Reaction To: the Gray Area: Exploring the Black-white Binary’s Exploitation of the Multi-racial Identity

• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020

Reaction to: The Gray Area: Exploring the Black-White

Binary’s Exploitation of the Multi-Racial Identity

JUSTIN FITZSIMMONS*

Landon Myers’ article explains how and why multi-racial people have been forced

to identify as Black in the Black-White binary, denying them the agency of owning

their identities while at the same time denying them the protection of civil rights

laws. Myers seeks to remedy the psychological oppression suffered by multi-racial

people in having their identity forced onto them by making modest changes to the

U.S. census. Myers proposes changing the “two or more races” category to “multi-

racial” with a “follow-up section to further specify [with] which racial categories this

multi-racial person identif‌ies.” Beyond allowing the opportunity for the multi-racial

individual to self-identify, these changes could potentially encourage federal courts

to believe the civil rights claims of multi-racial people.

While Myers identif‌ies a key issue in describing the discrimination against multi-

racial people under the Black-White binary, his analysis misses a key aspect of multi-

racial discrimination and with that, his proposed solution will not meaningfully con-

tribute to remedy multi-racial discrimination.

Though Myers identif‌ies that multi-racial individuals suffer from “hypodescent,”

his analysis misses that multi-racial discrimination is not only discrimination against

the Black identity, but also discrimination against the multi-racial person by virtue of

their being multi-racial. Not only can multi-racial people be discriminated against for

each of the constituent parts of their racial identity, but they can be discriminated

against for the fact that they have multiple constitute parts. For example, in the case

Myers cites, Callicutt v. Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc., the discrimination against the

“biracial” plaintiff was not only that he was called both “FUBU” and “not black,”

but that he was called both. Realization of this specif‌ic discrimination against multi-

racial people; does not limit claims of discrimination against the constituent parts of

the identity of the multi-racial person; instead, recognizing this discrimination both

allows for the multi-racial person to bring additional claims of discrimination and

more accurately describes the discrimination against multi-racial people for the fact

of their being multi-racial. Multi-racial people are discriminated against because it

took Loving v. Virginia to invalidate decades of anti-miscegenation laws that sought

to prevent “mongrel” children of such marriages.

This multi-racial discrimination is not widely understood, likely because the num-

ber of multi-racial people is only now increasing. Discrimination against multi-racial

people for the fact of their being multi-racial may be dismissed by saying that the per-

son is not seen as fully belonging to the constituent parts of their identity or that the

person is better situated because they are not fully a part of that race. As the numbers

* Staff Editor, GEO. J.L. & MOD. CRIT. RACE PERSP. (VOL. 12); J.D. Candidate, Georgetown University

Law Center (L’21), © 2020, Justin Fitzsimmons.

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