Friday, August 15, 2008

Quick read at The Root

Check out this piece at The Root today: Double Take. It's about a mother's perspective on having fraternal twins with different skin tones. It's really interesting. She writes,

When the Western World starts ignoring our skin colors and starts getting real, maybe we'll see these "miracle twin" stories for exactly what they are: living proof that it's time we rethink the concept of "race."

Ethnicity and culture will always be real, but the concept of race is not that straightforward. In America, there are some truths to face. We can start by facing a history many people are still too ashamed to talk about directly: slavery, miscegenation, class, caste and rape. Any American that looks at two siblings of different colors and is confused doesn't just reveal their ignorance of race, they show their lack of understanding of the history of this country, and where their own story fits into it.

Good stuff.

1 comment:

habladora said...

The whole piece is really interesting, thanks for pointing to it. I've also found a lot of good conversations about race at Anti-Racist Parent recently.