Please confirm she's not alone every day. My mixed BuJews who have a dad who is conflicted about his heritage have taught me that much.
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
What we call race aka color is an evolutionary fit human pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at different altitudes and latitudes primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations in ecologically isolated human populations over time and space.
What we call race aka ethnicity aka national origin is an evil malign socioeconomic, political, educational, demographic and historical white supremacist European American Judeo-Christian bigoted prejudiced myth meant to legally and morally justify humanity denying black African American enslavement and equality defying separate and unequal black African American Jim Crow.
While race is a social ' science' myth, racism is a living and lived reality.
See ' The Race Myth: Why We Pretend That Race Exists in America' Joseph L Graves; ' Watson Decoded' American Masters PBS.
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We can sympathize with Mr. Majors. In this word, "people of color" are now a given--even in the pages of The New York Times. This hard-left Orwellian language serves a political purpose--herd the peasants into groups, which are easier to rule, discipline and (occasionally) reward.
But then the convenience gives way to reality--just what the heck IS "color," anyway. Didn't we go through the tumultuous '60s to achieve "character, not color of skin"? The martyrs to the just cause of "desegregation" rest uneasy in their graves--all those "proud" kids who are re-segregating, into narrower and narrower tribes, colors, clans, nicely indoctrinated in the politics of the education bureaucracy--choose sides kids! Get in your group! Obey!
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A lot of Black people aren't easily labeled. Uh, what's your point?
The Africans who made the Trans-Atlantic trip in chains to the America's, the DNA of others more often than not were forced into the blood streams of African women.
I don't know many African-Americans families were one doesn't see the gamut of eye color, skin tones, hair texture, and phenotypical features. In my families instances my paternal grandmother was conceived by rape of the plantation owner son and my maternal grandfather father was the son of the plantation owner.
My mother told me the story of sitting in a doctor office holding her first born as a German couple discussing (in German) brown parents with the white baby. My two brothers look like white man, they look like our mother's father.
The NAACP (mid-80's) took up my brothers case, accusing the Army of discrimination. He was a doctor at a veterans hospital in Mississippi. When my brother was hired they assumed he was white until, he brought his black wife to office Christmas Party. All heck broke loss, evaluations went from excellent too poor, verbal harassment, ropes appeared, and he had to fight.
Most black folks are "bi-racial". What's your point?
A White Supremacist has been elected to the Presidency again, Trump's government is doing a lot of labeling. Racial identity on a sheet of paper negates, bigger issues.
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i had two nephews (brothers) living with me for several years. one was very white the other mixed race. when it came time to enroll the mixed race kid in school, i was told i should register him as "black" and then he would get remedial classes and minority benefits... he was starting kindergarten for heaven's sake. i told them i refused to register him as any race. he was exactly as much "white" as he was "black"... he could already read a bit, knew his numbers, and was clever in every way. i didn't want him pigeon holed at such a young age. why do we have to label our children from the outset? he's an adult now and i think he identifies as black, because the schools and society around him in the place he lives in now identify him that way. i hope whatever he picks or doesn't pick at all makes him happy and feel like he "belongs".
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We are humans. That should be the answer when we are asked about race.
Many years ago I was sitting in new employee orientation with a woman who was having a difficult time deciding how to answer the “race” question. She told me she was of Asian, African American and Native American ancestries. This was in the days when this question was in most employment applications. We talked about it a bit and I said how about “human”.
We both put that down. I would see her every so often and we would have a laugh. I still put answer “human” when asked the race question.
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I'm a 46-year old biracial woman married to a very fair-skinned Irish-American man. I always fervently identified as bi-racial, even though I was constantly pressured to define as black because 'that's how the world sees you'. My daughter has blonde hair and her father's beautiful blue eyes...she looks 100% white. So how does SHE define herself? What do we call it? Do we harken back to slavery terms like 'quadroon'? Since she looks white, does she claim that identiy? I bring this up to point out how difficult it is to try and 'define' race in our increasingly mixed-race world. Her identity will be shaped by a family that includes a 'Papa' born in the Jim Crow south, a 'Nana' descended from the first settlers of Boston, a mixed-race aunt married to a Polish-American woman, and a Grandmother born in Ireland. She is uniquely herself and a product of every part of her background. I'm not sure that needs to be labeled or defined.
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@MidwestMiss -- such an interesting and relatable comment. I am exactly 50-50 Asian/white and the father to my children was white (Germanic/Nordic in appearance.) My two elder children seem to have ID'ed themselves opposite of looks. One, who is black-haired and dark-eyed and thought at a glance to be Asian or Latino says he is "white" on forms. The blue-eyed, pink-cheeked one ID's as multiracial and is pretty invested in his Asian identity.
They're just a couple of years apart in age so I lightheartedly chatted with them about this recently. They didn't have any super political or principled reasons for any of it. It's just what they feel in their hearts/guts. My kids have grandparents with origins as varied (in different ways, obviously) as the ones you listed for your daughter.
I myself, after a childhood of "what ARE you" comments and whispers, refuse to identify as any race. I'm just plain tired of it. However, I am fine with whatever my children enter on demographic forms unless they mark something that is patently false and misleading (like black or American Indian) since that would be fraudulent.
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I am white and so is my husband. I was extremely blonde as a child and my hair has darkened over the years (this is very common). My husband has dark brown hair. When my very blonde daughter was little, a woman actually swam over to us in a lake and interrogated us about whether she was actually our daughter because of the blonde hair and when we said yes, she asked pointedly if she was the daughter of both of us. I should have told her the mailman was blond! So even white people can face these strange questions sometimes.
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Glad for this writer. It took me until my late 30's to understand how society was pushing me to claim one or the other of my two racial backgrounds, or say I was somehow both of them. It was a relief to claim "biracial" as its own legitimate identity that is neither of those things.
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Kids have a need to identify with a sub-group as they investigate identity. However they can enlarge their view to encompass all if the adults in their lives are sensible. As a psyc undergrad in the ‘70s, I read that ONE human race is a fact. All human gene pools overlap 100 per cent and simply have frequency differences.
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Why can’t we just be Earthians, which we all are (to the best of my knowledge), not self-agonize about scientifically very minor differences, and wait for society to catch up?
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@Matt Polsky
All of us should have been "Earthians" in 1619 and perhaps earlier. That didn't happen and there is a good deal of misery and trauma that remains unresolved today. Sorry, you cannot unring that bell by asking everyone to just get over it.
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We'll never all be Americans and be Equal if we continue to demand everyone identify each and everyone by individual Race, Creed, Sex, Sexual Preference, Party, Etc.
Perhaps the child is full of wisdom. Perhaps the younger generations are learning new biases, discriminations, and racisms.
Too bad most of us cannot just be Americans, much less Humans.
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I am an African-American male married to a White woman with two bi-racial children. Since the kids were little, I have told them: Others will try to define you as Black, but you are half-White. You will have to decide who you are. Don’t let Others decide it for you. Just as important, you do not have to choose. Why are we always so focused on tribalism?
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@A Scarsdalian Because this is America, a truly color-blind society. We see everything only in black and white.
A college friend way back in the 50’s had it right. The space for “Race” she filled with “Human,”. The space for “Religion” she filled with “None of your business.” Everywhere we turn, data is gathered. Usually for profit. I haven’t seen any advantage from filling out ethnicity questions. I would like them to define the terms “race” and “ethnicity.” Bet they can’t.
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Sadly, appearances are what people judge, regardless of racial background. My husband and I are both brown-skinned Black folks with some European admixture (like most in this hemisphere). We have precious boy-girl toddler twins-our daughter who has deep brown eyes, curly-kinky black hair and brown skin, and our son who has light beige skin, curlier brown hair, and hazel eyes (which were bluish grey at birth). In the 20 months since their birth, some of the reactions I’ve gotten from people have been strange, including subtle questioning of his/their parentage, and the comment from one nurse, “it’s a good thing he’s a twin, otherwise people would wonder!” (about his paternity). I already know that I will have to speak to my children about race sooner rather than later. Note that none of this pressure comes from my husband and I, who are not responsible for our genes or for the wonderful, unique phenotypes of our children. It’s that this society is obsessed with race, color, and categorizing people on the basis of it. Like many, I keep hoping one day things will be better, but so far not yet.
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@Sunflower
We have a large, extended rainbow family from several continents, resulting from marriage and adoption. I assure you that my lily white cousins and their lily white children get some of the same treatment based on appearance (skeptical glances at the toddler in the stroller and the unasked question—are you sure *he’s* the father?). It’s been a staple of novels and soap operas for years. (My favorite is “All the King’s Men.”)
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@Sunflower
There is noting unique about "this society". Every group on the planet from time immemorial has devised and continues to devise methods of identifying insiders and outsiders, embracing those it considers its own tribal members, and despising -- even unto death -- those outside the tribe. The human mammal just has more ingenious ways of determining and rewarding or punishing in-group and out-group statuses than the other mammals. I am neither hopeful nor despairing of the prospect that this will change.
Keep in mind that what does distinguish us from the other mammals is not the capacity for abstraction and seeming capacity to choose, but rather, the capacity and willingness to destroy the place in which we all live.
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@Sunflower
Make sure you get a copy of National Geographic’s issue on race from 2018. The cover features a pair of young teenage twins (girls), children of a British mother and Jamaican-British father. One shares her father’s phenotype closely and the other her mother’s. They report that they and their friends find the comparison in their appearances interesting and fun.
I’m keeping the magazine for my granddaughters, one of whom favors her mother’s Chinese features and the other her father’s African-European coloring. I hope they will grow up in a world where they can continue to find their differences interesting and valuable.
3
This right here is the story of my life. I am black man, I live in Africa. Because of globalization, history, an interesting childhood and other factors I have amassed through the years a complex fractured identity. For me it makes sense, I am happy being me and being this way. The problem with that is that I don't really belong in any group, any group I might find myself in I quickly discover I have other attributes that exclude me from being a full part of that group. As a result, I have complex view of things, although I feel free to be anywhere, I also find myself crushingly alone sometimes.
Like I suggested, it has ceased to all mater to me. I think of race, culture etc. when it is relevant(like when I know it could be used to discriminate against me in a situation) but for the most part I don't bother because such categories have done me no good in the past. I am happier here in the in-between.
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This is an amazing piece. It allows me to reflect on my own life and circumstances. I can't wait for your book!
6
"I read aloud the title: “The Hate U Give.” For the next half-hour, her head bobbed and her brightly colored nails wagged in my face as she told me the novel’s account of a mixed-race girl caught between a white world at school and her black family at home."
I don't know what it's like to be a mixed race man raising a teen girl figuring out her racial identity. But as a black woman the description of the daughter's head bobbing and nails wagging evokes an unsettling caricature of the black girl with an attitude problem. Also, The Hate U Give is not about a mixed-raced girl torn between her white school and black home. I would have liked to see the author express more empathy for his daughter's attempts to grasp a cultural identity and also a more accurate description of a recent and immensely popular novel.
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@J
Thanks to the writer's command of the language, I, too, received a strong impression of his daughter giving him a tongue lashing. Although as the parent of a now adult mixed-race daughter, I got a warm and loving sense of this father's encounter with his child. Nothing caricature about it.
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@MES
Thank you. Well said.
1
@J I hear you. I hadn't gotten that impression. A mom of a middle schooler and high schooler, I thought it characterized that age well, but I can see how you felt otherwise.
1
Can’t wait for your book. A real mirror of our times. Your daughters sound wonderful! High school never changes. Hopefully the real world will prove far different for them and everyone.
5
Thank you for a thoughtful essay. For me it’s not a racial issue, but I realized that I prefer living in between. It took me a long time though!
11
One thing is very clear: you have a daughter who is wonderfully reflective and aware.... even if she puts you on the spot. You can't change the Junior High lunch room hierarchies, but you can provide her with the support she needs to accept herself and transcend it.
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