Why do they even think about it, or measure it? Is one of the parents encouraging them to specific allegiance?
It is prevalent in many of those Countries, India also had a caste system predicated on the slight shades of difference.
Which is just as appalling. I do suspect that in most cases of this 'dismissal of my white half' business (in America etc), one of the parents is promoting it. I regard that as an incredibly sh!tty thing to do to your kids, and to your partner.
Maybe it's the cultural difference between the US and whatever country you're from, but in the US, a mixed race (black/white) is generally...based on appearance, considered black. Obama thought of himself, and identified as, black, not one thing or another. That seems to be true of most mixed race people in the US, and there are a lot of them so there are plenty of test cases on that.
I agree, and worse it saddened me to see family fall to such whims and stupidity. To see people of color pretend white by degree and act as if that slight variance made them superior. Almost an unconscious, no, subconscious reaction.
You see I really don't understand that, at all. Why are the black parents encouraging their kids to think that way? Why aren't they encouraging them to not think of themselves in terms of skin tone? I can tell you from experience, that if it's never a 'thing' in a household, it rarely comes up. When it rarely comes up, the kids never learn to identify with one or the other. They don't even know that they can, if that makes sense.
It's insanity. If parents are encouraging their mixed kids to be either 'white' or 'black', they're sh!tty parents.
It is not just parents, it is historical racism, passed on from ancestors, freinds, relatives, teachers, it is quite insidious and spreads like an airborne pathogen of pandemic incurable entomology.
Say the child is half white, half black. Say they have run into prejudice because they look somewhat African American. You know, the subtle, to not so subtle, slight that occurs very frequently in this country. Don't you think the child will begin to identify as black?
Not just black, Indio, Asian, Latino, many of my relatives are non African and they have very peculiar to understand views they would never discuss, and I observed this with many others not related to me. Very attractive people with very unattractive, unhealthy views.
If they conduct and present themselves as clean living, law abiding, productive citizens, why would they encounter prejudice? Even in America, a 'well spoken black man in a suit' won't encounter greater prejudice than that inflicted on other races.
Just an observation on my part, since I'm not part of the African American community, but the cultural hold inside the black community in the US is pretty tight, and mixed race kids are generally raised in the Black community, and actively discouraged with identifying with the white community because they figure the kids will never be accepted there anyway. Obama is a good case example. He was one of the few mixed who was raised totally outside the black community and probably didn't have any association with American Black people until college, but by virtually any measure, he identifies as black.
" Obama is a good case example. He was one of the few mixed who was raised totally outside the black community and probably didn't have any association with American Black people until college, but by virtually any measure, he identifies as black." Mostly for Political purposes, I remember Black people that mostly associated with whites, they were not interested in anything else.
That's where we differ. EG, UK born black people (of African descent) don't have a community, as such. They just mix in with the whites. There is no 'black accent' or anything like that to distinguish people. It's the same where I am. Black people born in this country sound exactly the same as white people. Even where they mix mainly with other black people, you can't identify them in terms of accent or other obvious markers. But I maintain that it's an incredibly sh!tty thing to do to your kids and white partner.
It may be, and I would wonder in those situations how the white partner feels about being cut out of their child's cultural heritage. Of course in the US, that's the norm. Obama made a point in one speech (I think it was his 2008 "race" speech) about his white grandmother being a racist. Luckily she was dead because I can't imagine how crushing it would be to have your grandchild reject you in such a vulgar way.
That is very Political and symptomatic of a person that is a total piker to use your Sainted Grandmother as a literary device and a Political prop is disgraceful and disrespectful to ones ancestors and may confer the curse of the ancients upon oneself.