"What About Your Kids?"

Though I’m sure they thought their reservation was about care for me, the question let slip what was really concerning — maintaining whiteness. Fortunately, the inquiry laid bare truths I hadn’t seen before. Truths that I critically needed to be aware of.

Picture of my family from my personal photo library

I’d been dating a black man for almost 2 years and we’d just gotten engaged. I was elated. I wanted everyone to know. But it didn’t go as I’d expected.

Before my big announcement was old news, the questions started coming from the white people in my life. Though they asked variations of “what about your kids,” the message was the same — white me, marrying a black person, didn’t sit well with the white folks in my life.

Never mind that, with this question, people assumed I was able to, wanted to, or planned to grow a family by birthing children. This sort of question was especially disturbing because it took me by surprise. I thought we were good with race.

I’d anticipated that my white community would embrace my chosen spouse — as I’d watched them do time and again with other white people and their white spouses. I thought the mostly white, Christian folk who surrounded me, spoke of love for all, and seemed to love me well, would love him too. They hadn’t asked these questions as we dated — but when marriage was our plan, things took a turn.

The inquiries expressed, only to me and never my black fiancé, about choosing to enter a mixed race marriage and, presumably, procreate to burgeon a mixed race family, asked again and again, told me that, what our white community said about race and racism, wasn’t our truest belief and most preferred way of being. Something else was more true and sought-after.

Before the questions of what to do with my not-yet-imagined or committed-to offspring, I believed all our talk of valuing every person — no matter skin color. I trusted when we said we value diversity because we’re all part of the same human race. I thought we really meant it and that, when confronted with situations that unsettled us, we’d stick to it. Perhaps our colloquy of race was a vocalized wish for how we could be.

But, when it came to it, wishing didn’t seem to help us live out our beliefs. And when this question came from white people who grew their families through transracial adoption — the very ones raising black and brown children — I felt a growing rift between us. What had I inherited of race?

There’s the colorblind ideology. Which, at surface, to someone in a dominate racial position, doesn’t seem that bad a mode of operation. We, the white people in my life and I, lived by the colorblind code. We don’t see skin color, we said. We look within for the value and worth of all human beings and we welcome and appreciate everyone.

As far as I could see, this same community of white people loved and embraced children of color brought into our fold through adoption. This question of “what about your kids” wasn’t put to the white adoptive parents. The brown and black kids in our community were all younger than me — too young to articulate what it was like to be a person of color in this white space, with us white folk. I didn’t know how it felt for them to hear us say what we stood for with race and racism and see us stand for something else with our actions

I’d spent my whole life working to make my white community proud. I was fully bought in. I trusted I knew who they were and who we were collectively. I’d followed all the rules and expectations. Well, except for the unspoken one about not disrupting whiteness. I never knew their disappointment, until I brought race to our community in an unacceptable way. A way that challenged the comfortable diversity we’d known.

I felt duped and foolish. I’d missed what was right in front of me. I didn’t think that race, or rather whiteness, influenced us so. I didn’t think it influenced me so.

I bet on my beliefs about my white community. Beliefs I came to based on my appraisal of how brown and black adoptees of white parents were seemingly welcomed. Now, I wonder if these young ones were ever wholly accepted.

I naively thought I could choose to partner with a black person with no push back from the white people in my life. I surmised that my partner would be easily incorporated into our community. But what evidence did I have? I’d never noticed other black or brown people, with the agency to decide, choose to be part of us. And I’d never seen any grown black or brown people welcomed in.

I hadn’t considered why our community was mostly white and why the only people of color among us had no choice in the matter — no little kid gets to choose their village. I didn’t challenge why this might be. But when the “what about your kids” questions started, I became fully unnerved. What had I gotten my fiancé, the one I dearly loved, mixed up with?

Whiteness, and the belonging I knew in it, clouded my judgment. I lacked the skill and knowledge to critically examine the ways race was always with us. I didn’t recognize how my community had only ever been comfortable with and preferred whiteness. Why did I think they’d see that he, a black man, belonged? I wish I would’ve seen the truth of us sooner than I did.

We’d been deluded by whiteness. I chose to believe that, when push came to shove, the other white folks and I would stand firm in our commitments. That we wouldn’t bend or sway from the ideals we professed. This real life lesson helped me see how whiteness can easily convince us white people that we’re good with race and racism, when we’re really not.

What did it mean for me to be brought up in this sort of racial climate? How did it shape who I am and how I am? How does it impact my mixed race marriage and now-realized biracial kids? There’s no doubt, I was profoundly influenced and still am. I continue to work out the how.