Last week marked 53 years of my marriage being “allowed” in the US. 53 years isn’t that long ago!
My family have likely ignored miscegenation laws since before they were a thing (1717 in NC). In fact, my great-great grandad Champ had his land deed taken from him for being married to a “colored” woman. I was lucky to grow up in a family where people looked like >👩🏻👩🏿👵👨🏼👴🏾👱🏻👨🏾🌾. It wasn’t until I started socializing with people outside of my family that I realized ours was not a typical one. My earliest recollection of experienced racism was at a ballet recital and involved one of my cousins who looked like 👧🏻. I remember all of the dancers in my ballet class being paired with older girls and I remember the girl who was assigned to me kept asking why she couldn’t be paired with my cousin because she was “cuter.” I was 3 years old and I remember thinking that if I’d had skin like @ceeee_jay then she wouldn’t have minded holding my hand.
I’m a pretty resilient person and most of the racist stuff I’ve been through doesn’t bother me that much but the idea that my kids may experience it because I look like 👩🏾 and daddy looks like 👨🏼really makes me angry. Kai has been lucky enough to have lived in a part of the world in which he has never had to think about race. We asked him this week if he knew what a black person was and he said no 😬. Many of you may be disappointed by this but honestly, I think it’s a good thing. This week I’ve had some pretty difficult conversations with him about the historical implications of my skin and what to do if someone were to bring up skin color differences in front of him. Kids aren’t blind but they also aren’t born prejudice. I told my son that if someone points out someone’s race the first thing he should do is ask “why does it matter?” And then tell the person that we are all the same underneath our skin. Regardless of what history says this is the world I want to create so this is the narrative I’ve chosen. What are you choosing to tell your kids and how does that contribute to the world you want to create?
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