This just makes me smile, because it completely neutralizes the backwards theory of and around this crazy thing called race and racism.
While in the Bahamas for an event recently, I noticed that I was actually sunburned. Let me note here, that I am proudly African American. My deepest roots come from mother Africa, so no way I thought, would I ever be sunburned. Black folks are built for the sun. That's true, if I were 100 percent African.
The reality is (thanks to African-Ancestry I know this), just like my friend and mentor Quincy Jones, I am 71 percent Cameroon, but I found that I am also 26 percent European, and the rest is Asian, Indian and 'other.' That means that what I really am, to quote Quincy, is "Global Gumbo." I'm a rich mixture of the broad texture of our world, and in all likelihood, so are you.
Or take our president, the Honorable Barack Obama. In the Black community we refer to him proudly as "Black," when in reality, he is Black African (his father from Kenya), White European (his mother), and was raised in part culturally Hawaiian and Indonesian, and then moved to the South Side of Chicago. So, what and who is President Obama, actually, if not a global reflection of all of us? A man for our times, really. Global Gumbo, thank you Quincy J.
We are all in this together.
Read the complete article on the Huffington Post here.