Biracial_Family_in_a_White_World

Biracial Family in a White World Dawn Thomas ETH 125 August 1, 2010 Gary Poulin Biracial Family in a White World I am in a unique and strange place. I am white and my husband and children are African American. It is amazing how the Whites view someone that is not white. In my community, most of the families are of one race within the household and are white. The racial demographics for Fort Lewis is 60.44% white, 20.34% black 6.44% from 2 or more races, 1.36 Native American,3.41 Asian, 1.79 Pacific Islander, 6.23 form other races,13.13 % are Hispanic/Latino. (Fort Lewis, n.d.) I have noticed how my family is treated differently in the stores, at a scene of or accident. How my children are treated differently in their jobs and when people find out their mother is white. Traveling with my family during PCS moves, if we were in an all white town, I will go in the store and pay for what we needed and come out and leave, just for safety sake. There is an unwelcomed feeling for my husband in some towns, which for me is sad to see because he is a hard working person, serving his country and yet he is still not welcome in some areas of the country. I think the advantage of me being white is I can “fit” in to the white community. I am not asked a thousand times they can help me and followed around the store like I will shoplift. A real wake up call for me in the way whites and blacks are treated come to me when my husband and I went in to rent a car, my husband asked to rent a car and the clerk looked at him and said they did not have any to rent. As we turned to walk out a white woman came in and said that she would like to rent a car and the clerk said no problem. In that split second, what changed, other than the color of the skin! We lived in Tacoma and by our apartment was a very big hill to get to the apartments. A woman and her passenger (black & young) lost power and rolled down the hill and into the major street. My husband and I and white woman stopped to help push the car out of the way. When a police officer came to the scene, he came bypassed my husband who was trying to explain what happened and came to the two white women in the midst of three black people. It is difficult to see how society treats the younger African Americans. My children are biracial. Most people when they meet my children they assume they are black, when told I am white, they are shocked or say, I would have never guessed. Now on the other hand when my children were younger and their friends that knew I was white would tell my children, “I know you momma doesn’t punish you like a black momma!” My kid’s response was you do not know my momma! I guess the meaning behind that is I believed in strict rules and boundaries cross them and there was hell to pay, no time out, nothing easy, hard manual labor was in order. We believe when children are young and learning how to be good adults, you do not negotiate with them! You let them know what you expect of them and they will not give you problems. That would not and did not happen with my children. My kids when in the store or in public behaved very well. They followed along like little ducks in a row; they did not grab anything of the shelf. Now if they got out of line a swat on the butt cheek in the store and all was well again. I see the mothers (white) let the kids determine what is in the basket. The difference I think is black families are strict when the children are very small so when they get older all it takes is a look and the kids know what that means. Our nation elected the first African American president, Barack Obama. My feeling is President Obama, because of his ethnicity, has had to work even harder than any previous white president has. He proved his citizenship by showing his birth certificate, when asked to do so. I do not know of a white president that has had to prove their citizenship. Obama has faced many obstacles as a president than his predecessors. President Obama has given new hope to the minorities of the nation that you can do anything you set your mind to do. For the younger Americans involved in the political arena tend not to discuss race or ethnicity due to political correctness. (Bai, 2010) Even the media plays a big part in racial divisions. When a crime happens, the media specifies the “black” offender, rarely is it announce when the offender is white as the “white” offender. To me a criminal is a criminal. The skin color does not make it more or less tragic. For changes to occur in our country we have to be colorblind. The skin when removed, we still bleed red. Our moviemakers and video producers need to focus on positive portrayals of women, and people of different ethnicities. The face of the world is slowly changing. The white majority now will soon become a minority. I hope for the children of the future to see a world that does not judge them by their skin color. The biracial marriages will produce biracial children who will grow up and have children of their own. So eventually it will be difficult to pigeon hole someone in a slot or category. The demographic categories in the future there will not have a category that will fit the mixes of the children. It is just now my children are seeing a box for them on forms. My children’s up bringing taught them to respect a person regardless of the skin color. For them in the work place environment they see how skin color effects how people are treated. My children speak properly and avoid using slang and Ebonics. Some people tell them, they hang around too many white people. For me I can see how the white people treat the black and how the blacks respond. It is very difficult for a young black person to rise up and try to do right when they have to push extra hard to get through the door. I get very upset when people judge my children by their skin color. They are treated as if they cannot understand what the expectation is of them and have to work harder than their counterparts do. We can learn a lot from the children at the playground. They know no color. They just know they are having fun. They have many friends. We as adults limit ourselves to specific people or ethnicities we have cut down the possibilities for friendship. We can learn a lot from other ethnicities and religions. Even Though people have different views, we can still be friends and get along. My journey started about twenty-two years ago when being in a biracial racial relationship was difficult and not accepted in society as it is today. You cannot help whom you love and I do not see color I see what is inside of the person. As I look at my relationship now we still get the stares and sometimes a mean comment or an ugly look. I am thick skinned and when people are insecure with a situation or the situation is not how they think things are supposed to be, ugly things come out of their mouths. People are uneasy with situations that are not up to society’s norm. For me I am the norm, my normal. I enjoy my view and I hope that times will change and this nation can grow away from people’s skin color and see how much the person can contribute to society. Every ethnicity and religion on the planet have some bad people within them, that does not make everyone bad. We cannot condemn the many for the actions of the few. References Bai, M. (2010, July 3). “Ethnic Distinctions, No Longer So Distinctive” New York Times 30 June 2010. Retrieved from http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com Fort Lewis. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fact-index.com/f/fo/fort_lewis__washington.html