Checking The "Other" Box

Whenever Catherine Betts, as a last resort, checks the "other" box on a form, she wonders if it's a sign of defeat, of giving up, of agreeing against her will that she can be defined simply.

By Catherine Betts

February 2003

OT

The box stared out at me, beckoning me to make my mark while my eyes nervously scanned for a way out.

Afr. Am. No, doesn't apply.

As. Am. Yes, but I just didn't feel comfortable committing wholly to it, I thought, as if the box As. Am. and I were a new dating item, having our first conversation about "commitment."

White? There was another yes, but again, now I was a two timer, having more than one conversation with a potential beau about me and my unwillingness to commit. I felt like an ousted single on a dating game.

Native American? This just kept on getting harder.

If the 2002 Census was the grandfather test of how many "multiracials" or "Hapas" even, that there are in America, this application was the backwards alcoholic uncle that no one in the family talked about.

I have always had trouble checking just one of the boxes nonchalantly and then, just letting it pass as if I just checked "F" for Female, or A. for middle name Ann. But, my name, what others identify me as, is just as definitive for others as my background is to me. Checking OT is like walking into a room full of strangers and introducing myself as "Barney." It's just as inconclusive and arbitrary.

Gloria Anzaldua has written that she, just as others living a "bordered" lifestyle, will always live on the border, straddling the fence in between many communities, and taking in the many contradictions that make us whole.
It's this constant feeling of being at home in many places, speaking different tongues, while feeling homeless and cut off in a way that the "other" box represents everything I do not wish to represent. It makes me resent this inanimate but still menacing box labeled "OT" as it looms at me every time I look at an application. It presents a threat and a challenge to me, it's me or nothing. Not because I'm wary of what my background represents, but because of the exact opposite. I know that I'm lucky, to be able to plant a foot in each world, each community, and feel a sense of belonging. Sometimes, this belonging is found when I'm speaking to a group that looks like me about the dangers of strict gender notions and how it ultimately disservices other humans. Sometimes, it's found in the subtle ways being racially ambiguous can allow one to be a "fly on the wall" spectator in other's discussions on race, gender, privilege. It's found when I work with men and women that have been repeatedly sexually abused, but still seem to find comfort in my friendship and a sense of commonality with me because of the way I look.

The "Other" box confines the many luxuries that being multi-racial has afforded me, it obscures the constant battle I have to fight for the under dog, it minimizes the fact that I can put myself on any side of a position and see the negative and positive value of each.

I have a white grandmother who claims that blacks in America don't know how to work, a Japanese American grandmother that was to be one of the first Asian American women to graduate from UC Berkeley (but was quickly whisked away to an internment camp), a white ex-Navy father who argued with me over the constitutionality of Proposition 209 in California, a Filipino-American uncle that can remember the day that Reagan called for the tear gassing of UC Berkeley as he walked home from school, a Mestizo surgeon uncle that used to discuss issues and plan with the Black Panthers, a Native American great, great grandfather that fought to survive everyday during the Gold Rush (in addition to a newspaper clipping that claims my white great, great grandfather was ambushed and killed by "Injuns") and a Filipino mother that recalls the tale of watching and holding me back as a three year old as I ran across the street of my grandmother's home in Oakland with my uncle's boxing gloves on in an attempt to stop two white police officers from violently brutalizing a black man in a routine traffic stop.

Just as I, an individual made of many parts do not exist in the "Other" vacuum of black and white, my experience as one who routinely calls herself "Hapa" cannot be contained by a box. I wonder if, when I check OT as a last resort, in an "I guess I gotta--there are no other choices" kind of way, it's a sign of defeat, of me giving up, of me saying "yes, I can be defined simply." I wonder if my multi cultural ancestors are rolling over in their graves. But even more so, I wonder how long it will take for this box to be defeated, and I wonder if the other "others" out there are having the same existential dialogue with themselves about a silly box.

I think back to the time I was first barraged with the "fill in the blank, just one please" race boxes when I was a gangly, wide eyed, 17 year old applying to college, and picking Asian American at the urge of my white math teacher that insisted "it would help me." I remember attending my first day of class and recognizing that although I was raised in a white town, and spent my life living with a "white" name, I wasn't white.

I glance back to the OT box and make the commitment to check it.

I realize how far I've come, and all of a sudden, I realize how comfortable straddling the fence has become.

About the Author
Catherine Betts is a multiracial "Hapa" from California, Kansas and Hawaii, and enjoys thinking about the ways being brought up in all three states has added to her intersectional identity. (Country music and sashimi? How does that work?) She graduated with a BA in Sociology from UCLA in 1999 and has since worked in violence prevention and education in Hawaii. She enjoys self-deprecating humor and lives for the day where there is no violence against any human or living thing.

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