Blurring Lines
Extreme English posted a link to a really interesting New York Times article about the diverse makeup of the Robinson-Obama family.
The article makes the point that many ordinary families are easily crossing racial and cultural divides and organically creating multicultural families. One of my good friends is an Egyptian Muslim married to an Acadian woman; his brother is married to an Anglo Canadian woman. A third brother just moved to Canada with his Filipina wife and their daughter.
I like it. I think that in North America, by the time our generation's children grow up, our definitions of race are going to be considerably changed; and by the time their children grow up, our current definitions of race are going to be largely unrecognizable in the North American landscape. At the same time, I think that something more important than race - culture - will be preserved and at the same time transformed. I expect that some people will find that sad. I don't.
Sometimes I think it's our only hope.
ronnie
Labels: culture
posted by ronnie at
8:52 p.m.
4 Comments:
Blush! (And that picture only includes representatives of the Latino, white, and African-American lines in the family because Doug's Uncle John and Aunt Ngoc Thu couldn't be there along with cousins Lan and Sophie Xuan.)
I think it really is our best hope. Might indeed be our only hope. And it's a beautiful thing to see.
Sherwood, your family was very much in my mind when I wrote this post! I didn't mention or link to you because I didn't know if that was overstepping boundaries a bit. But your family is in every way an example of the wonderful families I was writing about.
NFTP, I was wondering a bit if people would think I was nuts for writing that last bit about, essentially, wishing for an end to race as we know it. At least I know one person thinks I'm not :)
Thank you, ronnie. Our mix didn't happen by design, of course, which should give you and NFTP encouragement that your hope will ultimately come to pass. After all, it's just the natural outcome of not unnecessarily narrowing one's pool of potential dates.
Diane says she's still going to keep me around, anyway.
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