On Demand
Mixed Up
Thursday, August 21, 2008
We're heading for a mixed-race future and Carmen Van Kerckhove, Co-Founder of New Demographic and founder and publisher of Racialicious.com, and Jen Chau, Founder and Executive Director of Swirl, explain the implications and how Barack Obama's candidacy has changed the discussion about mixed-race identity.
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Racialicious rocks!
What mixed-race discussion? Where was I when this discussion was taking place? It's always been "the first black nominee" not "the first mixed-race nominee". Obama has been considered not black enough or not white enough.
I'm proud of my multi-ethnic background (West Indian-German-Scottish) but I've almost given up trying to get people to realize that calling me just black asks me to forget one half of my rich family history. I'd love the discussion to include an actual mixing of races.
The MSM calls Obama black or African American.
But he's 1/2 white.
Obama and his handlers have been doing a great job of milking his "blackness" - when expedient....
Mixed race is good. Let's see it sooner!
Sorry Omar, but it's more complicated. I'm sure that Obama himself made the personal (before the political) calculation that he was better off observing the one drop rule in order to find himself in the American mainland when he finally landed from Hawaii.
Race race race race
Meanwhile, I hope they don't sleep on the point (recently made in a fine column by Sam Roberts in the Times) that roughly half of so-called Hispanics count themselves as 'white' in the census. Therefore, the actual 'white' percentage in 2042 will only be a few points less than today....about 70-72%
Tragic Mulatto...great band name.
I am puerto rican and hatian..(spanish, creole, black, white)
My question to the guests is, Isn't the term race antiquated? Doesn't it have a connotation of eugenics?
I use the word multi-cultural..
Since there are more women in the world as well, does this mean that WHITE MALES, who have always been pegged as the bad guy majority, will now be the MINORITY?
What happens to affirmative action?
All the labels, even mixed race or bi-racial, should stop and we can just be people.
I'm mixed race, Italian, Mexican-Indian, German, 'Black' and quite a bit of other things. My birth certificate identifies my mother as 'white' and father as 'negro' but despite my curly hair most people assume I'm 'white' because of my light skin and CT accent.
I suppose at the end of the day I 'pass white' which in this bigoted, racist society has worked well for me socioeconomically, but I've always thought of myself as just an American.
It would be nice if the media would stop at the very least stop referring to Obama as 'African-American' and acknowledge that he's mixed race and at best get over the color of his skin and judge him by his words and even better, his actions.
- "race" as used in the US is a cultural/ethnic term, not a biological one
- therefore "mixed race" is really "mixed ethnicity"
- American culture is the result of heavily mixed influences
- All Americans are "mixed race"
Agree Seth
Nothing new here! I'm filled with despair, one step forward, two steps back.
These discussions start from the false premise of genetically determined "racial" characteristics.
We insist that a child of two different race parents must necessarily have different behaviorial characteristics. Completely ignoring culture and nurture.
In America, because we have the racial system still in place, Appearance (phenotype) trumps all. It's the racial system folks and false notions of eugenics. Imagine a dark skinned black raised in North Dakota by a white family. Such a person has no claim to "bi-raciallity" under our system.
Nothing new here!
Growing up in NYC in the 70's in public school, there was not a lot of racial harmony between blacks and whites. Now, as a caucasian man with a bi-racial child going into kindergarden, I found myself initially concerned with the low percentage of white kids at the local public school. Then I realized that A) I still have racial issues to deal with for myself and B) even those irrational fears don't apply to my child because he will be identifying with and identified as more than one race and C) his best friends are black, latino and indian- the racial experience is just not going to be the same for these guys as it was for Generation X.
Antonio (#10): I thought I was the only one who believed the word "race" was the wrong term to use, even though I use it for the sake of easier communication. I tend to use "ethnicity" - everyone has an ethnicity. Thanks for the validation that, again, I'm not alone!
I am so tired of people calling "Hispanic" or "Latino" a race. It's an ethnicity. My maternal ancestors in Colombia were European and Native American. My other half is Anglo-American. I am in my 30's. When I was growing up I was always considered white. But nowadays almost every "form" says "Non-White Hispanic" or "Hispanic Not White" - it's infuriating!
I recently applied to be a substitute teacher in NYC and "the form" did not offer the "Other" option. I had to choose one. Are you white or are you brown? I chose brown. I thought maybe I'd have a better chance of being hired. But what's next? My children will be 1/4 "Hispanic". Are they not allowed to mark "white" either? What's going on here? I see it as marginalizing, insensitive and ignorant. I think it's time we start acknowledging all of our sides.
we need to teach people that we're all mixed race, and eventually retire the idea of race entirely. a few minutes back, brian said - go back far enough and we're all mixed race. summed it all up. from New Scientist yesterday
----
...James Watson and Craig Venter were vying for the title of world's most candid scientist. Now their genomes are doing battle, and the loser seems to be the biological concept of race.
A new comparison of the scientists' publicly available genome sequences indicates that, although Watson and Venter are both white men, they will react to some drugs quite differently.
Watson's genome hosts a mutation in a drug-metabolising gene rarely found in Caucasians. "It shows that James Watson has some Korean blood in him, or some Asian blood anyway," says Howard McLeod, a pharmacologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. "He wouldn't get good pain relief from codeine."
The irony, Lou is that while, in fact all PEOPLE are of one mixed race--human--that has not been the practice, belief or basis of our society.
We recognize all Americans of purely (as far as we know) European descent as one mixed race--white. But we do not recognize people with any visible mixture of African decent--even a small fraction--as being of the same 'mixed race'.
Interestingly, because Hispanics, with a much deeper tradition of recognising--actually venerating--their European roots, feel much freer to identify as white, we are expanding that 'white' mixed race....to the chagrin or confusion of a great many people.
My family immigrated on both sides pre-rev war. People ask me all the time what my nationality is. I always answer that I am an American. No one ever accepts this as an answer and sometimes they argue with me.
I also describe people without reference to skin color. It never fails to elicit a question like, "Do you mean the black guy?"
We are obviously nowhere near a post-racial society. We all need to make a personal effort to bring us there, assuming that is what we are really trying to achieve.
hi sinthia, i've started saying 'the guy with light brown skin' or 'the guy with pale skin' or the guy with dark brown skin' deliberately ignoring race. it gets a very funny reaction, but it gives the description people want, like 'the guy with red hair', or 'the really tall dude'. give it a try!
until the color of a man's skin
is of no more significance
than the color of his eyes
- bob marley
sorry:
- bob marley, quoting haile selassie
I love what David Denby said in The New Yorker a few months ago about Harold & Kumar:
>>The H.&K. movies, in their slovenly and profane style, are about the transition to a post-racial society in which, as the Salon film critic Stephanie Zacharek put it, “no one in real life can say definitively what an American looks like.”<<
He still says it's a "transition." I just hope we can avoid the rampant stereotyping that continues today.
randy, at 11:05
thanks for posting that
as a person of "mixed race" I can only say, "hello to the new kids!" David Denby is really right, the "face" of America is changing, and I believe we can move beyond the weird terminology. Bi-racial is the stupidest, most weird-sounding word in the book.
Having said that, I mildly regret that no one ever did a portrait of "black" Sally Hemings or her kids while she was alive. From all accounts, we've been robbed of the legacy of a great American beauty... and in the process, a more nuanced understanding not just of "race" but of the twists and turns in our founding fathers. Er, our founding baby-daddies. The fact that old Tom Jeff took such liberties says more about our hypocritical view of race than anything else.
We've removed a few comments that were not on topic. Please keep in mind WNYC's comment posting guidelines, and keep the conversation civil.
Brian get the Michelle Obama quote right and it changes the message.
What she said was " for the first time in my life I am VERY proud to be an American" which is NOT the same thing.
So long as the media is sloppy about such things then the Republican message will be re-inforced. I expected better of you and WNYC.
New Demographic and Racialicious.com are ready to defend Barack Obama against those who question his "blackness" but they will NOT defend Anatole Broyard from those blacks and liberals who claim that he was not "pure" enough to be "white" and was merely a "light-skinned black" - an odious and insulting oxymoron. Only "Interracial Voice" and "The Multiracial Activist" recognize that "race" is a continuum and mixed-race whites are white as well - whether their partial non-European ancestry is American Indian, Asian, or the notorious sub-Saharan African.
"Mixed race" is too simple. We Americans see race merely in terms of black or white (and maybe Asian or Hispanic). Obama is not "half-black," but rather half Kenyan. His father was a Luo tribesman. McCain's effort to link Obama to American 1960s African-American radicalism is predicated on the simplistic concepts of race that prevail in U.S. culture.
Obama's experience as the son of an immigrant from Africa was very different than that of someone whose heritage was slavery and who'd been raised in, e.g., Chicago's southside. In fact, to me, Obama's confidence and achievements are proof in point that the failure of American blacks to succeed in the same numbers as whites is due due to racism. Obama grew up in a non-toxic environment uncontaminated by racism. He is a case in point that African-Americans are crippled by our over-simplication of and prejudices regarding race.
I'm part Ecuadorian, part German, part Swedish, and part Jewish. I grew up not identifying with any particular part of the family, and felt simply like "me." Not like "spanish me," or "White me."
Oddly, when I applied for a social security card and didn't know what to choose in terms of race, I went home and asked my mother, and she said, "Choose white, it's better."
I chose "other" because I didn't see what her point was, and "better" didn't seem like the truth. In any case, I have always been grateful not to have the ball and chain of a particular heritage to have to identify with as my parents did.
And hey, RCT from Chappaqua:
NOBODY grows up in a "non-toxic environment uncontaminated by racism."
It's sociologically impossible not to experience racism. You don't always know it, but you eventually figure it out.
American is too huge to identify with in its entirety. Rather, Americans tend to identify by race, ethnicity, region,politics, ideology, by generation, occupation... To be a "hyphenated American" is to be AMerican. "Social Identity" theory maintains that people have multiple identities which experience variously in various situation. The best reading on social identification that I have come across is a book written by Michael Hogs, entitled "Social Identification..."?, which provides a an alternate perception upon this topic. - Irish Jew from LI/NYC
The color of someone's skin will always and forever be an issue to those who hate - a sad commentary on the human race - but are we not all human first and foremost?
The hope of a future where judging a person by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin I fear will never be realized by some. Those paraphrased words by Martin Luther King, Jr. have and will always be at the core of my being a human being.
"The government is the mirror of the people", so said Maharishi Mahesh Yogi so many decades ago. Last night we saw how low we've sunk as a people when someone who can read a teleprompter well with a speech she didn't write can sweep away a convention hall as well as all the pundits. The Republicans will keep her under wraps so that she doesn't have to respond to any substantive questions and for the debate she will be drilled in how to take any question and wave the flag. And the American people will buy it. How depressing.
Your guest is such a stickler for precision of language. How about "Why should council members be thrown out of office when people want them to have another term"?
Under current rules there are term limits. Government service is a privilege as well as an obligation. It's not a divine right of kings -- no crowns or ermine.
First: Barack Obama is NOT half “African-American”. He is half African. Nevertheless, Barack Obama is African American.
Second: If Obama isn’t black then neither are his children. To go by percentages, for the sake of argument, Obama’s children are “25% white”. How come then people don’t argue that his children “aren’t black”. From eyeballing the local African American population, I would say a plurality look like Obama’s children, yet I can say with almost absolute certainty that the people living here view them as black. In accordance with the argument that Obama isn’t black because he is “50 percent white” wouldn’t the same argument hold for a sizable number of African Americans who have white ancestry whether the white ancestry is 50% or 10%? In other words, why is someone 50% white and 50% black argued to be “not black”, yet someone 75% black and 25% white is seen “as black”? And who is to enforce these blood quantums? I personally don’t think African Americans go around on witch hunts to figure out who is “100% black” and who is not. I have personally never met a black person who thinks in strict percentages. If anything, I’ve met black people who think in terms of nationality: “I am 100% Jamaican; I am 100% Somali, etc”. NEVER have I met a black person say: “You are only 98% black? Then I don’t accept you because I only accept 100% blacks”. The phrase “100% black” is ludicrous. Blood quantums are ludicrous. President Barack Obama is black.
.
It is often a surprise for people to learn that, in reality, there
is actually No Such Thing As a "Light Skinned Black" person.
The term "Light Skinned Black" is really nothing more than a
racist oxymoron that was created by White Supremacists in an
effort to forcibly deny those Mixed-Race individuals, who are
of a Multi-Generational Multiracially-Mixed (MGM-Mixed)
Lineage, the right to fully embrace and to also received
public support in choosing to acknowledge the
truth regarding their full ancestral heritage.
The people who have been slapped with the false label and
oxymoronic misnomer of "Light Skinned Black" person are
simply Mixed-Race individuals -- whose family have been
continually Mixed-Race throughout their multiple generations.
For more information on MGM-Mixed lineage, feel free to
view the information at the found at the links listed below:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/3331
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1399
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1747
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1570
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1573
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1402
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1400
Source(s):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MGM-Mixed
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FGM-Mixed
-- AP (soaptalk@hotmail.com)
.
.
It is often a surprise for people
to learn that, in reality, there
is actually No Such Thing As a
“Light Skinned Black” person.
The term “Light Skinned Black” is
really nothing more than a racist
oxymoron that was created by racial
Supremacists in an effort to forcibly
deny most of the Mixed-Race people,
who are of a Multi-Generational
Multiracially-Mixed (MGM-Mixed)
Lineage, the right to fully embrace
and receive public support in
implementing their rightful choice
to acknowledge the truth regarding
their full ancestral heritage.
The people who have been slapped
with the racist false-label and
oxymoronic misnomer of “Light
Skinned Black” person are simply
Mixed-Race individuals — whose
family have been continually
Mixed-Race throughout the multiple
generations of their existence.
For more information on MGM-Mixed
lineage, feel free to view the
information at the sites found
at the links listed below:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/3331
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1399
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1747
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1570
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1573
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1402
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed/message/1400
Source(s):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Generation-Mixed
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MGM-Mixed
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FGM-Mixed
.
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