When Identity Politics Fail by Michelle Geffner

Mixed feelings are my forte. Sometimes, I think being mixed-race has shaded everything about my life thus far and will continue to do so until we reach some colorless, ostensibly better society. In such a world, the news would no longer be disastrous or prescient or funny – a future that seems doubtful and a bit boring. Sometimes, I wonder if none of these feelings about my genetic makeup are my own but rather, they are everyone else’s and merely absorbed by me. In that case, it’s not actually my problem and yet, here we are. 

The tricky part is that to know how others perceive you, you need a reference point of judgment. On good days, I am the judge. On other days, I absorb; I am the sponge. 

I think of this now because a few weeks ago, in a spongier state, I made a silly mistake. I got in a dispute with a man who happened to be a white, millennial, self-proclaimed communist living off his mother’s prime, gentrified, Manhattan real estate, the irony of which was lost on him. He may have called our interaction a conversation about race in which he played the devil’s advocate. I think he just liked being the devil. 

My mistake was that I presumed a discourse of differing opinions would, after a time of listening, leaning, and learning (the new live, laugh, love!), reach some common ground. We would metaphorically shake hands and go our separate ways, like a civil breakup. I should have known that breakups are never breezy and the introduction of a demon wouldn’t help. I arrived home from work that day when he and a mutual friend were chatting benignly about the news. I piped up, briefly mentioned the term passing, and it all went downhill from there. Why this man thought it would be a good idea to debate white passing and/or mixed-race identity politics with me, a white passing, mixed-race woman he had met not fifteen minutes prior, I do not know.

In retrospect, I realize that conversing with someone committed to misunderstanding your humanity can become only speculative (for them) or strenuous (for you), at best. It takes all your patience and training and every rhetorical device you ever studied and then some. It did not matter that my diction is better than most and my very existence is a testament to the subject at hand because, compared to his neoliberal academic readings published under the newest edition of Radical College Boy™, my being was hypothetical. I even wore a modest dress and sipped a cheap beer in an effort to keep both the topic and myself, cool and comfortable. It didn’t work. 

He argued there was no such thing as being mixed-race - you are simply the race that you most physically represent. He may not have said this verbatim, but much like many advocates of the devil, the meaning was clear enough. This was, whether he knew it or not, based on the opinions of imperialists who deemed certain features to be more or less human, or rather, more or less Northern/Western European. Some of their descendants still agree with them. Under this doctrine, I am solely Wonder Bread white. Today, this idea attempts to be woke while it simultaneously neglects science and excludes the people it affects. He also made a number of subtle assumptions about my education and supposed wealth, not recognizing that the lovely townhouse I was living in was a temporary house-sitting gig. I sensed a theme.

It is an uneasy truth that multiracial faces force the onlooker to abandon binary thinking, upon which so much of our Western culture is built. Male vs female, gay vs straight, platonic vs romantic, right vs wrong. Rarely do we exist perfectly on the designated poles of these spectrums; most of us live somewhere in the grey, in some capacity. I suspect this is why an unconventional face can cause an onlooker to short circuit. If we embrace minor feelings, we reject major teachings. 

To look ambiguity in the face, literally and figuratively, leaves the viewer with two choices: create a blank slate of the person before you and paint to your heart’s content or examine everything you know to be true about race and find out (spoiler!), it was false. How unsettling that must feel, to find a truth disproved. In light of this, it makes sense why the man never bothered to ask me where I am from, what I believe, or how I want to be addressed. Yet, despite all this, I know in many real ways save for a crucial one, the man (whose entire personhood I just trashed) was right. 

I am Jewish with ancestry from Eastern Europe and pre-Inquisition Spain, and Chinese, with ancestry from the Hainan and Henan provinces. I grew up with three New Years on three separate days. Diaspora tales were my bedtime stories. I have lived in both Asia and America. To date, nobody has ever accurately guessed my heritage so, it is true that I function in the world as a white woman and receive all the privileges you can imagine for it.

Never has the word chink been used in reference to me, although it has been the descriptor of some innocent Asian passerby beside me. A pandemic being the newest catalyst, it is not uncommon to see panic sparked by the mere sight of an Asian person while the bystanders search my face for a look of misplaced solidarity. Never has the word kike been directed at me, although gentile men have acted a little too surprised to find themselves flirting with a girl lacking any resemblance to the imaginary love child of Anne Frank and Barbra Streisand, borne of their narrow minds. North of 116th street, I am sometimes yelled at in Spanish on the subway, then chastised for not understanding. Such is the blessing of ambiguity.

Race may be a construct but the consequences of it are universally real, from which I benefit. I’ve written about this online and made people uncomfortable talking about it in real life. I somehow blend in and am also, silently, the odd one out depending on the locale, the moods, and maybe the weather. These experiences do not happen in a vacuum and are not mine alone.

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There is a growing faction of Twitter dedicated to and created by young people frustrated by the systems under which we grew up. Their lay presence is not professionally backed, so they are free to be unfiltered. They tweet, protest, and make clever jokes at the expense of mostly right wing politicians. Most of us, myself included, have hopped onto this bandwagon on one occasion or another. It has never been easier to align oneself with a movement – all you need is the WiFi password. In a way, I am helping to perpetuate this culture of easy political insight, by referencing these threads and by writing this piece. It seems largely unavoidable to discuss anything contemporary and not do so. But, to the credit of Twitter and all its fervent users, there is a lot to be desired in this country and it’s not idealistic to hope for what we want, as long as that hopeful fury is coupled by action. I would even argue that all activism (online, in the streets, and elsewhere) is somewhat performative, since the language is not part of most people’s everyday vocabulary, and that’s okay. 

What’s not okay is when the jargon of any given theory becomes only that – a theory. Devoid of the humanity from which it evolved. Then, the theory becomes more real than the people it concerns and, in turn, the people become theoretical. 

I am not offended by being called white because I am, and because there is nothing offensive in that. I do, however, want to address the projection proclaimed as fact by a white stranger, as has occurred many times before. In short, who the f*** are you to tell me I’m not Asian? The paradox of this man’s rationale – that it is acceptable to argue my existence like an ontologist while assuming a greater understanding of how multiracial people live than I ever could – struck me as satirical. The usage of racial theory rooted in antebellum beliefs to justify his stance, under the guise of progressive thought, was the punch line. In the same vein, just because I’ve read James Baldwin does not mean I will ever know what it is like to be Black; I can never lay claim to an experience that is not mine to have. Still, I’ve read a decent amount of threads made of similarly presumptuous sentiments; he didn’t get the idea out of nowhere. The thread writers don’t seem to realize how counterintuitive the rhetoric they share is, nor do they ask themselves why they feel the need to write it. 

I can’t say for sure what the man’s intentions were for debating me but I, too, can conjecture. I think he gets a kick out of rewriting other people’s experiences without context because they are, to him and his cohorts, historical fiction. They believe that because they went to Northeastern institutions and creepily fawn over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they know best. They don’t do the reading and speak loudly over classmates. They vote blue and bring the energy of a colonizer into the room. 

It is no work at all to contextualize a person only on paper; it is much more difficult to look them in the eyes. The one tactic that worked in quieting him was asking, “Why, exactly, are you saying this?” to which he said nothing and it was over. 

I understand that the internet is not a place of nuance or complexity, not yet. The community we crave can be both fulfilled and shattered on the same digital medium. The knowledge we seek can be amplified and discarded on one frequented site. The conversations we have offline are often echoes of said knowledge, and the humility of not knowing is like a death sentence for some. In such circles, to admit a lack of understanding is to publicly light your own ego on fire; an irreparable, embarrassing way to go and you won’t even be sainted on the way out. To assert expertise before it is earned, is morale boosting for you and you alone. To navel-gaze is expected, but to look inward is out of the question. To apologize? Forget it. I consider this particular advocate of the devil to be a victim of this ideology as much as I am.

So, maybe, there is no demographic more qualified to speak on this murky corner of identity politics than those whom it involves the most. Mixed-race people have always existed, even before the concept of race, as we know it, was established. The jurisdiction to name ourselves is our own. We are living nuance and complexity, and I think that’s why some people dislike us. We should not have to defend our humanities in accordance with whatever the present cultural moment sells as enlightenment to the white and unaware. So long as we acknowledge our varying privileges at the door, what do the rest have to lose? We have been gaining in numbers every year since 1967 when Mildred and Richard Loving won their Supreme Court case against the state of Virginia. This fact may make your Aunt Karen anxious at the next reunion. I hope you will invite us there anyway.