The Turing Test for Transracialism

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

And as Chat GPT-4 and Claude 3.7 pass the the Turing Test, it occurred to me that we should develop a Turing Test for trans racials. You may recall trans racials are analogous to trans gender folks. A trans racial is assigned race at birth. Their racial identity differs from that typically associated with the race they were assigned at birth. Trans racialism lacks a universally accepted umbrella definition, among researchers. The opposite of trans racial is cis racial which identifies those for whom their racial identity matches their assigned race. I have no idea of the number of trans racial people in the world but, as a preliminary benchmark, up to 24% of individuals assigned the race of black American at birth believe Blackness is of no value or little value to one’s sense of self. Those who bear the consciousness of trans racialism swim within that 24% cohort.

Those who were assigned any race (white or brown or yellow or red) at birth can be trans racial. I suspect, for example, that a larger percentage of white Americans assigned race at birth self-identify in a color indifferent way as they live their daily lives. This is why sometimes, and for some white Americans, conversations about race and Blackness lack depth. In high school, our Advanced English teacher asked everyone to imagine they were of a different race and report on their self-anthropology. I could easily complete the assignment. It intrigued me that the most prejudiced and bigoted guy in class came up short, was stunted, and did not know where to start perceiving the world as a black individual. This same individual introduced the foreign concept of antisemitism to our school.

What might be the Turing Test for a trans racial? I am just a guy with a laptop and an idea. Let me set forth that caveat at the outside. I don’t have a PhD in Black Studies or Ethnic Studies, although ironically those disciplines would render me closed-minded to the development of pure self-identity. I know a tenured professor in a School of Teacher Education, a cis racial, whose life work is the development of a healthy ethnic identity: while focusing on the creation of pedagogies that support the healthy ethnic identity development of youth of color and immigrant youth. A healthy and introspective trans racial would be a lost soul in this gentleman’s class. Cis racialism is the expectation, the dogma.

I believe there are five criteria involved in passing the Turing Test for trans racialism.

First, does one sound of an identifiable race assigned at birth or does one sound raceless? If a listener attempts to identify the race of a person on the other side of a phone call or a partition and the listener gets it wrong more times than not, the trans racial has passed the Turing Test.

Second, does the person appear ambiguous on the street such that a passerby is unable to identify the self-identity of the person more times than not? I know people like this in my life. I am thinking of someone I met at a dinner who I assumed was Latina. She checked all the boxes. I was dead wrong. She self-identified as a black American. Her father is white and her mother is black. I know someone else whom I met at a lunch. Same thing. I assumed one race and the person identified as another race. My favorite recent example would be a woman I saw on the street, a random person whom I could not label and place in a racial box to save my soul. The Girl from Ipanema And then there was the woman passing me by by the San Diego harbor. There was nothing that said race, until I read her shirt. I Love Me Some Him

Third, does a review of the books being read by the person indicate race or not? Books are a lens into the soul. One chooses to consume and digest certain ideas in one’s life. A book is a major investment of labor and love and commitment, particularly as one grows older. I am reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham. None of these books suggest any particular race. Now, if I were reading The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon or The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas….

Fourth, does one take orders from racial commissars (or sometimes Kommissar) or does one self-reflect and introspect? Cis racials tend to be racial sheep in my experience.

Finally, does one engage the larger world? A tendency to identity with the abundance of the world suggests a trans racial identity. Does one embrace ancestors of different races with curiosity or does one shut down mentally as one can only have ancestors that match one’s race assigned at birth?

Conclusion: A Turing Test can be developed for assessing and perceiving trans racials society. If we are willing to manipulate the words we use every day to accommodate less than 1% of the world’s population self-identified as trans gender, perhaps it is time to encourage more trans racials to come out of the closet as well:

Coming out is the process of sharing one's identity with others, and can include sharing new pronouns and a new name. Individuals who have come out are known as out. The experience of coming out can change depending on whether the transgender individual is perceived as the gender with which they identify, which is known as passing. In certain environments, some passing transgender individuals can choose to be stealth, which means to deliberately avoid coming out, often to avoid transphobia; these individuals are often out in other environments. The decision for transgender people to come out to current or potential romantic or sexual partners can be especially difficult.

In places like San Diego, Los Angeles, and Hawaii, the old rules for cis racials are collapsing. The energy of trans has a natural home in racial self-identity. Let’s straddle those racial lines together. The Case for a Trans Racial Consciousness And the Winner Is… A Life-Day A Critique of the One-Drop Rule A Review of Migrations (Conclusion)

Oh, before I forget…a musical gift for my cis racial family and friends in life…