Tag Archives: mixed race

people don’t know how to treat you

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This article is from 2005.  I wonder if the family has noticed a shift in attitudes over the last five years.  And of course I’d love to hear from little Toni.  The bridge between them.  I like that part a lot.

HOW DARE THEY TREAT US LIKE THIS?

by DIANA APPLEYARD

JAN LLOYD, 45, has been married to Tony, 48, for ten years. The couple have a four-year-old daughter, Toni. They run a successful martial arts business, Fighting Fit, with gyms around South London, where they live.

photo by Jenny Goodall

Jan says:

PEOPLE have spat at me in the street, stared at me, jostled me and shouted at me — all because I fell in love with a black man. But unless you have experienced it, you are unlikely to have any idea of the racism in British society.

It’s terrifying, but it’s something I am aware of every day of my life. We were taking our daughter Toni to see the GP when she was only two years old, when I was spat at in the street. It was completely random — a white man in his 40s looked us up and down and then spat at me.

It was so disgusting — I couldn’t believe it was happening. I looked for support, but everyone looked away. They were embarrassed and probably disgusted too, but no one wanted to get involved. I was shaking and tearful, but angry as well — how could someone behave like that in a civilised society?

As I walk down the street, go to the pictures, eat out in restaurants or go to the theatre, I am frequently aware of a kind of coldness and embarrassment around me. The only way I can describe it is that it’s like being disabled — people don’t know how to treat you.

They don’t know what to say to me. You can see the thought running through people’s minds: ‘Why is she with a black man?’
When I got together with Tony, a lot of my friends melted away. They’d invite me to a party with my new boyfriend, but then, mysteriously, they’d never invite us again. Once, early in our relationship, I’d booked a table at a nice restaurant. When we arrived, there were lots of empty tables — but they put us at the back, next to the toilets. I was going to complain, but Tony told me just to leave it. He’s used to it. Our backgrounds could not be more different. I was brought up in a well-off family in Sussex and was privately educated. I met Tony when I took up aerobics and he was my instructor.  I thought he was nice, but our relationship didn’t progress until I was in a horrid road-rage incident, when a man hit my car and then bashed on my window. It made me realise I ought to learn self-defence and Tony also taught martial arts. Before I fell for him, I’d been out with City types, public-school educated white men, so Tony was a real change. I thought he was intelligent and interesting — I was fascinated by the fact that his life was so different from mine.

He was born in Yorkshire, but his family moved to London when he was three. He had traditional values and an old-fashioned approach to relationships. There was also a lovely warmth about him. He was successful and welloff through his business and he was a real self-made man.

We started going out and six months later I met his family. He’s one of six and it was so different from my middle-class home — they were so loud, so welcoming, pressing food on me and firing questions at me.

Tony told me he’d been badly beaten up as a child by racist bullies and that nearly every day he faced some kind of prejudice or abuse — it hurt him so much.

But it wasn’t long before I started to experience the kind of hostility he’d faced most of his life. Suddenly, being with him, I was made to feel like a freak, a secondclass citizen. It was bizarre. There was so much disapproval in people’s glances. There seems to be this attitude like ‘Aren’t white men good enough?’ when all I had done was fall in love.

We had been together only six months when we decided to get married and it came as a shock to my parents, who asked me if I was sure it was going to work given our cultural backgrounds. But they have since mellowed and little Toni is the bridge between us.

My parents are very traditional, and all they could see were problems in a mixed marriage.

We married on a beach in St Lucia. Both sets of parents came and it made such a difference being there — we were surrounded by welcoming black people, and my parents felt less uneasy.  Now they are very supportive of Tony and can see what a good man he is. Before, they — like so many others — had only seen the stereotypes.

After our wedding I joined Tony in his business, and Fighting Fit is now very successful. We live in a lovely four-bedroom house, we enjoy great holidays, scuba dive, ride horses and have a happy, middle-class life. Now when I get the looks, I ignore them and carry on. They can’t harm our life or family.

I did worry a little about our daughter and whether she’d face any prejudice at school being mixed race, but she’s totally accepted — she’s just Toni, with a big personality for a little girl, so sunny and confident. Everyone loves her.

SOURCE

further the cause, fill out the survey

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My friend Naehalani is conducting two studies on biracial identity for her Senior Thesis.  Yay!  If you have a moment, and are biracial, you can help her with the project by filling out the survey and emailing it to her.  I did.  Just click on “Biracial Survey” and the document should download to your computer.  Open it and answer away.  Instead of circling the most accurate choice for me, I typed my answers in after the questions.  It really did take 5 minutes.  Maybe less.

Naehalani(far left) and her siblings

From Naehalani:

Hello to all!

I need your help!  My name is Naehalani Breeland and I am biracial,
mixed with Hawaiian and Caucasian.  Having grown up predominantly with
my Hawaiian mother in both Hawaii and on the mainland… (and being
strongly influenced by both my Hawaiian culture and mainstream
American culture) I have come to identify as mixed race/biracial.
More and more we are seeing biracial and multiracial individuals speak
out about our unique identity development, juggling identities and so
forth.  So, for my Senior Thesis in psychology at Eugene Lang College
in New York City, I am conducting two studies on biracial identity and
I am asking you all to participate in these studies by filling out the
surveys below.  While this is helping me to graduate (fingers
crossed), it is also helping all of us to inform others on our
biracial/multiracial experiences.

For confidentiality purposes, you can email your completed survey to
me at breelj73@newschool.com or naehalanibreeland@gmail.com.
• Open the word document below
• Fill out the survey
• Save the completed document as CompletedBISurvey and the time (ex:
CompletedBISurvey10:31am) so that I can differentiate them
• Email it back to me.
The survey will take approximately 5 minutes! So quick and easy!  And
again, all the information will be confidential.

Biracial Survey

Also, if any of you are part of a biracial family in which you and
your siblings vary in skin tones please email me!  As an individual
coming from a family of all different skin variations, I have found
that my siblings and I often have different experiences in our
everyday life, and therefore we have also had a different identity
development. Sooo, my second study is on how society and family affect
the growth and perception of biracial individuals when their siblings
are of different skin tones. Basically it is about how we learn who we
are through others’ influence.  This is a small population, I
know…which is why I need all the help I can get from you!

the twins: Naehalani’s niece and nephew

I really really really appreciate your participation in advance.  It’s
helping me more than you all could imagine!!!

Take Care and have a wonderful day!

Naehalani Breeland

white mothers of mixed-race children

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I want to be a part of this research!  I’ve long been fascinated by the “white mom having” vs. “black mom having” biracial experience.  One similarity I can glean from my own “black mom having” experience and what is written in this article about that of the white mothers is the scrutiny.  I vividly remember my mother’s parenting being scrutinized by the mothers of my white classmates and some of the school faculty as well.

Do Racist Attitudes Hinder Mothers Of Mixed-Race Children?

via, Adapted from materials provided by University of Royal Holloway London, via AlphaGalileo.

Professor Ravinder Barn and Dr Vicki Harman from the Centre for Criminology and Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London are carrying out research into white mothers of mixed-race children. It is part of a wider study of mixed-race children and young people that has spanned more than two decades.

Parenting as an activity has become the focus for much concern at a policy and academic level, and the experiences of white women mothering mixed-race children is also receiving considerable attention.

Globalisation and migration are playing key roles in determining the social and familial landscape of contemporary western societies. Government statistics in the UK, Canada and the USA point to the increasing racial and cultural heterogeneity and the growth of the mixed-race population. Although many of these families lead relatively trouble-free lives, there is evidence of vulnerability and disadvantage for others in a number of areas including education, health, social care and the criminal justice system.

New and ongoing research was presented at a one day inter-disciplinary research conference, organised by Professor Barn and Dr Harman to disseminate the findings to those working with inter-racial families and to determine the research agenda of the future.


“In the academic and popular discourse, there is now a concern that ‘mixed families’ have become problematised. White mothers in these settings are often subjected to a racialised critical social gaze in a way that their parenting is placed under scrutiny,” said Professor Barn.

Dr Harman added, “Although the growing number of mixed relationships have been suggested to be evidence of a more tolerant society, social significance continues to be attached to relationships involving people from different ethnic backgrounds. White mothers of mixed-parentage children can find themselves dealing with racism directed at their children as well as facing social disapproval themselves”.

The six papers presented at the event explored a range of areas including: the mixed-race landscape in the Canadian context, common themes amongst families experiencing social service involvement, the need to understand the social networks utilized by white mothers in mixed families and historical research looking at government archives to understand the ways in which white women’s role in nation building had been marginalized.

you’re not adopted

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Wow, what a story!  While I think that Mrs. Brannigan’s choice to feign adoption in order to keep her own son is a sad commentary on black/white race relations, I honestly admire her commitment to her child and think her solution was clever.  This certainly is a unique story of “transracial” “adoption”.

Torment of the child from a mixed- race affair

By Ronan Lang

Tim Brannigan likes to say that he was born on May 10, 1966, and that he died the same day too. Minutes after his birth, Tim was ferried away from his mother Peggy, who subsequently told her own parents, siblings and her three other children that her baby had died in childbirth.

For the next five days in Templemore Hospital in Belfast, Peggy Brannigan had one ashen-faced visitor after another express their deepest condolences for her loss while, just a few doors down, her baby gurgled and cooed away like any healthy newborn.

The reason for the deception was that Peggy was a white woman married to a white man, and her new son was black. During a difficult period in her relationship with her husband Tom, Peggy had met and had a brief affair with a Ghanaian doctor named Michael Euke.

When she became pregnant, Peggy panicked and told her husband that she had been raped.

When the baby was born, Tom went along with the charade. Somehow, Peggy also convinced the hospital staff to assist in her scheme. The plan was for Tim to be smuggled to an orphanage under strict instructions that he was not to be adopted.

Peggy needed time and headspace to figure out what to do, but the plan was eventually to ‘adopt’ her own son. To her credit, by the time of Tim’s first birthday, he was living with his family deep in the heart of the Falls Road.

EastEnders scriptwriters would throw out that idea for being too far-fetched, but it’s all true, and laid out in honest, mind-boggling detail in Tim’s new book, Where Are You Really From?

Speaking to Weekend on a recent visit to Dublin, Tim recalls the night that his mother finally confessed the truth to him.

“I was 19, and I remember it was the night before Live Aid,” he says. “We were at a family function, and we’d both had a few drinks. She was saying how she wanted me to travel and see the world. Then, out of the blue, she said, ‘Timothy love,I’ve something to tell you. I’m your real mum and you are my son. You’re not adopted’.”

It’s a bombshell by anyone’s standards, but Tim, astoundingly, managed to take the news in his stride. He remembers crying, but from happiness.

“Honestly, I found it relatively easy to process,” he explains. “At that stage, my relationship with her was already quite established. I viewed her naturally as my mother. I didn’t call her by her first name, I called her mum, and I was closer to her than most of my other brothers. It all just seemed right to me.”

Having had years to absorb the story, and the chance to revisit his origins through writing the book, Tim says that he understands his mother’s desperate motivations after he was born. “I think she was very proud, and was part of a culture of looking out the net curtains and judging others,” he says.

“Because her family were close to the Catholic Church, and they had a little bit of money, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents and it became this massive burden. I think mentally she let this secret get out of all proportions. Even after she told me in 1985, I wasn’t allowed to tell my two eldest brothers the truth. They only found out in the last decade.”

Peggy went on to tell Tim about his real father, who had refused to support Peggy and had only ever seen his son once as a toddler. Nevertheless, Peggy seemed to want Tim to find out more about his father.

“She wanted me to be excited about having this father all of a sudden, but I had no initial desire to meet him,” Tim says.

It would be almost 20 years before Tim finally did meet him. In the meantime, Tim completed a degree in politics at Liverpool Polytechnic, but it was the explosive politics in his native town that were to define his 20s and 30s.

…Surprisingly, Tim reveals that the most sustained racism he ever encountered in his life didn’t come from his neighbours on the Falls Road, schoolmates, Republican comrades or Loyalist foes, but rather from the British Army — even its black members.

“I think I escaped the worst aspects of any racism because Belfast was so conflicted,” he says. “The last thing the British Army were expecting to see was a black kid, so they’d be shouting things like ‘black bastard’, ‘nigger’ and ‘go back to the jungle’. But people on the street would then say, ‘Don’t listen to them Tim, ignore them’, and so I became ‘one of us’ and the soldiers were ‘them’.”

… Sadly, his mum’s health took a turn for the worse in October 2002 and, for the best part of two years, Tim nursed her until she died from a brain tumour in March 2004. With his mother’s wishes in mind, Tim decided to track down his father three years ago as part of a BBC Radio documentary.

“Even after all his messing around, my mum held him in high esteem,” Tim says of his father. “Whereas I was more cynical about him. I was like, ‘Why would I want to track him down? He knows where I am, and he’s never bothered. He’s clearly made his decision.’

“My mum wanted me to do well, and I think she wanted to say to him, ‘Look what I did with our son on my own’. So I started with a view to saying, ‘I’ve been through a lot, but I’m still standing; this is who I am; this is what’s happened to me’.”

It’s a journey that brought Tim as far as Ghana to eventually meet his birth father. Along the way, Tim discovered that he had five brothers and sisters on his father’s side, many of whom live in London. After showing initial enthusiasm towards Tim, they have since cut off contact. They’re likely taking the cue from their father.

“He’s a very successful, quite wealthy guy in Africa,” Tim explains. “Money doesn’t motivate me, but they might think I’m after something.”

Tim met with his father a few times during the documentary trip to Ghana. “It was pretty awkward and stilted,” he recalls. “He’s a man who seems to be able to compartmentalise his life. His wife, as far as I know, to this day doesn’t know about me. We met a few times for a drink, but it was clear he didn’t want me around. He was determined to keep me away from his house and the rest of the family.”

The last time they spoke, or had any contact, was by text and an argumentative phone call over Christmas 2008. Now that his story is out in print, there could be a chance of reconnecting, but Tim isn’t going to hold his breath.

“I think a couple of them are on Facebook so I probably will message them to say, ‘Brace yourselves’,” he says with a smile.

So has Tim dealt with what must be deep disappointment, and made peace with the fact that any kind of relationship with his father and half-siblings looks unlikely?

Tim smiles and pauses before replying: “There are issues … in my quiet moments. I find myself thinking, ‘What if?’, or, ‘Will I try again?’

“It’s still a bit of an emotional maelstrom, but what can I do? Maybe they’ll read this and change their opinions.” He pauses again before continuing: “I guess it comes back to what a social worker warned me when I first started looking for my father. She said, ‘If you don’t want to hurt anyone, then turn around now and don’t do it. Someone always gets hurt’.”

Where Are You Really From? by Tim Brannigan is out now, published by Blackstaff Press, €13

– Ronan Lang

read the rest @ Irish Independent

re: emancipated slaves

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I posted this picture a couple of weeks ago, but just came across an article (found HERE) with details on those in the photograph.  Wow!
One Drop3.jpg

In honor of Confederate History Month, I present a group of emancipated Louisiana slaves. The following letter was written by Colonel George Hanks, who commanded a Union Corps composed entirely of black troops. Hanks was attempting to raise money for the education of freed slaves:

To the Editor of Harper’s Weekly:

The group of emancipated slaves whose portraits I send you were brought by Colonel Hanks and Mr. Phillip Bacon from New Orleans, where they were set free by General Butler. Mr. Bacon went to New Orleans with our army, and was for eighteen months employed as Assistant-Superintendent of Freedmen, under the care of Colonel Hanks. He established the first school in Louisiana for emancipated slaves, and these children were among his pupils. He will soon return to Louisiana to resume his labor.

Rebecca Huger is eleven years old, and was a slave in her father’s house, the special attendant of a girl a little older than herself. To all appearance she is perfectly white. Her complexion, hair, and features show not the slightest trace of negro blood. In the few months during which she has been at school she has learned to read well, and writes as neatly as most children of her age. Her mother and grandmother live in New Orleans, where they support themselves comfortably by their own labor. The grandmother, an intelligent mulatto, told Mr. Bacon that she had “raised” a large family of children, but these are all that are left to her.

Rosina Downs is not quite seven years old. She is a fair child, with blonde complexion and silky hair. Her father is in the rebel army. She has one sister as white as herself, and three brothers who are darker. Her mother, a bright mulatto, lives in New Orleans in a poor hut, and has hard work to support her family.

Charles Taylor is eight years old. His complexion is very fair, his hair light and silky. Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than he. Yet this white boy, with his mother, as he declares, has been twice sold as a slave. First by his father and “owner,” Alexander Wethers, of Lewis County, Virginia, to a slave-trader named Harrison, who sold them to Mr. Thornhill of New Orleans. This man fled at the approach of our army, and his slaves were liberated by General Butler.The boy is decidedly intelligent, and though he has been at school less than a year he reads and writes very well. His mother is a mulatto; she had one daughter sold into Texas before she herself left Virginia, and one son who, she supposes, is with his father in Virginia. These three children, to all appearance of unmixed white race, came to Philadelphia last December, and were taken by their protector, Mr. Bacon, to the St. Lawrence Hotel on Chestnut Street. Within a few hours, Mr. Bacon informed me, he was notified by the landlord that they must therefore be colored persons, and he kept a hotel for white people. From this hospitable establishment the children were taken to the “Continental,” where they were received without hesitation.

Wilson Chinn is about 60 years old, he was “raised” by Isaac Howard of Woodford County, Kentucky. When 21 years old he was taken down the river and sold to Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter about 45 miles above New Orleans. This man was accustomed to brand his negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters “V. B. M.” Of the 210 slaves on this plantation 105 left at one time and came into the Union camp. Thirty of them had been branded like cattle with a hot iron, four of them on the forehead, and the others on the breast or arm.

Augusta Boujey is nine years old. Her mother, who is almost white, was owned by her half-brother, named Solamon, who still retains two of her children.

Mary Johnson was cook in her master’s family in New Orleans. On her left arm are scars of three cuts given to her by her mistress with a rawhide. On her back are scars of more than fifty cuts given by her master. The occasion was that one morning she was half an hour behind time in bringing up his five o’clock cup of coffee. As the Union army approached she ran away from her master, and has since been employed by Colonel Hanks as cook.

Isaac White is a black boy of eight years; but none the less intelligent than his whiter companions. He has been in school about seven months, and I venture to say that not one boy in fifty would have made as much improvement in that space of time.

Robert Whitehead–the Reverend Mr. Whitehead perhaps we ought to style him, since he is a regularly-ordained preacher–was born in Baltimore. He was taken to Norfolk, Virginia, by a Dr. A. F. N. Cook, and sold for $1525; from Norfolk he was taken to New Orleans where he was bought for $1775 by a Dr. Leslie, who hired him out as house and ship painter. When he had earned and paid over that sum to his master, he suggested that a small present for himself would be quite appropriate. Dr. Leslie thought the request reasonable, and made him a donation of a whole quarter of a dollar. The reverend gentleman can read and write well, and is a very stirring speaker. Just now he belongs to the church militant, having enlisted in the United States army.

heterosis

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This strikes me as complete and utter bull****.  Excuse me, bologna is more appropriate for this forum.  I just don’t see how you can conduct a scientific study based on personal opinion.  Perceived attractiveness is not a science.  I have a theory that mixed race people have an interesting look, for lack of a better way to put it.  Since we are still a relatively small group, I think there’s something in a mixed race face that may make one take note.  A gaze may linger while a mind tries to process and perhaps dissect what it’s looking at.  And that probably prompts the occasional, “What are you?”  In my opinion, that does not equal more attractive, but I see how it could be misconstrued that way.

I also object to the antiquated notion of heterosis being used in this way- heck, in any way.  Cross-breeding!?  This leads me to believe that Dr. Lewis looks at race as more than a social construct.  I seriously disagree.

Lastly, the notion that because Halle Berry, Lewis Hamilton, and Barack Obama have risen to the top of their respective fields we are to infer that mixed race people are more successful on average makes my skin crawl.  More successful than whom?  Their black counterparts?  That must be what it means because I don’t think anyone can so easily forget the 40+ white presidents, 70+ white actresses, and I don’t know exactly how many (but most likely all) of the former Formula 1 champions that preceded these super-attractive, super-successful mulattoes.  UGH!  So glad I chose not to spend a semester at Cardiff!

Mixed-race people are ‘more attractive’ and more successful, results of a new study suggest.

The Cardiff University study involved rating 1,205 black, white, and mixed-race faces.

Each face was judged on its attractiveness, with mixed-race faces generally perceived as more attractive.

Author of the study, Dr Michael Lewis, also suggested mixed-race people were disproportionately successful in many professions.

The study based its hypothesis on Darwin’s notion of heterosis, the biological phenomenon that predicts that cross-breeding leads to offspring that are genetically fitter than their parents.

Dr Lewis said the phenomenon was mirrored in the results of his study.

“The results appear to confirm that people whose genetic backgrounds are more diverse are, on average, perceived as more attractive,” Dr Lewis said.

Yet there is reason to believe that mixed-race people may not just be more attractive, but more successful.

Dr Lewis said: “There is evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the impact of heterosis goes beyond just attractiveness.

“This comes from the observation that, although mixed-race people make up a small proportion of the population, they are over-represented at the top level of a number of meritocratic professions like acting with Halle Berry, Formula 1 racing with Lewis Hamilton – and, of course, politics with Barack Obama.”

Dr Lewis will present his findings to the British Psychological Society’s annual meeting on Wednesday.

SOURCE

offspring of a foreign race

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I have never before thought of mulattoes as victims of the Holocaust.  How ignorant of me.  I now imagine that some of the children fathered by black U.S. servicemen made up the group mentioned in this Delaware memorial.  So much history to uncover.

Interfaith Yom HaShoah service to
remember victims of the Holocaust

The third community interfaith worship service for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, will be at 4 p.m., Sunday, April 11, at Epworth United Methodist Church, 19285 Holland Glade Road, Rehoboth Beach.

For the past two years, clergy from six faith communities in the Lewes-Rehoboth area have joined to lead a worship service for the community that remembers the tragic events and honors the victims and heroes of the Holocaust.

Shoah is the Hebrew word for “whirlwind.” It is the term used to describe the Nazi firestorm between 1938 and 1945 that swept up 11 million souls – 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews including Poles, Rom Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, mulatto children, clergy and Germans who didn’t believe in the Nazi ideology.

Men and women, young and old alike, were butchered at the hands of the Nazis. Every year, on Yom HaShoah, people remember the martyrs who sanctified the name of God in the camps, ghettos and gas chambers.   Entire article

I looked into the situation further and came across this paragraph on studyofracialism.org:

African German mulatto children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military. With the Nazi rise to power they became a target of racial and population policy. By 1937, the Gestapo (German secret state police) had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many of them. Some were subjected to medical experiments; others mysteriously “disappeared.”

Here’s insight into Hitler’s had to say about us (found HERE):

MULATTO CHILDREN

Before World War 1 there weren’t very many Black people in Germany. During ww1, France brought Black soldiers in during France’s occupation of Germany. Since there were different colored people living in Germany, the Nazis forcibly sterilized offspring between black men and white women because it held back the campaign for the perfect race. Children that had a black father and a white mother were mulatto children because of their color. Mostly every German despised them and called them ugly names. Hitler wrote,” These mulatto children came through rape or their mother was a whore. In both cases there is not the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race.” This is what happened to children because of the color of their skin.

Black German girl 1930

Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between an “Aryan” and a black woman. The caption states: “The result! A loss of racial pride.” Germany, prewar.

smash the bnp

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I suppose this would be the British equivalent of someone registering me as a member of the KKK.

I looked around the internet to see if I could find any more about the following story.  The only other mention of it was found on stormfront.org, a white pride kinda site. So sad.

-What a load of pig droppings!
Most likely she signed up herself and only after a while noticed that there was a member’s list and now she regrets the decision and comes up with a fake “omg hackerz!!”-story

On the bright side: The woman is a prime example of what happens to White Intelligence when interbreeding with inferior breeds of “humans”.

-I reckon she joined the BNP hoping to get a free holiday to Africa.
It amaze me on how face book is taking so seriously with people. with kids killing them selves over been bullied on it and stuff.  Any way shouldn’t she be more traumatized finding out her dads a spear chucker.

Mixed race woman tells of her anger after computer hacker registered her as BNP member

by Matt Hurst, Birkenhead News

Maxine DeenA WOMAN of mixed race has told of her anger and upset after a computer hacker registered her as a BNP member.

Maxine Deen, whose father is African and her mother white British, says she hasn’t been able to eat or sleep since discovering the changes last week.

The 40-year-old told the News: “People have been ringing my family and saying, why has your daughter joined the BNP?”

She says the trauma has been so great that her youngest child, aged just ten, won’t go out anymore and her extended family feels deeply insulted.

Maxine, who has three children and lives in Tranmere, said: “Last week I wasn’t able to get on my email so my sister looked at my profile on Facebook and discovered the hacker has got me to join the BNP and given all my details out to everyone.

“I am not a member of the BNP, I’m from a black family and my children are black.”

To make matters worse, the BNP website lists her as a member, including her address.

The 40-year-old said: “It’s just made me feel really ill, I haven’t slept or eaten.”

A spokesperson for Merseyside Police said: “Merseyside Police is investigating an allegation of harassment made by a woman from Wirral through the social networking website Facebook.

“An officer has visited both parties involved.”

Maxine’s immediate family are committed Rastafarians, and she said: “I can’t put into words how they feel being exposed to the BNP.”


changing attitudes and understandings about race

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I thought I was over the Census, but my interest keeps getting piqued despite my best efforts to ignore the chatter.  What I’m most intrigued by at this moment is the notion that in the next decade or two, if we keep changing our attitudes and understandings for the better, a majority of Americans could come to view themselves as mixed race.  And by that I mean Americans who today consider themselves to be exclusively white or black despite the abstract knowledge that we are all mixed up to some extent.  And if that paradigm shift happens there won’t be much use in classifying ourselves in terms of “race” because we will see ourselves as generally more similar than different regardless of color/phenotype.  Although I respect Obama’s right (and that of every individual) to self-identify any way he chooses, I feel that the checking of just one box is holding us back from reaching that “promised land” where we aren’t so entrenched in these antiquated notions of race and color, but perhaps more interested in heart, spirit, intellect …. Once again I’m a bit speechless because I’m not sure what the world will look like when instinctively and instantly we take people for what the truly are instead of what they truly look like.

Rep. Patrick McHenry claims every census in history has asked for an individual’s race

SOURCE

In an op-ed piece for the conservative Web site Red State on April 1, 2010, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, the ranking Republican on the Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee, sought to tamp down some of the misinformation being spread about the census by “otherwise well-meaning conservatives” and warned that failing to fully participate in the census could create a competitive advantage for Democrats.

Specifically, McHenry attempted to allay the fear among some Republicans who distrust the government and view the census as overly prying.

…In his posting on Red State, McHenry said “the most private question on this year’s form asks for an individual’s race and that question has been asked by every census since the 1790 census conducted under then-President George Washington.”

We decided to check that claim out, which was similar to one from Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves in a March 15, 2010, press release: “It’s one of the shortest forms in our lifetime with just 10 questions very much like the questions James Madison and Thomas Jefferson helped craft on the very first Census.”

Conveniently, the U.S. Census Bureau keeps historical records online of all the questions asked in every census going back to the first one in 1790.

If you follow the census questions asked through U.S. history, you can see how they reflect changing attitudes and understandings about race.

Yes, the 1790 census and others in the early years of the survey addressed race, but it was hardly a matter of checking a box. Rather, the census asked about the number of free white males and females; the number of “all other free persons” and the number of slaves.

By 1850, the Census asked about people’s “color.” According to the Census archives, this column was to be left blank if a person was white, marked “B” if a person was black, and marked “M” if a person was mulatto. A separate form listed slave inhabitants, the last census to do so. By 1870, the “color” options included “W” for white, “B” for black, “M” for mulatto, “C” for Chinese (a category which included all Asians), or “I” for American Indian. The 1890 census added Japanese and more mixed-race categories — mulatto, quadroon and even octoroon, according to amounts of perceived African blood. By 1920 Filipino and Korean sprang up, along with the improbable racial term “Hindu.” New labels emerged after World War II, with Hawaiian, Eskimo and others joining the parade of terms.  The question morphed into “color or race” in the mid-1900s, and then, finally to just “race” in 1970. In 1980, in addition to race, the Census began asking if a person was of Spanish or Hispanic origin or descent.

It’s fair to say that every census has addressed the issue of race in some fashion. But we think it’s a bit of a stretch when McHenry says “this year’s asks for an individual’s race and that question has been asked by every census since the 1790 census.”

In the 1790 Census (and several after it), a respondent was not simply asked their race. Rather, they were asked to list the number of white people, the number of “other free persons” and the number of slaves. In other words, it didn’t ask for the race of non-whites. One could argue this reflects the common attitude about race at the time. But that’s hardly the same as the 2010 version that simply asks a person’s race.

Prior to the Civil War the census was more concerned with whether someone was enslaved or not, than establishing whether someone was white. This is a very different conception from our modern idea of race. Post Civil War, the terminology changed (from “color” to “race,” for example) and the categories expanded over time. Certainly these are different standards when compared to today’s measures. But again, one could argue that the questions comported with attitudes about race at those times, and the census has always asked discriptive questions that corrolate to race. So we rule McHenry’s claim Mostly True.

denying the rich history of america’s multiracial realities

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these are my sentiments exactly, jason haap!  i try so hard not to judge or be offended by anyones’ choice to self-identify as they choose, but…. come on obama!!  how will we ever move forward if the most recognized living ‘mulatto’ doesn’t think it matters that he is one?  how will we eradicate the vestiges of the one-drop rule, which implies that black blood is a pollutant, and that if your drop is visible you better forget about the rest and fall in line at the back with the other tainted ready to fight the good fight?  if we can’t get rid of that idea, then how will we get to the point where we see ourselves in everyone because we are indeed all mixed up and there is no inherent opposition.  i have a feeling that we as a human race could reach untold heights if we redirected the energy that we (perhaps unconsciously) spend on categorizing/demonizing/stereotyping/judging/comparing/othering toward a more inclusive, unified system of brotherly commune. like, no fighting, no distrust, no base-less fear. what!? i don’t even know how to say what i mean. maybe there’s not a word for it. yet.

Unfortunate message to our mixed-race children

by Jason Haap, an educator, citizen media activist, and father of two multiracial children

SOURCE

The “one drop” rule is alive and well for America’s multiracial children! Last week, President Obama gathered fanfare from national media. Despite the obvious existence of his white mother, he checked just one box on his census form regarding his racial identity: “Black, African Am., or Negro.” By ignoring the option of checking multiple boxes (or of writing in a word like “multiracial”), Obama sent an unfortunate message to America’s mixed-race children.

People may have the freedom to pick racial identities individually, but Obama’s public actions as president of the United States deny the rich history of America’s multiracial realities, hearkening back to a racist period that said one drop “black” makes a person “all black.”

I remember, a few months ago, playing with my kids at the Cincinnati Children’s Museum. I heard one boy point at my oldest son and call him “that black kid.” Certainly my children are more brown-skinned than me, but they are also more fair-skinned than their mother. That’s because I have multiracial children, and I think it’s too bad their racial identities are being formed by a backward-thinking American culture before they are even old enough to notice skin color might mean something in the first place.

Despite the mythologies some of us have been raised to believe, there is nothing “stronger” about black blood. It does not “take over” a baby’s genes if one parent is black and the other white. These ideas were promulgated by racists who wanted to scare white people into thinking their genes would be obliterated by the act of intermixing with blacks. But it’s just not true. It’s bunk science and even bunkier sociology.

When the Race exhibit came to the Cincinnati Museum Center, I learned how some cultures have radically different ways of articulating race – such as in Brazil, where dozens of descriptive terms are used instead of polarizing opposites like simply “white” or simply “black.” Instead of helping move our racial understandings into the 21st century, Obama’s public actions have placed us back into the old racist thinking of the one drop rule, and that’s a shame.