My daughter is ten years old and in 4th grade. I recently took her to see Avatar, and it spawned a conversation that I’m still thinking about.
The love of all things Avatar started when someone gave us an Entertainment Weekly magazine with full coverage of the movie and its actors. She read and re-read the articles until she had them memorized, and that was BEFORE I finally agreed to take her to the movie. I thought that some of the material was over her head and, being a protective parent, I didn’t think it was appropriate material for her even though I saw it a few weeks prior and loved it.
We saw the movie at a Sunday matinee, and she left with a satisfied smile on her face. It was everything she had hoped for, and more. What was so interesting to me, though, was her perspective on the races and cultures of the blue people. She read in the magazine about the actors and their various ethnicities, and was intrigued at the blending of them into a computer-generated race. She noticed the African characteristics in some of the “Na’vi”, and the Asian/American blending in others. She even picked out American Indian features within some of the tribespeople. And then, she bluntly told me that the Avatars of the two white people from planet Earth were the most “boring” people to look at, because there was no variation in their features.
This isn’t the first time the topic of ethnic blending has come up for us. My daughter has school friends that are of mixed race and has often sighed about how beautiful their skin color is compared to her own white skin. The only redemptive thing she has to say about her skin is that it tans easily, which makes her “prettier” in the summer.
I can understand her idolization of all people mixed. In her mind, blended people have the best of multiple worlds, where she’s stuck with two white parents. She feels that other cultures are closed to her because she doesn’t have “access” to them the way her mixed-race friends have free passes to other cultures. She can’t draw on any heritage other than white European ancestry. She’s no different from the majority of people in America. And that bothers her.
She WANTS to be different. She wants a full-access pass to other cultures. She wants to look at her arms and see pigments that tell her she’s from cultures that have more going on than conquering other people and making tons of money. And what’s more, I’m hearing that she’s not alone in this desire to be mixed.
Celebrities like Carmelo Anthony, Jimi Hendrix, Naomi Campbell, Alicia Keyes, Tiger Woods, Halle Barry, even Barack Obama, have opened young people’s eyes to mixed-race people and how cultures can be blended. Kids see blending as an ideal way to incorporate many cultures, though often they don’t recognize the issues of belonging that many mixed kids have reported experiencing during childhood. Things have come a long way in the past generation though, and I suspect that in the next generation, today’s children will have made giant strides in mainstreaming multi-culturalism all across America.
