Mixed in America

The coverage of the missing and murdered Ohio woman Jessie Davis included images of her toddler son Blake, whose father is the chief suspect in the case. Blake's father is black. Ms. Davis was white. Seeing the images of the little fellow coloring and playing, something completely unrelated to the case occured to me. It was this: The fact of little Blake's heritage was not directly commented upon. Failing to point out the obvious is one way the media shows that something is not out of the ordinary. While the number of people who identify themselves as belonging to more than one race (about 1.5 of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) is small, it is growing. When I was a child I remember often feeling like the odd one out. My mother is black and my father is whitle. I knew very few kids born of interracial marriages. I had a friend who had a Vietnamese mother and white father, but we didn't talk about this issue. Don't even get me started on the identity issues I grappled with in high school and college! Now, it pleases me to no end to see likes of Soledad O'Brien rise to prominence in broadcast journalism. She has a black Cuban mother and a white Irish father. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point, is also biracial. We even have a biracial presidential candidate, Barack Obama! As the presidential race heats up, it behooves journalists of all stripes to avoid oversimplification, stereotyping, and narrow thinking when it comes to addressing what is almost certain to become a public dialogue about what it means to be black, white, or "other." Thinking about this issued, I wanted to get an idea about how biracial people younger than I am view themselves. So I did an unscientific e-mail survey of some journalism students here at The Missouri School of Journalism. I asked the students a variety of questions about their parentage and how they identify themselves. I'll share some of the responses in a future blog.