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Tripping on the Color Line: Black-White Multiracial Families in a Racially Divided World

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The horrible thing about this book is the painful reality of trying to live as a mixed race person in this society or somebody in love with an African-American. Ms. Dalmadge does not subscribe to the theory of the tragic mulatto but American society does make it difficult to live in a culture where one is defined by their race. If race is not readily apparent, people will come right out and ask. I have had people argue with me that my kids can't be African-American but some sort of Hispanic, any sort of Hispanic but not African-American. As a woman in a mixed race relationship, I have been questioned on my sanity and my morals and told to think about the 'poor children'. African-Americans have told my children that they have 'good' hair and 'white' features and they have been questioned by whites about what race they are. My son recently became a father and when my grandson was born, the baby showed up fair skinned and blue-eyed. My African-American daughter-in-law has been asked in public by total strangers, always white, "Whose baby is that?" and, "Are you babysitting a friends child?" (Secret code-a WHITE friend) I do not see the same depth of morbid curiosity and outright ignorance concerning Hispanic/Anglo children or Asian/white children. This book is not polite, nor is it cautious. It is long overdue, however and I am glad to have discovered it. We need to have more in depth discussions of race in America and to be honest about the effect racism has had and continues to have. If the race of my kids didn't matter so much, it wouldn't make so many people nuts trying to figure out what my family `is'. For us who have lived the life and been affected by racism I say, well done! Thank you for putting into words what so many of us carry in our hearts.

Tripping on the Color Line: Black-White Multiracial Families In a Racially Divided World, by Heather Dalmage, discusses the "lived experiences" of multiracial families and family members in America. Having interviewed both members of multiracial households and children of such unions, Dalmage has successfully shed light on an element of a society centered on and rooted in the construct of race, but known only to those involved in such relationships, marriages, and families.

Providing both personal anecdotes and instances from her respondents, Dalmage has provided a respectable read on how families and their members navigate the racial waters of America. Of her work, she states, "three primary themes run through this book: the hurtfulness (and, for whites, the invisibility) of whiteness and racism; the lack of language available to describe multiracial experiences in positive terms; and the individual and institutional demands constantly placed on multiracial family members to conform to a racially divided (and racist) system." Inherent in her "themes," she points to the "borders" and "border patrollers" with whom many multiracial family members come in contact on a daily basis. In addressing this most important issue, Dalmage not only puts the issue up for intense discussion and debate, she has also removed it from the back burner of our social consciousness regarding the fallacy of essentialism, and placed it on the table of consumption for critical analysis.

Two chapters considered interesting by this writer are "Discovering Racial Borders" and "Redlines and Color Lines" chapters one and two respectively.

In chapter one, Dalmage delves into the inner-workings of the "thought community" of multiracial families and family members. By beginning the discussion of the "borders" encountered by Americans choosing to date and marry members not of their immediate "group," Dalmage lays the foundation for readers to conceptualize what it means not only to be one who "transgresses," but also what they encounter as the simply seek to live their lives.

Although these borders are socially constructed (as she clearly states), they have very real physical and emotional manifestations for all concerned: be they the family member or the one levying a critique of the union. In beginning her work with this chapter, she forces us to rethink our positions and the problems they create. By doing so, she provides a voyeur's view of a world of which many outsiders possess no concrete understanding.

Chapter two "Redlines and Color Lines," discusses the challenges faced by multiracial family members in their search to secure housing. Dalmage shows that, despite legislation prohibiting denials of housing, families still encounter such indecencies. With a brief history of the legislation and sentiments surrounding its drafting, she provides a good start for an inquiry by interested readers to begin an enlightening trek into the world of housing and the practice of housing discrimination. By doing so, her readers are sure to come away from this chapter, coupled with some independent research, with a firm grasp of both the laws and current efforts to address such inequalities. Additionally, by supplying information on how realtors play a role in creating pandemonium in a neighborhood, i.e. "block-busting," readers not versed in the subject of race and real estate will come away with a clearer understanding of several factors that produce lower property values: race/phenotype not being among them.

Given my enjoyment of the book, for personal reasons, finding areas that could have been fleshed-out more is a truly daunting task. How does one find fault in the seemingly faultless? Especially since Dalmage offers not only some good personal and respondent experiences, but also the fact that she is helping create a level of awareness among those walking by her book in bookstores? That being said, I will attempt the somewhat impossible.

In chapter three, "We Are the Nation's Racial Rorschach Tests," she mentions how commercials and movies are becoming more sensitive to their consumers, but she does not mention several recent and early movies that dealt with the question of multiracial families and family members seeking their way in the world of boundaries. Two such groundbreaking films are Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with Sidney Poitier and Imitation of Life starring Lana Turner. These two movies, for their time, addressed some heady themes and could have been included in an analysis of how the media is, and has, worked to address some of the pain and emotions experienced by members of multiracial families. This is the only problem I find; then again, she may have considered them but chose not to include them. Interestingly, her daughter's name is Mahalia, which immediately made me think of Mahalia Jackson and her song at the end of Imitation of Life. Also, given the taxi driver's position in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and the father's (Spencer Tracy) riveting and thought provoking "summation" which ended the film, I was surprised not to see this film mentioned.

In chapter four, "Communities, Politics, and Racial Thinking," Dalmage provides good information on organizations seeking to help multiracial families and members of society, but it could have been more inclusive. Also, realizing the support from GIFT, despite the good information, this chapter seemed like an advertisement of sorts for the organization and a soapbox for its goals to help multiracial families and their members; not that this such is inherently problematic, but it seemed like a paid advertisement; and in a way, it was.

That being said, by closing her work and stating "the categories, the borders, and the color line become a challenge for us all," Heather M. Dalmage has hit the proverbial nail on the head. When it comes to the socially created and maintained categories, borders, and lines that far too few are willing to cross, those seeking to hold onto a sense of identity will lash out at anything and anyone who challenges the status quo; for in so challenging these areas, the lines are shown for what they really are: in our minds.

Heather Dalmage has succinctly and clearly outlined the issues surrounding interracial families living in a racially divided society. She and her study participants give candid, straightforward and perceptive accounts of the everyday stressors unique to people "living on the color line".

That Dr. Dalmage has been able to weave together so many stories, data, and related research in a plain-talking, easy-to-digest way, is a testament to her understanding of and willingness to analyze the question of race in our society. This book is a "MUST-READ" for any person looking for an intelligent discussion of the current status of multi-racial families in our society.

AS the title said, I had to read it for a sociology class. But the lessons the book contains are more than simple academic discussions and rather life lessons that require you to examine yourself and your own, maybe not admitted, bias towards certain racial interactions.

"Trippingon the Color Line" by Heather Dalmage

At first sitting, one isimpressed by the excellent exposition of both the concept of race andthe practice of institutionalized racism in the U.S.A. The language,politics, and ramifications of a socioeconomic structure based onracial classification and skin privilege are well presented anddiscussed. Particularly useful is the analysis of how bothAfro-Americans and Euro-Americans maintain race and racism by"patrolling borders" and perpetuating the requirement of afalse either/or identity in order to validate individuals andfamilies. Borderism functions not only to perpetuate racism bymaintaining purity and separatism but in so doing it also functions todeny living space to those of mixed race. Yet, having acknowledgedand examined the social denial of mixedness the author's bottom lineis nothing new. Mixed people do not have the right to identifythemselves publicly as such and should be discouraged from doing so.While she seems to partially understand what it means for mixed peopleto live right on the very border she describes, Dalmage still supportsthe position that they must continue to endure an externally imposedidentity and the social and intrapsychic pressures created andenforced by monoracials. It is far easier to diminish and dismiss thecomplexity and variety of individual experience by subordinating it toa simplistic (and nonexistent) ideal of group homogeneity than it isto come to terms with reality.

The author discusses the significanceof language (and lack of language) regarding race and examinesarguments both for and against either changing or deleting racialcategories. Interestingly, after noting the linguistic problemsinherent in discussing both race and mixed race she is consistentlyinconsistent throughout her text in referring to white-black mixedindividuals as biracial, multiracial, African American, or black.Thus, she further obscures mixed identity by not clarifying her ownterminology and demonstrates exactly how language functions to annexmixedness to blackness . As long as nonsense phrases such as"white looking black man" or "light-skinned black"continue in common misusage they continue to perpetuate racism andhypodescent as established by the white "purity" myth. Suchlanguage denies reality itself as well as living space, choice ofcultural affiliation, and personal identity to mixed race individualswith any known or perceived African ancestry. If a person can lookwhite but be black then "black" is obviously asociopolitical status rather than a "race". The book wouldhave benefited from a deeper examination of what the author refers toas the "devaluation" of blackness, as well as an examinationof the trend in the white controlled media to employ mixed race actorsand models to portray "blacks". Doing so would also haverequired a deeper discussion and comprehension of why "blacks" compulsively claim black-white celebrities and public figures with any known African ancestry even when that ancestry is not visible or when it is obvious that the person claimed does not self-identify as "black" or Afro-American.

While Dalmage maintains that blacks cannot be racist because they do not have the power that whites do to determine others life chances, she ignores the fact that they did have the political power to determine others life choices. If the reader is to believe Dalmage, social justice is solely the prerogative of the group and the life choices of individuals are irrelevant. Whether the rights of the individual should be sacrificed to the idea of some greater good of the group is as old as Western philosophy. However, in this context her subscription to this view is just another form of the same old determinism and essentialism that she describes. On the surface she appears to make an admirable attempt to raise many pertinent issues and then address each of their several aspects in an objective manner. On second reading however, (especially of the final chapters), one is left with the inescapable impression that this book was written more to convince mixed people of partial African ancestry to "just check black" than to try to find new ways to frontally challenge whiteness and its self-supporting racist social system. This is particularly insidious as it is a white person (legitimized by the cloak of academic scholarship) writing on behalf of the 'Black Cause' about mixed individuals and telling those individuals where they owe their allegiance based solely on that infamous 'drop of blood'. This is precisely the same message both blacks and whites have been sending Native Tans for decades now going on centuries.

When it comes to race it is often true that people can only see what they've been taught to see or what they want to see. That's why so many "blacks" continue to assert that a black-white biracial person is "black". After all, that is what "whites" decreed so of course it is "truth". Therefore, it is obviously whites and not blacks who define "blackness". While it may be true that most whites see black-white mixed people as "just black", it is also true that whites who identify their own mixed children as black are only reinforcing such attitudes. Instead of renouncing their whiteness and subscribing to hypodescent for their children, whites in interracial marriages might consider breaking down the myth of white purity by indicating their children's "race" (where asked/required) as white. At least they should experiment with it since "eyeballers" are technically not supposed to complete this information on their behalf. In reality, parents can now write down whatever they choose. That at least would be an attempt at the deconstruction of "whiteness" and its system of unearned privileges based on an exclusiveness that derives from the myth of racial "purity".

The study's greatest weakness is its limited scope. The subtitle reveals a failing common to post-civil rights black-white interracial marriage partners. That is, they ignore the history of mixed race groups in this country and focus primarily on their own immediate experience and that of black-white individuals born during and after the civil rights era. Understandably, Dalmage writes as a participant-observer based on her nuclear family experience. However, by limiting the topic to white-black interracial couples with mixed children the author cannot escape the trap of the white/black dichotomy. The trap of the dichotomy is it's inherent lie that one is either black or white and that other racial groups or mixtures, both historical and contemporary, are unimportant to the dialogue on race. With this model, mixed race people become the target of charges of being a "buffer group" that benefits from a color continuum created by whites. The fact is that this continuum is also occupied by Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics/Latinos and all the other mixtures that are growing daily in variety and number. A really effective examination of race, racism, and mixed race in the 21st century in the U.S. must include comparative analyses of how these concepts are perceived and experienced by Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics/Latinos, etc. (and any mixed race persons whose ancestry derives in part from these groups). In what ways do these socially recognized "minority" groups ignore white racism and participate in the "devaluation of blackness"? Is there a "just check one" mindset among those in Asian-White families? If not, why not? Traditionally Chinese and Japanese in particular have not only devalued blacks but considered themselves superior to whites (and everyone else). At one time they had a horror of marrying outside the group. Now Asians have the highest rate of exogamy and the highest rate of non-whites marrying whites. Why is that? How do they regard their mixed children? Are Afro-Asian children devalued and Euro-Asian children privileged? Is the concept of "whiteness" being expanded in the new century (as it was in the past to include Greeks, Italians, Jews, etc.) to include Asians and biracial Asian-White individuals? How does the image of the white family as the model family negatively impact upon other family structures?

"Blacks" supposedly comprise approximately 12% of the total population. No one even knows the number of Native Tans (let alone the number of contemporary mixed race people) since they haven't been counted for 80 years. What exactly is the estimated number of people that "blacks" fear would have been "lost" to a multiracial identifier? Surely there are enough mixed race people who, whether by choice or assignment, have traditionally identified themselves

Haether Dalmage is a wonderful wirter. Her ability to relate to the topic is key in the writing. I hope to see more of her work soon.