The Inevitable Melting Pot
 

A question directly for Radar--because I can't condone yet another hijack of the Draft thread--and indirectly for everyone else: are you and your new wife planning on having children, and if so, do you feel prepared (or perhaps feel that no preparation is necessary) for the unique challenges that come with having interracial kids?

Say what!

Has anyone informed you that it is 2004!!

That also depends on where in 2004 this occurs.

Well once Radar's Wife is with him, wont they be raising their bundles of joy in America?

I wouldnt imagine a mixed race child having any social problems in this day and age.

I'd say that things have improved, particularly in the last 10 years, but there are still lots o' problems.

Having two mixed-race stepkids, I can assure you there are still issues. Mostly from the parents' perspectives--no one looks at the kid and says "You don't belong," rather they look at the parent and say, "That's not your child."

Hmm, i hadn't thought about it that way.

You have step kids Clod? How many? i didnt know you were married.

Yep, ages 5 and 2, half Vietnamese. Only been married for less than a year.

I wouldn't have thought there would be problems in this day and age either, but I've been stunned by the number of strangers who will just walk up to you in the grocery store and ask "When did you adopt?" or "Where's her real family?" And that doesn't even count all the people who just stare. One woman obliquely accused us of kidnapping once.

People actually have the nerve to accuse you of kidnapping?

( i take it your husband is not vietnamese)

I guess if you are both anglo with two vietnamese children it may look as though you have adopted but who cares even if you did? they are still your family.

Stupid people and their assumptions.

People take mental shortcuts. It's part of the way our minds work that we seek to categorise and group what we see into this mental shorthand. Unfortunately this leads to peple making assumptions ( such as the kidnapping) it also leads people to be quite surprised and a little taken aback when they encounter people who dont fit into their categories. So....someone may have gotten used, over the years, to seeing faces that didnt correspend to their own skin colour. Seeing someone of that complexion no longer surprises them. Seeing a parent and child who in their eyes " dont match up" may well throw their categorising/grouping systems into confusion causing them to feel almost slightly angered at the object of their confusion. Thats my take on it anyway.

I would imagine there are issues for children of mixed origin ( as if any of us are really anything else) The more visibly or culturally apparent those diferences, the more likely that child is( and their parents) to encounter difficulties, both in terms of other people's hostility/surprise and in terms of their own sense of "identity" as it relates to the world.

Kids are tough cookies though. They'll figure out who they are and grow up into a world which his more likely to accept them with every passing year. Funnily enough I was thinking about this the other day. There have been a few political parties campaigning in my area for the upcoming Euro elections. Alas one of those parties is a far right extreme nationalist party ( BNP) who advocate amongst other policies "peacewlls to seperate black from white"......One of the things they specifically wave their clubs and bag their chests over is what they see asa process whereby the "Native Englishman" ( aint that a beaut? at which point does my immigrant nation draw it's line? Roman? French? German? African?) loses his culture and the "white man" is transormed into a coffee coloured man........

I was thinking when I read it.....Yes...and? Strikes me that whenever I see a child of mixed indian/english extraction or African/english or African/Asian.....I am often struck by their beauty....Now i dont mean to suggest that all chidren of mixed race are beautiful, that would be a fallacy....But I have found that many of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen are these sorts of combinations.

I totally agree DanaC, I just wish they'd have the sense to stare quietly and not open their mouths, or at least ask "when" the kids were adopted when the kids are out of freakin' earshot. They'll have enough identity issues as it is.

I had a very interesting conversation with a woman on a playground once. She was half-white-half-asian (which tends to look just Asian), married to a white man, and her child looked like a much more even mix of white and Asian features. You could look at him and say "Ah yes, that child is clearly mixed-race" whereas you couldn't do that with her (like you can't with my stepkids).

Anyway, the conversation started because she made some comment to the effect of "our kids look like they should be swapped." We admitted we were both jealous of each other's kids' faces--me because it would be nice if they had some white features, so we wouldn't get so many questions, and her because she was teaching her son to speak her native language and people had told her flat-out they thought that was wrong, because effectively 'he looks white so you should act like he's white.' Both of us were having problems in public because we were treating our kids as if they were just normal extensions of ourselves, instead of being constantly aware of what they looked like.

It might depend on where you live.

I'm white, my wife is Indian (sort of).
Next door the husband is Indian and the wife is white.

I sometimes joke that we live in the biracial part of town.

i think it is sad for others to judge your families, i hope you all overcome this, and on behalf of them i say sorry if they cause any upset, i do look at other peoples children, but i don't take as good a look as to say 'you don't look anything like that man who is claiming to be your father' or anything like that, like DanaC i see beauty, i see hope for the future too... i might be sad but that is how i am!

okay, i'm going back to my little corner now...

I grew up in East Texas, so I definitely agree with the poster who said that it depends on where you live, and that includes within the United States!

As a teacher, I have heard bi-racial kids refer to themselves and others as "mutts". Not in a disrespectful manner necessarily, but it proves the point that people are still quite aware of this difference.

My five year old is bi-racial, but lives in a family that is otherwise all white. My own parents commented on how nice it was that he turned out "light". Bleah. Whatever.

Prejudice sure ain't went away yet, folks.



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