{"id":11277,"date":"2011-01-06T02:19:47","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T02:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=11277"},"modified":"2014-07-30T22:06:09","modified_gmt":"2014-07-30T22:06:09","slug":"passage-to-identity-is-still-a-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=11277","title":{"rendered":"Passage to identity is still a struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passage to identity is still a struggle<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kansas City Star<\/a>
\n2010-12-17<\/p>\n

Commentary by: Jene\u00e9 Osterheldt<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always known I wasn\u2019t white like my mama. Even as a little girl, I could feel adults stare as we passed by.<\/p>\n

I was different. But was I black like my daddy? It took me much of my young life to figure that out.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, we took the census. The hardest of the 10 questions revolved around racial identity.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama<\/a>, born to a white mother and a black father from Africa, checked one box: Black, African Am. or Negro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I checked it, too. But I also marked the ones next to white and Native American. The president and I are both mixed.<\/p>\n

So, who chose the right answer?<\/p>\n

More and more black-and-white mixed Americans are \u201cpassing<\/a>\u201d for black, according to a recent study in the current issue of Social Psychology Quarterly<\/a><\/em>, titled \u201cPassing as Black: Racial Identity Work Among Biracial Americans<\/a>.\u201d That\u2019s a reverse form of what biracial and fair-skinned blacks did in the Jim Crow<\/a> era, when they denied their race altogether.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s claptrap. Yes, Obama is mixed, but he\u2019s also black. It\u2019s possible to be both. How can people \u201cpass\u201d for something they already are?..<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the commentary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passage to identity is still a struggle Kansas City Star 2010-12-17 Commentary by: Jene\u00e9 Osterheldt I\u2019ve always known I wasn\u2019t white like my mama. Even as a little girl, I could feel adults stare as we passed by. I was different. But was I black like my daddy? It took me much of my young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,125,8,6462,394,20],"tags":[3529,5058,5059,352,3045],"class_list":["post-11277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-cathryn-johnson","tag-jenee-osterheldt","tag-kansas-city-star","tag-nikki-khanna","tag-nikki-khanna-sherwin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}