Tomorrow’s Children is highly recommended for anyone closely involved with biracial/biethnic children in any capacity. The author is a parent of biracial children and the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Biracial Children, Colorado. The book is based upon his experiences as an interracial marriage partner, a father, and as an educator. His experiences and insights have been compiled into a “How to” manual for parents, adoptive parents, and teachers engaged in rearing and educating biracial and/or biethnic children within a racist society and its public school system. For a “slim volume,” Tomorrow's Children is packed with excellent information and counsel. Many important topics are covered, and it should prove an invaluable resource and tool for interracial/bicultural families and children. Of particular note is the author’s warning to avoid the social isolation and marginalization that can easily overwhelm them.

There are two primary focuses in this work: 1) how to establish the biracial and/or biethnic identity which is essential to healthy development, and how to accomplish this with little or no support and possibly in the face of direct obstruction. Not only is exposure to a child’s total heritage considered crucial, but it is also strongly advocated that biracial and/or biethnic children be exposed to the widest possible variety of peoples and cultures. 2) how to navigate through communities and schools and how to engage with social agencies that all deny biraciality and/or biethnicity. Examples are provided of the type of difficulties that are often encountered and several positive and practical ways of dealing with them are offered.

Wardle is keenly aware that within the current framework biracial/biethnic children are rendered invisible and their needs ignored. He discusses the fact that the majority of social service, public service, or human service “professionals,” due to their heavy emotional and political investment in racism and racialism, have to a large extent become gatekeepers intent on tracking all children into single race categories. That being the case, Wardle encourages and outlines a highly pro-active response for parents and offers specific approaches and plans for them to implement. Additionally, he provides information for school personnel and other public officials who need educating or re-educating on the subject.

Wardle examines and discusses how social science theory, social organizations, public institutions, government, and the media perpetuate racism through racial stereotyping, dictating racial identity via the current classification system, and by portraying mixed people as abnormal. He goes on to systematically describe and debunk a whole series of cultural myths about race and mixed race that have developed over time to support a racism in the U.S. It is also noted how this racist system requires that “whiteness” be falsely perceived and presented as if it is “racially” and ethnically homogeneous. It is ironic that during this period of greater than ever diversity, that diversity is largely expressed in the same old us-and-them terms. Differences are still emphasized over similarities, “whiteness” is still projected as the standard for what is considered “normal,” and “diversity” is just a politically-correct buzzword.

Finally, there are a couple of interesting points mentioned in the book that would be good research topics for separate articles or books (if someone hasn’t already written them). One is that although the majority of interracial and/or interethnic marriages in the U.S. are not between “whites” and “blacks” the society as a whole continues to have an unhealthy negative fixation on black-white dating and marriage. The other is that the white parent of contemporary biracial children is most often female, which is a huge shift away from the historical pattern where the white parent was most often male. Some in-depth examination of what is at the bottom of these phenomena would add to a deeper understanding of American racism.

If multigenerational multiracial individuals read this book they may find their brows lifting in mild amusement when the author expresses “particular surprise” at their involvement in and commitment to the Multiracial Movement. While he knows that racial mixture in the U.S. is centuries old he apparently believes the current “party line” of certain organizations that all multis “over the age of 30” have a “black” identity. Yet another myth to be exploded in a future edition of Tomorrow’s Children (along with its companion myth that multis don’t know their Amerindian or European heritage). Many multi-multi mixies have never internalized a “black” identity irrespective of “legal” labels. Many have changed their racial identity over time, from one social situation to another, or from city to city. Others have learned to embrace a “black” identity wholeheartedly while others merely resigned themselves to it. Still others have worn it rather like the horned hat, yellow armband, or other stigmatic badges European Jews were once required to wear to distinguish them from non-Jews -- something put on or taken off when entering or exiting the public arena, and for similar reasons.

There are definite limits to what restrictive laws, propaganda, and brainwashing can accomplish. Consider the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with its history of suppressing political dissidents, religion, and ethnic minorities. In the early 1990’s the “Evil Empire” ignominiously collapsed after four generations. Within practically the proverbial fortnight the Orthodox church experienced a renaissance; the eastern peoples of the former republic jettisoned Russian as their “official” language and culture; and St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, formerly Petrograd) was renamed, well, St. Petersburg -- the name Tsar Peter the Great founded it with in 1703. Apparently for many “comrades” the conversion to Communism was -- despite revisionist history, the KGB, gulags, and mass executions and burials deep within Mother Russia’s climax forests -- rather less than skin deep.

No, being racially and/or ethnically mixed is certainly not new, and recognizing mixture isn’t new either. What IS new is the radical idea that each person is entitled to full access to his entire heritage and is free to self-identify as he chooses, based on his own experience and preference, and without interference from anyone else’s agenda. The Multiracial Movement is not only for and about biracial/biethnic individuals under the age of 30, it is also very much about the re-establishment of a socially visible and recognized mixed identity after four generations of deliberate suppression. Suppression initially by “whites” to serve their racist agenda and subsequently by “minority” blocs to serve their racist agendas.

At the core of the Multiracial Movement are the realities of individual experience and identity synthesis. A core which is common to both historical and contemporary mixies. The Multiracial Movement is not about one kind of mixture, nor certain phenotypes, nor one age group, nor one era, nor one locale. The Movement is for any and every mixed person at any time anywhere on the face of the globe. Solzhenitsyn, anyone?

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