Mixed-race role models to inspire our little ones

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Let's start a list.

Kelly Holmes
Halle Berry
Tiger Woods

Need more British ones especially ....

Agree peskykids. I read an article about him in the Sunday Times several months ago and I found him inspiring then, particularly the way that he turned his life around by embracing the Christian belief.

A great example of just because who were born down, does not mean you have to stay down.

Wouldn't agree with Kieron Dyer being a good role model, apart from being good at football he spends all his time getting drunk and sleeping with models. Maybe he could be my role model instead.

I didn't realise Jason Robinson had such a turn around, he comes across as a public schoolboy.

More British:
Martin Gore of the band Depeche Mode (his biological father is an African American G.I)
Dave Gahan also from Depeche Mode (his biological father was half malaysian)

Jade Goody....rolemodel??????Hm....sorry!
Jordan would count then, too....I only flew over the therad, so, might have been mentioned already....

hm...googled Beethovens Biography, but couldn't find anything about himbeing of aboriginal or whatever heritage (is that the word?)

he is off flemish ancestry...it says...

hester..oona king is not an mp anymore..gorgeous george got her seat..
tis hard to think of any sorry...

ah..lewis ?., the FI guy?

lewis hamilton that's it!

Are you sure about Samuel Taylor Coleridge? I'd be very surprised, although happy to be proved wrong. And you might be thinking of Kubla Khan - didn't Tennyson write Hiawatha (again, happy to be proved wrong)?

Zadie Smith, novelist - I went to school with her (boast!)

Hey, how about ASHLEY SHAW, she is a finalist in BBC1s Dance X on saturdays from 6.50(started 14th July 2007). Shes got there on raw talent and has not had the priviledged backgrounds (e.g. drama schools/rich parents) of the other contestants. Shes a down to earth Sheffield girl.

Shes got a Shirley Bassey like prescence and power to her voice and fantastic dance moves.

Shes mixed race.

Here's the evidence on Beethoven's racial heritage

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was indeed mixed race, no debate there - and he definitely composed Hiawatha. MissM, are you confusing him with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who he was named after (easily done!)?

Mixed-race icons

Mixed-race celebrities

Ah ha, you got me there! Well I've learnt something today - I was indeed confusing him.

Norah Jones
Cleo Laine and John Dankworth's daughter (sorry, can't remember her name)
The actress who plays Martha Jones in Dr Who

I thought Hiawatha was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/LonHiaw.html

Yes doyouwantfries, the poem was by Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor was a composer - his Hiawatha is a cantata based on the poem.

Louis hamilton Formula 1 driver for Maclaren
Oonah King ex Labour mp
Hans j Massaquoi managing editior of American Ebony magazine
Thandie Newton
Queen Charlotte wife of GeorgeIII
Mary seacole

All the above our of dual heritage/bi cultural.Sorry hate the word mixed race,we have always used bi cultural when talking to our 3 children about their identites.

Why not their parents? a role models colour or background should not play a part. I realise some may see it as a means of identification but again identity should come from your parents and I think you must be inspired by people of all races.

Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, the L Word)

When I saw this video on Youtube I was so impressed - she is articulate and insightful

Yes, I heard that President Thomas Jefferson ? the third elected president, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809 was described as the ?son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginian Mulatto father?. Jefferson also was said to have destroyed all documentation attached to his mother, even going to extremes to seize letters written by his mother to other people (according to Vaughan). Only in recent years did the family of Thomas Jefferson acknowledged he was the father of the (5 or 6) children born to a slave on his plantation, Sally Hemmings. Also another American President President Andrew Jackson was the son of an Irish woman who married a black man; Abraham Lincoln's mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe and was nicknamed ?African Africanus the First? by his presidential opponents and cartoons were drawn depicting him as a Negro. Lots more but no time or space.