Commentary
A World That's No Longer in Black and White
by David Cazares, Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — Almost as if it were yesterday, I can see my Korean classmate approaching with that quizzical look, posing the inevitable question.
What are you?
Perhaps he was also uncertain of his place in the world, but certainly, he wasn't sure of mine.
Where did I fit, he wanted to know, into the largely black and white world that surrounded us, the one that in the early 1970s was only beginning to make room for those who fit neither category?
At age 11, I hadn't yet given it much thought.
I must have told him that I was black. Maybe I also told him that my father was "Spanish," then unaware of just how Mexican-American he was.
That I don't precisely recall how I answered doesn't matter. What does matter is that the nation's social fabric didn't then allow me to choose, to decide for myself what or who I was. We've only started to turn that corner.
In those days I was a colored child. My mother fondly called her 15 children that. It was her way of embracing us, of letting us know that we were wanted. My demanding father was also proud of his children, though we were too dark for his mother, a grandmother I never knew.
We would find acceptance and security in my parents' largely black Pentecostal church, and by extension in black America, for generations the only home for people of mixed race -- that is, those of black and other ancestry.
That's the way the things were back then, and to a degree they still are.
But the world is a much different place today. Nearly a century and a half after slavery ended, and half a century since school desegregation began, the nation has changed -- for the privileged at least. Gone are the miscegenation laws that barred blacks and whites from marrying. Though my father isn't white, one such law led my parents to leave Indiana to marry in Chicago 58 years ago.
Thankfully, people who look like me are no longer an oddity, or subject to the stares that often greeted us a generation ago. Immigration has brought millions of multiracial people to the United States. Many are Latinos, who can be of any race, or Asian. Intermarriage has created a generation or more of young people with mixed heritage. Some are choosing partners of mixed backgrounds.
So when the New York Times weighed in this week with a story about young people of mixed heritage who want to proudly claim the multiracial label, I wasn't surprised. It's about time they had such a choice. For them there is nothing ambiguous about making it.
Read the Full Essay @ Minnesota Public Radio
A World That's No Longer in Black and White
by David Cazares, Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — Almost as if it were yesterday, I can see my Korean classmate approaching with that quizzical look, posing the inevitable question.
What are you?
Perhaps he was also uncertain of his place in the world, but certainly, he wasn't sure of mine.
Where did I fit, he wanted to know, into the largely black and white world that surrounded us, the one that in the early 1970s was only beginning to make room for those who fit neither category?
At age 11, I hadn't yet given it much thought.
I must have told him that I was black. Maybe I also told him that my father was "Spanish," then unaware of just how Mexican-American he was.
That I don't precisely recall how I answered doesn't matter. What does matter is that the nation's social fabric didn't then allow me to choose, to decide for myself what or who I was. We've only started to turn that corner.
In those days I was a colored child. My mother fondly called her 15 children that. It was her way of embracing us, of letting us know that we were wanted. My demanding father was also proud of his children, though we were too dark for his mother, a grandmother I never knew.
We would find acceptance and security in my parents' largely black Pentecostal church, and by extension in black America, for generations the only home for people of mixed race -- that is, those of black and other ancestry.
That's the way the things were back then, and to a degree they still are.
But the world is a much different place today. Nearly a century and a half after slavery ended, and half a century since school desegregation began, the nation has changed -- for the privileged at least. Gone are the miscegenation laws that barred blacks and whites from marrying. Though my father isn't white, one such law led my parents to leave Indiana to marry in Chicago 58 years ago.
Thankfully, people who look like me are no longer an oddity, or subject to the stares that often greeted us a generation ago. Immigration has brought millions of multiracial people to the United States. Many are Latinos, who can be of any race, or Asian. Intermarriage has created a generation or more of young people with mixed heritage. Some are choosing partners of mixed backgrounds.
So when the New York Times weighed in this week with a story about young people of mixed heritage who want to proudly claim the multiracial label, I wasn't surprised. It's about time they had such a choice. For them there is nothing ambiguous about making it.
Read the Full Essay @ Minnesota Public Radio
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