America Loves All Things Biracial

This is sort of embarrassing to post on, but our site got a minor boost in hits yesterday off of similar fodder, so here goes.

For the second straight day, a mixed-race person won a contest on a dumb reality television show. This time it was Jordin Sparks taking the crown of "American Idol". Here are the obligatory photos:




Sparks' reaction to being announced as the winner.






A happy family moment with mom Jodi and dad Phillippi (who used to play football with the New York Giants, for you NFL fans out there).




I personally think mixed-race celebrity gawking is a tired racket, often reduced to silly assertions of how awesome multiracial people are, or off-base speculation about the future of race as a concept. Nonetheless, I do think it is sort of interesting that Ohno and Sparks drew the limelight back-to-back like this, and while I can come up with a lot more important things for us to focus on, I believe it's worth taking a moment to contemplate if this occurrence has some underlying meaning or hidden value.

I don't have my own answer off hand, but I do hope this trend helps us predict the winner of America's next big popularity contest!