Tag Archives: mixed race

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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burden of mixed-race?

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Raising multi-racial kids in a color-conscious society

by LYLAH M. ALPHONSE

In spite of having a mixed-race president — or, perhaps, because of it — the issue of race is very much alive in modern America.
In 2000, for the first time the U.S. Census offered people the option of identifying themselves by more than one race. About 6.8 million recorded themselves as being multi-racial; more than half of those who consider themselves multi-racial are younger than 20 years old, which seems to indicate a growing acceptance of interracial relationship and a rise in the number of biracial and multiracial kids.
And yet, when it comes to raising these children, some parents are still facing questions and, at times, criticism.
At Babble, Elizabeth G. Hines shares a friend’s reaction to her donor-assisted pregnancy: Why, the friend wondered, would you choose to create a mixed race child? Why wouldn’t you just stick with one race or the other?
She writes:
“… she asked me what my ideal donor would look like. I answered honestly that I had no pre-set “ideal” in mind, but assumed that my partner and I would pick a donor that reflected the racial background of the one of us who was not biologically related to the child. At the time, I was in an interracial relationship — which meant, she quickly deduced, that I was talking about conceiving a bi-racial child. That, and that alone, was enough to make my fair-minded, thoughtful friend shed her liberal cool and call into question my credibility as a potential parent. Not my identity as a gay woman, mind you, which might have been an easy target. This was about race, and the perceived disadvantage I would be burdening a child with by choosing to create him or her from two different racial gene pools.”
The idea that belonging to more than a single racial group could be a disadvantage or a burden is one that I’ve never understood. I’m multiracial. My kids are, too — even my stepkids. My father is of mixed race. As are his parents. And their parents. And their parents. When it comes to mixed marriages, my family’s been doing it for generations.
So, when it comes to defining my race on a form, I check ‘other’ and, if that’s not an option, I don’t check anything at all. Maybe it’s a matter of privilege, but I’ve never been adversely affected by being multi-racial.

babies on backs in store

meet the de blasios

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05_Flatbed_2 - AUGUST

Such an innocent act.  A simple family photo.  I’m so disappointed that anyone even thought to turn this into a “scandal.”  In my opinion, a white man who has a “black” family very likely does “get it” more than one who has not or would not cross that line.  He’s become black by association to a degree, and even if he doesn’t fully understand the experience and the struggles, I’m pretty sure that he cares a lot.  For it affects him.  It affects everyone, but chances are de Blasio cannot and will not ignore it.

New York Post Attack On Bill de Blasio Is Bogus

by Sheryl McCarthy

The New York Post claims that Bill de Blasio’s use of photographs of his interracial family in his campaign mailings for the public advocate’s job amounts to pandering to black voters. Frankly, I was delighted to see the photographs of the Brooklyn City Councilman’s family.

With his wife, Chirlane, an attractive, dark-skinned black woman who wears her hair in natural braids, and his children, Dante and Chiara, who are clearly biracial, the de Blasios are the picture of an attractive and apparently happy family. Leave it to the Post to lend credence to claims by City Councilman Charles Barron that the photographs are designed to pander to black voters, and that they were mailed only to voters in predominantly black sections of the city, while voters in predominantly white areas received mailings with no photos or photos of the candidate only.

DeBlasio’s press secretary’s told me the family photos were sent out citywide and were not intended to appeal to just black voters or other voters of color. They were sent out because, as de Blasio told WNYC interviewer Brian Lehrer, “I’m showing my family, and I’m showing my family to all communities because that is who I am.”

The Post story is a shoddy piece of reporting which quotes only Barron and two anonymous sources who reportedly claim that black women are complaining about the campaign flier in which Chirlane de Blasio says of her husband “He gets it,” because it suggests that de Blasio understands black residents’ concerns simply because he’s married to a black woman.

…It’s customary for politicians to run ads featuring their families. So why shouldn’t de Blasio feature his? They’re certainly attractive, and if the fact that they’re black and bi-racial wins him points in the black community and any other community in the city, so what? When I was a columnist for Newsday I interviewed de Blasio on several occasions, without knowing the race of his wife and children. When I saw the campaign photos, I was frankly delighted. His wife looks adorable, his children attractive, and aware as I am of the dearth of suitable mates for black women in this country, I’m always thrilled to run across a successful man who’s attracted to black women. Since most of the five candidates for the public advocate’s job are more or less qualified for the job, I have to admit this fact makes me think more favorably of de Blasio’s candidacy.

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willing to accept

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This isn’t the first I’ve heard of biracial children falling under the umbrella of “hard to place” in the adoption world,  but this little article still made me sad.  As if it would be a great sacrifice, or a kind of acquiescence, perhaps an inconvenience to bring one of “those” children into your family.  But hey, they’ll pay you to take one…

Adoption Resourcess, under the umbrella of Jewish Family and Childrens’ Services, is a licensed, nonprofit adoption agency in Massachusetts. They have been in business for 140 years…

“The agency is a conduit for contact”, states the director. They provide counseling, support and education to birthparents before and after the birth. These services are also provided to the adoptive parents, and to adoptees seeking information on their heritage.

For a flat fee, the prospective parent(s) can adopt a healthy, Caucasian infant within one to two years. For those willing to accept biracial or at risk children that wait time can be as little as one year. Betsy notes that the agency is particularly proud of its Lindelli Fund, which provides subsidies to any parent wishing to adopt hard-to-place children.- via

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These children are not up for adoption.  They’re just cute and biracial.

kimora on growing up mixed

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Kimora Lee Simmons: "My Kids Make My World Go 'Round"

New mom to 2 1/2-month-old baby boy Kenzo Lee Hounsou, Kimora Lee Simmons found the time to write an article for Working Mother. The 34-year-old Baby Phat CEO and Style Network star addresses the racism she faced as a young girl, how her mom always encouraged her to believe in herself and work hard, and how she plans to instill these same values in her three children.

“My friends are surprised to learn that, outgoing as I am today, I was a loner growing up. I was a mixed-race girl with a Korean-Japanese mother and an African-American father, and none of the other kids at my school were like me. I was nearly six feet tall by the time I was 11 years old. And I was an only child being raised by a single mother.

At school in the St. Louis suburb of Florissant, MO, everything about me seemed to be a source of ridicule to other kids: my face, my height, the texture of my hair, my body shape. I was a real fish out of water. And because I had so many growth spurts, it took time for me to grow into my body. The popular kids were into sports, but I was awkward and gawky. I was super clumsy—I still am. Kids can be cruel. They called me “chinky giraffe.” I cried all the time. But my mother wanted me to turn my tears into something else, something positive.

…As my mom did for me, I’m helping my own girls, Ming Lee, 9, and Aoki Lee, 7, learn about tolerance—to respect differences in culture, religion and even the way we look. I also try to set boundaries, let them know what’s expected and give them room to develop and grow. I will do the same with my infant son, Kenzo Lee Hounsou. I recently married his father, Djimon Hounsou. He’s an actor and a model, and he speaks five languages. We learn a lot from him.

Read the rest of the article here

re:mixed race in the uk

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This is a sad story.  I’m not up on the politics of the United Kingdom, so I had to look up the BNP or British National Party.  Here’s what I found on Wikipedia:

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The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right and whites-only political party in the United Kingdom.

The BNP is not represented in Parliament.

According to its constitution, the BNP is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948”. The BNP proposes “firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home”. The party also advocates the repeal of all anti-discrimination legislation, and restricts party membership to “indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘IndigenousCaucasian’”. The BNP also accepts white immigrants that are assimilated into one of those ethnicities. The BNP asserts that there are biological racial differences that determine the behaviour and character of individuals of different races, although it claims that it does not regard whites as superior to other ethnic groups, and that preference for one’s own ethnicity is a part of human nature.

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Schoolgirl victim of racist bullying says tormentor’s sentence is ‘pants’

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By Nick Allen

The victim, a 14-year-old mixed race girl, was repeatedly insulted with racist terms for six months by a 15-year-old, BNP supporting fellow pupil.

Last month the boy became the first school child to be convicted of racially aggravated harassment of a fellow pupil following a trial at Lincoln Youth Court.

The conviction prompted questions over whether such racist bullying should be dealt with through criminal law or by schools themselves.

The boy could have been detained for up to two years in a young offenders’ institution but he was instead sentenced to a six month supervision order and made to pay £500 compensation to the girl, which will be paid by his father.

The victim, who tried to kill herself with an overdose of stress pills and painkillers, said she was “disappointed” with the sentence.

She said: “When my mum told me the sentence I just thought ‘Is that it? That’s pants.’

“He has got a slap on the wrists and been told he was a naughty boy – that’s all. He has not paid the price for what he has put me through and he will never have to suffer like I have.

“I want him to be out into a multi-cultural school where he is one of the only white pupils to see what it feels like to be in the minority. I want him to be in my shoes and see how he copes with that.”

The girl, who is of mixed white English and black African heritage, was called “wog”, “coon”, “nigger”, “gorilla” and “golliwog” by the boy. She also suffered abusive chants of “white, white, white is right, kick them out, fight, fight, fight” and was repeatedly told: “Go back to your own country, you don’t belong here.”

She wrote a suicide note and took an overdose on Jan 25 this year. She was then sectioned for six weeks in a psychiatric hospital before the family moved to a different part of the country.

After the sentencing her mother said: “…He bullied her to the extent she actually wanted to die but he had no remorse. When he was found guilty we were on a high and thought we would finally get justice. But now we feel we have put ourselves out there and not got anything back.

During the case it emerged the boy was a known BNP supporter who actively tried to enlist other youths.

The victim’s mother said: “It’s very sad and comes from ignorance more than anything. My daughter is British, she was born in this country and has a British passport. But they just think everyone living in the UK should be white and English.”

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mixed race in the uk

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I guess we’re the fastest growing group in the world, muah-ha-ha-ha! Just kidding. But I’m with you, Dani. We need to educate everyone about this group with rapidly increasing numbers.  I wonder if mixed race people are more likely to be victims of crime in the U.S.

Mixed race ‘fastest growing minority’

Karlene Pinnock BBC NewsBeat

“Best of both”, “pick and mix”, “Asian”, “half-breed” and “coloured” – they are just some of the names mixed race people say they’ve been called.

The mixed race group is the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the UK and is expected to become the largest by 2020.

Britain has one of the highest rates of interracial relationships in the western world.

If government watchdog figures are right, mixed race Britons will overtake Indian people to become the UK’s largest ethnic minority group within 25 years, reaching 1.24 million.

Seventeen-year-old Seeder is from Manchester. She said: “I actually expected mixed raced people to be the biggest ethnicity.

Listen to 1Xtra’s Mixed Race documentary

“Mixed raced isn’t just one race like me, English and Jamaican, there’s so many different mixes of so many different races.”

The latest official statistics available show mixed race people are more likely to be victims of crime than any other ethnic minority.

The risk of being the victim of a racially-motivated crime is also higher.

Dani thinks more needs to be done to educate everyone about the UK’s fastest growing ethnic minority group.

“I remember my teacher describing me as coloured and I was like actually not really fond of that one,” she said.

“We need to start looking at how we can make things more multicultural and I think the education system’s going to be a biggie.”

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slanderous

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A couple of days ago I came across this crazy comment on an article about health care and the uninsured.  I wasn’t going to post it, but I keep thinking about it so here it is.

via

Responses to “Uninsurance in the 300-400 Percent of Federal Poverty Line Bracket”

Davis Says:

—-

T.S. Eliot: “white trash” is a white person who fornicates with a non-white.

—-

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS.

Obongo has supported:

(A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians.

(B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation.

(C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans.

(D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities.

(E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs

(F) Creating a mandatory “America Serves” community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans
—-

Here comes my favorite part…..

From sociobiology email list: “Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? Whites have recessive traits, so mixed-race children almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, lips, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.'”

obama flag ray of light

Davis, Davis, Davis.  Come on!

On another note, I’m eagerly awaiting the report on the President’s beer date with Gates and Crowley.  I find it so fitting that this black and white man is getting together with this black man and that white man to bring us all to some common ground on this issue.  This is a perfect example of how Obama’s “unique experience” is helping him (and us) address the larger struggle.  I’m just sayin’.

“holler”

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This is exciting! Especially on the heels of Prom Night in Mississippi.  As I was watching the documentary, I wondered if there were any biracial students in Charleston, MS.  Actually if there were any biracial people there at all.  It seems as though it would be a miracle.  Anyway, this movie will show us what it might be like if there were a biracial student in that very segregated setting…

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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Screen Gems and Jennifer Aniston are teaming up to tell a tale of lingering racial tensions in the Deep South.

The company has acquired “Holler” (aka “Mutt”), written by Dana Adam Shapiro, co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Murderball.”

Inspired by true events, the script centers on a biracial high school student who returns with his white mother to her hometown in Mississippi, where he falls for a white girl. When prom season arrives at the high school, he is shocked to discover that she cannot be his date at the segregated prom. He soon finds himself a catalyst for change, not only for the prom but for the school and entire town.

HBO on Monday aired a documentary on the same subject, “Prom Night in Mississippi.”

The film will be produced by Aniston’s partner at Echo Films, Kristin Hahn, along with Tracey Durning. Aniston will executive produce with Jeff Mandel.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)

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.