If you were to read an article about racism and immigration, you would expect to read comments and quotes from multiple races and immigrants. Or is that too much to ask? In a recent article in the Washington Post, a story was going to supposedly show that in two counties in South Carolina, separated by one road, political lines were drawn alongside race lines i.e. Black people were Democrats and White people were Republican. Which is fine and dandy to talk about, except that the article seemed ignore the fact that there were maybe other people in the two counties who were not Black or White or who did not fit into those stereotypes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau information for 2008, thought most of South Carolina’s population is Black and White, about 6.1 percent of the population is not and about 1.1 percent said to be of two or more races It seems to me that people who are of other races, besides Black and White, or who are bi-racial, are not included in the race discussion.
Not only am I a child of immigrants, half-Salvadorian and half-Bolivian, but I also come from a vast multi-racial family. My first playmates were my cousins, most of whom are bi-racial (half-Latino and something else) or multi-ethnic. My oldest brother is half white and half Latino, a fact that doesn’t affect him at all (he sound’s like he’s Cuban, which is something no one in the family understands).
Though I have grown up with the race question as a reality and potential barrier in my life, I realize that for some people it has not crossed their mind as important to discuss, as something that may require some change. However, in the mainstream press, these are the voices that are ignored and not talked about.
If anything, these would be the people who would understand the need to have a discussion of racism to be included in the modern press. After the Race Riots in California and the Civil Rights movement, the race question sort of fell out of the discussion. However with the campaign and election of Barack Obama, the discussion of where race should be in the media has been brought back into the public forum. Though the majority of the country is White, there is a growing number of minority groups, which is not news. The news comes in the inability to talk about it, or to make a big deal about not talking about it.
It’s going to up to future genertions, my nieces and nephews already who are bi-racial, to figure out how to determine race in the media. This generation can start to make race into something that isn’t a huge deal, but we can’t finish. As the world is changing and growing we can’t ignore the mistakes of the past and keep repeating them. The world isn’t Black and White anymore, have you seen the difference yet?
