Passin' Black, My Memoir Short Stories~"Little Did They Know!"

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Little Did They Know.

by C.D. Homes-Miller

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Little did They Know

by C.D. Holmes-Miller

In quoting Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, blogosphere and the like, this notable citation is forever imprinted across the communications platform of the worldwide web. The impressions on this controversial subject have been made. They are now eternally well recorded and cannot be erased from the Google "search and find" keyword driven engines—ever:

Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.

“HAMMOND, La. — A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long..." I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

"Thirty-year-old Beth Humphrey and 32-year-old Terence McKay, both of Hammond, say they will consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.”

As I watched Justice of the Peace Bardwell defend his position, I listened carefully. He was trying to convince CBS Reporter Harry Smith that he was not a racist. Smith was seemingly amazed at his words and I was amazed at my own feelings welling up inside. “Judge you are correct about your concerns but dead wrong in your judgment and subsequent actions; you broke the law.” I thought to myself.

It was not the “dead wrong in your judgment; you broke the law” of my thinking that was surprising of my own impressions. It was his judgmental concern for the children yet born which struck a bad note in my ear. Yes, he broke the law and there does need to be a concern for children yet to come. I had to agree with his regard. Although he may have had wrong motives, legal misconduct or racial mal intent, he had a regard for the children.

Eating the fish and spewing out the bones of his interview, I had to agree with his empathic regard. As a justice of the peace he broke the law; his is not a minister of conviction or Jesus the Judge. My words are not editorial comment but a sharing of my life’s true story.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper "weighed in" his report as well. He reported 8.5 million in America are involved in mixed race relationships since between the years 1970-2005. I am 56 years old and am the first born child of an untimely as well as unseasonably 1949 mixed race marriage.

I have quietly suffered my entire life because of my can of mixed family nuts and their mixed race issues about my parent’s marriage. Mixed race marriages are here and are here to stay. Now vogue, they were once quite taboo and only now can I even begin to share my story—not a blog comment, editorial, commentary or book review but my life’s true story.

Momma and Poppa met in college. Poppa was a native Washingtonian and Momma was a native US Virgin Islander. Momma was mixed race Asian. Momma was multi-mixed i.e.-racially Irish, Black and one half Filipino; she was culturally West Indian. She came to the United States to attend college. Momma was quite a beautiful woman as she looked 100% Filipino; she was simply exotic.

Momma and Poppa fell in love. Upon graduation, Poppa just wouldn’t allow her to return to the islands and leave him in the United States alone. He asked for her hand in marriage. They were married in 1949 in Washington, D.C. Sandwiched between the prohibiting miscegenation states of Maryland and Virginia; they started their lives together in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region.

My maternal grandmother was actual leery of her mixed race Asian daughter marrying a black man in America. Actually, my father was a biracial mulatto white and black man with confirmed European DNA from the British Isles. Poppa assumed the Negro lifestyle culturally but was mixed race himself.

Post Emancipation Negro mulattos are well understood but mixing further to include mixed Asian breeds was quite an anomaly until the dawn of the Tiger Woods generation in the 1970s. My mother found herself, a mixed race Asian in America, not having the 1997 White House ruling allowing her more than two racial boxes to select!

My father’s selection of wife and my mother’s racial makeup as well as cultural background was too much of a "leap of faith" for my paternal family. A customarily Negro or Negro mulatto woman would have been more acceptable but Poppa picked a mixed blood Asian woman! Momma was an out of the Crayola coloring box marital choice and her mult-mix was far too much to embrace for Poppa’s folks, especially his mother. I was their first born child arriving on the scene of this madness in 1952.

Remembering my very own first born arrival, I can only imagine the joy they were experiencing. Little did they know what would lie ahead for a lifetime and even into eternity? My paternal family could never bond with my parent’s decision and never embraced their children as their own.

Poppa died unexpectedly when I was a college freshman and my paternal family abandoned us after the funeral. With my maternal family overseas, I grew up with no family at all. Not only did I grow up with no extended family, I had no idea or knowledge of my true racial identity.

I grew up culturally 100% African American and thinking racially that I was totally black. Not one moment of 55 years did I ever think, I was anything racially other than 100% Negro, black. Culture and race are two different things. Just because I was raised culturally African American, I assumed that I was completely BLACK!

God would have it that over the course of 15 years and three major genealogical episodes I would discover my true RACIAL identity. Words can’t begin to describe the pain, the grief and loss of not having family and not knowing my real complete racial makeup. I am white, black and Asian, I think even MORE SO than Tiger Woods; I never had a clue of the truth!

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Well, my parents...little did they know, what we know so much better now. They just fell in love; who was to know these mixed race issues would lay ahead for me! For the future sake of mixed race children, who will be born to godly marital relationships, make sure to read my short stories and my soon to be released memoir!

C.D. Holmes-Miller