Last week, a reader wrote to me about my past entries on interracial marriage and adoption. The reader, Laura H., is a white woman married to a black man. Her husband is in the military in Germany and the entire family lives there.  Here is our exchange, as well as some additional comments by me.

 

Laura H. writes:

I read with interest your blog posts about international and interracial adoption. Many of your thoughts are very similar to my own, based on personal experience. Whilst in Korea for two years I started to slowly realize that the traditional American understanding of international adoption was flawed in many important aspects. 

However, I wanted to broach with you some, I think, important ideas about your understanding of interracial marriage, again based on personal experience (amoungst other things). 

I don’t agree that it is ungodly to posit that the human race is one race; clearly, God started the human race with one couple from whom all others came. When He “restarted,” to use a very broad brush on that event, He again began with one family, Noah’s. The entire population of the world does indeed come from whatever race Noah and his wife were.  

Of course there are all the years of separation and association, and I agree that it’s naive to act as though what we currently consider “race” is not a real aspect of our human condition. However, it is “what we currently consider” race, which has been different in the past, which started out differently, and which has changed over time and will continue to do so. Your commenter from England, Karen Wilson, shows very little understanding of the recent history of her own nationality on this topic. The Irish, whom she will kindly include under the racial heading “white,” were often not considered by the British of only a few generations ago to be the same race as themselves, and would view with her same (apparent) abhorrence the idea of intermarriage with them as what she does with her “non-white” category. 

At any rate, the main point I wanted to address was when you said that children of “mixed race” marriages do definitely experience confusion. This is a false assumption, and is not a given at all. My children are excellent examples — all eight of them so far :). In fact, I observe that my older children often seem, far from being at the disadvantage, to have a natural edge over others in this matter. They are less confused, more confident, and unworried about both their place and their identity than many non-mixed children we know. My children go out and about in the world already knowing that what a person looks like is secondary to who they are and therefore how they will act and what can be expected of them, whereas often the white children of white parents, when meeting someone who does not look close enough to them, are confused and hesitant as to what to expect– from themselves or from the other person. 

There are a few reasons my children have no identity crisis or confusion, in my opinion. First, we do not relate race to appearance, especially as frankly this is a very tenuous way to address race. Secondly, my kids are homeschooled and have been since the beginning, so they have not been forced to allow a myriad of teachers and other adults to impose their ideas of race onto them. My children’s sense of identity is shaped by my husband and myself; our family, and our reading of the Word, not by outsiders. My children would have no idea what someone meant if they said “you must choose who to identify with, your mother or your father”. It would have to be painstakingly explained step by step by the person holding this view, as it is a concept that is completely foreign to my children. 

What I mean to emphasize there is, this forced identification is not an idea that comes to a child innately as a result of having a black father and a white mother; it is an idea and a concept and a world view which is learned and acquired from those who already hold it. If anything my daughter might say she identifies with me because we both like to talk a lot, lol. The idea that she would choose based on what “race” we are, or what my culture is compared to what her dad’s culture is, would simply not occur to her. Her culture is our family :) . 

Thirdly, we are a military family, and have lived two thirds of the children’s lives at overseas locations. Our children see appearance and chalk it up as simply what it is; tall, short, fat, skinny, blue eyed, black haired, etc. A delightful variety. Then they experience culture as food and dance and language and dress first, and after that perhaps as “how people who look like this behave”. This unique life has also exposed my children to far more marriages between couples who look more-different-than-similar to each other, as well as often being from completely different countries and cultures, than is the normal experience of children as a rule. 

My children do not have the preconceived, ingrained, natural idea that people of the same color or appearance marry each other, simply because this idea is not ingrained or natural; it is learned from others or acquired by exposure and experience. They do not have any identity problems related to who their parents are, for the exact same reason. That crisis or problem would have to be imposed upon them by others, or by their experiences or exposure to others who hold those ideas themselves. 

The majority of white children of white parents do not think of themselves as white, first and foremost. They think of themselves as “just kids”, lol. This is exactly how my children think of themselves. White children of white parents do not often, unless trained otherwise, look at their parents and immediately think of them as white– they think of them automatically as mom and dad. This is exactly what my children do. How silly it would be if my sister and her husband woke up one day and said to the kids “hey, did you guys notice we are both white?” That would be just as silly for us, lol. Of course, her kids notice what they look like, and our kids notice what we look like. Her daughter has red hair like her husband, and my son has wavy hair like myself. The assumption, or worse expectation, that this noticing is going to cause a problem in our family, whereas naturally it won’t in the theirs, is very erroneous and possibly half the reason that it does cause those very problems, in the cases where it does. 

I feel that this scenario, a marriage between two people from long time American families (my family came over in the 1900’s, dh’s long before that) who are not the same color or have distinctly noticeable ethnic appearances, is very different to the international and interracial adoptions issue; so much so that comparisons in one’s mind, and in the life experiences of the two, are not helpful at all but rather will cloud both issues more than not. 

I thought some of these ideas might be of interest to you. Thanks for letting me share, and thanks for a very fascinating and enjoyable blog.

Laura Wood writes:

Thanks for your e-mail, Laura. I’ve read through it quickly and will read it again before I post it.  

I have a question first. You say you are part of a mixed race marriage, but I wasn’t sure which races. 

Also, if you are part of a mixed race couple, I’m blown away by your even-handedness in discussing this. You don’t seem angry with me for bringing the topic it up. I’m curious, do you discuss the issue much with your children?

Laura H. writes:

I am not angry in the least at this topic, especially not by the evenhanded way in which you deal with it on your blog. Actually I’m thrilled to talk about it, because I think there could be and there should be fewer problems of identification amoungst all sorts of families. 

My husband is black and I am white. My husband’s black ethnic background is unknown; his ancestors were American slaves. He is also Cherokee, something which is not visibly apparent, LOL. I am Dutch; both my maternal and paternal grandparents (all four) emigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands sometime in the late 1800-early 1900s. 

Do we discuss the issue with our kids? I guess it depends on what you mean by “the issue.” We talk about the fact that other people may see them differently than they see themselves, or may respond to them with a certain set of expectations, if that is what you mean? Only with the older children of course (we have eight, agest 17-2yrs, and I am expecting). But as we are so different overall, this truly is one of the smaller issues we might face. We are military. We are a “huge” family. We homeschool. We are often foreigners in a foreign land…….. LOL.  We have issues.

Laura Wood writes:

You do have some issues, don’t you? : – )

But then none of the issues you mention, including your mixed marriage, amount to much when it comes to character, family love and commitment. These other things are nothing compared to that. I’m just curious about one more thing. Have you ever felt animosity from others – either black or white – because of your marriage?

Laura H. writes:

Certainly, we have. 

I’m trying to think if we have felt more animosity over our looks, or our homeschooling, or the size of our family. I’d have to say that probably of all of those, the size of our family would win, hands down. 

Before we even married we were called “zebra” by an Italian guy in North Dakota, if you can believe that, lol! In Texas, I was less than comfortable. We were stationed in Alabama and South Carolina for three years, and I don’t know that I’d care to do that again. Once we were sent literally “over the tracks” to a little tiny out of the way garage whilst on the road to another base, to get a split tire fixed, and only later did I realize it was because my husband is black and the original garage owner who sent us on our way was white. In fact that excursion was a cultural experience I would not have given up for the world! The reality of me having to go in to hotels to book a room rather than my husband going in, if we wanted to get one, is something that frankly I don’t care to have experienced. 

There is sin in the world. People treat others based on personal bias and past experience, this is what it is. It can be lovely, like my white neighbor who cared for my five children all day while the packers moved us out, or not so lovely like her (also white) husband who would not stand in the driveway if I was in the yard. I cannot say that things which I have experienced related to  my husband and I are more frequent or worse than things others have experienced because of who they are, or where they are. Certainly here in Germany the discrimination we met had nothing to do with our looks and everything to do with our enormous number of children (very sad). 

Our experience of the children having a strong family identity and a strong personal identity, with no confusion or feeling that dh and I are different or unusual or come from different stock to the point that there is some kind of choice to be made, is simply because my husband and I decided that our family identity was the one we wanted to live by. It is the one God made for us in our marriage, the one we wanted to be strongest for us and therefore for our children. I think that this is the way most Christian couples do actually approach their own marriages and lives. Again, it’s the expectation that somehow this Must be different, or the results Must be different, due to the fact that a couple is “ethnically different enough to notice”, lol, because gracious we are all different in so many ways, which is the fallacy that is accepted by too many– often by the very couple themselves. There is no more reason for my husband and I to expect our kids to have some kind of identity crisis than for my sister to expect her kids to have some kind of identity crisis, unless my husband and I create it.

Laura Wood writes:

Thank you to Laura H. for her many interesting observations. When she originally sent me the above, I didn’t have the opportunity to respond to many of her points. I still will not get to them all, but I wanted to address one issue in particular in light of my earlier comments on interracial marriage.

I had spoken of children struggling with their “identity” when they are part of a mixed marriage. I was not referring to the psychological foundation of self, the identity and personal characteristics that are formed in interactions with closest family. This is obviously of primary importance in determining how a person  faces life. I absolutely agree with Laura that this identity is formed by the atmosphere in the home, the personalities of parents, the sort of love and attention parents show, early education, and interactions with siblings. 

Also, when I spoke of the possible confused identity caused by mixed marriage in “children,” I meant children in the sense of “offspring,” not necessarily young children. In other words, this can happen later in life. Also, I did not mean to suggest that this confusion is the single most determining factor in their lives or that it is not possible to overcome it.

Laura’s children are lucky in many ways. It sounds as if they have a great home. For all their counter-cultural characteristics in being a large interracial military family that homeschools, they are probably much better off than many of those who grow up in more conventional circumstances today, especially children with no siblings or convoluted step families, with single parents or two parents who are too busy to spend time with them, and  with a sterile atheistic life or deadening public schools. I’m not surprised the size of her family and maybe her homeschooling are more controversial factors than race for her and her husband.  That makes sense. To many people, homeschooling and a large family smacks of Christianity and that is objectionable.

For all the good things her children have and the strong likelihood they will lead successful and happy lives, Laura has not convinced me that her children will not, at some point, have to come to terms with race in a way that is not as automatic as those with parents of the same race. As I said, it seems the case in mixed marriages that a child must eventually choose to identify in certain encounters with the world with one race or the other.  

It’s interesting that Obama so clearly identifies himself as black even though his mother is white. Why doesn’t he ever say he is white or simply refuse any racial identity whatsoever? Why doesn’t he allude much to his white ancestors or his white cultural heritage? Of course Obama did not have a happy childhood and thus has good reasons to seek a group bond in race. Also, his decision to identify himself as black had obvious political advantages.

But, even without these factors, he probably would have considered himself more black than white because of his appearance. And this part of his identity, this one aspect of his larger sense of self, probably would have had some influence on his life. The fact is, most people order their lives in some ways along racial lines in a multiracial society. For instance, more than 90 percent of black voters voted for Obama. Even now, when Obama has slipped in the polls in general, blacks in their continung support of him are about as close to unanimous as any group can be about a politician, much more so than whites. Racial characteristics are often very apparent in voting patterns.

Most blacks and whites tend to live in neighborhoods with people of the same race. There is intermixing, but still there are general tendencies and these tendencies appear to be voluntary on the part of both groups.  At schools and colleges, black and white students do intermix, but their social lives usually center around those of the same race, again with exceptions. When most people marry, they choose someone of the same race. In America, black women and white men seem to have the strongest aversion to marriages between blacks and whites; and white women and black men are more likely to feel otherwise.

 Now, Laura’s children may reject all sense of identification with one race or another because of their upbringing, but the world they encounter will not always reject this in regards to them. This does not mean they will always and everywhere be affected by their race, but it does mean it will be a factor in their lives. When they apply to colleges, they will be asked to identify themselves racially on their applications, and may be judged in part according to which they are, and when they apply for jobs, their race may indeed be significant as many companies consciously seek applicants according to racial quotas. For a smart, educated mixed-race applicant to either colleges or jobs, it makes much more sense to identify oneself as black. This affirmative action is not right, and I’m not in the least suggesting that Laura H. thinks it is right, but it exists and is not likely to go away soon.

If they go to college and take American history courses there, Laura’s children will most definitely encounter a view of history that sees race as important. Many people when learning of their cultural past, identify in some way with their ancestral heritage if they are at all reflective. If I were a student of mixed race, I think I would much prefer to identify with my black heritage as Obama has. Who wants to be part of a group that is guilty of unforgiveable wrongs, as whites so often are portrayed in history courses today? In colleges and other academic settings, blacks are generally viewed as morally superior to whites. Laura’s children may be, as she said, more enlightened than most people. Because of their family background, they may reject all racial characterizing as evil and wrong and seamlessly meld the different parts of their heritage. They may see through the worst racial propaganda, whether it is put forward by blacks or whites. But the world around them will not reject race. They will have to live in and struggle in some ways with this world.  

Laura H. also mentioned that her children are more comfortable interacting with people of different races, presumably with both blacks and whites. I could see how that would be an advantage in growing up in a mixed-race home. A white or black child who had grown up with only others of the same race would tend to be more shy and confused with those of a different race. This shyness is not wrong, but normal. The races look different and have different mannerisms. Children are aware of outward differences and don’t have to be trained to be aware of them. They naturally notice them. It makes sense that Laura’s children would be free of any of this discomfort. 

Terry, of Breathing Grace, writes:

I thought I’d make a small point in response to your post and exchange with Laura H., who is apparently raising a wonderful family as a result of her mixed race narriage. Like Laura, I was concerned that in reality, the issue of international adoption and marriage across ethnicity are indeed two different matters and was glad that she brought that aspect of the conversation to light. There was another mixing of the issues that took place in your conversation with her, and I think it needs to be pointed out. 

You mentioned President Obama and his racial identification. You have done that quite often, and I understand that he is an easily identified personality to press your point, but he is a very flawed example that doesn’t fit well within your conversation with Laura. Obama is the son of a father who abandoned him, a single mother, and was largely raised by his grandparents. His is an all too common narrative in the black community. By virtue of experience alone, it would make sense for him to identify with the black experience. 

I think the power of Laura’s family story demonstrated the point I was originally attempting to make: that in reality, we are all indeed one race. While ethnic and racial identification are real and powerful, they are largely human constructs that can be overcome with a commitment to something even more powerful, the love of God, which transcends our human inclinations if we walk in it. In a family like Laura H’s, this is powerfully illustrated. 

And it doesn’t hurt that her children aren’t steeped in the vile racial political correctness that has gripped the public education system.

Laura Wood writes:

As I stated in my comments to Laura H., Obama does have greater reason to amplify his racial identity both because of his strange childhood and because of his political aspirations. I pointed out the vast differences between him and Laura’s children.

Terry says, “We are all indeed one race.” I would change that to, “We are all human.” Race as a set of genetically-acquired characteristics, traits that include much individual variation, do not determine a person’s moral worth, and are not the sole defining factors in life, is not fictitious or imaginary. It is real. When Terry says we can overcome race, I would agree with her to the extent that we can individually overcome racially-motivated animosity. We cannot overcome race in the sense of making it disappear as a set of genetically-acquired characteristics – again characteristics that include much individual variation, do not determine a person’s moral worth, and are not the sole defining factors in life –  any more than we can overcome our ethnicity or sex (which is not to say that race is the same thing as ethnicity or sex). I’m not sure why it is considered impolite to say that race exists, but I know it is. Is there anything evil in recognizing the simple facts of racial difference? Some people will say, “Oh yes, there is. Anyone who wants to speak of race wants to wield power over and dehumanize others.”  If this is so then it is this motive and these moral wrongs that should be countered, not any mention of race, which is a physical reality.

Laura H. (the commenter) writes:

I think you make some interesting points regarding choices the kids will have to make in future. We are already somewhat amused by “checking the box” in various situations; filling out birth paperwork for our son in North Dakota comes to mind. My husband had to fill in black, as well as both African American and Native American……. after a while, he wondered just how many “Americans” one person could be, LOL. 

Our international experience has certainly had a strong effect on how the kids see the world. When asked they do not identify as black or white. They identify as American. This is simply because that’s the way most people they’ve lived around have identified them; people of various colors and cultures and places. American military overseas identify themselves as American first, and anything else second. The discussion with you has made me see that this has probably had more of an impact on the overall experience of our children than what I’d already realized. A positive impact, I think, but also one that will not translate exactly to the people in the world they’ll live in once we return to America for good. 

The Obama phenomenon is an absolute amazement to my husband and myself. We have never been Democrats. 

American history…… another interesting one. My children have said, “Why would Americans treat each other that way?” and they meant North and South, slave and master, equally. I will say that we’ve waited on an in-depth America History study until the kids are older, so that their worldview would be more developed; to understand what exactly happened, of all the history behind the history– there is huge culpability in black Africa for the slavery phenomenon– and they’d have the maturity to begin to take it all in. At this point my children don’t identify with either slave or master, black or white, in a personal way. They see the events of history as the events of history; things which affect us now, but don’t necessitate any action or reaction on their part. In the same way that I do not see any reason to identify with white slave owners, my kids see no reason to identify with black slaves. We simply don’t see our world as defined by those categories.

Laura Wood writes:

I’d like to offer one small recollection from personal experience, one very minor illustration, that is the sort of thing that makes me adamant in disagreeing with both Terry and Laura H. when they say race is not real or does not exist at all.

I like black gospel music. There is a famous black church in North Philadelphia that has a spectacular concert every Christmas season. The church is jam-packed and the music, both instrumentalists and singers, is fantastic. For a few years, this concert was something I looked forward to above all else in the Christmas season. I needed it.  There is an aspect of God conveyed in the best gospel music that cannot be found anywhere else. Or I should say there are aspects of God conveyed since gospel music encompasses joy, liberation, lamentation and exalted praise. Altogether it is sui generis, something entirely distinct. Gospel music itself is proof to me that race is real. It simply cannot be produced by white people in the same way.

Anyway, for several years, my husband and I took our young sons to this concert. There were two things, however, that made us stop going (aside from the size of the crowd and the competition for seats.) We were among the very few whites in the audience and my sons, who were younger than ten, were instinctively uncomfortable. It would have been wrong to reason with this discomfort because it didn’t express itself in any wrong way. They just felt they didn’t belong there and it upset them. Secondly, on one occasion, a woman who was sitting next to my young son was rude to him. No big deal, but these things made me realize something obvious: We did not belong there. There was no resentment to this realization. It was just a fact.

Laura H. writes:

Oh gospel music! I feel cheated that I spend my youth not knowing it even existed. I agree, white people do not have the history to have made that music. [Laura Wood writes: I don’t think it’s simply history. I think white people are constitutionally incapable of producing it.] It has a heritage that is black African, and black American. 

I don’t believe I say there is no such thing as race. I do agree that “human” is the most apt description, as you stated above and perhaps what you use the word “race” to encompass, I might break down more into “ethnicity and culture”; two things which I also agree fall along specific lines, with of course much overlap but still identifiable. I keep returning to the international perspective, but I was thinking that when we are out and about and do something, usually we don’t even recognize what it is, someone who is a local national– German or Korean or British or wherever we are– will say, “That is so American.” It seems that within any country the distinctions are more fine-tuned amoung the people themselves than what they are seen by outsiders. 

You have given me some challenging ideas to think over. Our family has had some wonderful discussions lately! I’m picturing what my children will do when confronted with a demand to “check a box” in a real life situation, and put down either white or black? I honestly think they will refuse to identify within those boundaries. I have no problem, when forced :), to identify as white. The kids truly do not see those categories as making sense in relation to who they are. This is not a negative, in my opinion, but it does make for an interesting thought as to how they will approach these scenarios.

A female reader writes:

My son (white) has played on a majority black football team for the past three years (members of a church-sponsored league). Most of these kids are from intact homes and would be considered middle class blacks; they are all at least nominally Christian. While there is a dramatic difference in speech, demeanor, etc. between these kids and the inner-city blacks we occasionally play against, they are still very much culturally black and almost all the parents are BIG Obama supporters. Some of the kids are mixed race (white mother/black father) and they speak in a noticeably different way – totally standard, unaccented English. One particular boy, my son’s buddy, is half black (mother) and half Hispanic (father). The family is solidly Christian; all the kids (six so far) are well-spoken and well-behaved. They attend church weekly. They attend public schools but are well-prepared through reading and educational games at home with mom. The family seems close knit and I was immediately reminded of them on reading Laura’s comments. While I don’t know that the younger children differentiate or identify with one parent or another based on race, I can say that the oldest (teenager) definitely considers himself black – and recently began acting that way (cutting school, letting grades drop, putting his girlfriend/peers before his parents) . Most of the family’s friends and kids’ playmates are also black.

Despite the numerous racial and cultural differences, one might claim that my family and theirs had many common values, such as education, Christianity, home discipline, etc. Once I got to know them better, however, I saw that underneath these similarities were the same profound racial differences one usually encounters. The black mother soon revealed an enormous chip on her shoulder, attributing any disagreement with anyone at her church or elsewhere to race. She attributed her family’s financial dificulties to race (not her husband’s personality/behaviour/work performance). She had a firm belief in societal injustice and couldn’t wait for Obama to step up and fix things (i.e. soaking those evil bankers and mortgage holders and anyone else more successful than she).

I’m not totally satisfied with what or how I’m saying this and I don’t have the time or desire right now to work on my comment further. I suppose I simply want to counter Laura’s comments with an example of a family that, on the surface, seems similar to hers, with a solid home life and family values, yet still exemplifies what I would call some of the root causes of black pathology – victimhood and resentment. Add the fact that these children look totally black, and I would be extraordinarily surprised if they ever identified themselves (personally or socially) as mixed race rather than aggressively “African American.”

Clark Coleman writes:

The comments of Laura H. are interpreted by me as adding up to something really simple: If your idea of culture is “our family” and does not extend beyond that, and you home school, and you move about from place to place as many military families do, and you view different people around the world in superficial ways (they dress differently, have different music and cuisine, etc.), then your kids don’t really feel the need to identify with the culture of the mother or the culture of the father. This is because neither the mother nor the father actually belong to a culture, and no one in the family thinks of culture in deep terms.

This is the case with many whites today, who do not know enough about their history and their culture, and the differences compared to other cultures, to really think much about it. Public school curricula have excised any sense that we are predominantly an Anglo-American-Protestant nation to which other groups assimilated to various degrees, because someone would certainly be offended by such a focus. The curricula of private schools and home schools follow the public school models (e.g. for history textbooks) much more than parents are willing to admit or think about. The average white kid does not think of himself in terms of being descended from the people who developed Western civilization, the “rights of Englishmen,” and so on. He is disconnected from his culture and his history.

Perhaps this is the reason that Laura H. reports that white kids from homes with two white parents seem more confused than others when encountering others who are different. They can sense that there is a significant difference, but what exactly is it? They cannot articulate it, because they cannot even articulate what they are.

When you connect with your history, and then begin to understand that all cultures and histories are not the same, you have a powerful bond to the past and to other people, past and present. It is a transcendent experience; it transcends your own little self and the few members of your own family. Most white people never experience this, because it is verboten, post-Hitler, post-Holocaust, post-segregation/Jim Crow era, to openly teach anyone along these lines. The disconnect with our culture and past, the lack of this transcendent experience, is something that happens to most white people without them even being aware of it. To me, Laura H.’s comments amount to putting a happy face on the modern life of retreating into our own families and being disconnected from our culture.

If her kids ever want to really connect with the past, they will have to choose which past to connect to. If they never feel the urge to connect with any particular culture, they will never have to do any choosing at all or experience the conflict of such choosing. I sincerely hope that the latter is the case for them, for living without any intense personal connection to past or present cultures is probably preferable to family/identity conflicts.

Laura Wood writes:

Laura  H.’s experience obviously is affected by the family’s moves. I agree with Clark when he says, “If her kids ever want to really connect with the past, they will have to choose which past to connect to.” This is at the heart of what I first discussed regarding interracial marriages. It seems the inclination is for the children eventually to identify more with the race which they physically resemble most.  This is typically their non-white parentage. In the case of a white/Asian couple, the children look Asian and even though they may have grown up in American culture, there is a strong pull toward their Asian heritage. 

I think the offspring of interracial marriages can have this transcendent connection with a collective past. But they must reject, or at least disregard, the heritage of one of their parents. This poses complications.

The reason why I brought up interracial marriages (and international adoption) to begin with is because I do think they demonstrate that this connection with a racial and ethnic heritage is natural and constitutes one aspect of the self that unfolds over time. This connection can be actively thwarted, as Clark mentioned; an entire people can even be made oblivious to its past. For those who are deracinated and lacking this spiritual sense of belonging to something larger,  popular culture, frequent travel and sheer busyness help to fill the void.

Also, to reiterate what I said above, family identity, in terms of psychological development and the formation of character, is primary. Laura H.’s children are lucky compared to many today.

Van Wijk writes:

I am myself a military brat. Life on post (and military life in general) can be extremely insular, and if one isn’t careful one can come to view this existence as a microcosm of the outside world. But of course it is not. Laura H. has raised her children in a bubble that they will very soon have to leave, and when they do the world outside that bubble will begin telling them, over and over again, that they are black.

It’s virtually certain that Laura’s children have strong negroid features, and this, coupled with the fact already mentioned that blacks are seen as morally superior to whites, means that the choice of which culture to identify with has essentially already been made for them. Let us not forget that Barack Obama came to despise his white heritage and to view his white relations as outsiders, despite having been raised by them.  Forgive me if I take Laura H.’s pie-in-the-sky attitude about her children having the best of both worlds with a large grain of salt. Their crucible is before them, not behind. They as yet can’t have much sense of the world, who they are or what they want.

Obviously, culture is of no importance to Laura. But whites are virtually alone in this regard. Only whites want to love everyone, or consider everyone to be of one race, or whatever. Non-whites know better.

Karen Wilson writes:

Children under the age of 12 have a very limited capacity for abstract thought. They are concrete thinkers and their perceptions of the world are formed primarily from visual impression. They think what they see and they draw what they see, usually in very simplistic terms. Children automatically connect with those who look like them and feel uncomfortable with those who do not. They even have a tendency to react adversely to disabled or disfigured or obese children of their own racial and age group and they have a tendency to be cruel towards those who are different. This is instinctive behaviour. The politically correct politicians are trying to socially engineer children to act against their natural instinct with indeed poor results. Laura H’s comment that “ we do not relate race to appearance” seems bizarre. Appearance is the phenotypic expression of our genes and thus central to race. Children understand everything in a visual way and hence notice even small differences in appearance which they do in simple ways attribute to racial differences.

Laura H. says, My children’s sense of identity is shaped by my husband and myself; our family, and our reading of the Word, not by outsiders. My children would have no idea what someone meant if they said “you must choose who to identify with, your mother or your father.” It would have to be painstakingly explained step by step by the person holding this view, as it is a concept that is completely foreign to children. Unless the family lives in total isolation, the children cannot but notice the outside world and peoples’ reactions to them. Children notice the simplest of gestures often picking up things which adults miss. The identity of the children is also shaped by the community in which they live.

Our children see appearance and chalk it up as simply what it is; tall, short, fat, skinny, blue eyed, black haired, etc. Then they experience culture as food and dance and language and dress first, and after that perhaps as “how people who look like this behave”. Normal children assess people visually and naturally categorize people as being like themselves or aliens. Young children do not consider behaviour as “cultural”. They simply view it as familiar and comfortable or alien and uncomfortable. She also contradicts her own views on race when she states “how people who look like this behave” implying that appearance is associated with behaviour in a way she previously denied.

My children do not have the preconceived, ingrained, natural idea that people of the same color or appearance marry each other, simply because this idea is not ingrained or natural; it is learned from others or acquired by exposure and experience. Children naturally seek out others who are like them and the idea of people marrying people of the same race is a natural and instinctive human behaviour and essential for preservation of each race. Miscegenation is an unnatural behaviour which destroys races and creates a deracinated population.

Her culture is our family. A family is not a culture. It exists within a culture and helps to preserve and perpetuate that culture.

Laura H. responds:

It seems there are two issues other commenters have with what I’ve posted about my family.

One, that we have no culture. I had thought I beat everyone over the head with this, but we do have, understand and embrace culture. My children’s culture is clearly and distinctly American. 

It’s possible that others feel this is no real culture; either perhaps that America has no culture or that it’s not possible for a person to identify with “American” as their primary culture in any meaningful way. I have nothing to more to add to that perspective than what I have already expressed above, except that to say the the majority of the world does in fact recognize American as a culture, and that we embrace this wholeheartedly. Proud to be an American :) 

Two, that my examples of our life and how we’ve raised our children are not accepted as a viable counter to the pressures they will face from others once they reach full adulthood. Again, I say that not enough credit is given frankly to good parenting and thoughtful life preparation. My children have as much potential to be a product of their childhood influences as any other child. Possibly it’s not understood how purposeful, and how normal and instructional rather than forced or fake, these influences have been. Some have mentioned a bubble and a happy face on reality :). If it’s possible to live on three continents and in four countries for 14+ years, and yet live in a happy little false bubble isolated from the world, it takes a more clever woman than I to manage it. ( I give the military brat the [blame for] the reality that far, far too many military overseas are isolationists. They miss the point, but I do try to change their minds. We live off-post in local communities and have done for all but two years). 

I do not reject the reality that my children will face some people in the world who want to pigeon-hole them to some specific category, in the States most probably a category that makes others around them most comfortable, which would frequently but not always, be “black”.  [Laura Wood writes: I think Laura misses the point made be several commenters here and that is, it is not other people who will impose a cultural identity. The demand for it arises from within.] (My children do not look more like my husband or more like myself. It is clear they are neither all negroid nor all caucasian. They do however look very like each other. This is another distinction from the interracial/international adoption issue). They absolutely will face this reality and will deal with what that involves. Where we disagree is that the mixed race factor in my children’s lives necessitates, more than any other factors involved, that the false expectations of others will somehow confuse or upset them, cut them loose from the moorings of the first 18 yrs. of their lives, and send them floundering into a forced “identity” crisis that conforms with the imposed norms of the world. [Laura Wood writes: Again, it is not the imposed norms of the world that other commenters are concerned with, but human nature and the innate need for connection.]

What can I say here other than the fact that this has not happened to husband and me — we neither reject nor embrace a black or white identity over the other, and are not upset or angst ridden about our place in the world; it has not happened in 17 years thus far for any of my children, and I personally see every reason to believe that our hard work will continue to bear fruit. We are not a conforming family and we are not turning out conforming kids (nor those that will allow others to impose a victimization concept onto them, which we abhor in every way. I was not allowed to whine “unfair” as a child, and never will allow it in mine). Others families don’t have to be conforming either, though I see that possibly I shortchanged just how resistant our family is to permitting other people to determine what we do and how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. 

There is no similarity between Barack Obama and my children, save one. Laura W. has said that this one similarity is not the defining one, though other posters here I think do feel it’s overarching, and the trump over all other characteristics. At any rate, Obama had a father who was visibly black and a mother who was visibly white. There the similarities end. His father was Kenyan, my husband is American. His family was broken and dysfunctional and he was raised by grandparents. My family is intact, as normal as one might hope for, and we are raising our own children together. Obama was public schooled. Perhaps only homeschoolers understand the depth of that factor right there. Obama is also not a Christian. I think we all can accept the huge difference between children raised in a Christian family, and those not. 

There was every reason to expect that Obama would embrace the life choices he has, and no reason whatever to expect that my children would even consider those things to be choices at all, much less to actually be driven to making them.

European and Western history is our favorite subject. The children are studying the Reformation this year, and they get to stand on the very places where this history took place. My son, the military history buff, looked out over the water, standing on Omaha Beach, and was awestruck. One must remember that my kids are homeschooled and not confined within the unredeeming boundaries of mainstream public school indoctrination. I think we will find over time that many homeschooled kids, when adults, reject much of that indoctination in their own lives as well.

Karen Wilson wrote:

 Children naturally seek out others who are like them and the idea of people marrying people of the same race is a natural and instinctive human behaviour and essential for preservation of each race. Miscegenation is an unnatural behaviour which destroys races and creates a deracinated population. 

You are insisiting that my children do not do what I see them do every day! I am sorry it does not fit with your theories that my children choose to play equally with white, black, and tan children when they are out and about with their fellow Americans in Germany, but in fact they do; that they are equally as comfortable with all of them, but in fact they are, and they do it all very naturally. But you are right, they are seeking out others who are like them. For you, the person’s color is the most significant “you are like me” factor, so significant in fact that it wipes out any others. For my children, this factor is one of many, and not the most significant (of course they notice it, I’ve never disputed that). 

May I ask if the English and the French are of the same race? The thousands of years they spent fighting each other on the Continent perhaps has me confused as to their natural perservation insinct. Perhaps if they revived that instinct we could all be spared from the monstrosity of the EU after the Lisbon treaty.

Laura H. continues:

Laura Wood wrote: I think Laura H. misses the point made be several commenters here and that is, it is not other people who will impose a cultural identity. The demand for it arises from within.

 I don’t feel that I am missing the point, but perhaps I’m not making mine well. 

My children will not feel in culture crisis as they enter adulthood in the world, because they already have a strong identity of their own. They will not be seeking an alternative to that which they already comfortably possess within themselves. There is no identity hole in them which they will be forced to fill at some point– the demand has been met, and it does not involve the acceptance-of-one-rejection-of-the-other premise posited here regarding mixed race kids over non-mixed kids (or any angst related to the same). 

The reality that the world will impose on them is that it will be harder to convince others that their cultural identity is real, is strong, and is useful in the world. I realize that this confidence is not the same for many other mixed children. But I do say that it can be, and it should be, if the parents would approach some of the things as I’ve mentioned in this exchange; differently to how one might normally approach them.

Van Wijk writes:

It must be understood that the military has a culture of its own. Soldiers must all go through the same training, live in the same space, eat the same food, follow the same regulations, conform to the same standards, etc. They have an understanding of each other that does not exist in the civilian world; a similar understanding exists among military spouses and children, who travel from base to base where things are essentially the same. Conflict does exist, but each soldier knows that to act out would be to bring down swift and draconian punishment.

I bring this up to illustrate that the military family is the worst possible example to put forward as evolved in racial attitudes. Peace in the service (in which minorities are historically over-represented) is maintained because it is very strictly enforced from on high, and punishments proscribed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice would appall most civilians. The military is communism in practice. There is simply no comparison between military and civilian life, even for family members. How then can Laura be expected to understand the questions put to her when she and her family have lived most of their lives in a federally-subsidized fantasy world? She seems honestly unaware of the existence of a world in which non-white racial identity is the highest virtue. But unless her children all join the service at 18 and never leave, they will eventually have to go out into that world. As I said earlier, only time will tell what and who they become. Despite her assurances, Laura herself cannot know.

Barack Obama barely even knew his father. His leftism and hatred of whites are results of his immersion in black American culture. His father’s nationality and politics are irrelevant.

Let me also state that I find it disturbing that the Christian religion is continuously used to justify miscegenation and interracial adoption. Marcus Aurelius said that if the gods are not just, you would not want to worship them. Any god who seeks the displacement or annihilation of my people is not just.

Laura H. writes:

Van Wijk writes: It must be understood that the military has a culture of its own. Soldiers must all go through the same training, live in the same space, eat the same food, follow the same regulations, conform to the same standards, etc. They have an understanding of each other that does not exist in the civilian world….Peace in the service (in which minorities are historically over-represented) is maintained because it is very strictly enforced from on high, and punishments proscribed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice would appall most civilians. 

Or perhaps, peace is maintained because these are thinking, intelligent people who live and work and play together, and realize that there is little reason to fuss and fight with each other. Your opinion of the motives of others is too ungenerous.

Again I am happy to say that my reality does not match the theories of others. 

I agree with Van Wijk that the military is it’s own (very wonderful) culture. However, I believe his experience with the military must be less recent than mine. We do not use military schools, we practice alternative medicine which means rarely using military dependant healthcare, and my boys play on the local German team rather than attend the military youth center; about every other base we attend military chapel rather than local churches. 

As I have said repeatedly, the life of my family is indeed blessed by our military experience, but it is not lived in simple minded false isolation as Van Wijk wants to insist it must be. In fact, as I have also said, I believe it’s clearly less isolated than children who live in one state, one town, attend one school, and hang out with people just like them all day every day. 

People have been telling me for years “just wait” in regards to my children. When I had four children under the age of 8, who someday would all be teens at the same time, everyone was a naysayer. Three of them are now wonderful teens, and the naysayers have shut their mouths. A passion for instruction and good hard work give a parent every reason for confidence. We will agree, of course, that only the Lord knows, and holds, the future. 

How do my marriage and children represent a decimation of the race rather than an expansion of the same?

Van Wijk writes:

Laura H. wrote: “Or perhaps, peace is maintained because these are thinking, intelligent people who live and work and play together, and realize that there is little reason to fuss and fight with each other. Your opinion of the motives of others is too ungenerous.”

I think we are coming closer to the truth. Apparently Laura H. lives in a cloister within a cloister. In addition to being a brat I served in the Army and was discharged in 2004, and the simmering anger I spoke of was present to some extent in each unit I was assigned to. I’ve seen the conflict, the violence that followed, and what happened to the aggressor more than once. It’s not atypical for an Army wife to believe she knows what it’s like to be soldier. But she hasn’t lived it. The military is, to some extent, an ongoing feminist and multicultural experiment where the subjects have no rights or means to be heard.

“Again I am happy to say that my reality does not match the theories of others.”

And again I will remind you that you do not yet know what your reality is. Also, what has been put forward are not mere theories, but truthful statements based on myriad evidence and observation.

“How do my marriage and children represent a decimation of the race rather than an expansion of the same?”

Because while race is not everything, it is fundamentally important, and racial differences are very real. Miscegenation represents an active denial of one’s own race and culture. A white woman who marries a black man will produce black children, and has therefore directly contributed to the ongoing displacement of white people in their own lands. By making that choice she has shattered the bonds that tied her to her own people.

America is not and was never intended to be a Proposition Nation, where all the peoples of the world are welcome and equally American. America was created by European people who were fleeing from what they perceived to be tyranny. Only Europeans were capable of creating and maintaining such a nation. It is no coincidence that the more diverse we get, the less free we are. Loyalty to the Proposition Nation is anti-American.

Laura H. writes:

In response to Van Wijk’s comments, I would like to say: Thank you for your service to our country. May God bless America!