Duncan "Atrios" Black (we can call him that now, right?) has a great post musing about race and labelling, which has always fascinated me as well. Says Duncan, "I've never been a big fan of the term 'African-American' as it ties a race into a geography... What do we call... black citizens of Britain?" I thought everyone knew the answer to that. (Although Robin and I have a different one.) I know famous mixed-race folks perplex and intrigue a lot of others in the media; there's a reason that every time Derek Jeter comes up to bat the cameras show his parents (black father, white mother) in the stands.
I wonder if the hang-ups about labelling and categorizing that some have aren't so much a matter of obsessive anal-retention as a reaction to changing times, a sort of subconscious need to keep things "the way they've been" in the minds of many to increase the feeling of security, when everything was literally, in their minds, "black and white." This need seems as much of a social construct as the idea of "race" itself, and we also see it at work when talking about gender; it's reflected in language like "when men were men and women were women." On the face of it, this expression seems absurd, implying we've all suddenly lost distinguishing sexual characteristics, but I think it does indicate resistance to change. But at the same time I don't think the need is overtly political; after all, we're not immune to it on the left end of the spectrum, where "identity politics" are as powerful as ever.
Maybe it's a kind of primal fear of a future in which we all look way too much the same; there's been speculation that, with multiracial intermingling, sooner or later we'll all be one "race" and have the same sort of tannish/brownish skin tone and wouldn't that be kind of boring and non-rainbow-ish? On the other hand, future scientific advances might make it possible to change skin tone (permanently or temporarily) the way we now use contact lenses to change eye color, so all bets may be off after all. Might as well get a head start by shifting our paradigm to "we're all just human beings and we're all worthy individuals at the same time" now.
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