Mixed People Often Lead The Way

The wife and kids.

I keep reading stories of the “tragic mulatto,” the term that used to describe a mixed person suffering from being lost between cultures, though then it was referencing primarily black and white. And I don’t know if it is just that we are lucky that we live in the very ethnically diverse California and Los Angeles area, or something else, but our kids, so far at least, have experienced none of these so called problems of being mixed. In fact they have turned out to be the most well-adsjusted kids I could ever want. Indeed they both, one 15 and one 14 years of age, are fantastic examples of what being mixed can do for someone when it comes to them accepting everyone and being able to blend in and out of different cultures with absolute ease. They love being two cultures and being more rather than being less.

I know life in other places isn’t the same as here, so I am not ignoring that reality for some others. But I also think it is important that people stop trying to make it sound like all mixed kids and people deal with identity confusion because I know firsthand that that is not always true. And as my “Mixed People Monday” posts on this blog also show, mixed people are very much overrepresented in areas of sports success, entertainment, business, you name it.

So much for mixed cultures or ethnicities being a hindrance. The opposite seems to be true.

Another Year of Getting Beyond Racial Classifications

So what is she?

Here’s to 2013 being a great year for all of us and to it being a year when we see our society and world get ever closer to the silly and outdated notion of “race” as a divider becoming meaningless, or at least less so.

Hailee Steinfeld, above photo, symbolizes the idiocy of “race.” Hailee’s maternal grandfather, Ricardo Guillermo Domasin, was born in Los Angeles, in 1938. Ricardo’s dad, Peter L. Domasin, was born in 1904 in the Philippines (his own mother’s maiden name was Lorisca). Ricardo’s mother, Evelyn Olivia Bain, was born in Los Angeles, in 1910; she was Hailee Steinfeld’s great-grandmother. Evelyn was African-American, and she and her parents, Thomas Edward Bain and Wilma “Willie” Peterson, are listed as either African-American or Mulatto in every census. So what “race” would that make Hailee?

Simply human.

Looking forward to 2013 and plenty more blogging.

Mixed Couples – Susan Rice and Ian Cameron

A smart and accomplished couple.

The United Nations ambassador, Susan Rice, is married to ABC News producer, Ian Cameron. They fell in love while both were at Stanford.

Affirmative Action Debate Always Misses The Point

The importance of diversity seems to get lost.

Looks like the affirmative action debate is still going strong.

In an interview on the Huffington Post Live, Professor Lino Graglia, a University of Texas law professor, pointed to test scores on the SAT and LSAT, where he said:

“blacks generally score hundreds of points lower than whites and Asians”, to buttress his claim that affirmative action translates to admitting “the blacks… that come closest to meeting the ordinary standards. And these are going to be the most advantaged blacks.”

Amazing how historical and current discrimination that impacts urban schools, funding and therefore test scores are left out of his equation.

Here is a piece of that interview/debate.

Mixed Couples – Wolfgang Puck and Gelila Assefa

I’m sure they eat well.

The famous chef’s wife was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia until she was 16 and moved to the U.S.

Obama Speech During Football Game Flushed Out A Lot Of Racists

Some people’s priorities are really screwed up.

This is what I call bi-level stupidity.

When the President addressed the grieving people of Newton on Sunday night and his speech was broadcast to the nation, television stations broke into regular programming to cover it.

This didn’t sit well with the neanderthal segment of the Sunday Night football crowd who couldn’t believe a football game was being interrupted by a tragedy involving 26 people being killed. And worse still, they were incensed that a part-black man was doing the interrupting.

It was just too much for their brains. So some of them took to Twitter and here was the result:

Trust me there was much more where this came from (if you’re in the mood to read more click here).

Amazing how little it takes for some people to show their true colors. And their stupidity.

Mixed People Monday – Arian Foster

A student of Buddhism and Eastern philosophies.

The Houston Texans running back is half African-American and half Mexican-American.

ESPN Host Talks Crazy Racial Ignorance About RG3

This is one of the most ignorant foray into ethnic analysis I have ever seen on a sports program.

Rob Parker, on ESPN’s “First Take” was trying to explain why he has problems with Robert Griffin III, D.C.’s black quarterback, who just the day before rightfully said he “refused to be defined by race.”

Talk about making a fool of oneself.

Here is an article on what RG3 said that sparked that ignorance. It is an excellent statement on ethnicity and sports.

In London, Whites Are Now A Minority

A change in the guard symbolizes a bigger change.

America is not the only country that is in the midst of an ethnic shift from being majority white (though that change is not expected here until about 2050). In London, whites are now the minority. According to The Financial Times:

White Britons no longer make up the majority of people in London for the first time, according to the latest census data which pointed to a cosmopolitan capital increasingly divergent from the national economy around it…

The surge of immigration has been especially striking in London, where more than one in three people — 37 per cent — were born outside the UK.

Only 45 per cent of London’s population were white people of English, Scottish or Welsh heritage, according to the latest data, down from almost 60 per cent in 2001.This makes London the first UK region where white ethnic Britons have become a minority.

The top source of new migrants to England and Wales overall for the decade was India — supplanting Ireland in the decade to 2001 — while the second-biggest source was Poland. In the 2001 census, Poland did not make the top 10.

Of course this shift is about one city in England but it is a striking occurrence since London is of course the marquee city in that country.

The Australian, a leading media source down under, also reported this from the same Census news:

The results, published yesterday, also show that the number of mixed-race people has doubled to top a million for the first time.

The changing face of Britain has been highlighted during the past decade with the prominence of mixed-race sports personalities such as Lewis Hamilton and Jessica Ennis. From small-market towns such as Boston to cities such as Birmingham, many parts of the country are home to increasingly mixed communities…

The London statistics include 102,000 mixed white and Asian people; 119,000 mixed white and black Caribbean; 119,000 other mixed; 542,000 British Indian; 224,000 British Pakistani and 222,000 British Bangladeshi.

Gotta love diversity.

Here is the full story in The Financial Times and here is the full piece in The Australian.

Mixed Couples – Michael Caine & Shakira Caine

He saw her on a commercial and had to meet her.

The esteemed actor, Michael Caine, and his wife Shakira, who is Guyanese, have been married for over 40 years.