Easy To Be Hard

I was all ready to finish a blog I started a week ago about what an effed up world we live in when something else caught my attention. A white dude in Virginia took a routine trip to Wal-Mart with his three adorable daughters, a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins. They finished shopping and went home and upon arriving were met by a police officer who told the guy that he'd been sent by Wal-Mart security to make sure that the three children he had with him were his own. Someone at the store saw a white guy with three bi-racial little girls and though he had kidnapped them. They alerted security and security called the police. After the cop posed his question, he asked the man for his I.D. and went so far as to make the older girl point out who her parents were. You would think he'd have put two and two together when he got to the house and saw one black parent, one white parent and three mixed kids. But apparently not. Mom called Wal-Mart demanding to know exactly why they had reported her husband as being a kidnapper and the security department said that a customer had come to them saying that the white dude with the three mixed kids "didn't fit". Mom asked what that meant, trying to get them to say what they really thought, but all the security department would say was that, "They just don't match up". Soooooo much to say here. Let's start from the beginning, shall we?
What is it that they say about the Taurus folk? Mess with the bull and you get the horns? Well, nothing brings the horns out of this bull like prejudice. And I think that's rooted in my childhood. My family literally consists of every color under the sun and always has. I grew up amongst a very diverse and unique group of people. Two of my cousins are half-African-American. My surrogate grandmother was with an African-American dude for three decades, back before it was accepted really. Her daughter married an African-American dude and had four gorgeous kids. My maternal grandmother married a white guy in the 50's, something that her Latino parents wanted to string her up for. Interracial relationships are literally in my blood. I think that and the fact that I did grow up in such a diverse mix of cultures is why I've never put much emphasis on race when it comes to dating. I don't care about color, I care about what kind of person they are and what we have in common. And thank god for it because if I did not feel that way, I may not have the privilege of being a father to an amazing daughter who just happens to be mixed.
I think part of the reason why this story ruffled my feathers is because it could just as easily happen to me. My daughter is darker than I am and is obviously mixed. It also could've just as easily happened to my mother, who is a very light-skinned woman with dark children. She used to always get asked whether or not we were hers, and we're talking by complete strangers at the zoo or at a store. People would just walk up, tell her how cute her kids were and then proceed to ask more questions than they were entitled to know the answers to. Fortunately, mi madre is a pit bull when it comes to her kids so she told peeps to mind they own damn business when they asked those questions. As we got older, we got similar questions from kids at school - "Who's that white lady you were with?". In hindsight, we laugh about it but back then it was just annoying. As a kid, you really don't see color and your parents are just your parents and that's all that you've known. Back then, I would've understood a story like this Wal-Mart one happening. Interracial marriages and mixed children were not as common. Hell, my mom used to keep me on a leash (yes, just me, the siblings apparently didn't require one) while walking through stores but no one ever reported her as a kidnapper. Yet this dude, in 2013, and in a state that leads the nation in interracial marriages, has the cops called on him because he and his mixed children "don't fit". If Virginia has that many interracial marriages then one would assume there would be a substantial amount of mixed children, so I wonder why this dude was singled out. Just because he's bright white and his kids aren't? I see mixed kids with people lighter or darker than them all the time while out and about, but I don't assume they've been kidnapped. I could even understand if this Wal-Mart shopper reported him because the kids were screaming or crying or seemed distressed in some way. But they weren't. So much for innocent, everyday trips to the store with the fam, huh?