of racial identity and claims to
mixture made increasingly broader during the Multiracial Movement of
the late 20th Century; they invite people to “think mixture” and reflect on
how the concept of racial mixture and who is mixed changes across time
and space.

In Abigail’s example above, she thinks mixture through the lens of
the one-drop rule. Although she acknowledges the familial mixture of
black and Native American ancestry, she does not claim a black and
Native American multiracial identity; her “opting for black” typifies the
tensions between agency and the legacy of racial rules and paradigms
that foreclose choice for people with certain racial combinations (see
Campbell 2007). As Campbell notes, many African Americans in
contemporary society remain reluctant to publicly make claims to their
Native American ancestry, fearing racial invalidations and accusations
similar to the ones described by respondents like Abigail. They worked
to avoid the charge that they were falsely attempting to diversify or
dilute their blackness with indigeneity. Respondents like Abigail opted
for blackness but the kind of blackness that incorporates these charges
with a positive spin. That is, if the common charge was that African
Americans always try to claim Native American ancestry, then
“blackness” in this context is always already mixed with Native
American ancestry. Rather than risk naming both her African American
and Native American ancestry, Abigail effectively wove those ancestries
into blackness. This exemplifies my earlier point about the illusion of
singular racial categories being cohesive. The narrative of Abigail and
others provides evidence of racial multiplicity taking up residence in
single race categories.

Another respondent shared the process of her racial identity
formation and her experiences with benevolent border patrolling.
Wendy, a light-skinned, black Hispanic, described moving from a
northern city to a southern one, and navigating impediments to
connecting with other Latinos. In that northern city, she felt her skin
color and lack of fluency in Spanish disconnected her from other
Latinas. During our interview, Wendy further suggested that her limited
Spanish-speaking ability prohibited her from getting “that deep” with
“the Spanish group” in high school because “every now and then, I
wouldn’t know what they were talking about” (when they spoke in

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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168 The Borders of Race

Spanish). She contrasted her lack of fluency in Spanish with otherwise
being an “articulate person.”

Unlike David (discussed later in this chapter and again in Chapter
6), Wendy does not experience, or admit to, this lack of Spanish
language literacy and fluency as a source of tension that generates
“imposter syndrome” (see Moore 2015). In contrast to him, she
expresses much less awareness of the way the social construction of race
and ethnicity are shaping these social dynamics, even as she discusses
these and related issues. Instead, Wendy offered up a narrative framed
by colorblindness, which minimized the significance of race and racism:

You know, when you’re asking me [about race], it’s weird. I’m trying
to think back and I don’t really ever remember race being an issue,
whether it was both of the races or either one of them. I mean, I guess I
would more relate to being black because I don’t speak Spanish
fluently and a lot of the things that I was put into as far as a child were
mostly minority-oriented or black-oriented rather than Latino [said
with an emphasized Spanish accent]. So I guess I would relate more to
black but I mean there wasn’t really any like you know, “You’re black
and Puerto Rican,” and I mean “You’re biracial.” I don’t remember
ever asking, I don’t think I had an identity crisis or a race crisis about
who I was. I remember I said to my mom one time, I um, I said,
“Mom, I’m not black; I’m peach.” But that was, you know, like…the
extent of it. I didn’t really think about it like that, I think.

Arguably, if race and ethnicity did not matter, it would not matter if
Wendy knew Spanish, as people of all racial and ethnic groups have
varying language literacies and skills. Ostensibly, she would be able to
make connections to even a few other Latinos or to any and everybody
based on her logic. However, if the expectation is that Wendy—as a
multiracial Latina—know Spanish well (which she admits she does not),
she may feel or be disqualified on some level; any markers of blackness
may serve as further disqualification to some, or conversely,
qualification and authentication to others. That she is read as black, but
not necessarily Latina, offers partial explanation for the disconnection
she experiences. She conveys a narrative that suggests that she is not
allowed to be both and, therefore, border patrols herself.

What Wendy’s experience highlights is the lacuna, or the silence
surrounding the racial and ethnic socialization she received in her
family. She points to this silence as an absence; in that void, the term
“biracial” does not exist. Hearing such a term might have affirmed to
her, or signaled, that “black” and “Latina” are not mutually exclusive
terms. Despite not learning the language to refer to her black and Latina

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 169

identity, Wendy does show how she is able to intercept—and correct—
the language others use to describe her: “I’m not black, I’m peach.”
Despite noting that she does not think about race and ethnicity, she
obviously does. She offers an awareness of her embodied reality, as she
experiences the “multiracial” as “multicultural.” Wendy’s innocent and
simple description of her color, as it contrasts with the language that
speaks only to her “legible” blackness, allows her the agency to contest
this and to recognize her reality as a multiracial and multicultural one.

The shift between “black” and “peach,” therefore, is not only a
nominal and discursive one but also an important agentic one to the
“names we call home” (Thompson and Tyagi 1996). These names are a
colorful expression of embodied hybridity and multiplicity of life in the
borderlands (see Anzaldua 1987; Canclini 2005). Wendy makes space in
her family that the ampersand between being black and Latina creates.
The ampersand acknowledges and accommodates her mixture, making
space for complexity in her racial identity, and what some see as a
contradiction, instead of the identity composition or sum of Wendy’s
parts. While she may claim to not think about her life in racialized ways,
she is clearly impacted by these dynamics in her family and in society,
as they shape her sense of self and the social interactions she has with
others.

Other respondents negotiate the ampersand differently. In contrast
to Wendy, whose peach-colored skin could locate her in “white,”
“honorary white,” and “collective black” categories, darker-skinned
black Latinos reported different experiences as individuals more
definitely located within the racial category of “collective blacks.” For
example, Sanchez, a black and Latino Puerto Rican man, confronted the
realities of borderism as a darker-skinned man. This reality includes
recognizing the racial hierarchy and classification system that inform
people’s perceptions of others and themselves He explained how he
embraced the categorization to arrive at a singular racial identity.
Growing up in “basically black or white” spaces (schools,
neighborhoods, etc.), Sanchez noted how the absence of Asians or “any
other race” created a white/black binary that meant he was defined as a
black person. “I was like, ‘Okay, I know that I’m a black person. I mean
my skin color is dark, so therefore I’m a black person.’ And I never
really, to tell you the truth, when I was younger, I never really thought
about race as much as I do today.” Sanchez’s understanding of his social
location within the U.S. racial hierarchy supports Bonilla-Silva’s (2003)
contention that darker-skinned people are sorted into a collective black
category.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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170 The Borders of Race

Similar to Sanchez, Frank, a 21-year-old man describes how he
arrived at a singular black identity and what I interpreted as benevolent
borderism:

I identify racially as African American or Black. Now ethnically, I
consider myself a mix and I’m a mix of different races—I mean
different groups of people. Ah, Native American; as well as Spanish
and oh no, not Spanish. Sorry, Um, German and French. My African
American identity is dominant. It’s almost like chromosomes. You
have dominant and you have recessive. So the Native American
history, the Native American heritage or ethnicity, they’re all the
same; they’re all related. The ethnicity is sort of recessive…. I
experience being African American. In all honesty, I don’t think it has
much to do with how I identify because even if I didn’t identify as
African American, I would still be treated like an African American….
Because that’s how I look. I look African American. I guess I’m not
light enough or um, of the consistency or what not, or whatever the
case may be, to be considered mixed, so when they, for example, see
me, the first thing they think of is black. The first thing that comes out
of their mouth is “black.”

In borrowing from the language of natural sciences, Frank refers to
the “dominant” and “recessive” genomic matter (“chromosomes”) which
becomes a metonym of race, though in reverse (see also Bliss 2012;
Dawkins 2012; Hochshild 2014). Frank observes that his “African
American identity is dominant” in this society which means that he sees
his African American parentage and heritage as phenotypically
dominant, a point that inadvertently reinforces the one-drop rule to some
degree. It suggests that because it is most visible (among his racial
mixture), blackness trumps any other race, and that said racial mixture
must be visible in order for it to be claimed.

In contrast to this dominance based on physical features or
appearances, and based on the racial hierarchy in the U.S., the opposite
proves true about social and structural dominance. In terms of power
and privilege, whiteness, as a group position and ideological framework,
dominates (see Blumer 1958; Feagin 2009). The taint of
“contaminating” black blood (see Douglas 2002), borrowing from the
biology of race discourse and racist ideologies about the polluting
qualities of this blood, has historically been used as evidence of black
inferiority; this discourse also supports false notions of race as
biological, effectively essentializing and naturalizing it (see Spencer
2010; Bridges 2011).

Frank contrasted his self-image with others’ perceptions of his race,
pointing to the pattern in which others see him as black. Because of his

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 171

(dark skin) appearance, Frank (like Abigail) believed that asserting a
mixed identity would prove arduous, a point echoed in the work of
Khanna (2011) and others. The absence of discernible markers of
mixture dissuaded Frank from incorporating mixture immediately into
his identity.1 He regarded visible mixture a requisite criteria for claiming
a mixed identity, despite discursively recognizing a “multiethnic,” if not
multiracial, heritage. He explained his rejection of the label “mixed,”
citing these reasons:

The diversity is not allowed to exist. That’s why it’s recessive. The
resistance is everywhere. It’s in institutions, with your
peers…Institutionally, for instance, you, until recently, weren’t
allowed to identify as anything more than, either, you’re African
American, you’re white, you’re not European American, or you’re
Asian American and so forth. Even if I put on (forms), considering that
I have Spanish and German, Native American, African American, I
could put on there “white” but if I get stopped by a police officer,
shoot, no matter what, pick one, no matter what happens if, they’ll
look at you, and you say white, they’ll say, “Yeah, right. Yeah, stop
lying.” You know. You could have a black person immigrate from
Germany to America and they say, “Okay, you’re German. You’re
black. You’re African American.” Which they don’t know how far
back you have to go to get to Africa in this heritage but it’s got to be
back there somewhere because you’re black. And “African American”
to my peers is devalued. It is considered an insult, like you’re denying
yourself or you’re insulting your race or your heritage to say, “Okay,”
that you’re not just black because you have the oppressor and you have
the oppressed and the oppressor.

Frank’s comments illustrate what Audre Lorde (1984) discusses in
Sister Outsider, that we are all the oppressed and oppressor together, at
once. Because he has encountered borderism from others, Frank opts for
black:

I mean, I like the African American ethnicity. I think I identify with it.
I think I would also, however, at least identify with my Native
American heritage, I’m not so partial to my German and French
heritage in that, it’s basis is on people being forced to come. It’s not
like they had a choice in the matter. If you get over here and you don’t
like it, there’s a chain and you get whipped up. I mean, so, granted I
am very much an admirer of Germany’s brilliance and France’s, you
know, medical and scientific advancements, as well, you know, in that
I have great respect for them.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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172 The Borders of Race

Frank recognizes his Native American ancestry, respects his
German and French ancestry, and connects to his African American
ethnic heritage. He also decidedly interprets race and arrives at his own
racial identity on the basis of hypodescent (Khanna 2010; Brunsma
2006a). During our interview, Frank rejected the possibility of a
person’s mixture being “clearly invisible” (Dawkins 2012; see also
Buchanan and Acevedo 2004), which ignores the number of multiracial
people “hiding in plain sight” because they do not appear to be what I
call, “clearly mixed.” In a way, this logic upholds the racial hierarchy
and system of racial stratification. By doing so, he border patrols his
racial identity choices. This creates a chain of events, reflecting others
limiting his racial identity options and illustrating his own imposition of
that limitation; this potentially extends to how he supports or denies
others in their preferred racial identities. That is, as he is denied choice,
he likely internalizes that constraint and, in effect, denies others with
invisible mixture their own freedom to choose. Frank also overlooked
how many visibly multiracial people face similar kinds of identity
invalidation, if they too, like him, do not look sufficiently mixed or are
not clearly ambiguous.

Like Frank, Kelly (a black-identified woman with French Guyanese,
French, Asian Indian, Blackfoot Indian, Black American, German, and a
“splash of Irish” ancestry) racially identified as black or “Black
American because…that’s how the general public perceives me.” Both
felt that they would be treated as black by the public and in public; this
implies that 1) they anticipate or fear facing antiblack racial
discrimination and devaluation (see also Yancey 2003), alienation, or
differential treatment because of their perceived blackness, and/or 2)
they would benefit from collective conscience and experience black
solidarity and racial kinship if and when perceived by other black people
as sharing a similar black identity.

Though Kelly thought she “would claim a multiracial identity if
society allowed,” she made clear her satisfaction and “comfort with
being black.” Rather than adopt an “anything but black” position
(Bonilla-Silva 2003b), Kelly and others actively challenged such
antiblack ideologies by purposefully opting for black. Despite persistent
antiblack racism, that includes maneuvers away from blackness in this
society, Kelly, Frank, and others moved towards blackness by
embracing African American racial and ethnic identities.

With racial mixture in her family that was “more distant…not direct
(since) it’s not like my mom’s one mono-race and my father’s one
mono-race,” Kelly described the intergenerational negotiations of race.
This accounts for both mixture shifting as well as a change in racial

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 173

categories and the meanings attached to them across generations. In
socially constructing her parents as having singular races, while
recognizing their racial mixture as “distant,” Kelly conveyed the way
that distance made claiming a multiracial identity feel inaccessible to
her. This distance, however real or imagined, made multiraciality that
much more off-limits given the absence of immediate, visual markers of
racial mixture. Although Kelly’s mixture is both contemporary and
historical (Turner 2013), she remained ambivalent about claiming a
multiracial identity.

Kelly’s reluctance, much like Frank’s, rested on her perception and
understanding of what counts as mixed; it also illustrates Bratter’s
(2007) concern about the survival of multiracial identification to “the
next generation.” It may also relate to the construction of a black family.
To some, the maintenance of a “black” family may be predicated on all
its members asserting black identities versus departing from that
expectation. The implicit concern is that a single departure would signal
a departure from blackness (or be read as antiblackness) as opposed to a
problematizing of blackness, in recognition of its richness and
categorical complexity, across the diaspora.

Having grown up in and been socialized as part of a family that
collectively asserted blackness (or whose members individually and/or
collectively asserted black identities), Kelly did not exactly view herself
as a “first-generation” multiracial (Daniel 2002) and felt she would not
be able to claim a validated border (mixed) identity (see Campbell
2007). In fact, one-quarter of the respondents (with black heritage or
parentage) asserted a singular black identity, evidence that supports
existing literature indicating that a very small portion of blacks claims a
multiracial identity (Lee and Bean 2004).

Notably, Kelly mentioned others’ interpolating or hailing her
(Althusser 1971) as “more than black” (Daniel 2002). “I mean I’ve had
people ask me, ‘So, what are you?’ And…for simplicity sake, you know,
I say, ‘I’m black.’ ‘No, but really, what are you?’” That some people see
her in this way suggests that, should she choose, she could assert a
multiracial identity that others might validate in those moments (rather
than fear imminent invalidation and contestation). Nevertheless, Kelly
seemed to resent and reject the intended “compliments” others provided
in presuming her to be Brazilian (mixed, not black); or, when saying,
“‘Oh, you don’t look fully black.’ Or ‘You know you have…a little bit
of oh, something else in you.’” She suspected that others may have
intended their comments as compliments but she failed to see them as
such. Instead, she implied that she saw them as sociologist Heather
Dalmage (2000) describes: “racist compliments.”

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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174 The Borders of Race

Had her parents’ looks contrasted each other more, such that they
were more “obviously interracial” or visibly mixed, and/or had they
chosen multiracial or black identities, Kelly might have felt more
compelled to choose such an identity for herself. I suspect this might be
the case for other black multiracial people. Without these verbal or
visible markers of mixture in significant others, those who get to claim
such a validated multiracial identity remain on exclusive and contested
terrain (Morning 2000), a point Khanna (2011) also makes in her book,
Biracial in America.

For Kelly and others, choosing blackness also serves as an
expression of racial solidarity and/or an explicit rejection of
“multiracial” privilege. As some black multiracial people move towards,
not away from, blackness, they challenge the antiblackness that prevails
in the U.S. Many black multiracial respondents expressed views similar
to Kelly. They found that the “absence of a presence” (Fine 2002), in
this case a racial presence, or a “clearly mixed” phenotype or physical
appearance, denied them the chance to choose a “mixed” identity. The
absence of racial mixture in the form of a visibly recognizable or legible
interracial family (nuclear or extended) remained present in their lives.
They negotiated this absence by expressing their desire to explore more
of their family heritage and racially mixed ancestry. Their choosing
blackness then can be understood as both constrained and concerted:
their “too dark to not be black” skin color marked them as black,
because of the one-drop rule (Khanna 2010), but also allowed them to
actively, positively embrace blackness.

In the next section, I consider the ways in which multiracial
individuals make strategic identity moves to increase their mobility and
facility in the world. I illustrate the ways that some multiracial people
curiously produce colorblind narratives or deny the reality of race, yet
appear to be managing their multiracial identity in ways that ensure their
access to some racial privilege.

Beneficiary Border Patrolling: A Matter of Choice, Convenience,
or Privilege?

For some of my respondents, acknowledging a racially mixed heritage
proved easier than asserting their own mixed race identity. Naming a
multiracial heritage enabled them to preserve the privileges associated
with the identities they chose. Unlike benevolent border patrolling of
identity, beneficiary border patrolling involved respondents generally
claiming a singular race that ensured greater social status than the races
not embraced or acknowledged. Most examples of beneficiary border

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 175

patrolling came from white-identified individuals (including White and
Asian and White and Latino respondents, and one White/Native
American respondent). In these cases, I saw these respondents as
avoiding a multiracial identity (based on the perception of its lower
social status and value in the racial hierarchy), and opting for white
(based on the perception of the benefits that accrue from whiteness).

Sociologists such as Mary Waters (1999) found that white people
reveal and conceal their ethnicity as they so desire. They may claim one
ethnicity based on its popularity in a particular historical moment, social
setting, or context; or, they may reject or deny parts of their ethnic
heritage. They claim or reject contingent on a set of variables including
the popularity of an ethnicity, or any animosity directed at certain ethnic
groups in particular social settings or historical moments. In my
research, I discovered that some multiracial people engage in practices
parallel to exercising their “ethnic options” by making a series of racial
options. This ongoing process of negotiating identity involves revealing
and concealing the composite parts of their (multi)racial heritage.

Consistent with the ways a white person interprets their “ethnic
options” (Waters 1990), Dakota, a white-identified white Asian
multiracial woman, treats her racial identity similarly. She explained: “I
do identify as Korean when it is convenient,2 I guess…I always say that
I am White on the standardized tests and things like that but, in social
situations when I am talking to people, I always say that I am half
Korean. I guess it makes things more interesting and I don’t feel that I
am a boring White girl.” This last observation suggests that Dakota was
“thinking the border” strategically—opting for white and/or Asian,
depending on which identity benefits her. As she suggests, she benefits
from being “half Korean.” Being able to brighten the borders of race,
she highlights her Korean identity to spice up what she might see as
“vanilla” whiteness.

Formally identifying as white on applications can prove materially
beneficial for white multiracials, as evidence suggests “opting for white”
(Rockquemore and Arend 2002) is a currency in today’s racial hierarchy
(Bonilla-Silva 2003a,b; Hunter 2005). These and other sources show the
material benefits of and the possessive investment in whiteness (see also
Lipsitz 2006; Harris 1993; Roediger 2003). Consistent with discussions
of the emergent multiracial “identity grab bag” (Rockquemore,
Brunsma, and Delgado, 2009), Dakota defaulted to whiteness because
her physical appearance does not deny her that option. Alternately, one
could interpret that she formally opted for whiteness, while having her
(“half Korean”) mixture operate as an added “flavor.” However, some
people read her as ambiguous, which places her in white and honorary

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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176 The Borders of Race

white categories (and accounts for the different groups to which others
perceive her as belonging to). The identities she chooses remain
contingent on the situations she finds herself in and the perceptions of
others.

As a general observation, I noticed that this and other white Asian
multiracial individuals situationally employ their racial literacy to
strategically shift their mixture to acquire the most privileges—the
social and material benefits—attached to whiteness and increasingly to
multiraciality. This ability to shift mixture operates as a material benefit
not only of whiteness then, but also of white- or light-skinned
multiraciality. That is, visible mixture affords some multiracial
individuals material benefits comparable to white privilege in white-
looking multiracials (see Bonilla-Silva 2004; Doane and Bonilla-Silva
2003a,b; Gans 1999).

Finally, Dakota’s convenient deployment of her Korean parentage
and identity allowed her to spice up her vanilla existence and reaffirm
her whiteness. This speaks to the point that cultural theorist and literary
critic, bell hooks, makes in her work; this “illustrates a commodification
of the racial otherness as ‘a spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull
dish that is mainstream white culture.’ The white woman does not seem
to seek a broader cultural appreciation, but rather a brief cultural
appropriation…She can perhaps have the fun of pretending to be black
for one night, but can soon return to her privileged white appearance and
style” (hooks 1992:21). Specifically among white Asian multiracials,
many of them “spice” themselves up with their Asian “Otherness,”
which reaffirms their predominantly white racial identity and white
privilege. They normalize their choice for whiteness through these
“Othering” discourses (Frankenberg 1993) and Orientalizing moves (see
Said 1978), which fetishize rather than respect and celebrate difference.
This fetishism of difference can also be a self-Orientalism when the
“Other” is the self. This became evident in Dakota’s interview, when she
said the following:

I see really cute Asian girls and sometimes I do wish that I looked
Korean because, I don’t know why, but I just think they are so cute.
But there is nothing I can do….I look at myself and I don’t feel like
really Korean a lot, other than my hair color and a little bit my eyes.
You know, like typical Korean girls have really small bodies, too thin.

By using language that supports the fetishism of Asian women,
apparent in her reference to “really cute Asian girls,” Dakota could be
viewed as admiring and/or creating a racialized spectacle of them.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 177

Though not mutually exclusive categories, these ways of seeing Asian
women dislocates Dakota from sharing that identity. In my
interpretation, it not only dislocates but distances Dakota from the
category, “Asian American woman.” Perhaps as Dakota continues her
education, she will consider ways of seeing herself as a part of the group
of women she finds cute. How she constructs or imagines racial
boundaries, specific to Asians, will reveal where she positions herself
over time accordingly, be it at the margins or the center.

Some respondents, reluctant to embrace a mixed identity, also
illustrated that they were transitioning into an incipient multiracial
identity, much like Dakota. By learning more about their family’s racial
diversity and starting to solve their family’s “mysteries of histories,”
some of my participants began to more readily recognize their own
multiraciality. They cultivated these nascent identities, growing their
dimensions as they acquired knowledge of their family’s racial mixtures.

During our interview, Dakota stated, “I always feel White.” She
experienced the feeling of being disqualified for not looking “Asian
enough,” and described a disconnection to Korean culture, language,
and people (resulting from being border patrolled by significant others,
as previously discussed). These feelings of disconnection and encounters
with borderism partially explain her racial identity options. Rather than
reject Korean culture altogether, she seems ambivalent towards it: “I
mean, it’s not like I am trying not to engage my Korean culture or
anything like that. But I just think it’s that my mom didn’t really force
Korean culture onto me…I mean I feel strange going to the Korean
market.” Because she looks more white than Asian (and Korean
specifically), Dakota feels out of place in predominantly Korean
settings. Were she to be both darker and smaller, Dakota noted, she
might feel more entitled to actively and publicly claim a Korean
identity. This is so largely because people essentialize ethnicity and
race, proscribing what counts as Korean or not. Believing that she fails a
variety of authenticity tests, Dakota instead opts for white.

In ways that echo traces of Dakota’s narrative, Rose offered some of
her experiences as a white-identified white and Native American
multiracial woman. Rose readily acknowledged some Native American
heritage and partially did so by recognizing the racial differences
between her grandfather (who she described as having dark skin and
being part Cherokee) and other relatives (who she described as white).
Registering this racial difference discursively distances and disconnects
Rose racially from the physically or phenotypically different relatives,
thereby keeping her “whiteness” intact. Such discursive practices
stabilize the category of whiteness without compromising its mythical

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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178 The Borders of Race

purity, despite the acknowledgment of racial mixture. That is, Rose
asserts and maintains a singular white identity comfortably, though she
“spices up” her vanilla whiteness with the difference of “Otherness,” in
this case, her Native American ancestry3 (see hooks 1992; Rubin 1984).
She offers different details than other respondents who see their
multiracial heritage as a flavorful addition to their chosen whiteness,
although Rose effectively does the same. Rose offers, “My mom’s dad,
he was a quarter Cherokee. They didn’t have a good relationship. I never
knew him. I think he’s dead. I really couldn’t say. There’s no
documentation [proving his Indian identity], it’s just what they’re telling
me.” At once, Rose remains skeptical of her family’s “mysteries of
histories,” and diminishes any connection she feels toward her maternal
grandfather. Her discourses work to do what I call “disappear
difference.” She disappears difference in herself by erasing mixture
through the speculation (instead of certainty) of her grandfather’s death,
and then by questioning his racial identity in life.

Because her family socialized her as white (rather than multiracial),
Rose learned to identify as white. At some point, her mother “just kind
of brought up that there was Indian blood in us,” and said, “‘Oh yeah,
we have some Indian in us….I think it’s Cherokee. Yeah, it’s Cherokee.’
And I’ve always been interested in Indian heritage. I think it’s neat. I
don’t know how else to put it. I don’t know the ‘P.C.’ way to put it.”
Like Dakota, Rose employs language that infantilizes and fetishizes
difference not in whites, but in Indians or Native Americans. In fairness
to Rose, she acknowledges her limited racial literacy when she admits to
not knowing the socially appropriate expression.

Following Bonilla-Silva (2003a,b), I wonder if Rose would regard
her whiteness as “neat” as well. Her ways of describing “difference” in
relation to whiteness reinforces the spectacle that so often surrounds
Native Americans and other racial groups of color, and normalizes the
centrality and invisibility of whiteness as well (see DeLoria 1999; Dyer
1992). Concerns about people “playing Indian” surface in instances
where Native American people and culture are regarded as more
interesting than white people and culture (DeLoria 1999). This is
another way of understanding hooks’ concerns of “spicing up”
whiteness with “Otherness.” This is especially notable in instances
where multiracial people who choose whiteness regard their “Other”
racial identity as something of an accessory; this Otherness can be put
on when desired and disregarded when not. This fashioning of race
speaks to the “optional” quality it takes on, as I discussed earlier (see
also Goldberg 1997; Waters 1999).

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 179

Amidst her curiosity about her “one-sixteenth” Cherokee “blood,”
Rose indicated, “I think I would still identify as white, depending on the
situation.” Because of this, and the fact that she knew precisely what
“fraction” Native American she was, she appeared to me to be a
beneficiary border patroller. The border patrolling that she experienced
from outsider within (significant others) partially related to her own
border patrolling of identity. This is not indicative of the racial treason
that scholars have described (see Segrest 1994; Wise 2008). Instead of
having traitorous identities that reject “whitely scripts4,” Rose and her
family embraced white privilege and engaged in racial redistricting to
remain race evasive and privileged (Fischer 2006; Frankenberg 1993;
Thompson 2001; Warren and Twine 1997). Her uncertainty concerning
her grandfather’s mortality and identity exposed racial ideologies that
partially explained his peripheral position in her family and memory.

I can’t exactly remember…I was just looking at pictures, and I saw a
picture and apparently it was my grandfather but he didn’t look related
to me at all, like he was very dark skinned, with dark hair. His nose
was a little bit bigger, I guess. And just looked mean to me. He just
looked angry, but my grandfather and grandmother weren’t together
for very long so it could have been likely that he was really
mean….You know, he drank too much; he was not necessarily
physically abusive but definitely verbally abusive, and um, kind of a
slacker. Wasn’t around, didn’t want to work.

One can speculate that the rocky relationship between Rose’s
maternal grandparents colored and contaminated her perception of her
grandfather. The negligible relationship that Rose had with him seemed
soured by others’ unfavorable accounts of his personality. This
illustrates the importance of the stories people circulate within families,
that “our stories matter” (Nash and Viray 2013), in terms of how they
shape and support our identities.

Additional interpretations of Rose’s narrative and experiences exist.
One possible interpretation of Rose’s attitude towards her multiracial
heritage draws attention to her inability (or reasonable unwillingness) to
recognize herself in her grandfather. While it is difficult to say whether
or not her perception of differences in terms of gender, color, physical
features, and other characteristics largely stems from the disparaging
remarks of others, I do think Rose’s discussion of these differences
dances around the idea of “real” racial differences, as evidenced through
her description of her grandfather as “only” one-quarter Cherokee. That
Rose indicated that it would be easier to opt for white in any (casual or
professional)5 situation, suggests her desire to possessively invest in

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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180 The Borders of Race

whiteness (Lipsitz 2006). Her narrative reveals both the relative ease
with which multiracial people with whiter or lighter skin can assert their
whiteness, and some of their reasons or motivations for doing so.

Rose implied that others might not take much of an interest in the
details of her mixture and, that in those inquiring moments, she would
not “want to overstep my boundary of information.” She suggested that
sharing information with strangers would be contextual, restrained, and
relevant to the social situation or particular interaction (Waters 1999).
However, it is more instructive to consider what information Rose is
willing to share about herself racially, namely that she is white.
Interestingly, when she mentioned lacking evidence of her racial
mixture, she did not feel this dearth in relation to proving her whiteness.
That is, she did not speak of the need to prove whiteness in ways that
contrast with her need to prove her Native American ancestry. It is as if
she has internalized government requirements to “document” or
legitimize her identity, not only to herself but to others as well. Rose
shared:

I think, you know, if I found out undeniable proof then I would
probably say White and Native American, just that I would give an
explanation. But if I couldn’t prove it, then I wouldn’t want to give
false information. I’d just say White. I wouldn’t want people to be
like, “Oh, well, tell me about your history.” Like, “Gasp.”… I think
it’s also, I don’t know, I would sort of be proud if I was a part of that
history that’s been pretty much demolished. I’d be proud to have the
opportunity to carry on some part of that because I know that there
isn’t a whole lot of it being passed on. Um, I don’t know.

Rose’s example suggests that when people lack racial literacy in a
general sense, they often still possess enough working knowledge of the
racial hierarchy to understand the wages of whiteness (Roediger 2003).
They experientially know the material and social benefits of whiteness
which require little proof of light- and white-skinned multiracial people.
White (looking) skin becomes proof enough, with the body as evidence,
but how does one prove something one ostensibly cannot see? Rose’s
comments expose the differences in racial group membership status and
socialization. What seems apparent is that she was likely socialized,
through colorblindness and colormuteness, to maintain the “invisibility
of whiteness” while recognizing her indigeneity as the “Other.”
Consistent with white racial socialization, she claims whiteness, while
remaining ambivalent about her “authority” to claim any indigeneity. As
a result, she reinforces both the idea of whiteness as property and her
invisible mixture.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 181

Another interpretation of Rose’s identity articulation relates to any
fear she has of facing further invalidation as a white-looking person
trying to acknowledge a racially mixed heritage. As a multiracial woman
with white skin color, Rose knows that asserting a mixed race identity
marks a risky proposition; doing so jeopardizes any white privilege that
Rose accesses and enjoys, which also runs the risk of inauthenticating
her mixture. As with other respondents, Rose reported that her
phenotypical whiteness motivated her singular white identity. Negating
her mixture and affirming her whiteness could be her way of border
patrolling herself for her own benefit and, as I discuss shortly, for self-
protection.

Unlike those White and Asian multiracial respondents who opted
for white or tentatively claimed more of an incipient multiracial identity
while enjoying their honorary whiteness, Peg rejected her honorary
whiteness by increasingly attempting to assert a validated Korean
identity. As a white Asian multiracial woman who was adopted into an
interracial family of the same racial mixture (white and Asian), Peg
increasingly embraced her Asian identity, even as she wrestled with not
knowing much about her birth family.

In the South, she found relative ease in emphasizing her Korean
heritage. She had no “concept of, like, being identified as white.”
However, her move away from her adoptive family and from one part of
the country to another facilitated some of these changes in her racial
self-perception. She noted that her racial sense of self shifted, such that
she no longer saw herself as primarily Korean. Peg tired of others’
inability to not see her as Korean. As she moved away from and became
increasingly ashamed of being Korean, she remained bothered by this
misrecognition.

This moving away from being Korean did not translate into
intentionally moving towards whiteness. As Peg explained, she was
essentially becoming white; the white culture, and mostly white friends
in their “completely white world,” made being Korean “different” but
also “honorary white.” Even though she “blended in very well” into
these whitespaces (Horton 2006), Peg described feelings of racial
alienation. Though “it was understood that I was Asian because I was
different,” many of the white people in Peg’s life treated her as white.
This behavior included making disparaging comments about other (than
white) races. This exposure to how her white friends felt about her as an
Asian solidified her honorary white status but also caused her to feel
alienated from these friends. The ease with which they revealed ugly
truths concealed in their race talk (Houts Picca and Feagin 2007) drew a
wedge between them and Peg. She felt increasing dissonance over her

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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182 The Borders of Race

friendships with whites, who accounted for and then effectively denied,
her preferred racial and ethnic sense of self. By not expressing criticism
of their racism, Peg maintained her honorary white status with them,
using it to her advantage.

Following the rules of racial etiquette, or the “polite silences” of
colorblind racism, none of the multiracial individuals admitted to
wanting to access white privilege. This, however, does not mean that
they do not want to enjoy the privileges of whiteness. Denying white
privilege allows the beneficiaries of this “invisible knapsack of
privilege” to continue enjoying earned advantages while maintaining the
view of deserving them (McIntosh 1998). The literature on white
privilege echoes this point by illustrating how whiteness and its invisible
knapsack of privilege remain sights left unseen.

Many respondents who claimed a white identity also spoke of the
nonwhite (or part-white) parent as highly assimilated. Also, they
espoused a rather colorblind view of society and centered whiteness
throughout the interviews. In that way, many of the part-white
respondents engaged in beneficiary border patrolling of their identities
because they knew they could access or had already accessed, the
unearned privileges of claiming a white, honorary white, or multiracial
identity versus a singular or collective black identity. This strategy
reaffirmed the new racial hierarchy (Gans 1999) in which most
multiracial individuals enjoy honorary white or white status in society.
That is, respondents with part-white parentage or ancestry could and
would more easily acknowledge their partial whiteness and its attendant
privileges, while those with part black parentage or ancestry were more
likely to claim a biracial or black identity than a singular white, Asian,
or Hispanic one.

Protective Border Patrolling: Choosing “Black” When Others
Don’t Understand “Biracial”

Prevailing racial hierarchies and ideologies shape the choices people
make regarding their racial identities and romantic partners. These
forces inform many differences between the public and private
presentation of their racialized selves. When people encounter
opposition to the racial identities they choose, they may become
increasingly self-protective. They opt for public identities that differ
from their preferred (and private) identities to minimize this
invalidation. They also do so anticipating that it will make more facile
the social interactions with others (including strangers, family members,
and friends). This does not always prove true.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 183

In order to buffer themselves from reactions, including surprise,
amusement, rejection, and so on, many respondents reported expressing
public identities that they could convincingly “get away with” (see
below). This observation underscores the performative aspect and
expectation of social interactions (see Goffman 1963, 1967). It also
highlights how much those interactions are racialized (see Khanna and
Harris 2014). Not all multiracials felt they could give a convincing
performance of their preferred identities. Consequently, they opted for
simpler, often singular options, in an effort to achieve this legitimacy (in
their own eyes and that of others).

As Gloria, one black and white biracial respondent recognized,
whiteness was out of bounds or out of reach for her, despite her golden
skin and curly blondish hair (as affirmed in people’s comments about
her appearance). Her experience illustrates that the boundaries of
whiteness seldom expand to include black/white multiracials, a point
made by Gallagher (2004a); Lee and Bean (2004); and others. This
explains why she asserted a protean identity (black and white, biracial,
“Other” [her term]), but never a singular white identity.

The identity grab bag that Rockquemore, Brunsma, and Delgado
(2009) discuss does not afford all multiracial individuals the same
number of racial identity options. In part, the racial hierarchy privileges
whiteness and, thusly, allows multiracial individuals with white
parentage an arguably more diverse range of options. Ironically, as my
research illustrates, multiracial individuals often reinforce the racial
hierarchy and the current racial classification system by border
patrolling their own identities. While many multiracial individuals
expressed a preference for shifting mixture, others preferred to collapse
their complexity into singular categories. However, multiracial
individuals with white and black heritage/parentage, for example, did
not feel that they could choose whiteness, in the same ways that some
white and Asian multiracial participants did. Despite the relative ease
with which the latter may claim a white and/or Asian identity, most
respondents of this combination chose to assert a mixed race or white
racial identity, not a singular Asian identity. No respondents claimed a
singular Asian identity.

This contrasts with Gloria’s observation about the limitations to
racial identity choice. She felt the option of whiteness was socially
denied her, as exemplified by her response when asked about it (if she
ever opted for whiteness): “I don’t think I could get away with it
(whiteness).” “Getting away” with whiteness involved looking white,
not simply having a white parent, or claiming a white identity and
having others affirm and validate such a choice rather than regard it

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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184 The Borders of Race

suspiciously or dubiously. That Gloria has “never thought about that,
honestly” shows the extent to which whiteness expands selectively,
careful to exclude part-black multiracials in the process. Her reportedly
having never thought about this issue could also be read as “not having
to think about that.” That suggests that Gloria either enjoys enough
white privilege to not have to think about race and racism deeply or
meaningfully, or the option to claim to not notice race through the twin
discourses of colorblindness and colormuteness. This colorblind and
colormute kinds of explanations exemplify the dominant patterns of
people seeking to avoid conversations about race and any
acknowledgment of racial difference.

Deploying colorblind explanations deflects attention away from any
unearned privileges she enjoys as she approximates whiteness. Her
comments that directly engaged racial matters in the interview contrast
with some of her colorblind narratives. For example, she communicated
that she claims a protean multiracial identity and has thought about that
enough to equate whiteness and blackness combined with mixture. A
more likely explanation again rests in the racial hierarchy that places
Gloria more centrally in the collective black category, and more
decidedly outside of categorical whiteness.

Chloe, an African American and Native American-identified woman
(with Irish and Italian ancestry), also discussed how she defended her
racial identity to family members. When some of her black relatives
made disparaging comments about whites, Chloe, “out of defense,”
reminded them of her Irish and Italian parentage (mother). Chloe
recognized her behavior as a “defense mechanism” when she took those
comments personally because of her white mother. She observed, “If
you [relatives] think this about white people, well then, what do you
think about me, or my mother, or her side of the family?” Despite her
understandable agitation, Chloe acknowledged that she mostly asserts a
black or Native American identity. Doing so replicated others’
invalidation of her racial mixture, making her identity align with how
she appears to others: “more black” than any other race(s). Chloe’s
choice captures the reverberation of invalidation.

Even as she recognizes her multiplicity, she asserts a simpler or
singular identity. This illustrates how many multiracial people may
choose racial identities that reflect borderists’ logic, or may become
border patrollers themselves, in these cases, of their own identity
options. This also illustrates the impact that border patrolling from
strangers and familial others has on multiracial individuals and the
identities they choose (or do not choose). When multiracial individuals
internalize this borderism, they begin to perpetuate it themselves.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 185

Though not her intention, Chloe (in opting for a black identity) also
alienated some white relatives who saw her as multiracial and not black.
She chose blackness to “uncomplicate things” and challenge the societal
devaluation of blackness. However, doing so confused others’ ways of
seeing her, even as these other family members worked to affirm her
multiraciality.

The above example underscores the predicament that places a
burden on multiracial people who have to manage both the luxury and
the liability of racial identity options (in contrast to people who feel
altogether denied this choice) (see Rockquemore and Lazloffy 2005).
Despite having more luxuries, in terms of choices or racial identity
options, Chloe highlighted one limitation of that choice: opting for
white. She offered:

I definitely don’t think I can get away with saying I’m white. “What?
Did you just come back from vacation?” But yeah, I mean it’s not
something that I’d do. But you know, I’d love to say, I’m Italian, too,
but what Italian community is really going to accept me? And the rest
of the world, you know, maybe one community might accept me, but
the rest of the world, when I step outside, they’ll be like, “Italian?”
Yeah. “She’s Irish, you know?”

Chloe also linked how she arrived at her racial identity in relation to
the racial socialization she received primarily from her father who
“definitely wants us to identify as black” because of “decades of
conditioning.” Chloe’s father prepared his children for the possibility of
facing racial discrimination resulting from others’ misperceptions of
them (as black and stereotypically so):

He definitely wants [us] to know that…when we step outside, nobody
really cares that our mother’s white…. He’s done it subtly you know?
He hasn’t actually sat us down, and said, “Well, you do know that
you’re black.” Or “There’s some things that comes along with being
black.”…. He’s subtly reminded us countless times that we can’t
expect the rest of the world to, like, buy into this biracial wonderland
that we have at home, maybe.

In her “biracial wonderland,” Chloe expressed a dichotomy between
the public and private selves (Goffman 1967) or what others have called
“public identity” and “internalized identity” (Khanna 2010). In Chloe’s
public presentation of self (Goffman 1963, 1967), she performs
blackness yet, while in the comfort of her wonderland, she can more

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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186 The Borders of Race

easily claim her racial mixture (though not without occasional
contestation from some relatives) (see Brunsma 2006b).

Chloe’s description of the backstage into which she retreats, or
perhaps luxuriates, connotes the comfort she experiences there. This
comfort eludes her in public in instances where others question or even
challenge her identities. Like many other multiracial women with black
parentage or heritage, Chloe draws this distinction to show the racework
that many multiracial individuals engage in, during these public
interactions with strangers; Steinbugler (2012) discusses this in her work
with lesbian, gay, and straight, interracial relationships. These
circumstances and social conditions reveal this racework and also make
more visible the extent to which multiracial people manage their racial
identities. The management of these identities involves auto-borderism,
a self-policing of one’s racial presentation of self in public and,
sometimes, in private settings as well.

Opting for black for simplicity’s sake did not, in fact, always
simplify social interactions. Instead, they sometimes created productive
tensions or intensified conflict between multiracial individuals and
others, including strangers, significant others, other family members,
and friends. Vanessa, a black-identified woman, explained why she too
asserted a singular black identity as a protective mechanism: “I say I’m
black because it’s easier. I don’t get a lot of questions that way.” Opting
for black enabled her attempts to evade borderists’ racialized attention
or the racial panopticon (Foucault 1977; Mirzoeff 2011) on the visuality
and spectacle of bodies (see also Markovitz 2011). In a way, her choice
to collapse her multiracial parentage into blackness can be interpreted as
a kind of self-border patrolling. Her choice also shows how
“multiracial” does not always survive to the next generation (Bratter
2007).

My father is Cherokee Indian and African American. He identifies
himself as African American. My mother is Caucasian and African
American, and she identifies as African American….My family also
identified us as African American because that’s how we are seen by
society and that’s how they see themselves. They feel like they’d be
able to relate to, they can deal with issues they are given by identifying
as African American instead of something else.

Similar to other black multiracials, Vanessa gets asked if she is
“anything besides black.” People often say that they think she looks
“different” and “exotic,” as if there is “something there that I don’t see.”
I suspect that they see signs of racial mixture (Cherokee Indian, African

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 187

American, and Caucasian) that Vanessa only partially acknowledges but
does not incorporate into her identity. Her mixture is her habitus and
thus it remains, relatively speaking, “clearly invisible” to her. To others,
her mixture appears always already visible.

Her desire for privacy and simplicity does not always dissuade
others who continue to wonder about Vanessa’s racial identity.
Identifying as black then backfires to the degree that it does little to
deflect these inquiring and curious gazes. What Vanessa draws attention
to here contrasts with her desire to not draw attention to herself. The
legibility of race—the in/visible mixture—relates here to racial literacy
and betrays the way people ignore, deny, or minimize the continuing
significance of race (Feagin 1991).

Another black-identified multiracial woman respondent, Juanita,
explained her own complicated racial parentage and reasons for
choosing her preferred racial identity:

I say that I’m black but I’m not really sure how to say it, like when
people ask me that question because I don’t know how to include
everything and so I just leave it (she laughs). “Everything” is of course
African American, Native American, Creole, Puerto Rican, I think
that’s it. There’s maybe something else…Some Caucasian but it’s just
further out (generations back).

Like Vanessa, Juanita opted for black, to elude attention and evade
others’ (un)spoken expectations of her to elaborate on her racial identity.
She strategically employed this tactic to manage public interactions with
strangers but effectively erased her racial multiplicity, or at least
attempted to, when she is in public. She suggested that opting for black
proved easier than elaborating on her racial mixture to strangers,
“because I get less questions that way.” Eliding inquiries and evading
racial interrogations is possible by collapsing her multiracial identity
into blackness. That way, Juanita avoids comments claiming that she is
“confused” or a modern day “tragic mulatto” who struggles with what
she called “the Tiger Woods problem.” This persistence of a problematic
narrative, the troubled, confused “tragic mulatto,” must be managed by
many multiracial people even those who claim a singular racial identity
and even if they are not the ones experiencing confusion over their racial
identities.

Juanita collapsing her racial complexity into a single category is a
variation of Rose’s practice of “disappearing difference,” as I discussed
earlier. In my estimation, Juanita does not work to deny or avoid her
mixture but rather simplifies it. She displays knowledge of the social

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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188 The Borders of Race

interactional rules; the ones that nudge her to abbreviate her responses to
strangers’ questions (see Goffman 1967, 1963). This contrasts with
Rose, who appears to intentionally “opt for white” to avoid any penalties
she might otherwise incur for naming her Native American heritage
(despite her discussion of how interesting this detail of her heritage
makes her).

Like other black multiracial respondents, Jessica, a black-identified
young woman of black and Asian Indian parentage, discussed having a
black habitus6 which largely influenced and explained her singular black
identity. She shared her negotiation of the space in between (feeling and
“acting black”) and the way she patrolled her own identity:

I’ve always felt black but I’ve always identified myself as biracial so
it’s kind of weird, you know what I mean? Like I—I know it’s not
proper to say this: I act black, you know, because that’s how I grew
up…. That’s kind of what I identify with, you know, but if like, I’m
filling out a form or something, you know, I’ll put multiracial.
Whereas when I was younger, I’d used to always put black.

Jessica’s response captures the conflict of racial identities in tension
with one another and in flux over the life course (Doyle and Kao 2007,
2004). Though Jessica wanted to “recognize both parents,” she opted for
black. Jessica’s border patrolling worked to both affirm and
problematize blackness (Hintzen and Rahier 2003). In celebrating her
pride in being black and her love of black people, Jessica overshadowed
her Asian Indian identity while deferring to it in order to nuance her
black experience. As with other respondents, Jessica had not thought
about or noticed any unearned privileges she enjoyed because of her
multiraciality and racial ambiguity. In not noticing, Jessica enjoyed her
singular black identity in ways that preserved her occasional
colorblindness. This colorblindness and colormuteness prevented her
from registering how her skin color and beauty operates as a currency in
this pigmentocracy (Bonilla-Silva 2003a,b).

Like Jessica, Jamie also asserted a black identity even though her
light skin tone piques others’ curiosity about her heritage. Based on
Jamie’s accounts, people interested in her racial identity and ambiguity
often confrontationally commented, “No, you’re not black. You’re black
and something else.” These comments troubled Jamie because she grew
up in a small Southern town and in a community and a family where
people abided by the racial binary: a person is either black or white. She
dogmatically denied the racial mixture that was the result of a white
man’s sexual exploitation of a black female relative that occurred

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 189

generations ago. Here, her denial of mixture is actually a refusal to
acknowledge mixture; a strategy or stance mimicked in her family, who
worked consciously to preserve blackness by negating and erasing the
trauma of rape (and the forced inclusion of whiteness into families) (see
Gray-Rosendale 2013; Spickard 1989; Walters, Mohammed, Evans-
Campbell, Beltran, Chae, and Duran 2011).

When I asked her to elaborate on her reasons for choosing “black”
over other options (i.e., “white,” “mixed,” “biracial,” etc.), Jamie
replied: “Because it wasn’t a choice that they (black female relatives)
slept with them, slept with the white people. It was rape. It wasn’t by
choice…. To be honest, if I could pass for white, I probably would say
that I’m white but I couldn’t pass for it, so I wouldn’t say it.” Since
Jamie felt too dark to be white, she resented relatives who passed as
white and enjoyed “the advantages you get just by being white,” or what
Peggy McIntosh (1998) refers to as “white privilege.” She recalled
having heard stories of white-looking black relatives trying to assert
black identities and encountering resistance and invalidation: “They told
her (a relative), ‘No.’ That she wasn’t, they told her that she wasn’t
black. That she was white…. Oh, I have some pictures—they look
exactly like white people but they’re not white. They’re black.”

While Jamie acknowledges why her family actively preserves
blackness by denying and eliding the painful racial reality of how
whiteness was incorporated into the family, she remains conflicted over
racial identity choice. Her narrative captures the ways that the meanings
people attach to racial categories often encapsulate or get informed by
the messiness of historical traumas. Claiming anything other than
blackness could be a trigger, resuscitating past individual, familial, and
collective traumas. Sensitivity to these matters involves attending to the
historical residue of trauma, and the traumatic residue of history, as
Jamie acknowledges and alludes to in her narrative (see Walters,
Mohammed, Evans-Campbell, Beltran, Chae, and Duran 2011).

Curious about her conviction to reinforce the black-white binary, I
asked Jamie to reflect on the term “biracial.” We shared this exchange in
discussing her views on the term:

Jamie: I don’t like it. I don’t think there’s such a thing (as biracial). It’s
either one or the other. Because you can’t be both. You just can’t; I
just don’t see how you can be both. You’re either black or you’re
white, whichever is more prominent, that’s the one you are, to me.

Author: If one is more prominent than the other, then that means that
the other still exists?

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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190 The Borders of Race

Jamie: It exists, but you don’t have to acknowledge it. You can’t
identify with both. When somebody asks you what race you are, you
can’t say, “Oh, I’m multiracial,” or “I’m mixed.”

Author: Why not?

Jamie: You’re just not. I just don’t see it. I don’t understand how you
could say that. Like I have a cousin and my uncle, he’s very light
skinned, green eyes, and he’s black but identifies either way though.
But he had 2 kids by a white lady and they look white. Like you
couldn’t tell they have any black blood and they don’t say that they’re
black or mixed. They don’t say that they’re black or mixed. They say
that they’re white. Because if they say, “Oh, I’m mixed,” or “I’m
black,” people gonna look at them like they’re crazy.

Jamie regarded racial mixture as impossible, relegating it to the
body (but not something that should be socially claimed in reality, as a
possible identity). She found multiraciality largely incomprehensible.
She lacked an awareness of the social construction of race, failing (or
refusing) to see how her community and family reinforced a black/white
racial divide in her life and mind. “Where I grew up at, you’re either
black or you’re white. No in-between. And those are the only two races:
black or white.” Although some scholars argue that members of the
same family are of different races because of the ways we socially
construct race in this country (Ferrante and Brown 2001), Jamie rejected
that reality. Instead, she insisted on her black identity.

This insistence was compromised by some of her classmates (“white
girls”) who considered her white. Once on a class trip, one classmate
commented, “I wanna get a tan like [Jamie].” Stumped by this white
girl’s perception of her, Jamie thought to herself, “White with a tan?”
She explained her conflicted feelings about racial passing and the
politics of skin color:

Skin tone is a big thing for me; I’m just getting over it…. I don’t want
to be dark, like this is too dark for me. I don’t know, I don’t think that
dark skin’s pretty. [I got that idea from] my grandmother….She
always used to tell us not to be out in the sun, and you know, that’s not
pretty. You don’t wanna get black. There was some saying she used to
say, I don’t even remember it.” (Emphasis hers).

Even though her maternal grandmother was light-skinned enough to
pass as white, she chose not to do so. Despite her choice, the
grandmother conveyed the importance of lighter skin to Jamie, who
observed that “they were seen to be a little bit better than the other black

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 191

people…and it was mainly because of their skin tone.” Jamie’s mother
also emphasized the importance of light skin and discouraged her
daughter from darkening by similarly admonishing her and advising her
to stay inside (see Golden 2005; Rondilla and Spickard 2007). While
Jamie’s mother cleverly couched her advice in gendered terms, “Don’t
go outside, or you’ll get dirty,” and initially deflected attention away
from a racial hierarchy, Jamie’s reflection on her mother’s (and
grandmother’s) comments suggests that despite these attempts at racial
displacement, she knew better than to ignore the significance of race in
these narratives.

In order to avoid or minimize this border patrolling from strangers,
black multiracial respondents asserted a singular black identity. In part,
they hoped to elide this attention (Frankenberg 1993) and avoid being a
racial spectacle (DeBord 1995), however benign the racialized gaze
(Foucault 1977). Choosing blackness as a means of circumventing
interrogations and the usual inspection, or what Gloria Wade-Gayles
(1997) calls “eye questions,” then could be interpreted as protective
border patrolling.

A few “honorary white” respondents had similar experiences.
David, another respondent (white Hispanic) discussed his blended
experience in terms of a “two-ness.” In borrowing from W.E.B. DuBois
(1903), David described himself “racially as white and culturally as
bicultural.” In his elaboration, he explained how being both white and
Hispanic meant enduring authenticity testing from various sources. In
feeling these pressures, David works to protect his multiracial, bicultural
identity.

Because I grew up identifying as biracial but as I came to explore what
race means, it became more and more evident to me that um, it’s, it’s
much more of an identity that’s assigned by the outside rather than a
sense of self and it’s, it’s linked to um, how I’ve experienced the world
because of privilege and things like that, and so, of my siblings, I’m
the whitest one and, and I, you know, came to realize at some point
that perhaps this was not just, “Oh, I worked really hard.” That I’m the
only one with a Ph.D. and the other two, one just has H.S. and she’s
the darkest of us, the one that’s most immediately recognized as
Spanish or “spic” (he says with a Southern accent; imitating a
Southern accent) or Latina, however she’s clearly recognized as
something other than white and my youngest sister is kind of in the
middle. And so I identify racially just sort of out of my awareness of
um sort of oppression dynamics, power, privilege issues and my lens,
my outward-looking lens, that’s pretty impossible for me to define. I, I
realize that, I know that I do not see the world as, um, people that I
know that are white from both parents, um. It’s very clear to me that,

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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192 The Borders of Race

that I see the world very differently than they see the world. Even those
who have had more awareness around racial constructs and things like
that. And so it’s a cognitive distinction that I’m easily able to make
and in terms of Latino people, I, I don’t experience a sense of
belonging from the inside but as a legitimacy I guess is a better word.
And so I clearly don’t see the world from the perspective of people
who are completely Latino because, or even Panamanian specifically,
because my whole life, I’ve, I’ve sort of been given that, that sort of,
you know, reminders that I’m the gringo, that I’m the white one. So I
have no idea how I would, you know, describe…. my racial identity
from the inside, because I can’t, I can’t—to me I can only say there’s
something about this blended perspective.

For this and other white Hispanic/Latino/a respondents, being
blended offers a unique vantage point for experiencing the world. While
they situationally enjoyed the privileges of whiteness, they also
experienced social life as “optional people of color” (Gonzalez 2016) or
“white people of color” (Alvarez 1998). As such, they may be read as “a
different kind of white” due to their Spanish language ability, but they
are also often read as “not quite Hispanic enough” and disqualified
accordingly. Having many of his white American father’s physical
features and appearance, David endured authenticity testing throughout
adolescence and young adulthood as others evaluated his legitimacy as a
“real” Panamanian. He even appeared to internalize some of this
disqualification. He said:

It was a strange reverse because the power dynamics of our, the racial
dynamics of our society were reversed in my family. My mother, the
Latina person, was the dominating figure and I grew up in a household
that devalued white people. Everything from “Their food has no
rhythm” to “They’re imperialist bastards.” You know? And so, I grew
up in a world where white was the bad guy, and um, for me, you
know, I was never, you know, I was adored but it, it and so the bad
guy didn’t apply to me, um, in any of those ways. It applied to me in,
“[He] doesn’t like mangoes.” I don’t like mangoes. (Here he
enunciates, mimicking/mocking whiteness through “hyperarticula-
tion”). “Mango,” (pronounced with noticeable or emphasized Spanish
accent, presumably the “proper” pronunciation), whatever you wanna
call it. And you know dancing, I can’t do salsa…. I dance like a white
guy. Yeah basically, that kind of stuff. And um, my older sister, has
the, in addition to her physical features, she also had this notion, she
was actually born in Panama, and so she is a “real” Panamanian and I
am not. And so since my mother was the idolized figure in the family,
I have her personality traits, but I, I was raised with the notion that I
got stuck with my father’s physical traits.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 193

As a point of clarification, and in my estimation, the comment,
“There food has no rhythm,” loops back to my discussion of vanilla
whiteness, and (stereotypically) speaks to this point by casting whiteness
as boring or bland. It endorses a different stereotype, that of “spicy” or
exciting Latino culture. As Dalmage (2000), people reinforce race and
police racial borders through the use of stereotypes. The narratives that
circulated in the interviews, and in the daily lives of my respondents,
make this clear.

The extent to which David participated in performing his racial and
ethnic identity intentionally at some points and unintentionally at others
is interesting, particularly given his geographical location: the South.
Khanna (2010, 2011) discusses the ways in which multiracials form and
perform their racial identities in the South. As someone living in the
South (at the time of our interview), David was not only reflecting on
his experiences forming and performing race from his blended
perspective but also within the particular geographical context of the
South. The bifurcated system of race that prevails there does not easily
accommodate his “two-ness” and keeps his mixture relatively invisible
to others.

Throughout the discussion of disqualification and authenticity
testing, he deploys his cultural knowledge and capital in a way that
authenticates the very identity that others have disqualified. When he
pronounced certain words such as “salsa,” and “mangoes” he used a
decidedly Spanish accent as if to stamp these words with his identity, to
inflect them in ways that native Spanish speakers would, to solidify his
position as a “real” Panamanian who speaks Spanish well. His
hyperarticulation, the deliberate enunciation of both syllables, offered up
whiteness as hyperbolic and hegemonic, as well as a reference with
which to contrast his Panamanian identity. When he said, “I don’t like
mangoes,” he was almost mocking whiteness, and himself, as he
recognized that he is white and not white; his tone of voice also inferred
that he is not the kind of white that others suggest he is. He tentatively
embraces whiteness or reluctantly identifies with what whiteness
connotes to the people who see him as only white. Another possible
interpretation of this enunciation and interaction is that he may
disidentify (see Muñoz 1999) with this kind of hyperbolic whiteness.

To make his whiteness visible, David makes his performance of
whiteness intentional and recognizable in its clichéd form (starchy,
“proper English” speaking). Doing so comfortably centers him in the
interstices or the borderlands and affirms that he is both white and
Spanish (see Anzaldua 1983). This affirmation results from his ability to
“do” race and ethnicity well (see Khanna 2011 for more on forming and

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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194 The Borders of Race

performing race). He can “sound” both white and Spanish in its most
recognizable essentialized, even hyperbolic, forms. This racial (and
cultural) performance not only validates his knowledge of both but
cements his position in-between. This performance also begins to
explain the blended perspective of which he spoke in the interview.

It wasn’t so much liked or did, because I liked and did. It was more of
just the way I was; the most vivid example that comes to mind, I
haven’t thought about this, and I’m realizing there’s some emotion in
all of this as I am talking about this. I haven’t talked about this in a
while. Um, ah, I, I did not drink when I was a teenager, you know; I
wasn’t getting laid with as many women as possible. I wasn’t you
know, I wasn’t a tough macho guy. I played the piano and so… I still,
I remember my cousins, because I lived in Panama when I was in high
school, and I remember my cousins you know, on the balcony of their,
of their porch in Panama City, you know, and they each have a glass of
scotch and soda and they say, “C’mon, you have to drink. You cannot
be a Gonzalez unless you drink.” I remember distinctly thinking,
“Shit.” You know. “Now I’m even more white because I don’t like the
taste of scotch and soda.” And um, it wasn’t until later in life that I
looked back on that memory, which is a vivid memory, but it wasn’t
until later that I realized, you know, they were linking being
Panamanian, um, with drinking, and toughness, and things like that.
My cousins, every once in a while, would could home, like with a
black eye, because they got into a fight. And I could hear my mother—
“Over a girl!” and yeah probably, you know, or because they stood up
for themselves, talking trash to some larger guy; and you know, I
remember my mom contrasting, “[David] would never do that; he’s
smart; he’s going to college” and all of that stuff. And so the very
traits that were different were also somehow linked to the fact that I
was going to achieve. And the only positive things my mother ever
said about my father, um, there was a lot of playful, um, insulting as I
was growing up, at him, she was, the most repeated thing was, “I only
married him because he had blue eyes and fair skin.” And that was a
big accomplishment for a Panamanian woman in the 1960s.

As the lightest sibling in his family, David stood out as different.
His skin color made him a target of ridicule and teasing, but also made
him a symbol of “potential,” a sign of inevitable success. For him and
other respondents, protecting one’s preferred racial identity proved
important. While most were recognized as mixed, they were not always
validated as such. In maneuvering around and manipulating mixture,
they opted to protect this mixture. For many of the black multiracial
respondents, especially those with darker skin color, they attempted to

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 195

protect themselves from racial interrogations and identity invalidations
by choosing blackness.

Some portions of David’s narrative suggest a more insidious or
condemning tone than he registers. In some of his examples, he notes
the way people use humor to defuse the charge of some racialized
comments and observations. If one could understand this practice as a
kind of “racetalk” (Myers 2005), one might consider how this discourse
impacts others. What is the impact of these discourses on multiracial
people like David? Does the existence and circulation of these
discourses link to the kinds of border patrolling behavior of multiracials
themselves? In the next section, I discuss malevolent border patrolling,
drawing particular attention to the patterns that emerge in terms of
people policing their own identity choices.

Malevolent Border Patrolling: Black, but Not That Kind of Black

Many people, including multiracial people themselves, believe that
multiracial people cannot express individual racism. This section
challenges that view, offering up many examples of multiracial
individuals negotiating their participation in racism and precarious
positions of privilege in the racial hierarchy. As multiracial people
internalize racism, they participate in malevolent border patrolling when
they express any variety of problematic stereotypes that situate them as
“better than” other groups of people. In addition, malevolent border
patrolling insists on a singularity. It reifies racial categories and
generally denies mixture and, thus, racially mixed identities.

Some respondents who confidently asserted a multiracial identity
deployed somewhat stereotypical thinking in affirming multiraciality.
Take Sanchez, a black Puerto Rican man:

I’m not one-sided on my race in any degree. I’m basically like in the
middle. I like Spanish food, like paella. Stuff like that. Platanos are
really good. Reggaeton. Merengue. And stuff like that. I love that
music. And of course, I’m black. I love hip-hop and all that other stuff,
like hip hop, rap, R and B, and of course fried chicken. And all those
stereotypes.

Here, Sanchez presented himself as a divided (versus composite)
self, enumerating his mixture as one part Hispanic, the other black. Each
part obediently follows what hegemonic culture dictates. These
discursive practices cement the idea that to be black is to like rap and
hip-hop or that to be Hispanic is to eat paella. Interestingly, Sanchez

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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196 The Borders of Race

acknowledges how his friends were affected by the policing racial
discourses of their parents, who held stereotypical views of blacks as
violent, criminal, “shacking up,” uneducated, incarcerated sex fiends
(see Davis 1981; Collins 2005).

Jessica, who engaged in both protective and malevolent border
patrolling, explained that growing up around black people both
prompted and pressured her to identify as black because “that was really
all I was exposed to.” She continued,

I identify with black culture. I listen to, you know, traditional black
culture, stereotypical music, you know, hip hop, R and B, all types of
music like that, and I mean, I guess just being around all black people
helped me identify more with that side of me.

Jessica also described not knowing “a lot about Indian culture,”
since her mother, who “you can’t tell is Indian just by talking to her”
and is “pretty much fully Americanized,” has “assimilated toward it,
regular culture.” In addition, “She cooks American food. She doesn’t
cook Indian food.” With both sides of her extended family in the
Midwest, Jessica noted that she has little contact with her parent’s
relatives and other extended kinship networks.

Jessica’s reference to “regular culture” speaks to the way that
“American culture” becomes the dominant reference point, despite her
growing up in a multicultural family (see Takaki 1993). Her logic
extends to matters of race as she relied on troublesome tropes of race to
situate herself in society (see Gates 1986). Jessica deployed similar
stereotypes in explaining how she arrived at a black identity. Her
contradictory comments above suggest that blackness was imposed on
her (the racial identity to which she should default), even though she
was aware that “when people see me, they don’t see a black person
because I don’t look black. I look like I’m mixed.” She actively chose
and embraced blackness “because I love black people.” She did so
amidst being teased by other black people:

If I say…an urban comment, you know…“What’s up??” or something
that’s really urban, people will make fun of me and they’ll be like,
“You ain’t black. Stop acting black.”…. Like my boyfriend. He’s
black. Um, he grew up a certain way. Of course, he grew up with the
mom who used to punish him, and beat him whenever he did
something wrong. And he knows that the way I grew up, it wasn’t like
that because I didn’t have a black mother, so you know I didn’t get
punishment all the time.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 197

Here, Jessica participates in racetalk. Following Toni Morrison,
Myers (2005) describes racetalk as permeated everyday life with “racial
signs and symbols” designed to oppress black people. In earlier work,
Myers (2003) contends that racism is always already present in social
interactions, whether or not black people are present; racetalk is
“symptomatic of a racial structure in which some racial/ethnic groups
enjoy more privileges than others.”

In some ways then, racetalk allows Jessica to deploy racial
stereotypes of black people, despite her own blackness and her
admission, “I love black people!” The deployment of these stereotypes
(that black mothers physically punish their children as discipline; or that
“real” black people “have it rough” growing up) is a curiosity in that
Jessica used it to both mark blackness and differentiate her blackness
from the recognizably stereotypical form. Much like Sanchez deployed
racial code words, tropes and stereotypes, so too did Jessica. To Jessica,
to be “urban” is to be black; it is to grow up a “certain way” (which
included examples associating verbal and physical punishment and
discipline with black people). This racetalk reflected the troublesome
tropes that persist which can be used to perpetuate racial stereotypes and
to authenticate race.

Others seemed less aware or equipped to deal with their own
stereotypical thinking about race and racial identity. For example, Toni,
a young African American-identified woman with Black, White, and
Native American ancestry, also faced invalidation of her racially mixed
heritage. “When I say I had a white great-grandfather,” some refute her
assertion by saying, “Everybody did. Who doesn’t?” Toni explained, “I
acknowledge that (mixture) because that’s just my history.” Ironically,
while confronting the racial ideologies of others and elaborating on
others accusing her of “acting white,” Toni reified many stereotypes
about blacks:7 that they “go around with nails and hair” [presumably
long and loud]; and look “ghetto” and expressed some problematic
ideologies of her own.8 When I asked her to clarify what “acting white”
meant to her, she offered the following:

People think I “act white” because I don’t act like that. (Emphasis
hers). You know what I’m saying?…. Well, I know I’m very reserved.
I guess by the way I speak, that I don’t speak slang, I guess. The way I
carry myself…. The way I dress; the things that I wear…. And also
because I, I’ve never, I don’t hang around just black people. I’ve never
gone to an all-black institution, like schools. I’ve always been around
whites (attended racially diverse schools)…. Except for one. I started
off at an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and it
was a culture shock for me…. Because they were African American

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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198 The Borders of Race

through and through. They weren’t like me…. They were a little bit
wild, more outspoken.

By “wild,” Toni meant “just flying off the handle about everything;
cursing.” Her comments about being “African American through and
through” suggest an authenticity or “realness” about blackness. She
knows these authenticity tests from experience yet supports them in her
observations of “real” black people. She also suggested that many had
“strong personalities, not saying that that’s a black thing. But it was just
different than what I’m used to.” After a year, Toni transferred to a
predominantly white university. Her experience “wasn’t as bad as at the
HBCU [because] everyone acted like they were supposed to.” Toni’s
comments illustrated that not only do some whites subscribe to racist
ideologies but often blacks do as well. The comments also contrasted
blackness by differentiating between “good” and “bad” blacks. Toni was
not alone in her deployment of these discursive practices.

The racetalk that Toni engages in supports the point that Bonilla-
Silva (2003a) makes in his work, Racism without Racists. He argues that
blacks increasingly adopt the style of colorblind racism many white
people rely on in this society. Bonilla-Silva (2002) also addresses this
covert operation in his article, “The Linguistics of Color Blind Racism.”
This article details the new face of racism—the softer, subtler kind.
While some people continue to keep racial epithets in circulation, they
have recently introduced a gentler style of racism into their repertoire.
The stylistics of this new racism have begun to seduce not only whites,
many of whom feel “outnumbered” or otherwise crowded out by
immigrants and/or people of color, but also by some of those very
immigrants and/or people of color. In an ironic but perhaps not
altogether surprising pattern, members of the honorary white and
collective black groups have coopted whites’ styles of racial discourses,
which replicate and reproduce dominant racial discourses and racial
hegemony.

Toni’s comments suggest some internalized racism which provides
a partial explanation for her perception and description of some black
people as “wild.” The result of this internalization of racism could also
offer explanation as to some of the contradictions that emerge in her
narrative, relating her contradictory admiring and disparaging comments
about black people (see Bailey, Chung, Williams, Singh, and Terrell
2011).

In contrasting shades of blackness, these respondents promoted
themselves as having ostensibly “better” kinds of black versus “not that
kind of black” identities by juxtaposing themselves with the more

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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Internalizing Racial Identities 199

mythical, hyperbolic blackness. Alternately, black-identified
respondents with multiracial parentage may experience border patrolling
as an attempt (by others) to dis/qualify their blackness. Invoking
stereotypical images of blackness can position one as an insider because
it suggests an intimate familiarity with such mythologies. Conversely,
circulating these stereotypes discursively could position one as an
outsider, thereby compromising their blackness even further. Perhaps
one could argue that a little bit of both are at play here. Toni, Jessica,
and others show how racial ideologies in a post–Civil Rights Era remain
contradictory at best.

That Jessica performs her blackness by getting “a little ghetto” or
“putting a little accent with my speech” suggests that she is both a racial
insider and an outsider to blackness. Her racial performance remains
problematic in her evocation of or reliance on stereotypes to express her
blackness publicly. Feeling pressured to prove her blackness (versus
both her black and Asian Indian identity), Jessica border patrols herself.
To alleviate some of the pressure of this border patrolling, she notes that
increasingly she acknowledges that she is mixed, with plans to travel to
India “to try to learn a little bit about that side of me.”

Jessica’s narrative deviated slightly from that of Sa, who pointedly
felt a sense of entitlement to freely explore a number of experiences and
cultures that her Black, Brazilian, and British relatives introduced and
exposed her to throughout her life course: “That’s why I’m kinda like
dipping into every little thing because it’s just like from one side I have
my (white British) grandmother showing me this (etiquette; tea parties;
‘ballet, opera, classical music…and museums’) from the other (black
American) aunts and cousins introducing me to rap music and stuff like
that (‘jazz’ and ‘Luther Vandross’).”

In describing this freedom to choose, Sa not only contrasted (and
racialized) the interests of family, she classed them as well, at least
implicitly, with references to the “ballet” and “opera” signifying high
culture and “rap” signifying low culture, in the dominant imagination.
The class connotations intersect with race to suggest that ballet, opera
and the like are “white” pastimes while rap music and jazz are “black”
pastimes. On a related note, respondents like Sa expressed an
appreciation for being able to blend racial borders by exploring their
interests cross-racially (“dipping into every little thing”). Ironically, as
they did so, they described different activities in bounded and race-
specific ways. This reified the racial connotations (and their attendant
limitations) of various social and cultural activities such that they
equated ballet with whiteness or jazz with blackness (see Steele 2011).
These dichotomies are false but, paradoxically, when mixed, they can

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
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200 The Borders of Race

signal blending, border crossing, and affirm multiracial mixture. Indeed,
they signal mixture.

Respondents who were border patrolled by significant others did not
seem to be as easygoing about border blending. In general, they
appeared more tentative and policing of their own interests as a result.
Respondents whose families encouraged border blending, then, more
easily seemed to embrace their racial composition. Unlike respondents
who felt regulated and disciplined by others’ borderism, Sa, for
example, felt unrestricted. Since she had not internalized others’
borderism, she felt free to explore her interests without being a docile
body pressured to follow racial scripts (Foucault 1977).

Another expression of borderism involved respondents articulating
antagonism about or frustration with being misread or misrecognized
racially and ethnically (see Harper 2005 and Harris-Perry 2011 on
misrecognition). While some respondents regarded such misreading as
complimentary because it facilitated their ability to blend into different
racial groups, other respondents responded less favorably to this
misreading that they felt was pejorative. This ambiguity sometimes
increased their social access to more groups of people.

Zach, a white Asian multiracial man, revealed more interesting,
almost incitable ideas about his reactions to being misread as Hispanic.
Because he jokingly referred to himself as a “flip,” which some
Filipinos do (see Francia and Gamalinda 1996), I considered his
experience in transitioning from “‘flip’ to ‘spic’” a provocative way to
draw attention to his ostensibly internalized racism and the white
privilege he enjoys as an “honorary white” or “not fully Asian” person.
Bailey, Chung, Williams, Singh, and Terrell (2011) discuss internalized
racism or racial oppression as it relates to black individuals, but one
could argue similar patterns may be observed in multiracial individuals
of various racial combinations. The aforementioned transition from one
racial location and consciousness to another occurs when his friends fail
to grant him honorary whiteness by problematically pointing out Zach’s
difference through “jokes.” They do not make fun of his Filipino
identity, notably, but rather the racialized ethnicity for which he is often
mistaken. Speculatively, Zach’s friends tease him about this, knowing of
his displeasure in being mistaken for a Latino. He expressed this
displeasure in misrecognition to me at various points in our interview
conversation. He provided this explanation and observation of the
humor his friends deploy to deal with the differences between them.
Note their use of the dimunitive, “little,” to describe a Mexican person;
this is indicative of what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003a) argues is one of
the primary styles of colorblind racism:

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 201

It seems like it’s just a big joke, like my friends that are white, they’re
like, “Ah, you little Mexican, come here.” I mean, they don’t mean
any harm by it. I know they’re just kidding; they’re just messing with
me. Like I have one friend who’s, he’s a white guy, and I call him
fatty, because he’s a big guy. And he’s like, “Come here, you little
wetback. Will you come cut my grass?” That kind of stuff, and it’s all
fun and games so I don’t take any offense to it. Like the thing that
really irritates me though is when I go to a Mexican restaurant or
someplace and like a Mexican, or a Latino generally, will come up to
me or my girlfriend and just assume, right off the bat, that we speak
Spanish. And I’m like, “Dude, I don’t speak Spanish” and they have
this look like, “Why not?” and I’m like, “Because I’m not Latino. I
don’t have to know Spanish.”

His racial attitudes about Latinos are insensitive, if not abrasive.
They are not, however, altogether uncommon, particularly in the
national and local context of intensified public debates and discussions
regarding the (legal and/or illegal) presence of immigrants, especially
Mexicans in the South (see also Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, and Krysan
1997). His vehemence becomes more visible and striking in opposition
to the racist jocularity he exchanges among friends, most of whom
identify as white.

Rather than enjoy the multiple honorary memberships he is granted
because of his ambiguity (that some mistake him as Hispanic), Zach
reacts with frustration. Ironically, he remains tolerant, if not
accomodating, of the racist jokes and race talk his friends casually
deploy in his presence (see Houts Picca and Feagin 2007; Myers 2005).
Arguably, when he joins in the joking, he might even be viewed as
encouraging their behavior. Whether he forgives them for joking or
actually does not even seem to find any offense in this type of humor, he
takes obvious offense to strangers misperceiving him as Hispanic or
presuming that he knows Spanish. He appears insistent on distancing
himself from Latinos or Hispanics, so much so that he disregards that
others may see him as multilingual (a speaker of Spanish and English),
rather than Spanish-speaking only. So palpable is his aversion to this
perception that he rejects this possibility and firmly celebrates that he
primarily knows and speaks only one language.

This, in some ways, exposes not only how his white friends view
him as “honorary white” or “not really Asian” (except for the “good
food” his Asian mother is able to prepare), but also suggests that he 1)
may see himself similarly, as “honorary white,” and 2) may harbor
potentially prejudicial views of different racial/ethnic groups (except
whites and Asians).

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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202 The Borders of Race

What is ironic about Zach’s opposition to honorary Hispanic
membership, or more generally to being perceived as of a group to
which one does not claim membership, involves the lack of information
that people have about the very groups to which they do or could claim
membership. For example, because one could understand Filipino as a
mix of Chinese and Spanish (Root 1997; Espiritu 2001, 2003, 2004),
one could read Zach’s frustration with or rejection of being
misperceived as Spanish as a form of internalized racism—or a lack of
literacy or knowledge about the complexity of multiraciality among
Filipinos. One might suggest he is border patrolling himself, except that
he appears unaware of what Filipino mixture includes (historically and
in contemporary society) (see Ocampo 2016).

To not know the composite parts of his identity prohibits him from
seeing that disliking or distancing himself from Hispanics/Latinos could
be interpreted as disliking or distancing from himself. While I cannot
draw this conclusion, I share part of his narrative as an example of how
easily some multiracial people can access white privilege, revise their
own family histories to maintain this privilege or enjoy “honorary
white” status, and reinforce socially constructed differences between
racial and ethnic groups. His example also reveals a certain fragility or
precarity in that honorary position.

Zach’s experience echoes that of Tracy whose friends reportedly
directed a lot of racetalk at her as well. As I discussed in the last chapter,
Tracy also enjoyed an honorary white status in her mostly white
friendship group. However, because she reportedly ate rice and “Chinese
food, or Asian food, everyday just about,” she faced a similar set of
insensitive and racist remarks or “jokes” from her friends. In both
examples, Zach and Tracy espouse colorblind narratives throughout the
course of our interviews yet these moments they offer punctuate, if not
rupture, their colorblindness. Their narratives reveal a far messier
negotiation that they must make, as they may want to preserve their
honorary white membership in the friendship circles and their integrity.
Reacting “too strongly” could easily jeopardize their status and reinforce
racial divisions that otherwise get ignored or minimized. Their
experiences suggest that these negotiations can much more easily be
framed through humor because that interpretation is more forgiving. To
interpret the jokes as more malicious, or racist, would require emotional
work and communication that multiracial individuals and their mostly
white peers may not be prepared to handle effectively. This sobering
reality suggests that more work must be done to equip people with the
tools to talk more openly and honestly about race, racial difference, and
racial discrimination on individual and institutional levels.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
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Internalizing Racial Identities 203

Just think about the impact and injury that these “jokes” have on
young people crystallizing their racial identities (see Collins 1998b;
Myers 2005). Is it any wonder that multiracial individuals engage in
racial border patrolling, denying parts of their parentage to blend in,
instead of blending borders?

Conclusions

What many of the narratives of multiracial respondents revealed is the
sobering reality of racism. That is, as some multiracial individuals
acknowledge the way that they are targets of racial discrimination and
differential treatment and that they are positioned at a disadvantage in
the dating and mate selection process, others participate in and produce
what Kristen Myers (2005) calls “racetalk.” Sometimes, the same
individuals may be targets of discrimination and also participants in
perpetuating it individually. This participation upholds and circulates the
problematic racial ideologies of members of various racial groups. As
multiracial individuals negotiate their potentially shifting mixture, they
may manage their multiplicity by border patrolling themselves.

Policing or constraining their own choices, instead of enjoying and
exploring these choices, reflects a trend that reinforces Bonilla-Silva’s
(2004) contention that anyone living in a racial pigmentocracy and
hierarchy will learn to participate in the process. Multiracial people may
choose to present themselves in ways that bring them better access to
racial privilege, positioning themselves in closer proximity to some
color lines and further from others. Doing so also upholds the antiblack
racism that persists in this country and the dis-privileges that collective
black members experience.

In Chapter Six, I build on my discussion of borderism to show how
people who are policed, in terms of their racial identities, produce new
ways of seeing race. Through their own literal and figurative journeys,
many multiracial people cross racial borders as well as geographical
ones. What does this multiracial movement do to our collective
conceptualizations of race when we are encouraged to take into account
different racial paradigms? How do these migrations facilitate racial
transformations and reconfigurations in the racial classification system
and the way people locate, dislocate, and/or relocate themselves within
this system, in this society, and others?

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204 The Borders of Race

Notes
1 He held this belief despite saying, “Almost everybody’s a mixture of the

oppressed and the oppressor because when you look at how many children were
the children of sexual, I mean, I hate to say it but, sexual molestation of the
white master on the black slave. A lot of kids came from that. And so you are a
mixture of the oppressor and the oppressed.”

2 Dakota revisits this term and provides the following elaboration: “My
mom’s best friend is also Korean and married to a White man. They have two
daughters which are half Korean and so when we are out, we are like whatever,
but when they are at home with us and mom, and they are speaking Korean, we
can start to be like little Korean girls or whatever, but only when it’s convenient
like that. That’s what I meant when I said ‘convenient.’”

3 More evidence of this “spicing up” of whiteness occurred with Rose’s
discussion of exploring more of her Native American ancestry: “I think it would
be fun, something to learn, about my culture…. Um, I think I would try to
promote the heritage more, if I could, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t promote it,
I think it’s great to promote other cultures but I think if I knew I was definitely a
part of it, then I would try to participate in more things that were culturally from
that sect of Indian culture.”

4 Rosalind Fischer (2006) described these as “rules and roles that support
and maintain the domination of people of color.”

5 “I think if it was like in a class, where people were asking about it, I’d
want to share more about it, but maybe professional situations where they don’t
want to know details, just they want to know, ‘What are you?’ Okay, move on.
I would probably just say white.”

6 By this, I mean that she mostly grew up in predominantly black
neighborhoods and “black settings”; and established black friendship networks.

7 Toni also reified stereotypes about whites, noting their reserved
demeanor, proper speech, and polished appearance and dress. These examples
illustrate racetalk (2005).

8 Bonilla-Silva (2003a,b) discussed how some nonwhite groups possess
more prowhite attitudes than whites themselves. The converse, then, involves
blacks having anti-black attitudes that match or exceed that of whites.

Mills, Melinda. The Borders of Race : Patrolling “Multiracial” Identities, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsd/detail.action?docID=4786360.
Created from ucsd on 2019-10-10 15:48:51.
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