Under the baobab: Culturally ‘blended’ family would be another first of a Harris presidency

“I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother”- Langston Hughes

If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election and becomes president in November it will bring many new realities to our country. Everyone knows that she would be the first woman, of African and Indian descent, to ascend to the presidency. But she would also be part of the first culturally “blended” family to reside in the White House.

Through our personal experience we know something about that. My wife, running partner, and best friend of more than 50 years is a person of Caucasian persuasion. My mother’s second husband was white. He was my stepfather when I became a teenager. A poet, piano player and cynic, he profoundly affected my life.

Until the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving V. Virginia, marriage between the races was illegal in many states. When Jo and I got together in 1970 we could not safely travel together in the South. Intimidation, arrest and even death were possibilities.

As working class artists, my mom and stepfather could only live comfortably in a handful of communities in the United States. Vice President Harris’ Jamaican father and South Indian mother were sheltered in academic ivory towers, outside of which they were subject to intense scrutiny, scorn and public contempt. Interracial relations could be even more serious. In the last century, a mere rumor of sexual encounter between a Black man and a white woman resulted in thousands of Black men being lynched.

Things have changed. According to the Pew Research Center in 2016, 10.2% of married people living together were in interracial or interethnic relationships. Their progeny are one of the fastest growing demographics in the country. We first came to Centre County in the last century. People of color were scarce, even though Bellefonte once had a thriving community of color during the industrial boom.

As the Civil War cenotaph in front of the county courthouse illustrates, many U.S. Colored Troops served honorably in the Union Army. St. Paul AME Church is a living memorial to a robust people who helped vitalize the Centre County community. The Mills Brothers barbershop and singing group are part of local folk lore.

Still, most of the young people in my classes had never seen an African American teacher or had a Black classmate. We rarely saw integrated groups, let alone couples. Literally the handful of “mixed couples” (we called ourselves “families”) knew and supported each other.

Today young people have helped foster an inclusive community of the world’s diverse peoples, who are represented from the president of the university to the store clerks at Walmart. Mixed groups are the rule not the exception. You are as likely to overhear a conversation in Mandarin as English in a local pizzeria. We nurture and are nurtured by ideas which are as likely to have been generated at the Sorbonne, the university in Accra or Tiananmen Square. We are better for it.

We are perched on the brim of a bright tomorrow. Visas in hand, we stand at the gate of the City on the Hill prepared to enter. We are encouraged not discouraged by the promise of an expanded White House. We are invigorated not threatened by the hope of a different perspective. Strengthened by our collective pilgrimage from the dark and forlorn places of our past we step toward a brighter day, knowing that this time, this time, sisters and brothers, the singing of the American chorus will include all our voices.

“Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table when company comes.

Nobody’ll dare, Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” then.

Besides, they’ll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed—

I, too, am America.”- Langston Hughes