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The Boston Globe ^ | March 23, 2008 | Francie Latour

Posted on 03/25/2008 3:57:05 PM PDT by forkinsocket

What the Obama speech taught me, the mother of two biracial children, about myself, my kids - and America.

ONE NIGHT SOME years ago, I tried to explain to my husband why it was that our future kids would be black kids. No matter how light or dark their skin turned out, no matter how coarse or cooperative their hair, chances were they would be black in the eyes of this racialized world, and I needed him to be prepared for that. So that they could be prepared for it.

He looked at me like I was crazy. Then he shot back, "They're going to be half-white too, you know." And as occasionally happens in our mixed-race marriage, I saw the canyon of America's race divide open up between us, right there on the sofa. "There is no such thing as half-white," I said, and I suddenly felt exhausted.

I am black; my husband is white. We live in a small town where llamas easily outnumber black people. It is only 45 minutes from Boston. But in our daily lives, it can feel much, much farther away than that. We now have a 3-year-old and a 4-month-old, and in the short time since they've come along, I've been mistaken for their nanny several times. Once, my husband was out with my son and was told, "He's adorable! Where did he come from, Guatemala?"

We like to joke that we are building our own little biracial colony, chipping away at the race problem one baby at a time. But in reality, we spend more time debating - worrying, actually - about how the wounds and markers of race will define them.

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: biracial; race; speech
.
1 posted on 03/25/2008 3:57:05 PM PDT by forkinsocket
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To: forkinsocket

I sympathize with the woman, but Barry and his hate-whitey-hustling pastor are a huge part of the problem ... Barry is bringing his beautiful daughters for this same inculcation. How do you end something that black people insist on perpetuating with lies and hate speech?


2 posted on 03/25/2008 4:02:41 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: forkinsocket

This needs a barf alert.


3 posted on 03/25/2008 4:08:50 PM PDT by Eagles6 ( Typical White Guy: Christian, Constitutionalist, Heterosexual, Redneck)
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To: forkinsocket
This black author says she's the daughter of two doctors, and thus didn't have the kind of disadvantaged upbringing that Jeremiah Wright had.

But get this: Wright's father was a prominent pastor and his mother was a teacher and later vice-principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, a distinguished academic high school. In short, Rev. Wright had a comfortable upper-middle class upbringing.

This "understandable rage from a generation that experienced poverty and humiliation" theme offered by Obama and others in Wright's defense is a crock. The Reverend's rage an emotionally self-indulgent, politically manipulative, guilt-inflicting and socially intimidating pose.

I have to admit, I don't understand why so many --- black and white, Saks and Salvation Army, liberal and yes, even conservative --- give him a pass. What a wretched charlatan.

4 posted on 03/25/2008 4:15:03 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
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To: forkinsocket

Blacks, and their “it’s all whitey’s fault” posterkids, Jackass, Sharpton and Farrakhan, are largely responsible for the “racial divide”. Rather than trying to close the divide, they have nourished and promoted it as a way to justify their worthless existences and get rich at the same time. Blacks are far more racist against whites than whites against blacks. It is the blacks that are keeping racism alive.


5 posted on 03/25/2008 4:20:19 PM PDT by infantrywhooah (s)
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To: MHGinTN

“How do you end something that black people insist on perpetuating with lies and hate speech?”

Thats a good question. I have felt the racism has been the fault of the ‘whites’, how wrong I’ve been!!!

After following Barack Oboma since 04 and at times impressed with him I really thought finally, we are above race, color and gender!!

His minister is a racist and full of hate. One does not attend a church and not believing what is being said from the Pastor/Minister/Rabbi/Priest for 20 years. I wonder what has been taught their beautiful children.

I have a real fear of Obama’s real agenda.


6 posted on 03/25/2008 4:21:05 PM PDT by malia (God Bless America, our troops & their families sacrificing so they can serve their country)
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To: forkinsocket
Nice, well written essay except the part where she reaches and passes Obama off as some kind of race uniter. How can a man who attends an obviously racist church (and has done so for 20 years), does not speak out against that racism, and who will be thought of as a racist b/c of that association, ever unite?

Hate to tell the author but her race uniter is not Obama; it's US regular Americans who don't care what color she is or what color her kids are and who would never listen to and would even run away from (at the very least) a race baiting poverty pimp such as Mr. Wright (something Obama is unwilling to do). It's US Americans not looking at skin color as the reason for every little slight or woe in life or as reason for advantage.

In the upside down world of Liberalism a racist would be the one that they would look to unite the races.
7 posted on 03/25/2008 4:23:32 PM PDT by socialismisinsidious ( The socialist income tax system turns US citizens into beggars or quitters!)
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To: forkinsocket

I’m so tired of hearing these people whine. The American Indians were, and are, treated much worse.


8 posted on 03/25/2008 4:23:46 PM PDT by MayflowerMadam
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To: malia

You have no doubt noted that the media have completely ignored what the hate speech and backlash will do to just plain fellow Americans who happen to have dark skin!... A beautiful family down the block, who keep their yard and home nicer than this old batchelor, will feel more negative impact from this racist crap perpetuated by Obama, et al than the Great Wright Way and the hate-filled democrat sycophantic black people. And yes, Barry has been bringing his daughters for this ‘education’ in hate-whitey-hustle.


9 posted on 03/25/2008 4:29:42 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: malia
"I have a real fear of Obama’s real agenda."

Wait until we know more about his links to Louis Farrakhan.

10 posted on 03/25/2008 4:32:27 PM PDT by OldEagle
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To: forkinsocket
Once, my husband was out with my son and was told, "He's adorable! Where did he come from, Guatemala?"

She hears the last half, the question, and hears it as hostile somehow, while missing the first half, "he's adorable". You can imagine that her husband, on the other hand, simply agreed that he was adorable and didn't hear anything negative in what was, after all, an innocent question.

After reading the entire article, you begin to see that her husband is "post-racial", as are the kids, and she is not. She has had every advantage in life, yet like Mrs. Obama, she can't quite let it go. She moves easily in what she calls the white world, but the mere fact that she thinks of it as the white world tells the tale.

But unlike Mrs. Obama, she is beginning to let it go. She sees that she needs to let it go. And that the problem is largely hers. She still projects it out onto the world around her. But in the end, the problem is hers to carry or set aside.

And, thankfully, it is apparently not being passed down to her children, who see themselves as being simply themselves.

She gives Barak Obama credit for helping her to see it. As she imagines Barak saying, "who says we have to keep carrying this baggage?" In the end, it is baggage that has long outlived its meaning.

But he didn't say it, she did. She didn't learn it from him, she learned it from her kids, and her husband, and the ordinary Americans she interacts with every day.

11 posted on 03/25/2008 4:33:26 PM PDT by marron
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To: Mrs. Don-o

How much $$$ does Wright earn in a year?

“By their fruits Ye shall know them.”

I know that quote is a bit maybe out of context, but the point is not moot.


12 posted on 03/25/2008 4:36:55 PM PDT by Radix (How come they call people "Morons" when they do not know as much? Shouldn't they be called "Lessons?)
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To: MHGinTN

The Democrat Party has made a good living by preaching hate for years.


13 posted on 03/25/2008 5:01:36 PM PDT by sport
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To: MHGinTN
You have spoken the truth, I have black (partially black, a little black?) family members and we don't notice their racial makeup. But now I fear that many all whites, and I'm one, will be suspicious of anyone who is wholly or partially black, that is not a close friend or family member, wondering if the terrible hatred espoused in Obama’s church is what black folks are really thinking. I hate it that this has happened but it is time for racism to end and I now believe it's the blacks and those who consider themselves black who must end it for they are the one perpetuating it. In a way they are not unlike the American Moslems who need to speak out against a religion of hate only in this case they need to speak out with tremendous force and repudiate the pastors who speak hate in their churches.
14 posted on 03/25/2008 5:01:54 PM PDT by pepperdog (The world has gone crazy.)
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To: malia
“How do you end something that black people insist on perpetuating with lies and hate speech?”

Without media coverage, most Americans would have no idea who Al Sharpton, Louis Farakhan, Jesse Jackson, or Rodney King is.

15 posted on 03/25/2008 5:07:01 PM PDT by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagon)
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