Posted by
Logical Party on Friday, January 16, 2009 5:00:00 AM
Thankfully we will begin our National period of Hope and Change and what better way to start then with an open, honest, truthfulness. That would mean acknowledging the reality of the moment and not whatever our desires or the media want to display.
That truth is Barack Obama is our first Black President and our Forty-fourth White one. Our longing to break a mold and “overcome” by finally electing a Black President should not foreshadow the truth.
Barack came from a broken home, his Black Father abandoning his family, eventually returning for a one week stay and then leaving to pursue misogynistic endeavors ending in a drunken car crash. The most influential, supportive, consistent people in his life were the white maternal part of the family, which he often gratefully acknowledges. Why don’t we?
We have finally accepted the psychological community’s definition of what makes a healthy family; positive reinforcement by parents, and unconditional love. I would imagine in a biracial household there is no acknowledgements of differences, because none is seen; only love.
Based on our country’s ancient prejudiced, bigoted and racial past, mixed race children assimilated with others of “color,” because White Americans would not “accept” anyone with a hint of skin tone differential. This is a half truth, since many Black Americans also were prejudiced to those who claimed to be black, yet “caramel” in appearance; not black enough. In extreme situations where attitudes and political beliefs didn’t match what “the community” had in mind, they were damned as “Uncle Tom’s.”
The confusing part for White Americans is why they don’t get a ‘shout out” for their part in raising a child? Why is Halle Berry the first Black actress to win an Academy award when her mother Judith is white, her father Jerome black? Whoopi Goldberg speaks in her monologues of the “black community,” and has acknowledged being a Jewish-Catholic girl from New York, her mother white and father black. What of Alicia Keyes, Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, whose mother Roxie Roker portrayed the very life she lived in an interracial marriage on the Jeffersons.
It seems disrespectful to the White parent to be overlooked and for White Americans to keep them and their influence in the closet. One is confused thinking Mrs. Berry must have thought “what about me?” when her daughter received an award for portraying the biracial actress Dorothy Dandridge.
Of course within the interracial family, recognition is not a component, only the aforementioned values of unconditional love, and the desire for their children to grow up healthy and happy.
Only when we acknowledge the truth will our differences die. And to take a page out of Whoopi’s monologue, it is only when we start referring to one another as Americans, not White or Black that our differences will disappear. To quote St. John, “the truth shall free you.” If we want to be honest to virtues of Hope and Change, then let’s start by acknowledging the events of the day: we have our first bi racial President and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
David DiBello