‘ THAT’S WHO I AM’

New RI law allows corrections of race on birth certificates

Antonia Noori Farzan

Providence Journal | USA TODAY NETWORK

Lucy Rose was born to a proudly Cape Verdean family in Providence in the 1950s.

Decades later, she requested her long-form birth certificate and was shocked to discover that it listed her race as “Negro.”

It wasn’t just the outdated term and its negative associations that bothered her. It was the way her family’s culture and identity had been erased by an unknown nurse or hospital administrator.

“To this day, I wonder how I was identified as a Negro,” she later wrote in a personal essay. “Was it my mom’s lips or curly hair, or was I a shade of brown that automatically characterized me as a Negro?”

Like most Cape Verdeans, Rose has both African and Portuguese ancestry. Throughout her life, she struggled to fit into America’s racial binary: She knew she wasn’t White, but checking the box for African American triggered a sense of “imposter syndrome,” she said.

If her parents were given the choice, she believes, they would simply have said that she was Cape Verdean.

Today, the Rhode Island Department of Health recognizes Cape Verdean as a valid racial identity. Rose successfully petitioned to update her birth certificate – and this year convinced the General Assembly to pass a law that will make it easier for

“I’m so proud that I was able to reclaim my heritage.”

Lucy Rose

others to do the same.

“It’s not rewriting history,” she said. “It’s correcting it.”

How were immigrants identified? Mostly based on skin color.

Cape Verdeans made their way to Southeastern New England in large numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an era of racist paranoia in which anyone with African ancestry was considered Black.

Fearing stigma, Cape Verdeans deliberately “chose not to identify with American blacks,” historian Marilyn Halter writes in “Between Race and Ethnicity: Cape Verdean American Immigrants, 1860-1965.” But more stereotypically European- looking immigrants from the Azores, Madeira and mainland Portugal excluded them from their neighborhoods, churches, and social clubs and shut them out of desirable jobs. Cape Verdeans typically considered themselves Portuguese, since the island archipelago was a colony of Portugal. But the wider world didn’t see them that way. While some Cape Verdeans passed as White, immigrants with darker skin encountered segregation in movie theaters, barbershops and on the bus.

Rose’s family history reveals how subjective socially constructed notions of race could be. All four of her grandparents were Cape Verdean. But her lighter-skinned paternal grandparents were labeled White on official documents, while her maternal grandparents were labeled Black or “Negro” – presumably because they had darker skin. Rose’s father was born in East Providence in 1920. His birth certificate and his draft card said that he was White. But Rose’s original birth certificate states, “Father’s race: Negro.”

In the 1950s, that label was especially fraught. But what bothers Rose most is that an institution imposed an identity on her family, lumping them into a category instead of recognizing their mixedrace heritage.

“It just didn’t align with who I was at my core,” she said.

The push for a new law in Rhode Island

In 2012, Rose visited Cape Verde for the first time. After she returned, she successfully petitioned for dual citizenship, a process that involved tracking down her grandfather’s baptismal records and having her parents’ birth certificates translated and notarized.

“Look at this,” she told a reporter, pulling out her blue and gold Cape Verdean passport. “This is unbelievable.”

Rose’s passport doesn’t label her as Black or White. Instead, it says, “Cabo Verdiana.”

“That’s who I am,” she said, tearing up. “That’s how they see me.”

Rose wanted her birth certificate to reflect her Cape Verdean identity, too. But while Rhode Island allows people to amend the names or gender markers on their birth certificates, she couldn’t find any information about how to update her race.

She eventually convinced the Office of Vital Records to make the change, providing her Cape Verdean passport as documentation. That was a “slam dunk,” she said, but many Cape Verdeans in the United States don’t have that option because they lack dual citizenship.

New law will create process for amending race on birth certificates

This year, Rose lobbied the General Assembly to pass legislation that allows people to request that their race “be modified or amended on their birth certificate in a manner that utilizes culturally sensitive language and terminology.”

The bills, introduced by Sen. Robert Britto and Rep. Katherine Kazarian, both East Providence Democrats, were signed into law by Gov. Dan McKee on June 30 and direct the Department of Health to come up with a process to “accommodate all reasonable requests.”

While the legislation doesn’t just apply to Cape Verdeans, Rose said that her story is a common one, and that many Cape Verdeans have been boxed into arbitrary racial categories.

She emphasized that she doesn’t speak for the entire community. Some Cape Verdeans are content to identify as White or Black, while others, like Rose, feel strongly about being identified as Cape Verdean.

“I’m so proud that I was able to reclaim my heritage, and hopefully inspire others so that they can find a way to reclaim theirs,” Rose said. “I really want to be who I am. And I want that to be reflected in my lifetime and beyond, because birth certificates last forever.”