Construction of a Post-Racial Identity
7
labels because they diminish what multiculturalism is and the courage of those
parents who created all of us ‘harmony babies’ . . . I had to deal with a
lot. . . because I’m multicultural, and there were no multicultural icons or role
models. It was a struggle to define myself as a person up against other people’s
expectations” (58).
In appearances on mainstream talk shows, David Letterman and Conan
O'Brien among them, Diesel engages in redirection of the expected
conversation. No doubt secure in the fact that no polite, sane person would
actually challenge one’s ethnicity on national television, he cites the facts that he
grew up, yes, multicultural, in an artist’s colony in New York’s Greenwich
Village, and started acting at the age of seven, when he and some friends broke
into a theatre and the canny owner told them to come back the next day for an
acting workshop instead of turning them in to authorities. If asked, he speaks
briefly about making his first film, Multi-facial, in which he plays a racially
ambiguous actor, yet fails to mention the autobiographical nature of the movie.
He mentions going out to Los Angeles and expecting to get work “as a New
York actor” and returning home “with his tail between his legs” before being
cast by Steven Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan. If there’s an identity Diesel
throws out for large scale consumption, it’s that of a New Yorker—an idealized
multiracial, multicultural, creative American icon.
As Diesel presents his own history in mainstream (non-minorityowned) print media, multiculturalism was simply a fact of his existence. His
references to kids and to role models and icons suggest that he sees himself as
an icon of the new millennium. He seems to have a healthy skepticism about
labels and about stereotyping in general. Most of all, he invites empathy, both in
the memory of that kid who never saw someone like himself on the big screen
and as a man who by necessity had to define himself in a psychological place
where there were no “official,” racially determined or sanctioned rules or
boundaries. What clearly comes across is that Diesel has created the first truly
multiracial persona in American film.
Rob Cohen, Diesel’s director in The Fast and the Furious, says this
about his racial ambiguity: “It’s been a long time for America and Hollywood to
get to a point where your racial identity is not your calling card. When they see
Vin onscreen, Hispanics can see themselves, African-Americans see themselves.
If you’re a Sephardic Jew, you could see yourself in Vin. He is in many ways a
Rorschach test on race. A lot of races look at Vin and say ‘there’s a part of him
in me, and part of me