A new American tribe
Feuerherd, Peter
Peter Fenerherd A NEW AMERICAN TRIBE Intermarriage & the racial divide P resident Bill Clinton has urged Americans to talk with their families and friends about race relations. I took him up on...
...One reason, besides intermarriage, is the growing number of immigrants...
...I looked around that restaurant and saw a couple with a cute interracial baby, a European man gazing into the eves of a beautiful woman who appeared to be from India, and other couples composed of mixed hues and shades...
...While the media are full of tales of bigotry and bickering, of Minister Farrakhan preaching race separatism, of radio talk-show hosts competing for the boxibv prize of who can be the most ethnically insensitive, of crosses burning and swastikas displayed on the lawns and houses of suburban neighborhoods, there is something else happening...
...Now American society has produced a revolution with huge consequences about our age-old bugaboo of race relations...
...Yet what is amazing about them is that my children are living embodiments that in the future the black/white divide is not going to mean what it does now...
...Commo.nei it 9 ~- plrmbrr 12, 1997...
...I think it was the first time it's happened in a public place...
...Pat Buchan to and others have posed the specter that the culture may not be able to survive such inclusiveness, particularly regarding immigration...
...I submit that in the future, race relations in the United States will be different: less of a black-and-white issue, with many more shades of gray...
...Biracial organizations are seeking to have the status of mixed children formally included in the US...
...And how do Dominicans, Pakistanis, Colombians, and other newcomers view our traditional black/white racial split...
...My son tells me that when he walks through a nearby all-white neighborhood with his Asian friend they sometimes are the objects of derision among some youthful know-nothings...
...It is just one ethnic group in the mix of life in Queens these days...
...The meaning of Tiger Woods's ascendancy in golf has been well-documented, particularly his coining of the word "Cablinasian" to describe his Caucasian, AfricanAmerican, Native American, and Asian heritage...
...How do Filipinos view America's racial divide...
...What about the children...
...We," in our case, means interracial families...
...It's about time we celebrated it, instead of simply feeding more social angst...
...These children, of course, will grow up and raise their own children...
...Them" is everyone else...
...If the president's dialogue is to mean anything, it will have to include these dimensions of modern American life and avoid getting stuck in tired old perspectives which don't have the meaning they once did...
...Peter Feuerherd i+assistaol .'dilir of the Long...
...I took him up on that offer one recent summer afternoon at a pizza restaurant in Queens, New,,- York...
...Census...
...My daughter is now considering colleges and she's made it clear that she would not be comfortable in a nearly all-white environment after experiencing four years in a racially-mixed Manhattan high school...
...The combination of intermarriage and immigration from racially-mixed cultures is going to change America, even more so than it already has...
...We have become part of a quiet revolution that is no longer so quiet...
...Two decades ago when my wife and I married, the worried lurks of some were apparent...
...What does this portend for race relations...
...Those of different races have proceeded to fall in love and produce what has become a new American tribe...
...Watching my own children is an amazing lesson in how the stereotypes can be demolished...
...It's become almost chic...
...My voice suggested surprise...
...to day there are nearly four times as many...
...When "we" outnumber "them" on a quiet afterno on at a restaurant in Queens, something has changed...
...Island Catholic an t r~,i i cu~rf iofaurs writer for the National Catholic Register...
...I would argue the opposite: Intermarriage and immigration are perhaps the best solution to this country's historic racial divide, stirring quietly behind the scenes, breaking out only when a Tiger Woods or some other multiracial celebrity garners the limelight...
...My pale visage, my wife's darker visage, and those of our two teen-age children, which fall somewhere in between, were just another part of the scene...
...But he's not the only sign in popular culture...
...Just two decades ago there were some 500,000 biracial children in the United States...
...It's not that they are bereft of racial consciousness...
...New York Yanked rookie-of-the-year shortstop Derek,leter-who grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and is the son of a black man and white woman-is written about in glowing terms as a symbol that Become a Commonweal Associate the 1996 world champs have shed their stuffy, nearly-all white image and have been truly embraced by all of their city's ethnic mosaic...
...She fits right in, often attending Filipino social events...
...They go where they want to go, largely unimpeded by fears that someone will make a racial slight against them...
...was a regular question we faced, forcing us to contemplate the specter of producing offspring who would never fit comfortably anywhere...
...Academically and socially, they appear unintimidated...
...Interracial celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, and Mariah Carey are lionized for their talents and, important in this superficial culture, phvsical beauty...
...For example, many of my daughter's friends are of Filipino ancestry...
...And they will bring their own special perspective to the question of race...
...We outnumber them," I told my wife and two children as I looked around the place...
Vol. 124 • September 1997 • No. 15
