By Kaitlyn Anderson
Art by Sarah Berman
When I tell someone that I’m mixed-race, I can feel them studying me in order to make sense of that statement. Usually, after some contemplation, they announce that they can tell — they say my eyes are a dead giveaway. They remark how “interesting” a combination of Chinese, Swedish, and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) must be. I tell them all about Hawaiʻi, my home, and how being multiracial is the norm there. If you ask any Islander off the street, they will probably rattle off lots of their ethnicities and say that there might be more they can’t remember.
I feel pride when educating someone about my beautiful home, but, in the back of my mind, guilt grips me. There’s a rush of shame when I look into the mirror and see light skin and hair or when I hear someone speaking in their native language while I know no other languages but English. I am always willing to step back for others who better fit the definition of a Native Hawaiian or Asian person because I feel removed from those experiences and that cultural belonging. I feel like an actor, a fake. An internal voice interrogates me: How can I identify myself as Chinese when I know next to nothing about Chinese culture and language? How can I be Swedish when I feel ashamed to admit it? And how can I claim to be Kanaka Maoli when I have only the smallest drop of blood in me to prove it?
a dissection of race, blood, & mixing
Why are we so obsessed with measuring our blood and ancestry down to the exact percent? What does it even mean in our daily lives and our overall identity? Companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com make profits by turning people into numbers and genetic databases that are faulty at best. Genetic ancestry testing is complicated and problematic as it relies on small control groups and varying foundational data. Despite their claims, DNA ancestry tests cannot detail your family history because you don’t inherit every piece of your parents’ DNA.[1] You may have or had family in Spain, but that might not show on your test. This doesn’t mean you aren’t related, but it means you didn’t receive those genes. These tests just aren’t definitive histories of anyone’s ancestry or identities, and the notion of ancestral blood isn’t really viable.
Ancestry tests also raise questions in regard to cultural appropriation and self-identification. Although a person might “uncover” branches of their ancestry they didn’t know about, do they have a right to claim that identity right away, when cultural knowledge-wise, they’re still an outsider? Intentions are important, but this doesn’t make cultural appropriation acceptable, especially when people are hurt in the process. This reveals a discrepancy between social constructs of race (roughly aligning to ontological experience and personal identity) and ancestry/ethnicity (the epistemic).[2]
But this does not mean you should never get a genetic ancestry test or reject its results if they don’t line up with your family history. Ancestry tests can be helpful tools when evaluated carefully. At the end of the day, it’s impossible to compress a person’s total family history into clean percentages; blood, ancestry, and identity are completely separate from socialized and lived constructions of race.
The practice of quantifying blood and ancestry can be traced to European colonial systems of power and authority such as the exploitative Encomienda system of post-contact Latin America, which set a precedent for other colonies throughout the Americas. Mixed-race peoples were segregated by the “amount” of white, Indigenous, or African blood they had within them, as though the mixing of race (as a European social construction) was a contamination. The term “mulatto,” meaning “young mule,” was used in reference to mules’ hybrid parentage and sterile status to socially stratify these blended ethnoracial populations and control “impure” interracial relations while extracting labor from trafficked Indigenous and African populations.[3] Often, the life of a mixed-race person was determined by their genetic phenotype: people with lighter skin were allowed more social advantages, while those with darker skin were relegated to slavery or servitude.[4] Although mixed peoples could benefit socially (albeit somewhat arbitrarily) from their heritage, these historical practices still enforced notions of behavioral and intellectual differences between races.
Later, the newly made United States used the terms “mulatto,” “half-blood,” and “half-breed” regarding mixed-race peoples in legal documents and treaties, solidifying the concept of mixed “blood” as a historical and legal precedent.[5] The system was founded on racism and targets people of color, especially those of Indigenous descent. A hierarchy of class, based on perceived amounts of purity and morality, created the idea that people of mixed descent only mattered as much as their exact mixture of ancestry, commoditizing and dehumanizing people into halves, quarters, and eighths.
blood quantum today
The idea that ancestry informs worth was thus established on a racist labor system marking Indigenous and Black mixed descendants. Unfortunately, these colonial conceptions of race didn’t stop with the encomienda system but continued into the present day, contributing to systemic racism and oppression of people of color. “Blood Quantum” laws have been and are used to condition eligibility for citizenship, land, aid, and more in Indigenous communities, usually favoring those with 25–50% or more Native “blood” (that is, if you can prove it through ancestral birth records, tribal citizenship, and/or other documents).[6] At first glance, this seems like the best system to avoid phony claims to Indigenous land — only those who were deeply harmed by these racist and colonial policies, those with ancestral ties to historical victims, should receive these apologetic reparations. The catch, though, is that these rules and concepts are not determined by Indigenous people, giving the illusion of choice and protected power when there is still none and allowing the Government to gatekeep Native American identity and thus land, reparations, and more.[7] A lot of mixed people, like myself, are not eligible for land or federal recognition by these laws legally denying us our identities as Native peoples.
Even when Blood Quantum is used as a genuinely protective policy for Indigenous people, such as within the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, it creates a complicated social and legal standard which many Native people use to evaluate themselves and others. ANCSA used blood quantum and geographical policies to determine Alaska Natives’ eligibility for shares of land and rights in Alaska Native Corporations, which disregarded Native people born after the cutoff date or those in Indigenous diaspora. As a consequence of blood quantum (as well as diaspora and even adoption), many Alaska Natives have “grown up immersed in their Alaska Native culture, but are unable to enroll in a tribe or an Alaska Native corporation.”[8] We have similar policies at home in Hawaiʻi, requiring Kanaka Maoli to prove, by birth certificate, at least ½ or ¼ Native Hawaiian blood quantum in order to receive Hawaiian homestead leases from a relative, actively keeping us from land and reparations by this notion of diluted blood.[9] These laws, unintentionally or not, separate natives based on ethnicity and identity and eliminate the power of lived ontological determination.
For African-Americans, too, Blood Quantum became a harmful policy to determine which people would remain slaves; in this situation, however, any African American “blood” was enough to qualify someone for that status. This law was named the “One Drop Rule,” following this tradition of numbering and quantifying blood and ancestry, hypocritically flipping the standard for Native Americans on its head.[10] It’s plain to see that these rules were created to define and continually oppress minorities and mixed-race people by quantifying their race based on numbers and distancing them from Christian-born notions of superiority in white “purity.”
The very fluid movement of ancestry and ethnicity is incongruent with stubborn laws and policies that dictate identity. In other words, the sociopolitical changes in definitions of “race” and ancestry may not be accounted for as time moves on. All these policies have to do to erase us is stick steadfast to a number — 50%, let’s say — and wait for those people to have children, who may be theoretically 25% native blood or lower, and on and on. In this way, blood quantum laws, or other policies based on race and measured ethnicity, are carrying out “autogenocide by statistical extermination” and exclusion in our settler-colonial worlds.[11] Eventually, Indigenous peoples could be totally excluded from our legal identities as such and could be systematically denied land and rights as our ancestors have before us. We would be bleeding out our rights.
Blood Quantum maintains this theory of a dying race to continue stealing land and history from Native peoples with the undercurrent thought that, with blood spread thin, eventually no one will be Native “enough.” So, while the legal practice of blood quantum purportedly has logical reasons, it hurts Indigenous peoples by removing the definition of indigeneity from our hands, the power of self-identification, and gives power to that voice questioning their identity. Blood quantum maintains a system that has been designed to keep minorities down — but, should we reject and stop depending on blood quantum laws to determine native eligibility and identity, we can separate ourselves from our “imposed racial past which was artificially created in the first place.”[12]
social colorism and racial imposter syndrome
This leaves mixed people occupying a peculiar space in the world, not belonging to any one place and perhaps not wanting to choose one racial identity over another. Mixed people by any definition have existed for centuries, but the complicated intersections between race, ethnicity, and culture still keep us on the outskirts of culture. Coming to Dartmouth, I was struck by these new interactions, and soon I was scrambling to redefine myself in a place where social dynamics are totally different and where we don’t all share the shared experience of being multiracial and multicultural. I was suddenly feeling pressure to connect with an Indigenous identity totally different from the one I had at home, while still not feeling Hawaiian enough. I am more than proud to be someone who is mixed, and I have never had anyone exclude my cultural expression outright, but I never feel like I’m enough of anything to claim any identity but a white/whitewashed person, the social default. I can’t comfortably step into my identities when I’m around others who are “more” than me because I don’t feel that I deserve to. At the same time, I am constantly worried about being perceived as white. I am afraid to admit that my neighborhood at home is very white, that I don’t speak local slang or ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian) that well, and that I may as well not be Hawaiian. I feel the responsibility, by trying to identify myself as Hawaiian, to reject all notions of whiteness, but I can’t do that. That doubtful reflex is still upholding an honoring and reacting to a colonialist sentiment that sees myself cut into parts and quarters, as though I am not a homogenous mix in and of myself.
But I learned that these experiences were not just my own. Lots of multiracial people share my thoughts and offer new ones, contemplating their experiences in performative code-switching between groups, the pressure they feel to learn their heritage language(s), and an overwhelming need to find themselves among different cultures. NPR’s podcast about “Racial Imposter Syndrome” addressed both the social forces excluding mixed race people as well as the internal obstacles acting against them, both of which dictate destructive conditions onto cultural identity.[13] The myriad of stories resonated strongly with me, and I agreed with the podcast’s conclusion that multiracial people need to remember that we have each other, but also that we get to choose which opinions inform our experiences. Although my qualms with my identities are internal, I know it comes from concepts created to oppress people of color like blood quantum, purity, and worth that I need to mentally reject.
But I’ll need to practice divorcing those internalized concepts. In the Foucauldian school of thought, power and knowledge are most effective when internalized in the minds of the oppressed; when I doubt my identity, in fear of being not enough, I am letting those internalized and invalid standards dictate my reality. But it’s not about “How much am I?” but simply that “I am.” I’m done letting that notion and doubtful voice — which came from genocide, exploitation, and opression — define myself. Instead, while learning and growing into my identity, I want to recognize all of my origins and ancestors, acknowledging the good they did and the bad they lived through. I’m going to learn the languages that help me connect with my ancestry to the extent I feel is enough for me, not for others. I might not know everything about the cultures and people that contributed to my existence, but my fear of rejection only accomplishes the goals of colonizers who wished to “kill the Indian and save the man.”[14]
the verdict
The multiracial experience is a complicated one, manifesting both externally and internally in our culture, in our laws, and in our actions. I resent the notion that I exist as part of a “dying” race. Yet I am still guilty of believing in it, that it has died with me, the drops of blood slipping through my fingers. But I also believe that I can share and live in my culture, my Hawaiian-ness, and reject the colonial idea that I have to be enough, that any number defines my identity. It’s what’s in your naʻau, your gut and soul, that truly “counts.”
I don’t exist for others — my culture, my notions of self, and my identity aren’t for anyone but me — so I shouldn’t have to tell myself to step back in fear. It’s important to know that nothing defines your identity but you; it’s more than your phenotype, more than words on paper, more than blood and experience. I need to work on recognizing my potential and accomplishments instead of shrinking back from challenges when internalized doubt tells me I should. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to establish a comfortable relationship with my identity. Mixed people define our own places in the world, and we all need to reject ideas of worth that surround factors that we don’t have control over; if not, we lose those identities altogether. I’m not letting that voice win.
[1] Brian Resnick, “The Limits of Ancestry DNA Tests, Explained.” Vox, January 28, 2019, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/28/18194560/ancestry-dna-23-me-myheritage-science-explainer.
[2] Sandra Feder, “Genetic ancestry test results shape race self-identification, Stanford researchers find.” Stanford News, May 17, 2021, https://news.stanford.edu/2021/05/17/ancestry-tests-affect-race-self-identification/.
[3]A B Wilkinson, “People of Mixed Ancestry in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake: Freedom, Bondage, and the Rise of Hypodescent Ideology,” Journal of Social History 52, no. 3, (Spring 2019): 593–618, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shx113.
[4] Wilkinson, “People of Mixed Ancestry in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake.”
[5] Ryan W. Schmidt, “American Indian Identity and Blood Quantum in the 21st Century: A Critical Review.” Journal of Anthropology 2011, (January 15, 2012), https://www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2011/549521/.
[6] Maya Harmon, “Blood Quantum and the White Gatekeeping of Native American Identity.” California Law Review, (April 13, 2021), https://www.californialawreview.org/blood-quantum-and-the-white-gatekeeping-of-native-american-identity/.
[7] Harmon, “Blood Quantum and the White Gatekeeping of Native American Identity.”
[8]Meghan Sullivan, “Alaska Natives' Complicated Identities.” Indian Country Today, July 15, 2021, https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/alaska-natives-complicated-identities.
[9] Associated Press, “Congressman Eyes Blood Quantum Rules for Hawaiian Homelands.” AP NEWS, July 15, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-09dd8eefbd6bdee56cdd7b0f09cb8fab.
[10] Yaba Blay, One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2021).
[11] Schmidt, “American Indian Identity and Blood Quantum in the 21st Century.”
[12] Schmidt, “American Indian Identity and Blood Quantum in the 21st Century.”
[13]Leah Donnella, “'Racial Impostor Syndrome': Here Are Your Stories.” NPR, June 8, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/06/08/462395722/racial-impostor-syndrome-here-are-your-stories.
[14] Barbara Anne Henderson, “Division by Blood: Examining a History of Political and Racial Clashes Underlying American Indian Identity.” University of Montana, April 5, 2016. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/5391/.
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