Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
By josh.thomas
Created 12/18/2008 - 12:07
Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
Simone snuggled up beside me and pointed to my face. "Mommy," she said, "is a black girl."
How observant, I thought, for a 3-year-old to make such a distinction. "Yes," I said, "Mommy is a black girl."
"Simone," she continued, "is a white girl." In all the time I had dreamed about being a mother and teaching my daughter about her African and European heritage, nothing had prepared me for a statement like this.
I demanded to know who had told her such a thing, but my question was met with silence.
"Well, you're a black girl," I said, knowing that I wasn't being any more accurate than she had been a few moments earlier.
Simone repeated her newfound knowledge to her father and added, "Daddy is a white boy."
He told her she was neither white nor black. "You have the best of both worlds," he said.
His explanation wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than mine.
For a moment, my mind drifted back to our wedding day in 2001, when raising children seemed so far away, when we were just one of the 1.4 million interracial couples tying the knot. In the 41 years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriages, the numbers continue to rise. In 2006, interracial marriages totaled 3.9 percent of the nation's 59.5 million marriages, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That means there are more families like mine addressing similar questions.
Back inside our Alabama home, I was uncomfortable, as if someone was watching our every move. I knew, by the way Ken and I reacted, that our latest dilemma was significant. If we flubbed this one, the one we had known was coming, how could we possibly be counted on to find the right things to say about boys, drugs, choosing the best college or any of those other tough parenting subjects?
After talking with Francis Wardle, executive director for the Center for the Study of Biracial Children and a father of four biracial children, I realized I was in better shape than I thought. Simone, it turns out, could have come to her conclusion about her race by herself. No one told her she was white.
Children between the ages of 3 and 5, he said, are becoming aware of their physical appearance and starting to make comparisons. Girls, as you would imagine, often do this before boys.
"She has two choices," he said. "She is either the same as you or the same as her father. There isn't a third option." At her age, race is an abstract concept and difficult to grasp.
She's not the only one having a tough time. I sent e-mails to my girlfriends recounting our conversation. There was no way a black woman could deliver a white child. I am her mother, her black mother, the one who carried her for 9 months. Do white mothers carry their biracial children for less time? Yet, too many black-identified Americans think that white mothers should consider themselves no more than incubators for the black father's seed.
My grandmother, though, was sure that was what had happened. Soon after Simone was born, she told me how she felt.
"You didn't do nothing for yourself," she said.
I didn't dare talk back. "Well, Mom was light-skinned," I said.
"Light-skinned? That child ain't light-skinned. She's Caucasian."
I tried to convince her to see things my way. "Don't you think she has my eyes and nose?"
"Nah, she is the spitting image of Ken, like he went, 'puh.'"
"Grandma, don't you think she will have curly hair like mine?"
"What does her hair look like now?"
I knew I couldn't win this argument. "It's straight," I said.
"There you go."
Grandma was wrong about one thing: Simone's hair is curly. When I comb it in the morning, she often wants to look in the mirror and see how many ponytails I have given her and to make sure the ponytail holders match her outfit. "I'm pretty," she says. "You sure are," I say.
I see something else when I look at her in the mirror. I see my late mother, a light-skinned black woman. The truth is, I always figured Simone would look black to herself and to society. I even thought that would be easier for her and for me.
I, for example, know what to say when—not if—the first time someone refers to her using a racial epithet or says something else insensitive. Simone would belong to one, not both worlds.
Now I know better. My job as her black mother is to help her navigate a race-conscious world, and I can't take the easy route. I can't simply explain to my daughter where she came from. I must show her, teach her about her background and how to embrace its significance, and I can't wait until she's old enough to understand.
That means I will buy that American Girl doll with the curly hair and light skin. I will make sure my husband tells her about her white great-grandfather's days as the drum major for the Louisiana State University marching band, and I'll tell her stories about how her black grandfather picked cotton as a child. Together, we will expose her to people who look like her and take her to faraway lands so that she can see people of every color. When we can't do that, we will turn to culture, music and art. I don't want her to have to choose one race over the other like so many interracial children who came before her.
Clearly, the conversation I shared with my daughter is just the beginning. I have no doubt that sometimes we will get it right and sometimes our best intentions will go horribly wrong.
In the end, though, it doesn't matter if my daughter is a black girl or a white girl. What matters most is that we help her develop her own identity just as the many biracial children who have come before her—from Sen. Barack Obama to Halle Berry to Tiger Woods.
I wasn't quite as open-minded as I thought I was on my wedding day. I brought with me a set of ideas that won't hold up to the new shades of reality. My daughter will continue say things about race that I don't want to hear and ask questions I'd rather not answer. In the end, though, it doesn't matter if she is a black girl or a white girl, but that she has a black mother and a white father who are willing to help her figure it out.
Monique Fields is a writer living in Alabama.
Thank goodness that Francis Wardle (also former "Interracial Voice" writer) was there to set this woman straight. Have you noticed that even the most assimilated, intermarried black-identified Americans go into culture shock at the thought of Euro-phenotype relatives with "black blood" calling themselves "white"?
Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
By josh.thomas
Created 12/18/2008 - 12:07
Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
Simone snuggled up beside me and pointed to my face. "Mommy," she said, "is a black girl."
How observant, I thought, for a 3-year-old to make such a distinction. "Yes," I said, "Mommy is a black girl."
"Simone," she continued, "is a white girl." In all the time I had dreamed about being a mother and teaching my daughter about her African and European heritage, nothing had prepared me for a statement like this.
I demanded to know who had told her such a thing, but my question was met with silence.
"Well, you're a black girl," I said, knowing that I wasn't being any more accurate than she had been a few moments earlier.
Simone repeated her newfound knowledge to her father and added, "Daddy is a white boy."
He told her she was neither white nor black. "You have the best of both worlds," he said.
His explanation wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than mine.
For a moment, my mind drifted back to our wedding day in 2001, when raising children seemed so far away, when we were just one of the 1.4 million interracial couples tying the knot. In the 41 years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriages, the numbers continue to rise. In 2006, interracial marriages totaled 3.9 percent of the nation's 59.5 million marriages, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That means there are more families like mine addressing similar questions.
Back inside our Alabama home, I was uncomfortable, as if someone was watching our every move. I knew, by the way Ken and I reacted, that our latest dilemma was significant. If we flubbed this one, the one we had known was coming, how could we possibly be counted on to find the right things to say about boys, drugs, choosing the best college or any of those other tough parenting subjects?
After talking with Francis Wardle, executive director for the Center for the Study of Biracial Children and a father of four biracial children, I realized I was in better shape than I thought. Simone, it turns out, could have come to her conclusion about her race by herself. No one told her she was white.
Children between the ages of 3 and 5, he said, are becoming aware of their physical appearance and starting to make comparisons. Girls, as you would imagine, often do this before boys.
"She has two choices," he said. "She is either the same as you or the same as her father. There isn't a third option." At her age, race is an abstract concept and difficult to grasp.
She's not the only one having a tough time. I sent e-mails to my girlfriends recounting our conversation. There was no way a black woman could deliver a white child. I am her mother, her black mother, the one who carried her for 9 months. Do white mothers carry their biracial children for less time? Yet, too many black-identified Americans think that white mothers should consider themselves no more than incubators for the black father's seed.
My grandmother, though, was sure that was what had happened. Soon after Simone was born, she told me how she felt.
"You didn't do nothing for yourself," she said.
I didn't dare talk back. "Well, Mom was light-skinned," I said.
"Light-skinned? That child ain't light-skinned. She's Caucasian."
I tried to convince her to see things my way. "Don't you think she has my eyes and nose?"
"Nah, she is the spitting image of Ken, like he went, 'puh.'"
"Grandma, don't you think she will have curly hair like mine?"
"What does her hair look like now?"
I knew I couldn't win this argument. "It's straight," I said.
"There you go."
Grandma was wrong about one thing: Simone's hair is curly. When I comb it in the morning, she often wants to look in the mirror and see how many ponytails I have given her and to make sure the ponytail holders match her outfit. "I'm pretty," she says. "You sure are," I say.
I see something else when I look at her in the mirror. I see my late mother, a light-skinned black woman. The truth is, I always figured Simone would look black to herself and to society. I even thought that would be easier for her and for me.
I, for example, know what to say when—not if—the first time someone refers to her using a racial epithet or says something else insensitive. Simone would belong to one, not both worlds.
Now I know better. My job as her black mother is to help her navigate a race-conscious world, and I can't take the easy route. I can't simply explain to my daughter where she came from. I must show her, teach her about her background and how to embrace its significance, and I can't wait until she's old enough to understand.
That means I will buy that American Girl doll with the curly hair and light skin. I will make sure my husband tells her about her white great-grandfather's days as the drum major for the Louisiana State University marching band, and I'll tell her stories about how her black grandfather picked cotton as a child. Together, we will expose her to people who look like her and take her to faraway lands so that she can see people of every color. When we can't do that, we will turn to culture, music and art. I don't want her to have to choose one race over the other like so many interracial children who came before her.
Clearly, the conversation I shared with my daughter is just the beginning. I have no doubt that sometimes we will get it right and sometimes our best intentions will go horribly wrong.
In the end, though, it doesn't matter if my daughter is a black girl or a white girl. What matters most is that we help her develop her own identity just as the many biracial children who have come before her—from Sen. Barack Obama to Halle Berry to Tiger Woods.
I wasn't quite as open-minded as I thought I was on my wedding day. I brought with me a set of ideas that won't hold up to the new shades of reality. My daughter will continue say things about race that I don't want to hear and ask questions I'd rather not answer. In the end, though, it doesn't matter if she is a black girl or a white girl, but that she has a black mother and a white father who are willing to help her figure it out.
Monique Fields is a writer living in Alabama.
Thank goodness that Francis Wardle (also former "Interracial Voice" writer) was there to set this woman straight. Have you noticed that even the most assimilated, intermarried black-identified Americans go into culture shock at the thought of Euro-phenotype relatives with "black blood" calling themselves "white"?
Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
By josh.thomas
Created 12/18/2008 - 12:07
Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
Simone snuggled up beside me and pointed to my face. "Mommy," she said, "is a black girl."
How observant, I thought, for a 3-year-old to make such a distinction. "Yes," I said, "Mommy is a black girl."
"Simone," she continued, "is a white girl." In all the time I had dreamed about being a mother and teaching my daughter about her African and European heritage, nothing had prepared me for a statement like this.
I demanded to know who had told her such a thing, but my question was met with silence.
"Well, you're a black girl," I said, knowing that I wasn't being any more accurate than she had been a few moments earlier.
Simone repeated her newfound knowledge to her father and added, "Daddy is a white boy."
He told her she was neither white nor black. "You have the best of both worlds," he said.
His explanation wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than mine.
For a moment, my mind drifted back to our wedding day in 2001, when raising children seemed so far away, when we were just one of the 1.4 million interracial couples tying the knot. In the 41 years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriages, the numbers continue to rise. In 2006, interracial marriages totaled 3.9 percent of the nation's 59.5 million marriages, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That means there are more families like mine addressing similar questions.
Back inside our Alabama home, I was uncomfortable, as if someone was watching our every move. I knew, by the way Ken and I reacted, that our latest dilemma was significant. If we flubbed this one, the one we had known was coming, how could we possibly be counted on to find the right things to say about boys, drugs, choosing the best college or any of those other tough parenting subjects?
After talking with Francis Wardle, executive director for the Center for the Study of Biracial Children and a father of four biracial children, I realized I was in better shape than I thought. Simone, it turns out, could have come to her conclusion about her race by herself. No one told her she was white.
Children between the ages of 3 and 5, he said, are becoming aware of their physical appearance and starting to make comparisons. Girls, as you would imagine, often do this before boys.
"She has two choices," he said. "She is either the same as you or the same as her father. There isn't a third option." At her age, race is an abstract concept and difficult to grasp.
She's not the only one having a tough time. I sent e-mails to my girlfriends recounting our conversation. There was no way a black woman could deliver a white child. I am her mother, her black mother, the one who carried her for 9 months. Do white mothers carry their biracial children for less time? Yet, too many black-identified Americans think that white mothers should consider themselves no more than incubators for the black father's seed.
My grandmother, though, was sure that was what had happened. Soon after Simone was born, she told me how she felt.
"You didn't do nothing for yourself," she said.
I didn't dare talk back. "Well, Mom was light-skinned," I said.
"Light-skinned? That child ain't light-skinned. She's Caucasian."
I tried to convince her to see things my way. "Don't you think she has my eyes and nose?"
"Nah, she is the spitting image of Ken, like he went, 'puh.'"
"Grandma, don't you think she will have curly hair like mine?"
"What does her hair look like now?"
I knew I couldn't win this argument. "It's straight," I said.
"There you go."
Grandma was wrong about one thing: Simone's hair is curly. When I comb it in the morning, she often wants to look in the mirror and see how many ponytails I have given her and to make sure the ponytail holders match her outfit. "I'm pretty," she says. "You sure are," I say.
I see something else when I look at her in the mirror. I see my late mother, a light-skinned black woman. The truth is, I always figured Simone would look black to herself and to society. I even thought that would be easier for her and for me.
I, for example, know what to say when—not if—the first time someone refers to her using a racial epithet or says something else insensitive. Simone would belong to one, not both worlds.
Now I know better. My job as her black mother is to help her navigate a race-conscious world, and I can't take the easy route. I can't simply explain to my daughter where she came from. I must show her, teach her about her background and how to embrace its significance, and I can't wait until she's old enough to understand.
That means I will buy that American Girl doll with the curly hair and light skin. I will make sure my husband tells her about her white great-grandfather's days as the drum major for the Louisiana State University marching band, and I'll tell her stories about how her black grandfather picked cotton as a child. Together, we will expose her to people who look like her and take her to faraway lands so that she can see people of every color. When we can't do that, we will turn to culture, music and art. I don't want her to have to choose one race over the other like so many interracial children who came before her.
Clearly, the conversation I shared with my daughter is just the beginning. I have no doubt that sometimes we will get it right and sometimes our best intentions will go horribly wrong.
In the end, though, it doesn't matter if my daughter is a black girl or a white girl. What matters most is that we help her develop her own identity just as the many biracial children who have come before her—from Sen. Barack Obama to Halle Berry to Tiger Woods.
I wasn't quite as open-minded as I thought I was on my wedding day. I brought with me a set of ideas that won't hold up to the new shades of reality. My daughter will continue say things about race that I don't want to hear and ask questions I'd rather not answer. In the end, though, it doesn't matter if she is a black girl or a white girl, but that she has a black mother and a white father who are willing to help her figure it out.
Monique Fields is a writer living in Alabama.
Thank goodness that Francis Wardle (also former "Interracial Voice" writer) was there to set this woman straight. Have you noticed that even the most assimilated, intermarried black-identified Americans go into culture shock at the thought of Euro-phenotype relatives with "black blood" calling themselves "white"?
What Wardle told her
Quote:
"She has two choices," he said. "She is either the same as you or the same as her father. There isn't a third option." At her age, race is an abstract concept and difficult to grasp.
seemed to not quite sink in, in my opinion. He specifically was talking about her AGE. His observation here makes sense to me and this whole situation reminds me of how my White mother helped her two mixed daughters (me and my older sister) come to understand who/what we are. She says we asked her "Am I White since you're White?" To which she responded, "How can you be White when your father is Black?" So, our question was "Then, am I Black since Daddy is Black?" And her reply was, "How can you be Black when I am White?" In other words, she helped us grasp the fact that we were both.
Yet, the mother in this article ends up with these thoughts
Quote:
In the end, though, it doesn't matter if my daughter is a black girl or a white girl.
Quote:
In the end, though, it doesn't matter if she is a black girl or a white girl, but that she has a black mother and a white father who are willing to help her figure it out.
She doesn't seem to be considering the possibility that her daughter WILL have a third option, an option of mixed/mulatto/biracial/black&white/neither&both. Just because that option might not occur naturally to a small child, doesn't mean it's not an option and it doesn't mean she won't come to that conclusion on her own in a few years. Did the mother misunderstand Wardle's input?
Posted: Mon 16 Feb 2009 05:49 Post subject: correction
The mother, Rebecca, had two daughters, both named Anna Maria. The first, by her German missionary husband, died as a small child. Her second child was also named Anna Maria, which causes some confusion. Sensbach's book, Rebecca's Revival, does confirm that second husband Christian Protten (half Danish, half West African) is the father of the child in the portrait.
A Separate Canaan by Jon F. Sensbach
Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity
by Jon F. Sensbach
Posted: Wed 01 Jul 2009 16:15 Post subject: Can racial definitions solve our race problems?
I like that the words and images posted here, about people of African descent, informs the public that appearance is unreliable for predicting race. By contrast, I find it disturbing that so much energy is applied to defining people racially, with the implication being that the less African blood you have, the better. This is especially confusing when the one thing we all have in common is that we are of African descent. People of African descent won't respect themselves, and they won't be respected, until they elevate being African to something that is not fearful or shameful. A *Diasporan can puff out their chest and declare 4/5 white blood, but as long as they think the white blood is what gives them value, they will feel inferior to the white person who declares 100% white blood!
Instead of people of African descent identifying themselves by how much African blood they don’t have, we should have an all inclusive name, like Diasporan, which identifies our historic African connection, but that is not racial. We are the only people on the planet telling others that we are not what we look like racially, if we look African; or explaining that we look the way that we do because we are not entirely African.
The culture of racism was put on us, but we won't be free of it until we throw it off. I think that President Obama is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, namely, he identifies inclusively, African-American, but he owns all that he is by openly referencing relatives who are not of African descent. One mentor of Barack said that he knew him for 20 years without learning that he is bi-racial.
Barack faces the world with what they see of him, but he doesn't hide what he is, he just doesn't make a point of it. I would venture a bet that white looking Diasporans don't go around telling people not to judge them by their looks because they have African blood. That is, with the exception of Carol Channing. It's people who look like they are of African descent, but who try to minimize their African roots by pointing to their otherness.
There is a woman in my neighborhood who looks like an average Diasporan, but after five minutes in her company, she will tell you that she is French, and she doesn't mean that she was born in France. I actually believe that she is telling the truth about her family’s French ancestry, but it is obviously joined with African ancestors as well, but her family does not acknowledge their African ancestry.
It is sad, undignified and boring, to witness a person anxiously explain, over and over again, that they are not what they looks like, or that they look like they do, because they are not entirely African. But perhaps the worse thing is that it’s divisive of Diasporans. I saw a mixed race website with a Diasporan woman pictured with her two children. The girl looks white and was described by a racial name, and the brown skinned boy was given another racial name. Is this how we want to define ourselves, so race conscious until a brother and sister are divided by more or less African blood? I don’t think so.
*Diasporan: A descendant of a survivor of the African diaspora.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 444 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Wed 01 Jul 2009 17:03 Post subject:
Anyone living outside of Africa today is a survivor or a descendant of survivors of the African diaspora, and a significant portion of those living in Africa are as well.
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