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July 2005

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REAL ID: Perpetuating the Myth of Authenticity

By Laura Newland
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A fter college, I moved to Cleveland, Ohio and in the fall of 2003 was asked to get an Ohio driver’s license for insurance purposes at my work.  I called the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and asked what documents I needed to receive an Ohio driver’s license. 

Growing up east Asian in the rural midwest taught me never to take my “American-ness” for granted.  Armed with the required social security card and an unexpired Michigan driver’s license, I reached the front of the line at the DMV. The woman behind the counter glanced at me and abruptly asked for my citizenship papers. 

We went back and forth—me, dumbfounded, mumbling, and stuttering about how I had called and I brought what I was told was necessary, attempting to keep my voice from shaking, attempting to assert that citizenship is not a requirement for a driver’s license. She responded by asking me if I had my passport. I replied in the negative, still mumbling, stuttering, voice unsteady, and asserted my citizenship status. She replied, even more forcefully, well, were you born here? At that point, I half-heartedly replied no, and tried one last time, hey, aren’t you even going to look at what I have?  She glanced at my social security card and said, yeah, you need to have further documentation. For me, visceral anger is almost always accompanied by tears and I could feel the moisture collecting, just waiting to betray me even further.  So I left. 

When I share this experience, it is not uncommon for the person to respond, well, what did you do?  To which I respond,  I did nothing.  I went to another DMV to get my driver’s license. 

What is still so startling about bigotry to me is how powerful and debilitating those experiences can be, even if it is something with which I am all too familiar. As an educated, politicized person of color, I expect more of myself. 

I come back to this moment often to analyze my reactions and I realize that when I was backed into a corner, when my ever precarious grasp on my identity was threatened, I displayed my own self-hatred, my desire to differentiate myself from the connotations my appearance holds for others. In essence, I was trying to assert my whiteness and, therefore, my normalcy. But I couldn’t, because I am not white. 

When something like the REAL ID Act is passed and signed into law with very little debate, it gives me pause.  I wonder what “authen- ticating identity” really means.

For those who don’t know about it, the Real ID Act (HR418) was attached to the $82 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill (HR1268) for military expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan and signed by President Bush on May 11, 2005. Under this legislation, the minimum standards for issuing a driver’s license are: a photo ID, documentation of date of birth, proof of social security number, and documentation of principal residence. 

Before issuing drivers’ licenses, states are also now required to verify legal residency within the United States. All required documents must be issued by the United States with the exception of official passports. States are required to fulfill the obligations of the Real ID Act within three years and must have the information available to all other states. 

As I read news articles and commentary about the REAL ID Act, I am most troubled by the refusal of commentators to explicitly confront what this Act codified. There is talk about identity theft, the bureaucratic complications of coordination, of training employees and relying on them to authenticate documents, costs, the implications of a national ID, etc., and all of these issues should be talked about.  But this is yet another example that what is politically expedient to discuss is not always what is ethically necessary to discuss. 

To be fair, advocacy groups have raised the Act’s implications for immigrants and there are many.  Unfortunately, most commentaries on immigration fail to place the effect of the REAL ID Act within the larger context of U.S. racial policies. It is important to stress how our use of language defines the terms of the debate, so when we say that someone is “illegal” or an “alien,” we are talking about much more than residency status. To speak of citizenship is to refer to privilege and power, no matter how obliquely. Citizenship is the affirmation of one’s human-ness, that there are certain rights accorded to individuals, that there is a right to exist within a certain space. As well, citizenship is a reminder that rights are given to some and not others. What is clear is that only certain immigrants have to explain their presence here. The REAL ID Act is the state sanctioning of bigotry. The Minutemen vigilantes spread out on the Mexi- can/American border to pre- vent Mexican immigrants into the U.S. is just another manifestation of this. 

The REAL ID Act is about much more than identity theft.  It is about the notion that identity is something that can be authenticated in the first place.  Indeed, if I knew of certain documents that did justice to my whole identity, that validated the authenticity of my experiences as an American, as an Asian, as an Asian American, and my ability to make choices about my life as a woman of color living in the U.S., I might be convinced to get them, if only to stop hearing the same stale commentary about how interesting my childhood must have been, about how interesting I look. 

 But even with my U.S. passport in hand, I still get asked the question of where I am from, where I was born, where my family is from, and people who ask me those questions are never satisfied with answers that reflect the fact that I grew up in the rural Midwest. Documents cannot authenticate my identity to the satisfaction of many of these questioners because to them my very presence in this country will never be authentic. 

Many supporters of the REAL ID Act have responded to criticisms with the assertion that the intent of REAL ID is neither to create a national ID, nor to discriminate against a certain group of people. While this sounds comforting, we all know that, regardless of intent, the result of REAL ID will be a further polarization of races in the U.S., which will benefit some and damage others. 

The REAL ID Act has passed, so let’s take its implications seriously because it is rooted in fear, the result of which is the codification of racial profiling that is shameful. Where is our response to this white vigilance against nonwhites? Where is our outrage?  Why is it so easy to place our outrage in abstract legal conceptualizations of rights, such as privacy, but so difficult to place our outrage in our own experiences?  Why do we continue denying the experiences of others? Where is our ethical vigilance against bigotry? 

My fear at the DMV in Cleveland was based in the idea that I didn’t have the right papers to prove I am who I say I am. The reality is, I may be a “naturalized alien,” but most people see nothing natural about my presence and no piece of ID is going to change that, “real” or not. If we really care about security and safety, then these are the things we should be talking about, rather than honing our fears into tools for erecting even more divisions, leading to even more ignorance.  

Laura Newland was co-coordinator of Ohio Free the Vote, a jail-based voter education and registration program. 
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