This is part 7 of a 10-part series by Dr. Charley Flint and Jeff Hitchcock, CSWAC’s founders, on our future direction. We value your time and support.
WEEK 7
Who Owns Multiracial Culture?
Centuries after white supremacy first created the race construct, we find race interweaves with culture. People of a given race also share broad cultural characteristics such as geographic origin, regional history, and a shared relationship to a hierarchical racial structure. We can speak in a meaningful way about Black culture, or white culture, for example. There is much variation in customs and practice within any given racial group, but there is still a common cultural foundation that informs each one. When we talk about race, we are talking about culture as well.
Who owns a culture? In other words, who has the right to identify and speak for and advocate for the interests of a culture?
For instance, who owns Black culture? We say, Black people. Who owns white culture? We say, it’s white people. Who owns Indigenous American culture? Indigenous Americans, of course.
So, who owns multiracial culture? Is it multiracial people? We say, no, because the idea of a multiracial culture is too important to simply leave in the hands of people of multiracial heritage. Why? Because when we look beyond individual heritage at social groups, we must allow for people of monoracial heritage to come together in multiracial community.
At the same time, the idea of multiracial culture is too important to simply leave in the hands of monoracial people. What does it mean, for instance, if monoracial people form a multiracial community in which people of multiracial heritage and identity are marginalized? It is not uncommon for multiracial coalitions to act this way.
Potentially, anyone might claim ownership of multiracial culture. But we need to recognize the idea of a multiracial culture is something not yet realized in our society in the same way as Black culture, or white culture. There has not been a historically continuous development of a self-identified multiracial community in the same sense as there has been with monoracial communities. Multiracial, anti-racist culture is something we aspire to create.
The idea of ownership of multiracial community and culture is one that is still in development. But at least we may expect those who own a culture will express loyalty and devotion to it. So, we say multiracial culture belongs to those of us who are invested in making it happen.
Be careful what you wish for. The cultural bonds that hold people together — shared fate, identity, leadership — are weak within multiracial culture. Cultures do not operate in a void. They foster social structures such as institutions and traditions which, in turn, support the culture. These institutions and traditions exist for monoracial cultures, but they have not yet come into being for an emergent multiracial culture. They have to be created.
When we enter into multiracial community, we all bring our monoracial identities with us. This includes not only cultural differences, but also histories of oppression, and contemporary injustices carried out along racial lines. These sharpen the monoracial norm.
We have, all of us, spent our entire lives operating within the framework of the monoracial norm. Our monoracial identities run strong, while our identities as members of a multiracial community are weak and easily undermined by critiques that uphold the monoracial norm.
Holding together a shared identity that contains within it all the historic fractures of race is a challenge. As learners, adherents and proponents of multiracial ideology and culture, we are still emerging. Our work stands before us.
So, like dual citizens or people who have lived within and between two different cultures, we must become facile in moving between monoracial and multiracial communities and negotiating differences. Our monoracial identities call us, from history and from the present, and hold us accountable. When we come together in multiracial community they come along with us.
Charley Flint . . . . . . Jeff Hitchcock
Next Tuesday: Politically Conscious Multiracialism