their lives as slaves whereas JeffersonÆs children by Martha Wayles were privileged members of mainstream white society. Instrumentally, the fact that HemingsÆ children were ôownedö by their father-master affirmed their inferior status and was very much an artifact of their race.
As Omi and Winant (1994) noted, interpreting the meaning of race necessitates framing it in terms of social structure. The case of Jefferson and Hemings demonstrates that at one point in time, instrumental articulations of what it meant to be black fully determined oneÆs status in American society. It is impossible in many ways to separate essentialist and instrumentalist articulations of race. As Omi and Winant (1994) indicate, it is the essentialist articulation of race that makes possible the instrumentalist articulation of race.
Daniel A. Nakashima (2001) suggests that what one calls oneself, personally as well as ethnically, is a site of political struggle where conventional racial classifications can be transgressed, accepted, or ignored. Something as simple as acquiring a new racial identifier is an attempt to somehow transcend or change how oneÆs race is understood. Tiger Woods, for example, has consistently resisted being characterized as an African-American golfer. Woods refers to himself as mostly ôOrientalö and claims connections to Caucasians, Blacks, Thais, and Native Americans. What this means is that Woods is rejecting both the instrumentalist and essentialist construction of race.
Cathy Tashiro (2001) has stated that the categories for identifying race that are found in U.S. Census reports represent an attempt to institutionalize race. These categories try to neatly pigeonhole and identify individuals using a racial classification scheme that Tashiro (2001) sees as ambiguous and inconsistent. No single racial classification system has been used for more than two censuses since 1980. These categories represent a...