These beautiful family portraits prove that racial borders are just imaginary lines

BY: THE PLAID ZEBRA

Perhaps you have heard the myth of the “tragic mulatto,” a term that casts bi-racial people as chronically depressed, caught in the crack between black and white society. The myth was promoted heavily in 19^th century literature, later leaking onto the big screen with cinematic portrayals of bi-racial self-loathing often ending in suicide.

With a bi-racial American President, today the concept seems to parody itself just as much as the idea that racially-segregated drinking fountains were vital to the balance of civilized society.

Let’s be clear, race isn’t genetic— it’s a social concept. While the looks of humans vary based on geography, like how close a population is to the equator, Alan Templeton, an American geneticist at Washington University describes the genetic boundaries of humans as a family trellis opposed to a family tree. Templeton writes, “Obviously, skin color and the other physical characteristics society uses to categorize individuals racially are biological. But skin color and physical traits are not the same as race.” He continues, “there is not a single biological element unique to any of the groups we call white, black, Asian and Latino.”

Bluntly, racial polarization is not and never was grounded in science; it was grounded in the economic incentive to grow the success of a nation on the scarred backs of an oppressed people.

Photo: CYJO

It wasn’t until 1967 when the landmark civil rights case Loving V. Virginia overturned anti-miscegenation laws that made interracial marriage and interracial sexual relations a punishable criminal offence. The implications of that decision were huge—as of 2010 there are 25 times more couples than 1967 that identify as interracial.

Photographer, CYJO began a project called “Mixed Blood” to document the evolution of our understanding of the word “race.” CYJO travelled to China and New York City to document cultural blending and its effect on ethnic traditions.

Photo: CYJO

In 2000, the United States Census allowed citizens to choose more than one racial identifier for the first time in the country’s history, another important legal signifier in the changing attitude of the population. But despite the fact that nine million Americans identified as bi-racial in the last government census, still many rubberneck when walking past interracial families as a matter of spectatorship.

No doubt, it is what drew you to this article in the first place.

In his famous campaign speech responding to commentators who deemed him either “too black” or “not black enough,” President Obama reminded us that race should not simply be confined to a check box. After all, race is fluid.

“[We are] divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems—two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.”