I've always found it interesting that when I was with my mother, people never asked her if I was adopted, while on a couple occasions people did ask my father that question. My father is white. My mother is Black. I'm in the middle, but all my aunts, uncles and cousins in both my father's and mother's families say I'm his spitting image.
So on the couple occasions that a stranger would say to my father, "Oh, what a handsome young boy, did you adopt?" I would cringe. I wanted to run for cover because they had lit a powder keg. Dad hated when people questioned my lineage. Aside from my curly hair and brown skin, we walked, talked, laughed and even joked in similar ways. I am simply a browner, curlier-haired version of him … "Paul Cole 2.0," if you will. Read Half-Black, Half-White: Obama's and My Identity for more on my being biracial.
My father's response was always more scolding than conversational. Rhetorically, he would ask why they thought I was adopted and challenge the person's implication that I was too Black to be his offspring. Embarrassed, they'd apologize and slink away. I beamed. My father loved me and that's all that mattered. I can say the same about my mother. Their love made me realize I am both of them.
Being mixed is an experience unique to each person who is the offspring of parents from different races. One mixed person might identify as being mixed, while another might identify as being one race or the other. But it seems to me that more than other mixtures, people who are both Black and white are forced to choose a side--or maybe the struggle of that mixture is more public. People want to know "What are you?" so they can put you in a box and identify your allegiance.
Racial allegiance also appears to be a uniquely American trait. In other countries I've visited, people identified first with their nationality and second with their race. But in America, as we can see with Barack Obama's campaign, first the public must know your race.
From the time Obama launched his campaign, he's been dogged about his racial allegiance. In the beginning of his campaign, political pundits and media polls revealed the Black community was not automatically enthralled by Obama and suggested he wasn't Black enough. Television news showed white men cheering him and white women crying when he spoke. But after a few primaries and caucuses, it became clear that Obama was receiving more support than his rivals from Black voters. Then his Black pastor Jeremiah Wright's remarks were released and now Obama is too Black. The uproar over Wright's comments forced Obama to explain race as it is seen from a mixed person's eyes. He is a product of both races and has become a product of both communities. He can understand the angst of both.
"Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person's racial appearance," Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white, told The New York Times.
The media's fixation on Obama's racial allegiance indicates old categories still exist. It is that old style of thinking that Obama's campaign is struggling to overcome.
"There's this notion that there's an authentic race and you must fit it," Jenifer Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families, told The New York Times. "We're confronted with the lack of fit."
The 2000 census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population, reports The New York Times.
The census also revealed that the mixed-race population is young. Forty-one percent of the mixed-race population was younger than 18, according to Census 2000. And the Mavin Foundation, a multiracial-advocacy group in Seattle, said that mixed-race people now find themselves better reflected in popular media, college courses, school brochures and in teacher training in public schools than they did in the past, reports The New York Times.
"When you're multiracial, you can be several things at the same time," Carmen Van Kerckhove, who runs a blog on race and popular culture, told The New York Times. She says that many people still wonder, "Are multiracial people trying to be multiracial as a way to escape racism?"
But Obama's candidacy is also revealing that simply being multiracial does not mean one can escape racism or prejudice. Obama is never considered white. Mostly he is referred to as possibly the first Black president, and secondly, a biracial person. That the media debates whether Obama is not Black enough or too Black rather than debating his policies and how they address the public's needs reveals that a person does not escape stereotypes just because he or she looks more white than the average Black person.
Because society forces mixed people to identify themselves as "either/or," many of us instead make a third choice and identify ourselves as "both" or "all." Multiracial is almost a new race. As people of one race often gravitate toward others of that race, multiracial people tend to gravitate toward other multiracial people and often surround themselves with an eclectic group of friends and associates. We feel more comfortable among many different people than we do with one group or the other. We see the possibilities created by shared efforts rather than seeing losses due to a zero-sum sociopolitical game.
I've seen that dynamic in my own life. I see that dynamic in the nation's growing multiracial community and I see it in Obama's campaign.
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