{"id":39741,"date":"2015-01-28T23:47:31","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T23:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39741"},"modified":"2015-01-28T23:47:31","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T23:47:31","slug":"growing-up-biracial-the-importance-of-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39741","title":{"rendered":"Growing up biracial — the importance of words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up biracial — the importance of words<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Journal Star<\/a>
\nLincoln, Nebraska
\n2015-01-25<\/p>\n

Cindy Lange-Kubick<\/strong><\/a>, Life columnist<\/p>\n

She is in the breakroom at Walgreens Thursday morning, getting ready for a seven-hour shift.<\/p>\n

KaDeja Sangoyele is trying not to cry.<\/p>\n

She gets emotional, she says. It\u2019s that word — half-breed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life was horrible at times because of words like that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

KaDeja is talking about a blog, The Objective Conservative<\/em>, and a post calling Barack Obama<\/a> the “half-breed” president.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s talking about Patrick McPherson<\/a>, the blog\u2019s founder and co-editor who says he didn\u2019t know about that post or about others, dating to 2011, that use those same words and other slurs and demeaning stereotypes about race.<\/p>\n

McPherson is a newly elected member of the Nebraska Board of Education. He\u2019s the former chairman of the Douglas County<\/a> Republican Party.<\/p>\n

Some people are calling for him to resign. Those people include the governor and senators and members of Congress and a multitude of ministers and educators and the NAACP<\/a> and city council members and many others — both Republicans and Democrats.<\/p>\n

And KaDeja, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be a part of today\u2019s society — you can\u2019t think that\u2019s OK,” she said. “There\u2019s no way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Especially for an authority figure, she says. Someone who is supposed to do what\u2019s best for kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes me angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

KaDeja is 19. She grew up in Lincoln<\/a>. She\u2019s a sophomore in college; she wants to study psychiatric nursing. She\u2019s taking four classes this semester and working full time. She loves to run and read and listen to live music and watch Netflix; she likes leggings and Lilly Pulitzer and triple Americanos and hanging out with her friends.<\/p>\n

She knows what half-breed means. She knows other words like it — meant to denigrate a person because of his or her skin color. The one they called her most was \u201cmutt.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Growing up biracial — the importance of words The Lincoln Journal Star Lincoln, Nebraska 2015-01-25 Cindy Lange-Kubick, Life columnist She is in the breakroom at Walgreens Thursday morning, getting ready for a seven-hour shift. KaDeja Sangoyele is trying not to cry. She gets emotional, she says. It\u2019s that word — half-breed. \u201cMy life was horrible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,20],"tags":[19194,19195,19193,5561,19196,19192],"class_list":["post-39741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-cindy-lange-kubick","tag-kadeja-sangoyele","tag-lincoln-journal-star","tag-nebraska","tag-patrick-mcpherson","tag-the-lincoln-journal-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39741","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=39741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}