(nacd = not a candidate diary]
Pultizer Prize winning columnist Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe has an incredibly thoughtful column today entitled Transcending race and identity which explores the variegated background of Barack Obama and his half-sister:
Maya Soetoro-Ng is now a 36-year-old teacher who describes herself as "half white, half Asian . . . a hybrid." She is a Buddhist, married to a Chinese-Canadian, the mother of a 2-year-old, and a woman who is so routinely identified as a Latina that she learned Spanish.
This becomes the beginning of a thoughtful column which I encourage all to read.
The column caught my attention not only because of the qualify of Goodman's writing, but because I teach many students of mixed race background, and some of the issues covered in the column may explain why so many of my students react favorably to Obama, even if they support someone else.
Consider that Soetero-Ng lives in Hawaii, a state where 25% of the residents check two or more boxes for race on the Census form.
She says that people marvel at her family, whose "complexity mirrors to a great extent the complexity of many families in this country and world today."
I immediately think of Tiger Woods and his great appeal, the fantastic golfer who describes himself as "Cablinasian" in tribute to his mother's Thai background and his father, primarily Black but with some admixture of White blood as well.
When asked whether she, who considers herself a hybrid (and is married to a man who is "Chinese-Canadian), considers her brother Black, her answer is affirmative
because that is how he has named himself. Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will."
Goodman quotes Obama reflecting on his heritage
"I think that if you can tell people, 'We have a president in the White House who still has a grandmother living in a hut on the shores of Lake Victoria and has a sister who's half-Indonesian, married to a Chinese-Canadian,' then they're going to think he may have a better sense of what's going on in our lives and in our country. And they'd be right."
and explores how his background plays differently in different places - in South Carolina, with few people considering themselves mixed, Obama is clearly considered as Black enough.
Lt me offer two other paragraphs from Goodman's column as a way of encouraging you to read it, and then perhaps reflect on the thoughts presented.
The children of what we label "mixed marriages" - ethnic, religious or racial - are often assumed to be torn by divided loyalties and identities. Yet the children that I have known may also - more so - be natural mediators, translators, connective tissue between multiple worlds.
This conforms with the experience I have perceived of the lives of my many students who are themselves of mixed heritage, and that includes those not only of mixed racial background, but sometimes mixed acorss religious or ethnic differences where parents are of the same race.
Maya Soetoro-Ng described her mother as someone who "thought of life as sort of this beautiful tapestry, full of possibilities." Whatever this campaign brings, her children are living a reality out loud that is far more like that tapestry than it is like the neat little boxes on the Census Bureau forms.
And perhaps it that living out hat potentially can enrich us all if the bitterness of the primary battle does not divide us.
So if you have some time today, read Goodman's column, and then perhaps offer your reaction in comments on the thread?
Thanks.