Guest Post: Awkward Silences

Posted by Martha on March 11, 2014

Today’s guest post is from one of my newer internet friends. She is a single mama, like me. She also reminds me of myself about a decade and more ago when I started trying to really understand racism. She is Only-Mama, a blogger, a single mom, but most importantly, a deep thinker who acknowledges her lack of understanding and wants to change that in herself. I love this post because I can relate to it on many levels, on both sides of the coin, and I appreciate her taking the time to guest post for me a second time on the topic of race.

I am a white woman, primarily raised around white people. I have always considered myself to be as non-racist as possible, given my isolation from other races. In my heart, I believe I don’t judge others based on color, and I think I manage to avoid believing or perpetuating stereotypes. But sometimes I get it wrong, and my first clue is the awkward silence.

When you are a white girl like me, you say stupid things on occasion without realizing why you just said the wrong thing. For example, I had a coworker whose daughter was pregnant the same time that I was, so we talked a lot about pregnancy and infants during coffee break. One day she showed me a picture of her adorable grandbaby.

NEW GRANDMA: Isn’t she the cutest little ewok?
(baby girl has curly hair up in two round puffy ponytails on top of her head. Absolutely adorable!)
ME: She is absolutely adorable!

Later that week, grandma, me and a white coworker were looking at pictures.
ME to white coworker: Isn’t she the cutest little ewok?
NEW GRANDMA: deafening silence.

Apparently white people can’t call black babies ewoks to other white people. I wasn’t trying to be dehumanizing, I was just using her word. I didn’t know that I didn’t have a right to use it.

I had a longer discussion with a different black coworker about calling black kids monkeys.

TEE: And so WHITE FRIEND came up to me at Target and my kids were hanging off the sides of my grocery cart, and can you believe she called them monkeys?
ME: But what is wrong with that? I call my own kids monkeys all the time!
TEE: But you can’t call a black kid a monkey!
ME: But they were hanging off the cart like monkeys!
TEE: I can call them monkeys, but white people can’t.
ME: But isn’t it racist that white kids can be monkeys and black kids can’t?
TEE: Porch monkey? Hello?
(A porch monkey is a derogatory term meaning that the person is lazy. Laziness is a negative stereotype often attributed to black people.)

I had honestly never thought of that. I was glad that Tee had told her story and was willing to spell it out for me. I learned more than if she had just gone with awkward silence.

There are other negative stereotypes that are good enough reasons why black children shouldn’t be called monkeys. For a white kid, it’s not a big deal because they don’t have the background of stereotypes depicting their ancestors as sub-humans, lazy, and ignorant. But black children do, and should never be called a monkey

Now, you may think it is ridiculous that a white person would even think to call a black kid a monkey, but we don’t always think in terms of racism. If my kid is a monkey, and your kid can’t be a monkey, that’s a racial division I don’t always think of. (This is a sign of white privilege.)

Insensitivity, sure. Wrong, yes. But when you become friends with someone you don’t always remember to be sensitive, and words come out and fall on the floor with a thud met by silence.

Time and again I have put my foot in my mouth and have had no clue until I am hit by the awkward silence, and I really don’t want to be offensive. I need someone to clue me in. I don’t know how to ask for this though. When I am shown my ignorance, I don’t know how to bridge the divide my words have just made, and I really want to.

Maybe next time, instead of changing the subject, I can have the guts to say, “Wow, I obviously said something wrong! I’m sorry.” And maybe whomever I am speaking to will have the generosity to tell me why my words hurt. I want to be better, I just need a little help growing.

Only-Mama is primarily a single parenting blog where I try to examine my moments of failure as well as my successes and don’t talk about being single as much as I intended. I am occasionally deep and insightful, more often light-hearted and irrelevant, and I have a propensity to discuss my underwear more than is appropriate. Thanks toMomsoap for allowing me an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone.

This guest post is part of a series for Black History Month. If you are interested in contributing, please see this post for more details. Or go directly to my Submit Guest Posts page.

A White Woman’s View on Race, From Detroit

Posted by Martha on March 3, 2014

This is the next post in my guest series on racism, which I am extending indefinitely. I have decided that one month is not enough to devote to this topic. I want to let people have the opportunity to discuss race in an open and honest way.

This post is written by a former coworker of mine from many years ago. I like this post because it is way more raw than much of the writing here on this blog. To be frank, it is an insider’s look at an academically uneducated view on race from the white person. It is not a hateful view, but a limited one.

It does have some things in it I disagree with, academically. But instead of having the author change them to fit my views, I decided to leave them in, but I feel pressed to make sure that I point out a couple of things.

In this post, the author mentions “reverse racism.” Her views are honest. So I left it in, because the notion of “reverse racism” still runs rampant in our society.

Academically, this notion is flawed. But because white people generally do not understand racism, or feel it personally when they do not hate, it is a common misconception in the white community.

I felt it myself, for a long time, until I began to understand the difference between racism and prejudice. Anyone can be prejudiced. But according to critical race theory, racism is something that black people in America cannot be, simply because racism is too deeply ingrained in society. Because we live in a culture of institutionalized racism, one does not need to be black-hating racist in order to still be defined as a racist. You simply are because you were born into this societal fabric. On the opposing view, one can be in the minority and can hate, or be prejudiced against the majority, but that does not make that person a racist. They are simply prejudiced against the status quo.

And with that, I give you a raw and honest look at a white woman’s view on race. From love with Detroit.

Ok, let me start off by saying, I plan to be open and honest, but will probably not be.

Not that I’m going to lie, but let’s be honest here. This is a hot button topic, and anything said about race will set someone off, so you need to tread lightly.

Second thing is, I’m a bit of a rambler, I don’t really even know what I’m going to say, so bear with me.

I like to think of myself as a non-judgmental person. I don’t judge people on their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, whatever. I do, however, judge people based on their personalities. So, I can’t understand why people would lump groups of people together based on anything other than their personalities.

My Experiences with Other Races

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. In about the third grade I became close friends with a girl who was mixed. Mom white, dad black. Mom was remarried to a white guy, and she had a younger half brother. I never really thought anything about her being mixed, she was just my friend.

We both loved to sing and dance, her mom had a jukebox, so we would hang out at her house, playing oldies, singing and dancing.

About a year later, I had my first run in with racism. We were walking home one day, and a car started following us, pacing us. We kept walking, aware that there was someone following, but ignoring them. Next thing I know the person started yelling racist remarks, to both of us. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but I was in awe. They drove off. It was eye opening, because I realized then, that this is something she dealt with on a regular basis.

Later that year, members of the KKK were outside the school, handing out flyers, spreading their hate, and it was then I realized that there was true hate in this world.

In middle school I went to school with a new mix of kids, I added Jewish, and even more black kids to my group of friends. I again, never thought twice about it, they were people I got along with, people I liked.

I, again, was to be shocked –by a family member–when I started dating a Jewish boy. I was told that there was nothing wrong with people who were Jewish, but that I shouldn’t date them. I was also told the same thing, when I later, started dating black boys.

None of this changed my views, I still looked at people as people. I didn’t understand why, when I went to the mall with my friends who were black, we were followed through the department stores by the employees there, in fact, asked to leave the store at one point, when all we were doing was walking through the store to get to the main part of the mall.

Feeling My Own Prejudice

In high school I was lucky enough to be invited to be part of the Horizons Upward-Bound program. It’s a wonderful program, that includes kids from Pontiac, Detroit and Berkley. To be invited, you have to pass tests, be the first member of your family to attend college, be from a low income family, and have a high IQ.

During the summer, we stayed on campus, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, for six weeks. We slept in the dorms, and on weekend, we had free run of the campus. This was when I feel I fully understood what it must feel like to be a minority. The very first day I was there, after I got my room, I went to the cafeteria, to eat lunch and I was taken aback. I didn’t know anyone at all in the room, not even anyone from my own city of Berkley.

There were, say, 400 students there, and maybe 40 of them were white, and included in the white students were people of Hispanic origin, Asians, and Middle Easterners.

I had never been in that situation. I was scared. Not because of any reason other than, I was the minority, I didn’t fit in. I found my roommate, who was Hispanic, and we went and sat at a table together in the back. There were two tables, further back, but those were only for the Seniors. The rest of the table was all white.

But as the summers went on, I made a lot of friends there. From Detroit, and Pontiac. My Sophomore year I had my eyes opened, yet again. That was the year I discovered “reverse racism”

I was dating a black guy, and a couple of his friends (black), were dating other white girls. We were all a big group of friends, so we were all pretty close. The boys informed us one day that a teacher had them stay after class so he could talk to them about dating white girls. He thought it was a shame that they would date white girls when there were perfectly fine black girls to date, that if they kept doing this, they would be killing their race.

I was again in awe, and lost complete respect for this teacher. And it was then I realized that no matter what race you were, you could be racist.

I’ve learned things in my adult life, how racist people are.

I have had to wait on people that I knew to be Nazis, I have had to deal with people of other races using their race to get out of things, and when I brought the fact that they weren’t doing their job to my bosses attention, they said I was racist.

I currently work in a mixed neighborhood, we have just as many black customers as white, most of my co-workers are black, and I have been told, by not only co-workers, but by customers, that I may be white on the outside but black on the inside.

I find I can fit in with any group of people pretty much, black, white, Jewish, Christian, Pagan, all sexual orientations, I look at myself as a chameleon. I was once accused of being fake, because of my ability to do that, but I’m not fake. I look at it as I have many, many parts of me, and that allows me to fit in with everyone.

Teaching My Daughter My Views

I have raised my daughter to do the same thing, look on the inside, not the outside. If I don’t like you, it has nothing to do with your physical appearance, it has everything to do with your behavior. If you act rude, or ignorant, I’m not going to give you any respect, but if you carry yourself like a decent human being, treating others with kindness and respect, I will treat you the same.

It’s a shame that it is the year 2014, and people are still having to discuss racism. I don’t understand why people have such hatred inside of them. I think that people are people, and everyone is equal.

I think everyone should have the same chances as everyone else, and that there shouldn’t be special treatment for anyone.

I just hope that maybe, this can inspire someone else to think twice before judging someone else. And I’m proud to say that I am “black on the inside”, but to me, I’m just me.

It’s a shame that personality traits are viewed as one race or another, or that people can’t be just viewed as people, but have to be typecast because they can fit in with other people.

Crystal Breger is a white woman in the suburbs of Detroit, which is one of the few metropolitan cities in the country that has a majority of African Americans. She is a wife and mother to one, in a white, monoracial family.

This guest post is part of a series that I initiated during Black History Month. This guest series has been extended indefinitely. If you are interested in contributing, please see this post for more details. Or go directly to my Submit Guest Posts page.

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Guest Post: Practicing How to Act in a World of Privilege, Where You Have None

Posted by Martha on February 25, 2014

Today’s guest post is from a blogger who I’ve known online for a while. She’s guest posted for me before, here. Jen Marshall Duncan is a teacher, and also mom and wife in a biracial family. She understands racism well enough to teach black students about how to act in a world where they will be judged based on their skin color. She is insightful, articulate and intelligent. I am very glad that she agreed to write another post for me.

I am in my second year of teaching a class full of students who are all young black men. I do not look at the boys in my class and see only their skin color, their sagging pants, or their hoodies. I do not feel fear when they posture, flash signs, or rant about the things that make them angry. (In fact, the white kids I used to teach did the same things.) I do not feel fear when I see young black men at all–I feel love. I want to hug them.

I look at most young black men and feel the same warmth I feel when I see my own son. Then a minute later I feel my whiteness, and I want to apologize on behalf of a society that has all but abandoned them by making assumptions about their worth and their future. I want to teach them to navigate the ways of our predominantly white school/city/state/country.

I say things to my students like, “There are white people who will be afraid of you no matter what just because you are a young black man. You may think it’s not your job to make them feel comfortable, and that it’s not fair that you have to act a certain way. You’re right–it’s not fair. But the fact is that if you don’t try to protect yourself by learning the ways of white society, it can get you in trouble. In this town (state/country), it is proven that your word isn’t as believable as a white person’s.” (Questlove describes the way that feels here.)

Because the truth is exposed time and time again that anyone who is not white or straight or male or well-to-do is treated differently in our society, my class is about practicing how to act.

We practice what to say and what to do in white society that will help us be successful. We practice applying and interviewing for jobs. We practice how to behave in a predominantly white setting. We practice what to do when the police stop them (because the police will stop them).

In short, I try to teach the boys in my class how to protect themselves in a white society that is plagued by racism.

I do the same thing at home when I teach my own biracial children how to navigate a system that doesn’t acknowledge the half of them that is white. Most white people don’t look at my son and say, “There’s a nice white boy,” or even, “Look at that handsome mixed boy!” They see him as a young black man–exactly the same as the boys I teach.

As young black people, there are certain safety lessons that both my children and my students need to learn:

Don’t carry a big bag into a store or you may be accused of theft.

When you’re driving, keep your hands on the wheel if an officer stops you, so he doesn’t think you’re reaching for a weapon.

Always be respectful so no one can arrest you for disorderly conduct when no other charge will stick.

Be smarter, more polite, better than you think you need to be–because it will be hard to make some people believe who you really are.

Sometimes I feel like I am giving my students the key to a locked room, and I know that there are white people out there who would view me as a traitor to my race for giving them that key. I want my students to not only to survive, but to thrive in this world, and I will do whatever I can to help them.

I want them to make it in life with the same fervor that I want my own children to make it. In fact, I care about them like they are my own kids–unconditionally.

And even though it took a while, they feel it. The boys in my class know how much I care, and they reciprocate. One calls me his OG. Another calls me his “white momma.”

I am both honored and a little worried by their nicknames for me. The first time I was called someone’s “OG,” I said, “I am not an OG! I am a middle-aged white woman!”

I am so touched that they think of me as one of their own, but I would never ever presume to be something other than what I am: a white teacher with a black family who sees reality. I care deeply about my students, and I care about trying to right the wrongs of racism.

I am honored that they give me respect and count me as part of their community. At the same time I am totally embarrassed by my privilege.

I didn’t ask to be the one person in the room who has more access to tools of success just because I am white.

I didn’t ask to be the one person in the room who doesn’t get followed around in stores to make sure I’m not shoplifting just because I’m white.

I didn’t ask to be the one person in the room who can drive home every night for years and years without being stopped by a police officer.

I didn’t earn those privileges–yet I have them. That’s embarrassing. Shameful even.

I truly wish I could share more than words and practice sessions with my students. I’d love to share white privilege. Wouldn’t it be something if all white people shared their privilege?

I mean is there a finite amount of the stuff? Will the world run out of privilege if it’s handed out to everyone?

Try to imagine what it would be like if we extended privilege to all. When I do, I see a world based on mutual respect….where I’d need to find some new material to teach in my class…and that would be a very, very good thing.

Jen Marshall Duncan lives in Iowa and blogs at empatheia, where she writes about her experiences in a mixed race marriage, raising 3 biracial children, and her experiences as a teacher of kids who don’t fit into traditional high school settings.

This guest post is part of a series for Black History Month. If you are interested in contributing, please see this post for more details. Or go directly to my Submit Guest Posts page.

Guest Post: A Letter to My Daughter

Posted by Martha on February 18, 2014

Today’s guest post is from a former classmate in Detroit. She writes a letter I could have half written myself. The parts she writes to her daughter about what may be to come are things I have thought myself. The worries about the cruelties she may have to suffer in school without my protection. I can’t relate to the parts about being targeted, but I do remember hearing hurtful things in school. This is a letter that all parents to children of color will be able to relate to. The knowledge and worry about what your child will almost certainly endure at too young of an age.

Dear Jade,

As I write this, I think of you, my little love – tucked snugly away in your bed tonight. Cherubic. Dreaming.

You’re only four years old and so blissfully unaware of any feeling other than the love that exists within the walls of our home.

You are treasured. You are loved. You’re my baby girl.

As your mother, I wish I could shield you from all of the ugliness and injustices that exist in this world.

Someday, your peers or their parents, may comment on my nationality. They may ask why my eyes look more almond-shaped than yours. They could be kind about it. Or, they could be cruel.

I wish I could tell you that there’s no such thing as racism, bigotry and prejudice – that these are as imaginary as the monsters under your bed.

But, I can’t.

So, before I send you out into this big, beautiful world to secure your place in it– I want you to understand that there is also an unpleasant side to it. There’s a shadowy underbelly to our nation’s history—and to human nature itself. You will learn some of this from textbooks – in History class. And, some of this you will have to learn on your own.

I did.

I had my first taste of racism in kindergarten.

It was then, over paste and construction paper and finger-paints, that one little boy called another little boy the “n-word.”

At the time, I didn’t understand the true weight, the sheer hatefulness, of the word. And, most likely, neither did the little boy using it. But, the look on the other kid’s face told me all that I needed to know.

It wasn’t until I got home, and I asked my parents (your grandparents) what it meant, that I truly understood.

Of course, I got the watered-down, “after-school special” definition of the term, but the point was still made: Don’t ever say it. It’s cruel. It’s hateful. It’s racist.

The second dose of racism came in middle school. Only, this time, I was the target.

It came shortly after our class was required to present a “family tree” assignment that detailed both sides of our family – going back at least three generations. Until then, I don’t think many of my classmates were aware that I was of half-Chinese descent. But, they were after that.

And, after that day, they never let me forget it.

Words like “chink,” “Jap,” “slope” and “gook,” were spat at me by kids I had known most of my life.

Again, I had no idea what those words meant at the time. But, they were uttered with such venom, through gritted-teeth by my classmates. And, they were almost always muttered in hushed-tones – so that no authority figure would hear.

And, after I looked up each word, one by one, in the dictionary, I knew why.

These words – harsh and cold and cruel — were designed to wound. To label me. To marginalize me, strip me of my individuality and make me feel like less of a person. And, for a time, it worked.

Each day, every slur seemed to chisel away at my self-esteem. After a while, I faked illnesses to avoid going to school. I lost interest in my classes. I held my head a little lower.

It took me a long time to view my heritage – our heritage– as beautiful and unique and not as some sort of genetic curse that made me stand out as a subject of ridicule.

I never want you to feel as I had. And, my hope is to raise you to be the kind of person who would never make anyone else feel that way.

Be kind. Be compassionate. Be better than the people who, one day, may try to steal your light or those who wish to extinguish the light of others.

Stick up for yourself. Stick up for those who are too fearful to stand up for themselves.

Have the courage that I never did when racism was staring me straight in the face.

Don’t run. Don’t cower.

Stand proud.

Know you are more than the label someone may affix to you.

Know your worth, because I do.

Love always,

Mommy

Bio: Andrea K. Farmer is a single mom living in the Detroit area who works for a major metropolitan newspaper. The loves of her life are her little girl, Jade, and writing. She is currently working on a fiction novel.

This guest post is part of a series for Black History Month where writers/bloggers talk about their feelings and thoughts about race and how it affects their every day lives. For more info on this see this post or see my Submit Guest Posts page.

Guest Post: Not So Fantastic

Posted by Martha on February 10, 2014

Today’s guest post is from a friend. He’s a dad in an interracial relationship with two kids. Mark is a very thoughtful man, someone who I am proud to have guest posting on my blog. He’s not a blogger. But he is an author and shares a male/dad point of view on how media affects him and his children’s outlook on life.

A couple of weeks ago, my kid told me some things that made my geek dad heart soar for about a minute, until some grim realizations sunk in.

On our way to pick up a Saturday night fast food dinner, my daughter decided to take the opportunity to workshop a comic book story she planned to flesh out later. It centered on all of the members of our family having superpowers. She gave me super strength, her mother super intelligence, and her brother super speed. “But what about me?” she wondered. “I know! I have a great imagination, so I’ll be like Green Lantern. I’ll have a ring that lets me do whatever I imagine!”

This thrilled me because Green Lantern typically gets less love than other super heroes. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and so many others are very evident and obvious in their powers and how those powers manifest. It can be difficult for younger children to understand a superhero whose power stem from his will and his mind. So I had a big grin when she said that. Points to me and her for picking Green Lantern!

It’s too true that pride goeth before a fall though, because the thought that followed that one shook me out of my joy. One day my daughter will open up a Green Lantern comic – or really any mainstream comic book – and quickly realize that no one looks like her…because she’s a young black woman.

Before I go forward with this blog entry, let me go back in time a bit.

In the spring of 1984, I wandered into a 7-11 and saw the first issue of Marvel’s Secret Wars, the forerunner for pretty much every epic comic book crossover. I knew that comic book represented a special moment when first I saw it, and it took me about twenty-five years to find an additional layer of specialness in it: the cover to Secret Wars #1 features three black super heroes, none of whom are related and none of whom are good friends – they aren’t even all on the same team [1]. I don’t know if this is something that has been repeated on a comic book cover – mainstream or independent – since that time.

Can you find the three black super heroes?

And there’s still another layer of awesome to that cover: two of the three are black women. If you’re not trippin’ yet, hold on because I’m about to take you still deeper: yep, there’s another layer to this cover, though it involves things that happened after the issue hit the stands. Those two black female superheroes would later go on to be leaders of their respective teams.

This is all excellent, right? You’d be forgiven if you found yourself thinking that over the course of 30 damn years, we’d have seen a nice upward trajectory for the representation of black women in comics and speculative fiction (sci-fi/fantasy books, TV shows, movies and video games).

But I wouldn’t be writing this guest blog entry if we had.

I wish I knew what happened. I suspect that much of what Sojourner Truth and bell hooks have said about how women of color, black women in particular, are forgotten when progress is made for women has played a role. I know that if the comic book industry let me write The Fantastic Four, given the metaphors and social commentary inherent in the nature of the characters (e.g., the brash young man is fiery, the loyal friend is rock solid), I’d make the Invisible Woman be an African-American woman.

After all, where are the prominent black women in some of the larger speculative fiction properties of the last few years? I’ll wait while you count them in Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Disney’s Princess line, and Star Trek.

……

Okay, I gave you time to think about all of those properties, each with many dozens of characters, many with very strong female characters, and I bet you still came up with only a few more than that funny book featured on its cover in 1984 – and you likely accomplished that by getting fuzzy with definition of “prominent”. Some of the only speculative fiction properties that do feature a black woman in a major supporting role – for example, The Walking Dead and Sleepy Hollow – are way too intense to share with my daughter.

Confession time: I don’t know what happened…and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m a writer, but I’m also the Man in Black to the publishing world: I am no one of consequence. (I’m also smiling because I am not left-handed.)

I know that many authors and directors simply don’t listen when one raises this issue. By contrast, when Lena Dunham got called out for the lack of black women in Girls, she didn’t immediately go on the defensive/offensive or offer lame excuses about marketing and “numbers,” she acknowledged the problem and indicated that she’d give some thought to how to make it better. The only speculative fiction creator I could see responding in that manner to a similar call out is, in the immortal words of David Tenant as the 10^th Doctor, “good ol’ JK.”

Ultimately, I guess I have to content myself with this knowledge: for all their imagination and the awards the Powers That Be behind so many of these properties give themselves for their epic imaginations, the fact that my daughter can see herself as a prominent superhero while they cannot means that if a dying alien with an artifact of incredibly advanced science ever crashes on Earth and seeks a worthy human being to wield the power of that artifact, my daughter is far more likely to be chosen than any of them.

[1] The three are Iron Man (Jim Rhodes, played first by Terence Howard then by Don Cheadle in the movies), Storm (of the X-Men), and Captain Marvel (the backstory to that name and the character who claimed it at that time would take up more space than I have for this blog entry; long story short, in 1984, Marvel Comics’ Captain Marvel was a black woman from Louisiana).

Mark Power-Freeman is the author of The Face Value Blues, a sci-fi/fantasy novel set in the Jazz Age. In his day job, he’s a creative director at a design consultancy company located in Austin, and he’s dabbled in everything from acting and modeling to screenwriting to tech support to teaching.

Guest Post: Interracial Relationships & Identity

Posted by Martha on February 6, 2014

Today’s post is a guest post from a long time internet friend and fellow biracial mama. To many of you, she will need no introduction. For those who don’t know Ellie, she’s awesome. Her blog, Musing Momma covers parenting two biracial boys; parenting in general; and she has lots of great resources.

In the few years that I’ve been connected to Ellie, I have to say this was, hands down, one of my favorite posts that she’s written and I was very excited that she offered to share it with me and this blog.

This is the kind of post that just goes to show that no matter who you’re connected to and how, it is always valuable to really examine your core values and attitudes about race and racism.

I’ve written this post and rewritten it and started it over at least three times now, until finally I resolved to just write it! And I realized that trying to capture the experience of being in an interracial marriage and part of a multiracial family is too complicated and personal to do justice to in a single post. I will have to do it in bits and pieces, so that maybe eventually it all fits together like a puzzle and I can step back and say, Yes, that is the picture, more or less.

I’d like to say that race doesn’t figure into my thoughts or perceptions. I’m married to a black man and my sons are biracial. So it seems like I should be color-blind myself, thinking of race only when the outside world brings it up or when considering how to raise my children to be proud and at-ease with their racial identities. It seems like I should hold no stereotypes of my own about race, no doubts or insecurities. That would be wonderful. But it’s not the truth.

The truth is this.

The truth is that I thought about race before I decided to date my husband and race made me hesitate. I didn’t worry how my family would feel, but I worried what my friends would say. I went to college in the south and I knew, without a doubt, that some of my friends weren’t down with interracial dating. I was scared that someone would react negatively and I would be disappointed and hurt by that. I didn’t want to be disappointed and hurt by my friends.

Fortunately, my husband’s charms are irresistible and I ultimately decided that, friends be damned, this was the guy for me. And, fortunately, I had underestimated my friends, none of whom batted an eye when they found out Hubby was black. (At least, if they did, they hid it very well.)

The truth is that when we finished grad school and moved to a new town, I was aware that the fact my partner was black would affect how people saw me. By that point in my life, I was aware of racial stereotypes. Plus, let’s face it – people have certain stereotypes about white girls who date black guys, and those stereotypes aren’t very flattering. Ugh.

The truth is, I’m more concerned than I’d like to be with how people perceive me, so I developed this tendency to mention – sooooo off-handedly – that my husband and I met in grad school and that he works at Impressive Employer and that we’re married. You know, clearly he is an upstanding black man and I am not that white girl. If we were out at a restaurant and I noticed someone looking at us, I might find a way to “casually” make sure my wedding ring was in view. At some point, something about what I was doing felt wrong, but I couldn’t quite explain it. The one day after Zippy was born, while walking across the parking lot of the grocery store, it dawned on me what I was doing and why, and it became disturbingly evident to me that I was feeding into racism myself. I was buying into the notion that to be respected and accepted my husband needed to be a certain “kind” of black man and I was selling out the whole black community – including my children – in the process.

The more I’ve thought about this, the more the bottom line of all this has become clear: Every single person deserves respect and consideration. Every. Single. Person. And while I truly believe this in my heart, it wasn’t being reflected by my behavior, which was suggesting that my husband needed to be a certain kind of black guy to be respected and accepted in the white community.

After this realization – that I was making these points about my husband because I was aware of the stereotypes and because I cared so much what others thought – I was able to back off. Yes, thankfully, awareness gives us the power to change.

A couple of months ago I came across this fantastic post by Jennifer Shewmaker that helped explain I was experiencing: Identity contingencies. As Jennifer explains:

“These are those things about our identities … that we know will lead others to believe certain things about us. What’s interesting about identity contingencies, is that they are based on our social identity, not what we think of ourselves but what we believe others think about us. Many of these contingencies are based on stereotypes. We ourselves don’t have to believe or accept the stereotype to be forced to deal with the contingencies; it’s enough for others to believe it. Or, in the case of stereotype threat, it’s enough for us to even be aware that someone else might believe a certain stereotype about us.”

Being a white person in an interracial relationship or being parent to children of color creates a whole new part of our social identity.

The truth is, it is one thing to be outraged as a white person at racism. But being personally affected, knowing that people may (mis)perceive me because of my family’s racial make-up, threw me into new territory. I don’t want to be seen in a negative light and I sure don’t want my kids to be subject to any negative perceptions, so sometimes I try to ward off others’ potential stereotyping. But this doesn’t address the real issue, which is that those stereotypes and prejudices shouldn’t shape how we perceive and treat people in the first place.

The truth is having children has motivated me in a major way to examine my own perceptions and subconscious reactions, because I want my kids to feel proud of who they are and their community(s), and that means recognizing and fighting my own stereotypes, however ashamed and embarrassed I am of them. As I think about raising my sons to be healthy, responsible, caring individuals, I realize how much the stereotypes and racism inherent in our culture have infiltrated my own psyche, like some stealthy virus.

The truth is, we all must be honest about how living in a race-conscious world affects our own attitudes and assumptions. I hope that the fact I am aware and trying to change how I think about certain situations counts for something. Sometimes I see or read about other parents of biracial kids who just seem so perfectly at ease with the race thing, but then I think that most of us are probably fighting the internal fight to see every person as an individual, to keep at bay those negative associations that our culture and media infiltrate us with.

The truth is, it’s a work in progress, an evolution, to be sure. I find myself wondering if other white people in interracial relationships and multiracial families go through similar stages. The pause before making the choice to date someone of a different race. The sudden awareness that all of those negative stereotypes now affect YOU very directly. Realizing upon the birth of your children that you need to fight those stereotypes tooth and nail – fight your own stereotypes – so that your kids can grow up in a world that sees them as nothing but the shining stars they are. Realizing that fighting this fight for your family and your child means fighting it for every person of color.

As wife and mother in a multiracial family, Ellie often writes about the intersection of race and family and her experience raising two African-American/white sons. She blogs at Musing Momma where she shares honest and personal stories ranging from reflections on motherhood to tips for raising healthy and (relatively) well-behaved kids. She is also the Family Room Editor at BonBon Break, an on-line magazine that showcases exceptional blogs. Ellie resides in central Pennsylvania with her husband and their two adorably mischievous boys, ages 4 and 7.

This guest post is part of a series for Black History Month. If you are interested in contributing, please see this post for more details. Or go directly to my Submit Guest Posts page.

Guest Post: Growing Up As A Dot Rat

Posted by Martha on January 23, 2014

This is part of a guest posting series where I’m calling for submissions, asking for bloggers (and anyone else) to write about experiences involving their thoughts on race and racism. I’m specifically targeting white authors, however, one does not need to be white to submit to this series. Blog posts must show thought and growth in attitudes surrounding race, culture, racism, and the racial divide in the United States.

I want to make this a safe place, for white people in particular, to explore their thoughts and attitudes and past experiences with the racial divide. One of the pieces of white privilege is that we don’t think about race or skin color. The criticism is that it is part of our privilege. However, I see it is a deficiency in our character. Thinking about how racism affects our world, and participating in other cultures has increased my view of the world and enriched my life.

So with that, I am looking for most posts like this from people who wish to explore experiences and thoughts relating to their own growth or questions about race, culture, skin color, and racism in the United States.

If you’d like to submit a guest post, please head on over to this page to read more about what I’m looking for. I am looking for posts that show thought and growth. Anyone is welcome to submit, no matter your skin color and you don’t have to be a blogger, either.

My second post is from an anonymous blogger, Suck At Home Mom. I grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a fairly poor neighborhood in Boston. When I was a child, my family was the only white one in the school, but at the time I didn’t pay attention to my whiteness vs the blackness of my neighborhood.

Everyone in my neighborhood was black, and my very Italian family was dark enough that it never occurred to me that I was different. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking in a mirror, but if I had maybe I would have understood a little more some of the looks I would get walking around my block. My coloring came courtesy of my father’s relatives, Scottish immigrants with fair skin and blue eyes. My red hair surely set me apart from the rest of my family as well as the rest of my neighborhood.

We lived next door to a three decker, and in it lived several generations of the same family with kids and parents and grandparents. There was a girl named Tara, who had a crush on one of my brothers. With them lived, a pastor or reverend of some sort, I think.

It was the reverend who was so kind the day I yelled the most common racial epithet (yes, that one) at one of his grandchildren; I had no idea what it meant, but my cousins and I were yelling back and forth, at the grandchildren and when one of my cousins yelled it, I followed suit.

I would find out very clearly from my father both, what it meant and how horrible it was. And when I had to apologize in front of the entire family on a Sunday after they had all returned from church, the reverend, with kind eyes, asked me if I knew what it meant, and more importantly, if I would ever use it again. I never have.

My best friend was Elaine Silverman, whose name I always envied. It wasn’t boring like my name, and she had these cool braids in her hair (what I later would realize were called corn rows.) We were both quiet, and smart, and terribly shy. She was the one thing I would miss about my old school when they moved me over to the advanced classes at the Mather. Well, that and the medal I got every year. The Alice Casey award, that came with a medal and a ribbon, which at the time I wore as proudly as if I had won it in combat. I didn’t realize until I was an adult what the award was actually for:

“Criteria: Elementary students who have demonstrated the highest degree of social and academic growth during the school year and have shown outstanding and positive attitudes toward classmates of all racial and ethnic backgrounds while promoting a positive spirit of integration within their classroom and school community.”

Basically, I won an award for having black friends. Being the only white girl in the school, I no longer think it was that much of an accomplishment.

After the Mather I went to “the King”–short for Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. I loved my teacher, Mr. Brown–a man with dark brown wrinkly skin and bright blue eyes. I felt like he was as noticeable as me. He instilled in me a love for writing and imagination, and I have never forgotten him for it. On my last day of school there, the teacher had stepped out and I got into an altercation with a boy who kept throwing things at “the white girl.” When he got too close, leaning into my face and demanding what I was going to do about it, I stabbed through his jacket with my pencil, not hurting him but making him think twice. Mr. Brown removed me from the class at that point, and at the time I was just glad he believed me that I was provoked. Over the years I have come to realize that he was actually protecting me and that I was lucky not to have been really hurt.

And then we moved.

It is something I never fully admitted until later, but it’s pretty demoralizing to go from being the only white girl–and therefore different, an outcast, and a target–to an all white suburban school, where being from Dorchester was something to sneer at, and to realize that it was never the color of your skin that made you different, it was being poor AND from Dorchester that made me different. Leaving didn’t change my feelings of being different.

Where I had an incident or two at my previous schools, I had never been emotionally bullied–physically threatened, maybe, but never harassed on a daily basis.

The girls on my new school bus used to tease me so badly about being a “Dot rat” that I would find excuses to miss the bus, thus making my mother, who had to drive all the way into downtown Boston, add twenty minutes to her already two hour commute to drive me to school. I couldn’t escape them on the way home, though, and I would get off the bus stressed every day because they would tell me I must be dirty, or ask one another “did you see a bug in her hair?”, or “what’s that smell? Must be a Dot rat.”

Dot Rat is both a term of pride (by us) and an insult (by others). Dorchester is a very poor neighborhood in Boston with a high crime rate. Drive-by shootings are common. It’s also primarily a black neighborhood, thought “Dot Rat” for some reason seems to refer only to the white residents, though I’m not sure why. I guess it would be similar to “poor white trash, from Dorchester.”

We only lived in the suburbs for one year,but the venom of those girls has stuck with me forever, and I had never been so grateful to move in my life. I wanted to go home, back to Dorchester; but instead we moved to another town, just outside of Dorchester, called North Quincy.

Quincy was the home to two presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and it was also the place that I could finally call my home. I stayed there through high school, and got to see diversity fill the halls of North Quincy High over the four years I attended. I made life-long friends, and was close enough to Dorchester that being from there was more of a badge of honor than a put-down, even when it became full of drive-by shootings and gang activity.

I now live in another suburb, whose schools are fairly diverse. My kids participate in a program called “Steps to Respect”, which is designed to promote inclusion of all races, genders, backgrounds, and sexual orientations. Every now and then I wonder what they would think if they had grown up differently–or if I had. If I had never been the only white girl or the Dot rat, would I have cared so much that my kids attend a school that was representative of more than one race and more than one economic bracket?

Stuck At Home Mom is an anonymous blogger who lives with her husband, two Tweens, and a new baby, and blogs about keeping her sanity, which she mostly fails at.

http://www.suckathomemom.blogspot.com/

www.blogher.com/member/stuck-home-mom

Guest Post: I Support Breastfeeding, So I Support Black Breastfeeding Week

Posted by Martha on January 21, 2014

Before you get confused, it is not Black Breastfeeding Week at the moment. This is a guest post written in response to a call for submissions to a blogger group I am a part of.

Every year, since Annika was a baby, Black History Month comes along in February and think, “Damn, I really should do something on the blog about Black History Month.” But what? Do I just write posts about Black History? Well, maybe. But that doesn’t seem to jive very closely with my typical blog posts and there are plenty of websites where one can read about Marching on Washington.

Then, I finally hit on an idea, which was inspired by this post by Only Mama, where she writes about an experience that was part of becoming more racially aware as a white woman.

One of the ways in which I hope to inspire people with my blog is to think about their own racism and their own issues surrounding skin color and living in a multicultural world. Of course, we’ve always lived in a multicultural world, but the attitudes are shifting. Are we becoming more accepting or less accepting of other cultures? It seems that in the current climate, there are more strong feelings on both sides.

This post is written by Krisdee Donmoyer of Keep Austin Nursing in Public. She is a feminist sahm of three sons and an outspoken breastfeeding advocate. She’s the outreach coordinator for Central Texas Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, and the recent recipient of the 2013 Breastfeeding Hero Award from HMHB, due to her work lobbying for mother-and-baby-friendly breastfeeding policies in two central Texas school districts and in the Texas Legislature. You can read more about her work on her blog, Keep Austin Nursing in Public, and like her on Facebook, where she spends more time than cats spend sleeping.

Photo borrowed from http://www.mrprintables.com/easter-crafts-for-kids-egg-people.html

When I was a little girl, I told my head start teacher, “We’re just like Easter eggs. We’re all different on the outside, but we’re all the same on the inside.”

My mom was so proud. And as I got older and forgot having ever said this, she’d tell me now and again, and I was proud, too. What a smart cookie I was!

It was insightful for a four-year-old, yes, but it was also indicative of what my generation was taught. As a child, the differences didn’t matter to me, because I was taught to be color blind.

As a pre-k teacher ages later, I taught a social studies lesson using hard boiled eggs, both brown and white, as a hands-on metaphor for teaching that we are all “the same on the inside” regardless of our color. But what I had come to learn by then was that we must also honor differences. In my classroom we had multicultural crayons, and dolls, and construction paper. We compared our skin colors to the many shades on paint samples. We had books in different languages and sampled foods from different cultures. We read books like Two Eyes, a Nose, and a Mouth and Whoever You Are.

It is important for many reasons to acknowledge both our commonalities and our differences. Among the reasons to acknowledge differences is that we have different needs.

I have a son with dyslexia.

All of the kids at his school deserve terrific literacy instruction. But no one would deny that my son needs and deserves special support.

All breastfeeding moms need support, regardless of differences. There is a huge racial disparity in breastfeeding rates, though. A CDC report from this year states that by 2008, breastfeeding rates among white mothers were up to 75.2%, yet among black women, only 58.9% breastfed at all. That disparity alone is a clear signal that special support is needed. For this and many other compelling reasons, several breastfeeding advocates launched Black Breastfeeding Week.

Source: Black Breastfeeding Week on Facebook

When I was four, or even eighteen, I might have thought that the idea of a Black Breastfeeding Week was divisive. I thought I was color blind. I thought that’s how I was supposed to be – that that was proof that I wasn’t racist, that it was how to not be racist. I think that for some people, this belief in color blindness is a factor in the backlash against a World Breastfeeding Week image shared on The Leaky Boob’s Facebook page. This, and/or not being aware of the race-specific needs outlined in this brilliant and compelling article by Kimberly Seals Allers.

Others seem to think that it excludes white people. White people are free to support Black Breastfeeding Week. It’s existence is not discrimination any more than is the existence of the International Dyslexia Association.

And then, of course, some people are just racists.

I’m a white, college-educated, middle class woman. I am lucky enough to be in the group of women most likely to breastfeed – that’s one aspect of my white privilege.

The only time I’ve ever experienced discrimination was for nursing in public. Other advocates and I have drawn parallels between discrimination against public breastfeeding and discrimination based on disabilities, gender, age, race.

I realize not everyone self-identifies as an advocate, but if a person is following a blog/page in search of or to offer support, I don’t understand how that person might speak against NIP discrimination yet perpetuate discrimination against anyone else. And denying people a sense of community and need-specific support IS discrimination.

I have struggled to write this post for the entire day, I’ve been so afraid of getting it wrong. Words can be hard to find, especially when something is deeply felt. My husband and I were just talking about what I’ve been writing, and he said to me, “Sometimes you don’t want to have to use words.” He was talking about a grief support group I went to in 1999 for women who had lost their mothers, and how important it was to me then to get to connect with people who shared the specific experience of mother loss. It mattered so much to be able to communicate without always needing to have the right words, because they got it. They understood, even without words.

As a white woman, I can’t claim to know what it is to be a black breastfeeding mother. But I can certainly understand that black women have a shared history, a shared experience. And that it could help a new mother to have support from those she can communicate with about that shared knowledge without needing so many words.

We all look for things we have in common with the people in our lives. A love of “Doctor Who,” a preferred parenting style, a penchant for gardening. We celebrate our differences, yes, but we still want to connect with people who share them.

Especially when we need support.

Guest Posting Over At Balancing Jane

Posted by Martha on June 11, 2012

Today I have a guest post over at Balancing Jane.

Balancing Jane is written by another mama to a biracial child. But aside from the racial aspect, her blog is interesting because she examines things with an intellectual twist. She’s a PHD student, working on rhetorical construction of difference. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds like fun in my book.

So head on over and read my post. It’s totally new and something I never would have thought to write if she hadn’t proposed it. If you’re a blogger, you can also submit guest posts on the topic of identity in balance.