Parents of Biracial Cheerios Girl Say They Were ‘Excited’ About Negative Comments

Cheerios commercial star and her family made an appearance on MSNBC.

By Jorge Rivas Jun 12, 2013

Six-year-old Grace Colbert, star of the Cheerios commercial, and her parents, visited MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts to share their take on the racist backlash the ad received soon after it premiered.

"Being part of a biracial family, it’s just the reality," Christopher Colbert, the father of the six-year-old Grace, told MSNBC on Tuesday. "We’re also part of the face of America."

Colbert added that he was "excited" about the reactions to the commercial, both good and bad.

"Being a biracial family is just a reality. We’re also a part of the face of America, and so America just needs to see that this is just a way of life and that this is just the way life is today," Colbert said during the interview. "I wasn’t upset or anything I was pretty much really excited to have this type of reaction so we could see where we still stand in America."

The six-year-old actress’ mother, Janet Colbert, said that her daughter thought all the attention the commercial was getting must have been because of her great smile.

According to Census data, among opposite-sex married couples, one in 10 (5.4 million couples) are interracial, a 28% jump since 2000. In 2010, 18% of heterosexual unmarried couples were of different races (1.2 million couples) and 21% of same-sex couples (133,477 couples) were mixed.

The number of mixed-race babies has also climbed over the past decade. More than 7 percent of the 3.5 million children born in the year before the 2010 Census were of two or more races, up from barely 5 percent a decade earlier.