The Importance of an Origin Story: Looking for my Multiracial Family

Sometimes television makes history and, as such, makes (pop) culture. I’ve been thinking about one of these moments for months now. Maybe the only reason I know about Star Trek in this capacity – as culture maker – is because my dad was the first nerd I knew and that show, the original Star Trek series, was the one that introduced me to fandom (though we never called it that). I inherited from him my bad eye sight, my enthusiasm for the franchise, for sci-fi, for all things nerdy. So here’s the iconic television event: Nyota Uhura and James T. Kirk kissed on television on November 22, 1968. The much-hyped kiss in “Plato’s Stepchildren” was not the first on-screen interracial kiss. It wasn’t even the second. But it often gets labeled as such.

  I’ve been thinking about that kiss a lot lately. Not because it’s been almost 50 years since the episode aired. Not because Taye Diggs is dealing with (and profiting from) his kid’s racial identity. Not because transracial isn’t actually a thing. Honestly, it’s been on my mind since I took my kids to see Hotel Transylvania 2. I was halfway through the movie when I got a hair in my ass. For those you unfamiliar with the pair of movies, these Adam Sandler vehicles are (be warned: spoilers for predictable-ass kids movie ahead) a barely veiled metaphor about race-mixing. The original is Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner starring Dracula’s daughter, Mavis, and a hapless white backpacker named Jonathan played, of course, by Andy Sandberg. In…