Action Speaks looks at the construct of race

Action Speaks!, the superb discussion series at AS220, returns tonight (5:30, 115 Empire St., Providence) with another provocative discussion, looking at how the US Census began in 2000 to allow people to identify themselves as being of mixed race.

For the first time, citizens of the United States were not asked to define themselves by checking a single ethnic box in the census. In all of the census counts through 1990, an individual's race was supposed to be indicated by checking only one of the boxes presumed to correspond to the main social racial categories. Thus, there was no allowance made for multiracial identification, although the category "other" was recognized in the 1980 and 1990 census and on many local record-keeping forms. Advocates worked throughout the 1990s to rescind this “one box” policy. This change will lead to a discussion of the demographics of hybridization and the hybridization of demographics at the turn of the 21st century in the U.S. and in the world. We will also look at the concept of race as a construct and the notion of racial purity.

One of the featured guests, Mass Art professor Noel Ignatiev, the author of How the Irish Became White, is known in part for his work with Race Traitor, a journal with the motto "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." He once explained his outlook in a New York Times' interview.

Q: You're white. Do you hate your own hide?

A: No, but I want to abolish the privileges of the white skin. The white race is like a private club based on one huge assumption: that all those who look white are, whatever their complaints or reservations, fundamentally loyal to the race. We want to dissolve the club, to explode it.

Q: What can a white person do to explode the club?

A: Be reverse Oreos. Defy the rules of whiteness -- flagrantly, publicly. When someone makes a racial slur in your presence, say ''You probably think I'm white because I look white.'' Challenge behaviors that reproduce race distinctions.

Q: You'd do this in a bar full of rednecks?

A: That depends a lot on the situation. Challenging people on their whiteness can lead to harsh confrontations, even blows. Sometimes that can't be helped. But since we don't accept labeling people, I'd ask you: What's a redneck?