Be Honest - Do folks (white and black) see biracial people as black/white/neither (please explain)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I are both "biracial," as some people like to call it. We both consider ourselves black. Our kids definitely look racially "ambiguous" but we describe our family as black. This does not bother our non-white parents one bit. We don't have any angst or confusion about the issue (much like Obama, come to think of it), and it is who we are culturally. My kids are told by other kids all the time that they're "not really black." We teach them that this is not a compliment, that we define ourselves by who we are culturally, not by what others call us. Tiger Woods can call himself whatever the hell he wants, but if he wasn't a famous golfer he'd have the same trouble hailing a cab as any other brother. Actually, I find it amusing how whenever someone of mixed race becomes famous (for a good reason, like golf or being the President) white people rush to point out that they're not "fully black." Strange how I don't see them doing that with "biracial" brothers on the street. Bottom line: you can consider me and mine to be whatever you want; as far as we're concerned, we're black.

that is silly. you are not black (what does that even mean anyways?), you are a human being with one parent who has more european features and one parent with more african features. your attitude reminds me of the Jim Crow "one drop" rule. It is absurd. So if I have two AA grandparents I am "black", but just one and I am "not black". Can't wait until we get passed this nonsense and have a true colorblind society with no quotas, no affirmative action, no census labeling, no nothing. (To do that we need to encourage as much intermarriage as we can!)

WTF? Not the PP that you quote, but I think it's more "silly" that you would question someone else's self-defined racial/cultural identity.

What you're missing is the fact that there is an African-American culture that AA biracial people can and do proudly choose to identify with and participate in. Having black ancestors and identifying as black isn't shameful, or something to be "gotten passed" [sic].

of course, but the original PP is completely discounting a multi-racial or bi-racial culture, and only focusing on the AA side. Sounds to me like the "one drop" rule and that is absurd.

[Anonymous]

I disagree that it sounds like the "one drop rule" (which I agree is/was absurd). The one drop rule was used by the majority to define and exclude AAs, not by AAs to define ourselves.

I don't think anyone be so quick to judge someone who's, say, 1/8 Native American and chose to acknowledge their tribal affiliation. Or who didn't so choose. So why the scorn for a biracial AA family? Is it because it's less legitimate to want to be black? Because anyone who had a choice should choose not to identify as black? Now THAT'S a holdover from the one drop rule.

PP's family's cultural affinities are AA. Who knows why that's the case? Maybe because of their physical appearance? Maybe because of their upbringing (raised by AA single parents)? Impossible to tell, and IMO, improper to judge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I disagree that it sounds like the "one drop rule" (which I agree is/was absurd). The one drop rule was used by the majority to define and exclude AAs, not by AAs to define ourselves.

I don't think anyone be so quick to judge someone who's, say, 1/8 Native American and chose to acknowledge their tribal affiliation. Or who didn't so choose. So why the scorn for a biracial AA family? Is it because it's less legitimate to want to be black? Because anyone who had a choice should choose not to identify as black? Now THAT'S a holdover from the one drop rule.

PP's family's cultural affinities are AA. Who knows why that's the case? Maybe because of their physical appearance? Maybe because of their upbringing (raised by AA single parents)? Impossible to tell, and IMO, improper to judge.

based on the way the prior PP disparages Tiger Woods for acknowledging his Thai heritage as equal to his AA heritage, I think it pretty easy to judge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I generally see biracial kids as black. I'm 42. I think younger people (20s) are much more apt to say biracial. I don't mean anything bad by it. That's how things were, and how my biracial friends self-identified (then and now, actually). Having said that, I very rarely ever identify people by race or ethnicity unless it's somehow germane to the conversation. It just doesn't come up.

Just FYI- Biracial doesn't always mean black and white parents. My son is biracial with one white parent and one Hispanic parent. His friend at school is also biracial and has one Hispanic parent and one black parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I generally see biracial kids as black. I'm 42. I think younger people (20s) are much more apt to say biracial. I don't mean anything bad by it. That's how things were, and how my biracial friends self-identified (then and now, actually). Having said that, I very rarely ever identify people by race or ethnicity unless it's somehow germane to the conversation. It just doesn't come up.

Just FYI- Biracial doesn't always mean black and white parents. My son is biracial with one white parent and one Hispanic parent. His friend at school is also biracial and has one Hispanic parent and one black parent.

I was thinking the same thing. My children have one Asian parent and one White parent. We call our kids Hapa, it's Hawaiian for half, and a common term for those who are part Asian.

5/21/2011 - 1/2/2012
Race: Are We So Different? -
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
202.366.1000

[Anonymous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyd10ToV8k

[Anonymous]

I am white. And if I know that a person is biracial (sometimes you just never know) I really do not see them as white or black. I think they are all beautiful people and do not consider myself racist. But I really don't consider them truly one race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I disagree that it sounds like the "one drop rule" (which I agree is/was absurd). The one drop rule was used by the majority to define and exclude AAs, not by AAs to define ourselves.

I don't think anyone be so quick to judge someone who's, say, 1/8 Native American and chose to acknowledge their tribal affiliation. Or who didn't so choose. So why the scorn for a biracial AA family? Is it because it's less legitimate to want to be black? Because anyone who had a choice should choose not to identify as black? Now THAT'S a holdover from the one drop rule.

PP's family's cultural affinities are AA. Who knows why that's the case? Maybe because of their physical appearance? Maybe because of their upbringing (raised by AA single parents)? Impossible to tell, and IMO, improper to judge.

based on the way the prior PP disparages Tiger Woods for acknowledging his Thai heritage as equal to his AA heritage, I think it pretty easy to judge.

I completely agree. I have a bi-racial son (African American and Asian) and the biological fact is that he is neither just African American nor just Asian. If later on he chooses to identify with one culture over another then that is his choice but that certainly doesn't change the fact that he is bi-racial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyd10ToV8k

So the key to racial harmony is to mixed the races?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please say if you are black or white yourself.

I am black, my husband is white and we have a biracial son. I see him as black I guess because I see him the way I perceive society views him. I find this curious because I grew up in a predominantly black country where people like my son are viewed as white but having lived in the USA for 8 years I now see people like my son differently.

White. Haven't had time to read all the replies so this may have already been said. When I taught race and ethnicity courses, I discussed these issues with my students in order to get them to think about the social construction of race. When asked in the abstract, these nice young white middle class people always said they saw people with mixed heritage as biracial. But in reality, their behavior suggested to me that they saw such people as black. Of course these were young pretty unsophisticated folks who hadn't thought much about these things. But then that describes most of the United States.

FWIW, I brought up the kinds of examples you give, OP -- to show them that our thinking about race can change depending on where we live. Hopefully they left my class a little more self-reflective about these things.

For myself, I have to say that one thing I love about living in DC is that it challenges my perceptions. I have found myself in more than one situation wondering exactly what someone's race/ethnicity and/or family situation is and realizing that it doesn't really matter. That it's perfectly okay to go on wondering. And to never make assumptions about anybody's background. As well, I've learned that when I meet dd's friends I should never make assumptions about what race/ethnicity their parents are -- because it can be anything!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyd10ToV8k

So the key to racial harmony is to mixed the races?

makes sense to me

In a country filled with brown skin, there would be no boxes to check! How great would that be??

bottom line - Race isn't real . . . Humans are genetically 99% identical across the board.

Check out this site - http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm

We're different only b/c of culture/geography.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:kids of biracial couples are black. only because they have darker skin. races are dumb labels that have no basis in any science (not like we have different human breeds), but unfortunately minorities won't let the labels die in their neverending need to be victimized.

example - Obama is about as black as me: raised by white family and didnt really know his black dad, but everyone calls him "black".

Sounds like someone else has a neverending need to feel victimized, eh, pp?

[Anonymous]

"Obama is about as black as me: raised by white family and didnt really know his black dad, but everyone calls him "black"."

Good thing because if what his half bro says is true, his dad was an abuser. The Obama we know today might have been someone entirely different had he grown up in an abusive household. But then again, Clinton was also raised by an abusive father figure...

[Anonymous]

BTW if folks think this sounds like the Jim Crow rule (one drop of Black blood), that's because it is. At the time of the Civil War, we conventionally saw people of mixed black/white race as being various levels of mixture (a time when words like "quadroon," "octoroon," and "mulatto" were used. But the perspective shifted towards the Jim Crow view that one drop of AA blood made a person black. We still tend to think that way (lots of present company on this thread excepted) because that's the tradition in this country.

In other places (like the Carribean), as OP noted, her son might be seen as white (e.g., Virgin Islands) or as a mix such as mulatto. In South Africa, her son would be "colored" (racially mixed), not "black."

The difficulty in deciding who is black, white, and bi-racial based on biological heritage is that many AAs have white ancestry (and I've heard that maybe 20% of whites have a black ancestor) so technically they are multi-racial but that certainly isn't part of their identity or the way they are seen in their communities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyd10ToV8k

So the key to racial harmony is to mixed the races?

I think all the Sci-fi movies have it wrong. In the future I would expect us all to look Filipino.