May 2006 Symposium (Callan)

Lionel McPherson has asked me to post this as a comment in the Callan Symposium:

Eamonn Callan's rejoinder is largely directed to a character, "Lionel McPherson," whose views are not mine.

I do not think "that individuals of multiracial descent who resist being identified as black must be committed to the intellectually if not morally disreputable view that personal identity tracks racial essence." Rather, my argument targeted the view that mixed-race identity is supported essentially by the facts of one's mixed-race ancestry. This is compatible with individuals, of mixed-race or solely African ancestry, reputably resisting being identified as black on other grounds---say, because they believe that standard racial categorization is biologically or ethically suspect. In short, I explicitly challenged a neo-essentialist rationale for multiracial identification, not all such rationales.

I never claimed or suggested that any individual typically identified as black "must be proud of being black." The issue I raised here is whether self-identifying African Americans could expect other persons typically identified as black to join in strategic black solidarity. This need not depend on taking pride in one's own blackness or that of others.

Callan finds useful an analysis of "personal identity" that is oriented around "a set of attributes, desires, or principles...the person takes a special pride in." But imposing this analysis distorts my views by implying that I endorse an account of strategic black solidarity oriented around black pride. I endorse no such account, though I cannot speak for "others" with whom Callan groups me. (He believes that racial self-identification can "simply" reflect taking pride in one's ancestry or cultural heritage. I believe that this view is confused and naïve.)

An individual's "racial identity is his own business, not ours," Callan reiterates. This fails to engage with a central point of my commentary. Public, as compared to purely private, self-identification also may well be our business. An obvious purpose of an individual's (uncoerced) public self-identification -- e.g., regarding race, sexual orientation, and religion -- is to convey beliefs or attitudes that otherwise might remain private, in an effort to influence public perception of him.

Tiger Woods, to use Callan's example, has demonstrated a great capacity for discretion and image management. Instead of opting for silence or vagueness, Woods declared -- in the anti-black context of the United States -- that he does not consider himself black. Ethical scrutiny of the significance of such a declaration thus seems fair. Generally, we might indeed lack sufficient information to ground criticism of an individual's choice to racially disidentify. I acknowledged as much and drew no inference that would compel us to "moralize" about Woods or anyone else in particular.

Yet it seems that anti-black stigma has played a substantial role in motivating racial disidentification for a non-trivial number of individuals in the United States and elsewhere. To ignore this -- in working at a level of abstraction apparently removed from history and experience -- is to miss how complicated the political, social, and psychological issues are concerning racial (dis)identification for blacks and non-blacks.

I am sorry to have misunderstood Lionel MacPherson. But now that I stand corrected, I find his position more elusive than it seemed before I was corrected.

My first mistake was to suppose that identifying oneself as black or African-American, in the sense that Macpherson thinks morally and politically important, entails pride in one's identity as black or African-American. The mistake was motivated in part by something that MacPherson said. He said that identification was a matter of "strategic black solidarity" and that part of what this would imply, in the event that Woods had publicly made the relevant identification, is that other blacks were invited "to take pride in his accomplishments as a black person." To be sure, a distinction might be drawn, as Bob Gooding-Williams reminded me, between proud identification with a community that is independent of its accomplishments and a pride that is contingent on those accomplishments. Yet when people say they are proudly black, Irish, etc. the ordinary, charitable interpretation is surely that this is accomplishment-sensitive pride. After all, when we ask them why they are proud, a list of accomplishments is precisely what we expect to hear. If they shrug and say simply that being black, Irish, etc. is intrinsically valuable, their pride would seem merely bizarre. I assume that MacPherson did not uncharitably suppose that my references to black and African-American pride were about an accomplishment-insensitive emotion.

But even if MacPherson had not appeared to connect the racial identification he prizes with group-pride, I would likely have made my first mistake anyhow. For if one seriously identifies with a particular community in strategic opposition to some social evil, such as racism, a susceptibility to pride in the successes for which the community is responsible and shame at the failures in which it is culpable would seem to me implicit in the identification. Suppose Woods had said "I am black, but not in any sense that means I am proud of being black."  That utterance is intelligible: on its most obvious interpretation it means simply that one knows that other people classify one as black, which Woods conceded in different words. But if Woods had used these particular words, would his critics have been placated. I doubt it. I wish that Macpherson had told us more about the concept of pride-less strategic identification with other blacks that he thinks is the heart of the matter. I worry that the concept may not be coherent.

The other mistake I made was to infer that MacPherson believed that those who claim a multiracial identity when others would classify them as black or African-American are guilty of essentialism. MacPherson only intended to criticize those who appeal to essentialism to justify their claim; other multiracial persons may resist being classified as black or African-American for honorable reasons, such as the view that races are unreal. But then these honorable reasons must have been available to Tiger Woods. Are we then to understand that Woods would have escaped justified reproach if he had proclaimed himself "Cablinasian" and under questioning had proved free of any essentialist error and an adherent of the view that races are unreal? Was the problem not that he disidentified as African-American (which he did when he described himself as "Cablinasian) but that in his later media statement he affirmed the primacy of a non-racial identity ("I am an American . . . and proud of it)? These are not rhetorical questions intended to insinuate that Macpherson's position must be wrong; the merely express my confusion about what his position is.

Eamonn Callan

 I am struck by this discussion whether individuals who chose to assimilate to dominant cultures are in some way betraying their "home" or origin cultures. Regardless of where we come down on whether Woods owes some debt of gratitude to a coalition of people who fought antiblack racism in the past - and whether he should therefore identify as African-American - I wonder what to make of white U.S. Americans' debts:

As Callan notes, antiblack racism has conferred substantial benefits on socially and self identified white people in North America. Many of the "goods" conferred by white supremacists past and present seem to me shame-worthy simply because of their origin. So, I would argue that white people could appropriately feel a sense of both personal connection to a white supremacist past/present and shame, outrage, and anger as a result of being the beneficiaries of systemic and interpersonal racism. So, this piece made me think about the ethical implications of a system in which the receipt of goods (differential, preferential, etc) is a kind of wrong. While black U.S. Americans may not owe a debt of gratitude to African Americans of the past who fought racism, I would argue that white U.S. Americans owe a debt of anger and repudiation to white supremacists past and present. And this would entail a rejection and re-assessment of things ordinarily considered worthy of thanks.

Alexis Shotwell