Reply to Racial issues in DCPS for mixed race kids

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As this thread has demonstrated, this can be a sensitive issue.  A lot of the sensitivity among African Americans comes from their particular history, in which those mixed race blacks who were able to "pass" for white did so to escape racism and oppression.  Sometimes these individuals were seen as simply trying to get by and have a better life and more opportunities. Others effectively crossed over into white society and never looked back, and cut off their black relatives.  I think this is where the resentment comes from historically--the denial, in some cases, of one's black ancestry in an attempt to be accepted in white society during the Jim Crow era.

Take this reporter, for instance, in a relatively recent instance of "passing"--he left New Orleans and moved to Greenwich Village, and ceased contact w/his black/Creole relatives.  He married a white woman, and only right before he died did his daughter find out his "secret" (i.e., that he was part black).  I read his daughter's account of how she then reached out to her black/Creole relatives, whom she previously didn't know existed.  Really quite interesting.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_Broyard

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Forgot to mention Philip Roth's "The Human Stain" and Danzy Senna's "Caucasia" as fictional accounts that wrestle with passing and related issues.[/quote]

I'd add to that the movie, "Skin," based on the true story of a dark-skinned child of white parents in South Africa.  Interesting perspective from another culture with its own brand of racism.  [/quote]

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