The challenges of biracial children in Russia

For biracial or mixed race children in Russia growing up can be a challenge. It often means being singled out at school, discriminated against and sometimes even being attacked by Neo Nazi skinheads.

But the Afro-Russian organisation for mixed race children 'Metis' supports the children and learns them to love themselves for what they are and shows them that they are not alone. And not without reason.

In 2006 two men attacked and stabbed a 9-year-old girl of mixed Russian and African heritage in St Petersburg when she was returning home after a walk. The incident came just days after a St Petersburg jury acquitted a teenager of fatally stabbing a 9-year-old Tajik girl two years ago.

According to the Russian Cloudwatcher-Times (Russian) in 2010 in one incident, biracial children were been beaten with chains by skinheads near their own house. They survived because their light brown uncle rescued them.

Because of these challenges and because most biracial children are often raised by a single white mother, the founder of Metis proposed a drastic solution. Warn Russian white female students for the consequences of having relationships with Africans and giving birth to a biracial child. See the story 'A SMALL TRAGEDY' below.

The founder of Metis is Emilia Tynes-Mensa and she is of mixed Russian and African-American heritage. In an interview she talks about the Metis program. "We give children education, language training ,computer classes ,we organise events, but more importantly we learn them to love themselves for what they are and show them that they are not alone."

And the program works. Seventeen year-old Fatima Udayevna said it took her a long time to join the Metis program because she too was afraid. "Its use to be even more difficult; when you would ride on public transportation and they would see a black person they would start pointing at them,’ she said. "They’d say, ‘Look, a black person!’"

But Udayevna said with help from the program, she’s really found herself and she’s comfortable in her own skin. As for the future, the self-assured Udayevnya said she’s got big dreams, but not here in Russia. “I play two instruments, the violin and the piano. I also work as a model and dance. My life is bright,” she said, “and in the future I hope to move to Europe and be successful there if possible.” Read the interesting story and listen to the audio here.

Emilia Tynes-Mensa has been the main force behind the organisation. Her father, George Tynes, was an African-American. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Tynes fled to the Soviet Union in 1933 to escape discrimination. He lived there for 51 years, working as a poultry specialist, and married a Russian woman.

About her father Emilia Tynes-Mensa wrote. "He could hardly imagine that half a century later his grandchildren would be leaving Russia for the same reason he had left the United States." Mensa is one of the first Blacks in the former Soviet Union to recieve a dual US/Soviet passport.

Website Metis at www.fundmetis.ru


A SMALL TRAGEDY
By Daria Okuneva

From Izvestiya, 16 September 2005

Recently Ryazan' was shaken by a wild scene. A ten year boy was beaten by his 40-year old neighbor. The kid was guilty only of not having white skin – he was a mixed-race (metis) child by the name of David Nahenu. David was taken to the hospital with bruises and injuries to the soft skin of his head. Luckily this story didn't have a tragic end: David recovered from his injuries, and the offender subsequently agreed to pay the compensation for the harm caused.

Based on data from the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN), from the 1960s up to now, more than 70,000 students from the “black continent” have been to Russia. Leaving behind a trace of their existence here, they left over 40,000 metis offspring. Today the number of children from mixed marriages is constantly on the rise, and all of them encounter the advent of xenophobia. Eight of every ten such kids are taken care of by Russian mothers who are in no condition to fight against poverty and a society turned nationalistic.


A normal story

“The story is similar for most of the girls,” says Emilia Tynes-Mensa, President of METIS-The Inter-Racial Children's Charity Fund. They met students from Africa in clubs and institutes. In their twenties, they are neat, clever and very sexy and of course they are also intrigued by the local blondes, and the blondes by them. Love affairs are started which often end in pregnancies. Africans are deeply convinced that kids are a blessing and the more there are, the better. They don't resist and with pleasure marry the Russian girls. And after five years they finish their education and fly back home. The young man who has graduated and knows a foreign language is considered an ideal husband [back in Africa]. Moreover the conservative African family at times looks negatively at “white” brides.

There is one more scenario, but it is truly very rare: the African takes his family along. Most of the girls find this variant acceptable. But in practice they find it nearly impossible to stay in Africa. In the first place many countries are experiencing civil wars, for example in Congo; also, there are the problems of poverty and high unemployment. Secondly, most mothers just can't adapt to the hot and dry climatic conditions and different epidemics, in particular malaria. Thirdly, for the ladies, probably the hardest thing is to accept their husbands' unfaithfulness. Africans are polygamists by nature, if this was subdued by the local order, then in their native land nearly all the healthily men have, if not more than one wife, then definitely more than one lover. And don't forget about the language and cultural barriers.


Chocolate tears

“What I hate most in the whole world is going to school,” confirms 12 year old metis Alina Silvia. “At home I was tenderly called ‘chocolate,' in class the name ‘starveling' has stuck on me. There was a time during physical education when I fell and soiled my uniform. I definitely cried. The others just laughed and said that I'm supposed to always wear dirty clothes so that the clothes match with my skin color and unclean origin. Another time, when I faltered at the blackboard, my classmates were shouting to the teacher: “Yes, she's stupid. It's a nigger from the palms”. It was very humiliating. At long last I convinced mother to take me from school. I study at home with hired teachers. Up to now I have very few friends, yep kids from the neighborhood, only one girl from my courtyard.”

The worst thing that takes place is that some of the teachers take part in hurting the metis. Many such examples have accumulated in the METIS organization. Angela, a dark skinned girl with a great voice, could not received her well-earned prize at young talents competition. She was told: “How can a nigger win in the festival of Our Home – Russia?”


Mother return me to womb

A truly tragic story was told by Galina Victorova Fedina, who is now taking care of her grandson, a metis. “After my son-in-law, an Ethiopian, left, my daughter tried in all ways to organize her private life. She had an affair with a Russian man and when things were heading towards marraige she decided to introduce him to her son. The man went berserk and shouted, ‘I hate prostitutes who sleep with niggers. Forget about the wedding!' My daughter was depressed, and later she went to another man, practically leaving me with the kid. Now we are not communicating.”

If there are no relatives ready to take in the metis, then he is in dire straights. Not long ago one of the organization's members heard over the radio that the director of a children's home was basically begging listeners to adopt a metis – he was being beaten by his age mates. Sadly METIS was not able to rescue the boy and the SOS signal was never repeated. METIS hopes the boy was adopted at long last, but we also fear that he might no longer be alive.


A message from Africa

Maybe the situation would not be this critical if the mothers were paid alimony. Theoretically it's possible but in practise, it's not realistic.

“The possibility of getting alimony from one of the African governments is maximum 10%”, - explained to NI Roman Dyachkov, head of the judicial firm Fact. In order to sue an African who is in his homeland, it's necessary to locate him first. No court will take the case if you don't prove that the person in case exists. You need to get his letters or bills. The consular departments are supposed to help in such instances but they normally don't deal with such cases. One has to use personal resources. Then the court starts calling the African to court hearings. More than half a year pass for the court to decide whether to listen to the case without the defendant. Even if you'll have the court's decision, it's not a fact that you'll be paid the money. Firstly, there may be no respective international agreement between Russia and the African country. Secondly, the court has to send a letter to the employers of the defendant, about the plaintiff who in most cases they have never heard about. Thirdly, even if the employer gets the letter, he can decide to ignore it. Practically the Russian court has no way of putting pressure on the person who is not paying alimony, if he is in Africa.

This way the decision of whether or not to support his Russian family is in the hands of the African father only. But according to METIS there are practically no cases of voluntarily payment of alimony. At home the Africans usually have families and usually they don't even have enough for them.


Prohibit love

The answer to the situation, according to Emilia Tynes-Mensa, is propaganda to female students. “Because when they start a relationship with Africans, most of them are not aware of the situation they are putting themselves into. The young ladies have no idea of African culture and taboos, nor about the effects of even a short affair with a fine African man. The decision to give birth to a metis child should be well thought out. Then the situation of the unusual child will be better.”

“Of course, we hope that the xenophobic mood of our society will come to an end,”

adds Tynes-Mensa.

According to specialists at the social-psychological centre of Moscow State University, the problem of discrimination against metis on the local arena is a problem that won't be solved soon. People are sour with the political-economical instability in Russia and they will aim their anger towards the “strangers” until the situation changes. The situation is worst in schools.

“In most cases in classes, the children who are physically and morally unfit,” says NI's judiciary director of the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights, Vladimir Novitski. “A metis will always be the minority, which is usually considered the weak enemy. With the advent of xenophobia some teachers also take out their aggression on the “stranger” kids, changing the stronger objects of hate with weaker ones. In this way the dark skinned kid becomes an outcast. According to us the only way to cure xenophobia within the youth is to have a program on tolerance in kindergartens. The existing projects have not produced the required results up to now. But we will keep on hoping that soon or later Russians will - at long last - have tolerance in relation to people from other nationalities and with different skin color.” (Source Fundmetis.)


See the trailer 'Family Portrait in Black and White' of biracial children in the former Soviet Union republic Ukraine. The children in Russia are in a similar situation. See the post of Ukrainian children here.


Also read the post Video: Black in Russia - harsh life on the streets in Moscow

Colour Bar: A Belgian-Congolese Mixed Race in Search of His Identity. DVD OUT NOW!

My friend Roland Gunst is a film maker and musician who spend the last 5 years making a documentary about his search for identity. His film is entitled ‘Colour Bar’ and was first screened at the Mixed 2010 expo that we organized together last year and has been screened several times in Belgium since. It will soon be scheduled on national TV here in Belgium but it is now out and for sale on DVD (with subtitles in English, French and Dutch). You can purchase it via the website www.colourbar.be
Personally I think the film is of a high esthetic and informative quality. It is bilingual French/Dutch as the voice over is in French (his mother tongue) while many interviews were done in Dutch (his ‘father tongue’). He talks to several mixed race Belgians about their search for identity.

The film is a message to his parents. He tells us how in Congo he was considered white and called ‘mundele’ while when coming to Belgium as a 12 year old he suddenly was considered black and called ‘neger’. His search for identity has been dominated by this racial perspective.

Below the official trailer (unfortunately, no English subtitles)


For those who understand some Dutch (with a Flemish/Belgian accent), check this video featuring footage which didn’t make it in the final version of the documentary. This was a pre-trailer. The central question is: ‘My name is Roland Gunst. Who am I?’ (Mijn naam is Roland Gunst. Wie ben ik?)

Bi-racial children in the Ukraine - "Family Portrait in Black and White"

Spotted on Blackgermans
"Family Portrait in Black and White" is a compelling film of Russian/Canadian Filmmaker Julia Ivanova about a group of bi-racial/black orphans in the former Soviet republic Ukraine.

Forced to constantly defend themselves from racist neighbours and skinheads, these children have to be on guard against the world that surrounds them.

The film is still in production, but will have its World Premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival



Short synopsis: Olga Nenya, from a small Ukrainian town, is raising sixteen black orphans in a country of Slavic blue-eyed blonds. The reality of growing up as a bi-racial child in Eastern Europe, a rare and truly visible minority, is not for the faint of heart. While Olga is on a crusade to save her children from the unjust world, she is also determined to shape their future according to her own, sometimes limited vision.

Long synopsis: Olga Nenya has 27 children. Four of them, now adults, are her biological children; the other 23 are adopted or foster children. Of those 23, 16 are bi-racial. She calls them "my chocolates," and is raising them to be patriotic Ukrainians. Some residents of Sumy, Ukraine, consider Olga a saint, but many believe she is simply crazy.

An inheritance from the Soviet era, a stigma persists here against interracial relationships, and against children born as the result of romantic encounters between Ukrainian girls and exchange students from Africa. For more than a decade, Olga has been picking up the black babies left in Ukrainian orphanages and raising them together so that they may support and protect one another.

The filmmakers interview Neo-Nazis in Ukraine reveals the real dangers for a dark-skinned individual in the street. These white supremacist youth joke about their evening raids and how police seem to let them do it. Prosecutors are not particularly determined to give strict sentences to racially motivated crimes, and young thugs can get away with probation for beating someone nearly to death.

Olga sends her foster children to stay with host families in France and Italy in the summers and over Christmas, where they are cared for by charitable families who have committed to helping disadvantage Ukrainian youth since the Chernobyl disaster. Olga's kids now speak different languages, and the older girls chat in fluent Italian with each other even while cooking a vat of borscht. But Olga doesn't believe in international adoption and has refused to sign adoption papers from host families that wanted to adopt her kids.

"At least when the kids grow up, they'll have a mother to blame for all the failures that will happen in their lives," she says.

See more information about the film and mixed race at www.mixedracestudies.org

See official website of the film at www.familyportraitthefilm.com

And see film synopsis in pdf at www.interfilm.ca

Black in Belfast and the book "Where Are You Really From?"

The book Where Are You Really From? is a compelling story of a black mixed race man who grew up in Belfast Northern Ireland.

It´s the fascinating and powerful memoir about oneman’s struggle to establish his own identity and a moving tribute to the woman who risked everything to keep her son.

Tim Brannigan was born in 1966. He grew up in a white Catholic family on the Falls Road, all the time believing he was adopted.

Tim was actually the result of an extra-marital affair between his mum, Peggy, and a black junior doctor from West Africa. To avoid scandal, Peggy told her family the baby was stillborn. Tim was then hidden in a baby home for almost a year before his mum ‘adopted’ him.

Tim learned the remarkable truth of his mother’s true identity when his mum revealed the shocking truth on the day of the Live Aid concert in 1985.

Where Are You Really From? is a moving account of racial prejudice, sectarian tensions and family secrets. It also recounts his exceptional relationship with his mother and his attempts to trace the father who abandoned him. (Source: Blackstaff Press.)

Read a long story at Timesonline

And see the book details at Blackstaffpress.com

The miXed2010 Expo at Gentse Feesten 2010

During the festivities of the ‘Gentse Feesten’ (17/7-26/7/2010), a yearly 10 day music and theater festival in the city of Ghent, the miXed2010 association (website in Dutch & French) is planning an exhibition about racial identity. The exhibition contains work of black and white artists who question the concept of race through visuals, paintings, sculptures, video, installations, … The artists featured in the exhibition are Berni Searle (SA), Jean-François Boclé (F) and Gauthier Hubert (B) among others. The curator is the art critic Stef Van Bellingen who questions through this exhibition the way black people have been depicted during the whole history of Western media (commercials, Hollywood, TV, …).

(c) Gauthier Hubert

The exhibition will be opened on Friday 9th of July at 7pm, one week before the start of the Gentse Feesten and will be followed by a concert with European and African artist brought together by Tuur Florizoone. They will bring a musical show combined with visuals, telling a story of a white man who discovers his African roots (according to me a metaphor for the whole of European histroy and identity). World famous Belgian jazz artists like Laurent Blondiau (AKA Moon) en Nicolas Thys will be part of it, next to AfroBelgian singer Sabine Kabongo and polyphone vocal group Nabindibo next to African multi-instrumentalist and artist Aly Keita. You can see Sabine Kabongo performing Duke Ellingtons 'Come Sunday' with the Zawinul Syndicate via this link.

During the exhibition the documentary ‘Colour Bar’ will be screened all day long. This is a documentary of Roland Gunst, a video artist who describes his identity issues for a new generation raised in-between different cultures and racial colours. Below I post the little trailer for his documentary. It is currently only available in French though.

Afro-German week: Actor Tyron Ricketts in "AfroDeutsch"

AfroDeutsch (AfroGerman) is an intriguing short film (2002) by actor and musician Tyron Ricketts. It’s the movie title song for Afro-Germans.

The film describes what it’s like growing up in Germany as Afro-German, with all its facets. Ricketts (1973) was born in Austria to a Jamaican father and an Austrian mother. He now lives in Germany.

To put the film into context. The film was made after the racist killing of the black German Adrinio in 2000 by Neo Nazis. In the same period the Afro-German anti-racism group Brothers Keepers was formed of which Tyron Ricketts is a member.

The big news is that the film is subtitled in English just recently.




Website Tyron Ricketts www.tyronricketts.com

Website Brothers Keepers http://brotherskeepers.org

A Silenced History from Belgian Congo: A Mixed Race History

You haven’t heard much from me lately. I was writing a book and it’s finally finished and published. The book I wrote together with Kathleen Ghequière traces back a history of Africa and Europe that has been ignored for too much time. Some of you know about the mixed race children of Australia thanks to movies such as ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ or even Baz Luhrmann’s latest ‘Australia’. But concerning Africa this history is unknown.

It seems as if the European colonizer didn’t have intimate relationships with the African colonized. But many children were born out of relations between white Europeans and black Africans during colonization. These children undermined the racial colonial order with their existence. These children have been hidden and their stories silenced. At least for the Belgian Congo this story is now unveiled and in this book the mixed race children of Belgium and Congo express their history freely.



Through the testimony of two dozens of mixed race Belgians born in Congo we have tried to tell a story which is mostly unknown to the Belgian and Flemish public. Kathleen Ghequière interviewed them. They were all people born during colonization from one black and one white parent. Some of them grew up in their families but most of them weren’t recognized by their fathers and were taken away from their mothers at a very young age. The colonial authority separated these children from their mothers to raise them in schools only for ‘mulatto children’. At independence the colonial authorities decided to deport the younger once (between 2 and 16 years old) to Belgium to be adopted in Belgian families. The circumstances are still unknown, which children were send over and why is still a mystery. Even the exact number of children deported is hard to tell.

Kathleen Ghequière found many of them living in Belgium who were prepared to tell their side of the story. I edited these interviews, translated those done in French and tried to make of more than a thousand pages of testimony an accessible and readable book. It became a book of 250 pages full of beautiful pictures from the colonial past out of their personal archives. Filip Claus took recent pictures of the witnesses and I added with some academic assistance some social historical explanation and maps.

I am very happy with the result and hope that the book will be translated in French soon. It was mostly important to publish the book in the Flemish part of Belgium because the Flemish don’t know anything about the mixed race children of their country. In French neutral terms such as ‘metissage’ and ‘metis’ define these people in a positive way. But Dutch lacks this kind of vocabulary, mostly because the Dutch speaking people lack any knowledge about this part of their history. The Dutch language lacks emotionally and politically neutral terms for mixed race people (generally the Dutch and Flemish use English or French to express these terms for which they don’t have their own words). Journalists in progressive newspapers in Belgium refer to Barack Obama as a ‘mulat’, a word perceived by many Dutch speaking blacks as offending. We decided to take a provocative and colonial title with a more explaining subtitle in which we introduce a new word in the Dutch language: metis.

De Bastaards van onze kolonie. Verzwegen verhalen van Belgische metissen (The Bastards of our colony. Hidden stories of Belgian metis) is published by Roularta and available at all good book stores in Belgium. You can also order it online

Wednesday 16th of June is the official release at Vooruit (culture center) in Ghent, Belgium. The entrance is free

film: Leroy (Germany 2007)

Leroy, a German youth film (2007).

Leroy (17) is German – and black. He lives in Berlin, wears a big afro, but prefers Mozart to Hip Hop. Leroy’s friends are outsiders as well, Dimi is Greek and Achmed is Palestinian. However they all have girlfriends except Leroy. When cute Eva falls in love with him, nobody is as surprised and confused as Leroy himself.

But first love is not always sweet. Eva’s family turns out to be right wing extremists. They even named their Australian parrots after two of Hitler’s generals and Eva’s five skinhead brothers are longing to kick Leroy’s butt asap.

However, Leroy does not give up easily. He assembles his friends, fights for his love and, in his own style, revives the black power movement of the 70s. His motto: Funk not Fascism.

Leroy (Alain Morel) lives in Berlin-Schöneberg, and is the son of a black eccentric inventor (Günther Kaufmann) and a progressive white mother (Eva Mannschott) who works for the local government

“Director Armin Völckers takes a gently humorous look at otherness and xenophobia in modern day Germany.”
www.spill.com



A black guy who is in love with a girl from a right wing extremist family? It's as if the German director tried to mix German Neo-Nazi culture and black exploitation culture with bi-racial love. I wonder if a black director would have made a flick like that. Germany keeps surprising me.

Official website Leroy
Read more at Seattlefilmfest

The director also made the short film, "Leroy cleans up" (2005)
Part 1


Part 2

Musical Tismee with Aurélie Konaté (France)

The musical Tismee, Sept 18th till Nov 11th 2009 in Theatre de la Reine Blanche in Paris

The musical Tismee is a musical about ordinary racism. It’s about words and telling jokes that are not often considered evil, but can hurt. It’s about bias, prejudice and the colour of one's skin. It’s about living in two cultures, at a time when more and more people carry two cultures and two lives in them: one where they are, the other where they come from. It’s about the difficult duality where the solitude of exile and feelings of rejection regularly overwhelms.

Sounds very dramatic, but with this line up no tears will be shed.

With Aurélie Konaté – Singer, dancer and comedian
Félix Sabal Lecco – Singer, musician and comedian
Khalil Maouene – Singer, musician and comedian

Official Myspace website Tismee

Official theme song Tismee "Je Pars Seule"

Skin – The story of mixed 'outcast' Sandra Laing

Sandra Laing was a black baby born to white parents at the height of apartheid in South Africa. The hatred, rejection and heartache she suffered at the hands of the authorities, her teachers and her family sent shock waves across the world.

On the timesonline a story was published about her life, the racial implications of being stuck in the racial middle during the apartheid in South Africa, and about the movie Skin. "The story goes beyond race. It’s about a need to belong, a need to be loved and accepted. There’s a moment when her father lovingly puts skin-bleaching cream on her face to lighten her skin. It burns and he blows on it. Fabian (Producer and director of the film Skin) describes Laing as like a peach. “The skin easily bruises, but there is a hard core, a big stone of strength.

The one thing that haunts Laing is her relationship with her brothers. Neither of them speaks to her. When Adriaan was a baby she used to cradle him and feed him. “Leon told me that if Adriaan’s wife finds out that he has been talking to me she is going to divorce him.” Is it because Adriaan, himself quite dark-coloured, is ashamed of his even darker sister and the way it might interrupt his nice white life? “I don’t know what colour his children turned out to be. People say they are white. He must remember me, how close we were. Maybe he is scared of his wife.” Read the full story here.

In a book review bi-racial author Rebecca Walker wrote about laing's story. " Laing's story is similar to that of many who straddle racial designations that have more to do with social engineering than with actual differences among human beings. Shame, alienation from family members, memory loss and difficulty in sustaining a stable home are a few of the possible effects of belonging to more than one racial category. Ironically, Laing eventually seems to have found some peace with help from members of the same media that once took part in her objectification. Two journalists in particular helped to fit the pieces of Laing's life together, and as a result of their work to reunite Laing with her estranged mother, she finally felt unburdened. In a moving passage, one of those journalists, Judith Stone, tells of Laing dreaming that she was "laughing and laughing"; she felt "a new space open up in her heart."

The sad part is that one her parents has black roots, but ended up being a pro-white nationalist.

See more pictures here

See youtube video: Sandra Laing: A Spiritual Journey - South Africa

Muhammed Ali is Irish?

On September 1st 2009 boxing legend Muhammed Ali visited his ancestral home in Ireland. See the story and the pics here.

Muhammed Ali though he got his European blood due to slavery (see video), but it turned out he got it from his Irish great-grandfather Abe Grady, who settled in the United States in the 1860s and married a freed African-American slave. One of their grandchildren, Odessa Lee Grady Clay, was Ali’s mother.

Abe Grady lived in the Western Irish town Ennis, and Ali was honoured as the first Freeman of his ancestral home Ennis.

I don't know what "Freeman" means, but according to some people it means free drinks at the pub and free entrance to the disco.



In this interview Ali did know his ancestry, but still he thought his great grandfather was a slave owner. But listen to the mistake of interviewer!

Are Prince & Paris Jackson Black?

Beware: In this article I will use the word 'mulatto'. I know that some people are sensitive about the use of this word due to its ethymology. The reason I use it is not because I like it but because I will tackle an issue about mixed race people and want to describe things clearly. If this shocks anyone please accept my appologies before starting to read this.

In the following days after Michael Jackson’s death we have heard a lot of speculation about MJ’s fatherhood. During the ceremony we saw his children for the first time and many people were surprised to see that MJ’s children looked so white/Caucasian. Tom Vandyck, US correspondent for the progressive newspaper De Morgen (Belgium) expressed his doubts about MJ being the real biological father of these children. His doubts were based on Paris’s appearance. For him, biologically, she couldn’t be part of the Jackson family.

I was shocked as it reflected the fact that race is still perceived as a hard evidence. But my experience among mixed race people is that whether the parents look black or not, once there is some racial mixing in your background, the racial features of your children is a lottery.

According to an article in The Observer two years ago, nearly all African Americans have some white ancestors. This is the reason many African Americans do actually look like mixed race people with an African and European parent. Look at Colin Powell, Jeremiah Wright, Beyoncé Knowles, … and many more. They all identify as black and have a black identified mother and father. Therefore they are black in the US American context. But these people have white ancestors too and could have children with blond straight hair and blue eyes, certainly if they would choose a white partner.




When you are 'real mulatto', that is first generation black African & white European mixture, your children will generally look white if your partner is white, and black if your partner is black.

Below is a picture of Victoria Rowell, an actrice who has one white and one black parent. on this picture you can see her with her two kids. The white girl's father is white, the black boy's father is black.








Although we can’t really make a rule out of this. Different exceptions are just as common as the rule. My sister, who is half white half black has two daughters with a white Belgian man. The first girl looks white: bleu eyes, light brown hair. The second girl looks mulatto, but still with blue eyes. A good friend of mine who is half white half black has two children with an African man. They both look mulatto. One of my best friends has a mulatto mother and white father, he looks mulatto although his brother is blond and has blue eyes. Still, if you see them together you can see they are brothers.

When you look mulatto Africans can see you are not black and Europeans can see you are not white. Africans in East-Africa will call any white person ‘muzungu’, also someone looking like Obama will be called ‘muzungu’. It’s the same thing to them.

Europeans call light skinned blacks and mulattos also black. To most Europeans whether you are mulatto are not, you are just black. This means that a mulatto is ‘white’ or ‘black’ depending on the place where he is. Race is a relative thing.

I once asked a black street boy in Kenia whether he thought Beyoncé was white or black. He said without hesitating he thought she was white. He had a point, don’t you think so?







The only places on earth I know where people perceive the difference between black, mulatto and white is in Cuba and South Africa. Two places where many people of mixed race of all shades live. I have never been to Brazil, but there too, I heard it’s not just black and white, there is a whole world in between and people are very much aware of it.

My point is that based on the racial appearance of MJ’s children we can’t see if MJ is their real biological father or not. It’s pure guess work and it is wrong to say ‘they look white so therefore they can’t be his children’. Maybe they aren’t but that’s not for certain because of their skin colour. You can look white and still resemble you black father a lot.

Michael Jackson (before getting vitiligo) was a brown skinned black man, with the features of a mulatto. If you look at him, the ‘real black man’ (because having 2 black American parents) and the 'real mulatto' Obama; honestly they are the same type of black man, aren’t they?









Paris and Prince, if mixed race, are not the only mixed race children who look like white people. There are actually many. I will list some famous American ones.

This however doesn't prove that 'mulatto' people look white, this just proves that mixed people have all colours and shapes, and that they prove that race is just an illusion.





Jennifer Beals, actress, father black, mother white








Wentworth Miller, actor, father black, mother white








Rashida Jones, (Quincy Jones's daughter), father black, mother white








Elisabeth Atkins Bowman, author of 'White Chocolate', father white, mother black








Amanda Marshall, singer, father white, mother black








Derek Jeter, baseball player, father black, mother white







Blu Cantrell, singer, father black, mother white








Mariah Carey, singer, father black (Afro-Venezuelan), mother white







Jason Kidd, basketball player, father black, mother white







And then last but not least: a little youtube video about biracial twins, one white, the other biracial as the world expects it (although called 'black' by the journalists). As twins this is rather special, but even then, brothers and sisters one white and one 'black' will become more and more common in interracial families.

Don't listen to what these journalists say nor the doctor they quote. The father might be 'black', he is certainly not a black African. He has clearly some white ancestors somewhere in his family tree. He looks mixed race.

The girls are not white or black, they are both mixed race. One looks white and is blond, the other looks dark and brown skinned.

If you keep on looking around you will find out that this phenomenon -maybe not twins but brothers and sisters having a totally different racial make up- is not a One in A Million case.

Film: I’m Bi-Racial… Not Black Damn It!

For the film 'I’m Bi-Racial… Not Black Damn It!' see the interesting post and comments on the film blog Shadow And Act

Of course I've asked a bi-racial Dutch African-American woman about her opinion. She feels that the title, I’m Bi-Racial… Not Black Damn It!, is wrong. Being bi-racial means not black not white, but both. It's a combination.

People with a bi-racial background are a fast growing group in Europe. It's a consequence of the fact that Europe is less racially segregated then the US.


4 minute trailer


16 minute trailer

"Bi-Racial...Not Black Damn it" Excerpt (16min.) from Carolyn Battle Cochrane on Vimeo.