When it comes to race, things are usually thought of in a way that is black and white. What many people don't realize is that race is something that has a lot of grey in between. The grey area that the final paper is going to research is that of people who are biracial. The definition for biracial according to the Oxford Dictionary, is, "concerning or containing members of two racial groups." Many times society is quick to revert to the mindset of things needing to be one way or another when it comes to race. Many believe that the 44th president, Barack Obama, was completely of African-American decent, not giving any thought to the fact that his mother was a white woman. Halle Berry, a famous actress, is also biracial, also had many problems with the fact that she was of two different races. She stated in an interview, "Now, all of a sudden we were in an all-white school with all-white kids," Berry said. "I got bullied a little bit...because of the color of my skin and at that time we were 'Oreos.' " This facet of people aren't always thought about, many times even being labeled only one of the races that they actually are, yet this category of race is continuing to grow. According to research done by the Pew Research Center, "multiracial adults currently make up 6.9% of the adult American population." And continues to grow, as their estimate says that this number may triple by the year 2060. So as the number continues to grow, the need for research about this specific subset needs to continue to grow as well. This paper is going to focus on someone that is biracial (specifically black and white) and has grown up in community that is predominantly white. Questions that may be interesting to ask is, how growing up biracial in a white community has affected their growth as a person, as well as their views on diversity. Two local experts that would be useful to this story are Dr. Agustin V. Arbulu, an executive director of Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) and apart of the Race Relations and Diversity Task Force. Another expert that would prove helpful to this story is Michael S. Rafferty, president and CEO of New Detroit, a racial justice organization. Michigan, and Detroit in particular have many different races of people and the amount of biracial and multiracial people continue to grow in our community. Seeing the views of these two experts would be very helpful in seeing if they have worked with people that are multiracial and see if their opinions differ in any such way. Overall I see this as being a very interesting subarea of diversity to delve into.
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