The Proof is in the Pudding or Intelligent by Association Part Deux

Since the answer to the question posed in my previous post obviously depends on what I said, here it is (along with its context):

Yet many white women implied or stated outright that race had been little more than a passing thought until they married a black man and had children. Bridget Xxxxxxxxx, the BFN newsletter editor,

"grew up in Glenview [Illinois], it was an all white environment. My education since being in an interracial relationship has been phenomenal . . . race is a fiction . . . I'm sensitive to the whole argument of the white mother who doesn't want her kids to be black [but] that's not what this is about. It's about providing a situation in which it's okay for your kid to identify with their full heritage."

Xxxxxxxxx favored the addition of a multiracial category to the census, although she also saw a need for "constant vigilance against discrimination." She did not think the two desires were at odds.

So there it is.

As I paged through the book looking for my quote (I didn't make the index), it was strange to be skimming over events in which I was involved. They seem distant, removed, part of a different life. In addition to being the past newsletter editor of the Biracial Family Network, I am a past president. Once so active and now, it's all so far gone.

The fly leaf states,

The activists themselves - a loose confederation of organizations, many of them led by the white mothers of interracial children - wanted recognition. What they got was the transformation of racial politics in America.

I haven't read the whole book so I'm not in the best position to comment, yet, but it does make me reflect. What we were trying to do definitely seemed important but I'm puzzled as to why we were able to be so successful. We really were a small, disorganized group. It was perhaps a rare confluence on events, personalities and agendas. I'm cynical enough that I'm finding myself analyzing the goings-on, looking for where and how we were used to further political agendas which we did not share. And yet, upon my first superficial analysis, I don't find any evidence.