utah

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I never would have guessed Utah!

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Census says Utah first in mixed-race growth

By Christopher Smart

The Salt Lake Tribune

 

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_12530272

 

Utah’s mixed-race population grew at the fastest rate in the nation from 2007 to 2008 — a trend some say could show Utahns are increasingly comfortable identifying themselves as multiracial.

“People are more willing to take a stand and say, ‘This is what I am,’ ” said Betty Sawyer, who works closely with students of various ethnic backgrounds and is president of Ogden’s NAACP.

New census data show multiracial Americans make up the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group. Between 2007 and 2008 the number of people identifying themselves as being of mixed race grew 3.4 percent; in Utah, the number jumped 5.9 percent.

But before 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau didn’t even provide a way for people to identify themselves as multiracial. 

 

…Still, the new Census Bureau option doesn’t mean the country has moved beyond racism, said Darron Smith, an adjunct professor of sociology at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Smith, a black man who is married to a white woman, studies census trends.

In Utah Valley, people often make note of the black-and-white couple who have two girls, he explained.

“I always tell my kids they are biracial,” Smith said. “But the world will consider them black.”

While more people are identifying themselves as being of mixed race, those numbers don’t necessarily reflect a more racially progressive society, according to Smith. The percentage of biracial marriages and their mixed-race offspring is still very small — 3 to 5 percent.

“It’s a [statistical] outlier,” he said of interracial marriage. “It’s still not accepted.”

the movie glory

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I just finished watching Glory for the 5th time.  It might be my favorite movie.  This movie was actually the catalyst for my whole “biracial” revelatory aha moment.  While watching Glory for the 4th time, I realized that, seeing as this was the history of our country, it is a miracle that I (a black and white person) even exist.  Truly.  And then I realized that I didn’t really exist.  There was no recognition of the miracle.  Not even an internal, personal one.  I realized that the history depicted in the film was the truth and that I had fallen victim to it’s legacy and failed to know myself fully.  

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Watching the movie tonight, I was again blown away by Denzel Washington.  “The tear” is one of the most memorable moments I have witnessed on screen.  I also kept searching for the moment that might have triggered the big realization. My guess is the part where Matthew Broderick (as Robert Shaw) takes the 54th out with the other “negro regiment.”  The other leader is an ass to say the least.  He not only refers to the black soldiers as “little monkey children,” but he is extremely immoral in every sense of the word.  He treats his soldiers like animals, they act like animals.  Robert Shaw treats his soldiers with respect, like men.  In turn they are respectful and respectable men.  

The most poignant moment for me this viewing though was when Broderick and Denzel Washington’s character (whose name escapes me), were discussing the predicament that was life in America at that time.  And arguably still is to a certain extent.  Denzel says “It stinks real bad.  And all of us are in it.  Ain’t no one clean.”  Broderick asks, “How do we get clean?”  There wasn’t a definitive answer, but if I had to glean one from the film it’s that we become clean when we decide to die fighting for what we now know to be right, no matter how many wrongs we may have committed in the past.  

Thank you Edward Zwick, for the movie Glory.  I think it should be required viewing for every American.

how do you think?

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This is so ridiculous I don’t even know what to say about it.  Other than, I’m actually glad he said it because I know he isn’t alone in holding this backwards, racist belief.  That’s how he thinks like everyone else, actually.  Well, not everyone thank God, but you know…  Most people wouldn’t admit it though.  Or maybe it’s so subconscious that they aren’t aware of it.  Either way, or whatever, it’s so perverse!!

Manuel Miranda: Latinos are ‘not like African-Americans. We think just like everybody else.’

Manuel Miranda, who was busted for hacking into the files of Senate Democrats while he served as an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), is leading the conservative charge against Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. At a Heritage Foundation lunch for conservative bloggers today, Miranda discussed how conservatives could attack Sotomayor’s qualifications without alienating the Latino community. Miranda, who is Latino himself, argued that Latinos had concerns similar to those of “everyone else,” but then appeared to suggest that African-Americans somehow think differently from other people. Latinos are “not like African-Americans. We think just like everybody else”:

Hispanic polls, Hispanic surveys, indicate that Hispanics think just like everyone else. We’re not like African-Americans. We think just like everybody else. When I was on the leader’s staff, someone called me once and asked me: ‘What’s Senator Frist’s Hispanic agenda?’ I said, ‘low taxes, better education, more jobs … what are you talking about?’ And that’s how Hispanics are. This is an opportunity to educate them on all of our issues and they will resonate in the way that they resonate with everyone else.

via http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/02/manuel-miranda-african-americans/

1am210

a new biracial children’s book

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Though the Newsday reviewer doubts that mixed race kids wonder about the racial features of their soon-to-arrive siblings, I don’t.  Since my “Heidi and Seal” post, I’ve wondered how little Leni will react to her new sister who will likely be brown like her brothers.  I imagine that right now she might think that boys look like the dad and girls look like the mom.  Since their new baby is said to be a girl, that theory (should it really exist in her mind and not just mine) could be blown out of the water.  

Regardless of any of that, I’m so glad to know that this book exists and hope more like it will follow.

review taken from http://www.newsday.com/features/booksmags/ny-bkend0712810377jun01,0,2983687.story

I’M YOUR PEANUT BUTTER BIG BROTHER, by Selina Alko. Knopf, $16.99. Ages 4-8. 

Books that address issues in an obvious way can be a bore, but since books are a useful way to address issues, parents, teachers and librarians are constantly on the lookout for good ones. In Selina Alko’s “I’m Your Peanut Butter Big Brother,” a child in a biracial family wonders what the new baby will look like. The whimsical elaboration of possibilities makes this the rare “issues-book” you’d want to snuggle up and read with your kids. 

“Baby, will your hair look like mine?” the boy asks. He considers the range of hair in his family: “Noel’s string beans locked this way and that, or Akira’s puffy broccoli florets? Maybe, like Auntie Angela, your mushroom bob will wave neatly in half-moon curls. Feathers might hang from a round coconut face. Or, like Grandma Helen, will sharp blades of grass stick straight up?” 

Certainly no two parents, of the same race or not, look precisely alike, and I doubt that children are considering racial features when they wonder: “Baby brother or sister, will you look like me?” But in a world where skin tone, hair texture and eye shape carry social complexity, this book offers a welcome alternative vocabulary.

By Sonja Bolle