{"id":7609,"date":"2010-06-21T02:37:04","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T02:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7609"},"modified":"2010-06-21T02:37:04","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T02:37:04","slug":"ward-helps-biracial-youths-on-journey-toward-acceptance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7609","title":{"rendered":"Ward Helps Biracial Youths on Journey Toward Acceptance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ward Helps Biracial Youths on Journey Toward Acceptance<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2009-11-09<\/p>\n

John Branch<\/strong><\/p>\n

PITTSBURGH \u2014 Steelers<\/a> receiver Hines Ward<\/a> surrounded himself with old friends at the dinner table on a recent Saturday night. The bond was as obvious as the look on everyone\u2019s faces \u2014 half Korean, half something else. The shared experience was far more than skin deep.<\/p>\n

There was a boy who was bullied into depression and tried to commit suicide. There was a girl ordered by a teacher to keep her hair pulled back tight, to straighten the natural curls she inherited from her black father. There was another too intimidated by her taunting classmates to board the bus, choosing instead the humiliating and lonely walk to school. There were the boys who were beaten regularly and teased mercilessly. There were college-age girls who broke into tears when telling their stories of growing up biracial in South Korea.<\/p>\n

But when they looked around the table, they saw familiarity. And a future…<\/p>\n

…\u201cIt was hard for me to find my identity,\u201d Ward said. \u201cThe black kids didn\u2019t want to hang out with me because I had a Korean mom. The white kids didn\u2019t want to hang out with me because I was black. The Korean kids didn\u2019t want to hang out with me because I was black. It was hard to find friends growing up. And then once I got involved in sports, color didn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there is no such relief valve for most of the estimated 19,000 biracial children in South Korea. The fast-growing majority of them are Kosians, with a parent from a different Asian country.<\/p>\n

The number of Amerasians \u2014 those generally with white or black American fathers, often from the military \u2014 is slowly shrinking. But their mere appearance leads to harsher discrimination, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cKorea is traditionally a single blood,\u201d said Wondo Koh, a Korean who met up with the group in Pittsburgh while doing business. \u201cWe Koreans are not comfortable with this mixed-blood situation. We have become familiar now, but we did not know how to cope.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Ward Helps Biracial Youths on Journey Toward Acceptance The New York Times 2009-11-09 John Branch PITTSBURGH \u2014 Steelers receiver Hines Ward surrounded himself with old friends at the dinner table on a recent Saturday night. The bond was as obvious as the look on everyone\u2019s faces \u2014 half Korean, half something else. The shared experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,8,394],"tags":[2906,3166,229],"class_list":["post-7609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-hines-ward","tag-john-branch","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609","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=7609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}