Are biracial people too ambiguous to be identifiable? Or are they the greatest thing to happen to the human melting pot?
Cross-posted at Cultural Imperialist
Laughter Is the Best Melanin
Greg Piper
Washington, D.C.’s next mayor will be black, just like the outgoing mayor. Vince Gray beat incumbent Adrian Fenty, who is not gay or British despite the sound of his name, in the Democratic primary, all but ensuring his election. Yet the city pretty much divided along racial lines, with blacks supporting Gray and whites supporting Fenty.
The conventional explanation is Fenty eschewed the old-school patronage that gave blacks their place in city government, and let loose a fierce Asian tiger in the public schools, threatening the predominantly black teachers.
What perplexes me is how anybody even knew Gray was black. He looks Italian to me. Fenty could pass for an Arab intellectual except for his slurred speech and love of marathons, a favorite white activity. And President Obama reminds me most of my liberal white Russian professor who ribbed the conservative students for sitting on the “right wing” of the classroom.
This racial rigamarole is making it hard to evaluate people based on the color of their skin. Of course, Martin Luther King Jr. rightly urged us to judge people based on the content of their character. But my favorite clerical philanderer (sorry, Haggard) wasn’t talking about the fleeting judgments we need to make immediately to accurately gossip, forecast trends, and crucially, not offend these melanin mysteries.
Say I meet Vince Gray on a train in Europe, and assume he’s a spaghetti-eating, lecherous pope-hugger (not that kind of “hugging”) who may progressively disrobe and splay across me in a series of tunnels. Looking for common ground over a couple Peronis, I try to start a conversation about the best references to “niggas” in rap music, since Italians love rap. Bam! and I’ve lost any hope for a political plum in Grayskull. Ever wonder why you and your ethnic-omelette friends are always making fun of white conservative Christians? Because of that stick up their ample booty when it comes to having fun at the expense of minorities.
As people’s heritages disappear into a George Hamilton shade of tan, making us even harder to peg than Vanessa on “Gossip Girl“, our venerable humor traditions will fade like so much pigment. It’s no coincidence that our least funny president since Bill Clinton — the best walking gag since Warren Harding — is biracial. Neither white nor black, No Drama Obama can’t have fun at anyone’s expense, and resorts to lame jokes about putting your car in D instead of R to move forward. Yeah, that’s guaranteed to swing independents in November.
Think of a world without stereotypes, where everybody is so idiosyncratic that we can’t make any useful and humorous generalizations about, say, who loves fried chicken, who has no ass, who will jump into your truck in a parking lot, who you shouldn’t let dogsit when they’re hungry, and so on. The outliers, like Will Smith’s cousin Carlton Banks or Usher-in-waiting Justin Bieber, will cease to be “out,” because there won’t be any “in.”
Imagine trying to size up an overly tan female Republican blowhard — is she an ignorant white mama grizzly, or some ethnic combination more convoluted than the unintelligible promos for NBC’s “The Event”?
We aren’t the world. It’s us vs. them, and your culture is weird. That’s how I like it.
Genetic Carpool
Jeremiah Lewis
You want racial hegemony? Only if you’re in the mood for a holla-caust. Don’t trust those Blaucasions and Hisplasians and Nubinuit? Congratulations, you’re a Mulazi.
The natural extension of mistrust of racially ambiguous people is the systematic destruction of their kind. So I’m calling you out, Adolph Piper. Your worldview stinks, and I hope others smell your aryaroma of hatred and fear the same way I do.
Many bi-racial people are, without a doubt, uncommonly beautiful and therefore successful, which leads to their unusual, if overrated happiness. Show me a purebreed Swede and I’ll give you twelve hybrid hyperbeauties of mixed blood; Asians and Africans are a surefire mixture for long-legged beauties with brains, and Hawaiians can’t mix with any other race without causing major upheavals in Miss Whatever beauty pageants. Aussies seem incapable of swimming with anyone outside thir little genetic pool without producing the finest offspring since Ham first laid eyes on Japheth’s daughter. And there’s no disputing the fact that when it comes to white power, there’s no greater example than Adriana Lima. In fact, there’s a mathematical formula to describe the hybridization of races to form perfect supermodels: B*2r = SB. That’s Supreme Being (Leeloo Dallas, multi-ethnic pass) for you sporty types.
But it’s not all about the looks; hybrid people carry within them the full cream of the genetic crop, a flowering perfection that combines the greatest and most powerful genes from either parent, producing the maximum potential that macroevolution can offer, like using stackable coupons at the world’s largest genetic superstore.
There’s a reason God told Adam and Eve to go forth and be fruitful; like combining strawberry and bananas together into a puree of exquisite perfection, heterozygosity–genetic diversity for you unibreeders–is the key to healthier, stronger, more attractive beings (and Robeks drinks).
Not only are the genetics superior, but multi-ethnics also carry the most potential for cultural diversity. Black Asians have a better claim on both rap music and sushi than white people do; Indo-Europeans or Anglo-Indians will likely be avid clubbers and mathematicians. Blitey might grow up to be President (spawning a backlash “birther” movement in the process, haters). I’ve made my white bed and slept in (with) it (her), but Greg’s insufferable whiteness can be tempered if his WGWAF lifestyle produces offspring down the road.
The point is, we can’t be myopic when it comes the way we breed. It is vital that humans continue to spawn perfect children who can’t fill in the bubble under Race on their SATs without a significant amount of questioning of their self-identity. At some point in the far future, a perfect and beautiful species of non-specific race will come across evidence of a culture and time when their ancestors worried about who was coming to dinner. They’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.