Ethncity

Some birracial negroes like Barack and me have what I like to call "the birracial strut". It is the kind of strut or body language that seems always relaxed, especially if the room is filled with white people.

I've been told more than a couple of times that my body language and demeanor is jolting to white people who don't necessarily expected to have a black latina talking to them as an equal. Actually, the people who have pointed it out as a positive have described it as "a breath of fresh air" or "a pleasant surprise". I just walk into room, make myself comfortable and dispense with the inanities of social expectations. To a lot of people who have not had the joy of socializing regularly with people "outside their tribe", this demeanor and way of being in society can be quite calming.

Yet there's the times that this same exact demeanor is described as arrogant in a "how dare you talk to your betters", sort of way. And even in the black community it is considered more uppity than the uppity negroes that Chris talks about in his post-Iowa post. I've been called an uppity nigger by black people.

It's not that biracial negroes socialize in a completely different way than black or white people. It's just that we socialize as equals to both black, whites (and usually any other race).

We don't see distinctions based on racial categories because in our mind there are none. In our minds, we are white. Not just "also white", but "white".

Think about it. The first expression of love for a biracial negro like Barack came from his white mother.

Biracial negroes like Barack Obama suckled from the tits of white mothers. It was our mother's eyes, lips, hair, voice and smell we fell in love. It was a the face of a white woman that we first gazed into and learned to love.

In a case like me, I look like a carbon copy of my mother. I have my mother's face with brown skin and brown eyes. By the same token, my mother has my face with white skin and blue eyes.

Is it any wonder why Barack walks among white people like it's not a big deal?

But it is and that's where that the t-shirt above comes into place.

What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings

Tamara K. Nopper
April 17, 2007

Like many, I was glued to the television news yesterday, keeping updated about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University. I was trying to deal with my own disgust and sadness, especially since my professional life as a graduate student and college instructor is tied to universities. And then the other shoe dropped. I found out from a friend that the news channel she was watching had reported the shooter as Asian. It has now been reported, after much confusion, that the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui, a South Korean immigrant and Virginia Tech student.

As an Asian American woman, I am keenly aware that Asians are about to become a popular media topic if not the victims of physical backlash. Rarely have we gotten as much attention in the past ten years, except, perhaps, during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Since then Asians are seldom seen in the media except when one of us wins a golfing match, Woody Allen has sex, or Angelina Jolie adopts a kid.

I am not looking forward to the onslaught of media attention. If history truly does have clues about what will come, there may be several different ways we as Asian Americans will be talked about.

One, we will watch white media pundits and perhaps even sociologists explain what they understand as an “Asian” way of being. They will talk about how Asian males presumably have fragile “egos” and therefore are culturally prone to engage in kamikaze style violence. These statements will be embedded with racist tropes about Japanese military fighters during WWII or the Viet Cong—the crazy, calculating, and hidden Asian man who will fight to the death over presumably nothing.