one world: my MIXED up WORLD

Introduction:
I am new at this blogging thing, so please bare with me as I figure out how this works.

The reason I started this blog is because I have been a member of a Kenyan Online Forum for about a year and numerous topics came up about race relations and America. I wanted the rest of the world to understand America better and in turn I would like to understand the world better. To tell you the truth, I am not exactly sure where I am going with this blog, but I want to start with America's inter-mixing of races and how we have all started to blend together.

Of course, I will not deny, that racism continues to exist in America, and there are many segregated communities especially in relation to impoverished families. However, there are numerous integrated communities too. America is a complex country with 303,824,640 people. Everyone (with in reason) is able to make a decision on what type of life style they want to live and what environment they want to live in, meaning a diverse community or a segregated community (again with in reason). And even if you chose to segregate yourself, chances are someone in your family has went out and intermixed with and/or procreated with someone from a different gene pool. So, at one point or another, whether you like it or not, these genes will pop up in your family, as the old saying goes, "you can pick your friends, but not your family." This is the reason why two parents that look fully "black" may produce a child that looks mixed, or mixed parents may produce a child that looks all "white" or all "black," or a brown hair woman may produce a blond hair child...you never know how or when these genes will pop up.

For the sake of this blog:
When I am referring to American, I am referring to anyone born and raised here, so people that are 1st generation and beyond.

Pieces of me:
I am born and raised in the state of Delaware. I love to travel and have seen other places, but always feel most comfortable in my home state, so I have more or less settled here. I have lived in Florida and Philadelphia during my college years, but there is no place like home.

I grew up in an Italian-Catholic family. My family traveled here from Italy in the early 1900s which makes me a 3rd generation Italian. When my family came to America, it was a time when people were forced to integrate, where as now we are more appreciative of culture and much more accommodating (though few want to admit it). Families were forced to blend in and not speak Italian (or whatever someone native language was at that time) unless they were inside of the home which is the major reason I never learned Italian from my family. My Great Great Grandparents only spoke Italian, and my great grandparents and grandparents spoke both, but it was only used inside the home to address those that did not speak it. My grandmother was encouraged to blend in so she could advance. Well that is enough about my family history, but we may revisit it later.

Being a 3rd generation Italian, my family tried to hold on to the few Italian ties that we had left. I was sent to an Italian school that had mostly Italian students, some of the students were 1st generations and others were 3rd generation like me. There were only a few non-Italians in the school. We had about 5 students of other cultures such as Asian, Latino and African American. The Latino and Asian students usually were 1st generation Americans, and the family had moved in the Little Italy area. (Little Italy is the name of the section in town that my school was located).

So growing up in this environment, I thought everyone was Italian and did not realize there was a bigger world out there until I was in my teens. I was surrounded by people with brown hair, tan skin, brown eyes and big bone children (not fat, big bone). Of course, there were a few blonds and blue eyes, but they were few and far between. Actually the main person who had blond hair, was a 1st generation Italian from Northern Italy. So my point of telling you this, is because in my early years, it was not pressed upon that blond and blue eyes are better, so I have no inferiority complex about my skin tones or anything else that is Italian (such as waxing our upper lip:))

Let me get back to the main reason for my blog. I want to show some real life examples of my friends and family and how we are all meshed together. My life revolves around diversity, I love it and would not have it any other way.

Welcome to my world:

This is one of my besties, 1st generation Vietnamese

My cousins, adopted from Korea at birth

My buddy, 1st or 2nd generation Peurto Rician, married to a white man, so you can see her child looks all white, although her side of the family is pure latino

A buddy, one parent is Peurto Rician, and the other is Asian

Buddies, the person in the middle is Italian, and the person on the right is adopted by white parents from Korea (she has a biological sister that was adopted too and her parents have a biological child that is white)