Reflections on Multiracial Identity on Another Thanksgiving Passed

Reflections on Multiracial Identity on Another Thanksgiving Passed

by Danny Haiphong

“Concepts such as multiracial identity put forward the dead-end conclusion that ‘mixed’ individuals lay outside the power structure of white supremacy and racism.”

Over the last few years, much discussion has occurred in the US corporate media around the demographic shift in the US. Reports have verified that white Americans will be minorities in the general population after 2042. This impending change has struck fear in the eyes of the racist, rightwing sector of society and romanticism in the minds of the racist, white liberal sector of society. The right has responded with racist terror while self-identified white liberals have found new ways to boast of the so-called "progress" of US capitalist society. Multiracial identity has been a key concept recently devised to sanitize the racial political order of the US.

The politics of multiracial identity are a product of the same liberal mythology so embedded in the Thanksgiving holiday. This ideology, promoted by the liberal sector of the ruling class, celebrates Thanksgiving as proof that the US is a "nation of immigrants." Thanksgiving positions the US as a cooperative society. The fairy tale paints the US as a safe haven for people of different backgrounds instead of the genocidal settler state that it is.

Similarly, multiracial identity has been featured in corporate media such as the New York Times as a product of an increasingly tolerant, diverse US Empire. The US corporate media is quick to cite how more self-identified "Americans" are marrying between racial groups and how migrations of peoples from Africa, Asia, and Latin America have increased as well. These developments are indeed fact. However, the past and present exploitation that underlies their meaning is left out of the discussion in the same manner that the continued plight and resistance of indigenous peoples is left out of the Thanksgiving narrative.

“Multiracial identity has been a key concept recently devised to sanitize the racial political order of the US.”

Thanksgiving is a dark day in the US. Thanksgiving erases the existence of indigenous people and extols the benevolence of the nation's settler colonial roots. Multiracial identity serves a similar function in its erasure of the question of power within the racial politics of the US capitalist Empire. Multiracial identity is deemed a "new" development and one that creates new social relations among people. According to trendy media such as Mic, being of "mixed" race descent carries with it new experiences with racism not yet easily understood or dealt with. These so-called "new" experiences are glorified by the liberal sector of US society while the history of revolutionary resistance and struggle against the racist US power structure is erased.

I am what many would describe as "mixed" or "multiracial." My father is a white man and my mother is a Vietnamese and Chinese woman. The social relations of racism defined my childhood. Most white youth could care less about my father being white and saw me as a "gook" or a "chink" with all of the prescribed characteristics. And most youth of color, Black and otherwise, were so steeped in their own experience with racist oppression that I could only be seen as a person of color. So while light skin may have afforded me the privileges of bourgeois education, the social relations of power at the root of racism provided a daily reminder of my inferior position to White America.

In college, my survival in the ivory tower depended on a deep search for my place within the US racist power structure. The search initially drew me to a dialogue group specifically tailored to the experiences of people who grew up "multiracial." The group focused on "microaggressions" and centered almost entirely on a narrative that positioned multiracial individuals outside of the so-called racial binary of White and Black. Yet the reason I became involved in the struggle against racism had nothing to do with a lack of recognition within the "racial binary." I became committed to the struggle against racism because I felt compelled to act in solidarity with people, whether they identified as Black, Latino, Asian American or otherwise, who were victims of racist oppression. It was because of my identification as a victim of white supremacy that I felt obligated to place myself in service of the people in whatever way I could.

The proponents of multiracial identity possess little interest in solidarity. Most of the operatives who peddle "multiracial" and "multicultural" narratives are consultants, academics, and "diversity" pimps in search of foundation funds from the liberal sector of the exploiting class. Their class interests dictate the politics of the multiracial identity they created. Every Thanksgiving holiday, people all over the world are compelled to glorify racism, empire, and colonial conquest. Multiracial identity suppresses the potential for solidarity among peoples exploited by racism in the same way the narrators of Thanksgiving suppress the genocidal background of the holiday.

“I felt compelled to act in solidarity with people who were victims of racist oppression.”

In 2011, I found an alternative to the bourgeois politics of multiracial identity from Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton's "To Die for the People" introduced me to the revolutionary ideology and practice of the Black liberation movement. His work placed racism within the context of imperialist development. The Black Panther Party explained racism as a precondition to the collective oppression of Black people and all colonized peoples necessary to maximize capitalist profits. The analysis led the Black Panther Party to an internationalist perspective. When I studied that the Black Panther leadership offered its members to fight on the side of the national liberation front in Vietnam during the US invasion, it became instantly clear that the politics of multiracial identity contributed little to nothing toward the solidarity necessary to defeat the US power structure.

There is no time riper than now to wrestle with the need to build solidarity with the oppressed and simultaneously uphold the principle of self-determination. Concepts such as multiracial identity negate these important questions by forwarding the dead-end conclusion that "mixed" individuals lay outside the power structure of white supremacy and racism. Multiracial identity ultimately promotes the same liberal mythology inherent in the long colonial practice of Thanksgiving. Both serve to erase the critical historical context behind the foundations of US imperialism. The liberal sector of the ruling class is constantly in a search for new ways to paint a colorful picture of US empire, especially in a time where conditions are on the decline for every section of the working class and oppressed. The movement's focus, then, must be on what ideas and actions will draw people away from the allure of imperialism's great (neo) liberal diversions. You can help by donating to the film project linked below.

Danny Haiphong is currently fundraising for an important film project on the Black Panther Party, which can be found here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-story-of-huey-newton-the-black-panther-party#. Please consider a donation. For more information, contact Danny at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

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