Black people have come in a wide variety of colors for centuries now. Most of the variances were a result of White owners raping African slaves. Some came from genuine love such as Sally Hennings and Thomas Jefferson.

However, they could not marry; in their time, even into my own lifetime. Any children from these unions were automatically and legally considered Black and therefore non-citizens.

Times have certainly changed. At first there seemed to be a minor explosion in the population of mixed race children. More importantly, families that once would have been scandalized by having a "half-caste" child are now more accepting of brown skinned blessings.

These are generalizations of course. Many interracial couples and their children do still experience resistance from narrow-minded individuals; especially in the Old South and the East Coast.

The West Coast is far more tolerant. Almost every school in California has a significant population of mixed race children - to the point it isn't even a topic of discussion anymore.

The norm has long been to raise mixed race children with one cultural identity or the other. One girl told my daughter she sympathized with her challenges as a mixed Black and White child in South Carolina.

She said, "It would be easier if you were White like me."

An ironic statement considering her mother was a native of the Philippines. The girl and her sister had been completely denied access to their mother's heritage and were expected to live as monoracial members of the community.

That is a fading habit from where I can see. There appears to be a growing subculture of biculturalism. More and more youth are embarrassing their own checkered heritage. To be an American of more than four generations is to be mixed race.

Check four generations back in almost any American family and you will likely find two or three Native Americans (I have three), and at least one opposite (Black or White) in your family tree.

(I had no Whites in my past but four in my generation have married White spouses.)

The de facto leader of this new movement is Barak Obama. Not that he has sought out notoriety for this distinction; he has simply tried to discover his own identity. In the process he has helped America look beyond the boundaries of racial identity.

His book MEMOIRS OF MY FATHER explores the blending of his Black African heritage with his mother's progressive Mid West background. His immediate family is equally mixed. His mother had a daughter by her Indonesian second husband and his father had six more children with an African wife.

His Family reunions must be interesting - as are mine.

We have nine mixed race children in the next generation and three more in the generation following. More importantly they are all loved, confident, educated and very public. None of them are reared to hide in shadows.

Neither are they expected to choose their identity. Just as my daughter told the little girl in her school that she was "neither Black nor White but a Human being. If anyone has a problem with my skin color, they can talk to my dad!"

Funny, my phone never rang.

Learn more about this author, Morgan Johnson.
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