Is The Mixed Child Internal Conflict Avoidable?

My wife and I are both reading Barack Obama's first book, "Dreams From My Father." It is very clear reading it that Obama experienced great internal conflict growing up part Black and part White. Frankly I was surprised at just how much turmoil he went through trying to figure out his place, just where he fit in in our still polarized society and world.

I have read or heard of other Mixed people growing up not knowing where they fit in, of feeling caught between two worlds. This is generally true when the mix is White and Black, which most people unfortunately consider to be polar opposites. Not having grown up with that I cannot really know what that is like. But I have also heard of some who say they never really had many problems with their status. So who knows, maybe it is a factor of where you grow up and how your parents handle it.

Obviously it is my hope that our two kids do not struggle with their identity or feel some sense of ethnic isolation. As I have said before, in an effort to try to make this less of an issue, we chose to move to Los Angeles from our native Texas and our home in the midwest specifically to make sure that they would at least grow up in a city that had many ethnic groups and where ethnic mixing was not so uncommon.

But I am not naive enough to think that this will inoculate them from racism. We just wanted to give them a chance of at least seeing more people that looked like them and realizing that they were not oddities like they might be in some other places. But I suspect that as they get older the time will come when indeed they are challenged to "fit in" to one group, to pick a side. And maybe they will be conflicted. I do think to a small degree being that they are mixed with two "minorities", Black and Mexican, that it will be less of an issue than if they were Black and White. But still there are certainly Blacks and Mexicans who will challenge their identity.

As a parent, all I can do is hope we have provided them the tools and the self-esteem to deal with the natural identity issues that any teenager goes through, their Mixed status being an added "bonus." Already I get some indication that they see themselves as the best of all worlds, something to be proud of for being Mixed, since we have always pointed out to them all the famous and successful Mixed people there are in the world.

So when the conflict comes, if it does at all, right now I feel confident that these two will do just fine. And if not, I hope at least, my wife and I can help them steer their way through it.