Is Obama black or biracial? Obviously he is both of these things. However, he is usually referred to as our first black president, not our first biracial president. Certainly, it is monumental that we have a black president and it should be celebrated and highlighted. I only ask the question because, after my last post, where I began a discussion by asking why race exists and looking at how the government classifies race, many people responded by explaining how they identify themselves and their children. So, why and how do we identify ourselves and how are we defined by others? For instance, is Keanu Reeves white even though his father is Chinese/Hawaiian? Is Tiger Woods black because of his skin color and certain features, even thought he identifies as “Cablinasian?” Frida Kahlo is a Mexican Painter but is she also a painter of Hungarian Jewish ancestry?

My daughters, although they have kinky hair and their mother’s features, are lighter skinned. It is pretty obvious that their parents are of different races, but how will they self-identify? My wife and I teach them that everyone is a human being first but they should be proud of their heritages, their ancestry on both sides and their unique physical appearance. We also prepare them to understand that humans seem to have a need for categorizing. And, the obvious way to do this is by physical traits. Therefore, many people will make assumptions about race. People with black features will be called black; those with Asian features will be called Asian and if you look white, you’ll be called white, regardless of actual racial make-up.

Since identification has so many ramifications in everything from health care to education, before I even start to break down these complicated issues further, I thought it would be good to see how other mixed-race people identify themselves in the 21st century. To that end I would like to take this post to share a resource I found. It is called the The Mavin Foundation and it is a foundation that raises awareness about the experiences of mixed heritage people and families. They recently started a project called “What are YouTube?” which challenges mixed people to self-identify on their own terms. I encourage you to take a look at the many ways people of multiple heritages see themselves and to contribute a video if you are so inspired.

Joshua Lewis Berg

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 10:54 am and is filed under Thoughts and opinions, Web, Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.