how will Big Duane be able to figure out who is really white or black?
Multiracial Americans surge in number, voice
Obama candidacy focuses new attention on their quest for understanding
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By Mike Stuckey
[/align]Senior news editor
[/align]MSNBC
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[/align]If you want a good glimpse of the multiracial experience in America, get inside Louie Gong"s skin.
"I"m Nooksack, I"m Chinese, I"m French and I"m Scottish," Gong tells viewers of a multimedia piece he placed on YouTube to help spark discussion of multiracial issues. "... When I was a kid, I drank my Ovaltine with real milk, and my cousins and I liked our fried rice with salmon."
At the same time that the nation"s growing diversity and changing social attitudes are helping to swell the ranks of multiracial Americans at 10 times the rate of the white population, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, son of a black man and a white woman, has brought new attention, curiosity and discussion to their experiences.
Obama has faced an endless barrage of questions anchored to issues of race and class, from his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to whether, in his own words, he is "too black" or "not black enough." As Gut Check America engaged msnbc.com readers in this re-emerging national conversation on race, it became clear that multiracial Americans offered unique perspectives on the topic and that the nation is far from entering a "post-race" era.
Gong, 33, is on the leading edge of what he calls the "modern multiracial movement." A founder of the Mixed Heritage Center, a Web-based resource collection for multiracial Americans, Gong is also vice president and a key spokesman for the Mavin Foundation, a Seattle-based advocacy group for mixed-race people and families. As the educational resources director for the Muckleshoot Indian tribe"s college near Seattle, he is able to tailor programs to Native Americans of mixed heritage. He teaches classes and workshops on the topic and is helping prepare a museum exhibit on the mixed-race experience set to open in Seattle in the fall.
To read the rest.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24542138
In another generation
