Melirosa and Kansascity:

Melirosa, your family is beautiful. It's families like ours who will determine true brother and sisterhood for the future of the world, "no difference, no color". Children of mixed race are truly blessed.

Kansascity, there was an effort by hispanics, blacks, and asian groups who tried to pressure people of mixed race from reporting to the census their preference as "multiracial", instead for only the traditional race categories of the past, for fear of diluting their groups political strength in numbers. They largely failed. If you read the current census, the number of people reporting themselves as "multiracial" are rapidly increasing and will only gain in strength in the years ahead. ~ Roberto

By Kansascity (209.242.125.155) on Wednesday, April 4, 2001 - 04:41 pm:

My children over the years have told me that they want their own classification on forms that they have had to fill out at school, work, etc. They do not feel as though they are represented. Being that black and white often do not accept them on their own terms. Isn't it about time that they had their own categories. I see it as a rock they can stand on and not something that will further alienate them from all the races they are a part of/apart from. Being that things are the way they are, more must be done to validate multiracial people. To ignore this situation is not helping. Take care.

By Melirosa (208.48.12.163) on Wednesday, April 4, 2001 - 11:53 am:

roberto-
my family, like yours, is as diverse as the united nations and my experiences are similar to yours. i come from a family that on one side, i have a grandmother who is a white hispanic from puerto rico, light hair and green eyes. her husband, my grandfather is a mulatto also from PR and very dark skinned with very coarse hair. my other set of grandparents, my grandmother is irish and my grandfather is a medium complected dark hair dark eyed hispanic from PR. what a mix. my daughters' father is cuban and his family includes both black and white hispanics. my fiancee is jamaican and his son's mother is mixed with black chinese and white. we have beautiful children both from previous relationships. none together. when people see us they automatically assume that my youngest daughter who is very dark skinned and his son are "ours" and that my eldest daughter who is light complected with blond hair and dark eyes is from another family, anyone's but ours. my children see no color i am happy to say and like you i believe it is going to take a child like yours or mine, from a mixed background to change the way people from mixed backgrounds are looked upon. they find it hard to be excepted by blacks, harder to be excepted by whites, so they always seem to fall into that other group. "OTHER" what is that really? other is a word used to describe our children by people who have no idea on how to describe these beautiful human beings. people shouldn't be placed into categories. it makes them feel as though they are being set apart from other people in some way. who today is really pure black, or pure white? no such thing i say.

By Roberto (205.188.193.51) on Sunday, February 4, 2001 - 02:05 pm:

Many of you do not know my family composition. It goes as follows: My wife is a "Bi-Racial Hispanic" of mixed white and indian descent, and so are her two children from her previous marriage. My two children from my previous marriage (son and daughter) are "Mult-racial, a mixture of Taiwanese, Chinese, Black, White (descendants from England) and Indian (Cherokee). From my fathers side of the family they inherited the black, white and indian blood line. My mother (very light skin) came from descendants from "Near White Jamacians". That should give you an idea of where I come from. So when the issue of conflicts between mixed and so-called pure blacks comes up as it has in the past and present lives of my children, especially when they were growing up, it takes on special significance for me.

We had endured much over the years as a family. This is especially true of my daughters. My oldest daughter had always experienced conflicts with black females, especially because of her looks (light skin and asian features, and she is very beautiful), a main reason for many of the problems she had in trying to fit in with other blacks and for them disliking her. She is now married to a black man (my son in law). My youngest daughter is a white hispanic. She too has experience much conflict in her life from other blacks and whites. From the whites who think she should stay with her own, because they mistook her for a white of european descent, to the black females who saw her as white girl trying to steal black men. She now dates black men exclusively (she always did come to think of it). My wife, and I get the stares and snide remarks from all. So when we all show up as a family you might say we are like a family of the United Nations. People do not know how in the hell to react to us. My family structure as unique as it is among a very large extended family is the sign of the future I tell everyone, whether they like it or not.

The problem I see today, especially among the children of bi-racial or multi-racial parents is the outcast behavior that many so-called pure blacks (who are mixed too) are driving as a wedge between themselves and mixed race children who are trying to find an identity of their own, or to somehow still appreciate both of their parents racial and cultural heritages, but at the same time who would in most cases identify themselves as black. This wedge on the part of so-called pure blacks is the greatest challenge that black leaders have better address in the future, because the population of children of mixed race like my own is rapidly increasing. For these so-called blacks to distance themselves from the mixed race children or adults and scorn them will have serious consequences in the future.

I predict what will happen in the next forty years, there will be a new movement initiated by some charistmatic child of mixed heritage (woman or man) living today who will demand a separate group identity away from the so-called blacks, which will dilute the black political strength in this country in how blacks are counted by the census. That is those who wish not to be called black or African American, but simply as "Bi-Racial" as a census category or to come under some new name for classification. That inspiration will come from the "Hispanics", who are themselves such a diverse racial community, but who are too struggling with the same group identity as to who is a pure blood hispanic, is it a white castilian spanish, a black cuban, a peruvian indian or a mulatto from the Dominian Republic. The struggle for identity as I see it will be reminscence of what has occurred in South Africa between the "Coloreds" (black and white mixed race peoples) and the pure black Africans like the Zulus and other black tribal nations, when they broke off from blacks (with the help of the Afrikaners of course to divide and conquer) for the purpose to be their own group.

Since so many black leaders in this country lack imagination and foresight to solve problems, this "Conflict Between The Multi-Racial Or Bi-Racial Population and the So-called Pure Black Population brought on by today's treatment of mixed race children will be a time bomb waiting to explode into a further segmentation of the black community in the years ahead. That is the way I see it. ~ Roberto