I recently discovered that my Ancestry.com ethnicity estimate is 66 percent European and 32 percent African. It confirmed the rough percentages that had been rattling around in my head for all these years. It also reminded me of the constant social media drumbeat from liberal academicians and journalists who lament the emergence of a transcendent awareness that would relegate our current binary race-consciousness to the rubbish bin of history.
Admittedly, not everyone interprets the growing population of self-identified multiracial Americans as a critical mass of spiritual enlightenment. Witness the first mulatto president identifying with merely one-half of his racial heritage, rarely mentioning the other.
Facebook and Twitter are teeming with declarations from “critical race theorists” who question whether the post-racial narrative, a phrase they alone use, represents some degree of victory over white supremacy or a convenient sociopolitical tiptoeing around its black victims. It’s virtually impossible to discuss this, however, without acknowledging the twin 800 lb. gorillas in the room — organized religion and Marxism.
During slavery’s long dark night of barbaric lashings with a cat-o’-nine tails during the week, transitioning to praising the Lord on Sunday, religion certainly did not allow society to reconcile and find peace with dark skin.
Preachers of all shades and political affiliations still declare that life is a zero sum proposition, with the soul condemned to burn in eternal hell or ascend to the heavenly paradise of God’s kingdom. The standard retort as to why awful events such as slavery occur is usually, “God works in mysterious ways, child.”
Conversely, the world’s mystical traditions maintain that all things happen for a reason. The notion that people are born into particular situations based on pious or impious past life actions, though, is exceptionally controversial and elicits tremendously vitriolic reactions. The soul survives the death of the body, however, and even a slave-owner pays his karmic debt for demoniac behavior.
Worsening things was the introduction of atheistic Marxism into the struggle for social justice in the early 20th century. The idea of some nebulous “collective of color” acting as an effective counter measure to the dominant white power structure had the opposite effect of rendering the souls of black folk — since Marx viewed religion as the opium of the masses — null and void.
Consider also the Talented Tenth idea of W.E.B. Du Bois, who embraced Communism himself, wherein mulattoes with a superior education would forever be race leaders. He proclaimed: “Some were natural sons of unnatural fathers and were given often a liberal training and thus a race of educated mulattoes sprang up to plead for black men’s rights.”
It’s not inappropriate to feel compassion for those who have long felt uncomfortable in their skin. Ultimately, however, the question of individual identify reduces to the level of personal awareness. Does one see himself as the body or the spark of consciousness animating the same? Is one obligated to accept society’s labeling, or should one be able to freely name himself?
Multiracial identity is the first step toward an embrace of humanity, the platform from which one can best cultivate a transcendent consciousness. This should not affect the self-esteem of anyone misperceiving a distancing from blackness toward a neo-whiteness, further isolating and segregating dark bodied individuals.
More people are realizing, though, that their racial identity choices are not necessarily other people’s. They understand that they are not reacting to the decision of those who identify with their entire heritage; rather, they are reacting to their own feelings about that decision. Multiracial Americans are not responsible for others’ feelings of indignation, jealousy and fear; when those folk recognize and understand this completely, they will be able to take responsibility for how they feel and to change it.
Critics deride the notion of a transcendent consciousness as naive post-racialism, but they cannot deny that the continuing use of mutually exclusive racial groupings to monitor racialized forms of disadvantage doesn’t work when individuals cannot overcome internalized victimhood and self-loathing.
Those people who are darker than blue, recollecting Curtis Mayfield’s ’70s lyric, might do well to consider individual self-analysis apropos spiritual identity — contrasted with permanent attachment to a religio-political bloc foisting groupthink upon its devotees.
Charles Michael Byrd, an opinion writer whose pieces deal with racial identity politics and religion, is of black, white and Cherokee heritage. He lives in Queens, N.Y. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
