Wow I just noticed how long it's been since I last posted on here. My apologies to my two readers. :-) Life's been crazy. I hope all is well with you.
I came across an interesting piece you may or may not have seen on Yahoo. Check it out, it is about the rise of "bi-racial" Americans and how important the 2010 Census will be for documenting just how much our society has become more Mixed. Worth the read.
Here it is.
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Michael Vick, Dogs and Race
The whole sad saga over NFL quarterback Michael Vick is made even sadder by the "racial" and ethnic divisions over how people are responding to it. It is all so reminscent of the OJ verdict and how the country divided along ethnic lines in their reaction to his acquittal in the criminal trial. I have seen and read reports lately that show once again, whites are overwhelmingly negative in their response and view of Vick, while blacks and hispanics either support him or take a wait and see approach. Again, this goes to show that our views of the world and justice are still colored by our skin tones and our experience of life from within that perspective.
Dog fighting, and the horrible allegations leveled at Vick, is truly sickening and anyone involved in it should indeed be osracized from civilized society as well as paying the price of criminal punishment. And I do understand all those who have judged Vick guilty already. The reports are so overwhelming. So it does seem like he is guilty.
But therein lies where I, like many of the other people of color and others who withhold their judgement, focus our attention. He SEEMS guilty but until he has had his day in court, we believe we have to hold full judgement. I think minorities simply have experienced too much of a rush to judgement used against us to easily fall into that trap and do the same. And ironically, though the judicial system has not historically been on our side, we do believe he deserves a chance to defend himself before the media and leaks decide Vick's future. Even in the case of white athletes, the Duke lacrosee players, we have seen how a rush to judgement can be wrong.
By the way, I do agree with Vick not playing this year, at least until this matter is resolved. But that is only because it will be impossible for his team to focus with such a distraction going on around them. It is fair to the team and the sport. But I also say, give Vick a chance to answer the charges before he his life is ruined. So it seems, when it comes to the justice system, or how quickly someone is assumed innocent or guilty, unfortunately race still does matter.
Dog fighting, and the horrible allegations leveled at Vick, is truly sickening and anyone involved in it should indeed be osracized from civilized society as well as paying the price of criminal punishment. And I do understand all those who have judged Vick guilty already. The reports are so overwhelming. So it does seem like he is guilty.
But therein lies where I, like many of the other people of color and others who withhold their judgement, focus our attention. He SEEMS guilty but until he has had his day in court, we believe we have to hold full judgement. I think minorities simply have experienced too much of a rush to judgement used against us to easily fall into that trap and do the same. And ironically, though the judicial system has not historically been on our side, we do believe he deserves a chance to defend himself before the media and leaks decide Vick's future. Even in the case of white athletes, the Duke lacrosee players, we have seen how a rush to judgement can be wrong.
By the way, I do agree with Vick not playing this year, at least until this matter is resolved. But that is only because it will be impossible for his team to focus with such a distraction going on around them. It is fair to the team and the sport. But I also say, give Vick a chance to answer the charges before he his life is ruined. So it seems, when it comes to the justice system, or how quickly someone is assumed innocent or guilty, unfortunately race still does matter.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Supreme Court Ruling Complicated In Its Implications
Sorry I have been away so long. You don't want to know about my computer woes. But I am back at it again and hopefully this time I will remain a daily if not semi-daily contributor again.
Well this is as good a day as any to get back in the saddle. Today the Supreme Court, in a split decision, struck down voluntary "race-based" diversity programs at public grade schools. Their ruling essentially says "race" (their word since you know I hate the term and find it a misnomer) cannot be used as a factor for schools as they attempt to implement programs that diversify their student bodies. Conservatives, of course, hail the ruling, while liberals and Democrats have decried it as a slap in the face of the longstanding "Brown V. Board of Education" that essentially destroyed the old separate but equal doctrine.
Now you would think someone who writes a blog based on the notion of "no more race" and getting beyond the concepts of race, would be ecstatic at the Supreme Court ruling. After all, the Court is saying we must stop focusing on race in making decisions about people. Right?
Well, here's the problem with that ruling though. The programs that were used in this case, like many others that will be affected, were rooted in the goal of bringing people together across racial and ethnic boundaries. Which in the long run is exactly what we need to be doing if we are ever going to reach the true point of ignoring race. I agree with those schools in their philosophy based on the belief that getting young people to spend time around each other is the greatest thing we can do to helping them see for themselves that racial and ethnic differences aren't the most important thing. Socializing, playing and learning next to each other goes a lot farther than subjecting people to lectures and preaching racial acceptance.
Now do I recognize the irony of using race to promote a future of no more race? Of course I do. But we sit in such a screwed up, racially-sensitive world right now that sometimes it does indeed require counter-intuitive ideas to get us to where we need to be. And I know this for sure, having the "races" living and being educated in separate worlds does not do anything for a real coming together. So I do believe that we took a step back today. But no matter what the Court has done, I also think the lid is already off he jar for the most part, and this decision won't, in the long run, stop the inevitable that we see occurring.
Well this is as good a day as any to get back in the saddle. Today the Supreme Court, in a split decision, struck down voluntary "race-based" diversity programs at public grade schools. Their ruling essentially says "race" (their word since you know I hate the term and find it a misnomer) cannot be used as a factor for schools as they attempt to implement programs that diversify their student bodies. Conservatives, of course, hail the ruling, while liberals and Democrats have decried it as a slap in the face of the longstanding "Brown V. Board of Education" that essentially destroyed the old separate but equal doctrine.
Now you would think someone who writes a blog based on the notion of "no more race" and getting beyond the concepts of race, would be ecstatic at the Supreme Court ruling. After all, the Court is saying we must stop focusing on race in making decisions about people. Right?
Well, here's the problem with that ruling though. The programs that were used in this case, like many others that will be affected, were rooted in the goal of bringing people together across racial and ethnic boundaries. Which in the long run is exactly what we need to be doing if we are ever going to reach the true point of ignoring race. I agree with those schools in their philosophy based on the belief that getting young people to spend time around each other is the greatest thing we can do to helping them see for themselves that racial and ethnic differences aren't the most important thing. Socializing, playing and learning next to each other goes a lot farther than subjecting people to lectures and preaching racial acceptance.
Now do I recognize the irony of using race to promote a future of no more race? Of course I do. But we sit in such a screwed up, racially-sensitive world right now that sometimes it does indeed require counter-intuitive ideas to get us to where we need to be. And I know this for sure, having the "races" living and being educated in separate worlds does not do anything for a real coming together. So I do believe that we took a step back today. But no matter what the Court has done, I also think the lid is already off he jar for the most part, and this decision won't, in the long run, stop the inevitable that we see occurring.
Friday, February 2, 2007
The Genesis
Starting this is kind of hard. Not because I don't know what to say. Actually it's because I have so very much to say that I don't know for sure where to start. So why don't I start with the personal motivation behind this blog.
I am married to a Mexican-American woman and we have two beautiful children, a 9 year old son and an 8 year old daughter. By the way, I am a black American, or African-American if you prefer. So our children are, depending on how you view the world, black, Hispanic, mixed, black-Hispanic, black-Mexican, bi-racial, multi-ethnic, mulatto, or any number of other interesting terms our society has come up with to put a label on who they are. It truly is funny in some ways how important it is for people to have a label they can hang onto when defining people. And yet in many many other ways it is not funny at all.
Which is the point of this blog and this particular posting. While putting a label on our, and other children whose parents are of different ethnic groups, is important to others for reasons that are political, racist, ego driven and just to make things easier for some, it is not important to me and my wife. What IS important to us is that our kids be proud of who they are and what they represent. Which is both sides of their heritage - both all that it means to be black and of African descent AND all that it means to be Hispanic and of Mexican descent. And of course all that it means to be American and all that that means as well. Though this sounds simple enough, and logical, it is amazing how many people do not see things this way.
Most of us are familiar with the "one drop rule" that says if you have even one drop of black blood in your veins, no matter how far back you have to go to find that drop, then you are black, end of discussion. What amazes me about this notion and the fact that it is still widely accepted today, even by black people, is that most proponents of this idea have no idea how racist the notion is and that it is rooted in the idea of a pure white "race." It is based on the notion that one drop of black is so pervasive and tainting that it overrules everything else. How stupid and silly. And worse, that black people back the idea is even more crazy. But I bring it up to say that my wife and I aren't crazy. We understand that with such idiocy as the root of our notions of "race" our children will be pushed simply to identify and be identified by most who carry this outdated notion, as being black. As if half of their genetic pool does not exist. It reminds me of something I read the other day that sums up the idiocy best. The phrase was something like "in this country, a white woman can give birth to a black child but a black woman cannot give birth to a white child." Does that not bring home how crazy this is?
And I need to make sure something is very clear, the point here is not that I am not proud of being black because believe me I love my culture and what we have brought to the world and I will make sure my kids are proud of that as well. But I believe that racism is stupid. And I believe that if we are ever going to rid ourselves of that stupidity, we will not do it with laws and whatnot, we will do it by blowing up the notion of race. Race is just a convenient way to label people. There is only one race with many different cultures and ethnic groups. My goal is that we get past these labels. And it starts with these kids. Interracial is a misnomer since its root is race, I prefer mixed or bi-ethnic if not the more accurate black-Hispanic in the case of our kids. In the end none of those labels matter anyway, except to be able to identify. In the end, ours kids and the thousands that are out there, are just people. Gloriously though, they are people who just may help destroy our notions of race.
I am married to a Mexican-American woman and we have two beautiful children, a 9 year old son and an 8 year old daughter. By the way, I am a black American, or African-American if you prefer. So our children are, depending on how you view the world, black, Hispanic, mixed, black-Hispanic, black-Mexican, bi-racial, multi-ethnic, mulatto, or any number of other interesting terms our society has come up with to put a label on who they are. It truly is funny in some ways how important it is for people to have a label they can hang onto when defining people. And yet in many many other ways it is not funny at all.
Which is the point of this blog and this particular posting. While putting a label on our, and other children whose parents are of different ethnic groups, is important to others for reasons that are political, racist, ego driven and just to make things easier for some, it is not important to me and my wife. What IS important to us is that our kids be proud of who they are and what they represent. Which is both sides of their heritage - both all that it means to be black and of African descent AND all that it means to be Hispanic and of Mexican descent. And of course all that it means to be American and all that that means as well. Though this sounds simple enough, and logical, it is amazing how many people do not see things this way.
Most of us are familiar with the "one drop rule" that says if you have even one drop of black blood in your veins, no matter how far back you have to go to find that drop, then you are black, end of discussion. What amazes me about this notion and the fact that it is still widely accepted today, even by black people, is that most proponents of this idea have no idea how racist the notion is and that it is rooted in the idea of a pure white "race." It is based on the notion that one drop of black is so pervasive and tainting that it overrules everything else. How stupid and silly. And worse, that black people back the idea is even more crazy. But I bring it up to say that my wife and I aren't crazy. We understand that with such idiocy as the root of our notions of "race" our children will be pushed simply to identify and be identified by most who carry this outdated notion, as being black. As if half of their genetic pool does not exist. It reminds me of something I read the other day that sums up the idiocy best. The phrase was something like "in this country, a white woman can give birth to a black child but a black woman cannot give birth to a white child." Does that not bring home how crazy this is?
And I need to make sure something is very clear, the point here is not that I am not proud of being black because believe me I love my culture and what we have brought to the world and I will make sure my kids are proud of that as well. But I believe that racism is stupid. And I believe that if we are ever going to rid ourselves of that stupidity, we will not do it with laws and whatnot, we will do it by blowing up the notion of race. Race is just a convenient way to label people. There is only one race with many different cultures and ethnic groups. My goal is that we get past these labels. And it starts with these kids. Interracial is a misnomer since its root is race, I prefer mixed or bi-ethnic if not the more accurate black-Hispanic in the case of our kids. In the end none of those labels matter anyway, except to be able to identify. In the end, ours kids and the thousands that are out there, are just people. Gloriously though, they are people who just may help destroy our notions of race.
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