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.

Actually, nice to know that Facebook is reacting quickly and forcefully to this attack. If you saw this one, it’s just a good reminder not to stick in your password without thinking twice, or three times.

Facebook early today suffered its second phishing attack in 24 hours, but the social networking site took swift action to resolve the matter.
Yesterday, attackers worked to lure Facebook members to FBAction.net, a site displaying a bogus Facebook login page that hijacked users’ accounts. Today, a second attack appeared, this time using fbstarter.com.

While the creator of the site remains uncertain — the site is registered to “Boris Soroka” in Moscow, according to Whois records, which aren’t necessarily legitimate — Facebook and its security partners are moving quickly to lock things down.

“We’ve already blocked www.fbstarter.com from being shared on Facebook, which stops the spread,” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told InternetNews.com. “Now, we’re deleting that URL from walls and inboxes. We’ve also blocked access to the URL so if someone does find it on Facebook [on their wall, in their inbox, or in an e-mail notification] it won’t send them to the destination. Finally, we’ll automatically reset the password on any account that sent the malicious link. Thus, the data becomes useless to the bad guys very quickly.”

[From Facebook Fights Second Phishing Attack - InternetNews.com]