Why I am not explaining racism to my kids
My 8 yr old son: “I think dark skin looks better in the football uniform”. Me: “You think they look like they will play better or you like how their skin looks in the helmet?” His answer: “I just think it looks better in the uniform. But now that I think about it, it seems like a lot of the best players have darker skin. Do we have anyone in our family with dark skin?” Me: “not that I can think of, but if you or your sister marry someone with brown skin or if my sister adopts a child with dark skin, then we will”. Him: “I like how it looks”. Me: “yeah, I agree, I think dark skin is pretty.” Him: “Well, pretty isn’t what I would say. But I like how it looks.”
And I think this would have been a good place to inject a story about MLK or the lack of respect that has been shown to people with dark skin in our country. 8 would be a good age for him to truly understand what Black people have had to overcome to be football stars with million dollar sponsors, or to become President. I could have explained that Black people are commonly thought to be better athletes or that often they find sports to be an easier way to extreme wealth than knocking on corporate doors. But, I don’t say any of that, on purpose. And here is why…
When I was in 3rd grade I was moved from a city with mostly White people or Mexicans into a DC school with 75% Black students and 25% White (which was me). And I didn’t feel different because of my skin. I have no memories of being called any names by the students. But I felt like an outsider because I couldn’t do double-dutch while singing on the playground, and I couldn’t do jive hand movements and cool dance moves with the music. I recall loving watching the girls move so easily in their bodies and sound so vibrant with their laughter, and I wanted that for myself. But at home we were mellow, and my mom listened to Bob Dillon and Dire Straights.
5 years later I remember figuring out that my grandfather, who was like a father to me, was racist. He hated Oprah. Thankfully my mom never let him speak openly around me about his disgust for Oprah’s body shape or coloring. But I put it together that I wasn’t a white person who could brag about their history of marching in Selma or giving up a seat in kindness for an elderly Jewish or Black woman. I was upset at a deep level to learn that my ancestry was part of the problem, not the solution. I thought to myself, how could a Black person like me? Or like anyone with my skin color? My heart broke and my guilt increased as I learned more about how people of color have been treated [by people like my beloved grandparents]. A Black person’s confident body language walking down the street in Arizona, and unsmiling faces as we made eye contact would lead me to assume they didn’t want to be my friend.
But I was lucky enough to attract into my life a friend and roommate who was in a circle of mostly Black people, and we often socialized in low income neighborhoods in Oakland. And thankfully I learned more about the unsmiling faces and the confident body language that I had misunderstood a year earlier. I realized that most dark skinned people neither wanted nor didn’t want to be friends with light skinned people (in general, of course). Most of the dark skinned people I met just wanted to live their lives and “get theirs”, which wasn’t so easy on a daily basis. And correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that with Black people in general… if you are good with them, they are good with you.
So, I choose not to be a parent describing anyone as “Black” to my kids. I choose not to address skin color at all. Only within recent months have my kids started to reference skin color, “you know, the girl with the dark skin”, which could mean any variety of shades… Black, or Latin, or Italian, or Russian. I tell them that Martin Luther King Jr was a person who tried peacefully and respectfully to get everyone to have the same rights in our country, because a lot of people in our country weren’t allowed to do things they wanted to do. And I choose not to say that dark skinned people often dance better or play better ball. I don’t tell my kids there are way too many people in our country who still need to hear an MLK lecture, although with Trump coming into office it’s harder to avoid verbalizing my disgust with racism. I think the best thing I can do for the future of my people, which is all Americans, is to bring up the next generation of humans thinking that dark skin is nothing more than dark skin. As much as we like the way it looks, it should no longer be the reason for, well, anything major.
And if we were dark skinned this would be a different conversation at home, I think? I’d tell my son to be proud of his skin. I’d tell him to look for families who smile at him and reach out to him so he knows who will be his people. I’d tell him to enjoy his brain and his strength and his coordination and his connection to his rich heritage. I’d tell him to love anyone who seems loveable. I’d tell him to hold the door for any woman of any age. I’d tell him to eat well and never get into a car with a drunk driver. I’d tell him… hmmm… wait… this list is exactly the same list that I have for my family and our light skin color.
If I’m wrong about this approach, and it is a disservice to anyone that my kids are in the dark about inequality, then it will take me about 3 hours to educate them enough to feel the same guilt and sadness that I felt. In 2 days they could be educated enough about our tragic history to want to be activists and give up their place in line for any dark skinned person they see. They might also suddenly think that a Black person is more likely to rob them than some other color of skin, or that a Muslim person might turn into a terrorist based on their mom’s birth place. But, on the flip side, if I’m actually creating humans that know equal treatment as their normal, and skin color as a normal difference amongst us, then we might actually be getting closer to what we’ve all been fighting for (or against, in sad cases) for a long time now.