Blacks Split on Disclosing Multiracial Roots
By Eric Schmitt
Vicksburg, Miss., March 26 — When Milton Heard was filling out the census form for his family last year, he hesitated where it asked the race of his two sons, Jacob and David.
Mr. Heard, who owns a women's apparel and cosmetics store here, is black. His wife, Chong Suk, is Korean. His sons, ages 21 and 17, are black with distinct Asian features. For the first time, the 2000 census allowed Americans to check more than one category to identify their race. But after talking with his sons, Mr. Heard said he marked only black for them, not black and Asian.
"I thought about it and thought about it, but in the end I didn't feel there was enough information about what the government was trying to do," said Mr. Heard, who is 76.
More than 550 miles and a cultural world away in Lawton, Okla., in the shadow of sprawling Fort Sill, Neil Domingo, a retired Army staff sergeant, recalled weighing the same decision and coming to a different answer.
"I identify with being black, but I'm also Hispanic," said Mr. Domingo, 53, who said he described himself both ways in the race category. "Why cast away my black or my Latin heritage when I can mark both?"
The suspicion harbored by Mr. Heard and the openness of Mr. Domingo are attitudes reflected in the census, which found that Mississippi had one of the lowest multiracial responses in the country, while Oklahoma had one of the highest. And those polar views reflect the black community in America, which is not monolithic in its politics, its socioeconomic status, its intermarriage rates or how it perceives itself racially.
A look at these two places with thriving African-American communities underscores how much the concept of race is influenced by recent memories of segregation and oppression, levels of integration and different views of history.
Census figures show that more than 2 percent of all 281.4 million Americans said they belonged to more than one race. But about 5 percent of all black people said they were multiracial, double what many government demographers and civil rights leaders had predicted based on surveys in 1996 and 1998.
Here in Warren County, Miss., however, less than 1 percent of the nearly 22,000 people in the county who said they were black said they belonged to more than one race, the same minuscule rate as blacks throughout Mississippi. Many African-Americans in the county said they considered race literally in black and white terms, and skeptically viewed any effort to capture a new multiracial statistic. Attitudes seem to be so hardened that even people like Mr. Heard who have an option of describing themselves or their children as multiracial, opt not to.
"In this area, people are either this or that," said Mayor Robert M. Walker of Vicksburg, the first black mayor in the city's 176-year history. "I don't see why people get off on this multiracial thing. That's a bunch of junk."
But in Comanche County, Okla., which includes Lawton, many blacks celebrate their diversity, a result they said of more than a century of intermarrying with American Indians and of the Army's influence in integrating military towns. About 8 percent of the nearly 24,000 blacks in the county said they belonged to more than one race, mirroring the rate throughout Oklahoma, which had one of the highest multiracial responses in the country.
It is difficult to say whether the differences in two counties is the cause of their different political and social views — or the result of them. But while the long, sad history of slavery and segregation seems to inform the contemporary outlook of blacks in Vicksburg, it is relegated to a distant past in Lawton.
The Rev. Gary E. Bender of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Lawton's oldest black church, said he had to tone down the popular sermons he preached when he lived in Nashville that evoked images of slavery and racial oppression. "It was an offense to say that stuff," Pastor Bender said. "People came to me and said, `Pastor, we wish you wouldn't do that.' "
Both counties have black congressmen, and not surprisingly each seems to mirror his constituents' views on racial identity. "For all intents and purposes, you're either black or white in Mississippi," said Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes Vicksburg.
Representative J. C. Watts of Oklahoma, the only black Republican in Congress, who is also part Choctaw Indian, said, "It's hard to be from Oklahoma and not have some native American blood."
For many of the more than two dozen blacks interviewed in these two counties, separated by history, geography and culture, racial identity seems influenced by forces less biological than social and environmental.
In Vicksburg, the vestiges of racial segregation are still evident, despite an ethnically diverse community that includes small but significant Jewish and Lebanese populations.
This city of 26,400 people, whose antebellum homes look out over the Mississippi River and riverboat casinos, is more than 60 percent black, though the majority in Warren County is white. Civil War history is not just a rich tradition; the Vicksburg National Military Park, commemorating the famous 1863 siege, is a major tourist attraction that draws one million people a year.
"Most blacks here see themselves as black, and not something else," said Charles Wright, 52, a telephone electronics technician who is past president of the Vicksburg N.A.A.C.P. branch. "More black folks feel this is a prideful thing, and don't want to dilute themselves with all those notions we're part this and part that, although we all know we're part something else."
The Rev. Thomas Bernard of Travelers Rest Baptist Church said that even talking about race was painful for many elderly blacks, for whom the history of racial segregation and slavery are more poignant.
"The issue raises a lot of questions from the past that were never dealt with and that many people would just as soon forget," Mr. Bernard said.
In Oklahoma, however, blacks and native Americans have a racial relationship that spans nearly 200 years. When Indian tribes in the Southeast were moved to eastern Oklahoma in the 1830's they brought black slaves with them.
Blacks were freed after the Civil War, and over the years were able to buy land and established all-black towns throughout the state. In the late 1860's, all-black Army troops called Buffalo soldiers helped build Fort Sill, a western outpost in the military's battle against the Indians.
In addition to the history, there is the presence and influence of the United States Army. Lawton, like other military towns such as Fayetteville, N.C., and Killeen, Tex., are among the most integrated places in the country, and many black soldiers, especially those who have served overseas and dated foreign women, marry outside their race.
In Lawton today, it is common to see mixed-race couples and their multiracial children in the schools, shopping malls and places of worship. Many are military families, who account for about one-third of the 17,500 pupils in Lawton public schools.
When it came to filling out the census, many of these mixed couples expressed delight that they could recognize their children's racial diversity.
Claudia Romero, 30, and Karin Williams, 43, were both shopping at the mall here today with their kids. Both women are white. Mrs. Romero's husband, Andres, is Hispanic; Mrs. Williams spouse, Eric, is black.
Both women applauded the option of choosing more than one race for their children; Mrs. Romero for her sons, Tony, 6, and Ricardo, 10, and Mrs. Williams for her son, Eric Jr., 10.
"I think it's great," Mrs. Romero said. "I don't want to put them in just one single category, white or Hispanic, because they are both."
John Lasker, 52, a retired postal supervisor who is black, said he felt the same way about his 18-month-old granddaughter, Preciosa, whom he and his wife, Evelyn, are helping to rear. The infant's mother is black, her father is Hispanic. Mr. Lasker said he thought of Tiger Woods, the golf superstar who is mixed race, when he marked down both black and Hispanic in the race category for the girl.
"When she's older, we don't want her to be just black or just Mexican," said Mr. Lasker, cuddling with his granddaughter at home. "We want her to be Preciosa, with two backgrounds."
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Carl
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