Heidi Durrow: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

Tiffany D. Jones at Mulatto Diaries has given me her kind permission to cross post her wonderful review of Heidi Durrow’s “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky” (2010). Some of you might know Heidi Durrow from her blog, The Light-skinneded Girl.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

- The History Boys

This is exactly how I felt while reading Heidi Durrow’s debut novel “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky” (available now wherever books are sold). Except that I do know her, and I thank God that she’s not dead because I need more from this author/friend of mine. Heidi has written one of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading, biracial subject matter or not. Truly beautiful, profound, poignant. All that good stuff and more! I read (more like devoured) TGWFFTS during an extremely difficult time in my life. I felt as though the book was saving me. And reminding me of all the good things I have to offer. And that no matter what hardships and tragedies we may go through in life, the story goes on – there’s another chapter to be lived.

Though the book is not entirely about being black and white, there are many beautiful passages that honestly touch upon the heart of that matter. I often find myself lamenting the fact that this biracial identity is so misunderstood out in the world at large. “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky” offers much insight. I sincerely hope that it is widely read. We all need this book. Whether we know it or not.

A few of my favorite “themes” of the novel:

Loss of self, becoming the “new girl”, becoming “black”, forsaking white. Making deals with the self. Deals which become layers covering over the authentic self. The self that the biracial kid loses when they feel pressured to be just one thing. Then eventually you long to be just one thing because no matter how hard you pretend to be whatever it is they want you to be, you can never totally convince yourself that you are exclusively that one thing. Because you aren’t. But most people seem completely incapable of understanding that, of allowing that. So we find ourselves feeling alone and lonely in groups of people.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is, “I think what a family is shouldn’t be so hard to see. It should be the one thing people know just by looking at you.” Unfortunately, we’ve been trained to recognize families as homogeneous groups. Seeing interracial couples is still jarring for many. Mentally pairing a mother with a child that “does not look like” her can be a major stretch of the imagination. But it is not an imagined thing for many. It is a reality. And for whatever reason that people who don’t have to deal with this don’t seem to understand, we need our families to be recognized.

I could go on and on. I have pages of notes. But I hope this is enough to pique your interest and motivate you to buy (and read!) “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky”. I’d love to hear what you think!

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Staceyann Chin

Staceyann Chin (1971- ) is a slam poet from Jamaica who now lives in the country of Brooklyn in New York City. She travels the world performing and teaching poetry. Unlike most poets she has been on Oprah’s television show and has her own Blockbuster Online page.

I thought maybe she was just television-driven fluff, that she had no substance, but when she made me cry at her grandmother’s death – not mine but hers - then I knew she could write.

She was a slam poet before slam poets were in fashion, when it was still underground in New York. Like in Ancient Greece, slam poets perform their poetry for an audience with judges picking the winner. Their pieces generally run three minutes long and tell a story. A video of one of her pieces is at the end of this post.

She got into slam poetry almost by accident: one day she went to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. The rest is history.

Her first published book is not of her poetry – she is not ready for that yet – but a  story in prose about her first 24 years: “The Other Side of Paradise” (2009).

She was born on Christmas day in Montego Bay, Jamaica, the unwanted daughter of a rich Chinese businessman and a poor black woman. Her mother left the country soon after and Chin was brought up by her grandmother, then in her sixties. Although unwanted by her mother, her grandmother loved her unconditionally. No one has ever loved her more. Because her grandmother could not read, Chin read the Bible to her, especially the psalms – a slam poet in training!

All that ended at age nine when her mother arrived from Canada, briefly, and put her with a great-aunt whose sons tried to force her into sex. She was shifted from house to house without a home, till age 16 when she went away to boarding school and then university – paid for by a Chinese businessman who denies he is her father.

At age 21 while at university she found out she was lesbian. She only told close friends: in Jamaica  you cannot live openly as a homosexual and expect to not be beaten up or, in the case of women, raped.

As much as she loved Jamaica, she had to leave: it would not allow her to live freely as a lesbian. So at age 24 she came to New York:

New York was my godsend. As soon as I landed, I knew I was in a place that welcomed misfits.

No one in New York cared if she kissed girls. She was free! Yet not free: she was black. In Jamaica, because of its colourism, she was favoured for her light skin. But in America she found herself at the bottom – for the very same skin, now seen as black. America may have been more enlightened about lesbians, but it was way less enlightened about black people.

See also:

• posted videos of her on this blog:
  • Staceyann Chin: Pity The Nation
  • Staceyann Chin reads Las Casas on the Spanish genocide of Hispaniola
• colourism
• New York
• Jamaica
• Oprah

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For those willing to accept biracial or at risk children

I saw this on the Mulatto Diaries. It is from an article about an adoption agency in Boston:

For a flat fee, the prospective parent(s) can adopt a healthy, Caucasian infant within one to two years. For those willing to accept biracial or at risk children that wait time can be as little as one year. Betsy notes that the agency is particularly proud of its Lindelli Fund, which provides subsidies to any parent wishing to adopt hard-to-place children.

More at the Mulatto Diaries.

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Imitation of Life

“Imitation of Life” (1933) is a book written by Fannie Hurst, a once-famous American writer. The book was made into a Hollywood film in 1934 and 1959. It was the only Hollywood film of the 1930s to view race as a serious issue. The film was so famous among blacks that Peola, the name of one of the main characters, was still a byword for self-hating blacks as late as the 1970s.

My understanding of the story before I saw the two films was that it was about a black girl named Peola who looked white and tried to pass for white by disowning her very black-looking mother. In the end she sees the error of her ways and comes home to make up with her mother – only to find that her mother has just died! She cries on her mother’s grave and the story ends, the story of the tragic mulatto.

That would have been a great film, especially if they showed how her heart was torn between the white world and the black world and her fight to become a whole person at peace with herself.

Well, that in fact is pretty much the story of “Passing” (1929) by Nella Larsen, herself a black woman who could pass, not “Imitation of Life” by Fannie Hurst, who was white even if she was part of the Harlem Renaissance scene.

Unlike “Passing”, “Imitation” has white main characters and was made into a Hollywood film. It seems that American film-goers, who are mostly white, do not care enough about a black girl passing to make a whole film about it. So, like in the 1959 poster pictured above, the black characters have the less important part of the story. (On the 1934 poster only the white characters appear!)

Both films are mainly about a white woman who becomes rich and famous and gives her daughter everything – but her love. Peola gets the subplot. She thinks by being white she will have everything – but she will not have her mother’s love.

The 1934 film sticks closer to the book, but it is slower and stiffer, like a stage play. Peola’s mother is pure Mammy, even to the point of wanting to give up millions to remain the servant of a white woman! Peola is not believable either: she wants to be white no matter what, her mother be damned! She is also a stereotype: the tragic mulatto – the idea that mixed-race people can never be happy.

In the 1959 film Peola, named Sarah Jane, gets more of a storyline so we find out more about her, but she and her mother are still the same two stereotypes, although less extreme and more believable. It also has a more powerful ending. Mahalia Jackson sings too!

The 1959 film is worth seeing, but do not get your hopes up. And, as always, the book is probably better than either film, though I do not know that for a fact: F. Scott Fitzgerald did say people would forget the book in ten years.

See also:

• Turner Classic Movies: Donald Bogle comments on “Imitation of Life” (1934) – a good, short video.
• stereotype
  • tragic mulatto
  • The Mammy stereotype
• biracial
• Nella Larsen: Passing
• passing for white

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growing up biracial (the black-and-white kind)

The following is based on Dr Beverly Tatum’s excellent book, “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” (1997):

Most studies done on biracial or mixed-race children growing up in America have been done on those with a white and a black parent. There is no general agreement yet on the stages they go through, but Dr Tatum says it goes something like this:

• ages 1 to 5: You become aware that your skin and hair is different than one of your parents. You want your same-sex parent to be like you. One girl said if she had a magic wand she would turn her mother brown like her. Your parents say you can be both black and white but it does not make sense.  You may get a good deal of unwanted attention. But worse than that is if you get cut off from the black side of your family and your white side bad mouths them. That, along with the racist messages coming from society, will make it hard for you to feel good about yourself down the road. It is not as bad the other way round because society will help you to feel good about your white side.
• ages 6 to 12: By now your parents have stuck a label on you: black, white or biracial. You are starting to think of yourself that way too – and at the same time you are finding out how well that label works in practice. If you do not look like your label it is going to be rough. “Biracial” does not work in all towns and neighbourhoods. It depends. If you look white, then your friends are going to be in for a shock when they see your black parent. (It is less of a shock the other way round.)
• ages 13 to 18: This is the hard part. You are going to be asked to choose sides. The tables at lunch become more divided by race. There is no biracial table. If you sit at a black table they might say you are “not black enough”. You will also have to hear their angry words about whites. You might share that anger if you have experienced racism too, but for you it will not be so straightforward. Yet at the white table you might hear racist remarks. Even if you look white, “passing” as white might not be as easy as you think if they know you are part black. You will run into the same trouble with dating – many white parents will see you as black no matter what. So if you are, say, a biracial girl growing up among whites, they might say you look beautiful and “exotic” but you are still dateless.
• ages 19 to 25: You become more secure in yourself. You are less affected by what others think. You can freely accept both the white and black parts of yourself. It is much easier to think of yourself as “biracial” than it was in high school.

See also:

• biracial
  • black father, white mother
    • Danzy Senna
      • Danzy Senna: Caucasia
    • Jennifer Beals
    • The blackness of Mariah Carey
    • James McBride
    • Lisa Bonet
    • Halle Berry
  • white father, black mother
• growing up white
• growing up black
• Why all the black kids sit together
• One Drop Rule
• tragic mulatto

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Zadie Smith: Speaking in Tongues

The following is based on Zadie Smith’s essay “Speaking in Tongues” (2009):

Zadie Smith is a writer. She speaks in a posh British accent. But when she was growing up in the  Willesden section of London, the daughter of a white Englishman and a black Jamaican woman, she had a different accent.

For a while she could speak in both accents as the circumstances required, but then bit by bit her childhood accent went away. All she had left was just her posh accent.

She spoke that way not because she hated where she was from, but because she thought the way people spoke at Cambridge University where she went was the way lettered people spoke. And she wanted to be a lettered person.

Now looking back she sees it as a loss. Most people have just one voice, even if it changes over time. But a fortunate few can speak in more than one voice. Two that come to mind are Shakespeare and, yes, Barack Obama.

Authors often have to be able to speak in many voices. It makes their stories more believable. Shakespeare was a master at it. He was so good that even though he was a Protestant people still wonder 400 years later whether he was a secret Catholic.

And it is partly why some wonder if Obama is a secret Muslim. Like Shakespeare he can speak in many voices. He changes how he speaks depending on his audience.  He says “we” instead of “I”. He can say things like this:

We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

Taking “awesome God” from the churches of Georgia and “poking around” from the kitchen tables of Indiana.

Shakespeare could do it because he grew up between Catholic and Protestant worlds. Obama can do it because he grew up between the black and white American worlds. And so he can see them as worlds. Instead of being stuck between them, like a tragic mulatto, he moves between them.

Some might see that as underhanded but Zadie Smith sees it as having a broader view of the world, seeing it more as it is. Most presidents, like most people, stick to their own kind and so have a narrow view of the world. Not Obama.

On the night that Obama won she was at a party of white New York liberals when she got a call from a German friend to come uptown to a Harlem reggae bar. She looked at her dress and thought about her posh British accent and did not want to go. But then she saw that as:

A hesitation in the face of difference, which leads to caution before difference and ends in fear of it. Before long, the only voice you recognize, the only life you can empathize with, is your own.

See also:

• Zadie Smith: “Speaking in Tongues”
• Transatlantic accent
• RP (Received Pronunciation) – the posh British accent
• Standard English
• tragic mulatto
• biracial
• Barack Obama

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Vietnamese Amerasians

Vietnamese Amerasians are those who were born to an American soldier and a Vietnamese mother during the time of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s. Outcasts in Vietnam, most are now in America living in poverty. Few have ever seen their fathers.

There are about 22,000 of them in America, at least 4,000 of which are black. Maybe 2,000 more still live in Vietnam but there is no way of knowing.

In Vietnam they were called “half-bloods” and “children of the dust”. They had no fathers in a land where fatherhood is strong. They were mixed in a land where almost everyone is pure Vietnamese. To the Vietnamese they looked like black and white Americans, they looked like the enemy of a long war in a country broken by that war.

They were outcasts. They were unwanted. Sometimes their mothers were outcasts, seen as loose women. Sometimes even their own mothers threw them out to live on the streets. Other children called them names, beat them up or were not allowed to play with them. Most only went to school for a few years. Some cannot even read.

When Saigon fell in 1975, about 2,000 of them were flown to America and were adopted. Of the rest many were hidden or made to look more Vietnamese. Any proof of their American fathers, like pictures and letters, were destroyed for the most part to save them from being killed by the army.

In 1988 America passed the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act. If you went to the Amerasian Transit Center in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), an American official would look at you and if you looked white enough or black enough he would send you on to a camp in the Philippines where you would learn a bit of English and something about America (not necessarily what you needed to know) and then be sent on to America where you would get some help for six months and then be left to sink or swim.

Most sank. Good work was hard to find: their English was bad, they had little education and no car. So most live in poverty.

Only 3% found their fathers. Partly because they had little to go on, partly because most of these men did not want to be found. Most fathers, when found, refused to see their children. Yes.

Full-blooded Vietnamese who live in America want little to do with them – they do not seem Vietnamese to them. Even to Asian Americans they often look too white or too black. And, because they are foreigners in America, black and white Americans do not see them as one of their own either.

So they are caught in the middle with no place they can truly call home. “Children of the dust” turned out to be a cruel truth.

For those who are black, sometimes called Afro-Amerasians, it is the worst. They got the least education in Vietnam, experienced the most racism and learned all the Vietnamese stereotypes about blacks, so much so that self-hatred and self-doubt is common.

See also:

• mixed race
• Korean adoptees
• half white, half Asian

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Sandra Laing: a black girl born to white parents

Sandra Laing (1955- ) was a black girl born to white Afrikaner parents in South Africa back in the days of white rule and apartheid, of keeping the races apart.

It seems that her white father was her true father: blood tests showed that his blood matched hers. Sandra also looked too much like her brother Adriaan, who was white.

Although Sandra’s great grandparents were all white, someone in her family tree must have been passing for white, probably several people on both sides. Their genes came together in her. Most white Afrikaners are only about 89% white by blood.

The trouble started when she went to school. The white children called her names, like “blackie” and “frizzhead”. They hit her. The school did nothing to stop them: it saw her as the cause of the trouble.

For four years parents and teachers of the school pushed to have her kicked out. Then on March 10th 1966 the police came and took her out of the school: the government said she was no longer white in the eyes of the law but coloured (mixed-race).

For two years her father fought to have her changed back to white, taking it all the way to the Supreme Court. He won. But it did little good: few white schools would take her. Nine said no. Only a Roman Catholic school far away said yes. By then she had fallen too far behind in her studies and never caught up.

Very few whites would befriend her. Nearly all her friends were black. She felt more comfortable with blacks than with whites.

At 14 she fell in love with a black man. Her father pulled a gun on him and told him never to come back and told her that if she married him, he will cut her off from the family.

At 15 she married him and ran off with him to Swaziland where she became his second wife. Her father made good on his threat.

When she returned to South Africa she was forced by law to live in a black township, a place with no power or running water. Even worse, her children were not allowed to live with her: they were “black” and she was still “white”. She tried to get herself changed back to coloured so they could stay with her, but her father blocked it! It took her ten years to get them back.

Her father went to his grave never seeing her again. Even her two (white) brothers, who are still alive, will not see her. They blame her for their parents’ unhappiness: ever since she ran away they were never happy again. But she did get to see her mother in 2000 just before she died.

Her story was made into a documentary in the 1970s - which was not allowed to be shown in South Africa! It has also been made into a book, “When She Was White” by Judith Stone, and a British film, “Skin” (2009), starring Sophie Okonedo and Sam Neill.

See also:

• Skin
• Sarah Baartman – another South African woman who suffered for how she looked
• coloured
• biracial
• tragic mulatto
• white people
• David Myers: the black boy who thought he was white
• James McBride: The Color of Water
• There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black

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James McBride: The Color of Water

“The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother” (1996) by James McBride was the number one book in America and spent two years on the New York Times’s bestseller list. It is now required reading at many high schools and universities.

It tells the story of his mother, who became an outcast from white society for marrying a black man in the 1940s, bringing up 12 children in Red Hook, a poor black part of New York, sending them all to get university degrees. And it is about James McBride himself, about his search for who he is as a mixed-race person.

Growing up, McBride did not make all that much of being mixed. He looked black, thought of himself as black. It was not like he could pass for white or something. He avoided the issue, but by the time he reached 30 he found he could not go on like that.

When he was growing up his mother was the only white person in the neighbourhood, at church, at the bus stop. And yet her past was a mystery. She never talked about where she came from or how she got there. But McBride found he could not understand himself unless he understood the mystery of her past.

She would not even say she was white. She said she was “light-skinned”. It turned out to be truer than McBride knew. She had a white body, got the diseases that white people get, but because whites would not accept her while black people did (more or less), she became in effect black. McBride calls her a black woman inside a white woman’s body.

Bit by bit the truth came out. She was a rabbi’s daughter who grew up in the South. Being Jewish in the South and living on the black side of town where her family’s shop was, she had only one good white friend growing up. After high school she left home for New York. There she fell in love and got married.

But because her husband was black, her family cut her off. Completely. They would not even let her see her mother on her deathbed. When her husband died and she needed help, they slammed the door in her face. Only years later, after the book became a bestseller, did they speak to her again.

Cut off, she did not know what the future held, she did not know what she was doing half the time, but, becoming a Christian, she trusted utterly in God.

One time he saw his mother crying in church. He thought it was because she wanted to be black like everyone else. He asked her what colour God was. She said, “the colour of water”.

When she saw him off to Oberlin College she gave an absent-minded wave as the Greyhound bus pulled out. But when the bus turned the corner and he could see her again, she had broken down, leaning against the wall crying.

See also:

• James McBride
• biracial
• Jews
• New York
• black ghetto
• The Wigger Fallacy
• Barack Obama
  • Obama in Hawaii
• There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black

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James McBride

James McBride (1957- ) is an American writer and jazz musician. He is best known as the author of “The Color of Water” (1996), which became a number one bestseller in America and is required reading at many schools and universities. He also wrote “Miracle at St. Anna” (2004), which Spike Lee made into a film of the same name in 2008. McBride has written music for Anita Baker (“Enough Love”), Grover Washington, Jr and Barney (no, not “I Love You”).

In 1981 when he worked for the Boston Globe, he wrote a column about his mother for Mother’s Day. It got so many letters that he made it into a book, “The Color of Water”.

His mother was a rabbi’s daughter who ran away from home to Harlem in 1939. She married a black man and became an outcast among whites. Even her own family cut her off. She found herself a white woman bringing up her 12 black children in Red Hook, a poor black ghetto in New York. All 12 children got university degrees, two of them becoming doctors. McBride himself studied music at Oberlin and journalism at Columbia.

As a boy McBride noticed that his mother looked different and asked her if she was white. She said she was “light-skinned”. She always talked about whites as “they” and never as “we’”. Her past was a mystery. He asked her what colour God is. She said, “the colour of water”.

Race was not something she liked to talk about. The book “The Color of Water” tells the story of his mother’s life and, in parallel, his own life and how he comes to terms with colour:

I didn’t want to be white. My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds.

He sees himself as black but came to understand that blacks and whites are pretty much the same on the inside. His Jewish background is part of who he is, but he is Christian.

His next book, “Miracle at St. Anna” is about four black American soldiers who fought in Italy in the Second World War as part of the mostly black 92nd Division. Like his first book, it also shows the ugliness of racism and yet at the same time  the underlying oneness of mankind.

His latest book is “Song Yet Sung” (2008). It is a true-to-life story about a slave woman who is being hunted down while she flees north towards freedom. It shows how slavery worked in practice, how it affected the moral lives of both blacks and whites.

His advice to writers:

• You learn writing by writing.
• Most books are written between five and seven in the morning.
• Do not wait; start now.
• When you fail, get back up, forgive yourself and try again. (Only about half of McBride’s books ever see print.)

Most of that goes for musicians too.

See also:

• James McBride: The Color of Water
• Danzy Senna
• biracial
• black father, white mother
• black ghetto
• Harlem
• Jews
• The oneness of mankind

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Halle Berry

Halle Berry (1966- ) is an American actress, the first black woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Actress. In America she is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful black women alive, even now in her 40s. She was Miss Ohio USA in 1986, a Bond girl in “Die Another Day” (2002) and has long been a face for Revlon.

While she is beautiful, I would not go to see a film just because she is in it, like I would with Gabrielle Union.

She won the Oscar for playing the lead  in “Monster’s Ball” (2001), where we see her make love to the white racist prison guard who put her husband to death. Angela Bassett refused the part because of how it made black women look. Berry took it and won an Oscar.

After the Oscar win and her success playing Storm in the X-Men films (2000-2006), she was given the lead in “Catwoman” (2004). Few black actresses are given the lead in any film  aimed mainly at white people, at least not without appearing opposite a white person. Unfortunately, “Catwoman” was terrible – so terrible she won a Razzie Award for it, which she accepted with good grace.

She does not try to just get by on her pretty looks. When she was going to play a crackhead in “Jungle Fever” (1991) she talked to crackheads and went for ten days without a bath. I can still remember her performance.

Apart from the Oscar she won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for what I think is her best film  by far: “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” (1999).  She was perfect. She is something of a latter-day Dorothy Dandridge herself.

She has been married twice: first to baseball player David Justice (1992-1997), then to singer Eric Benet (2001-2005). She is now in a long-term relationship with Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, who is white and ten years younger than her. They have a daughter together, Nahla, born in 2008.

Life with Aubry seems to be a happy one, but her past with men has not always been so happy. One boyfriend hit her so hard that to this day she cannot hear well out of her right ear. When Justice asked for a divorce she was in such pain she came close to killing herself – only the thought of her mother finding her body pulled her back from the edge.

She is diabetic, the kind where you need to take shots all the time.

She is named after Halle’s department store in Cleveland, where she grew up. Her mother is white, her father is black. Her father left when she was four. He came back once but then was gone again for the rest of her childhood.

When they moved out of Cleveland to live in the suburbs people called her “zebra” and put Oreo cookies in her mailbox. Her mother told her that when people look at her all they will ever see is someone black: they will not know that her mother is white – nor will they care.

See also:

• She tops these lists:
  • The most beautiful black women according to white people
  • The most beautiful black women according to black people
• She gets an honourable mention on this list made by me:
  • The most beautiful black actresses
• black actresses
• biracial
  • black father, white mother
• Jezebel stereotype
• Dorothy Dandridge
• Gabrielle Union

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Half white, half Asian

People who are half white and half Asian are sometimes called Eurasians or hapas, which is a Hawaiian term that comes from the English word half. Here are some famous ones – Americans, mainly (famous means famous enough to be in the Wikipedia):

Ann Curry, Keanu Reeves, Eddie Van Halen, Dean Cain (“Lois & Clark”; born Dean Tanaka), Miranda Cosgrove (“iCarly”), Vanessa Hudgens (“High School Musical”), Steve Berra, Maya Soetoro (Obama’s sister), Rob Schneider, Tommy Chong (of Cheech & Chong), Stacy Kamano (“Baywatch Hawaii”), Jennifer Tilly, Meg Tilly (born Margaret Chan), Lindsay Price (“Lipstick Jungle”), Mark-Paul Gosselaar (“Saved by the Bell”), Phoebe Cates, Liz Cho (ABC News), Jessica Gomes (Australian model), Enrique Iglesias, Kristin Kreuk (“Smallville”), Nancy Kwan (“The World of Suzie Wong”), Vanessa Minnillo (“TRL”), Russell Wong, Betty Nguyen (CNN), Lina Teoh (Malaysian beauty queen), Devon Aoki, Maggie Q and Lisa Joyner (TV Guide).

Those listed above were half East Asian. These are half South Asian:

Norah Jones, Boris Karloff, Sir Ben Kingsley and Yasmeen Ghauri.

These are part Asian and part white, but not necessarily half-and-half:

Bruce Lee, Yul Brynner (“The King and I”), Nicole Scherzinger (Pussycat Dolls), Patricia Ford, Michelle Branch and KT Tunstall.

As far as I know Miley Cyrus (“Hannah Montana”) is not part Asian, but she sure looks it to me, just as Hudgens and Cosgrove do:

She was caught in a picture pulling her eyes up at the corners, something white children do to Asians for some racist laughs. For someone so much in the public eye I thought she would know better, but if she is secretly part Asian it starts to make sense in a backwards way.

But my powers of observation are pretty poor when it comes to part Asians. I thought that Eddie Van Halen and Rob Schneider were plain white and Nancy Kwan was plain Asian, for example.

I once had Yasmeen Ghauri and Ann Curry on a list of white women but I was dutifully informed that they were not pure enough to count as white. The white race is the poorer for it. I remember looking at Ann Curry on the morning news – I could look at her forever – wondering if she was white or what. I did not see the Japanese in her. I thought maybe she was from Tennessee and part Cherokee or something.

To be hapa in America is different than being either White American or Asian American. For one it means having to deal with two different worlds, one white and one Asian American, belonging to both and yet belonging to neither.

Some can pass easily between the two worlds or at least within one of them, but others feel like outsiders forever in both, never fully accepted by either whites or by Asian Americans. That is the biracial experience. On top of that your parents do not understand what you are going through. So it helps if some of your friends are hapas too.

See also:

• biracial
• Korean adoptees
• Patricia Ford
• black father, white mother
• white father, black mother
• white people

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Danzy Senna

Danzy Senna (1970- ) is an American writer, best known for her book “Caucasia” (1999), a coming of age story about a girl who is somewhere between black and white. It is about a mulatto who is not tragic. Something Senna knows about first-hand.

Her parents were both writers and both worked for the civil rights movement. Her mother was white, coming from an old-money Wasp family in Boston that once traded slaves. Her father was a black Mexican. Senna, born in Boston, was in between, able to pass as white or black.

But not as biracial: in Boston in the 1970s there was no such thing. You were either black or white. Her parents brought her up as black.

You told us all along that we had to call ourselves black because of this so-called one drop. Now that we don’t have to anymore, we choose to. Because black is beautiful. Because black is not a burden, but a privilege.

She saw herself as black. But because she could pass for white she could hear the things that white people said about blacks behind their backs.

She found that no matter how much whites might talk equality and Martin Luther King and all that, they were still just as hung up about race as blacks were – they just had a different, more subtle way of talking about it. Subtle or not, it was still hard to hear it.

People who do not know her tend to think she is Jewish or Arab.

These days she sees herself as being mixed yet black:

I think of myself as mixed, and I think of myself as part of a long history of African-American writers, so I don’t see them as so distinct as people do these days.

She says not being white helps her as a writer because it gives her an outsider’s point of view.  In writing courses she took she noticed that white men, at least those who were not Jewish, had a hard time picking something to write about.

Even though she had been writing stories since at least age 11, when she went off to Stanford she studied medicine instead. But the science courses were too hard and, besides, she found that writing was something she just had to do.

The writers who made her know she should be one too were Colette, James Baldwin and Dostoevsky. She particularly likes Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” and Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. And also Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”.

“Caucasia” was her first book. It was so good it became a hard act to follow. For two years she wrote nothing. In time she did write another book, “Symptomatic” (2004) whose hero is also biracial, but this time more of a tragic mulatto. Her latest book is “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History” (2009). She also writes for magazines, especially about the way race and sex affects how people think of themselves.

She is married to writer Percival Everett.

See also:

• Danzy Senna: Caucasia
• biracial
• tragic mulatto
• black father, white mother
• Nella Larsen
• One Drop Rule

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white father, black mother

Here are some famous people (famous enough to be in the Wikipedia, at least) who have white fathers and black mothers. They are listed in order of birth year:

1700s:

1710s:

1720s:

1730s:

Prince Hall

1740s:

1750s:

1760s:

1770s:

Sally Hemings (Thomas Jefferson’s mistress).

1780s:

1790s:

1800s:

1810s:

Frederick Douglass.

1820s:

1830s:

1840s:

1850s:

Booker T. Washington.

1860s:

Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.

1870s:

1880s:

1890s:

1900s:

1910s:

1920s:

Eartha Kitt.

1930s:

1940s:

Ronnie Spector, Bob Marley, August Wilson, Jerry Rawlings (once president of Ghana).

1950s:

1960s:

Malcolm Gladwell (wrote “Blink”), DeBarge, Lenny Kravitz, Gloria Reuben, Marie Daulne (Zap Mama), Slash, Michael Michele, Soledad O’Brien, Karyn Parsons, Mariane Pearl (wife of Daniel Pearl, played in Hollywood by Angelina Jolie), Salli Richardson, Cree Summer, Rebecca Walker (daughter of Alice Walker).

1970s:

Thandie Newton, Tracee Ellis Ross (“Girlfriends”, daughter of Diana Ross), Maya Rudolph (“Saturday Night Live”, daughter of Minnie Riperton), Amel Larrieux (Groove Theory), Faith Evans, Benjamin Jealous (NAACP),  Leila Arcieri, Les Nubians (both of them), Zadie Smith, Tamia, Marsha Thomason (“Black Knight”), Tia & Tamera Mowry, Noemie Lenoir, Shakara Ledard.

1980s:

Farrah Franklin (once a part of Destiny’s Child), Lauren London, Jennifer Freeman (“My Wife and Kids”, “You Got Served”), Tahj Mowry.

Here are some things that strike me about this list when compared to my other list, the one with those who have black fathers and white mothers:

1. Three-fourths are women.
2. Nearly half were born between 1964 and 1974 (from Lenny Kravitz to Les Nubians).
3. It goes deeper into the past.
4. Only two are British: Newton and Thomason.
5. On the whole, they do not seem as famous or outstanding as their counterparts on the other list. Nearly all the star power on this list was born before 1950, like Marley and Douglass.

No doubt there are people I overlooked, but any additions can shift the list by only so much.

The third one – that it goes deeper into the past - is no surprise because white men were allowed to take black women as mistresses or even rape them; black men were often hanged if they tried the same with white women.

The second one – that half were born from 1964 to 1974 – is no accident: those were the years when the future of race in America looked hopeful: racism was dying. But somewhere between 1972 and 1974 that progress stopped. Maybe there will be a wave of mixed-race Obama babies over the next several years.

A study done in 1974 showed that mixed children with black mothers had lower IQs than those with white mothers – although their IQs were still far higher, on average, than blacks in general, both light-skinned and dark-skinned. Their IQs were close to that of white children.

Studies show that light-skinned blacks get more education and make more money on average that dark-skinned blacks. How much, if any, of that difference comes from the white parents that some have?

Who I assumed was white: Ronnie Spector, Malcolm Gladwell, Slash, Maya Rudolph, Soledad O’Brien (white/Hispanic).

Who I thought was mixed before I knew the facts: none.

See also:

• black father, white mother
• People:
  • Sally Hemings
  • Thandie Newton
  • Lauren London
  • Gloria Reuben
  • Booker T. Washington
• biracial
• One Drop Rule
• Black IQ
• Jim Crow

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black father, white mother

Here are some famous people who, like Barack Obama, have black fathers and white mothers. They are listed according to their date of birth (though in some cases I had to guess when that was):

1700s:

1710s:

1720s:

1730s:

1740s:

1750s:

1760s:

1770s:

1780s:

1790s:

1800s:

1810s:

1820s:

1830s:

1840s:

1850s:

1860s:

1870s:

1880s:

1890s:

Nella Larsen (“Passing”, writer of the Harlem Renaissance)

1900s:

1910s:

1920s:

1930s:

Shirley Bassey (sang “Goldfinger”)

1940s:

Sue Simmons (Channel 4 news in New York).

1950s:

Lani Guinier, Walter Mosley (wrote “Devil in a Blue Dress”), Vickie Sue Robinson (sang “Turn the Beat Around”), Lonette McKee (Flipper’s wife in “Jungle Fever”),  James McBride (“The Color of Water”), Mario van Peebles, Sade, Victoria Rowell, Vanity.

1960s:

Barack Obama, Cindy Herron (En Vogue), Mel & Kim, Roland Gift (Fine Young Cannibals), Downtown Julie Brown, Lisa Jones,  Jennifer Beals (“Flashdance”), Christopher Reid (Kid N Play), Jasmine Guy, Neneh Cherry, Rob Pilatus (Milli Vanilli), Barbara Becker (wife of tennis great Boris Becker), Halle Berry, Lisa Bonet, Jayson Williams, Renee Tenison (Playboy Playmate of the Year), Ben Harper, Joshua Redman, Rick Fox (Lakers), Sophie Okonedo.

1970s:

Mariah Carey, Shemar Moore (“The Young and the Restless”), Adrian Fenty (mayor of Washington D.C.), Danzy Senna (wrote “Caucasia”), Donald Brashear, Persia White (“Girlfriends”), Wentworth Miller, Amy Holmes, Jason Kidd, Boris Kodjoe, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Alana Davis, Derek Jeter, Sherri Saum, Paula Patton, Blu Cantrell, Melyssa Ford, Rashida Jones (daughter of Quincy Jones and that white girl on “The Mod Squad”), Goapele (sang “Closer”), Ida Corr (Danish singer), Emilia Rydberg (Swedish singer), Corinne Bailey Rae, Mya Harrison, Mel B, Ursula Rucker, Imani Coppola (Little Jackie).

1980s:

Alicia Keys, Craig David, Grady Sizemore, Hoopz, Samantha Mumba, Leona Lewis, Lewis Hamilton, Jordan Farmar (Lakers), Laura Izibor (Nigerian/Irish), Jordin Sparks, Corbin Bleu (“High School Musical”).

I had no idea so many mixed people were in the public eye! Till I learned about their backgrounds, I thought of most of these people as just plain black. Even Halle Berry.

A few I thought were white when I first saw them: Mariah Carey, Jennifer Beals and Vickie Sue Robinson. Both Carey and Robinson sound black on the radio but looked white on television.

The only ones who I suspected might be mixed were Derek Jeter, Jennifer Beals, Persia White, Alicia Keys, Mya Harrison and Ursula Rucker, Shows you what I know.

Of those listed above, one in five are from New York City, especially Harlem. One in six is part Jewish.

One of the most striking things about this list is that few were born before 1950. That is no accident: before the fall of Jim Crow, black men were kept from white women in the southern states of America by law, force and terror. It was no easy thing elsewhere.

I think having parents from two different races does affect you growing up, especially if you find yourself in the strange position of being too black to be white and too white to be black, making you in effect neither black nor white but biracial.

But whether it is your mother or father who is black or white, does that affect you?

The only study I know of done about the sex and race of one’s parents is one done by Willerman, Naylor and Myrianthopoulos in 1974: mixed children brought up by a black father and a white mother had a mean IQ of 104.7, more than 8 points higher than those raised by a white father and black mother: 96.4. And, by the way, almost 5 points higher than the mean white IQ and, in those days, nearly 20 points higher than the mean black IQ.

See also:

• white fathers, black mothers
• People:
  • Barack Obama
  • Nella Larsen
  • Jennifer Beals
  • Melyssa Ford
  • Lisa Bonet
  • Amy Holmes
  • Ida Corr
  • James McBride
  • David Myers: a black boy who thought he was white
  • The blackness of Mariah Carey
  • Danzy Senna
  • Halle Berry
  • Sade
  • Boris Kodjoe
• One Drop Rule
• biracial
• Black IQ
• New York
  • Harlem
• Jews
• Jim Crow

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