Obama A Symbol Of Acceptance For Mixed Couples

Some see Obama's interracial roots as step toward erasing stigmas

By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
tgillman@dallasnews.com
09:27 PM CST on Sunday, March 2, 2008

NELSONVILLE, Ohio – Barack Obama was nearing his sixth birthday when the Supreme Court struck down the last 16 state laws banning interracial marriage. Forty years later, the offspring of such unions and folks who crossed racial lines to find a spouse, like Mr. Obama's parents, are watching his campaign with special pride.

Usually they're anonymous in the crowd. Rarely do they get to thank Mr. Obama directly, as a local pastor, Leon Forte, got to do Sunday morning at a town hall in Ohio's rural Appalachia region.

"I'm the father of two biracial children, and your campaign has lifted them into a whole new dimension," he said before asking about home foreclosures, a problem afflicting his congregation. "And so, I'm proud, as an African American." Mr. Obama thanked him for saying so.

Voters of many ethnicities find meaning in the Obama candidacy, just as many women root for Hillary Rodham Clinton to break the gender barrier.

But for mixed-race families, he represents a lifting of ancient taboos.

"My son's half black, and I'd like him to be able to run for president" or at least feel that his choices in life have no limits, said Carol Lennox, waiting for the candidate to emerge at Wednesday night's rally in Fort Worth.

"There's a large biracial population that's usually ignored," said the 55-year-old psychotherapist, adding that with her son's heritage – she's white, and his father is black – there's always anxiety about acceptance, especially at school, where kids seem to segregate themselves.

Ms. Lennox's son Blake Scott, summoned by his mother via text message, said Mr. Obama will make the world easier for him: "It's something new."

Rice University sociologist Jenifer Bratter in Houston, who has written extensively about the topic, said that "what modern interracial families deal with is questions of whether their child is going to be able to fit in and develop a coherent racial identity."

Mr. Obama, she said, has managed to "navigate the politics of race" in a way no national leader has before, embracing two races "without alienating either side."

And it's not just about his comfort with his own identity. It's about acceptance. "He embodies the possibility of being welcomed by both sides of the divide that modern interracial families are constantly contesting with," Dr. Bratter said.

Mr. Obama often relates his upbringing to voters, saying that his father, from Kenya, left his mother, a white woman from Kansas, when he was 2, and he was partly raised by his white grandparents in Hawaii. When he's speaking to predominantly black groups, as he was in Beaumont the other day, he slides easily into the cadence of a black church preacher. But he always pays homage to all parts of his heritage.

The 2000 Census found 3.1 million interracial couples, a bit more than one in 20 married couples. Of those, one in eight involves black and a white spouses. The number of marriages has risen steadily since the Supreme Court ruling that struck down laws banning interracial marriages, including one in Texas – from 65,000 black-white unions in 1970 to an estimated 422,000 three years ago.

But the stigma remains. Public health studies show sharply higher stress and divorce levels in interracial families.

"You have to think, what must it have been like for a little biracial child in Kansas with white grandparents?" said Francine Childs, professor emeritus of African American studies at Ohio University in Athens. Dr. Childs' brother is Dallas pastor Rickie Rush of Inspiring Body of Christ Church.

She said Mr. Obama's candidacy gives biracial people a chance to "come through and say, 'I am who I am. I can be the best black part of me, the best white part of me, the best Hispanic part of me, without rejecting my mother or my father or my grandparents.' "

At an Obama rally last weekend in Akron, Canton resident Jean Nash volunteered that Mr. Obama's background struck a chord for her and her daughter.

"When her dad and I were married in the '70s, there were certain states we couldn't go to safely," said Ms. Nash, 52, who is white and works with the mentally disabled. "All those years where I got looked down on and called names and stayed proud – proud of my family, proud of our children. ... It's just a dream come true."

Daughter Angela Howard, 29, a social worker who lives in nearby Massillon, agreed, though Mr. Obama's other attributes are most important to her. "He's just inspirational. ... He can really deliver," she said.

In Nelsonville, as Mr. Obama shook hands, Mr. Forte, pastor at Grace Christian Center in Athens, spoke of the son and daughter he had with his ex-wife, who is white.

"Someone is going to say, well, they're hindered because you're neither one or the other. They have to make a decision: Do they embrace their blackness or do they embrace their whiteness?" Mr. Forte said. "He says it doesn't make a difference. His candidacy says it doesn't make a difference."

 

This is an interesting article. Thanks for posting it, nobledruali.

Maybe one day when a biracial man is President of the US, my mom will finally stop trying to discourage me from having biracial kids!

Ok... ok... it may be a long shot in both cases... but a girl can dream, no???? :lol:

 

Hey nothing wrong with that Pearl. "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" :!:

 

While I would encourage you to make more Baraks

 

:smt023

 

Umm, pardon the interruption and rather unwelcome questioning about your private life, but at certain age, isn't it inappropriate and undeniably childish for parents to tell their children not to have children, much less biracial ones?

 

Shhh.

Not when it comes to black men.

Oh.

My bad.

I must be bitching.

I have no backbone too.

Oh, woe is me.

 

Thank you! You get it too!

The moment we question something, we're considered spineless and less of men because we can't just 'go with the flow'.