Friday, April 8, 2011

Mixed Race on the Brian Lehrer Show

My favorite radio show is having a call-in right now on being mixed race - I can't get through so I will blog about it instead.  Apologies in advance for the stream of consciousness.

Click on multiracial on the tag cloud at right or search "mixed" to see my previous musings on being more than one race.

While I appreciate the guests - an interracial couple, I'd like to hear from a mixed race "expert" instead - but that would defeat the purpose of understanding since any one person's experience can't possibly capture it for us all.

You know where being mixes sucks these days?  Dating.  White guys are like "I don't date black women."  I don't know how someone can say this and not feel they're being racist and vastly generalizing (ahem, John Mayer, whose songs I have deleted from my iTunes after his extremely racist and insensitive comments about interracial dating).  And black men do not know what to do with me.

Last week I went to my friend Santana's play reading - she wrote a one-woman show about her experience growing up mixed called "The Other Box."  It was brilliant.  I didn't expect it to be that good this early in development.  But we have some uncommon parallels in our childhood & experience, so it was very hard for me to absorb at points.  The show is going up this month, happy to share info, it is so worth seeing -- you'll laugh and cry and get it.

Woman on radio now is talking about how it's more of an issue in New York.  This is so true.  Of course I was a kid on the West Coast so I may not have been as aware, but I will tell you that in NYC everyone needs to fit everyone else into a box, and it can really suck.  Of course, this is true way beyond race: your job, your neighborhood, your money, your family, your alma mater, your marital status, your hobbies, etc etc.

And.... segment over!  Seriously, I could explore this all the time.  Maybe I will start my own radio show just about being mixed and America from a mixed perspective.  Why not, every other racial group has their own media microcosm.  Take that, Brian Lehrer!