Very often, when black people see me alone with my white-looking biracial children, they demand to know that I'm going to teach them that they're black. They do this with great seriousness, usually glaring into my eyes as if they caught me about to steal change from the collection plate. (Most whites, on the other hand, either think I'm the nanny or search for a polite way to ask if they're my biological children.) This question is not rhetorical. They wait, squint-eyed and ferocious, for an answer. Much as I'd like to say, "Damn skippy they're black. Holla," the anal-retentive, extra-credit-loving hall monitor in me has to ask: "But why doesn't my husband's culture and DNA count?" Then, without fail, the hysterical, spittle-inflected tirade begins: "They're just niggers to the cops," such a person will say, or "Self-hating" blah blah, "You think whites will accept them?" etc. I can't imagine a more pointless or less dignified discussion.
When I look at my kids, I see only my babies. People are always lying about how they don't "see race," but, in this world, that can really only be true when it comes to those you love. I don't think of my children as black or white, so I can't take the world's attempt to superimpose its silliness on them seriously, though I know that as they get older, I'll have to.
I make my living writing about race, but once I'm home with my family, I'm just a wife and mom. No one is more surprised by that than I am. When I was pregnant the first time, I subjected my husband to long lectures about being the father of black children. I gave the man homework, like reading Toni Morrison's books and watching my bootleg Eyes on the Prize video history of the civil rights movement. Then, when each child was born Klan-robe white, my husband turned the tables: "Debra, we have to talk about you being the mother of white children."
Blacks like those described above, truth be told, begrudge biracial people their whiteness, however attenuated, because it is they who are self-hating. They invariably end their tirade with: "You know they're going to get darker, right? Their hair's going to get nappy." This is always said with relish, as if they were telling me that my winning lottery ticket was a forgery. I look away because I'm so embarrassed for them. I couldn't care less what my kids look like. What I begrudge them is their privilege. Race schmace. The real issue is class.
Listening to my 3-year-old go on the other day about motor boats, preschool, lake houses, Vietnamese food, and skiing at Steamboat Springs, I felt a moment of vertigo followed by panic: The boy just sounded so, so … white. Worse, like a white woman, like the teachers who dote on him and his blond curls. He began every other sentence with an overenunciated, "E-actually, Mom" or, "In fact, Dad." He referred to his chicken noodle soup as "the first course." All at once, I could see my babies through a stranger's eyes: My kids are the ones that made poor kids like me embarrassed of our threadbare lives. My kids, God help me, are rich, that birth defect for which I have only begun to forgive a chosen few.
In my mind, no one can begrudge me my success because I built this life for myself with a hammer and a nail. My parents were uneducated, Great Migration Jim Crow sharecroppers. Up north, in St. Louis, my father, a World War II Marine, drove a truck and did odd jobs. My mother worked in factories, waited tables, cleaned offices, and nannied. I started working at 13 and, after dropping out of community college, got my BA and MA at night while in the Air Force. Since I escaped the working class, everyone born outside of it has been presumed to be a lazy, weak oppressor until proven otherwise. (You motivate yourself your way, and I'll motivate myself mine.)
But what about my own kids? If it's true that George H. W. Bush, as Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower* quipped, was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple, you could say that my kids were born on second base. My job is not to teach them that they're black. My job is to teach them that they damn sure didn't hit a double. I will not allow them to coast on that which they didn't earn; they have to prove their worth to the world. And, frankly, to their mother.
Feminism and class consciousness have always come more naturally to me than race consciousness. Born in 1959, I was insulated from the most direct racism by the overt segregation blacks faced, even up North, but trapped under the thumb of any black person who peed standing up. In other words, whites weren't the reason my brother was forbidden from cleaning up his own messes or why my mother slaved around our house until late in the evening—still in her pink waitress uniform—while my father puttered in the basement. Male privilege within the black community was, and remains, oppressive.
And the chasm between professional or light-skinned blacks (God help us if they were both) and us "cabbage and cornbread" broad-nosed Negroes was equally pronounced; these "seditty, high falutin' " blacks were as determined to segregate us from them as were whites. Our shared blackness never trumped gender or class. Few whites were in a position to exploit or despise me the way black men and the black elite were.
But now, not only am I sleeping with the enemy, I'm singing it lullabies and scheming to get it to the head of every line. I'm like those World War II vets who bemoaned our lost valor and patriotic unselfishness but then turned around and helped their own sons shirk duty in Vietnam. I'm going to have to find a way to reconcile my reverse snobbery with invoking, on my children's behalf, the old boys' network I've worked my way into.
I'm desperate to prevent them from becoming the kind of privileged snots with that disgusting sense of entitlement I saw in too many of my trust-funded classmates at Harvard Law School. Their (white) grandfather is tenured at a public Ivy. Their mother writes books and is on television. Dad's an architect. My son's godparents are Harvard muckety-mucks. My infant daughter's are journalism big shots—can you say early admission to an Ivy, snazzy internships, and eenie-meenie-minie-moe-ing between cushy first jobs? I scheme and freelance so as to squirrel away money for them so they can have all the ski trips and concert tickets that their mother never had. And yet even as I do so, I begin to wonder if, on some level, I'll come to despise them.
That last sentiment seems unnecessarily harsh—except when I think of a friend who is the child of his father's second, young, post-success wife. This friend was raised in Europe, attended an English boarding school, then Cambridge University. He'd told his father about a brawl involving some friends that he'd witnessed but not participated in. Looking for absolution, he'd said, "I suppose I should have jumped in." His father had grown up a poor immigrant Jew in the tough Irish slums of 1920s Chicago. Disgusted, Dad had snarled, "Yes, you should have" and walked away without another word. "He wrapped me in cotton wool," my friend said, "but expected me to act like I'd grown up in the rough."
Blacks like the ones I've described are trying to force me to say my kids' real name is "Toby." I'm trying to keep their real name from being Paris Hilton. I thought I understood how difficult that would be. Then, the other day, my black hairdresser kept affecting a Condoleezza Rice overarticulation in response to every thing I said to her. I paid little attention, until she said, "E-actually" for the fifth time. I asked if she could fit in a deep conditioner; "That could be problematic," she orated, and cracked herself up. That's when it hit me: The white woman my son sounds like is me.
Correction, September 10, 2004: Debra Dickerson's article "High Class," posted Friday, September 3, 2004, originally attributed the "third base" quote to former Texas Gov. Ann Richards and indicated Richards was speaking about George W. Bush. In fact, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower said it and he was speaking about George H. W. Bush. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Posted: Wed 12 Oct 2005 13:11 Post subject: Definitions of "White"
Quote:
Very often, when black people see me alone with my white-looking biracial children, they demand to know that I'm going to teach them that they're black. They do this with great seriousness, usually glaring into my eyes as if they caught me about to steal change from the collection plate. (Most whites, on the other hand, either think I'm the nanny or search for a polite way to ask if they're my biological children.) This question is not rhetorical. They wait, squint-eyed and ferocious, for an answer. Much as I'd like to say, "Damn skippy they're black. Holla," the anal-retentive, extra-credit-loving hall monitor in me has to ask: "But why doesn't my husband's culture and DNA count?" Then, without fail, the hysterical, spittle-inflected tirade begins: "They're just niggers to the cops," such a person will say, or "Self-hating" blah blah, "You think whites will accept them?" etc. I can't imagine a more pointless or less dignified discussion.
Frankly, a public "white" identity for children like Debra's would be good for them, other mixed race people, and the blacks because it would be a public sign that "black" genes are NOT INFERIOR. As I've pointed out for many years, a "black" identity for people who don't look "black" is based on the assumption of the INFERIORITY of "black" genes. The blacks who confronted Debra about her kids are, unfortunately, typical. The blacks were telling Debra that they believed in their own "inferiority," had no hopes of being "equal" with "whites," and found their only pleasure in dragging down vulnerable mixed-whites and white mulattoes "unfortunate" enough to bear some of their "tainted" blood.
You can see the irrational, hate-filled nature of black support of the "One Drop" myth through the ridiculous "hope" that Debra's "white-looking" children (The term "white-looking" implies that one is not good enough to claim the "honor" of white ancestry and family ties but is only wearing a mask or a disguise) will be "niggers" and get beaten by cops . It is the type of curse people wish on their enemies. The reality, of course, is that Debra's kids will be seen as "white" to other "whites" because they have not been nearly as educated in the ODR as blacks think. Cops will see them as white because of their looks and because mixed whites don't register in the crime rate. No "blacks" encountered by cops look like Debra's kids. Blacks, who claim that Tiger Woods is "black" because he "looks black" (while politely ignoring the much darker-skinned Vijay Singh), are unwilling to say that anyone who "looks white" is white.
Many scholars claim that American "blacks" are a "mixed race" people because you might find a tiny amount of white or Indian ancestry in the average "black" if you tried really hard. I reject this idea because:
1) It is based on the assumption that "whites" are "pure."
2) It is designed to ignore the truly mixed-race ancestry and culture of Latinos. The average black would look like the average Latino if they were nearly as mixed as some like to claim.
3) Mixed-race people as a group are like genetic circus freaks as far as most American blacks are concerned. Note the hostile stares and demands for degradation that blacks usually gave Debra's kids. Latino culture (a truly mixed race culture) has its biases but it does not have the foaming-at-the-mouth hatred that black culture has for those whose biology has given them some "white privilege" in a society they didn't create.
Posted: Fri 14 Oct 2005 13:14 Post subject: Re: Definitions of "White"
Quote:
1) It is based on the assumption that "whites" are "pure."
2) It is designed to ignore the truly mixed-race ancestry and culture of Latinos. The average black would look like the average Latino if they were nearly as mixed as some like to claim.
3) Mixed-race people as a group are like genetic circus freaks as far as most American blacks are concerned. Note the hostile stares and demands for degradation that blacks usually gave Debra's kids. Latino culture (a truly mixed race culture) has its biases but it does not have the foaming-at-the-mouth hatred that black culture has for those whose biology has given them some "white privilege" in a society they didn't create.
1. It has been documented that White Americans are on adverage about 0.7 Black in DNA. Exactly how much "purer" can you get than that? A.D. are you attempting to suggest that .7 Black admixture plus about 3.2 Indian admixture makes White Americans "mongrels" or better yet one of your 'Mixed Whites'? (some sort of One Drop Rule for social superiors) Gentically these people are probably "purer" than alot of European countries!
2. Using your logic that Latinos are a Mulatto/Mixed raced people and also considering the facts that Hispanics marry non-White Hispanics in this country at rates of 40%, isn't it beyond obvious that if Hispanics were TRULY a Mulatto/mixed raced people (as you suggest) than White Americans would have higher White and Indian admixtures in their DNA? Many Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have enjoyed White status in the country since the 40's and 50's and have married White! So your logic doesn't add up one bit! Either this or they are marrying the most genetically European people from Latin American countries that they can find! lol. White Americans have continously assimilating non-Afro-American immigrants/ethnicities year after year and yet still register .7 BLACK admixture. Quite frankly, their partners can't be that African nor INdian (or mixed-raced) in their DNA...........obviously!
3. A Black identity as well as a White one is a PERSONAL choice. Bulling people with claims of "you feel too inferior to call yourself White" is just as much of racial policing as "everyone sees you as Black" sayings! The lastest census clearly showed that most Americans of African descent willingly choose a "Black" identity even though they were allowed to check "all that applied". Voluntarily choosing the Black box showed that most Americans with at least partial African ancestry feel more comfortable in the Black and/or African-American group than any other! Which is the very opposite of what you're suggesting of their "inferority" and feeling of being "tainted". Besides if they truly felt 'tainted', even checking "White" would never erase the genetic taint of their racial reality!
Posted: Sat 18 Mar 2006 04:17 Post subject: Let's all take the test
Maybe EVERYONE in America should take the ethnic admixture test. This would shed a light on the myths of "purity", "superiority", "inferiority", "inclusion", "exclusion" and "group membership"!! It would also turn some people's worlds upside-down and inside-out----and that is always a learning experience(and ultimately would free us all from this silliness and encourage decency, respect and positive coexistence).
(You can also check out The Fray, http://fray.slate.com/?id=3936&tp=Concept on Slate. Might cost you a few IQ points tho -- my apologies to those precious few Fraysters with at least eighth grade reading comprehension and even one day's worth of home training.)
Quote:
Debra,
Interesting take on how you perceive your own children and we are all blessed that you have opened your family to an honest conversation on race in a way this country truly needs. It is sad, however, that the only goal of your discourse is the end of the culture in which you were born.
Tales of how you grew up under the thumb of the black men around you provides more data on how you have come to decide that the culture of your birth has nothing to offer you.
The interesting fact to me is that I would guess my mother would echo those very comments about how black men need to atone for more than their fare share of oppression the
female half of our community; and yet it was her singing "Black is Beautiful" when I was a child that instilled that love of my culture in me.
Perhaps you could explain how blackness is not a part of our culture? Why is it that no one on the planet would expect someone from China to write a book called, "The End of Chinese". Indeed, it is the worlds oldest continuous culture - that is a source of strength for members of that culture wherever they may reside throughout the world. Why should black people - and even people from Africa call themselves black - deny ourselves the ability to use our
culture as a source of strength?
DG
Dear Debra,
I'm 1/8th sub-Saharan African. I've got a DNA test to prove it. It (and a family rumor about being related to Crispus Attucks) are about all I have to prove that I'm African-American. Ok, so the rest is Indo-European. I was hoping for some East Asian or American Indian, but no luck.
Thanks to your article, I found out that I have hope that some day, I will darken up and my hair will get nappy. Praise be! I'm sick of this pale skin that burns if I'm out too long without sunscreen in late fall. My hair is currently limp and thin, as well as thinning. If my hair turns nappy after I go bald, will I ever know? When will this kick in? I'm 46 years old. Isn't it about time?
I enjoy telling people I'm 1/8th African. It's a quick way of weeding out the people I don't want to be friends with anyway.
RC
Dear Debra,
This is the second e-mail to you in under an hour. Since I sent the first one, I've been thinking about all the things left unsaid in the joking first message. There's things I can't find the words for.
Everyone looking at me sees a white person. They don't see someone 7/8ths white, 1/8th black. They see a really, obviously white person. My own wife calls me the "whitest white boy."
I wonder how my life would have been different if I couldn't pass? I wonder, and I think I know some of it. My life would have been a lot harder.
Could my parents have even moved into "lily white" [suburb]? School would certainly have been even more hell than it was for this nerd. Dating...would any father have let me date his daughter?
In my black studies courses (did I know on some level?), I didn't quite understand that I was privileged because I'm white. It offended me that somehow I wasn't "good" enough because I was white. As an adult, I look back and understand all too well that passing as white made a difference.
It's a hell of a thing to say, but I "passed." I passed easily. I passed so easily, it's almost offensive for me to talk about having "passed." There's so much I never had to deal with. Even when I told people that I was related to Crispus Attucks, they thought I was joking or thought it was so far back that it didn't matter.
I never learned to be afraid of police officers.
I passed, and I hate to say it, but I'm glad. I found out at a time in my life where it doesn't matter any more. No one cares now.
It's easier to joke about than think of how life might have been.
RC
Hello,
First of all I'd like to thank you, because through your writing I've finally decided to do something that I tell my wife I'm going to do all of the time, and that is write a letter of complaint. I have to say that after reading two of your recent Slate entries that you and people of your ilk are the real blight on Black Americans. The way you constantly berate and belittle my people is unfathomable to someone like me, who would like to see real change in the way we think about ourselves and educate our children rather than some aesthetic change, that won't embarrass me in front of my friends who aren't Black. But, maybe you don't want change, maybe you appreciate the status quo as it makes you feel superior to someone, since, it seems to me at least, you feel what other people think of your entire race is relevant enough to have made you such a race hating bigot. And I'm sure you could care less about my background but I too have an interracial child and plan to teach her about her heritage, as well as about various other important issues. That you'd deny your children a link to something as important as their history is truly a shame and there’s a chance that someday they'll resent it.
Well, that was really all I had to say and if you have made it this far I'd like to thank you again for allowing me to get this out of my system. And I'd also like to ask you to keep in mind, that I don't think anything I said will make a bit of difference to you, but if you really do want to help Black people maybe you should try a little more compassion and a little less prejudice.
Regards,
MF
I wanted to write after being moved by your article on Slate today. I thought it was filled with profound insights on race, class, & gender (I kept thinking how interesting it would be to read a similar article about from a father's point of view), but on another level it really resonated with me personally, which is really what made me want to thank you for writing it. So: thank you.
As someone who grew up in a working-class Boston neighborhood but lucked into a lot of opportunities to get a great education (scholarships and the like, aside from the prerequisite hard work and saving of my parents), I identified with what I thought to be your conflicted emotions about taking accountability for our own success. Where do we draw the line between being proud of our achievements (which seems OK to do) and thinking that we “hit a double” (which clearly isn’t)? I also identified with what I thought was your internal conflict about “being true to your roots.” I went to private school with, and now work in the non-profit world with, children of privilege, for whom I’ve always had the same disdain that you mentioned, and I’ve picked up a lot of their habits along the way (I sure as hell write like one, I’m noticing). When as a result I have a harder time relating to my demo-crew, drywall-installer friends who I grew up with, I feel that same struggle. Being white myself, I can’t even imagine much harder being black would make it and, as I don’t plan on having children myself, I can’t imagine having to struggle with passing these conflicts on to them. So I admire your candid take on a struggle which I’ve always had in my head, and one that seems to be even more complicated in yours. Thanks for putting it into words for others to read.
Quickly, what I found most intellectually intriguing about your piece was when you wrote: “What I begrudge them is their privilege. Race schmace. The real issue is class.” As an amateur student of sociology, I’ve always felt that as much as race, gender, etc are huge issues in our society, it ultimately all comes down to class (although race & class are particularly thorny
to separate), but part of me has always wondered that maybe it was pretty easy for me to think that, being a white man and all. So I was interested to see you mention that, albeit briefly.
Anyway, long story short, your essay was a breath of fresh air after watching way too much of the RNC this week for some reason....
DS
I felt a wonderful sense of relief after reading First Class on Slate this morning (so much so that I had to respond). Finally, another parent who is struggling with the very issue I have been trying to impress upon my wife and her friends. My wife was born into a white upper middle class family and seldom struggled growing up. I come from the other end of the spectrum, born to a poor "white trash" family. Through hard work and a lot of luck I've been able to move from the working class into the professional world. I met and married a wonderful woman, bought the four bedroom dream house, a new car and a big screen TV. Life was (and is) good. I could never have imagined reaching the level we've attained. We were blessed with two healthy sons and it was their births that began the process of my struggle. My wife has felt a need to "wrap them in cotton wool" every day of their lives. I've tried to gently explain to her that this may be crippling them in their ability to deal with adversity. I love my children dearly but find myself at times exasperated by their cosmopolitan view of the world. I've tried to explain to them that not everyone has a family home at the Jersey shore or takes vacations at Disney World each year. I've tried to teach them to judge others on their actions and not just their words, that "good" and "bad" people exist across all social and economic barriers. My wife has told me I've become "preachy". I've tried to tone things down but I'm terribly concerned that my message isn't getting through. The most important things in my kids lives seem to be PS2, the PC and whether they will get a cell phone before their friends. It heartens me to know that others are struggling as well with the issue of giving our children a perspective on the lives of others (who are often less fortunate). I'm going to end with the words of my late father in-law who gave me some great advice, "Don't give up and just do what you can do".
This was a great article. I too believe that class insulates one from a certain degree (or type, maybe) or racism. Even the mulatto experience has significant class elements - they were, after all, overwhelmingly related to rich, powerful White men and women who chose to grant their relatives some of the privileges of being part European more often than not. People tend to focus on skin color, as if it is a magic prize unrelated to class and even gender in some cases. If you've ever met a poor White or lightskinned Black person from the "ghetto" I'm sure you'd agree their whiteness prize hasn't come in the mail quite yet.
And after reading numerous posts from AD Powell huffing and puffing about Blacks who have the NERVE to acknowledge their multiraciality yet still call themselves Black, it seems to me that she is confusing our ethnic identity with a racial identity (hey a lot of us do the same so it's understandable). We do come in all colors and it's not because the Black elites refuse to "defect" and become mulatto or multiracial. Questions about whether there would be a Black ethnic group without slavery or the ODR are interesting but irrelevant because both are major reasons why the group exists. Black people are just like Arabs and Latinos, or Italians and Jews for that matter: Multiracial and culturally centered and it's quite uncontroversial except in colorstruck families. We even discuss our multiracial roots as quiet as it is kept. I can honestly say that I have never, ever met a Black American person who thought they were of 100% African ancestry. 100% Black and 100% African are not the same thing, and the ODR confirms that thinking rather than dispels it.
Blackness is just like whiteness - both are racial identities that developed when European colonization of non-European lands began in the Middle Ages. I'm not as familiar with Arab colonization and racial identity development so I can't speak to that.
I wonder if she has ever met and conversed with actual Black people? You know, just nice and decent people who happen to be dark brown and Bantu-esque and couldn't care less about what some people of African descent call themselves? I guess this is the attitude you end up with when you get hate mail from the oppression traffickers, but that's really no excuse for anyone to make claims about Black people that are plain false.
'
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Very often, when black people see me alone with my white-looking biracial children, they demand to know that I'm going to teach them that they're black. They do this with great seriousness, usually glaring into my eyes as if they caught me about to steal change from the collection plate. (Most whites, on the other hand, either think I'm the nanny or search for a polite way to ask if they're my biological children.) This question is not rhetorical. They wait, squint-eyed and ferocious, for an answer. Much as I'd like to say, "Damn skippy they're black. Holla," the anal-retentive, extra-credit-loving hall monitor in me has to ask: "But why doesn't my husband's culture and DNA count?" Then, without fail, the hysterical, spittle-inflected tirade begins: "They're just niggers to the cops," such a person will say, or "Self-hating" blah blah, "You think whites will accept them?" etc. I can't imagine a more pointless or less dignified discussion.
A.D. are you attempting to suggest that .7 Black admixture plus about 3.2 Indian admixture makes White Americans "mongrels" or better yet one of your 'Mixed Whites'? (some sort of One Drop Rule for social superiors) 