{"id":13601,"date":"2011-05-03T00:40:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T00:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13601"},"modified":"2014-09-14T20:54:11","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T20:54:11","slug":"multiracal-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13601","title":{"rendered":"Multiracal In America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ebonyjet.com\/CurrentIssue\/May2011_Multiracial.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Multiracal In America<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebonyjet.com\" target=\"_blank\">Ebony Magazine<\/a><br \/>\nMay 2011<\/p>\n<p><strong>Adam Serwer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>In The Mix: Being Biracial in America<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">President Barack Obama<\/a> checked \u201cBlack\u201d on his census form last April, it was an actual news story. The Associated Press subhed [sub-headline] was lined with implicit anguish: \u201cPresident Ticks One Box Concerning Racial Heritage on U.S. Census Form, Despite Mixed Heritage.\u201d For some, it was a grand betrayal by the candidate who had run ads highlighting the fact that he had been raised by his White grandparents, the candidate who falsely presented himself as a living avatar of American racial progress.<\/p>\n<p>The president, a self-identified \u201cmutt,\u201d could have chosen any number of options. He could have checked White and Black, as I have every year I\u2019ve been old enough to fill out the census form myself.\u00a0 But Obama had made his own reasoning clear in 2007 when <em>60 Minutes\u2019<\/em> Steve Kroft asked him how he had decided he was Black. The president had a simple answer. \u201cWell, I\u2019m not sure I decided it. I think if you look African-American in this society, you\u2019re treated as an African-American.\u201d Put another way, <strong>there\u2019s nothing contradictory about being biracial and being Black. Since there have been Black people on American soil, the children of Black and White parents have always been seen as Black. It\u2019s only in the past few years that we\u2019ve even begun to ask the question and that people of biracial parentage have begun giving different answers.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Even in 2010, biracial people are treated as a novelty or a contradiction. My parents pointedly did not raise me as one or the other.\u00a0 I never found anything odd about being given children\u2019s biographies of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Malcolm_X\" target=\"_blank\">Malcolm X<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Muhammad_Ali\" target=\"_blank\">Muhammad Ali<\/a> as Hanukkah presents. But interracial relationships are hardly novel. During <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction_Era_of_the_United_States\" target=\"_blank\">Reconstruction<\/a>, Black Republicans in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tennessee\" target=\"_blank\">Tennessee<\/a> attempted to pass a bill criminalizing sex\u00a0 between Blacks and Whites to prevent rape and to stop White men from fathering illegitimate children and then abandoning them. Instead they only succeeded in passing a bill that prevented the recognition of marriages between Blacks and Whites, ensuring that White men could continue siring biracial children without being fathers to them.<\/p>\n<p>Read more in the May issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebonyjet.com\" target=\"_blank\">Ebony<\/a> available on newsstands now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Multiracal In America Ebony Magazine May 2011 Adam Serwer In The Mix: Being Biracial in America When President Barack Obama checked \u201cBlack\u201d on his census form last April, it was an actual news story. The Associated Press subhed [sub-headline] was lined with implicit anguish: \u201cPresident Ticks One Box Concerning Racial Heritage on U.S. Census Form, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,125,8,26,394,20],"tags":[5207,6203],"class_list":["post-13601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-adam-serwer","tag-ebony-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13601","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=13601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}