Blog Post: A Family Comes In Any Color

Writer Kurt Streeter recently wrote an article that appeared in the L.A. Times entitled "Colors of a Family." In it, he summarized how diverse his family is and how, even though he comes from mixed racial parentage, he is pigeonholed most of the time as being "Afro-American." In truth, his mother is Anglo. His father is black. But people just tend to assume what a person is and I guess that makes it easier for them if they assign a label to a person.

Many families are not all homogenized and exclusive to any one culture or race any more. Especially in California. It's not uncommon to see families with the parents being one race and the children being another. Sometimes the children are foster children or have been adopted. But that's not always the case. Races and cultures are gradually melding together.

Sometimes mixed families can make for awkward or embarrassing moments. It would be socially imprudent to just assume that an adult or child in any family is not a full member of that family. People and society are less discriminatory about who marries whom and the result sometimes makes for some very unique children. At the moment, Tiger Woods and President Obama come to mind.

My son is 100 percent Mexican American and I am a German/Swedish Anglo. It's made for some interesting moments. When I took my son to my Mother's retirement home, one elderly lady wanted to know what country he was from. He answered, "California."  I think it was just an innocent generational faux pax.

On a lighter note, with a Mexican American son, and I now know what things like pesole and menudo are and how to make chorizo and eggs. When families and cultures are mixed, the result is most often a much more interesting and varied view of many things.

Growing up in the Midwest, I did not even see an Asian-American or Mexican-American until I was thirteen years old and we moved to Texas. Up to that point, I had never even tasted Mexican or Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Thai food! My roots were strictly one-race; one culture. (WASP who ate meat, potatoes and a heck of a lot of corn)  The best thing my parents ever did for me was to move to California (after 3 strained years in Texas!).

I am truly glad that the majority of our population in this state handles mixed marriages and mixed families as well as they do. There can still be some challenging moments, but when one embraces a family of mixed race or culture as their own, one is prepared to do whatever needs to be done to make it all work. (Although I seriously doubt if I'll ever be able to make homemade tamales!)