Deb of Debwire Update
This is a blogger who I told you about before-- one who has created their own online newsgroup to report hot topics. (FYI, this year bloggers for the first time were granted journalists' passes to the conventions.) Anyway, whether we use Deb in the doc or not, I would ask her and other bloggers to do a grass roots movement of our film. Here she's commenting on the Kennedy article.
(The Politics of) Interracial Intimacy, Part 1
Filed under:
Race & Culture— Deb @ 7:22 am
And isn’t this the truth:
White-black dating, marriage, and adoption are on the rise. This development, however, is being met with resistance—more vocally by blacks than by whites.
Perhaps explained this way:
A third camp opposes interracial marriage, on the grounds that it expresses racial disloyalty, suggests disapproval of fellow blacks, undermines black culture, weakens the African-American marriage market, and feeds racist mythologies, particularly the canard that blacks lack pride of race.
(Updated 9:30 p.m.)
The above quotes were captured from an article that is linked at the bottom of this post. You will notice that a lot of territory is covered in the article. I read it months ago and came across it again this morning. I figure it’s time I write about the subject of interracial relationships. Why? Well, because I’m qualified to and this is my blog. I’ve got a lot of personal experience in this arena. I’ve debated in several arenas the issues relating to “race,” interracial relationships, marriage, and biracial/multiracial children and have done so for decades.
Because it is perhaps one of the most comprehensive articles I’ve read in a while, I’m going to write a series of posts relating to what it discusses with each post addressing particular aspects of the article. My mind is in a flurry right now trying to organize the thoughts and transform them into words because to expound on a topic so complex, yet so basic or simple, is the challenge for me.
My anal retentiveness wants to spend days writing down my thoughts (what seems like hundreds of them), then organize them in a structured sequence of sorts, then type them, correct all my grammar, edit, re-edit, re-read, read again and finally post…whew. I might do that to some degree. And some of my posts relating to this topic may seem fragmented, but hang in there with me… I’m having to dig deep into the depths in order to be able to effectively write something that is so personal and sometimes painful for me. I’m struggling to finally document what I have felt, observed, learned, analyzed, experienced all these years.
So, yeah, since it’s my blog and I can cry if I want to (well, you know what I mean), I’m going to address this topic from a very personal standpoint. No, I’m not giving very personal details (at least I don’t think so), but a very personal perspective. But those personal details may shine through when that perspective is documented in these posts. That makes me feel vulnerable, as it should.
This subject has been at the core of much of the pain and joy in my life. I started a book several years ago that I have struggled so hard to finish writing. In fact, I can’t tell you the last time I read it. Each time I tried, it was too uncomfortable to read. Sometimes when we try to write about topics that are so personal it forces us to re-examine ourselves, to second guess ourselves, it causes past pains we thought we buried or have spent years avoiding feeling anything about to resurface. I’m overdue, though. I’ve got to break the writer’s block. And I wasn’t writing for anyone else, mind you. I was writing for myself. I was trying to force myself to document and ultimately make sense of everything I feel about the issues surrounding “race” in general and as it relates to interracial relationships and biracial/multiracial children.
Like politics and religion, issues of “race” (or “race” politics) are a major hot button in this society that truly affects everyone–some more than others. And unlike “standard” politics or religion (neither of which I feel impassioned to write about–leave those topics to the thousands of bloggers who do), I feel compelled to do this topic justice if I am going to write about it. Before I can write about it, I’ve got to lay some of the framework to build around…
To define “race” to begin with is a challenge. Here’s one definition, according to Dictionary.com:
racen.
A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.
A genealogical line; a lineage.
Humans considered as a group.
Biology.a. An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies.b. A breed or strain, as of domestic animals.
A distinguishing or characteristic quality, such as the flavor of a wine.
———————————–[French, from Old French, from Old Italian razza, race, lineage.]Usage Note: The notion of race is nearly as problematic from a scientific point of view as it is from a social one. European physical anthropologists of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of racial classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin color, hair type, body proportions, and skull measurements, essentially codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations of humans. The traditional terms for these populations — Caucasoid (or Caucasian), Mongoloid, Negroid, and in some systems Australoidare — now controversial in both technical and nontechnical usage, and in some cases they may well be considered offensive. (Caucasian does retain a certain currency in American English, but it is used almost exclusively to mean “white” or “European” rather than “belonging to the Caucasian race,” a group that includes a variety of peoples generally categorized as nonwhite.) The biological aspect of race is described today not in observable physical features but rather in such genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes, and the groupings indicated by these factors seldom coincide very neatly with those put forward by earlier physical anthropologists. Citing this and other points such as the fact that a person who is considered black in one society might be nonblack in another many cultural anthropologists now consider race to be more a social or mental construct than an objective biological fact.
So while I’m about to explode with thoughts, I’m not going to put the same pressure on myself to document everything all at once. No deadlines and only when I feel the urge to write. I suspect as I do finally put the pen to paper again (fingers to keyboard?), that I’m going to be forcing myself to examine the “rights” and “wrongs” in my feelings. I suppose that can be healthy, but it means making it public. I have to be okay with that. I’m getting there…
(The Politics of) Interracial Intimacy, Part 1
Filed under:
Race & Culture— Deb @ 7:22 am
And isn’t this the truth:
White-black dating, marriage, and adoption are on the rise. This development, however, is being met with resistance—more vocally by blacks than by whites.
Perhaps explained this way:
A third camp opposes interracial marriage, on the grounds that it expresses racial disloyalty, suggests disapproval of fellow blacks, undermines black culture, weakens the African-American marriage market, and feeds racist mythologies, particularly the canard that blacks lack pride of race.
(Updated 9:30 p.m.)
The above quotes were captured from an article that is linked at the bottom of this post. You will notice that a lot of territory is covered in the article. I read it months ago and came across it again this morning. I figure it’s time I write about the subject of interracial relationships. Why? Well, because I’m qualified to and this is my blog. I’ve got a lot of personal experience in this arena. I’ve debated in several arenas the issues relating to “race,” interracial relationships, marriage, and biracial/multiracial children and have done so for decades.
Because it is perhaps one of the most comprehensive articles I’ve read in a while, I’m going to write a series of posts relating to what it discusses with each post addressing particular aspects of the article. My mind is in a flurry right now trying to organize the thoughts and transform them into words because to expound on a topic so complex, yet so basic or simple, is the challenge for me.
My anal retentiveness wants to spend days writing down my thoughts (what seems like hundreds of them), then organize them in a structured sequence of sorts, then type them, correct all my grammar, edit, re-edit, re-read, read again and finally post…whew. I might do that to some degree. And some of my posts relating to this topic may seem fragmented, but hang in there with me… I’m having to dig deep into the depths in order to be able to effectively write something that is so personal and sometimes painful for me. I’m struggling to finally document what I have felt, observed, learned, analyzed, experienced all these years.
So, yeah, since it’s my blog and I can cry if I want to (well, you know what I mean), I’m going to address this topic from a very personal standpoint. No, I’m not giving very personal details (at least I don’t think so), but a very personal perspective. But those personal details may shine through when that perspective is documented in these posts. That makes me feel vulnerable, as it should.
This subject has been at the core of much of the pain and joy in my life. I started a book several years ago that I have struggled so hard to finish writing. In fact, I can’t tell you the last time I read it. Each time I tried, it was too uncomfortable to read. Sometimes when we try to write about topics that are so personal it forces us to re-examine ourselves, to second guess ourselves, it causes past pains we thought we buried or have spent years avoiding feeling anything about to resurface. I’m overdue, though. I’ve got to break the writer’s block. And I wasn’t writing for anyone else, mind you. I was writing for myself. I was trying to force myself to document and ultimately make sense of everything I feel about the issues surrounding “race” in general and as it relates to interracial relationships and biracial/multiracial children.
Like politics and religion, issues of “race” (or “race” politics) are a major hot button in this society that truly affects everyone–some more than others. And unlike “standard” politics or religion (neither of which I feel impassioned to write about–leave those topics to the thousands of bloggers who do), I feel compelled to do this topic justice if I am going to write about it. Before I can write about it, I’ve got to lay some of the framework to build around…
To define “race” to begin with is a challenge. Here’s one definition, according to Dictionary.com:
racen.
A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.
A genealogical line; a lineage.
Humans considered as a group.
Biology.a. An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits. A race that has been given formal taxonomic recognition is known as a subspecies.b. A breed or strain, as of domestic animals.
A distinguishing or characteristic quality, such as the flavor of a wine.
———————————–[French, from Old French, from Old Italian razza, race, lineage.]Usage Note: The notion of race is nearly as problematic from a scientific point of view as it is from a social one. European physical anthropologists of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of racial classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin color, hair type, body proportions, and skull measurements, essentially codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations of humans. The traditional terms for these populations — Caucasoid (or Caucasian), Mongoloid, Negroid, and in some systems Australoidare — now controversial in both technical and nontechnical usage, and in some cases they may well be considered offensive. (Caucasian does retain a certain currency in American English, but it is used almost exclusively to mean “white” or “European” rather than “belonging to the Caucasian race,” a group that includes a variety of peoples generally categorized as nonwhite.) The biological aspect of race is described today not in observable physical features but rather in such genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes, and the groupings indicated by these factors seldom coincide very neatly with those put forward by earlier physical anthropologists. Citing this and other points such as the fact that a person who is considered black in one society might be nonblack in another many cultural anthropologists now consider race to be more a social or mental construct than an objective biological fact.
So while I’m about to explode with thoughts, I’m not going to put the same pressure on myself to document everything all at once. No deadlines and only when I feel the urge to write. I suspect as I do finally put the pen to paper again (fingers to keyboard?), that I’m going to be forcing myself to examine the “rights” and “wrongs” in my feelings. I suppose that can be healthy, but it means making it public. I have to be okay with that. I’m getting there…
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