"Are You the Nanny?"

I’ve never been asked this question — though it would’ve made sense back when I actually was a nanny.

Photo by Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash

Maybe it’s the look I carry around. You know, the one that accidentally says, “I’m not in the mood. Don’t try me.” My face has a way of communicating a little more fight than invitation.

But I’ve heard plenty of stories from women — always women, never men — who have been asked this exact question when out with children who don’t share their skin color. I’ve heard it from white women. I’ve heard it from women of color.

“Are you the nanny?”

On the surface, it seems like a casual (perhaps rude) question. Maybe it’s about curiosity. Maybe it’s about assumptions. But the more I’ve sat with it, the more I’ve come to believe it’s not random. It’s tied to something deeper. Something we don’t like to look at too closely. Something called whiteness.

Now, I know some of you may be thinking, “Of course, you’re going to bring it back to whiteness. Isn’t that where you always go?” Fair enough. But stay with me. Because here’s how I’m making sense of it.

Who’s Doing the Asking?

In almost every story I’ve heard, the person asking the question is white. Not always, but most often. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? White folks — myself included — have been taught to see parenthood through a certain racial lens.

We often imagine ourselves as the ones who might adopt a child of color, or foster, or have a blended multiracial family. But do we picture it the other way around? How often do we imagine a black parent with white children? Or an brown parent with white children?

It doesn’t usually occur to us. And that’s not an accident. That’s whiteness at work.

Whiteness Was Made Up

This is the part that still unsettles me when I say it out loud — whiteness itself was made up. It’s not natural. It’s not inevitable.

It was invented by pale-skinned folks as a way to mark who counted as fully human, who had access to rights, and who didn’t. Whiteness turned skin color into a sorting system — into a way of deciding belonging.

So when a white person sees a family that doesn’t “match” by skin tone and blurts out, “Are you the nanny?” — they’re leaning on the story whiteness taught us: people of different skin colors don’t really belong together. At least not as family.

A Question That Reveals a System

Think about what that question is really saying. It’s not just about childcare. It’s about belonging. It carries the assumption that skin color should line up neatly within a family, that love and connection should follow the rules whiteness made up centuries ago.

When it doesn’t line up, whiteness makes it strange. It makes it suspect. And it shows up in an everyday, ordinary question: “Are you the nanny?”

An Invitation to Reflect

So here’s what I wonder — what does it mean for us as white people to recognize that we made race a thing? We created whiteness, and in doing so we made the whole social environment one where race determines who belongs where. What happens when we slow down and notice the ways we still carry those stories, even in a passing question at the park?

I’m not writing this as an expert with all the answers. I’m writing as a fellow white person who’s still waking up to the ways whiteness has shaped my imagination — and my silences.

And maybe the better question isn’t “Are you the nanny?” but: What assumptions might we question in our own thinking, or in the questions we casually ask?