Call for Census Category Creates Interracial Debate

Reflecting changing times and demographics, a new generation of ethnically and racially mixed Americans is demanding the creation of a multiracial category for the U.S. Census.

In general, supporters of the category want recognition and political representation for people of mixed heritage. Opponents say minority groups could shrink if such a designation is allowed. The issue has been of particular importance to blacks because of the way in which race has been traditionally defined in America: socially, any known African ancestry makes you black.

Last summer, Velina Hasu Houston and Charles Stewart were among the panelists discussing the role of “Blacks in a New MultiCultural America” at a Los Angeles meeting of the National Assn. of Black Journalists.

Houston, 33, supports a multiracial census category. She is an award-winning playwright and an assistant professor at USC, where she teaches play-writing. She is the executive director and co-founder of the AmerAsian League.

Houston considered her experience on the panel so painful--she says she received a hostile reception from many African Americans--that she declined to be interviewed in the same room with Stewart.

Stewart, 38, opposes a multiracial category. He has been chief deputy for state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) for three years. He has been active in national and community Democratic Party organizations for 10 years.

Times: How do you define yourself?

Houston: As Amerasian. And it’s not how I define myself, it’s who I am biologically. The biological truth of my identity is Amerasian, but politically I often call myself a multiracial person because I want to stress the political agenda of multiracial persons, including Amerasians. I include Amerasians as a subset of the multiracial community in this country.

Times: Where were you born? What were your parents’ backgrounds?

Houston: I was born in Tokyo . . . May 5, 1957. My mother was born in Matsuyama, which is on the smaller island of Japan. . . . (My) father was a military policeman in the U.S. Army. He had served in Guam and then was stationed in Tokyo. He met my mother in Kobe, Japan.

Times: Tell me more about your father’s family.

Houston: He was born in Linden, Ala. His mother was Blackfoot Indian and his father was African American.

Times: You have said that you’ve suffered oppression at the hands of African Americans. When did this begin?

Houston: It began in kindergarten in Junction City, Kan., the town outside of (Ft. Riley). Children can be cruel. It began with the food we brought to lunch.

Times: What did you bring to lunch?

Houston: Sushi and Japanese pickles, and I always had hot green tea. I remember kids would always say: ‘Your lunch smells like perfume, yuck.’ They would see our moms and make fun of the way our moms talked and called us interesting names. And we were the group that everybody could make fun of--we were the immigrants.

The problems (ranged) anywhere from mild teasing to being treated very badly at recess by groups of African-American girls usually . . . (one of whom) pushed me down and cut my hair off in junior high. . . .

Times: Where did you go to college and what were your experiences with African Americans there?

Houston: I went to undergraduate school at Kansas State University. My large Amerasian community was gone. We had all spread to different parts of the country. I was on my own. I was a member of the Asian-American student body, the Native American Indian student body and I would go to the Black Student Union meetings, and they always were very leery of my presence. And it was because they wanted me to choose. It began there. The Asian-American student body didn’t care. . . . I felt the same thing with the Native American Indian student body. But with the Black Student Union it was really like ‘you come over here and you stay here and your allegiance is with us or we won’t accept you.’ So some of the foundation for relationships with the African-American community that would reverberate into my adulthood began in the undergraduate level. . . .

Times: How do you perceive your relationship with African Americans now?

Houston: I am able to fuse bonds when I am accepted for who I am. For instance, the USC Upward Bound program is doing a presentation for Black History Month dealing with Martin Luther King Jr. A woman calls me up and says, ‘I know that you are mixed and that you are Asian and American, but I’d like your help on this from a theatrical perspective.’

I said, ‘This is something I care about too. This is part of my heritage.’

Times: Since most people of discernible African ancestry in America are identified as black, why don’t you accept that definition?

Houston: First of all, I feel it is not what one is considered to be or (how one is) treated that determines who we are, because people of color are always considered to be ignorant and lazy and lesser than European Americans. If we are to accept their considerations and perspectives of our identity, then we have beaten ourselves before we’ve started the race.

Further, the societal definition of African-American identity refers to, in my opinion, the Euro-American/African-American mixed-race experience only. The Amerasian is new in America and that’s really the only multiracial identity I can address.

Historically and currently, Afro-Asian mixtures in this country have been and are defined as Asian--such as Pacific Islander Americans.

Amerasians are also politically and societally defined as Asian Americans, despite the fact that we are of mixed race.

Times: You have referred to the political agenda of multiracial Americans. What is that agenda?

Houston: I think that they want to be recognized, they want their identity to be . . . categorized truthfully and accurately. That means that they don’t want to be lumped into one monoracial category or another because it’s politically appropriate or convenient.

Times: Obviously, there is strength in numbers. Political scientists point out that if the African-American population were divided, as the population of African descent in Brazil is, it would be politically dysfunctional.

Houston: I am part of a monolithic group--Amerasians. . . . (Stewart) made it very clear to me on that (journalism) panel that the reason African-American people need to deny multiracial people their identity, and pull those who are part African into their numbers, is purely political. It’s not because of some great brother or sister love--it’s political. If their numbers decrease, their chance of getting public funds decreases--as well as political representation. To me that is a totally unethical way of saying that you want people to be a member of your community. . . .

There is no ownership of our political agenda or our political burdens. If they want to count Amerasians in their numbers, are they willing to come on my side, to give me part of those funds to deal with Amerasian politics?

Times: So you feel there has to be a new, multiracial census category to give this group political recognition?

Houston: Yes. I would like to see a multiracial category. Right now, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department wants to award monies to minority artists. They have meetings to meet the artists in the community, they have a meeting for the Asian-American artists, the African-American artists, etc. I send a friend to the African-American meeting who is a Amerasian (of African-American descent) and she can’t even get her hand acknowledged to get a question answered. And all of the issues that come up from the African-American artists are 180 degrees from anything that has to do with her artistic or political agenda. She simply does not fit in. They don’t understand what she represents or who she is, they just want her to be quiet.

The same thing happens to me. I go to the Asian-American artists meeting and I have to rally to bring up the whole Amerasian or multiracial agenda. Because when the city looks at funding African-American and Asian-American artists, they don’t remember the people in between . . . .

The only way we can become accounted for is to have that category on the census.

Times: What’s your response to the idea of a new census category for multiracial Americans?

Stewart: I have no problem with a new census category which does not reduce the numbers of people of African descent in its count.

If, in fact, the census created a new category called “multiracial” and people could identify themselves exclusively as members of that group, then I think that would be problematic--not only for black people but for other ethnic groups as well. However, I would support . . . some sort of census formulation which clearly acknowledges the sociopolitical reality of America, which is, if you have identifiably African ancestry, you are considered to be and treated as if you were black.

Times: What kind of formulation would you suggest?

Stewart: A multiheritage classification, which would be distinct from a racial classification, could be acceptable.

Times: So you would suggest having that category in addition to a racial classification. That way you could identify people who want to have their multiple heritage acknowledged at the same time you acknowledge their historical racial classifications.

Stewart: Correct.

Times: What is your background? How do you define yourself?

Stewart: I am an African American . . . I am aware that on the maternal side of my family I have both Native American ancestry--we believe it’s Creek Indian, but I am not absolutely sure about that--and white ancestry. On my father’s side I have white ancestry too.

Times: Velina Hasu Houston would probably say that you are not acknowledging your “biological truth” by simply defining yourself as an African American. You and she are multiracial Americans. Why don’t you, as she does, identify yourself as a multiracial person?

Stewart: No. 1, we need to recognize that race as a concept is not defined by the individual nor by the subculture, but by the dominant culture. . . .

The reason I consider myself African American primarily is because that is how I am identified by the institutions and individuals in this society . . .

For instance, in my case I have a half-brother and half-sister whose mother is Swedish. As recently as Thanksgiving, my brother’s mother and I had an argument about this very issue--her insistence that her son is a mulatto and her abiding resentment that her son is considered black in America.

When she came here FOB--fresh off the boat--she couldn’t understand how the mother could be listed as white, the father could be listed as black and the child could be listed only as black. She literally did not understand that, she had no historical comprehension of the notion. It was only when she began to accept the American distortion that she could understand why that was the case.

Times: Do we need to perpetuate that distortion?

Stewart: Yes, we do.

(After talking to friends and colleagues about Houston’s position) people . . . were surprised to hear of this phenomenon of a multiracial identity as a primary identity. And there was some suspicion that this was simply a repudiation of blackness born of unwillingness to identify with a despised minority. Unwillingness to identify with America’s quintessentially despised minority.

Times: Do you agree?

Stewart: Yes . . . (At the panel) I suggested that it was possible that a lot of Velina’s negative experience interacting with African Americans stemmed from her unwillingness to acknowledge a bond with other black people in light of her African heritage. That, in fact, it is not the difference in appearance that arouses hostility to Velina, but rather the fact that if someone approaches her on the assumption that there is a connection between them because of shared African heritage, Velina objects to that and rejects that kinship bond. That may arouse the hostility.

Times: Since African Americans are, in fact, a racially mixed population, isn’t it possible to expand the definition to include the new kind of diversity that Velina Hasu Houston represents?

Stewart: There is a need for us to continue to identify ourselves as black people. However, I also affirm . . . that it is essential that a way be found to respect everyone’s self-identification while also continuing to empower ourselves as African Americans.

We have a responsibility to find some way of doing that. (It’s possible that) Africa America can broaden its cultural sense of parameters while continuing to consolidate around social and political issues. And it is imperative that African Americans not repeat the crime of bigotry that has been visited upon us. If there are people of mixed ancestry . . . who do not feel an identification with black people . . . we have to respect that.