Mixed Race Studies

‘Blind Spots’ and Other Problems in Globally Blended Families

The Wall Street Journal
2016-08-31

Tracy Slater

When the parents are in the majority and the kids are in the minority

Perhaps your child, like my two-year-old, and many other children in globally blended families, belongs to the world’s growing mixed-ethnicity population. The World Factbook finds a percentage of mixed-ethnicity people in almost a quarter of its 236 countries and territories. Among western nations, the U.K.’s and the U.S.’s mixed-race populations are increasing faster than any other minority group.

Mixed-ethnicity children often face very different experiences to their parents, a point stressed by many studies tracking this population’s growth, but within multinational families, there is another dimension: My daughter may be mixed, but she has two biological parents without much clue about what it feels like to be a minority as a kid. I’m a Jewish-American, raised with all the cultural privileges afforded to whites in the U.S., her father is native Japanese, and we live in Japan.

As a woman in a multicultural, multinational, and multiracial couple, I’ve sensed how some people assume I must be uniquely open to cultural differences, and thus uniquely equipped to raise a mixed child. But this assumption betrays a flawed logic. Globe-trotting parents in mixed marriages who grew up in the majority may be aware of racism and may even have faced it themselves, but most still lack a deeper understanding of racism during a child’s formative years…

Read the entire article here.

Jones: Kaepernick, Lochte cases are as different as black and white

The Philadelphia Inquirer
2016-08-30

Solomon Jones

SAN FRANCISCO 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits down during the national anthem to protest America’s treatment of people of color, and he is accused of being a traitor to his country.

Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is facing criminal charges in Brazil for falsely reporting he was robbed at gunpoint, and, while he lost several endorsements as a result, he ultimately was rewarded with a stint on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”

Both men are accomplished athletes. Kaepernick appeared in Super Bowl XLVII. Lochte is a 12-time Olympic medalist.

But Lochte is white, Kaepernick is black, and when black men stand up against American oppression, the fears of the white establishment arise. Fears that a single man seated on a bench is the forerunner to violent rebellion; that an athlete with the gall to think for himself is a danger to the order of things…

Read the entire article here.

Rodney Harrison sorry for saying Colin Kaepernick is ‘not black’

ESPN
2016-08-29

Former NFL player and current NBC analyst Rodney Harrison has apologized on Twitter after criticizing Colin Kaepernick and his refusal to stand for the national anthem while suggesting that the San Francisco 49ers quarterback is not black and doesn’t truly understand racism.

In an interview with iHeartRadio, Harrison said Tuesday that Kaepernick has the right to stand for what he believes, but he “has to understand there might be consequences and might be backlash to what he’s saying.”

“I tell you this, I’m a black man. And Colin Kaepernick — he’s not black,” Harrison said. “He cannot understand what I face and what other young black men and black people face, or people of color face, on an every single [day] basis. When you walk in a grocery store, and you might have $2,000 or $3,000 in your pocket and you go up into a Foot Locker and they’re looking at you like you about to steal something.

“You know, I don’t think he faces those type of things that we face on a daily basis.”

Kaepernick, the biological child of a white mother and black father, was adopted and raised by white parents. He has been outspoken on his Twitter account on civil rights issues and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Harrison took to Twitter later Tuesday to apologize for the remarks, saying he “never even knew [Kaepernick] was mixed.”…

Read the entire article here.