USARiseUp

Although America bills itself as a melting pot for people from around the world, the United States has long had fractious relationships with Black Americans.

African-Americans; descendants of Africans who were brought here forcibly, have contentious relationships with their native country. During the early part of the 21st century, many African-American artists such as Richard Wright and Josephine Baker chose to decamp to Europe where they felt they received better treatment.

If you are a person of a certain age, you may remember a time when foster and adopted children were placed in homes of the same ethnic or racial distinction as the child. It was rare to see a family of color providing refuge to a Caucasian child, or vice versa. In 1994, that all changed.

Sitting in her grandmother’s living room in Teaneck, N.J., Nakebria Murray ponders the question of race in America. After realizing that she is not exactly sure what “race” means, the self-described “half-brown, half-tan” African-American 8-year-old says she knows the difference between white and black people sometimes means trouble in America.

When Jolanda Williams looks in a mirror, the image she sees is a warm peach complexion framed in dark silky hair, high cheekbones beneath almond eyes, and full lips that slip into an easy, radiant smile. She has a face that could belong almost anywhere in the world, Mexico, India, or Indonesia. Yet Williams, the daughter of a white German mother and a black American father, has spent the better part of her 35 years coming to terms with where she fits in.