{"id":41846,"date":"2015-07-22T15:16:09","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T15:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41846"},"modified":"2017-05-05T23:06:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T23:06:06","slug":"not-your-post-racial-future-why-interracial-families-need-to-talk-about-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41846","title":{"rendered":"Not Your Post-Racial Future: Why Interracial Families Need to Talk About Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not Your Post-Racial Future: Why Interracial Families Need to Talk About Race<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

ARMED<\/a>
\n2015-05-17<\/p>\n

Sophie Steains<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have this memory that\u2019s been troubling me for a while.<\/p>\n

I was 18 and out in Kings Cross<\/a> for the night. As I was waiting to order at the bar, a man came up and offered to buy me a drink. He was in his early 30s or so, white, built. He told me it was his birthday and that he wanted to celebrate. I knew he was coming on to me, but I was young and na\u00efve, so I let him do it. Anyway, the lady at the bar made up this special blue birthday cocktail for him. She set it on fire, everyone around us cheered. I couldn\u2019t help but join in on the celebration too. But then, as the man motioned to pay, I noticed a photograph tucked into the front pocket of his wallet. It was a young, beautiful Asian woman holding a Eurasian baby. My blood ran cold…<\/p>\n

…Growing up half-Okinawan and half-white Australian has left me with a lot of these unanswered questions. It\u2019s led me to the belief that our society just isn\u2019t equipped to discuss mixed-race, despite the fact that I\u2019m seeing mixed-race faces everywhere I look today. Despite the fact that mixed-race people existed<\/a> on this land well before white people were even a blip on the radar. Watching Japanese-Canadian Jeff Chiba Stearns\u2019<\/a> documentary \u201cOne Big Hapa Family<\/a>,\u201d I was struck by how much his own reflections mirrored my own:<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter thinking back on some bizarre identity related experiences that I had growing up mixed, I started to wonder if interracial couples ever considered how their marriages might affect their children? I got the sense that my relatives never discussed multiracial identity with their kids. I mean, not once growing up did I tell my parents that I experienced cultural confusion.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Often when mixed-race identities are discussed today, they are conflated with this idea of our \u201cpost-racial future.\u201d A future where race is no longer an issue and everyone looks like Halle Berry<\/a>. The kinds of people who seem to be the most vocal about mixed-race are the people who claim that, \u201cEveryone is a bit mixed-race\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t see race, we are beyond it\u201d etc. There is this belief that Love and its mixed-race children will help break down the barriers that have been so doggedly safe-guarded for the past several hundred years. Parents of mixed-race children often believe this too, I\u2019ve heard it coming from their mouths many times…<\/p>\n

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

I have this memory that\u2019s been troubling me for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,414,8,4405,394],"tags":[20486,986,20485],"class_list":["post-41846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-family","category-media-archive","category-oceania","category-socialscience","tag-armed","tag-australia","tag-sophie-steains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41846","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=41846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53833,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41846\/revisions\/53833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}