So sang Michael Jackson in an anthem of hope that skin color shouldn’t matter – at least when sexual attraction is the issue.
Skin color matters greatly to liberal Democrats who use race to divide America to retain political power and use the charge of “racism” to intimidate opponents. This Democrat race-baiting era may be closing for good as mixed-race Americans emerge from the shadows to live publicly a life where it doesn’t matter whether they are black or white. In fact, today, a new pride has emerged in these Americans of mixed race.
Racial labeling has been a reality in America – a holdover from the days of slavery. That’s the story told today in our government schools. But the untold story is that the source of racial labeling in politics is the Democratic Party. The Andrew Jackson era even saw Democratic Party platforms explicitly proclaiming the “right” of Americans to own slaves. The Civil War liberated the slaves, but Democrats were the founders of the KKK and the authors of segregation laws and poll taxes. After the legal demise of slavery, Democrats invented “racism” politics as the vehicle to continue to control the black population.
On his 2010 census form, President Obama checked the box for “black,” even though he is half white. One of the most racist elements of the heritage of the Democratic Party is this notion that you are black if you have one drop of African blood. For all his recent scandals, Tiger Woods’ public embrace of all his various ethnic and racial backgrounds resonates with an increasing number of Americans.
The census of 2000 was the first to offer American the choice to mark more than one box for “race,” and 7 million Americans checked more than one box that year. The Census Bureau says that number went up by 35 percent in the 2010 census.
Sexual attraction has resulted in younger Americans proud to be called “mulatto.” Sunday’s New York Times ran a story of about a new student group at the University of Maryland called the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association. This group of mixed-race students is breaking out of the racial pigeonholes of the past to proudly proclaim all heritages. The vice president of the group, Laura Wood, says if someone calls her black, she says “yes, and white, too.”
Dr. Warren Kelley is faculty adviser to the multiracial student group. He has learned from the students. Kelley’s father was black, his mother Japanese. They met when his father served in the U.S. Army in World War II. For all his adult life, he had stated his identity as “black.” “There was no notion that I might be multiracial,” he said. On the 2010 census, he checked two boxes –”black” and “Asian.”
I think I know when this cultural shift started.
In 1996, Ward Connerly, a regent of the University of California, led a successful campaign to change the California Constitution, adding these words: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
Connerly proudly proclaimed his multiracial roots, and criticized an America that still called him “black” or “African-American.” He called Prop 209 a civil-rights campaign to put an end to any consideration of skin color in government decision making; opponents called it racist.
California voters (by 54.55 percent) approved this law as Proposition 209, ending affirmative action, which had been used as a tool to divide Californians along racial lines and entrench Democrat officeholders for decades. Two legal challenges to Prop 209 were defeated at the California Supreme Court.
The result? As opponents predicted, the enrollment of “minority” students at the University of California went down. But it turned out that over time, enrollment went back up and graduation rates increased dramatically – at San Diego’s University of California campus, the graduation rate for “black” students increased from 26 percent to 52 percent.
Today, mixed-race Americans are moving the country beyond race, beyond the politics of affirmative action. To these Americans, the pride many Americans feel toward “the first black president” is misplaced. They are proud of our first mixed-race president.
According to the New York Times piece, there are mixed-race networking, dating and news sites – even consumer products pitched to a mixed-race buyer. Personalities with ambiguous racial backgrounds abound in sports, politics and in the performing arts. In the most hopeful sign yet, actors of mixed-race backgrounds are now much sought after. Mixed race is “hot.”
Is it possible that America’s long nightmare of guilt and recrimination on the subject of race is drawing to a close? Not only possible, it is happening.
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