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Many multiracial LIers face the identity issue

BY JENNIFER BARRIOS | jennifer.barrios@newsday.com

January 11, 2009

Melissa Stephens, 23, is Italian, Irish and Korean, but she usually identifies as Caucasian.

Susan Eckert, 39, is Latina, Native American, Irish and African-American. She calls herself a "multiracial American."

For those who have a diverse heritage that defies easy categorization, choosing an identity becomes a necessity - and sometimes a source of difficulty.

"It's hard to characterize yourself, especially on forms," said Stephens, of Franklin Square, who said that few people have guessed from her features that she is half Korean. "What would you say I am? Half European? Half Asian? It's so hard to put yourself in one box, because I'm more than one box."

Eckert, of Bay Shore, said she once left the race category blank on a kindergarten form for her son. None of the categories seemed to fit him. "How do you choose one identity when who you are and what you come from is so much more than that?" she asked.

A matter of identity

The everyday questions of identity for America's 6.5 million people of multiracial ancestry have renewed resonance on the eve of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

The son of a white mother and a black father, Obama has opted to identify as black, not biracial - in part, he has said, because his brown skin effectively makes that choice for him in American society.

Roughly 40,000 people on Long Island identify themselves as being biracial or multiracial. The figure is estimated to have remained steady since 2000, when the U.S. Census began allowing people to choose two or more races when describing themselves.

Some people, such as Eckert, try to embrace all racial categories. Others choose only when confronted with paperwork that demands a simple answer. Some wear both identities as a badge of pride. And like Obama, some find that others have chosen an identity for them.

"Once people hear Asian in my background, it's like they see nothing else," said Stephens. "I don't know why we place so much emphasis on race."

Building their pride

Stephanie Ruane, 20, of Huntington has struggled with racial identity all her life. Her father is Irish, and her mother is Dominican. But Ruane herself didn't grow up speaking fluent Spanish and had little connection to her mother's culture. As a result, she always identified as Caucasian because she didn't think she qualified as Hispanic.

"If anybody ever asks you, 'Oh, you're Hispanic, you speak Spanish?' I couldn't," Ruane said. "So it would almost be like, 'OK, you're really not Spanish.'"

Still, her dark hair marks her as part Dominican, she said, just as her light skin and eyes hint at her Irish heritage. Now that she's learned more Spanish, she said, she feels comfortable identifying as biracial.

Jason Chin Chitty, 21, of Farmingdale said his Chinese, Jamaican, African-American, Native American and Caucasian background always has been a "conversation starter."

"I actually do enjoy that I'm multicultural," Chin Chitty said. "I'm open to more than just my culture, because I am more mixed. It makes me want to explore more, know more languages."

Anjana Mebane-Cruz, assistant professor of anthropology at Farmingdale State College, coined a term for her ancestral background: "AfraAmerIndian." But she prefers to bypass racial categories entirely, because, she said, race is a social construct, not a biological one.

So when Mebane-Cruz's son was born more than 30 years ago, she wrote "human" on his birth certificate. Her midwife promptly "crossed it out and put what she decided he was," she said with a laugh.

"Particularly in the United States, we have this idea that we know who people are, that how they look tells you who they are," Mebane-Cruz said. "It's something about really simplifying and limiting people. That's what irritates me most."

Michelle Sakhai, 25, an artist who grew up in Old Westbury, said she's had to contend with labeling all her life. Sakhai is Japanese, Persian, and an observant Jew.

"People are shocked because I look Filipino or Latin," she said. "When I tell people Middle Eastern, people say, 'No way, I don't believe you.'"

In fact, she said, some people "get upset if I'm like, 'No, I'm not Latino.' Like I'm trying to hide it, like I'm not proud of being Latin or something."

Last year she moved to San Francisco, where she said she's met many more people who have a background as diverse as hers.

"When you're half and half of something, and you meet others who are the same, there's kind of a connection, an automatic bond," she said. "You are two things, but two totally different things ... You're one person, and you have to hold these two things together."