Being Biracial and Black in the Age of Obama

Cross

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

Langston Hughes

Growing up mixed is hard in America. There are no dolls, not too many heroes and no box to explain your identity on applications. As a child I was was called a zebra, half breed and a mutt. There are many stereotypes about being biracial, confused, mixed up the tragic mulatto. From a young child I was always forced to explain my ethnic make up. Are you Puerto Rican, Arab? What are you?

The term mulatto comes from the word mule. A mule is an ass, an animal bred from two separate species, a horse and a donkey, that cannot reproduce. Most biracials consider it an offensive term yet it is still freely used.

My father was a Jamaican immigrant who came to the US to study at MIT. My mother was a refugee from South Africa who came to MIT to study after she was deported for conspiring against the apartheid regime. Growing up it was hard to find a group to identify with. I was proud of my diverse heritage yet insecure about where I fit into society.

America's color coded racial identity system makes it hard for people of mixed race to choose a group to identify with. America is not like South Africa where people of mixed race were deemed colored and given separate social status under the law.

For years, biracials have been viewed as the bastard children of America, rejected by their white parents and accepted by black society. Biracials have always had a place in African American society while being cast from white society in the states. The same laws of slavery and Jim Crow applied to biracials as well as blacks. That is not to say that biracials were not given preferential treatment but they had the same status under the law.

It wasn't until I read Barack Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, in 2004, that I really thought about my identity as a both a biracial and as an African American. His tale of struggle for identity paralleled mine, embracing his white relatives and white heritage while clearly defining himself as a black man. As a book, Dreams From My Father was as influential as The Autobiography of Malcolm X in terms of determining my personal identity. No longer were my options of success becoming a successful rapper or comedian.

Barack Obama had taken his biracial identity and incorporated himself into the greater American identity and opened up the doors for biracials and blacks to determine their own place in society.

Obama's journey for identity led for him to believe that despite the fact his father was a foreign born African and that he was raised mostly by his white mother and family, he considers himself African American. Still Obama is part white. Historically being white was exclusive. If you had one drop of black blood, you couldn't be white. Being black has ben more inclusive, as the black community has accepted biracials immigrants and latinos into their greater struggle.

Top 10 Reasons Obama is Black

Being biracial is a gift and a curse. The curse is having to struggle with identity and placement in society. Barack Obama struggled with the curse of identity but showed how beautiful the gift of being able to relate and connect with people of all races in his historic campaign.

When Barack Obama was born, it was illegal in 16 states for blacks to mary whites. Today the product of a relationship between a black man and a white is the President of the United States.

If we were to give biracials a separate category from African Americans, we would have to take several pages out of black history. Several politicians, artists and writers who contributed to the struggle for African American human rights and dignity were of mixed race. If we were to take biracials out of black history it would be a disservice to both biracials and blacks.

Mutts Like US: A Gallery of Famous Biracials

When Barack Obama called himself a mutt at his first Presidential press conference, it was a self deprecating remark that reflected the new face of both biracials and America. The next time a mixed kid is called a mutt or half breed, he can say so is the President of the United States.

Barack Obama's historic rise to the Presidency is a victory for biracials, a victory for African Americans and a victory for Americans as a whole. Although his experience are distinctly unique, there are parts of Barack Obama that every American can directly connect with. Our President is black, he is also part white, he is biracial, he's an American. Get over it.

Comments

[BiracialMyrt]

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[papapj]

To RobXDion;

Inferiority complex, indeed...c­oming from someone who knows absolutely nothing about the Black experience outside these shores, and shows an obvious air of elitism and xenophobia when his knowledge gaps are made obvious it would behoove you to show some respect for those who obviously know more than you on certain issues and can sense the projection of an 'inferiority complex' when they see it.

Black people in the US come from all over the world, we pay our taxes and are just as patriotic.­..neither you nor I knew nothing of this planet before we were born apart from that which we have 'read in books', so the fact that you were born here is of little or no import.

Some of us know this, and aren't gonna roll over to the ignorance of a xenophobe no way, no how...not gonna happen, skipper...

[Einstein44]

God made people like a rainbow.

[victoriajubilee]

Seems like a lot of my fellow Jamaicans are on this blog. Hello there. Here is my piece : My mother's father was an Irish-Jamaican,my fathers mother was a light-complexion Jamaican from the parish of St Elizabeth--for non -jamaicans , St Elizabeth is a parish in jamaica inhabited by Irish,Engl­ish,Scotti­sh and Germans. A lot of mixed race people are from there,including Colin Powell's parents. When I was a child, I recalled being teased and called "mallata" [mullato] or "jaaman" [german] . It was very disturbing as a child. I did not like my red hair, I put black shoe polish in my hair to darken it, I tried to cover my arms---the hair was blond-- My eyes were light greenthat changed colour from time to time. I was teased by the kids and called " puss yi " cat eyes. My brother was called "porky" Older people would call us "backrah" [white people' Some parts of Jamaica in the deep rural areas,many children had never seen a light-skinned person all their lives,so they would run away when they saw you. Having said all this,Jamaica is perhaps the most racially tolerant places on earth--They have elected a Lebanese man as prime minister, the current speaker of the house of representatives is a chinese gentleman,we had a woman chinese mayor of kingston, several jews in the senate. We have over 100,000 East Indians in Jamaica,today all the people get along beautifully.

[papapj]

...E pluribus unum...


A so we do tings a Yard...

[apoyo]

I don't know how anyone wants to label President Obama but to me he is one very intelligent, handsome and humane man.

[vennibee]

To some extent it's about branding. The black-American brand is well-known world-wide with both its positive and negative connotations. The African brand (at the country and tribe level) is not well understood around the world. The biracial brand is basically non-existent. It cannot be branded (it's barely definable) because it's characteristics vary down to the individual level. That's why it makes no sense to talk about the plight of the biracial/m­ultiracial people at the national level. You are what you look like and identify with. Learn to like it or suffer by your lonesome. As an aside, the white-American brand has really taken a hit since the reign of GWB and now, even more, with the crash of the economy.

[noudidnt]

"As an aside, the white-American brand has really taken a hit since the reign of GWB and now, even more, with the crash of the economy."

This is the understatement of the year.

[Klimb]

If you are just using skin color to define where anybody comes from then, the everybody needs to travel around the world!!!

[Clavis]

I call what President Obama has "genetic perspective". In the same way that a team composed of people from diverse backgrounds gives the team an increased perspective that is both healthy and productive of innovation and beauty, when an individual has ancestry from many places around the globe, that individual is, in and of themselves, the result of a much wider scope of past struggle and perseverance. They literally are better equipped to handle the myriad of obstacles that will confront them, from genetic predelictions to environmental trauma to social imbroglia.

So, to me, genetic perspective can only be a good thing. I wish there were more of it. I am mostly Ukranian and Polish, but I suspect that there is Mongol blood in my history (or whatever hordes periodically swept through the region of my ancestry), and I thrill at the notion. There is nothing in me that recoils at the notion of my family tree having a deeper and stronger root structure. How could there be? It's only me.

[Benton]

There are millions more "blacks" who are much less African then the typical child of a "black" person and a "white" person. Confusion results when those 'blacks" want to be recongized as something other than "black" because historically "black" has been propagandized into degradation as a justification for the brutal treatment of Africans. "Black" is a new concept as "blacks" were Ibos, Hausas, Fulanis etc.

[wakeup804]

I am a multiracial person, and I remember one evening being in a club in Atlantic City and this guy kept asking me my nationality. I responded American. That wasn't good enough for him, over the next hour or two, to the point of him becoming beligerent, my response of American, simply wasn't good enough for him. Now had he asked my my ethnicity, I might have told him, but my nationality is American.

[dadumdee]

Mighty Casey,

as a bi-racial Black man, I feel what you are saying, and I'd like to offer my personal insights. The terms black & white started as adjectives and grew in to proper nouns that name amorphous cultures. This needs recognized and discussed. The cultural component standouts for me because physically I am the product of a white looking man and black looking woman. Culturally I am the product of an Irish man and a Black woman. Futhermore, although born in Ireland and being Irish and American by citizenry, I was raised by my Black mother in the Black community and I am Black by culture. A lot of our racial problems come from not addressing Black/White being proper nouns and not defining each respective culture proactively and positively. The latter is especially problematic because it allows Black and White to both be defined (caricatured?) by the most visible problematic aspects of each culture instead of the proper shared fundamentals of each culture.

[PoliticJunkie]

I really wish I could stop seeing race but its so very hard when every black person I see or meet feels compelled to talk about their race. At what point will ethnocentric agendas be seen as unnacceptable ACROSS THE BOARD? This is certainly not the case today as black culture still frames the struggle as white vs. non-white (unless they want to get into someone's wallets or pants) instead of focusing on more substantive differentiating features (ideology, class and such).

[Jina Gaines]

PoliticJunkie -
You're not supposed to "stop seeing race." Why should you? It's there and it's real. I think people that say things like "I don't see color" are being naive. Instead, we should recognize our differences, work to understand them, accept that there is value in diversity and then seek out our common ground. I also believe that being able to "ignore" race is a priviledge of being white. Personally, I'm a step beyond bi-racial (with 4 grandparents each representing a distinctly different ethnic group) and some of what Casey said resonated with me... I'm less than half black, yet our societal standards define me as a black woman. This has shaped my personal identity because I share the social experiences of other black women in America. While my "blackness" is not the sum total of who I am, it is nonetheless my reality when I interact with the rest of the world. If you think it doesn't matter, ask me about my experiences with college recruiters, job interviews and my ex's parents...

[PoliticJunkie]

Of course you see it but that doesn't mean it has to have any value judgement whatsoever. This is not the current situation however and is something that must be strived for. When you say that ignoring race is a privilege of being white, I respectfully disagree. I've also dealt with racial insults and stereotyping most of my life. The idea that I'm privileged in this respect is just one of them along with the ideas that I'm rich (I never have been) and must be put down since I my race has already granted me so much societal slack (it hasn't). I'm sorry that you have been hurt by racism but please don't assume that it has to be that way. I'm not a big dater but I have dated a black girl and race was never a barrier in the relationship. It was our individual differences that ultimately split us apart not the racial component. BTW making race more visible is a reciprocal spiral. I think the best solution is to ignore it except where cases of racism apply.

[cdub1991]

"(unless they want to get into someone's wallets or pants)"
----------­----------­----------­----------
That parenthetical pretty much invalidates any attempt you might make to argue that you are striving for a post-racial world. It's still foremost in your thoughts, isn't it? The welfare mother after your paycheck. The big-black-bucks after your women. And yet you really probably don't see that you are the problem. That you are the reason that the conversation about race is not yet done. I'm an optimist; I believe that day will eventually come. It won't happen, however, until people like you recognize that you are--in fact--the bad guy in all of this.

[djwfutbol]

I took it to mean "sell me something" or "romance me". What did you think?

[PoliticJunkie]

The "welfare mother" and the "big black buck" were not components of my statement but thanks for proving my point by interjecting YOUR stereotypes onto me. Does throwing around unjustified accusations make you the good guy or just another Joe McCarthy?

BTW in the interest of accuracy (in my experience) I should have put "almost" before the words every black person. Also note that sometimes there are legitimate reasons to bring up race. That said I stand by the main points of my comment.

[Johansson]

Being smart or stupid is not in the skin of course and thus of no consequence but just one thing, is any American so-called black really of pure African ancestry?

[Nommo]

The point of your question being...?

[Jamchinadian]

1) That's impossible to answer and you should know that.

2) In all likelihood most are and you should know that as well.

[papapj]

Everybody is of African ancestry..­..

[skippypicasso]

I care how you self-identify as much as you care how I self-identify.

[vennibee]

As a light-skinned New Orleanian living in France, I find myself lamenting over the fact that I look (in any way) other-than black. I feel like an invisible person when others percieve me as an "other" sans the beauty of my ethnic and cultural identity. I wish I could wear a sign on me so that there was no mistake abut it. I love being identified as an black-American. Ethnically, t's my birthright. And culturally, I've earned it!

[vennibee]

Funny. You rarely hear white-looking Americans going around trying to reconcile thier cultural/ethnic heritage with the black-American community because there was a black grandparent in their family tree. In most cases, they try to supress it.