drydem
12-12-2009, 08:41 AM
below is an excerpt on the trend of social acceptance
and the cultural impact of hapas/multiracial/multiethnic community
in the USA
Barack Obama's rise marks America's first multiracial decade.
Thomas Kelly. Blog from Wed Dec 9 2009
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_deca/ynews_deca_ts1001
highlighted - excerpts:
Nearby was another family—a white mother and a black father with their son and daughter. They were also arriving for their first day and the boy was around my age.
To my surprise, my mother turned to me and quietly told me she was worried for the children. We were living in a predominantly white suburb and she later explained to me that being black in our society was hard enough, but being half black, half white, was even harder. There was greater potential for rejection from both sides of the racial divide. Because of this, she wondered if entering a black-white relationship was always fair to the kids. In some ways, I understood my mother's reservations, but I was also astonished. The simple reason why is because I’m biracial too, half Asian and half white.
That was more than 25 years ago. Today, the multiracial American has become an undeniable fact of life in the 21st century. From the actress Jessica Alba to the trend-scriber Malcolm Gladwell to the Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno, many multiracial Americans have reached superstar status in the last decade. And the biggest phenomenon of them all is President Barack Obama.
....
I talked to one last person for this piece, my Japanese-American mother. She and my father now live in Hawaii, her home state. I asked her about that cold September morning a generation ago in Colorado. She remembers it slightly differently and had a decidedly more adult point of view. She has experienced racism many times and has talked to other interracial couples over the years.
“We would get stares sometimes when we went out to eat or strangers wouldn’t believe I was your mother,” she explains. “I met a white woman from Texas once who was married to a black man, and she told me that most of her white family had rejected her children, wanting nothing to do with them.” I asked her about what she had meant when she cautioned against the idea of interracial marriages. “Children can be cruel and society especially. What I was saying is those parents must be very brave. I also was saying that you have to give those children extraordinary love, you have to support them.”
Not surprisingly, she voted for Obama, and cried when he won. For me, as a biracial American, it was a profound experience watching him climb to the planet’s most powerful leadership role. He’s now a global American icon. I’m not sure interracial parents have to be as brave as before. And that's a good thing. But the nation as a whole still needs to be.
...
and the cultural impact of hapas/multiracial/multiethnic community
in the USA
Barack Obama's rise marks America's first multiracial decade.
Thomas Kelly. Blog from Wed Dec 9 2009
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_deca/ynews_deca_ts1001
highlighted - excerpts:
Nearby was another family—a white mother and a black father with their son and daughter. They were also arriving for their first day and the boy was around my age.
To my surprise, my mother turned to me and quietly told me she was worried for the children. We were living in a predominantly white suburb and she later explained to me that being black in our society was hard enough, but being half black, half white, was even harder. There was greater potential for rejection from both sides of the racial divide. Because of this, she wondered if entering a black-white relationship was always fair to the kids. In some ways, I understood my mother's reservations, but I was also astonished. The simple reason why is because I’m biracial too, half Asian and half white.
That was more than 25 years ago. Today, the multiracial American has become an undeniable fact of life in the 21st century. From the actress Jessica Alba to the trend-scriber Malcolm Gladwell to the Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno, many multiracial Americans have reached superstar status in the last decade. And the biggest phenomenon of them all is President Barack Obama.
....
I talked to one last person for this piece, my Japanese-American mother. She and my father now live in Hawaii, her home state. I asked her about that cold September morning a generation ago in Colorado. She remembers it slightly differently and had a decidedly more adult point of view. She has experienced racism many times and has talked to other interracial couples over the years.
“We would get stares sometimes when we went out to eat or strangers wouldn’t believe I was your mother,” she explains. “I met a white woman from Texas once who was married to a black man, and she told me that most of her white family had rejected her children, wanting nothing to do with them.” I asked her about what she had meant when she cautioned against the idea of interracial marriages. “Children can be cruel and society especially. What I was saying is those parents must be very brave. I also was saying that you have to give those children extraordinary love, you have to support them.”
Not surprisingly, she voted for Obama, and cried when he won. For me, as a biracial American, it was a profound experience watching him climb to the planet’s most powerful leadership role. He’s now a global American icon. I’m not sure interracial parents have to be as brave as before. And that's a good thing. But the nation as a whole still needs to be.
...