We are partnering up with Ruby from Growing Up Blackxican and celebrating Mixed Heritage Week, February 25th through March 1st.Celebrating diversity is huge thing growing up here in Southern Calfornia. The "melting pot" of cultures has always been something that's distinguished our coast on the map.
My extended family is a bit of a melting pot as well. My Mexican-American family is interwined with Filipino, Italian, Caucasian and African-American. We come in all shades of colors!
I'm so excited because my husband is a beautiful example of what mixed heritage is about. The son of a Mexican-American mother and an African-American father, Michael wears his"Blackxican" title with pride.
He grew up in the pre-dominantly African-American neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles and he remembers how distinctly different his parent's families were. Still, his first language was Spanish.
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| Michael's mother and father as teenagers. |
When our kids were younger, they would often ask, why do my Daddy's uncles have dark skin? and how come their hair looks different from ours? Their aunties (say it like this: unn-tees) had brown-colored skin, too. It was a big shock to their system the year we went to visit for the holidays. The collard greens, ham and peach cobbler was totally different from what they were used to--tamales, posole, and pan dulce.
We recently got to spend time with Michael's family, to celebrate the life of his sweet Grandmother Dorothy, who the family simply called "Mama". Much like my husband's family, she was a was light-skinned, green-eyed African-American woman--Creole, we've been told. This explains why my husband's Dad was the lightest of the family, with a light brown afro and green eyes!
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| How adorable was my husband as a little boy? And how handsome was his daddy? |
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| Michael and his first cousins, Isaiah and James. |
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| My husband and his Grandmother, a sweet woman who loved her first grandson very much. |
Our babies may not look mixed at first glance, but they are well aware of their mixed roots because we've taught them where they come from and who we call family. Each distinct culture deserves to be celebrated. What a boring world it would be if we were all the same.
We've taught them there is beauty in every person because God made them that way.
Join us for Mixed Heritage Week by using the #GUBMixedHeritage hashtag via Instagram, twitter, facebook, pinterest and Google+. I'm looking forward to seeing your photos and hearing your stories.
