Category Archives: biracial

the house at the end of the road

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Although I am reading two books similar to this right now, I am so eager to jump into this one.  My “mulatto” google alert alerted me to this review.  I found myself fascinated by the first two paragraphs…

The Family That Rejected Jim Crow

By Martha A. Sandweiss

The Story of Three Generations of An Interracial Family in the American South

By W. Ralph Eubanks

Smithsonian. 206 pp. $26.99

W. Ralph Eubanks’s family memoir tells a double story, one about the past and the other about the author’s efforts to uncover it. This has become a familiar kind of literature, the search for family roots that becomes a search for one’s own identity. But Eubanks has an unusual story to tell. His maternal grandparents, Jim and Edna Richardson, lived on a remote rural road in a black community in the now deserted town of Prestwick, Ala. According to family stories, they married in 1914 and by 1929 had seven children. Jim was a white man, a “boisterous adventurer” and bootlegger who ran a logging business. Edna’s racial heritage was mixed, but she thought of herself as black. In Jim Crow Alabama, where the courts had repeatedly upheld the state constitution’s ban on interracial marriages, the Richardsons constituted an unusual sort of family, and they defied the social rules that governed the segregated South. After Edna died in 1937, Jim remained in Prestwick with his light-skinned children. They could have moved away to start life anew as a “white” family. After all, Eubanks says, the children were so fair that a federal census agent once categorized them as “white.” But the family “made a conscious choice to identify as black people, in spite of skin color and features that would have allowed them to move seamlessly into the white world.”

Eubanks sees this act as both radical and heroic. As a black man married to a white woman, he finds in his grandparents’ lives valuable lessons for his own. “Sometimes it even felt as if they had forged a path for the life my wife and I shared, occasionally guiding us on our way.” He thus crafts a progressive tale of social improvement, with his grandparents’ and parents’ lives in the Jim Crow South paving the way for his own youth during the civil rights era and eventually leading to his 11-year-old daughter’s vision of a world “where race matters less and justice and our common humanity matter more.”

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more children’s books with biracial characters

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I came across reviews of two books for kids ages 8-12 with biracial main characters at TheHappyNappyBookseller.com. Thanks so much Happy Nappy Bookseller!  I wish I’d had these books when I was a kid.

Prince of Fenway Park

Oscar’s parents adopted him when he was a baby and he worries they divorced after realizing he was half black. Being biracial Oscar has a hard time fitting in at school.

“What didn’t help was that just this year it seemed as if the white kids he’d been friends with in elementary school didn’t have much to say to him anymore, and there weren’t many black kids in Hingham Middle. Occasionally a Hispanic kid would ask him something in Spanish assuming he spoke it. He’d just shrug.” (from ARC)

I don’t run across too many biracial characters in middle grade fiction, so I was very happy to discover this about Oscar. While reading I couldn’t help thinking about all the biracial children who may discover this story and be able to relate to Oscar’s feelings.

“There was a code for race, and the tidy letters were all lined up: Black. He’d never seen it written before. There was a spot for it on the MCAS- standardized tests- and Oscar usually left it blank. The previous year he’d lightly marked both white and black and then smudged them on purpose, which seemed the most honest answer he could give.”

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“Her parents were her parents, and she almost never thought about being adopted-except that sometimes, she did.  And they didn’t talk much about the fact that she was biracial and her parents- weren’t.  Her mother had blond hair, even.  Well, greyish blond, but still blond.  It totally didn’t matter, and it was mostly just funny, like when her father got all into celebrating Kwanzaa and everything, and she had to make him promise never to wear kente cloth in front of her friends again.”

obama in moscow

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For Russian Blacks, Obama Visit Stirs Special Interest

By Kevin O’Flynn

MOSCOW — The visit to Russia by Barack Obama, the first black man to be elected president of the United States, is significantfor many Russians.


But for Russians of African descent, in particular, the new U.S. leader is a potent symbol of triumph over the same challenges they themselves face in a country where dark-skinned people remain rare and often unwelcome.


Yelena Khanga is one of Russia’s best-known black citizens. The popular host of a top-rated 1990s chat show about sex — “ProEto,” (About That) — she became one of the few black faces regularly seen on Russian television.


Khanga’s grandparents came to the Soviet Union in the 1920s to escape the racism they had endured in the United States as a mixed-race couple.


Today, Khanga says Obama’s election to the American presidency, and his current visit to Moscow, have special meaning for her.


“He did what my grandmother and grandfather dreamed about in their day,” Khanga says. “They couldn’t even have dreamed that, one day, America would have a black president. The only dreams that they had — my grandmother was white, and my grandfather was black — was that Americans would someday allow mixed couples to live in peace, have children, and let the children have decent lives. That is what they dreamed about.”


…Still, Khanga — whose great-grandfather was a slave in Mississippi — says she believes the scourge of racism was far worse in the United States, where there were 4 million African slaves by the time slavery was abolished in 1865 and where it took another century before school segregation and other forms of racial discrimination were formally outlawed.

Khanga notes that there was a very small percentage of mixed-race and black people in the Soviet Union.“I was part of the first generation — now, of course, there are a lot more,” Khanga says. “But…we did not have the history of racism as they did in America. Not everything was easy, and I can be the first to tell you what kinds of problems we had. But, of course, you can’t compare them to the kinds of things that happened in America.”

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I really enjoyed this article.  You can find the whole thing here where it’s much easier to read.

rainbow children

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British family have rainbow children

A mixed race couple have nicknamed their kids the Rainbow Children after a genetic quirk left them with a remarkable spectrum of skin colours

via Published: 6:48PM BST 06 Jul 2009

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White mum Carla Nurse, 27, and her black husband Cornel, 31, were not surprised when their first child Jermaine was born with a mixed race complexion.

But they were amazed when daughter Tanisha arrived with an Afro-Caribbean appearance -and their second son Jayden was born with white skin and blonde hair.

“Where I live it is a predominantly white town and I admit it looks pretty strange when I walk around with my brood of rainbow children,” said Mrs Nurse.

“I am at a complete loss to explain why they are all different colours – I can only think that it is some type of freaky genetic thing.

“After Jayden was born and he looked Aryan my friends nicknamed us the United Nations.”

Mrs Nurse , a part-time model from Lowestoft, Suffolk, said her only concern is that many people assume the children have different fathers.

She said: “I remember giving birth to each one of them at the hospital and all the doctors were looking at me thinking I had all these children to different men.

“When people think I’ve cheated it makes me so angry. “I would never stray from Cornel and never have – I’m totally devoted to him and always will be.”

Mr Nurse ,whose Afro-Caribbean father came from Barbados and white mother came from London, grew up in the Suffolk village of Halesworth just 30 miles away.

Their eldest son Jermaine, now six, has brown eyes with golden brown skin while daughter Tanisha, four, takes after her father with Afro-Caribbean skin, dark eyes and tight black curls.

Youngest son Jayden, now two, has white skin, blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

All three siblings have their mother’s nose and big eyes while Tanisha has full lips similar to Mr Nurse.

Mr Nurse said: “They are definitely all mine and the whole thing is just a freak of nature. Tanisha was dark from the start but as the boys got older one has gone darker and one has got whiter.

abilene

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I came across this article on the birthplace of Dwight Eisenhower, Abilene, KS.  This isn’t much of a news story, but it’s proof that we existed and were acknowledged once.  The Hispanic=White is interesting to me too.

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via The Abilene Reflector-Chronicle

Dave Bergmeier
Editor and Publisher
Tuesday, Jun 30, 2009

Cindy Harris, who has done extensive research on 19th and early 20th century Abilene gave an overview of civic, business, social and cultural life at the turn of the 20th century. She was among the speakers for the latest installment of Ike’s Abilene Saturday at the Eisenhower Visitors Center. Saturday’s edition was entitled “Life in the City, 1900: Political, Business and Social History.” The focus on the series is about Abilene during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s youth and when he grew to a young man who would later become the nation’s 34th president.

…Her studies indicated that Abilene had a diversified community. Census forms indicated only three races were available to check — white, black and mulatto (someone with a black parent and white parent). As a result, Hispanics, who worked in the railroad industry were listed as white.

David and Ida Eisenhower lived in the south part of Abilene, considered south of the tracks, where people of mixed races also lived, Harris said. However, there were other mixed race neighborhoods in other parts of Abilene.

Harris said Dwight Eisenhower was proud of his Abilene roots and what the people and community meant to him.

iron butt

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“Tricky Dick” wasn’t his only nickname (list), and since this confirms for me that he was an ass, I prefer to call him by his law school nickname, “Iron Butt.”

Nixon Believed in Aborting Mixed-Race Babies

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 7:49PM BST 24 Jun 2009

via

Commenting privately on the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe vs Wade, which decriminalised abortion in the US, the then-president said he worried that access to a legal abortion could lead to “permissiveness” because “it breaks the family” but thought them justified in certain cases.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary,” he told his aide Chuck Colson. “I know that. When you have a black and a white.” Mr Colson offered that rape might also make an abortion legitimate, prompting Mr Nixon to respond: “Or a rape.”

The comments were revealed in more than 150 hours of tape and 30,000 pages of documents made public this week by the Nixon Presidential Library, part of the United State National Archives.

They were recorded by secret microphones in the Oval Office from January and February 1973 and provide fresh insights into Mr Nixon’s tumultuous presidency, which ended with his resignation in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

Mr Nixon was widely believed at the time to be privately opposed to abortion rights, though he declined to take a public stance on the issue.

The tapes capture mundane conversations about daily life in the White House but also offer new insight into changes in US society.

During a telephone conversation with George H. W. Bush, then Republican National Committee chairman and later elected president in 1988, Mr Nixon said that a visit to the South Carolina legislature had persuaded him of the value of female political candidates for his party.

“I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature. I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let’s look for some … Understand, I don’t do it because I’m for women, but I’m doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not … So have you got that in mind?” Mr Bush replied: “I’ll certainly keep it in mind.”

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Richard Nixon 1962

the jeffersons

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Jeffersons-Cast

At the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival Elliott it was brought to my attention that on The Jeffersons a white male and a black female were cast as Tom and Helen’s children.  I could hardly believe it.  Then I kinda forgot about it.  Well, I was flipping channels today and came across the Jeffersons and lo and behold there was Berlinda Tolbert playing Jenny Willis.  She played the part well, don’t get me wrong, but….um…. well there’s just no way!  Why was this the best casting choice?  On the other hand, biracial actresses play “black” characters all the time, so what’s the difference.  I’m not sure really.  It just seemed silly to me.  The son, Allan (played by Jay Hammer), was only on for one season and was written as “their overzealous college drop-out who abandoned the family, passed as a full-blood Caucasian and lived in Paris for two years.”  Here are some recent(ish) photos of the brother and sister…

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I wonder what Lenny Kravitz thinks of that.  I wonder if he and his mother ever discussed it.  I wonder if I’ll ever get to ask him.

Tom-Helen

slash

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I didn’t know that Slash was biracial until HBO’s The Black List.  There was a brief period in middle school when I really tried to like Guns N’ Roses.  I guess I’m just not that white.  That’s meant to be a joke, btw.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find out about his mixedness, and thought to myself, “I should have known.  Look at that hair.”  But back then I didn’t even know that I had that hair, so of course I was clueless.

slash and axl

In Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock ‘N’ Roll edited by Kandia Crazy Horse Slash is asked if he defines himself as a black musician to which he replies that he defines himself as a rock musician if he defines himself as anything. He says he is very proud of his black heritage and sees this as being very cool. One thing he clears up is that he is NOT a Jewish musician. He says that is because his first name is Saul, but he is not Jewish. He talks about his racial background (biracial)…and how it was dealing with a white midwesterner in GNR.

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A recent article on the passing of Slash’s mother:

Rock guitarist Slash, the bi-racial son of a black mother and white father, is mourning the passing of his mother Ola Hudson, a woman he referred to recently as a “cool rock and roll mom.”

Hudson, a former costume designer for such musicians as Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Diana Ross died on the morning of May 6 after a battle with lung cancer. She was 62.

“This is a difficult time, but I have to share with you that she was the sweetest, warmest, most loving human being I’ve ever known (next to my grandmother on her side), as well as one of the most creative and talented,” Slash wrote on his MySpace page.

“She was also the coolest rock and roll mom, a rock junkie like myself could ever possibly want to have,” Slash continued. “She was responsible for exposing me to a lot of the music that would influence me as a musician growing up, as well as introducing me to ‘the life’ and priming me to survive this crazy business that I’m now in.

“But more importantly, she turned me on to all different forms of art and the importance of artistic self expression and creative communication thru music and dance from as early on as I can remember. She really was all things artistic and creative personified and the world is a lesser place without her.”

away we go

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I just saw “Away We Go.”  I totally loved it! So much!  It’s so real, and they handle “the biracial” perfectly.  Outsiders bring it up, but the couple never does.  The way Verona is patronized by LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) really hit home for me.  And I loved Catherine O’Hara as the mother-in-law asking, “How black is she gonna be?” in reference to the new baby.  And the golliwog slippers!  Here’s an excerpt from a Huffington Post interview with Maya Rudolph that Karen of reelartsy.com hipped me to.

W&H: What are your thoughts on why we don’t see more films with African American women leads.

MR: It’s certainly not for me to answer because I have nothing to do with why the world is as f***ed up as it is. It has less to do with TV and movies and more to do with race and history and culture. It’s obviously a reflection of the world we live in. Although I still can’t believe we have a president who is mixed like me. It’s one thing that we have a black president but for me it’s even crazier because he’s mixed. I feel like I come from a smaller off shoot of black people because I am mixed. People say I’m African American but that doesn’t include the other half of me.

I can’t believe I’m living in a time where I feel proud of my president where I feel like things are actually positive and people feel good about where our country can be.

I don’t know the answer to your question and I don’t know if there is one. I plan to keep doing what I’m doing because race is just not a part of the way I look at the world and the way I live my life. I think that was a minor, key thing in the way that Dave and Vendela wrote the script. Verona is mixed and Burt is white but nobody talks about it. That felt realistic to me in my day to day life. People expect race to be an issue and I was raised in a house where it was never as issue. My parents were interested in having us feel like we were normal whatever that is.

via huffingtonpost.com

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