barack like me

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David Alan Grier: Is beige the new black?

Comedian writes about how Obama has made being multiracial cool

excerpt from chapter 2

Every pundit from Larry King to Atlantic magazine agrees: black is in. All shades of black. Which is good for most people, because so many of us are of mixed race. Myself included. It’s mind-boggling that we have ended up here, at this point in our history. There was a time, only a few generations ago, that being of mixed race was not so cool. In fact, it was illegal to try to pass yourself off as a different race. If the authorities found out, you lost everything — your position, your home, and all your possessions. You’d be separated from your family and often lynched.

President Barack Obama has changed all that. People now want to be mixed. Bi-racial, tri- racial, quad- and quinti-racial, how many you got? The more the better. Multiracial is the hot new facial, the best look in the book. Mixed race is the new superrace. If you look too black, people seem disappointed. They look at you and say, “You’re just black. Oh. That’s too bad. Are you sure? Anything else in there?”

They’re looking for the Obama mix. It’s like a new kind of coffee. “We just came up with it. Try this. The new Obama roast. It’s the perfect blend. Strong, but not sharp. Seductive. Bold. Sweet. Smooth. And not too dark. Not like that Dikembe Mutombo roast they’re brewing across the street.”

And why not be black like Barack? He’s the coolest guy on the planet right now. He’s bigger than any rapper, more popular than any rock star. He’s huge. We admire him and kids aspire to be like him.

…It’s still hard to get my head around this, though, the idea of acceptance that comes with the Barack Obama presidency. There is a part of me that acknowledges — and remembers, historically — that people of color who tried to deny any part of themselves were suspect. They would have to make a decision and stick with it. If it was found out that they were denying a part of themselves, they would be accused of running away from themselves and be rejected by their own. We’re looking at a whole new playing field as of right now. You can embrace all the parts of you. You can say, forthrightly, “I am who I am. I am all my parts,” or even, “I am all my parts, but I am embracing this particular one. This is who I am.” And we, as a people, will embrace it as well.

Excerpted from “Barack Like Me” by David Alan Grier with Alan Eisenstock. Copyright (c) by David Alan Grier.

i like my coffee like my presidents'

speaking of ben harper

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He’s so cute… but anyway,  I found this little piece on The Insider website…

Ben Harper & Family In Sardinia

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Ben Harper and Laura Dern vacation with their children, Ellery, 7, and Jaya, 3 1/2, and friends in Porto Cervo (Sardinia).

Source : Bauer Griffin

Thank God “anonymous” posted this comment:

Those two other children are *NOT* friends they are Ben’s kids from his first marriage. His son is named after Ben’s grandfather Charles Chase who owned a folk music store and instrument museum who exposed him and fueled his love for music.

It may seem trivial, but as the only brown person traveling with my white family I was often mistaken for a “friend,” and that just doesn’t feel good.  I don’t know exactly how to describe how it feels, but it’s not good.  Especially when that’s your dad and the circumstances lead you to think, “I was his family before these other people.”  So, thank you Anonymous for clearing that up.

further proof that we are far from post-racial

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Though this (hopefully) isn’t something that happens every day in America, the fact that it has happened in 2009 is so very disheartening.  This is why we keep talking about these issues.  Many of us have risen above the confines of race, many of us have not.  Many reside somewhere in between.  All I know for sure is that this country has still got a long way to go in healing from our sordid racial history.  And I think it would help if they would just admit that this was a hate crime.  I just don’t understand the benefit of pretending that this was just some random act of violence.  The truth will set us free, right?

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Mixed-Race Couple Confronted With Racist Question, Stalked, Then Gunned Down In Arizona Park

by Dawn Teo

PHOENIX, AZ — Phoenix police say the gunning down of an interracial couple by a stranger in a local Phoenix park is being investigated as a possible hate crime. A 39-year-old white female was shot to death after being confronted with a racist question about being with her black boyfriend, Jeffrey Wellmaker.

The couple was out for a walk in La Palma Park in Phoenix early Saturday morning when a heavily tattooed man with a shaved head approached them and asked Wellmaker, “What are you doing with that white woman?”

The couple tried to ignore the question and immediately walked away. The gunman followed on foot for a short distance, then got into the passenger seat of a nearby car. The car followed the couple for approximately half a mile before the gunman fired two shots from the passenger window, and the car sped away.

Both the 39-year-old woman and 48-year-old Wellmaker were hit. The woman, who has not yet been identified by police, was transported to the hospital where she died later Saturday. Wellmaker did not sustain serious physical injury.

Phoenix police officer James Holmes says he cannot say for certain that the shooting was a hate crime, “but it does lead us in that direction just because of the fact that the suspect made a comment to the race of both victims,” explaining, “He’s bald. He’s got tattoos. He’s making a comment about a white woman with a black man. One could assume that it might be a hate crime.”

The suspect has not been identified and is described as a white male, about 5’6″, heavily tattooed. The suspect fled the scene in a white four-door car with tinted windows.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/mixed-race-couple-confron_b_308842.html

i “needs to talk” to obama about this too

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Mariah Carey: in a frank interview, the singer tells all

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…Carey’s own parents divorced when she was little, and although her father materialised occasionally to take her on trips – hiking or to the races – she didn’t get to know him properly until she was an adult… He was tough. He’d been in the military. I do miss him. At the end of his life we spent a lot of time together. And I learned a lot about his side of the family.”

Her mother grew up in the midwest. “She came from – er –?” Carey frowns. “Middle of America?” She brightens –”Illinois!” – and as such, she says wryly, “is among the whitest people I know”. Her father was half-African American, half-Venezuelan. “I’m a black woman who is very light skinned.” As a child, she was self-conscious of her mixed race, and it is still enough of an issue, in the US and elsewhere, that Carey is routinely accused of “trying too hard” in one racial direction or another.

“White people have a difficult time with [mixed race]. It’s like, my mother’s white – she’s so Irish, she loves Ireland, she’s like, yay, Ireland! Waving the flag and singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. And that’s great. I appreciate that and respect it. But there’s a whole other side of me that makes me who I am and makes people uncomfortable. My father identified as a black man. No one asked him because he was clearly black. But people always ask me. If we were together, people would look at us in a really strange way. It sucked. As a little girl I had blond hair and they’d look at me, look at him, and be disgusted.”

She says she “needs to talk” to Obama about this. When he became president, she was overwhelmed and delighted, “but for years we never believed it would happen. There’s a group who will never get it, never want to get it. Because you have to lose the purity of both races and there are certain people who really don’t want that to happen. I think it starts with people teaching their children that it’s not OK, because they don’t want their kid to come home with someone of another race. I understand people want to hold on to their roots. But for me, I was a complete nonentity because of it. Maybe that was part of my drive to succeed. I’ll become accepted.”

And now? Oh, she says, sarcastically, “it’s in vogue now. So I’m sitting here thinking, now it’s cool, great.”

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