Is It Getting Easier to Raise a Biracial Child?

By Heidi Schnakenberg, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2008.

Every time I see a glimpse of Barack Obama's mother, S. Ann Soetoro, in the family photos sprinkled all over the news, I wonder what it must have been like for her to raise a biracial child in the 1960s. By all accounts, she seemed to be ahead of her time -- open-minded, well-traveled, knowledgable about her child's heritage, and committed to a multinational education for him. In a Time article on Obama and his mother, America is described as "constrained by war, segregation, and a distrust of difference" in Ann Soetoro's day. Knowing how hard it can be today as a member of a multiracial family, I imagine there must have been times when Soetoro and her unique entourage were rejected by members of their community, family, and society throughout Obama's upbringing.

Though Ann could marry Barack Obama Sr. legally in Hawaii at the time of their courtship, interracial marriage was still illegal in parts of the U.S. mainland. Ann admitted to Obama later in life that his white grandparents were initially upset about her union with Barack Sr., and Obama himself has suggested that his grandmother was suspicious of blacks, although she didn't appear to take it out on him. But even with the support of her parents and an international sensibility, I wonder -- how did Ann manage it? And how much have things improved for multiracial families since then?

For the last several years, my husband and I considered ourselves lucky. Rarely did our "interracial couple" status come up in meaningful ways. My father harbored racist assumptions about minorities in general, but he was quickly disarmed by my husband's kindness and didn't dare come between our obvious happiness. My husband's Puerto Rican family was also supportive. They had some curious assumptions about me, too, like, "My uncle's got a white lady. We're gonna be rich!" Their hopes were dashed when I went broke and moved in with them. Otherwise, our racial differences became a footnote, only occasionally referenced by our families on both sides in the form of benign jokes.

Then we got pregnant. Suddenly the color of our child's skin, whether he would have "good" hair, the color of his eyes, and every other aspect of the baby's appearance became a topic of race-based discussion. "He's gonna be half cracker, half Puerto Rican!" or "Maybe he'll look like Lenny Kravitz," or "Maybe he'll be striped, like a zebra." How our unborn child was going to look and how our roles would play out as interracial parents suddenly become an obsession for our loved ones. It seemed as though our families were waking up to the reality of our status as a multiracial family. When junior arrived, there would be a permanent manifestation of our union. For all the talk about skin color, I started to wonder if my family would feel alienated from the child if he turned out to be dark, and vice versa with my husband's family if he emerged as white as snow.

Throughout my pregnancy, I contemplated what it would mean to be a multiracial family. Bringing a mixed child into the picture connects individuals across races in a way that is irreversible. It also seems to fuel people's deepest fears about purity of race, loss of identity, and loss of culture. My husband and I had a parenting plan that spoke to these issues, but I worried about how my son would adjust to the differences between the Latino community and the white population, and I lamented the unfortunate fact that he'd probably always face some level of discrimination from both sides. It's clear from some of Barack Obama's speeches and writings that he faced the same dynamics when he was growing up. And what does my generation, which lies between Obama's and my son's, have to say?

Larry Woods, a non-profit director in Harlem and the child of Portuguese and African American parents, says that when he was born in the 1970s, it was a time when people were still very openly racist. His parents were lucky enough to live in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which was already a bohemian, artist's community back then. However, the town was peppered with Portuguese fisherman who weren't too keen on the small black population. Larry's grandfather was one of them, and he was angry when Larry's mother brought his father to the house. Then, when Larry's father brought his mother to Tennessee, the home of the Ku Klux Klan, his paternal grandfather didn't know how to react and couldn't quite relax -- he addressed her with the same extreme formality that was expected of him around white folks from the South.

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Heidi Schnakenberg is a writer and activist whose work has appeared in the Des Moines Register, Women's eNews, and several national and international publications. As a screenwriter, she has worked with Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope. Her latest project is an original screenplay based on Spanish Harlem in the 80s and 90s, called El Barrio Del Sol.

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