Chapter 6: Fragmented But Unbroken: Forming a Black White Biracial Identity in the South

Through personal narrative, this chapter explores issues of marginalization and the im/possibility of a “postracial” society from the perspective of a Black–White biracial male in the South. Often denied cultural access by both groups or expected to choose a single racial/cultural category, the author attempts to give voice to an emergent demographic cohort and examines implications of multiple consciousness and bi/multiracial identity in the 21st century.

Predicated on the notion of White superiority and traditionally yet erroneously framed as an inescapable biological imperative, “race” is a socially constructed and oppressive mechanism of human categorization used to support and preserve a social habit of group domination through the creation of taxonomies of privilege, which bend decisively toward those in power. Somewhere within, between, and beyond the institutionalized walls of these wildly inequitable typologies and hierarchically fixed set of monoracial norms and antiquated social structures—although allowed to be neither here nor there—is the multiracial identity. If only because of the genotypic and phenotypic markers used to divide us on the basis of appearance, one does not and sorely cannot truly choose who one is in such a configuration; it has already been chosen (Farley, 2001; Mallon, 2004; Omi & Winant, 1994; Root, 1990; Sundstrom, 2001, 2002a). One can (and does) choose, however, who and in what ways one becomes; perceives the world; self in the world, and in relation to the other; whether “privilege” is kept for individual gain or employed toward the dismantling of that which is unjust; and what is done with the knowledge that when one suffers, so do we all. Indeed, it has never been nor could it ever be in one’s best interest, or that of our brothers and sisters, with whom we share this human experience, to avoid or embrace such perniciously conceived, love-lacking, and stealthily maintained demarcations of humanity drawn in the sand/s of time. And so, no matter the intent or presentation of any system or institution so devised, which by its design or in application fundamentally ignores our common human ancestry, is destined to repress at its very core any notion (or possibility therein) of a liberated human existence; as it has no choice but to invariably fade when any one person or group is de/elevated at the expense of another (Collins, 2000a, 2000b). Instead, let us seek peace and purpose.