The church exists in the wake of this racial world, and for this rea­son mixed bodies still trouble the waters.

The church exists in the wake of this racial world, and for this rea­son mixed bodies still trouble the waters. Mulattos were bodies that troubled the waters for all of us because they existed on both sides in a space that could not sustain such a possibility. That we no longer char­acterize mixed-race children as mulatto does not mitigate the growing fact of these interracial children. But perhaps even more important, these children continue to pose a problem because the patterns of faith, educa­tion, and marriage still flow along the trenches of a world forged by race. The ambivalence of our racial condition is no clearer than in both the election of a mixed-race president, Barack Obama, as well as in the vehe­ment questioning of his faith, birth, and citizenship. Just as darker and lighter Americans alike are reimagining the possibility of political life in the United States, so too are the numbers of militias swelling, and chants of “we want our country back” growing. The possibility of post-racial is only an illusory bridge. To enter into such divisions we must recognize interracial children and their perpetuation in our own lives in the subtle and glaring ways we seek to reinforce our difference and refuse the pos­sibility of becoming something different.

Brian Bantum, Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity, (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010), 9-10.

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