Probably 5-6 years ago I started looking on the Internet for woman who have interracial families to talk to. There was very little out there. But I did find a small group on Yahoo for Moms with Biracial Children. I became fast friends with them. From there, everyone went to MySpace and I collected a few more great friends. Then we all moved to facebook and I met more great people. I was blogging on MySpace and was getting a lot of positive feedback, so I figured out to do my own personal blog. All this time, still keeping connected to the wonderful women I had met along the way.
My blog frequently dealt with the issues I, myself, or my family deal with being an interracial family. I was fascinated about how little drama we endured as compared to other friends on line. I was curious as to why this was.
Then the news story came out about the Justice of the Peace in Louisiana who refused to married an interracial couple. The story wasn't surprising. I had lived in Mississippi for 8 years. I said very little about it until I watch a video on the news where that JP defended himself by saying he did it for the the sake of the children. He said the children suffer.I took that personally. I wrote a blog in anger and sarcastically said that we needed a national organization. The Interracial Family Organization.
Christmas was coming and I felt I wanted to make a bigger statement about this mews story. I decided it would be great if all my interracial family friends on line sent Christmas cards to this JP with pictures of our lovely families. I call a dear friend of mine, Kat Robertson, and she loved the idea. But very quickly we realized that we could control, and didn't want to be a part of anything negative that other people would send. Kat, being an IT guru said she would put together a web page where we could screen and post the photos. In 24 hours she put together a comprehensive web site and we named it
The Interracial Family Organization
The MISSION of the IFO is to facilitate the cultural recognition of interracial/multicultural families and disassociate this culture from longstanding stigma by exposing and discrediting stereotypes. Branching off of that statement, we intend to provide so much more than simply strategic and passionate defense of our character and integrity - we intend to enlighten society of the wonderful contributions our community makes every day.
This website has allowed us to pull together the resources on the Internet, feature beautiful families, respond to news stories, support each other and people in ares that lack support, and celebrate the beauty of all families.We also have a Facebook fan page.
I am so proud to be a part of this. I welcome everyone to the site and encourage you to give suggestions as to what you would like to see.