1
The
Role of Colour and `Ethnic' Autobiography: Fanon, Capécia and Difference
SAGE Publications, Inc.200510.1191/0967550705ab013oa
MaureenPerkins
Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia,
mperkins@iinet.net.au
Address
for correspondence: Maureen Perkins, Australia Research Institute, Curtin
University of Technology, GPO Box U 1987, Perth, Western Australia; Email:
mperkins@iinet.net.au
This paper argues that in
many recent life narratives a new openness about the part played by colour
undermines what have historically been the fixed essentialisms of race. In
particular, memoirs that acknowledge difference and division amongst people
`of colour' (such as the fierce criticism by Frantz Fanon of Mayotte Capécia's
autobiography) highlight the complexities of racialized categories, and problematize
the nexus between `race' and `ethnicity'. Analysis of the genre of `ethnic'
autobiography has until recently been largely dominated by American scholars,
whose understanding of black—white positions has been premised on homogenous
racial identities, which have taken for granted that `ethnicity' implies
`minority' or coloured status, neglecting discussion of white as a colour.
As `inbetween' and alternative colour positions make their voices heard, and
those for whom colour/race is in some sense at odds with culture/ethnicity,
it is necessary to rethink the role of `ethnic' autobiography, to reconceptualize
the role of colour within it, and perhaps to reject its usefulness as a category
altogether.
INTRODUCTION
The burgeoning field of `ethnic' life writing contains many examples of unashamed
discussion about the writer's colour, while, by way of contrast, few `white'
autobiographers would feel the need to consider their whiteness. Yet `ethnic'
life writing is no longer clearly demarcated from `white' in the simple binary
that has so long marked the field. Waves of post-colonial migration and generations
of interracial relation- ships have resulted in writers of colour who speak
from within the `white- ness' of the dominant discourse and who occupy positions
that can both understand whiteness and critique it. This article examines
some
2
of the
complications caused to the black–white binary by autobiographers writing
from `in-between' positions, and questions overly simplistic equivalences
of ethnicity with colour and race. What ethnicity is a `white' Aboriginal
woman, or an assimilated Chinese migrant, or a third genera- tion Japanese-Canadian?
The nexus of race and ethnicity is troubled, casting doubt on the interchangeability
of those terms, particularly when people of `pale' colour can talk and write
about their marginalization within black communities. As A. Robert Lee reminds
us, `the very terminology of ethnicity and race is itself partial and Westernized'
(2001). In understanding that the field of auto/biography need not be divided
into `ethnic' and `non-ethnic' life writing, we may perhaps dispense with
that strange term `ethnic' altogether, and face up to the challenges of deconstructing
the role of stereotype in all our lives, of whatever colour or culture. The
term `ethnic' is made to serve multiple purposes: as a euphemism for race,
to denote cultural belonging (often to a minority community), and to mean
non-white. In a detailed study, Marcus Banks calls the term `[A] collection
of rather simplistic and obvious statements about bound- aries, otherness,
goals and achievements, being and identity, descent and classification' (1996:
190). I will concentrate on the use of `ethnic' to mean non-white, and will
argue that the question of what constitutes `white' and `non-white', in other
words, what constitutes colour in the formation of racial identity, is a major
feature of many recent works of autobiography, which break away from an acceptance
of `ethnic' as `black'. In doing so, they prepare us for what would surely
be the most revolutionary development in `ethnic' autobiography: an acceptance
that, just as we all have race, we all have ethnicity and colour. Such an
accept- ance would encourage so-called `white' autobiographers to consider
their own racial identity models, and to discuss the powers and privileges
of whiteness (McIntosh, 1990). An increased discussion of racial forma- tion,
rather than a shying away from it as a non-material reality, would contribute
to a truly human solidarity in which we would accept that all autobiography
is the autobiography of race. IS `ETHNIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY' THE SAME AS `BLACK
AUTOBIOGRAPHY'? Until whiteness studies make more impact on the general reader,
it has to be accepted that an `ethnic' autobiography is usually understood
to be one written by a person of colour, since the correlation of ethnicity
and race is widely accepted, and `white' is seen as not racial. There is also
a category of `immigrant autobiography', sometimes considered part of `ethnic
life narratives', and in these the portrayal of the immigrant community does
not necessarily consider colour as an issue, although
3
Italian,
Irish, Jewish and Greek heritage have all, at various times, been considered
non-white. There is a considerable literature on `ethnic autobiography', but
it is dominated by US perspectives, which determine that the authors included
are black. Laura Browder (n.d.) conceptualizes the readership of ethnic autobiography,
as opposed to its authorship, as `white': Ethnic autobiographies have fulfilled,
and continue to perform, a number of cultural functions, but one purpose has
remained the same: to offer the authentic voice of a minority group to a reading
audience composed primarily of white middle class Americans … [T]he
memoirist is not telling his or her own story as much as the story of a people.
This communal character of `ethnic' autobiography is reiterated in Sidonie
Smith and Julia Watson's `Fifty-two genres of life narrative' in Reading autobiography
(2001: 194). The authors describe the `ethnic life narrative' as `emergent
in ethnic communities', implying the same repre- sentative role described
by Browder. This function is also claimed by Kenneth Mostern in his study
of Autobiography and black identity politics. Mostern stresses that a theory
of autobiography `caught inside the “I”' does not render as rich
an analysis as one that `recognizes that all autobiography includes, in some
measure, testimony – the construction of a “we”': I will
suggest that African-American Autobiography Studies has tended to place autobiography
in a relatively stable location in the field: where `I' tends to have a determinate
relation to a specifically racial `we'; and where the text provides for its
audience a way to symbolize racialization as a version of the real. (1990:
30–31) As well as this emphasis on writing to inform an audience concerned
with understanding racial groupings (from the readers' own presumably `non-
racial' position), ethnic autobiography is often described as having an individualistic
quality that is based on its presumed roots in American slave narratives.
Such narratives traced a journey of liberation from down- trodden member of
an exploited class to empowered, free individual. That trope has had wide
influence in other countries, too, for example in Sally Morgan's Australian
classic My place (1987), in which the young Aboriginal woman finds her heart
liberated by the hard-won knowledge of her Nyungar heritage. This important
aspect of `ethnic' life stories still underpins much scholarly understanding
of the genre and its pedagogical use as bildungsroman. The Yale–New
Haven Teachers' Institute posts a web page that argues the benefits of autobiography:
`Students are looking for something, often they are looking for themselves.
Often, they don't
4
know
where or how to look.' The website suggests that this search is best served
by helping the individual reflect on their ethnic grouping: The study of autobiography
/ biography with varied readings and activities based on their ethnic group
and the ethnic groups of those around them can help to provide answers to
the age-old questions of, `Who am I,' `Where do I come from,' and `Who do
I want to be?' A quotation from Ralph Ellison's Invisible man is used to summarize
`the way many adolescents feel': All my life I had been looking for something,
and everywhere I turned, someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted
their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.
I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions
which I, and only I could answer. (Ellison, 1995: 163) The recommendation
to `ethnic' students of this black American classic is not necessarily to
suggest that they would not enjoy literature by white authors, but it does
imply that it is best to attract them to the genre as a whole through work
that seems particularly relevant on the grounds of race. A more inclusive
model of readership has been suggested by Nancy K. Miller, who says, `When
you read the lives of others, you can't help but remember your own.' For her,
the `others' are not demarcated in any racial or `ethnic' way. They are simply
other people, like the reader in some ways, unlike in others. For her, this
complex pattern of identification and disidentification is an aid to `interactive
remembering', the construction of the reader's own memory: So what happens
when beyond even disidentification there seem to be no commonalities between
your life as a reader and the writer's, when it's another zeitgeist entirely?
What have you to do with a woman who had an affair with her father, a man
who was a sexual addict, fill in the blanks with the person most unlike you
that you can imagine? If the task of memoir is to pull away from the face
you see in your mirror to contemplate a face that doesn't look like yours,
what does it take to make an intimate connection? Put another way, can we
respond only to memoirs written by our twin, as though we had been separated
at birth? (Miller, 2000: 430) In making her impassioned plea for memoir to
be considered as much more than navel gazing, Miller offers a way out of the
ghetto of ethnic life writing. According to her model, all readers can engage
equally with all stories, whatever the ethnicity of the writer.
5
The
black–white binary, so evident in much writing on American autobiography,
is no longer a sufficient framework for understanding life writing. In 1993,
William L. Andrews noted that criticism of African American autobiography
was increasingly recognizing the international context (1993: 1–7).
Indeed, the `international context' is demanding to be heard. In 1999 an international
conference on autobiography, held in Beijing, `saw pressure being exerted
to move away from the dominance of United States scholarship in autobiography
studies'. A trend towards glob- alized terms of reference, Indigenous scholarship,
and the development of white studies, all undercut the unproblematic acceptance
of `black' and `white' as the overriding framework by which ethnic autobiography
should be understood. In the 2001 Encyclopaedia of life writing, A. Robert
Lee provides a trenchant critique of the category of `ethnic', exemplifying
a schol- arship of ambivalence at its very best. Not only does he ponder on
why the writings of the Buddha, St Paul, Augustine or Christopher Columbus
might not be known as `ethnic', but he also considers `white ethnicity', and
subtly conveys an engaging complication of the `supposed' mainstream culture.
Homogenizing attitudes to colour, vital though they may have been when minority
groups sought solidarity to challenge the `dominant', are giving way to the
complexity resulting from huge waves of postwar migration and the resulting
`interracial' children. Those whose physical appearance marks them as `ethnic'
may actually have a community that does not appear to relate to their phenotype,
or may feel an allegiance to a `white' community, or to no community at all,
challenging the tradi- tional function of autobiography as outlined above
by Browder. Some may even feel marginal to their communities because of their
colour. Kathe Sandler's 1992 documentary, A question of color, featured inter-
views with African Americans of many shades who agreed that their own communities
had hierarchies based on colour. In a collection of recent essays problematizing
the relationship between racial identity and auto- biography, Lisa Kahaleole
Chang Hall reports a Latina friend's comment: `I don't think Black people
really truly believe that any other people of color exist' (Chang Hall, 1996,
241–51). Hall herself gets labelled `high yellow' by black friends,
but this same label offends another, as if it signifies not-quite-black-enough,
and Hall is `torn between laughter and despair', as she responds to the complex
connotations of hierarchy and recognition that are afforded to different kinds
of colour. Her `yellow- ness' (that is, her particular shade of `black') means
marginality, even in a community that ostensibly accepts her. As Omi and
Winant point out: `[E]thnicity theory isn't very interested in ethnicity
among blacks. … There is, in fact, a subtly racist element in this
substitution – in which whites are seen as variegated in terms of group
identities, but blacks “all look alike”' (1994: 22).
6
`Mixed
race' autobiographies also problematize the issue of colour. As `mixed race'
has become more speakable, the ability to take positions within the black
community that claim a colour other than black has become more widespread.
Gloria Anzaldua is recognized as being a major influence in compelling white
feminists to rethink the homogeneity of feminism through works such as This
bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color, but she also creates
a space for all mixed race writers. Her theory of borderlands is a reminder
that the `margins' are too powerful and heterogenous to be clumped together
in one undifferentiated group that has in common only its members' deviation
from the `norm'. Writers of mixed race are marking out a territory in which
colour is defined by neither black nor white. Janice Gould writes: [W]e are
left with a legacy that allows us to speak of Euro-Americans as whites and
African Americans as blacks. We say, `a white woman I work with' or `a black
woman I know'. But we do not say `a red (or yellow or brown) woman I know',
because this has somehow lost favor, as James Clifton has pointed out. We
imagine that color coding the rest of us is somehow racist. Instead, we tend
to speak of reds, yellows, and browns as Native Americans, Asians, and Hispanics.
(1992: 81–90)1 Gould goes on to say that, because she is `mixed', she
does not fit into any one of these ethnic/racial categories. She talks about
the role of colour, the response of others to this, and her coming to a sense
of identity. She tells the story of Louise Erdrich, a mixed-blood Chippewa
writer, who when told by someone she meets, `Funny, you don't look Indian',
responds, `Funny, you don't look rude!' Colour is not a reliable indicator
of ethnic identity, just as `racial' com- munity may also easily be misread
by physical appearance alone. Lynette Rodriguez, an Australian Indigenous
woman of `fair-complexioned' appearance, growing up in the Kimberley region
surrounded by darker- skinned Aboriginal family, writes: `Many times I have
looked at my skin and while I knew the colour was white I saw black.' In the
late sixties, Rodriguez's mother was given the good news by the Native Welfare
Office that her children could now be classified as white: `“[B]ut unfortu-
nately you can't be, because you fall just below the mark.” I asked
Mum, “What was this mark?” She said, “I don't know”'
(Rodriguez, 2004). Rodriguez successfully completed a year-long course designed
to help Indigenous students get in to university: As part of the university's
promotion of having a group of Aboriginal students studying in rural areas,
a photo session was arranged. All of the students in this group were obviously
Aboriginal in terms of skin colour.
7
Of the
whole group I was the fairest. As the staff and the photographer arranged
the students, I was asked to step aside, away from the group being photographed.
I remember feeling very, very upset and alienated. Why was I the only one
being asked not to be in the photo? All my friends were there and here I was
standing at the back of the room by myself while my fellow students were being
asked to `smile'. I never saw myself as being any different to my friends
so it wasn't until a few years later that I realised that it was because
they only wanted students who obviously looked `Aboriginal'. I would have
spoiled their photo session. (Rodriguez, 2004) Rodriguez's white skin could
not be allowed to disturb the dominant definition of Aboriginal as `black'.
ESCAPING FROM THE BINARY In Australian society, where one is either black
or white, Rodriguez's posi- tion requires a very great deal of reflection.
Happily, given the rejection by Aboriginal communities of any kind of blood
quantum measurement, she is able to identify completely as Indigenous. The
binary need only impact on her in the gaze of `others'. For immigrant, `hyphenated'
Australians, like Annette Shun Wah, an ABC (Australian Born Chinese), the
binary is, perhaps, more internalized: I recall a well-meaning friend at university
telling me that she'd forgotten I was Chinese, and that she only ever thought
of me as Australian. I was thrilled at first, revelling in the warm glow of
acceptance. Only later did I wonder what that meant about the parts of me
that are Chinese. If we simply ignore them, do they go away? (Shun Wah, 2004)
Shun Wah's use of `we' signals her complete comfort in an Australian identity,
born and raised in Queensland, and living in Sydney. It could be said that
she is culturally `white'. Yet as her humorous and insightful memoir makes
clear, she is also Chinese. Eric Liu is an American memoirist who also cannot
fit within the black–white binary. He remembers being surprised as
a boy when he caught sight of himself alongside his friends in a mirror, and
realized how much shorter than them he was. Growing up in an era of assimilation,
like Annette Shun Wah in Australia, there are now many ways in which he is
culturally white. Is this, then, an `ethnic autobiography'? The choice of
Henry Louis Gates, Jr, to commend the book on the front cover indi- cates
that the publishers, at least, regard it as belonging to that genre. Liu,
after all, is `not literally white. That is, I do not have white skin or white
8
ancestors.
I have yellow skin and yellow ancestors' (1998: 34). Yet The accidental Asian
does not fit into the `construction of a “we”' described by Kenneth
Mostern. It is much more part of the `cultural borderlands', where hybrid,
unstable identities are rendered palpable through the negotiation `between
conflicting traditions – linguistic, social, ideological' (Woodhull,
cited in Smith and Watson, 2001: 100). In James McBride's The color of water,
McBride's `white' mother tries to escape from the binary that would position
herself and her `black' son on opposite sides of the great American divide,
by appropriating an alter- native term that could be interpreted as a position
on a colour spectrum. She rejects the term `white' and prefers to call herself
`light-skinned', a quality that she might even share with `light-skinned'
black women. Only by insisting that God does not have a colour (`God is the
color of water') can his mother reassure the young James that their own difference
in colour is not a problem. Her reassurances to her son are an attempt to
find a posi- tion outside racial discourse, in a transcendent divinity, where
the burden of her in-between position, neither black nor white, can be removed.
The title of Ien Ang's On not speaking Chinese suggests that her book is
going to be concerned with cultural rather than racial difference. Here, perhaps,
is an `ethnic' autobiographical work that takes ethnicity entirely in its
cultural sense and does not touch on biology, race, or colour at all. Yet
in her earliest pages, Ang writes: `Throughout my life, I have been implicitly
or explicitly categorized, willy-nilly, as an “overseas Chinese” (hua qiao). I look Chinese' (2001: 23). Ang, who was born in Indonesia and
was educated in the Netherlands, before migrating to Australia, has at some
early stage been on the receiving end of the `white gaze', of knowing that
she herself was `other', and the powerlessness of that position is only subtly
hinted at in one reticent, condensed word, `willy-nilly'. To say that this
was her position `willy-nilly', whether she liked it or not, is in fact to
say that she did not like it, and had to learn to accept it. Indeed, the very
purpose of the title is to allude to strangers' expectation that she will
speak Chinese. The role of physical appearance, then, presumably including
colour, is clearly a formative experience in the writing of this memoir. All
of the above life stories would seem to fit with Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong's plea
for the use of `multiple, provisional axes of organization' rather than `some
totalizing system in which autobiographers speak from a priori fixed positions'
(Wong, 1991: 160). Although I am cautious about Wong's conclusion that `reading
by ethnicity is a necessary act', her critique of the `trans-ethnic' paradigm
underlying William Boelhower's Immigrant autobiography in the United States
(1982) is a welcome reminder that individuals often fail to recognize themselves
in accounts of their `group'. Unfortunately, she states quite clearly that
her discussion
9
leaves
out `borderline' cases such as `those of mixed blood' (1991: 162). These would
surely be the very people who would provide clear examples of the shortcomings
of the ethnicity model. ETHNIC DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE `BLACK' EXPERIENCE A
cautionary example of how hierarchies of colour might be used to silence difference
within difference and to impose group solidarity is that of the famous response
of Frantz Fanon to the autobiography of a woman of colour from his own Martinique.
In Black skin, white masks, Fanon spends a chapter angrily demolishing Je
suis Martiniquaise by Mayotte Capécia. Capécia was the pseudonym of Lucie
Combette, who was born in Martinique in 1916 and died in Paris in 1955 (Macey,
2000: 169). Je suis Martiniquaise was published in 1948, but has drawn most
attention for Fanon's fierce response to it in 1952. It is through the reaction
of Fanon, a man of colour, to the autobiography of Capécia, a woman of colour,
a reac- tion that appears to be totally unsympathetic, that I want to suggest
one approach to the cultural work done by colour in `ethnic' life writing.
Fanon's dislike for Je suis Martiniquaise has been interpreted by some as
a matter of gender. Certainly, the authors who came to praise negritude, like
Fanon at an early stage, took part in what David Macey has called `a very
masculinist discourse' (2000: 180). Gwen Bergner comments on the sympathy
that Fanon affords the male protagonist in the second semi- autobiographical
work he refers to, Un Homme pareil aux autres, in com- parison with his disapproval
of Capécia, and declares that `[I]n transposing Freud's question of the other
from gender to race, Fanon excludes black women' (1995: 75–88). Macey,
however, believes that `what is really at stake in Fanon's reading of Je suis
Martiniquaise' is a philosophical issue, `pure Sartre'. Fanon believes that
Mayotte is living in bad faith and is lapsing into inauthenticity: Bad faith
is, in Sartrean terms, a form of self-deception, a denial of human freedom
and an abdication of responsibility towards oneself and others. The repeated
`I know [that is impossible]' that Mayotte appends to her wish to marry a
white man is the index of her bad faith and of her inability to be what Heidegger
would call `resolute' or what Sartre calls `authentic'… `It is because
the negress feels herself to be inferior that she aspires to being admitted
to the white world.'… In terms of the philosophical framework of Fanon's
analysis, Mayotte's bad faith is more important than her gender. (2000: 176–77)
On this important issue then, that of truly knowing oneself, Mayotte seems
to fail. `Mayotte Capécia is barred from herself.' This would endorse those
who see the value of ethnic autobiography as being to
10
teach
young people the success of achieving a strong individuation, of `knowing
themselves'. In one sense, Black skin, white masks is about Fanon `finding
himself', through the traumatic experience of realizing that he is `the object
the other is looking at'. On this count, Mayotte fails, and Fanon is right
to condemn her autobiography. It would not be a suitable text for those adolescent
readers whom the Yale–New Haven Teachers' Institute wants to be helped
towards self-understanding. However, there is another important question on
which Fanon believes that Mayotte Capécia fails. Nearly all his criticisms
are expressed in terms of her beliefs about skin colour. She declares that
she could never love anyone but a white man. Fanon responds: `We are thus
put on notice that what Mayotte wants is a kind of lactification. For, in
a word, the race must be whitened; every woman in Martinique knows this, says
it, repeats it' (1967: 47). Mayotte fails to identify with her black heritage,
taking pride instead in having had a white Canadian grandmother. Again, those
critics who have commented on Fanon and gender have juxtaposed l'homme noir,
represented by Fanon and all black men, against the black woman, represented
by Mayotte Capécia. Bergner refers to Capécia as a black woman. Yet this elision
between the woman of colour, which is what Fanon in fact calls Capécia, and
the négresse, with whom he at times sug- gests she shares common features,
is to miss an extremely important point about the specificity of colour that
is subsumed within the collective term `black'. Capécia's second book, which
Fanon briefly mentions, is called not La Négresse, but La Négresse blanche; the difference matters. One Martinican writer, critiquing Je suis Martiniquaise
at the time of its pub- lication, thought that the title was in error, and
should actually be Je suis une martiniquaise. In other words, Capécia was
only one of many differ- ent Martinican women, not a representative (Alpha,
1948: 844–45). It is Mayotte Capécia's failure to realize that she
is in fact `black' that constitutes her inauthenticity. In a story by Abdoulaye
Sadji called Nini, a Negro tries to woo a girl who is `almost white'. She
rejects him, and Fanon writes, `We have seen here how a girl of color reacts
to a declaration of love made by one of her own' (1967: 57). Fanon may be
counting `colour' as `black' but it is not in any sense of equivalence, rather
of what ought to be a common purpose. In fact, `colour' leads those who experience
it to be alienated from their true selves. His experience of growing up in
Martinique meant that he was all too aware of the multiple variations on skin
colour. Macey refers to the hierarchies of colour as an extraordinary `shadism',
which carried (and carry) complex distinctions made on the basis of degrees
of pigmentation (2000: 46). The significance of Mayotte Capécia is not as
a representative of black woman, but of mulatta or métisse. Although Fanon
seems to be criticizing Caribbean society, where `every woman … whether
in a casual flirtation or in a serious affair, is determined
11
to select
the least black of the men', he nevertheless chooses as his exem- plar not
a black woman, but a `mixture'. It is ironic that in choosing to use Je suis
Martiniquaise to convey his thorough distaste for racism and the lack of pride
of the black `man' in his blackness, Fanon should tap into one of the most
enduring and significant stereotypes associated with colour: that the woman
of mixed race is dominated by her uncontrollable sexuality. Mayotte Capécia
submits to all her white lover's demands, despite the fact that `love is beyond
[her] reach' (1967: 44). It is sex that is the exchange between Capécia and
her lover, and a child is the outcome, but there is no love as Fanon understands
the word. In using Capécia to act as an example of the inherent hatred of
blackness even amongst black people, he perpetuates a contempt for the `halfie',
the mulatto. Je suis Martiniquaise fails, then, because Mayotte Capécia does
not come to a recognition and embracing of what Fanon regards as her true
colour, her blackness. Is it possible that one feature of what is regarded
as `successful' autobiography written by a member of a `visibly different'
minority is the narrative of coming to an awareness and acceptance of colour?2
The key moment in Fanon's own autobiographical reflections is when the young
French child says, `Mama, see the Negro! I'm fright- ened!' (1967: 112). Many
memoirs of people of colour have as a pivotal point such a moment of realization
of how they appear physically differ- ent. Janice Gould, just like Fanon,
relates the words of a child: `A little girl called me a “dirty Jap”.'
In her case, the child misreads the colour, since Gould is not Japanese at
all, but Native American. The fame of that moment in which Fanon experiences
the white gaze is somehow premised on its accuracy. Yes, thinks Fanon, Je
suis nègre, I am black. What would have been the result of that encounter
if, as in Gould's experience, the child had been mistaken and allocated the
wrong category to Fanon, if he had, in fact, had to face the perennial mixed
race question that Rodriguez faces, `But who are you really?' By 2002, it
comes as no surprise to find Frank H. Wu including colour in his experiences
of growing up Asian just outside Detroit: `I learned I was not white', he
writes. Indeed, the importance of colour could hardly be more clearly proclaimed
than in his `in-your-face' title, Yellow, and the gloriously yellow dustjacket
of his book. Wu declares: I'd like to be as honest as possible in explaining
why and how race matters, because it shapes every aspect of my life – and everyone else's. I'd like to do so in a manner that allows my white relatives
and my white friends to understand and empathize. (2002: 7) Here Wu seems
to be taking us back to a traditional reading of the role of `ethnic' autobiography,
that of informing and educating the white,
12
middle-class
audience about what it means to be `raced'. However, there is a crucial difference
between his goals and those, say, of Malcolm X (Eakin, 1993). For Wu, all
his readers are `raced', and that is what they have in common: `race matters,
because it shapes every aspect of my life – and everyone else's'. Steve
Olson writes that the only logical conclusion of recent biological research,
which has concluded that we all share common ancestors aris- ing from the
veldt of East Africa, is to suggest that every single human being is `mixed'.
Whatever a person's skin colour, they have all sorts of different colours
in their ancestral heritage. He concludes that the day will come, after this
fact is widely enough acknowledged, when it will be accepted that people `choose'
their ethnicity, and he uses present-day Hawaii as an example of what this
might mean: The logical endpoint of this perspective is a world in which people
are free to choose their ethnicity regardless of their ancestry. Ethnicity
is not yet entirely voluntary in Hawaii, but in many respects the islands
are headed in that direction. State law, for example, is gradually coming
to define a Native Hawaiian as anyone with a single Hawaiian ancestor. But
at that point ethnicity becomes untethered from biology – it is instead
a cultural, political, or historical distinction. People are no longer who
they say they are because of some mysterious biological essence. They have
chosen the group with which they want to affiliate. (Olson, 2002: 237) In
claiming a universality for mixedness, Olson dissolves the whole prob- lem
of race, not simply by labelling it a scientific illusion, or looking to some
future utopia in which the `melting pot' has erased all differences, but by
casting doubt on the possibility of ever drawing the parameters of any grouping
accurately enough to signify where one group ends and another begins. There
is no `other' that we can be absolutely sure does not include one of `us'.
We are all `we'. If we are all mixed, and we are all `raced', then the term
`ethnic auto- biography' may be redundant. Autobiography is always the autobiography
of race and ethnicity. If we include white as a colour, then it is always
the autobiography of colour as well, which is, after all, what the term `ethnic'
has usually meant. The dustjacket of The accidental Asian pro- claims it to
be `Beyond black and white', yet Eric Liu does not deny the significance and
power of colour: `So long as we speak of whiteness as the social norm and “passing” as the option of choice, no amount of census reshuffling will truly matter'
(1998: 194). Knowing that his embodiment as Chinese can never be put aside,
his subtle balancing of the many aspects to his identity calls to mind Fanon's
famous prayer: `Oh my body, make of me always a man who questions!' (1967:
232).
13
Embodiment
in a racialized body is a crucial part of one's `origins', predetermining
later `life-choices'. For those who are white, neglecting the role of colour
may be possible, but the privilege and ease that whiteness allows should
not suggest that silence equals unimportance (Perry, 2001; McIntosh, 1990).
Only if race is recognized as an aspect of all modern life writing, whether
white, Indigenous, black, brown, or yellow, will a real commonality be possible,
one that does not overlook difference, but sees it and incorporates it into
the universal. `Ethnic autobiography', in which the coming to an awareness
of colour is so crucial, will be written by white people too.
NOTES
1 The Clifton reference is
to James A. Clifton, Being and becoming Indian: biographical studies of
North American frontiers (Chicago: Dorsey, 1989).
2 I am not suggesting a hierarchy
of success in autobiography, but some texts are recommended for adolescent
and student reading, others are not. Although I have not done a survey of
such lists, the publishing history of Je suis Martiniquaise suggests
that it is not.
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NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR MAUREEN PERKINS is a Research Fellow at Curtin University,
Perth, Western Australia, working in the area of `mixed race'. She is co-editor
15
of the
journal Life Writing, and co-Director of the Life Writing Research Unit. Recent
publications include `Australian mixed race', European Journal of Cultural
Studies 7 (2004), and `False whiteness: “passing” and the stolen
generations', in A. Moreton-Robinson, editor, Whitening race, Canberra: Aboriginal
Studies Press, 2004.