Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 05:42 Post subject: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
Quote:
WITNESS: My mixed-race family
Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:26pm EDT
Diane Bartz has worked for Reuters since 1998, most recently covering antitrust and patent litigation. She grew up in a white suburb in Minnesota but adopted from abroad. In the following story, she recounts her experience of changing responses to race within a generation of her family.
By Diane Bartz
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When my father was growing up in a Minnesota farm town during the Depression, his German Lutheran mother vehemently opposed mixed marriages. For her, that included her son marrying someone of Norwegian descent. Or a Catholic.
Now, my father, who is white, has two white grandchildren, two who have a black father and two adopted from Asia.
To me, the fact that Armin Bartz adores his white, light brown and dark brown grandchildren is testament to how much America has changed in the past 70 years.
His youth -- like that of many older Americans -- was in a rural, agricultural America where a 20-mile trip was difficult and unusual. Contact with different ethnic groups was sporadic at best.
He tells of a tense Thanksgiving Day dinner at the home of some cousins, a farmer named Wilmer Radel and his red-headed Catholic wife Katherine Ryan -- especially when Katherine mentioned the Virgin Mary in a prayer.
"My parents before going out there talked about it, wondering how Wilmer and Katherine were going to handle the prayer. So that increased my interest and ramped up the tension," my father, who is 77, told me.
This was not an America where someone like Barack Obama, son of a white Kansas woman and a black man from Kenya, could be a serious presidential candidate.
My sister Pam was the first to have children, giving birth to two girls. But then my father learned that his daughter Lisa, whose partner is black, was pregnant. And he feared that he would not adore the baby as he did the older two grandchildren.
He admitted he was afraid of what people would think, and that he was a little embarrassed.
But everything changed when the baby was born. "I think Jordan's a handsome little boy. Once I start to interact with him, it all goes away," he said of Lisa's oldest, now 12.
It was only in 1967 that the Supreme Court, in its ruling Loving v. Virginia, struck down the last of the U.S. laws designed to prevent black and white Americans from marrying.
Lisa, who lives in Minnesota, said that she never worried about our father's reaction, but she would have feared what her grandparents might have said.
"The immediate family I didn't worry about," she told me, adding that she remembered my dad chastising one of her friends for using a racial slur.
JUST A 'BORING' FAMILY
Interestingly, Jordan identifies himself as black while his sister Eva, 7, sees herself as more biracial.
My sister says her family is "boring" -- except for the fact that her partner cooks while she does most of the yard work.
"We do all the normal stuff that everyone else in the neighborhood does. We go to work, come home and take the kids to sports," she said.
The family got even more complicated when I, then single, went to China in 2001 to adopt a child and to India three years later to adopt a toddler who is darker than most African-Americans.
I soon found out that multiracial families have tensions I never expected.
One is that the kids themselves, who want to be just like parents who they don't resemble a whit. My younger daughter once tried to scratch off her brown skin with her fingernail so that she could be white like me. She didn't stop until she bled.
But my parents have been everything I'd hoped for as grandparents to my kids.
On a last visit to Minnesota, my children were fed their favorite foods, introduced to polka music and told fanciful stories of leprechauns who drop quarters from the ceiling.
But that doesn't mean my dad is completely at home in a multiracial America.
When he goes to Jordan's American football and basketball games, he feels uncomfortable -- not because he thinks poorly of anyone else but because he fears they will assume -- because of his age -- that he is a racist. And perhaps they fear that he is making negative assumptions about them.
"When I see my (white) neighbor working on his car, I go up to him and say, 'Do you know what you're doing?'" said my dad, who has a dry sense of humor. "I wouldn't dare do that ... with black people."
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 12:49 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
Quote:
WITNESS: My mixed-race family
One is that the kids themselves, who want to be just like parents who they don't resemble a whit. My younger daughter once tried to scratch off her brown skin with her fingernail so that she could be white like me. She didn't stop until she bled.
I hope that the child has had some form of counseling after this incident to educate her on who she is ethnically and and allow her to know although she is not her mother's biological child and of a different race, her mother has more love for her since she was chosen by her mother.
Adoptions of children with parents of a different race is not the easiest situation for children, but if the parents are able to do research on how to handle arising issues (although some instances you just have to experience first hand) they can create a strong foundation for that child. An adoptive loving responsible parent is better than no parent at all.
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 13:00 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
onlyhuman77 wrote:
although she is not her mother's biological child and of a different race ... Adoptions of children with parents of a different race is not the easiest situation for children ...
Interesting. Does this refer to the toddler adopted from India "who is darker than most African-Americans"?
If so, of just what "race" are people in India? How does their "race" differ from the "race" of Europeans or of White Americans? Is it just darker Indians who are of a different "race" from their own lighter parents or siblings? Or are even fair-skinned Indians of some non-White "race"?
(I dismiss out of hand the notion that the toddler is of a different "ethnicity" since toddlers do not yet have ethnicities.)
Is it just darker Indians who are of a different "race" from their own lighter parents or siblings? Or are even fair-skinned Indians of some non-White "race"?
There are Indians here in TnT whose features and dark complexion and curly hair often gets them mistaken for Douglas, but they have no SSA.
Also i have this friend who is Muslim who has this light brown Wavy hair and green eyes and he to is Indian.
There are Indians here in TnT whose features and dark complexion and curly hair often gets them mistaken for Douglas, but they have no SSA. Also i have this friend who is Muslim who has this light brown Wavy hair and green eyes and he to is Indian.
Of course. My final boss before I retired (I was consulting for a large investment company) was an extremely dark-complexioned East Indian, one of the darkest people with whom I have ever been associated. East Indians, like many people from that band of latitudes, come in all shades.
My question was merely aimed at finding out if onlyhuman77 saw them all as being of the same non-White "race" or if he saw different East Indians as being of differerent "races" depending on each person's skin tone. And, in either case, I wanted to ask just which "race" or "races" they were in his mind.
I ask because since the mid 19th century, U.S. courts have waffled back and forth over many times over whether East Indians are White (in the U.S. legal sense).
Some U.S. Supreme Court rulings have decreed that East Indans are not White and can never become White. Other U.S. Supreme Court rulings have decreed that they are most definitely White, the truest "Caucasians" in earth in fact, and that to say otherwise is illegal. And other U.S. Supreme Court rulings have decreed that some are White and some are not, depending on how they visually appear to the average man in the street.
The only common thread among all of the U.S. Supreme Court cases regarding the Whiteness of East Indians is that every single decision insists in writing that it alone is the only correct decision, that all prior decisions are wrong and illegal, and that any potential future contradictory decisions are pre-emptively declared to be wrong and illegal. Of course, each ruling says that about all the other rulings, so you have to be quite nimble to keep up with the latest judicial thinking. (See U.S. Supreme Court Rulings on Who is White for details.)
Onlyhuman77 seemed so confident that he had the answer to this puzzle, that I was curious to know just what his answer was.
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 14:35 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
fwsweet wrote:
onlyhuman77 wrote:
although she is not her mother's biological child and of a different race ... Adoptions of children with parents of a different race is not the easiest situation for children ...
Interesting. Does this refer to the toddler adopted from India "who is darker than most African-Americans"?
If so, of just what "race" are people in India? How does their "race" differ from the "race" of Europeans or of White Americans? Is it just darker Indians who are of a different "race" from their own lighter parents or siblings? Or are even fair-skinned Indians of some non-White "race"?
(I dismiss out of hand the notion that the toddler is of a different "ethnicity" since toddlers do not yet have ethnicities.)
I have always thought of the Indian race as people of East Indian ancestry. I don't believe their race is built around complexion since there are dark complexioned to pale complexioned, with green, grey, blue and hazel colored eyes with light colored hair.
I have no idea if the people of East Indian heritage who visually are indistinguishable from Caucasians identify as such since the few Indians I have come to associate with have all been brown complexioned and mostly from Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago.
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 14:55 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
onlyhuman77 wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
onlyhuman77 wrote:
although she is not her mother's biological child and of a different race ... Adoptions of children with parents of a different race is not the easiest situation for children ...
Interesting. Does this refer to the toddler adopted from India "who is darker than most African-Americans"?
If so, of just what "race" are people in India? How does their "race" differ from the "race" of Europeans or of White Americans? Is it just darker Indians who are of a different "race" from their own lighter parents or siblings? Or are even fair-skinned Indians of some non-White "race"?
(I dismiss out of hand the notion that the toddler is of a different "ethnicity" since toddlers do not yet have ethnicities.)
I have always thought of the Indian race as people of East Indian ancestry. I don't believe their race is built around complexion since there are dark complexioned to pale complexioned, with green, grey, blue and hazel colored eyes with light colored hair.
I have no idea if the people of East Indian heritage who visually are indistinguishable from Caucasians identify as such since the few Indians I have come to associate with have all been brown complexioned and mostly from Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago.
Offhand the only Indian I know of that didn't identify as such was Freddy Mercury, the former lead singer of the the rock band Queen
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 15:04 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
onlyhuman77 wrote:
I have always thought of the Indian race as people of East Indian ancestry. I don't believe their race is built around complexion since there are dark complexioned to pale complexioned, with green, grey, blue and hazel colored eyes with light colored hair.
Ah. Thank you. You see them as a distinct "race" of their own, unrelated to skin tone. That is interesting. It resembles the usage in European professional journals.
In the United States, the use of "race" (either as term or as a concept) in professional anthropology journals has virtually vanished within the past 30 years. Using "race" as explanatory concept nowadays will guarantee that your paper will be rejected.
On the other hand, professional anthropology journals in Europe continue to use the term "race" heavily. But they use it in a subtly different way than Americans do. Like onlyhuman77, they refer to the "East Indian race." They also refer to the "Tibetan race," the "Polish race," the "German race," the "French race," and so forth. Perhaps the usage in whatever elementary schools onlyhuman77 attended was more attuned to the European rather than to the USAmerican usage.
anonymouse wrote:
Offhand the only Indian I know of that didn't identify as such was ...
What do you mean by "as such"? Are you saying that all but one of the East Indians you know consider themselves to be of a distinct unique "Indian race" (separate from White, Black, Yellow, Brown, Red, etc.) Now that is interesting. Do your French and German acquaintances also consider themselves to be of unique "French race" and "German race," respectively?
I wonder how your acquaintances answer the "race" question on U.S. forms (job applications, school matriculation, business licenses, census), since no U.S governmnent form allows for a separate "East Indian race." Is there any way we could find out? If you have email addresses for five or six people, I would love to write and ask them.
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 16 Jul 2008 15:21; edited 1 time in total
I have always thought of the Indian race as people of East Indian ancestry. I don't believe their race is built around complexion since there are dark complexioned to pale complexioned, with green, grey, blue and hazel colored eyes with light colored hair.
I always thought of the Northern Indians as being related to Europeans but then the darker ones to the South are also Indians. So are they all Indians because they live on the Indian Sub-Continent ? , because looking at the Y Halpogroups of the World i see IN for Indo -European and DR for Dravidian so is there a Distinction ?
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 16:50 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
fwsweet wrote:
onlyhuman77 wrote:
I have always thought of the Indian race as people of East Indian ancestry. I don't believe their race is built around complexion since there are dark complexioned to pale complexioned, with green, grey, blue and hazel colored eyes with light colored hair.
Ah. Thank you. You see them as a distinct "race" of their own, unrelated to skin tone. That is interesting. It resembles the usage in European professional journals.
In the United States, the use of "race" (either as term or as a concept) in professional anthropology journals has virtually vanished within the past 30 years. Using "race" as explanatory concept nowadays will guarantee that your paper will be rejected.
On the other hand, professional anthropology journals in Europe continue to use the term "race" heavily. But they use it in a subtly different way than Americans do. Like onlyhuman77, they refer to the "East Indian race." They also refer to the "Tibetan race," the "Polish race," the "German race," the "French race," and so forth. Perhaps the usage in whatever elementary schools onlyhuman77 attended was more attuned to the European rather than to the USAmerican usage.
anonymouse wrote:
Offhand the only Indian I know of that didn't identify as such was ...
What do you mean by "as such"? Are you saying that all but one of the East Indians you know consider themselves to be of a distinct unique "Indian race" (separate from White, Black, Yellow, Brown, Red, etc.) Now that is interesting. Do your French and German acquaintances also consider themselves to be of unique "French race" and "German race," respectively?
I wonder how your acquaintances answer the "race" question on U.S. forms (job applications, school matriculation, business licenses, census), since no U.S governmnent form allows for a separate "East Indian race." Is there any way we could find out? If you have email addresses for five or six people, I would love to write and ask them.
I think that many of them they do. Close friend of mine said this when discussing interactions with Indian born Indians, "Yes we are all indians as in we belong to teh same race but I am not Indian: I am Guyanese!" I took that to mean that the term Indian is a race but it is also an ethnic group and one could belong to the former but not the latter.
I have never heard any Indians state that they were "white", European, Anglo, etc. and they are usually proud to say they are Indian. It was curious that Freddy Mercury seemed to hide his background from the general public but I am not sure whether that was because of his sexuality (I think everyone knew that he was gay) or if there were another reason(s)
I'll see what I can scrape up and ask if they are willing to participate. I'll try to get a couple of India born Indians as well as Caribbean born ones with varying skin tones/colours (I know more of the latter), Hindu & Muslim (I don't know many Christian ones). I even know a South African born Indian guy that I might be able ask if I can track him down
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1053 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Wed 16 Jul 2008 19:23 Post subject:
anonymouse wrote:
It was curious that Freddy Mercury seemed to hide his background from the general public but I am not sure whether that was because of his sexuality (I think everyone knew that he was gay) or if there were another reason(s)
I believe Freddy Mercury was a Parsi. The Parsis are descended from Zoroastrian Persians who settled in the Indian subcontinent. Despite their inevitably having mingled with Indian natives, some members of this population still look Persian, and some Persians look European. Freddy, to me, looked quite European, so perhaps he wanted folks to think of him as an Englishman. This is just a guess on my part.
Posted: Thu 17 Jul 2008 12:28 Post subject: Re: WITNESS: My mixed-race family
anonymouse wrote:
onlyhuman77 wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
onlyhuman77 wrote:
although she is not her mother's biological child and of a different race ... Adoptions of children with parents of a different race is not the easiest situation for children ...
Interesting. Does this refer to the toddler adopted from India "who is darker than most African-Americans"?
If so, of just what "race" are people in India? How does their "race" differ from the "race" of Europeans or of White Americans? Is it just darker Indians who are of a different "race" from their own lighter parents or siblings? Or are even fair-skinned Indians of some non-White "race"?
(I dismiss out of hand the notion that the toddler is of a different "ethnicity" since toddlers do not yet have ethnicities.)
I have always thought of the Indian race as people of East Indian ancestry. I don't believe their race is built around complexion since there are dark complexioned to pale complexioned, with green, grey, blue and hazel colored eyes with light colored hair.
I have no idea if the people of East Indian heritage who visually are indistinguishable from Caucasians identify as such since the few Indians I have come to associate with have all been brown complexioned and mostly from Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago.
Offhand the only Indian I know of that didn't identify as such was Freddy Mercury, the former lead singer of the the rock band Queen
True, He did before he became a rock singer, and before he was told to downplay his heritage because the public wouldn't be interested in an Indian rock singer. At least this is what was said during the documentary.
'
FAQ
Search
Register
Log in
