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Bi-racial, strike that, fractional black folks have been around since the first slave master slipped out of the big house and into the slave quarters but not until the election of Barack Obama did many white folks consider them anything but black?
Hell, Sally Hennings, Thomas Jefferson's paramour wasn't biracial she was black. Homer Plessy of Plessy v Ferguson was 7/8 white, Supreme Court didn't call him bi-racial! As white looking as my grandmother wasn't treated as anything but black until the day she died. Now suddenly after eons of considering any person with one drop of black blood as being nothing more than a Negro, along comes Barack Obama and despite his insistence that he is as black as the next brother, some white folks insist, after all these years, that he isn't black at all, but instead bi-racial.
Now at another juncture in our collective American history I might have considered this to be progress of some sort, but this sudden acceptance, or more to the point, insistence that Obama ain't black after all, is more than a bit puzzling to this causal observer.
Maybe someone can help me understand this newly found racial enlightenment (pun intended).
Want to hear a real reason to complain, talk to my son. He is half Filipino half American and is always filling out forms for school. Get down to the question of race and you get to pick one, none of them have mixed or other as an option. He hates it, feels like he is betraying one of his parents no matter what he selects.
After Obama was elected and they call him the first black president I turned to my son and told him, there you go, pick Asian. If he is mixed and gets to pick the minority status then you get to pick the minority status as well!
My guess is that most white people just haven't thought about it much. Groups of people who aren't like "you" seem very homogenous (Sp?). It's usually only when you get to know individuals that you start to think of them as individuals. Now, millions of white people who have had very little personal contact with black people have had months to ponder the fact that black men sometimes immigrate from Africa and marry white women from Kansas. And lo and behold! Their offspring are biracial.
I'm as guilty of it as anyone, I suppose. I have nieces who are biracial and I know that their mom is white and their dad is black. I don't think of them as my "black nieces," or my "biracial nieces," but just as Niece 1 and Niece 2. But if I talk to a black person I don't know, I don't tend to contemplate their racial background very much. If I were to describe them, I'd just say "black."
After Obama was elected and they call him the first black president I turned to my son and told him, there you go, pick Asian. If he is mixed and gets to pick the minority status then you get to pick the minority status as well!
I would have explained to him, as I explained to my "bi-racial" African American daughter that if she ever gets in trouble or is suspected of being in trouble the folks being asked for a description aren't going to be picking bi-racial.
This actually took place very early on when she was 5 or 6 and she came home for day care and stated that she didn't want to be brown like daddy any more she wanted to be pink like mommy. I informed her that there were a lot of things in life she could be, but pink wasn't one of them. We never had to have that conversation again.
I'm as guilty of it as anyone, I suppose. I have nieces who are biracial and I know that their mom is white and their dad is black. I don't think of them as my "black nieces," or my "biracial nieces," but just as Niece 1 and Niece 2. But if I talk to a black person I don't know, I don't tend to contemplate their racial background very much. If I were to describe them, I'd just say "black."
No problem. I was in Romania and my interpreter describe a building as being gothic revival, she later admitted that it really wasn't but that everything needed a name.
As for nieces, I have one Vietnamese, and one Chinese. On one level they are niece older and niece younger, but on another I look at them as my Vietnamese and Chinese nieces just as I look at my oldest and favorite niece as oldest and favorite niece who is a lesbian. Personally I revel in the fact that my extended family as a celebration of diversity.
But then again, I'm one of those Looney Leftist™.
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