Interacial Intimacies

Amy Penn The article that I read was Interracial Intimacies, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Multiracialism; written by Kimberly McClain DaCosta in 2009. I choose this article because it hits close to home for me since I have been in a interracial relationship since I was sixteen years old, and have three interracial children. In this article, the author reviews the way that political discourse of multiracialism has changed in the last twenty years. Multiracials began organizing in the late 1980's, and at that time things that were once ignored started to become part of the cultural mainstream. The article discusses our President of the United States, and his multiracial backround. Barack Obama was raised in an interracial familly, and with him being President, the world has been forced to recognize and debate publicly issues that are seldomly talked about in a national dialogue. The author discusses how individuals were forced to choose one race, even if they were multiple races. In the early nineties, the Association of Multiethnic Americans lobbied the federal government to enumerate racial mixedness, and 1997 the government agreed to change its system of racial classification to enumerate mixed race identities in the form of mark one or more option. Even though multiracial people and relationships are more readily accepted, there are still many people that do not accept it, and probably never will. The key point that the author was trying to make is that interracial status is becoming more accepted in the world, but it has taken a lot to get to that point. By having a President that is of a multiracial descent, it has opened the eyes of many people that never before accepted multiracialism. I agree with the author. I have personally seen people change since President Barack Obama has taken