Will we ever live in an America that sees race as a continuum, instead of just black and white (or black and white and Asian and Latino)?

Gary Kamiya wrote an excellent article on Salon.com  today that deals with race in America, especially as it pertains to Obama and his candidacy. Ironically, I was just having a conversation with a friend and I mentioned to her that I was a little disappointed in how Obama has self-identified as completely black in the public eye, instead of being proudly biracial. I understand, because I too am half-black and half-white just like Obama, but it upsets me that the Senator believes that America is too close minded to deal with biracialism. Is it? Here's an excellent quote from the article:

"Mixed-race people, particularly those of black and white ancestry, have long been forced to navigate this complicated terrain. Their experiences show just how inadequate our traditional ways of talking about race are. As their numbers grow and their perspectives become more familiar, they will inevitably erode the cornerstone of America's racial pathologies, the one-drop rule -- the idea, deeply rooted in white racism, that any amount of black blood defines you as black. And no one will do more to undercut that racist rule than Obama".

I hate that I live in a country where, when people see me, all they see is black, and I would hate it equally if all they saw was white. I believe that being multiracial is a huge blessing, and I try to identify equally with both sides of my family, but I definitely feel like it's a complicated societal balancing act.  People seem to always expect me to "act black" or "act white". Admittedly, because of how and where I grew up (suburban white America, with my white mother), most people say that I "act white". This hurts me deeply, because I feel like sometimes people think that I think I'm "too good" for them. In reality, for social reasons, it's just been harder for me to meet as many black friends. However, according to Kamiya, the opposite is true for most mixed-race people. As a result of the fact that society defines them by their "non-whiteness", many seem to find it easier to identify with their minority ancestry. This is the case with Obama, and I completely undestand. He grew up in a predominately white community in the 1970's so he didn't really have the option to identify as white or even biracial, because of the historical "one-drop" rule (whose remnants still haunt us today) that states that if you're "one drop black", you're black. I know that I've had a much easier time with race issues in my life than he must have had in his, and I pray that my future children (who, mathematically, would have to be multiracial, simply because I am) will have an easier time than I've had. I hate the fact that in the 21st century we still have to fit neatly into racial and cultural boxes, and perhaps Obama's candidacy will start to bring some of these issues into the national dialogue, and break down some of our antiquated ideas about race.

If anyone has any insight or wants to share his/her own experiences (especially if you have some insight about being mixed-other than black and white), please reply. I'd love to hear what you think. 

Probably as a testiment to the fact that I no longer watch Saturday Night Live, I just read about this controversy today. It seems SNL used Fred Armisen, an actor of Asian and Hispaic decent, to depict presidential candidate Barack Obama in a debate skit.

Armisen has played Prince in a skit as well, with no controversey response. To me it is a bit reminicent of the old blackface comedy skits, but in "post-racial" America maybe people aren't up in a fury about actors playing characters of another race for comedic purposes.

For me the larger issue has more to do with SNL's casting generally. Perhaps they didn't have a black actor that resembeld Obama closely enough. It might be equally problematic to have one black actor who was a stand-in for every black male they choose to satarize. In my experience, SNL's cast is overwhelmingly white. The subtext could be interpreted as only white people are funny. (Obviously not true, if you've ever seen Dave Chappelle.) But why is it so hard to find black actors for Saturday Night Live's cast? If they did have a more diverse cast, it would probably change the dynamic, the humor, and the audience of the show. And that might not be a bad thing.

In attending the discussion about the Latino and African American Vote Panel yesterday there was a theme running through the speakers that caught my attention. There almost should have not been a panel on this issue at all. Let me explain what I mean.

The population of Latin Voters and African American voters has more to vote for than race, so why categorize them as such? They have such a wide economically and socially diverse population that they are not going to for vote as a group for the one candidate that appeals to them most. They just might have the issues to consider.

Panelist Dr. Eddie Glaude brings up the point that he has been asked more than once how the African American vote is going to go and he says “I don’t know. I can tell you how I’m going to vote. I don’t represent anyone else.”

Another panel guest Gebe Martinez made the point that the younger generation favors a new hope message, whereas the older generations of Latino voters like what they have seen in the White House before. The only problem is that this is appealing to races across the board. Gebe brings up is that the general population believes that every Latino’s top concern is immigration. It turns out that education is number one.

In a campaign that is not focused on race or gender, why are we still categorizing race? There are so many factors that go into a race as largely publicized as this one that we should not tailor any categorization as broad as race. How is the Latino and African American vote this year going to go? They cast more than one vote.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, he was in the midst of an anti-war, anti-poverty campaign that ostracized him from the mainstream. CNN.com features a pretty decent reminder about King's legacy, and how "I have a dream" has been manipulated to create an icon rather than a complex man.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/01/21/mlk.legacy.ap/index.html

Exciting news for a variety of historically marginalized groups: Denise Simmons, the country's first black, lesbian mayor, was elected this week to serve Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Simmons, a member of the council since 2001, is the second consecutive mayor who is black and openly gay. She is the first woman to serve as the city’s mayor since Sheila Russell held the office from 1996-1997. 

... 

“It feels really great,” Simmons said. “When I first came to the School Committee, one of the things I always said was that I wanted to be mayor.”

“Today is a day to celebrate another broken glass ceiling,” said Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of the Victory Fund, a national organization that supports openly GLBT candidates seeking national and local office. The Victory Fund’s blog, incidentally, has one of the best URLs I’ve come across recently: www.gaypolitics.com.

The New York Times reported today on a poll conducted by New America Media, a coalition of ethnic news organizations, that attempted to gauge minority perceptions— about each other.  The poll surveyed African-Americans, Hispanics (I use this word because the poll did not say “Latino”) and Asians on various economic and social issues, and directly asked groups questions about other minority groups.  The findings are quite interesting—for example, the groups that likely have more immigrant members, Asian and Hispanic, seemed to have more faith in the so-called “American dream,” that if one works hard one will succeed economically.  African-Americans, on the other hand, were far less likely to agree.  Asians were also by far the least likely to indicate that their community experienced significant discrimination in the U.S., while contrastingly 92% of African-Americans responded in the affirmative.

I can't decide whether this passage, from a Patrick Healy/Adam Nagourney story on Hillary Clinton and the so-called gender card, is the result of shoddy editing or a laughable assumption on the part of the authors: 

In a campaign in which a woman is leading the Democratic field, it was perhaps inevitable that the question would arise: would or should she be treated any differently from her rivals? The situation is that much more complicated given that second place in most polls goes to Mr. Obama, who is black. It means that both race and sex have been added to the mix of substance and imagery that makes up presidential politics.

Right, as if the virtually total domination of presidential politics by white men for the past 200+ years suggests that race and sex have been absent from that domain. Rather than completely and overwhelmingly present. Unbelievable.

Condensation by editors often drains nuance from writers' copy, but this seems way beyond that. Thoughts?

Black students across the nation receive harsher discipline than whites, an article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune notes.  Teachers dole out suspension, expulsion, and detention disproportionately to black students, who, researchers have shown, are not more likely to misbehave.

If you, like me, are looking for some clarity on the Jena 6 rally, Courney Martin has a great piece up at The American Prospect today that explains it:

Indeed, the Jena 6 case, like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is a violent reminder that our country is actually many nations. Despite all of the progress that has been made, racism is still a part of too many American kids' ideological diets. A noose, even in 2007, struck these good ol' Southern boys as an apt symbol for the fear of "the other" that had been bred in them from birth. And their elders -- the school administrators, city officials, and parents -- called their inexcusable hatred by cutesy names: pranks, child's play, boys will be boys. It is a wake-up call to us all: The work of ending racism is far from over.

I encourage you to read the whole thing. 

Today falls exactly nine months before Russia Day, and as one of Putin's policies to encourage more breeding in his country, he's offered SUVs, refrigerators, and monetary rewards to anyone who gives birth on June 12. So the mayor of Ulyanovsk, a region in central Russia, has given workers there the afternoon off to make with the baby making. Everyone who gives birth is a winner in the "Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia's Independence Day" contest, but the grand prize winner -- judged on qualities like "respectability" and "commendable parenting" -- gets to take home a UAZ-Patriot, a Russian-made SUV.

The day the towers fell was one I´ll never forget. All of us Americans no matter what our political stance we remember. My first reaction was shock and awe. I couldn´t believe someone would do something so crazy to so many people they didn´t know. But when I got home and turned on the TV there it was and they were indeed doing it. The faces of terror, confusion and disbelief just didn´t jive with any of the memories of my favorite city I had stored in my mind. This couldn´t be New York. I was glued to my TV set and forgot about the job hunting I was supposed to be doing. It was so painfully horrific. And to think all those people, brave firefighters, policemen and rescue workers were in there when it happened. A piece of my heart broke that day and hasn´t healed since.

I'm not the only one. The whole country was pushed from it´s center and rendered off balance. With no time to find our way back we did the best we could to find our way forward from where we were. We´re still not back to being back where we were. The old America seemed untouchable. Unable to be moved from it´s principles no matter what. Free and brave we all had a piece of the American pie as long as we put in the work to earn it. And at our cores there wasn´t a single one of us who believed we didn´t deserve it.

If somehow we found ourselves on the wrong end of the law we had the right to earn it back. I speak of our freedom. When one of us broke the law we became wards of the system of corrections. If we did our time worked extra hard and slogged our way back through the muddy trail of reform one day we´d be back shiny new Americans. Lessons learned with a bit of tarnish, some dents and perhaps a wrinkle or two. Take me for example. I broke the law when committing a violent act of student protest. Toiled for years if the fields of reform and finally realized my father´s dream when I was accepted to school and began to finally pick up where I had left off towards a new life. Eleven years had passed and I was ready for my new future.

It’s well known that the United States has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world (about 6 per 1,000 births). Progressive health care wonks have long suspected that sub par Medicaid coverage for pregnant women and cuts to programs like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program are culprits. Last month, the counter-CW folks over at Slate announced that actually, babies die because wealthy American spend a lot of money on fertility drugs, prenatal care, and other newfangled treatments that save otherwise unviable pregnancies and lead to increased rates of prematurity and infant mortality.

Yesterday a must-read article on infant mortality in the South appeared in The New York Times. On this issue, at least, it seems counter-intuition will only take us so far: American infant mortality is very much a byproduct of poverty, with all the usual disturbing implications for race and gender. In Mississippi, the poorest state in the country, the infant mortality rate rose from 9.7 to 11.4 per 1,000 births in 2005. Nationwide, white Americans have an infant mortality rate of 5.7, while African Americans have a much higher rate of 14.0.

Poor black mothers are especially at risk for a variety of reasons, ranging from high rates of obesity (which can make ultrasound monitoring difficult and lead to diabetes, thus under-nourishing the fetus) to increased deaths from SIDS, accidents, and disease. Doctors are few and far between in rural counties, and local doctors report that many poor women have no prenatal care at all. In addition, the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, has raised barriers for entrance into the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

All in all, not a rosy picture.

Cross-posted at TAPPED.