Homer Alaska - Opinion

Well, yes, I can, and I know how the U.S. Census would like me to answer. As a blue-eyed, fair-skinned man, I'm supposed to be "white." Based on what I've found out about my ancestral heritage, the real answer is "It's complicated."

That's not the answer the U.S. Census wants, I'm guessing. If any of us are honest about our race — and what race means in a biological sense — "it's complicated" is the only answer we can give.

As a son of the South born in Virginia and raised in Florida, I fully understand the issue of race. When I was a young boy in the early 1960s, Jim Crow laws classified people as white or black, or sometimes, white and colored. There were white-only bathrooms, white-only drinking fountains, white-only schools and even white-only beaches. If you were black and couldn't drink from the refrigerated fountain or go to the new school, race mattered. If you were denied education and jobs because of an arbitrary racial designation, race mattered. If people called an elderly man "boy," race mattered. If the Ku Klux Klan lynched you because you looked twice at a white woman, race mattered.

In recognition of the harm done to people not-white, and to redress grievances done against people of color, the U.S. government rightly has established laws to make sure no American suffers prejudice again. Affirmative action attempts to compensate for past injustices. To track the progress of civil rights in areas like voting laws, the U.S. Census asks questions about race.

I understand that. How do we define race, however? The real question is, "Who am I?" It's a question President Barack Obama has had to contend with all his life. It's not a question I've had to contend with, however. I've been comfortably content being white, with all its privileges. When you're privileged, you don't have to think about your race. Nobody reminds you of it 10 times a day.

Then I discovered defining white, African American, Asian, Native American and Hispanic isn't so simple. On a visit to my new dentist after I'd moved to Homer, Dr. Hodnik looked at my teeth and asked, "Do you have any Asian or Native American ancestry?"

Apparently I have a dental characteristic, a slight bump on my upper front teeth called a pronounced cingulum, that's common among Asians or Native Americans. As far as I know, I don't have any such ancestry, but as anyone who has done genealogy discovers, it's amazing what you find out about your ancestors.

I had to rethink my race, and what it means.

Then I had a Y-DNA test done to sort out better my father's Scottish lineage. DNA tests group people by what's called haplogroups. I'm R1b1b2, an extremely common haplotype in Western Europe. Going way back in time, and following the trail out of Africa of my paternal ancestors, I'm connected to, well, every man alive.

Take people of Hispanic origin — question 8 on the census form. About 20,000 years ago, my R1b1b2 ancestors moved into Spain and found refuge there during the Ice Age. When the ice retreated, we moved into northern France and the British Isles. Am I of Hispanic origin? Well, yes, genetically.

The R haplogroup goes back 30,000 years to central Asia, when another group, P, split into groups Q and R. The Q dudes went east into Asia and the Americas. That means all Native American men are my cousins — and could explain that funny little dental bump.

Follow my genetic trail back 35,000, 40,000 and 60,000 years, and my line goes into the Middle East, northern Africa and finally back to the ancestral Adam in southern Africa. Scientists studying deep human ancestry believe we came from one man, one small tribe struggling to survive on the ancient African savannah.

All men aren't my brothers, but you all are my cousins.

So how do we define race? If we mean culture, as in growing up learning a certain language, customs and traditions, then we should say that. If we mean ethnic groups, as the Scotch-Irish, then we should say that, too. Some time in our world history we thought it expedient to group people as races.

If we call black people African American, then what do we call my Jewish friend now an American citizen who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and whose mother came from Berlin during the Holocaust? What do we call a man whose father is from Kenya and whose mother is from Kansas — other than "Mr. President?" The apartheid government of South Africa twisted itself into contortions trying to define race, and you see how far that got them.

Race matters because we say it matters. It won't matter when we understand that there really isn't such a thing as race — that as the anthropologist Ashley Montagu said, it's a fallacy and a social construct, not a biological fact.

The U.S. Census asks a political question for political purposes. I understand that, but as a rational, scientific thinking person, I'm going to play dumb.

"It's complicated" might fit into the box, but since I come from many heritages and many genetic lines, I am white and black and Asian and Hispanic and Native American. Like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and every human on this planet, I am not any one race and I am all races.

I checked "some other race" on my census form, and wrote "mixed." If you want to call me any race, though, there's a simple answer.

Call me human.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong.@homernews.com.