What "White Privilege" Means

Article HERE.

Dismantling Anger and Racism.

"For me, the racism of microaggressions means having to be alert the minute I step outside the house, ensuring that I don’t carelessly do something that might reflect badly on my race."

The article is HERE.

Blasians.

Famous half Asian, half- African Americans.



Amerie.


The Rock.


Kimora Lee Simmons.


Nicki Minaj.

This shirt says it all when an interested soul wants to come up and feel your "exotic" hair....

new skin lightner for Black/Hispanics?

I’m not mad at Sammy. I can’t relate but I understand why people would want to lighten their skin. I’m the opposite. I go tanning any chance I get. In every part of the Black World there are people using ridiculous and dangerous chemicals to lighten their skin. It makes me sad because I love black. I love black so black its blue.

I heard on the news this morning that Sosa is considering marketing this product he used. Being the official spokesperson for a deep seeded self-hatred that millions of Black people have for themselves. Sadly, I think the product would be a hit. Who doesn’t want to be lighter, make things easier, right? Being from the Dominican Republic, Sosa was born into a group of people that refuse to acknowledge their Black heritage. Much like Brazil and many regions of South America. In many of these places Black is synonymous with poor, dirty and unrecognized in society - in other words nothing anyone wants to be.

White supremacy is an ideology that stretches much further than the (US)American terrorist organization, the kkk. White Supremacy is a universal virus that has destroyed people of Black and Brown decent. It’s killed us, erased our history, enslaved us, raped us, lightened our skin, terrorized our minds and shunned our culture. There is just a little part of me that is patiently waiting, praying and hoping that one day, one day soon, we’ll stop hating ourselves and start hating the system that put us here.

I’m not mad at Sosa, I’m mad at the system that got us here.
(via mzreport.)

China’s black pop idol exposes her nation’s racism

She is attractive, effervescent and has an appealing voice. But these qualities alone would not have made Lou Jing the most famous television talent show contestant in China and the subject of national debate in the world’s most populous country. The reason they are talking about Lou is because she is black.

The 20-year-old daughter of a Chinese mother and an African-American father who left the country before she was born, Lou was a highly unusual entrant to Shanghai-based Dragon TV’s Go Oriental Angel. Her appearances – she became one of five finalists – have provoked a storm of abuse on the internet, a rare debate on racism in the media, and a bout of self-examination in a country where skin colour is a notoriously sensitive subject.

(…)”There are two factors at work here,” wrote Raymond Zhou.”Lou Jing is not a pure-blood Chinese and anyone who marries a foreigner is deemed a ‘traitor’ to his or her race. More relevant, Lou’s father is black.”

Zhou concluded: “It is high time we introduced some sensitivity training on races and ethnicities if we are going to latch on to the orbit of globalisation. People should realise that if you have a right to discriminate against another race you have automatically given others the right to discriminate against you.”

Chip Tsao, one of Hong Kong’s leading columnists and cultural commentators, believes that a child of a Chinese woman and a black person hits all the buttons that cause prejudice among Chinese. “It’s an obnoxious novelty,” he said, adding that Chinese prejudice against black people was part of “prejudice against people less well-off than themselves”.

There was, he said, greater acceptance of Europeans because they were viewed as successful, but mixed Chinese/white European couples frequently attracted racist comment.

One leading actress, Jiang Ziyi, who has an Israeli boyfriend, has routinely been accused of betrayal for consorting with a foreigner. A stark reminder of official racism came last year when Ding Hui, of mixed Chinese and African parentage, was barred from representing his country in the national volleyball team.

China officially lists 56 approved ethnic minorities within its borders, but discussion about ethnic differences is largely taboo. Racial tensions have recently broken out between the Muslim Uighur population, who look more like Europeans, and the “Chinese”-looking majority.

-China’s black pop idol exposes her nation’s racism | World news | The Observer
(via exiledsoul)

politically conscious jewelry

via Ghostface Tesha



politically conscious jewelry
34-year old Kali Arulpragasam is not just the big sister of style icon M.I.A, she’s also the creative mind behind the line Super Fertile. She uses her dramatic jewelry to bring issues like class disparity and cultural ignorance to the forefront. Collections like Endangered Species, Rich Girl vs. Poor Girl, and Tourism (Terrorism Affects Tourism) clearly speaks for itself. I think she’s a genius. I mean what better way to get our generation more involved than to surround it around fashion; stylish jewelry that we would totally wear. To see more of Super Fertile collections visit the website Superfertile

HU's First White Homecoming Queen

via Mello Dee:

ETA: The winner is from Hawaii and calls herself Hawaiian. Her mother is Italian and her father is from Guam. Yet the headlines, for the most part, call her white. This is a good case for discussions on race, nationality and ethnicity. Also self-identification versus ascribed-identification."

When Cultural Appropriation Goes Too Far.

(pic via iindia.)

"Perhaps it was curious exploration, but to me it has always felt like the new-ager obsession with India feeds into the belief that Americans don’t have their “own” culture, so they need to participate and steal from “mine.” Even though I had adopted a Western lifestyle and it was definitely “my culture”—one trip to India made that very clear. Furthermore, it felt very convenient for people that hadn’t experienced life as a person of color and an immigrant in this country to participate in a culture by choice, one that I had been discriminated against for being a part of. My ambivalence to Westerners adopting and often distorting what I knew as my “home” culture has only grown, where yoga practice for me is sometimes my fight to deal with my anger around cultural appropriation."

Samhita - When Cultural Appropriation Goes Too Far.
Full article HERE.

(via Mrjjude.)

Poverty on Pine Ridge.

All photos by Aaron Huey and can be seen at the New York Times interview here.



Aaron Huey arrived on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota at the start of a self-assigned photographic road trip to document poverty in America.
The poverty he found on the reservation stopped him cold.
“Pine Ridge is the scariest place I’ve ever been - more so than in a Taliban ambush,” Mr. Huey said. ”It was emotionally devastating. I’d call my wife late at night crying.”

Overwhelmed by the poverty – and at the same time by scenes of people trying to maintain the Lakota way of life – Mr. Huey abandoned the rest of his nationwide project to focus on Pine Ridge. Five years later, he’s still photographing on the reservation, which includes the Wounded Knee battlefield.
Mr. Huey, 33, is a photgrapher for National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler. He also freelances for The New Yorker and Geo. In 2007, he photographed in Afghanistan for The Times.

(via Indigen)

In the News: Interracial Couple Denied Marriage Liscense.

Read the article
HERE.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America.

-Barack Obama

Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back On Online-Dating Sites

(via Hi My Name is Kia)


Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back is an
interesting article by dating site OK Cupid on the stats of how many replies you will get back based on your race. As you can see - Black women are overwhelmingly undesireable. The article can be read HERE.

"It’s hard for me to really explain how it feels to be a part of the group that is overwhelmingly undesired. To be seen as universally unattractive. Of course there are so many factors that led to how this data came to be, geography, age, culture and so on, but let’s not kid ourselves. The data would tell a similar story no matter how you slice it."- excerpt from Kia's response:

WHO: Sabina Karlsson

Mixed: Gambian and Swedish

WHAT: Model.

Never Forget.

Post - racial.

Since my birth in the mid-80's I have been force fed the same line: "It shouldn't matter what color we are. We are all people." As much as I would have liked to swallow that pill, my life has proved just the opposite. While yes, science has proved that race has no genetic standing or basis, we are still a society that views race as a platform for many things. We encode, latently embrace, reject and sop up racial stereotypes and act accordingly to them. Even the most un-biased person does this..if even just a little. However, Obama's election last July unearthed this issue of "post-racialness". While [African-Americans] praise the fact that he is the first Black president, others still recant, "Well, he is still part white." What does that mean? It means that, while America may preach "color-blindness",it is something we have yet to embrace. We are not yet comfortable with race yet, let alone with post-racial, or bi/multiracialism. With the population of Multi-Racial Americans doubling every year according to Diversity Inc., this leaves us in the middle - a minority of minorities. We grasp on to two worlds, accepted, and yet never fully embraced by either ethnicities. We get tossed back and forth, in and out of categories as society sees fit. A light skin mixed baby? We will call you mixed; too dark? sorry, you're black.

As much as I would like to belive in a world devoid of racism, stereotypes and categories, I cannot be so naive as to believe it will happen. And as long as those societal problems stand, the issue of being "post-racial" cannot be fully understood or embraced.

“No race, creed or religion should endure the ridicule faced by Native Americans today. Please help us put an end to this mockery and racism, by visiting www.ncai.org.” —National Congress of American Indians

A Melting Pot: The Stew gets Darker.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Reform Madness - White Minority
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

"Go tell that to the Indians!"

We Are All African Now.

(pic via Intelligent Life.)

An ambitious study of our DNA is showing that everybody's ancestors came out of Africa. J.M. Ledgard reports from the Rift Valley in Kenya. Read more HERE.

Addicted to Race

A post on Racialiciousby Carmen Van Kerckhove.


Addicted to Race is New Demographic’s podcast about America’s obsession with race. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll find in this episode:

This episode is NSFW. Are beauty standards for black women really laxer than for white women, just because big booties are appreciated? What role does race and ethnicity play in burlesque? Why must interracial porn always be so racist? What is it about race play that gets people off? Carmen Van Kerckhove, Tami Winfrey Harris, and Andrea Plaid discuss.

Perfect Braids Show Depth of Dad's Devotion

Happy Father's Day.


(pic via AJC

Clifton Green waited a decade to become a dad, imagining he would be like the man who raised him and made him feel like the most special kid in the world.

That day came in 2005, when Green and his wife adopted daughter Miriam Tigist from an Ethiopian orphanage.

Suddenly, fatherhood demanded a task few white men ever contemplate: hours of cleaning, combing, twisting and braiding African hair. Full Story Here..

Multi-Racial in America

*MSNBC did a five part series on Multi-Racial families in America. The link is here

Multi-Racial Men: Vin Diesel

Who He Is: Actor

Races: African-American and Italian American.


How you know Him: Steven Spielberg was impressed by Multi-Facial (1999) and wanted to meet Vin, leading him to be cast in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Multi-Facial (1999) earned Vin more work, when the director of The Iron Giant (1999) saw it and decided to cast Vin in the title role. From there, Vin's career has steadily grown, with him securing his first lead role as 'Richard B Riddick' in the sci-fi film Pitch Black (2000). That role has earned him a legion of devoted fans and the public recognition he deserves. (via IMDb)

Multi-Racial People becoming the Fastest growing US Group.

Associated Press Writer= WASHINGTON (AP) — Multiracial Americans have become the fastest growing demographic group, wielding an impact on minority growth that challenges traditional notions of race.

The number of multiracial people rose 3.4 percent last year to about 5.2 million, according to the latest census estimates. First given the option in 2000, Americans who check more than one box for race on census surveys have jumped by 33 percent and now make up 5 percent of the minority population — with millions more believed to be uncounted.

Demographers attributed the recent population growth to more social acceptance and slowing immigration. They cited in particular the high public profiles of Tiger Woods and President Barack Obama, a self-described "mutt," who are having an effect on those who might self-identify as multiracial.

Population figures as of July 2008 show that California, Texas, New York and Florida had the most multiracial people, due partly to higher numbers of second- and later-generation immigrants who are more likely to "marry out." Measured by percentages, Hawaii ranked first with nearly 1 in 5 residents who were multiracial, followed by Alaska and Oklahoma, both at roughly 4 percent.

Utah had the highest growth rate of multiracial people in 2008 compared to the previous year, a reflection of increasing social openness in a mostly white state.

"Multiracial unions have been happening for a very long time, but we are only now really coming to terms with saying it's OK," said Carolyn Liebler, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in family, race and ethnicity.

"I don't think we've nearly tapped the potential. Millions are yet to come out," she said.

In Middletown, N.J., Kayci Baldwin, 17, said she remembers how her black father and white mother often worried whether she would fit in with the other kids. While she at first struggled with her identity, Baldwin now actively embraces it, sponsoring support groups and a nationwide multiracial teen club of 1,000 that includes both Democrats and Republicans.

"I went to my high school prom last week with my date who is Ecuadoran-Nigerian, a friend who is Chinese-white and another friend who is part Dominican," she said. "While we are a group that was previously ignored in many ways, we now have an opportunity to fully identify and express ourselves."

The latest demographic change comes amid a debate on the role of race in America, complicating conventional notions of minority rights.

Under new federal rules, many K-12 schools next year will allow students for the first time to indicate if they are "two or more races." The move is expected to cause shifts in how test scores are categorized, potentially altering race disparities and funding for education programs.

Five justices of the Supreme Court have signaled they would like to end racial preferences in voting rights and employment cases — a majority that may not change even if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as the first Hispanic justice. Blacks and Hispanics, meanwhile, are touting a growing minority population and past discrimination in pushing for continued legal protections.

Left out of the discussion are multiracial people, who are counted as minorities but can be hard to define politically and socioeconomically. Demographers say that while some multiracial Americans may feel burdened or isolated by their identity, others quickly learn to navigate it and can flourish from their access to more racial networks.

"The significance of race as we know it in today's legal and government categories will be obsolete in less than 20 years," said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution.

"The rise of mixed-race voters will dilute the racial identity politics that have become prevalent in past elections," he said.

Liebler noted a potential dilemma where a white student who is one-eighth Cherokee applies to college and seeks an admissions preference based on race and disadvantaged status. Should the college give the multiracial student the boost, if one-eighth of his family suffered a past racial harm but seven-eighths of his family were the perpetrators?

"It's a huge question for our legal system and our policies," she said. "Tomorrow we could have a legal case that challenges whether a multiracial person is a minority."

Census data also show:

More than half of the multiracial population was younger than 20 years old, a reflection of declining social stigma as interracial marriages became less taboo.

Interracial marriages increased threefold to 4.3 million since 2000, when Alabama became the last state to lift its unenforceable ban on interracial marriages. (The Supreme Court barred race-based restrictions on marriage in 1967.) About 1 in 13 marriages are mixed race, with the most prevalent being white-Hispanic, white-American Indian and white-Asian.

Due to declining immigration because of legal restrictions and the lackluster economy, the growth rates of the Hispanic and Asian populations slowed last year to 3.2 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, compared to multiracial people's 3.4 percent. The black population rose at a rate of about 1 percent; the white population only marginally increased.

Currently, census forms allow U.S. residents to check more than one box for their race. But there is no multiracial category, and survey responses can vary widely depending on whether a person considers Hispanic a race or ethnicity.

"It's all about awareness," said Susan Graham, founder and executive director of California-based Project Race, which advocates for a multiracial classification on government forms. "We want a part of the pie chart."

The 2008 census estimates used local records of births and deaths and tax records of people moving within the U.S. The figures for "white" refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. For purposes of defining interracial marriages, Hispanic is counted as a race.

(via The Guardian)

Multiracial Americans surge in number, voice

If you want a good glimpse of the multiracial experience in America, get inside Louie Gong’s skin.

“I’m Nooksack, I’m Chinese, I’m French and I’m Scottish,” Gong tells viewers of a multimedia piece he placed on YouTube to help spark discussion of multiracial issues. “... When I was a kid, I drank my Ovaltine with real milk, and my cousins and I liked our fried rice with salmon.” more here..

Trans-Racial Adoption: Is It REALLY Common?

Angelina Jolie did it. As did Steven Spielberg. So did Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman when they were married.

Celebrity aside, what the above individuals have in common is that they are white and adopted black children. Though images of Jolie and her multi-cultural brood are common, statistically, the rate of children being adopted outside of their race is small (only one percent of white women adopt black children.)

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, tens of thousands of nonwhite children are waiting for adoptive families, and many have remained in foster care for at least two years. Of the 525,000 children in foster care, 45 percent are African American.

-->read the full story here.

(Via Black Voices)

Multi-Racial Beauty: Sade Adu

Who She Is:
Soulful Jazz Artist.

Her Life:
Helen Folashade "Sade" Adu was born in Ibadan, Ọyọ State, Nigeria. Her parents, Bisi Adu, a Nigerian lecturer in economics of Yoruba background, and Anne Hayes, an English nurse, met in London and moved to west Africa. Later, when the marriage ran into difficulties, Anne returned to Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, England, taking four-year-old Sade and her older brother Banji to live with her parents. Living in Colchester, Essex, Sade read a good deal, developed an interest in fashion, acquired a taste for dancing and listened to soul artists like Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, and Marvin Gaye.

In 1982, she joined Ray St. John's band Pride, which also included guitarist Stuart Matthewman, bassist Paul Denman, and drummer Paul Cooke. However, St. John left Pride shortly after, later resurfacing in the band Halo James, and Pride eventually petered out.

The other four members then formed a new group, the eponymous "Sade" and began to write their own material. Keyboardist Andrew Hale joined the band as a keyboard player in mid-1983, and in 1983 she signed a solo deal with Epic Records and sister imprint Portrait Records for the U.S. and Canada until the Portrait label folded in 1986.

In 2005, Sade recorded a new track, "Mum", which appeared on a DVD Voices for Darfur to support charity concert of the same name at the Royal Albert Hall in London, to raise awareness and funding for the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region.[citation needed]


I recommend:
Best Of Sade, 1995. Her hits "Cherish the Day", "No Ordinary Love" and "Smooth Operator" and are SURE to please...

(Via Wikipedia)

As Requirements Change, Just Who Is An Indian?

The struggle for identity among Native Americans isn't just about outsiders; Lompre says other natives have looked down on her for not growing up on the reservation.

"I wish there was a magical mutt nation that you could put people in that could have that identity given to them, but there's not," she says.

Read the full story.

(Via Indigen)

Interracial Love: Should We Have Children?

I am black and I have been dating a white man for several years now, and I feel that we have an incredible relationship. We are honest, loving, and faithful, and we work hard to make sure that both of us are happy. In the past I have dealt with racism from both white and black people, and I worry that if we have kids they will deal with more racial attacks than us. Is it right to bring your children into a situation in which they will deal with such harsh racism? Tanya B. Greenfield, CA, 35

Racism is prevalent through out the world, and if you are mixed you may experience it from either race. Your concern that your children will be faced with more racism than other children should not limit you from having children. No matter what your race, your children are going to face the trials and tribulations of life, and be exposed to prejudice and racism because it is the human nature of the ego to judge others. The key is to teach them who they are as human beings, and that all people are equal because we are all connected to the human condition. We all love, hate, cry, and feel pain. We all live and as Susanna Moodie described, "death, the great equalizer," we all die. Teach your children to judge people by their character not by their color, and instill all the great qualities and lessons you have learned from your own experiences. Choose to live your life ruled by love, and don't allow fear to limit the great family you want to bring into this world.

(Via Black Voices)

Your Other Five 'Bi-Racial' Presidents.

"It has been said that this year was the first time a major political party in the United States nominated a woman or a Black person as its presidential candidate. For women, that is true, but some historians say Barack Obama will not be the nation's first Black president. They say he certainly won't be the first president with Black ancestors--just the first to acknowledge his Blackness.

Which other presidents hid their African ancestry? Well, it's not Bill Clinton, even though the Congressional Black Caucus honored him as the nation's "first Black president" at its 2001 annual awards dinner. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge all had Black ancestors they kept in their genealogical closets, according to historians.
Harding did not deny his African ancestry when Republican leaders called on him to deny his "Negro" history. He said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence?"

Does African ancestry make these men Black? If the bar is the one-drop rule, then yes. The one-drop rule is a historical term used during the Jim Crow era that defines a person with one drop of sub-Saharan-African ancestry as not white and therefore must be Black. If that's the bar, then there have already been other Black presidents, says historian Leroy Vaughn, author of Black People and Their Place in World History.

The first president with African ancestry was Jefferson, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809. Jefferson was described as the "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father," as stated in Vaughn's findings. Jefferson also was said to have destroyed all documentation attached to his mother, even going to extremes to seize letters written by his mother to other people.

President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president, was in office between 1829 and 1837. Vaughn cites an article written in The Virginia Magazine of History that states Jackson was the son of an Irish woman who married a Black man. The magazine also stated that Jackson's oldest brother had been sold as a slave.

Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Lincoln was said to have been the illegitimate son of an African man, according to Vaughn's findings. Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and his mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe. His heritage fueled so much controversy that Lincoln was nicknamed "Abraham Africanus the First" by his opponents.

President Warren Harding, the 29th president, in office between 1921 and 1923, apparently never denied his ancestry. According to Vaughn, William Chancellor, a professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy. Evidently, Harding had Black ancestors between both sets of parents. Chancellor also said that Harding attended Iberia College, a school founded to educate fugitive slaves.

Coolidge, the nation's 30th president, served between 1923 and 1929 and supposedly was proud of his heritage. He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "Moor," and in Europe, the name "Moor" was given to all Blacks, just as "Negro" was used in America. It later was concluded that Coolidge was part Black.

(via Your Other "Black" Presidents.)

Why "Beautifully Blended"?

The Title-
During college, my friend Danielle formed a campus organization called the Multi-Racial Student Association in which I was Secretary and later Vice-President. During this time, there was a Bi-Racial Conference held in Canada and the theme of it was "Beautifully Blended". It was about empowerment for people of Mixed Races, or those living in Mixed Race environments, because many bi-racial people grow up on the outskirts of racial divides being stigmatized, or feeling/being misunderstood. I thought it was a good message and thus the title of this blog.

Who is this blog for?
Everyone! I love…well..race! I love talking about it, learning about it and the problems/misconceptions that it forms.

Who is this blog about?
In addition to mixed folks, It also pertains to:

- people who grew up in a multi-cultural environment (ie a white child adopted by two black parents; a Hispanic girl who grew up in a predominately white area and went to a predominately white prep school; etc.)

- Immigration. Being new to a new land and having to forge together cultures.

- people who are: in an interracial relationship; by products of interracial parents or one interracial parent; has an interracial child.

- Native American Issues.

What else?
I will also be relating news, info, bits and pieces about cultures around the world and issues within certain cultures. I want to share personal stories, debate, share - so i’ll have an email address where you send in questions, comments, concerns, answers. ya digg? :)

About Me.

lived, breathed race and gender politics in college. continues to educate herself on race issues and how they affect our world. she has specifically made an effort to shed light on the growing Bi/Multi-Racial Population in the US and the "post-racial" movement to racial equality but is intrigued by all cultures. is no expert by any means. just a girl with big, hippie, 'one love' dreams.

hi. my name is Marenna Nicole.