Mixed Couples – Lewis Hamilton & Nicole Sherzinger

Formula 1 driver, Lewis Hamilton (Mclaren Mercedes team, ok I am a huge F1 fan and Hamilton is my favorite) has been romantically linked to singer Nicole Sherzinger for some time now. Both are actually mixed. The British Hamilton’s Mom is white and father is black and Sherzinger has a Filipino father and a mother who is half Hawai’in and half Russian.

Mixed People Monday – Melissa Harris-Perry

This is one sharp lady.

The MSNBC talk show host and college professor has a white mother and a black father, though she self-identifies as black.

Jason Richwine Should Have His IQ Tested

I guess facts can be made to support any argument.

What an idiot. Here is what one of the leading researchers at a conservative think tank wrote a few years back about Hispanic immigrants to the U.S.

[n]o one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent.

Wow. Goes to show that an education does not guarantee someone will not be an idiot.

The author of that statement, which came from a dissertation he wrote in college, though it has been shown that he still believes such drivel, is Jason Richwine, of the Heritage Foundation, one of the major opponents to immigration reform going on in Washington. No wonder Heritage is against immigration reform when they have people like Richwine working for them. Strangely, the Heritage Foundation is trying to back away from what Richwine wrote in that paper. Yet they keep him on staff and happen to agree with the implied point of his argument, that we should not let more Hispanic immigrants into the U.S.

Geez.

Here is a full article on this craziness.

Asian Americans Are Americans

As American as apple pie.

Friend of mind posted this in honor of May being “Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month.” (Admittedly I didn’t even know that. Shame on me.) But love this article, which was on Changelabinfo.com. The last point on this list is the most important in my opinion and nails the biggest takeaway for all of us:

Five Things You Should Know About Asian Americans

By Scott Nakagawa

May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. In honor of the occasion, here are five things that I think you should know about Asian Americans.*

1. We Don’t All Look Alike. In fact, most of us aren’t alike at all. When many non-Asians conjure a picture of “Asian American” in their minds, they see an East Asian person – someone whose roots can be traced to China, Korea, or Japan. But Asian America includes dozens of distinct and linguistically diverse ethnic groups originating from a region that encompasses much more than the Far East.

Moreover, we are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants who came to the U.S. for wildly different reasons, at different times, and under vastly different circumstances. While some Asian immigrants first arrived in the U.S. as sojourners seeking economic opportunity (and not a few of us because the economies of our home countries are devastated by global economic pressures), others are in the U.S. as legacies of war. Still others entered the U.S. with special visas in order to fulfill business needs for investment capital or highly skilled workers.

And, Asian Americans generally don’t identify as Asian American, which after all is an American term invented in the 1960s, before the largest waves of migration from Asia post-1968. Instead, most of us identify by ethnicity.

2. We Aren’t Halfway Between Black and White. In fact, this way of thinking of Asians overlooks the peculiar role anti-Asian racism plays in strengthening the American racial hierarchy. Rather than be profiled into traditional categories of Black, White, or indigenous, Asians, like many Latinos, are raced as “forever foreign,” even if we may have been in the U.S. for generations. Whether we’re profiled as sub- or super-human, we are always exotic, and anti-Asian stereotypes are manipulated in a way that strengthens the oppressive power of all other racial categories, from White as normative, to Black as problematic and dangerous.

Some version of this has been true since the first Asian immigrants came to the U.S. Because of perceived over competition for economic opportunity and white anxiety over loss of cultural and political control, the reaction to the arrival of Asians made the connection between “American” and “White,” and “race” and “nation,” stronger than ever.

3. We’re Not Your Model Minority. We aren’t all privileged by high incomes and higher levels of education. That’s not to say there isn’t some privilege associated with being stereotyped as exceptional, but that privilege is conditional, based on our usefulness in maintaining a racial hierarchy in which there are model minorities and “problem minorities.” As long as we can be profiled as a model minority who quietly pulled ourselves up by our boot straps, that stereotype can continue to be used as the exception to American racism that strengthens the myth of American social mobility across the color line, with terrible implications for other people of color.

And, word to the wise, the point of drawing attention to those Asian ethnic groups who don’t benefit from the stereotype is, in part, to remind those of us who do that our privilege should be balanced by the obligation to raise the visibility of those among us who continue to suffer from poverty and/or anti-terrorist racial profiling. When we dodge this responsibility, we make ourselves vulnerable to changes in the political climate that might turn the stereotype over onto its flip side which casts us as disloyal, dangerous perpetual foreigners.

4. We Aren’t “Naturally” Conservative. While it’s a perilous jump from Asian American voters to a whole community that includes so many non-voters, most of us who vote aren’t conservative at all. That doesn’t mean we’re progressive, exactly. Instead, it means we tend to side with liberals on issues like health care, affirmative action, immigration, and social security. That’s probably why well over 70% of us voted for Obama. And as we are also less likely to be Christians, as long as the GOP continues to side with conservative evangelicals, many Asian voters will lean toward Democratic candidates.

5. Asian Americans are Human Beings. That may seem awfully obvious, but studies demonstrate that when many of us, especially Whites, respond to images of White people, we describe people without race. We may use other adjectives, but white isn’t often among them. That is, until images of non-Whites are introduced. And when non-White images are presented first, race is almost always noted.

But, we are all just human beings upon whom race has been imposed. Race is neither cultural nor biological. Instead, it’s a political system, invented to subjugate and exploit non-whites, and to keep those raced as different apart from one another, I’m guessing so we can’t figure out that we’re all just human.

During Asian Pacific American Heritage month, this bears repeating. Even as we address racism, and celebrate our many cultures, we Asians should remember that race, as opposed to culture or ethnicity, is a political invention imposed upon us in order to fit us into categories according to which power has historically been organized in the U.S. Forgetting this may well strengthen those oppressive categories, even when our true interests lie in holding them up and making them visible to ourselves and others in order to destroy them.

Here is the link to the original article.

 

Being The Only Black Around Can Often Be Hilarious

The experiences of being the only black around can sometimes be funny.

My son posted this on his Facebook page. I nearly died laughing. Brings back memories of my experiences in class too. Glad he has a sense of humor about it.

Click here for some funny stuff on life as the only black in your class.

Mixed People Monday – Odette Annable

The actress (“Golden Boy,” “House”) has a Cuban mother and a father who is of Italian and French descent, was born inBogotá, Colombia and raised in Nicaragua.

Should We Still Use “Race” To Get Past “Race”?

A major ruling is coming soon. Will be controversial either way.

I have to admit, I am still not sure which side of this debate I fall on. Honestly, I see the arguments on both sides as having merit.

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court set the terms for boosting college admissions of African Americans and other minorities, the court may be about to issue a ruling that could restrict universities’ use of race in deciding who is awarded places.
The case before the justices was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white suburban Houston student who asserted she was wrongly rejected by the University of Texas at Austin while minority students with similar grades and test scores were admitted.
The ruling is the only one the court has yet to issue following oral arguments in cases heard in October and November, the opening months of the court’s annual term which lasts until the early summer. A decision might come as early as Monday, before the start of a two-week recess.
As hard as it is to predict when a ruling will be announced, it is more difficult to say how it might change the law. Still, even a small move in the Texas case could mark the beginning of a new chapter limiting college administrators’ discretion in using race in deciding on admissions.

I do believe that there are other criteria, other than “race” that can be used to ensure diverse student populations – family income, high school being located in an impoverished area, first in family to attend college, class ranking regarding of school, etc. Using those factors will naturally lead to minority students in a lot of cases even if ignoring culture or ethnicity. I also believe a middle class or upper middle class hispanic or black student should not necessarily get preference over a white kid who went to poor schools or comes from a poor family.

But I certainly believe it is critical that universities be diverse and reflective of our changing demographics and world. It is critical to our future. So I will be paying close attention to this ruling and what happens in the aftermath. It is a tough question, should we continue to pay attention to color in order to get past color? The answer is not so simple.

Read the rest of the article reference above here.

High School Hold Its Very First Integrated Prom!

Since I posted about this a while back, I wanted to pass on the update.

Hallelujah, the kids had their first integrated prom – ever! At this rate Georgia may catch up to the times in another 200 years.

Mixed People Monday – Tia Carrere

A diverse heritage.

The actress, who was born in Hawai’i, is of Filipino, Chinese and Spanish heritage.

Mixed People Monday – Bruce Lee

None better.

Man I was a huge Bruce Lee fan growing up. So had to throw my old hero in here. The American–born actor was born to a Chinese father and a mother of Chinese and German ancestry.