Lani Guinier is the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Until I went to junior high school I was interracial. I would say, if asked, “my mother is white and my father is Negro.”Or “I come from a ‘mixed’ family.”
When my family moved to Hollis, Queens in 1956, the neighborhood changed with our arrival.When we first moved in, Italians, Jews, Albanians, Armenians and Portuguese lived in small,tidy two-family attached houses on both sides of the street. By 1964 there were almost no whites still living on our block except my mother. As the demographics changed, so did our zipcode. We were now in St. Albans, part of the burgeoning black migration from Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant to southeast Queens.
In junior high school I became black. I attended Junior High School 59, a magnet school that attracted Jewish students from Laurelton and Italian kids from Cambria Heights. The white students were friendly during the school day, but it was in riding the bus home with the other black students that I felt most welcome. We rode the bus together to an increasingly segregated St. Albans neighborhood. And it was in St. Albans that I felt fully accepted.
When I applied to college I don’t recall any box-checking exercises involving race. I do remember being asked whether any relatives had attended the particular college in question. My application to Radcliffe College stands out for this reason. Radcliffe had a separate admission system for girls who, if they attended, would graduate with a Harvard degree.
My father had been admitted to Harvard College but he dropped out after two years. As a black man in 1929, he was not permitted to live in the dormitories. He was also denied financial aid when he showed up in person to apply. He was told it was because he had failed to submit a photograph with his application. Harvard had a quota for black students, and its quota had obviously already been met.
Box checking, quotas, or some upscale version of the “one drop” rule do not explain the challenging issues of race in the U.S. One’s individual gene pool, in 1964 and 2011, is less important than the ethnicity, race, and yes, the economic and social class of the people who live in the neighborhood in which one is raised and to whom one feels ultimately accountable. Today, race is less about biology and much more about demography.
Thus, for me, the real question is not which box you check, just as the real question for my father was not whether he had failed to submit a photograph. The real question is much more closely related to the experience I had attending Junior High School 59. I did not change my “bloodline” between elementary school and junior high school. What changed for me was the existence of a community in which I felt accepted and to which I ultimately felt responsible.
This article highlights the belief that race is socially constructed. In a matter of years the author went from being considered “multiracial” to being considered “black.” The author’s race obviously did not change – yet the perception of her was different. The author of the article notes that, while at school, the white kids were friendly enough, yet she felt most comfortable and at ease on the bus ride home when she was with the black children. The author lived in a primarily black community. Race is less about biology than it is about society and the preconceptions that society forms. The author does not attribute her race to her skin color, but to the community in which she felt accepted.
ReplyDeleteThis article highlighted a new trend that may create even more problems in the future. The author states in elementary school she considered herself of mixed race. However, by junior high, she would indicate she was black. "I did not change my “bloodline” between elementary school and junior high school. What changed for me was the existence of a community in which I felt accepted and to which I ultimately felt responsible." By changing the box she marked, she could be creating problems. For example, schools may receive federal money based on the number of black students they have. By marking the black box, the author is allowing her school to get more money. The author stated it herself...she didn't change her bloodline. Therefore, she should mark the mixed box. The marking of the box does not indicate what community you feel more comfortable with, it indicates your bloodline and your ancestry.
ReplyDeleteThis article fits right in with the video we watched in class where the African American woman came into a classroom in Little Rock to talk to a group of students. The woman automatically noticed that the students segregated themselves on where they sat in their classroom: white students on one side, and African American students on the other. When the woman told the students about the segregation, half of the class didn't realize, and the other half knew and didn't care. The author of this article is saying she felt comfortable when around people of her race, and thats exactly how the students in Little Rock felt. She is also saying in different places, she referred to her skin color as different things to fit into the groups she wanted to fit into. She had to change what she referred to her skin color as, because like Harvard proved, skin color can make or break a person.
ReplyDeleteLani Guinier’s story emphasized the social construction of race. He cannot change his lineage and his genes, but he can change how he categorizes himself. He did not physically change over the course of his life, but his race changed in the eyes of society. This highlights the fact that race is no longer categorized on a biological basis but is rather designated by the changing views of evolving areas, like the change in demographics in . Race is a tool used to separate people into social groups.
ReplyDeleteLani Guinier makes an important point about race being more socially constructed than biologically determined. Even though she first categorized herself as "mixed," as she grew up and attended high school, she began to realize that it was easiest for her to categorize herself as "black" because those are the people she felt most comfortable with. This largely had to do with the population of where she lived - as she grew up, she noted that her neighborhood became increasingly segregated. Because of this, she found herself identifying more with the black students at her school than the white students. Her physical appearance never changed, but her personal perception and the evolution of the society that she grew up in did, resulting in her changed personal image.
ReplyDeleteLani Guinier's story started out with seeming to be the perfect neighborhood with a whole array of ethnicitys but as the children grew up so did their view of society. The children themselves didn't physically change but societies standards forced them to to be friends with people physically like them. This is why I wonder if as a country we will every be able to get past this issue of racism. I hated to read the part about Harvard meeting their black "quota" though it is true there should be equal opportunities for blacks and whites not only for admittance into the college but for Financial Aid as well.
ReplyDeleteThis article was fascinating, because it proved that race, and demographic issues is a social construct. If individuals accept others and their races, then differences in heritage or skin color are not an issue. The author wrote about being able to feel both white and black in his youth, because of the communities he was in and the acceptance of other individuals around him. Guinier's perspective emphasizes that race is not concrete, but dependent on environment.
ReplyDeleteThis article goes right along with the movie we watched in class about the woman returning to Little Rock 50 years after she was allowed to attend that school. Guinier has been in both situations and has observed her mother, who is white, feel the effects of this. I liked how the author said her race had not changed from elementary school to high school, because it proves that race is a social construct and is almost never the same from place to place. It is interesting how when attending a mostly white school, the children are "friendly" but she does not seem to be friends with them. She only feels at home with other children who look like her.
ReplyDelete