Emma: Portrait of Racial Confusion through Biracial Experience - Essay Example

Emma: Portrait of Racial Confusion through Biracial Experience The story of Emma in the book The Professor’s Daughter is told form first person perspective with the narration coming from Emma’s point of view. The most engaging aspect of the story is that she relates the way in which having an African American father and a Caucasian mother has affected her appearance in a way that leaves her in a place of confusion. She has no racial attachment to either the African American community or the Caucasian community, although she is immersed in the Caucasian culture. One of her first experiences in Harlem left her feeling compassion that brought her to tears, but unable to explain this to her father. The isolation that Emma feels because of the racial ambiguity leaves her questioning her place in society. Emma describes her life from her perspective. The one person she is most attached to is absent from her life as he is now a vegetable. The word vegetable is used to describe the vegetative state that her brother Bernie is in because of an accident. Bernie is the one person that she can identify with because of the way in which they share racial components in their looks. Furthermore, she looks up to Bernie because he has advantages that she doesn’t really think that she has developed. She also thinks of him as her anchor in the world. She describes this when she talks about how after they have moved and she has her own room she feels as if without him sleeping in the bunk bed above her that she “had nightmares of the house blowing down” (Raboteau 11). Once he is no longer mentally there for her, she becomes a bit unfettered. The importance of Bernie becomes more poignant after he returns from his experiences with the Million Man March in Washington. Bernie was being mentored by an associate of his father, a professor who saw the potential racial identity that was growing in Bernie. Bernie was embracing the African American side of his cultural experience. When he returned from the March, Emma felt a separation that was between them through his identification with the ‘black’ culture. The fact that he understood his association to that identity as he said “We were light…like we weighed nothing, and we were lifting up” (Raboteau 18). However, this identity with other African Americans left Emma jealous of his association as he was her sole sense of racial identity because they carried the same interpretation of the looks of their mother and father. The core of her dilemma is described when she becomes Mrs. Havisham for Halloween and her brother asks her “What are you suppose to be?”, thus creating a distinct question that defined her conflict (Raboteau 16). This question is one that society, from her point of view, asks when they see her. Her racial identity is not clear, thus creating a conflict from the first moment another person meets her. According to Rockquemore, this conflict becomes an issue because the way in which people create first identities for other members of society is by assessing the way in which their racial markers identifies them with a group. She states that “Appearances provide information about individuals that helps others to define the self as situated” (153). In other words, the way one person looks helps one to understand how to behave in relationship to them. When a person is not easily definable through their looks, members of society tend to be uncomfortable as they cannot figure out where they fit in relation to culture as a whole. Gillem and Thompson further this concept when they discuss bi-racial identities within society as it relates to the way in which an adolescent develops a sense of identity. An adolescent is searching for a place in the adult world, but when they are not readily identified through their racial association, this creates a conflict. This conflict is made worse because during adolescence is when more complex ideas about race and how it affects social and cultural identity are developed (219). Emma sees this in her life from a much earlier age as in evidence of her reaction to her experiences in Harlem (Raboteau 13). Because her looks in regard to her race have affected her more acutely than other children, she has an understanding of how this makes her different from an earlier age. This does not make her adolescent experience easier, however. Her first experience in college was to watch as her brother drove away, leaving her alone to face society without a sense of her own culture when it wasn’t tied to him. The first encounter she has of importance is when a student from the Af-Am Center comes to show her to the ‘black’ culture of the campus. Because he does not recognize her as part of his racial culture, he does not include her into his world and never speaks to her again (Raboteau 21). This experience sharpens her feelings of isolation from society as she cannot define herself in its limitations. Her life is defined by where she does not belong, rather than by where she does belong. The discussion that Lewis makes about the way in which race is defined in society relates to the confusion that Emma experiences. He makes the example that if being red-headed was defined as a difference; a new race would be created (45). Through this example, he proves that race is a creation, rather than a scientific fact, within the experience of life. Understanding this concept would have alleviated the burden that Emma felt. However, through the time period that she lived, the issue of race was a defining experience that a person who did not have a distinct definition would have felt very strongly. She was living through the period of social revolution as civil rights were being acknowledged and the differences between the ’black’ experience and ’white’ experience were being re-defined. The gap between the races was closing as rights were being given and enforced, where the defining lines between them were growing stronger as the African American experience was becoming a distinct and acknowledged culture. The most definitive moment in the cultural experience of biracial definition, according to Laszloffy and Rockquemore, happened on the Oprah Winfrey show when Tiger Woods defined himself as neither ‘black’ nor ‘white’, but as biracial. This declaration was significant as the media had been portraying him as the first ‘black’ golfer who had won the Master’s Golf Tournament, an achievement he made at the age of 22. He specifically defined his heritage as being one-eighth Caucasian, one-fourth black, one-eighth American Indian, and one-half Asian (1). Through this statistical evaluation, his predominant race is Asian, but the media, based solely on the way his looks presented, defined him as African American. This culturally defining racial association allows for a deeper understanding of the point that Lewis makes in association to race. Race is a manifestation of society, rather than of true defining characteristics of a scientific nature. Emma must struggle with the way in which society defines others as she does not specifically fit into any category that was available to her during that time period. Her contradictory identity is further realized through her descriptions of her brother. Her brother was physically beautiful, so much so that he was a child model. He was also very attuned to his African American heritage, having inspired a chapter in a book by the professor who was his mentor, and having embraced that side of his ancestry in order to define himself. However, his dual nature becomes relevant to her life when he is hit by lightening and becomes deformed. He loses his penis and a hand, his skin is scarred, his head is shaved, and he breaths through a tube (Raboteau 23). His former beauty is reduced to an ugliness that is in distinct contrast. The irony of this is that just like race, beauty is defined by society rather than by a distinct measure of science. In other words, his dual nature is evident through both of his most important experiences within the American culture. The American Anthropological Association released a statement in May of 1998 stating that through their findings, they had determined that race was a manifestation of culture rather than a true categorization of human beings. Human beings, according to the paper, had a long history of breeding between cultures, therefore there was no discernable differences between biological markers within human genetic material. The human species was homogenous, with no way to define categories other than through cultural specifications that are completely arbitrary. The problems that Emma experiences and relates through her novel show that she is victimized by norms that have no real foundation. The issue with biracial differences is not defined by skin color, but by a society that defines certain experiences as being association with skin color. The use of her brother’s beauty furthers this concept, allowing for another example of cultural definitions to elaborate on her emotional context in her experience. The Professor’s Daughter creates a framework for the discussion of the experience of biracially defined children within the American culture. Children who are born of parents who appear to fit into specific categories of race, find themselves torn between cultures and either choose, or in Emma’s case, hide in order to find a sense of comfort. Identity is an important aspect of the human experience. Emma placed her sense of identity in her brother, but his life became a physical example of her sense of duality and represented the pain that she felt because of it. Bernie was her anchor, but that anchor was lost and she was lost without him. The racial experience of the time period added to her experience as the nation as a whole was experiencing defining moments that both closed the gap between the races and created more defining divides. The experiences of Emma reveal an aspect of the American culture and reflect the divisions that result in a lack of harmony between the races. Works Cited American Anthropological Association. “American Anthropological Association Statement on Race” The American Anthropological Association, 17 May 1998. Web Gillem, Angela R and Cathy A. Thompson. Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Korgen, Kathleen O. From Black to Biracial: Transforming Racial Identity Among Americans. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1999. Print. Laszloffy, Tracey A, and Kerry A. Rockquemore. Raising Biracial Children. Lanham, MD [u.a.: Altamira Press, 2005. Print. Lewis, Elliott. Fade : My Journeys in Multiracial America. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005. Print. Raboteau, Emily. The Professors Daughter: A Novel. New York: Picador, 2006. Print. Rockquemore, Kerry Ann. “Between Black and White: Exploring the Racial Experience”. Hier, Sean P. Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Canadian Society. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2006. 147-159. Print. Scans of References Rockquemore, Kerry Ann. “Between Black and White: Exploring the Racial Experience”. Hier, Sean P. Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Canadian Society. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2006. 147-159. Print. Gillem, Angela R and Cathy A. Thompson. Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Lewis, Elliott. Fade : My Journeys in Multiracial America. New York: Carroll & Graf \ Publishers, 2005. Print. Laszloffy, Tracey A, and Kerry A. Rockquemore. Raising Biracial Children. Lanham, MD [u.a.: Altamira Press, 2005. Print. American Anthropological Association. “American Anthropological Association Statement on Race” The American Anthropological Association, 17 May 1998. Web Found at http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm Read More