My letter to CNN about the "M" word



My name is Max Parthas. My wife and I are two of America's most recognized Spoken Word artist and the founders of Prysmatic Dreams. PrysmaticDreams. com
An artists social network based on the dream of multicultural brotherhood.

We were as proud as anyone else to know that a multiracial American became our president. I have personally discussed the issue with Barak Obama during our travels. Below are photos of him reading my thoughts on this new melting pot America at our first meeting. I thought we had grown as a people to fully embrace who we are as people of multiple cultural heritages. Until June 12, 1967, white and blacks couldn't even get married legally. Now the children of those unions and others like them number in the tens of millions. We have pride in who we are and who he is. We are here to stay and part of the national character.

To hear him refer to himself as a "mutt" brings me near to tears. For a biracial person that's the equivalent of calling us the N word. We are not mutts. Nor are we halfbreeds, mulattoes (half mules) or mistakes. If you must call us anything let it be with respect.

We have as much right to embrace our diverse racial pride as anyone else. For our president to casually denigrate the near 30 million multiracial Americans in this country who supported his causes, his family included, is a public shame. It shows how little his rich heritage means to him and how little it matters. With one single word he made an entire burgeoning culture of people seem worthless.


I for one demand an apology.


Max Parthas
A Proud Multiracial American -not a mutt-

see the photos @ the www.myspace.com/maxparthas blog

Awesome letter Max, i was seriously shocked when i heard him say this.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Really? Are we going to make something of this? I'm an 8th Cherokee, Scottish, German and god knows what else. Am I a mutt?

Race, isn't that a social term that categorizes people apart from others because of socially defined physical characteristics ( hair texture, skin color, nose and lips, etc). Many of which are nothing more than mere expressions of dominant alleles in our genetic makeup?

How is it that somehow people continue to de-emphasize the biological functions (if any) of those characteristics and instead assign a social significance to them with no basis whatsoever. I am sure this did not pave the way to erroneously let race become an indicator of moral, intellectual, and psychological capabilities by ignorant people. Oh wait, it did.

"Proud Multiracial American"

Being proud about unavoidable and pre-determined characteristics whose social label is nothing more than that, a label.

Could you explain to me how does that make sense?
I am really asking because I want to know.

When you say that, are you also including ethnic history and heritage? because appreciating that is fine and everyone should do it, but race and ethnicity are not the same, and I don't see how pride is something positive or correct to say when you are dealing with things that you had no control.

Secondly, Last time I checked there was that thing in language called context, don't you think it applies here?

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/082200sci-genetics-race.html

" As it turns out, scientists say, the human species is so evolutionarily young, and its migratory patterns so wide, restless and rococo, that it has simply not had a chance to divide itself into separate biological groups or "races" in any but the most superficial ways.

J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. "We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world."

Dr. Venter and scientists at the National Institutes of Health recently announced that they had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, and the researchers had unanimously declared, there is only one race -- the human race.

"If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent"

So what is it about the term multiracial, when genetics are telling us, there is only one race since by evolutionary terms, a couple of thousand years are not enough to divide a species as sharply as our silly lets-label-everything brain and society are saying?



Harold P. Freeman, the chief executive, president and director of surgery at North General Hospital in Manhattan, who has studied the issue of biology and race. "This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup."

Unfortunately for social harmony, the human brain is exquisitely attuned to differences in packaging details, prompting people to exaggerate the significance of what has come to be called race.

"There's no scientific evidence to support substantial differences between groups," he said, "and the tremendous burden of proof goes to anyone who wants to assert those differences."

Again, I am just asking.

Think, ask, believe whatever you may like. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I was personally offended. I speak for myself as a lifetime advocate for multiracials. I am NOT a mutt. I've never been a mutt and don't intend on becoming one now. It's not a word of pride. it's a derogatory reference. If don imus had said it everyone would be screaming. if john McCain said "I'm going to get my kids a dog. probably a mutt like Barak Obama." It would be world war 3. No other group of people would allow such a slight and we should not consider it OK either. Like I said. Believe what you like. just don't call me or mine mutts. We WILL be offended.

If you must call us something call us "Prysmatic"
it took me ten years to get that word in the dictionary. Beats the hell out of "mutt"

****

Definitions of Prysmatic: Submitted to Merriam Webster dictionary 8-2007

* A derivative of the word prismatic

* Noun: "Prysmatic" A person who is multi racial, multi cultural, and or, multi national. A living bridge between peoples, races and nations through ancestry, cultural philosophy or personal ideology.

* adjective: exhibiting traits formed by the multi national, multi cultural and inter racial experience.

* verb: to defy hereditary, cultural, social or historically imposed limitations.

****

Oh for fuck's sake get real.

What a bunch of weenies, feigning insult over something so innocuous.

Well, I guess the days of the right wing blowing every petty little thing completely out of proportion are back again.

Moving this video to Napoleon's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.