My Identity Story

                                                       
                                                     
Lately, I’ve been thinking about my identity after having AncestryDNA which estimated my ethnicity to be 88% African; 48% Nigerian. An earlier mtdna concluded my maternal ancestry was Sierra Leone.  I was not surprised and delighted by the results. However, I cannot trace my family to Nigeria or Sierra Leone.

When I was born in 1935 my Arkansas birth certificate identified me as “C.” for Colored.
The 1940 Census identified me and my parents as Negro.

My 1955 Arkansas driver’s license when I was nineteen identified me as “colored” as did other documents of that era including my father’s Cotton Belt Railroad pass. I am not exactly certain when my identity changed.  I did not self-select these designations and do not remember my parents telling me I was Colored or Negro. So, who told me I was Colored or Negro? Who designated me to be Colored or Negro?

A “Negro” is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a “member of the Negroid ethnic division of the human species, especially one of various people of central and southern Africa… characterized by brown to black pigmentation and often by tightly curled hair.”  I do have these physical characteristics.  I am African by ancestry, history, and DNA.  I am certain my ancestral family also came from the Niger Region of Nigeria.
The word Negro is a Spanish and Portuguese term for black.

I was born in the United States which makes me a national or citizen of the United States of America. My ancestors were enslaved Africans who did not gain U.S. citizenship until the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868 after the Civil War.

The Europeans who colonized and settled the United States of America were not a monolithic “white race” in Europe but transformed themselves into a new national and cultural identity in the United States where being white was superior to Colored, Negro, Black, Brown, Red, or Yellow. Being white meant not “contaminated” by Negro blood.

The idea that there existed a white superior race of Europeans and a black race of Africans considered inferior and chattel property was well crafted in the origin of the founding of the United States of America. My family was not immigrants. My family did not choose freely to come to the USA to make a new life. My family came enslaved in chains as free labor. They were stripped of their name, origin and language. All of this has made it impossible for me and countless others to trace their ancestry to the shores of Africa, except now through DNA.

I am also an American because I share the North American Continent with other inhabitants. But the history of race supremacy and power has made this identity synonymous with being from the United States. The internet identifies me as “American.”

So, who told me I was Colored?
The power of white oppression told me I was colored through Colored Waiting Signs, Colored Water Fountains, and Colored Sections on buses/trains, segregated Colored schools, segregated communities, segregated churches. All of this was dictated by the laws of segregation. My designated identity had nothing to do with my ancestry but to ensure that I stayed in my designated place.

So, where does the US Census fit in?

Since 1790, the United States has taken a census every ten years. In 2020 the Census Bureau will undergo this ritual again. The original purpose was to count the population necessary for drawing congressional districts. The population schedule which genealogists and family researchers use to help trace their family history remains confidential for 72 years, unless under special family circumstances. The first Census categories included:
  Free white males under 16
  Free white males 16 years and upward
  Free white females
  Other free people
  Number of slaves

“… slavery was no mere accident of history but rather a near universal practice in the Western Hemisphere from the sixteenth century onward to the eighteenth, shaping the very legal foundation of citizenship and property rights, as well as the idea of civilization.”

For the first six censuses (1790-1840) enumerators recorded only the names of the heads of households. Beginning in 1850, all members of the household were named on the census.

“Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the United States Census Bureau, are described as self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races, they most closely identify. One may indicate whether or not they are Hispanic or Latino origin (the only categories for ethnicity).”

The Census currently acknowledge that “the race or races that respondents consider themselves to represent is a social-political construct and generally reflect a social or anthropological definition and takes into account social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry, using appropriate scientific methodologies that are not primarily biological or genetic in reference. The race categories include both racial and national-origin groups.”

A review of race and ethnicity in the United States Census is informative.

1820 Census added the term “colored” and number of foreigners not naturalized.”

1830 Census added number of White persons who were non- naturalized foreigners.

1850 Census was “first time free persons were listed individually instead of by head of household. The question on the free inhabitant schedule about color was a column left blank if a person was white, marked “B” if a person was black, and “M” if a person was mulatto. Slaves were listed by owner, and classified by gender and age, not individually, and question regarding color was to be marked with a B or M.

1870 Census was my maternal family entry in South Carolina Census and is the first Census slaves were listed by name. I cannot trace my maternal family prior to this date.

1890 Census: Enumerators were instructed to write “White, Black, Mulatto, Quadroon, Octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian.”

1900 Census: Enumerators instructed to use a special expanded questionnaire for American Indians living on reservations or family groups off reservation that included “Fraction of person’s lineage that is white.

1910 Census reinserted Mulatto and asked question about respondent “mother tongue.”

1930 Census:
  Mulatto Classification discontinued.
  Interracial persons with white and black blood were to be recorded as “Negro”
  No matter the fraction. (The one drop rule).
  Mixed Black and American Indian was to be recorded “Negro” unless he was considered to be   “predominantly” American Indian and accepted as such within the community.

Mixed White and American Indian were to be recorded as” Indian” unless his American Indian ancestry was small and he was accepted as white in the community. In all situations in which a person had White and some other racial ancestry, he was to be reported to that race.

1940 Census:
President Roosevelt sought a “good neighbor” policy with Mexico after a federal judge ruled that three Mexican immigrants were ineligible for citizenship because they were not white, as required by federal law. To circumvent the decision and make sure the federal agencies treat Hispanics as white, all federal agencies were to uniformly classify people of Mexican descent as white.

1950 Census removed the word “color” from the racial designation.

1970 Census included “Negro” or “Black.”

1990 Census “was not designed to capture multiple racial responses, and when an individual marked the Other race option and provided a multiple write in, the response was assigned and coded according to the race written first.” Black-White, White-Black.

2000 Census defined “White” as a “person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”  Black or African American was defined as “a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.”

I have had strong debates with those who abhor the designation/classification, identity “African-American.” They say they never been to Africa, have no connection to Africa and do not represent the people of Africa. Some wish to be known only as “American.” Others preferred Colored or Negro.

What term to identify ourselves as an ethnic group has been a matter of debate dating back to the Black abolitionists who identified themselves in African terms, “Sons of Africa, African Lodge, Free African Society, and African Baptist Church.” Some Philadelphia leaders urged Blacks “to abandon use of the word “Colored” and removal of African from our institutions.” Martin R. Delaney said “no people could gain respect unless they retained their identity.”

An informal survey of friends, relatives, church members regarding their self identification was informative.
One respondent who checked the “Other” box on the Census said he did so “because I don’t know who the hell I am.”  The “Other” box was also used by those who considered themselves “bi-racial.”  One native born naturalized Nigerian considered himself “Nigerian American.”  One respondent who was 55% European according to DNA
with European characteristics, a maternal and paternal great grandfather who were “white, self-identified as “African American.” She said she had been “segregated and socialized to be African American.” She cited an incident when a physician attending her in a hospital refused to accept and write in her medical chart her self identity “African American” and implied that she was mentally ill. She continued by saying her self-identity “African American” is often changed in her records to “white.”
Another respondent said she had been “Colored,” “Negro,” “Black” but now self-identify herself as “Afro-American.”

A respondent who self identified himself as “bi-racial” said he identifies himself as Black
when binary thinking of the computer does not allow him to be both Black and White and when there is a group benefit or personal benefit such as receiving more scholarship aid.  He never checks “Other race because other does not matter.”

A respondent who self identified himself as “Israelite” who can walk his ancestry from then to now” said “I do not appreciate anyone telling me who I am, I tell them.”

“When it comes to models of second-class citizenship for non-whites, the United States led the way and the Nazis eagerly followed.” The U.S. government has spent an inordinate amount of time and energy promoting racism defining who is non-white. When the federal government defines citizens’ identity on the basis of skin color it is discriminatory. My ancestral identity is part of my national and personal identity as an African United States person of America.

How Data on Race and Ethnicity Are Used
The decennial census is required by the Constitution and used to determine the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives, as well as how federal money is distributed to local communities. Today’s Census Bureau markets itself as more than a head count operation but a purveyor of demographic data authorized by Congress that determine how congressional seats are apportioned, how federal dollars are distributed. And oversee federal civil rights compliance for certain demographic groups, programs/statures.


Sources: United States Census, Wikipedia.
Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America.
“And He Is Us: The Land of Cotton Meets the Third Reich,” Guy Lancaster, Arkansas Review, Volume 48, Issue 2, August 2017.
Self-reflection.