Being Biracial: A Rant

Today I went to get my new Wisconsin driver's license. I left work 30 minutes early to get their before it closed. The drive over was nice- no rush hour traffic yet. The DMV was surprisingly efficient. It took me less than 10 minutes to sign in, have my picture taken, and get called up by one of the clerks. I would have said it was the best experience I had ever had in a DMV!

This perfect reality came to a screeching halt all because of  a .5 inch square box.

On the license application was a small box titled, "Race." Now, as a biracial individual and having had to fill out my race on multiple forms throughout my life, I am very much aware that this is not a simple task. Everyone has their own terminology they want you to use to indicate that you're simply multiracial. For me, that means I am White and Black.

Choose one:
    "Other"
    "Multiracial"
    "Biracial"
Choose multiple:
    "AA/Black"
    "White"
    "Asian"
    "Native American/Pacific Islander"
    "Hispanic"

I was fairly certain that those were the only options out there, but I needed to know which one this institution wanted me to answer with. They didn't have a nice list on the form, so I had to ask:

Me: "What are the options for race?"
Clerk: "White, Black, Asian, or Hispanic"
Me: "Well, I'm biracial. What do I put if I'm biracial?"
Clerk: "We actually don't have an option for that..."
Me: "So I can put two?"
**awkward silence**
Me: "So I have to choose one?"

Well, let me tell you. My entire perfect experience at the DMV went up in flames! How, in 2012, on an official government document, in the United States of America, is a multiracial person not able to correctly identify themselves! There is no way I am the only multiracial person up in this state! If I am, someone please tell me cause I have got to go!

When is America going to wake up and realize that it really is the melting pot that it was designed to be! Not only are all people not White anymore, people aren't just once race anymore either! It wasn't until 2000 that we could even self-identify as Multiracial on the Census!

Multiracial people were the fastest growing racial group in 2009! That was 3 years ago. At that point 5.2 million of us self-identified according to Census polls. The number of multiracial children is growing even faster. In 2011, the number jumped 50% to 4.2 million multiracial children!

Change is happening, and in a lot of ways, change is already here.
How are we going to handle it?
How are you?


Side note: I put White on the form, but I did contemplate putting "Black." However, I thought that that might cause lots of unnecessary issues with airport security.