Filling out his census form, the President of the United States chose to answer the question about race by identifying himself as African-American.
Mr. Obama could have checked white, checked both black and white, or checked the last category on the form, "some other race," which he would then have been asked to identify in writing.
But Obama went for the single classification, black. In yesterday's Washington Post Elizabeth Chang takes him to task. She's disappointed that he should have so self-identified, rather than registering that he is biracial. There's more than one issue wrapped up in what she says. Is one's preferred identification all that matters? Or should we care, rather, about accuracy? Perhaps by filling in the form as he did Obama was 'simply exhibiting pride in being African American'. I won't comment on any of these points. I just want to pick out one aspect of Chang's argument that I think is questionable. It's here:
Despite being raised by a white mother and white grandparents, despite hav[ing] spent most of his childhood in the rainbow state of Hawaii, despite clearly being comfortable in almost any type of crowd (though I suppose Tea Partyers might give him pause), the president apparently considers himself only black... But he also argued in his famous speech about race that he could no more disown the Reverend Jeremiah Wright "than I can my white grandmother." With his census choice, he has done precisely that.
That is an inference too far. A person's links to parents and grandparents are of many dimensions, one of these, most likely, the sharing of a common ethnic identity, but only one of them. That someone should choose to self-identify in a certain way different from a parent or grandparent cannot be taken as a disowning. Though the two acts might go together, they needn't. Here's an analogy: a son or daughter of Jews, one to whom Jewish identity ceases to matter and who assimilates, can continue to have a very close and perfectly loving relationship with his or her parents and grandparents despite that. The word 'disowning' would be a simple misdescription of that relationship. To insist otherwise is to rule out the legitimacy of personal choice in matters of identity. There are, of course, families in which such choice is frowned upon or worse, but they aren't universal within a liberal and secular culture.
There's another critical reflection on Chang's column here.
