Race consciousness is certainly nothing new in America. What is changing is how we identify ourselves racially and who gets to do it – us or the people around us. More people than ever before find it difficult to check off one box in a simple array of race choices. Some people feel that they are none of these things; others, that they are several of them. Increasingly, the trend is to allow people to define their own race and ethnicity.
In the days of “Jim Crow” laws, official records measured precisely the degree of “Negro blood” in a person’s heritage and a now archaic vocabulary instantly communicated what rights that person could claim or only desire. “Passing” as white could afford access to opportunity otherwise unavailable. While these conventions are now repugnant to us, we still have the need to identify people by race, and misrepresentation of one’s race is not entirely a thing of the past.
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