People like to tell me about my biracial kids. We get all kinds of commentary about them. Often, the things people say are connected to race and difference.
My favorite is when the words are kind, “your children are beautiful.” This rings true because, like most parents, my children are beauty to me. I can’t hear enough about their loveliness.
On many occasions, the remarks are odd, “do you bleach her ends?” — this question was asked about my toddler’s hair when she was two years old. Or “their coloring is exquisite — like perfect caramel.” Not once has someone shared their feelings upon beholding my chalky paleness, so, when confronted with it, I find this sort of assertion strange.
Other times, the observations are hateful (see post N****r Lover).
Then, there are moments where the statements leave me unsettled and questioning. Like, “Your kids, and biracial kids like them, they’re going to end racism.” Or “your kids think they’re white.”
These last two pronouncements came as my children played nearby. Let me back up a bit, I’m a white American, married to a black Kenyan (or, known in the US by the reductive, yet all-encompassing, identity put upon him, a black man), and we are parents to three black, white, Kenyan, American children. When my kids are within earshot, and such words about them escape another person’s lips, I’m inundated with worry and curiosity…
…“how will they end racism — just by existing? That’s a far-fetched idea and unfair expectation to shoulder them with”
…”how can you tell what my children think of themselves? What things do they say or do that make you believe this of them?”
…”did my kids just hear what this person said?”
This last notion most troubles me — what do I do with messages like these and how do I help my children make sense of them? It’s not that people share their thoughts about my kids. I enjoy interacting with others, talking about difference, and expressing the things we appreciate about one another. People are free to say what they like, I’d like to think that we aren’t bound to what others might say or not say of us.
Navigating the world as a mixed race family, puts us face-to-face with this experience — theories and stories about racism and race getting passed around in the happenings of our daily lives. But it’s not just my family — in the US, we are immersed in race everyday. That untrue, impossible, simplified, and harmful messages get conveyed about the ways people perceive my multi raced kids and all racialized people, isn’t new information. As we go about our daily lives, these messages come, they are easily transmitted, and get preserved in our sociocultural context. They are stored in our shared account of race. This is the racial climate we find ourselves in and it cannot be divorced from the comments about my kids.
It’s this context that informs the substance and effect of the commentary. Always with us, are hints and connections to long-established truths of race and difference in the United States. There’s a meta-communication that happens when people make seemingly harmless statements. In these moments, it’s not just that this person sees my children as unique, but also that something about them and their racial makeup is a deviation from ordinary or default humanness. Often times, the message we receive is that my kids are other and that our family is other.
Difference is unavoidable. In fact, it’s beautiful. I don’t desire, nor expect, for all of us to be the same. Recognizing the uniqueness of myself and those around me, is a part of being human.
Unfortunately, in the United States, we’ve long had trouble with difference and skin pigmentation. Here, we have an extensive history of marrying melanin-lacking skin (white) with ideas of good, of American, and normal. On the other hand, melanin-rich skin is attached to ideas of less-than and atypical. To be outside of the white skin club, is to be other, it’s diverse.
Along the way in our journey with race, we Americans have tied whiteness to what it means to be human — the qualities and conditions that make up the essence of humanness. Our language, practices, standards, and stories put white at the center. Everyone who doesn’t fit the social definition of whiteness, stands outside and white is falsely elevated. This piece of American life, is what’s often reiterated when people tell me about my biracial kids.
Language is crucial to difference and othering. How do we talk about difference without othering? Language and story help us interpret and make meaning of our lives. When dehumanizing words, untrue stories, voyeuristic sentiments, and diminutive definitions are used to describe another person or group who is unlike us, the other(s) is understood, not only as dissimilar, but less-than or outside the norm because of their difference. We shrink the sum and substance of some humans and assume that the whole of another person can be captured in words and ideas dreamt up by those with the power to ascribe meaning and worth.
So here’s one thing we try to help our black, white, Kenyan, American children understand — words and context matter. How we talk about people shapes how we think about people. Our ability or inability to talk about complicated and difficult things, shapes how we interact with and are impacted by these things.
We help our children know who they come from — the good and the bad of our people. We tell them the stories of who we’ve been and who we’ve belonged to. We let them know that we get to decide what to do with those stories — do we continue them or help to write new ones? When our kids lack words to describe themselves or others, we help them find words that affirm the beauty in our difference and cling to common humanity.
And we also tell them that words don’t always have to mean to us, in our home and family, what they mean to others in society. Yes, there are distinct social consequences, sometimes negative other times positive, that go along with words or labels. Sometimes, words are weapons.
But we — in our home and our family — don’t have to perpetuate this. Our beings and our story cannot be contained by the meanings others give to words. We will not weaponize language and will work against the ways others use words as arsenal to tear people down and cause harm. We do this because so many people share words about our children and not all of those words reflect the love, truth, complexity, and splendor that our multi raced kids are.
In my attempts to guide and care for young humans while they grow into adults, I’m certain, like most people who are in, or have been in this same position, I’m going to mess up. I’ll make mistakes too as I try to create a better, more peaceful, and more just world for my kids. As a white, American woman attempting to raise young humans who are raced differently than me, I’m certain race will complicate my efforts.
But, I’m finding that my imperfect and sincere attempts are better than nothing. And, regardless of the ways we are raced, community and relationship with those who differ from us, is wonderful. It helps us understand ourselves and better appreciate the bigness of this place we inhabit together. Connecting with difference helps us see pieces of who we are and the immense opportunities available to us that we otherwise might miss out on knowing. I’m trying to get better at welcoming difference without needing to other those I’m dissimilar to. I’m convinced, when we can do this, we and our world are better for it.
Commentaires