What are you thinking about today?

This picture was sent to us by reader Meredith.  Her son is half Jewish and half Cuban-American. This photo was taken at the New York Aquarium on June 6, 2010, just two days before he turned 20 months old.

written by Kristen H.; originally published on Rage Against the Minivan

I got a Stuff White People Like flip calendar for Christmas. I am enjoying it very much. This was last night’s entry:

The Daily Show/Colbert makes up a duo that is held in such high regard by white people that to criticize it would be the equivalent of setting the pope on fire in Italy in 1822. It just isn’t done, in fact it isn’t even considered!

White people love to make fun of politics, especially right wing politics. It’s a pretty easy target and makes for some decent humor, but white people are actually starting to believe that these two shows are becoming legitimate news sources.

“Oh, I don’t watch the news,” they will say. “I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. You know, studies show that viewers of those shows are more educated than people who watch Fox News or CNN.”

White women all consider John Stewart to be the most perfect man on the planet. This is not a debate, it is law.

I can neither confirm not deny the truth of that statement.

I can tell you that my sister read the whole Stuff White People Like book and believed it to be written exclusively about me. (There is even a chapter on hating people who wear Ed Hardy. Yes. This book IS about me).

I don’t actually believe this book or blog represents all white people, but I do think it makes some funny commentary on a certain demographic of caucasian folks. I’m having fun identifying with it, and I’m even feel a little pride in my whiteness as I read the things, both silly and serious and mortifying, that we white people like.

And yes. I did just say “pride in my whiteness”. Let me explain.

Continue Reading »

Black Women Don’t Swim? [ColorLines]

Of course, it’s hard to prove that past racist policies are directly responsible for apparent the lack of a swimming culture in some urban communities of color. On the other hand, in segregated cities, where structural racism continues to shade into the use and perception of public recreation, it seems less outlandish to focus on the role of historical memory versus, say, Black women’s supposedly life-consuming hair neuroses. But of course, it’s more fun to just indulge public fascination with how hairstyles influence Black women’s behavior. And when that story gets old, just add water.

Coalition Calls on Toys “R” Us to End “Toxic Toy Story” [Inhabitots]

PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is the most dangerous plastic of all. BPA? Check. Pthalates? Check. Lead? Also check. So why is are these toxins found in so many children’s products? A coalition led by the Center for Health, Environment & Justice is presenting that question to the largest toy store in the world, Toys “R” Us, today at its flagship location in Times Square.

I don’t talk about strollers, I talk about race [Los Angelista’s Guide to the pursuit of happiness]

I don’t want to read about strollers. I want to read about how do I raise my child with the social and spiritual mindset, skills and knowledge to be a productive member of society?

 My boys go to summer camp and on Wednesday they took a field trip to Zuma Beach. I figured the most exciting thing to happen would be a jellyfish sighting. Unfortunately, on the bus ride home, one of the other campers, an older 13 year-old boy, decided to slap my nine year-old , Mr. O, and hurl some racial epithets his way.

 I had to figure out how to respond to that, and in the long run, how I deal with that will mean more to my son than what stroller I bought him or what babyfood he ate.

 The Pursuit Of Parenting [Rice Daddies]

Recently, I suffered my children’s fierce complaints about having to go to Chinese school over the summer. All of their other friends had the time to themselves – they travelled and played and filled scrapbooks (or hard drives) with tokens from their adventures. My kids were frustrated that they were spending the summer sitting at a school desk for four hours a day, writing and reciting passages they have yet to gain a strong understanding of.

I looked towards my mother, who simply sat there witnessing my children’s tirade, and I knew – I knew I was doing a good job parenting. I knew this because a smile was tucked snugly in the corner of her mouth. It was a smile that dared me to remember how much I protested Chinese school when I was as young as my children are today.

[This post is the first in a series on the columnist's search for a church home for her family.]

Written by Love Isn’t Enough columnist Annie Avery

For a long time my partner, who is Jewish, and I were pretty smug about not having conflicts from being an interfaith couple.

Then I got pregnant. We didn’t know the baby’s gender and we had an argument about circumcision. She couldn’t imagine not having a bris if we had a son, and I couldn’t imagine subjecting our child to unnecessary pain. Our compromise: if we had a boy I’d get to decide about circumcision, and she’d get to name the baby.

Fortunately we had a girl.

It was a wake-up call to the fact that we did have issues about being an interfaith couple. Looking back I can see that there were conflicts about religion all along, we just chose not to see them.

When our older daughter was three we tried Unitarian, having heard that a lot of Jewish-Christian couples end up there. We loved that church, but only attended a few times before my partner’s job caused us to leave New York for Chicago. At about the same time we decided to pursue adoption. My partner and I and our older daughter are white and we were likely to be matched with a black or biracial baby, so we began preparing ourselves to be a multiracial family. Aware now of race in a new way, it became another factor in our search for a religious home.

The first church we tried in Chicago (Unitarian) was all white. The next (Congregationalist) had a service that was too long. The next (Unity) asked my partner to take our then-five-month-old baby out of the service because her babbling was interfering with audiotaping the service, plus, they sang “People Who Need People”. The next (Unitarian again, but in a racially diverse neighborhood) was racially mixed but lacked energy. The next (Episcopal, with a reputation for being attended by gay people of color) was vibrant and racially mixed, but had fewer then forty people at the service. On Easter.

As we drove through a west side Chicago neighborhood that Easter we passed churches that, to judge by the crowds, housed large black congregations. I was tempted to try one, but wary of the condemnation black gay and lesbian people have experienced in black churches. Our kids would be embraced for sure. I don’t know how my partner and I would be received.

We went to a liberal synagogue for Family Shabbat: a potluck dinner followed by a family-friendly service. The congregation included a lesbian family, several multiracial families, and other black people. The rabbi welcomed me as warmly as she welcomed my partner, our nine-year-old was drafted for the choir, our four-year-old spent the service on a new friend’s lap, and we felt at home.

But I felt a little envious, so knew I was not ready to give up the search for a church. Besides, as genuinely as our new temple community embraces our four-year-old African American daughter, the road for black Jews is hard (see Rebecca Walker’s book, Black, White, and Jewish). I want to give our kids options.

Next up: a Catholic church in a gay neighborhood, which I’m told is a comfortable place for people of color as well as gay people.

Photo Credit: Weidmaier

What’s on your mind?

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for another gratuitous cute kid pic. Reader Amanda submitted these photos of her two boys, Kieran (2 1/2) and Liam (13 mo). She submitted two photos because she can’t get both of them to sit still at the same time to be photographed together. I think we can all relate…

Written by Love Isn’t Enough guest contributor Gwen; originally published at Sociological Images

Diego Costa sent in an image of Jayden Smith, star of the remake of The Karate Kid, at a recent promotional event in China. In it, 11-year-old Jayden has lifted his shirt to show off his abs, while co-star Jackie Chan and a man I presume is the event host marvel at them:

What struck Diego is how this image was received differently than a similar image of an 11-year-old girl pulling up her shirt to show off her abs might be seen. For instance, The Huffington Post showed the image without any comment about its content. We might compare that to the public outcry over the images of Miley Cyrus wrapped in a sheet that came out two years ago. I also suspect The Huffington Post article might say something about the adult men in the above photo if it were a girl rather than a boy they were touching/ogling.

Apparently when he went on The View, Jayden said he’s “already a great kisser” and the audience cheered, though I can’t find a video of it.

Diego says,

Why is the exposure of boy bodies deemed appropriate whilst the revealing of girls’ bodies must always accompany relentless probing, judging and outrage? If we agree that we shouldn’t sexualize children, then let’s not do it to any child. And, while we are at it, let’s also not assume infantile heterosexuality by asking if boys already have “a girlfriend.”

Excellent points. I suspect if an 11-year-old girl went on The View and said she was a good kisser already, she and her parents would be attacked in the press, people would express horror, and rumors would circulate about whether she’s been sexually abused, is already sexually active, etc. etc. But when an 11-year-old boy does it? That’s cute! He’s on his way to being a smooth-talking ladies’ man!

I can’t decide if, or to what degree, race might be at play here. There is certainly a tendency to adultify non-White children — that is, to treat them as mini-adults rather than children at much earlier ages than White kids are. This includes sexuality (for instance, teachers often assume Black girls are sexually active at younger ages than White girls). My recent post on the hypersexualization of a 13-year-old Latino boy discussed this topic.

But I’m not sure if that’s playing a major role here, or if gender assumptions and him being the son of a much-beloved celebrity couple are the more important factors. Thoughts?

Spoken Word/Music Video: ‘Better Off, Better Smile’ [John Raible Online]

This project originated out of a need to counter the tired, predictable arguments that are often used to dismiss candid and critical (a.k.a. “angry”) adoptee voices. A prime dismissal is arguing that adoptees should quit whining, since we are “better off” by being adopted than we would be in other imagined scenarios.

This piece offers an alternative view. Having being forced to endure racist conditions within our adoptive “host” communities as children—even among good families who loved us, and among well-intentioned neighbors whose unexamined privilege often led them to participate in the racialization that was happening to us—many adoptees later begin, in adulthood, to make connections between adoption’s Before and After. That is, the Before of the oppressive conditions that led to the need for adoption, and the After effects of growing up in overwhelmingly white, psychologically unhealthy, and racist social environments.

 Friendship 101   [Mama C and the Boys]

To add to the list of things I never thought much about before becoming a parent, is the importance and skills involved in helping my children establish and maintain friendships. With kindergarten looming on Sam’s social horizon, I have been  checking in with him lately on what he is comfortable with, and where he might like some help. (Preschool is great for teaching Sam how to negotiate the intricacies of friendships he already has, so we’re all about how to make new and lasting ones.)   Luckily, Sammy has a natural facility in this arena. My job seems to be more of one of helping him practice.

 Only the Lonely  [CocoaMamas.com]

Time magazine recently ran an interesting article on “Onlies” or “Only Children” also known as children without siblings. The point of the article was to debunk the long-standing myths of “single children [being] perceived as spoiled, selfish, solitary misfits”. The article caught my attention because I was raised an only child and my son is being raised in an interesting situation where he can be the “only” child 80% of the time.

Here is an interesting trend of note:

“The recession has dramatically reshaped women’s childbearing desires,” says Larry Finer, the director of domestic policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a leading ­reproductive-health-research organization. The institute found that 64% of women polled said that with the economy the way it is, they couldn’t afford to have a baby now. Forty-four percent said they plan to reduce or delay their childbearing — again, because of the economy. This happens during financial meltdowns: the Great Depression saw single-child families spike at 23%. Since the early ’60s, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, single-child families have almost doubled in number, to about 1 in 5 — and that’s from before the markets crashed.

Confident Black Girls [My Brown Baby]

I get why my mother did what she did. When you’re overworked and way underpaid, and you’re of a generation that thinks kids are to be controlled, rather than reasoned with; and you’re afraid of having to deal with the cascade of hormone-driven adolescent problems that come with being the mom of a girl child, you search for silence. Demand it, even. Talking about tween stuff like periods and first kisses and confidence and beauty wasn’t an option for her, because speaking about it somehow condoned and encouraged a flurry of inappropriate behavior—invited her daughter to be difficult.

YA Literature: Someone Like Summer by M. E. Kerr

As a writer, it’s always good to read words of other writers–to get ideas on delivery, to develop a sense of rhythm, and to see different perspectives.  I’ve mostly been reading literary fiction, so I decided to take a break by checking out the YA (Young Adult) literary scene.  My library has pamphlets that recommend books by providing a short synopsis of each book, and when I read the synopsis for Someone Like Summer by M.E. Kerr, I decided to give it a shot because of the interesting storyline: a rich White girl from the Hamptons falls in love with an undocumented Latino day laborer.

As a woman of colour adopted by Caucasian parents, race and racism have always been a factor in my life. Racism in every day language is something that I am becoming more tuned in to.

Some people want to believe that race should no longer be an issue that because people of colour are afforded the same opportunities as everyone (in reality this is not the case).  However, the reality is race does matter and it should be discussed, acknowledged and steps should be taken to balance the power inequalities. Race is a social construct, and racism is a social disease. There is overt racism which is continually being addressed but there is another form of racism – one that is normalised, it has seeped into society and is continuously being perpetuated and not being challenged which is causes more damage to society than overt racism. I particularly agreed with Love Isn’t Enough contributor Renee’s comments about  “when children go to school and learn that white people are the only ones who did anything historically important, how is that not actively teaching children racism? When children turn on the television and see that white people are everywhere, whereas; people of colour are relegated to specific roles that are necessarily degrading, how is that not actively teaching them racism? When parents actively have to struggle to find books that have good representations of people of colour, how is that not affirming racism?”

And I would like to add, when the media is trying to be more representative of the general demographic population they are accused of be tokenistic rather than just accepting that this is how it really should be. Publicity campaigns which depict a diverse group of people who are different shades of brown and peach are mocked for trying to be “politically correct” – how is this attitude not perpetuating racism? Illustrating that it is not normal for media representations to be diverse. The fact that many people are ignorant to this type of subtle racism that is constantly going unchallenged is evidence that society is not post- racist. Ignorance is not a valid excuse, we all need to open our eyes and support rather than patronise those who are trying to make changes.

My mother made a effort not only to provide us with books with drawings of beautiful children of colour and black dolls but also when I grew up she and I had (and still do) lengthy discussions about how Western society is “white washed”. I fully believe she embodies an “Anti-Oppressive Parent” and I hope to follow in her footsteps. One strong example that she told me is the use of the word “dark” to describe a sinister and evil things and a foreboding atmosphere. It is often used in literature, the media and every day speech. I was taught to use “dark” in my English class to analyse poetry, I blindly subscribed to this norm, comparing “dark” imagery depicting sinister and evil things and a foreboding atmosphere with “light” imagery signifying purity and blissfulness. When discussing poetry with my mother, she vehemently argued that “dark” to represent a foreboding atmosphere was yet another example of pervasive racism which is glossed over by society by people naively believing that “dark” and “light” comparisons are simply referring to night and day and the night is considered to be scary, when in reality – using “dark” with all its negative connotations is an example of racism against people of colour. I would really welcome your thoughts on this issue. Also can anyone highlight other examples of common day language which is in fact racist and oppressive?

-Anonymous

From co-editor Sarah:

I wholeheartedly agree that there is racism in everyday language and we should guard against it. I immediately thought of a few more examples of racism in everyday language: black sheep are the outcasts or odd ones out in a group (because white sheep are the ‘good sheep’ or the ‘normal sheep,’ of course), white lies are better than plain old lies (because if you call something ‘white’ that automatically makes it less upsetting, I guess), black magic is the worst kind of magic (I suppose that would make white magic the harmless, fairy variety).  And I’m sure there are so many more.  This is just off the top of my head.  However, I’m not sure if I feel that “dark” and “light” are examples of racism in language.  Although, I agree there is a negative connotation with “dark,” I did always think of it as associated with night and the inability to see what is around you, which can be frightening and disorienting. That’s just my personal opinion, though, and I’m open to the thoughts of others on the issue.

Readers, co-editors, what do you say?

-Sarah

Better late than never!

What are you thinking about today, readers?

This is Josh, age 3.  He had climbed the monkey bars and was eating leaves off of the tree.  Why?  Because he’s a dinosaur and dinosaurs eat leaves, of course!

By Love Isn’t Enough guest contributor Jessica Pegis; originally published at O Solo Mama.

It sounds at first like a half-assed backwards way to do anything but Sally Maslansky’s article in the HuffPo, which has now been linked to by a couple of bloggers, says essentially that. In order to understand your adopted child and, more specifically—in order to understand yourself reacting to and relating to your adopted child—you need to understand your own life story.

I wish more people would go there. The tone of Maslansky’s piece is almost casual. Casual about something critical, as though she were saying, “You know, as a therapist, this is something I have known for so long.” No doubt she encounters the same issue when helping people patch their marriages back together. Lack of understanding of self. Failure to examine one’s own inability to relate because of internalized “truths” learned through being parented by one particular set of parents.

But seriously, how many times has someone prodded you to examine your own childhood as a way of mapping your relationship to your adopted child? I’m betting never.

How do we develop the skills necessary to understand our child’s story in order to help them make sense of it for themselves? Well, the place to start is with making sense of our own story first. In fact, one thing that attachment theory informs us about is that the best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is the degree to which that child’s parent or caregiver has made sense of his or her own story.

That’s a staggering statement. “. . . the best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is the degree to which that child’s parent or caregiver has made sense of his or her own story.”

This also explains something that has been disturbing me greatly. That when adopted children are deemed unmanageable, parents and others may be judging the behaviour based on their own mythologies around parenthood and family or—here’s a loaded word: safety—and not on the reality of that child and what he or she actually needs.

I believe this article invites us to be more child-centred than we ever thought possible, in spite of the fact that it counsels us to look at ourselves first.

_________________________________________________________

NOTE: If you go to the study cited in this article, you will find that it doesn’t go into detail about what “knowing your story” looks like. I found that a bit maddening because we all know poets and novelists have a handle on this thing but what about the rest of us. However, it does say that when you have a good handle on your own story, you won’t do the following:

• idealize your attachments (dismissing)
• tell a story that’s incoherent or inconsistent (dismissing)
• show angry involvement with your attachments (preoccupied)
• ramble excessively, providing irrelevant detail (preoccupied)
• display lack of reasoning when recounting loss (unresolved)

I haven’t quite sorted out in my head how the cognitive/logical dovetails with the emotional, but clearly it does. I mean, they got these people to sit there and actually tell their story–it’s that concrete.

[by Macon D.; full text published at Stuff White People Do]

I refuse to go along with this week’s warm, feel-good celebrations of Harper Lee’s novel (published fifty years ago today), To Kill a Mockingbird. Simply put, I think that novel is racist, and so is its undying popularity. It’s also racist in a particularly insidious way, because the story and its characters instead seem to so many white people like the very model of good, heartwarming, white anti-racism.

A few days ago, NPR (National Propaganda Public Radio) aired a typically laudatory piece on the novel, voiced by reporter Lynn Neary. As usual on the soothing, soporific NPR, this piece was filtered through, and aimed toward, a well-educated white perspective. These implied people are all too happy to be reminded that racism is a thing of the past, and that things are oh so much better now. The writers of this NPR segment were careful enough to interview some black teachers and students about Lee’s book, but if any offered significant criticism, their perspectives were left out.

The segment begins,

Harper Lee had the kind of success most writers only dream about. Shortly after her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, came out in the summer of 1960, it hit the bestseller lists, then it won a Pulitzer Prize, and then was made into an Oscar-winning movie. Her novel has never gone out of print.

But, in a move that’s unheard of in this age of celebrity writers, Lee stepped out of the limelight and stopped doing interviews years ago — she never wrote another book. Still, her influence has endured, as we mark the fiftieth anniversary of its publication.

NPR’s print version (entitled “50 Years On, ‘Mockingbird’ Still Sings America’s Song”) goes on to say,

For the high-schoolers reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago. Lee’s story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus — a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape — came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation.

That’s right, dear, lily-white NPR fans. Things were sooooo different back then, weren’t they? Thank God racism is dead!

Actually, that right there is the first reason I think this novel is, in effect, racist — it allows, indeed encourages, today’s well-meaning white people to think that “America is a very different place” than it was when Lee wrote her novel, and thus to think that widespread and deeply entrenched racism died a long time ago.

Read more.

Apps, Afros, and Handcuffs: Talking With Kids About Race [Slate/XXFactor]

But even with such stark reminders that the color of our skin and hair changes the way people treat us—and even in a mixed race family (one of my daughters is Asian) it feels weird, if not impossible, to turn to my 9-year-old and say, “So, what do you think about the fact that only one kid in your class is black?”

It turns out there’s an app for that. Harvard cultural anthropologist Michael Baran (who wrote about Disney’s Princess Tiana for DoubleX late last year) sent us links to two iPhone apps from the Race Awareness Project. Guess My Race presents pictures of real people and multiple options for guessing how those photographed answered the question, “What race are you?” Who Am I seems simpler: One player selects a picture from a group of photos, and the other player must guess, by asking questions and eliminating options, which picture was chosen. Is anyone surprised that neither turned out to be simple in any way?

Advice From An Adoptee To Mom [My Mind on Paper]

When I was 8 years old our family packed up and moved from our black neighborhood where I was part of the majority and moved to a white neighborhood where I was now for the first time since I could remember a minority.  I was the first child of color on our block and right away I felt differently.  The boys that I played with were not sure how to treat me because most had never played with a black person before on a regular basis.

I was also the only adopted one on the block, so I was a double minority and that translated into me being THE DIFFERENT ONE.  For the first several months I really struggled with that title.

Freedom for ?  [Resist Racism]

In May, Governor Deval Patrick signed Massachusetts’ first anti-bullying statute into law.  Among other things, the law provides that school staff report all incidents of bullying, that anti-bullying intervention programs be established, and that students participate in anti-bullying curriculum.

One of the main criticisms of this law and other attempts to address bullying?  That they are an assault on free speech.  Regular readers may recall that I often think “free speech rights” are raised for the wrong reasons.

Impossible Beauty Standard Ruins Naomi Campbell’s Hair [The Black Snob]

What happened to Campbell is a lifelong fear of mine. From the first time I saw a preteen girl lose her hair to a bad perm, I lived in fear of going bald. I’ve always had a ton of hair. It was always long and curly. My mother used to press my hair straight every two weeks when I was child and took me to a salon to get a perm once every six weeks after I turned 13. I wanted to experiment with my hair, but there was always a voice in the back of my head telling me “YOU’LL GO BALD!” When my always thick hair actually started to get thin when I was in college and my hairdresser told me that it was because after years of resistance my hair was FINALLY getting accustomed to the chemical relaxer, I visualized my once vibrant hair just giving up on me and falling out en masse.

I didn’t go natural out of racial solidarity. I didn’t go natural trying to make some political statement about blackness. I didn’t go natural to subvert the system. I just didn’t want to go bald.

Written by Love Isn’t Enough guest contributor Big Man; originally published at Raving Black Lunatic.

A certain segment of the literary world is gearing up for the 50th year anniversary of the publishing of Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Like many of you, I read this book as a child. I can’t remember if it was part of my own summer reading list, or my brother’s. I typically read all the books on my reading list before the first two weeks of summer were finished, then read all of his books. Then I read all of them all over again if they were any good.

When I read that Times article about the novel, along with the 1960s book review that is linked, I was struck, once again, by how differently we all see and experience the world. I was reminded that our worldviews are consistently shaped by our personal experiences and allegiances no matter how objective or unbiased we think ourselves to be.

When I think of “To Kill A Mockingbird” I don’t think about the growth of Scout, like some folks, or about the mystery of Boo Radley. I don’t think about the quiet dignity of Atticus Finch, or how Jem learned adult lessons.

I think of Tom. The disabled, hard-working black man who was abused and murdered because of prejudice, bigotry and the need to maintain white supremacy. I recognize those other issues, but ultimately my mind is dominated by what happened to Tom; how he suffered and died while the rest of the characters, no matter how venal, saw their lives go on. I haven’t read the book in more than a decade, but I can still remember how disturbed I was by the image of Tom riddled with bullets clinging to a prison fence, and his young wife stuck with no husband and a baby to feed.

What springs to my mind when I think about this classic book in ultimately tied to how I view the world. In my world, the other characters and issues of the novel, no matter how central and endearing they were to others, are immaterial when compared to what Tom and his family endured. I really don’t care about how Jem, Atticus and Scout saw their lives changed, I just care that Tom saw his life end.

When I was younger, this focus made it impossible for me to read the book more than once or twice because of the intense bitterness that welled up inside of me. I was distraught that everybody else moved on with their lives, lived in the same community and basically continued to live as if a grave injustice had not been done. It was too much for my young spirit to handle, and the reason why I remember specific details about Tom, but very little about everybody else.

But, my reaction is ultimately my reaction. The book inspires different feelings in different folks based on the lives they have lived before and after reading it. What I saw as fairly unimportant, other folks have found to be profoundly interesting. What I see as central, other folks see as important, but not really worth too much investigation. Most folks see “To Kill a Mockingbird” as tale that exposes the complex nature of racial interactions in the Deep South and I don’t disagree. The book does that, while at the same time telling a compelling story about children learning what it means to be adults in America.

However, in my world the book is a re-telling of just how far my people have had to come. It relates one “small” injustice that for me exposes the prevalence of the larger injustice that was the daily life of black folks in the South. Tom’s story isn’t a solitary example of the justice system gone wrong, it’s a cautionary tale of endemic problems that persist today. Problems reinforced by dozens of studies examining injustice in the legal system, and hundreds of stories of prisoners wrongly convicted.

Some folks read this book and see a good yarn, and interesting and engrossing story. I see life as it was, and as it still is for far too many people.

What do you see?

[Editor's Note: See also the excellent story about To Kill a Mockingbird on NPR.]

Dear Love Isn’t Enough,

I’ve been puzzled by a particular behavior I’ve encountered consistently since my two preschoolers started attending “school” part-time. There’s been an impenetrable degree of ostracism directed at my sons and myself that’s a bit perplexing. My sons have a lot of friends at school, they get invited to birthday parties … but when it comes to playing with the other kids outside of those two very specific contexts, the other mothers aren’t interested. They do, however, set up play dates/sleepovers with other mothers.

It would be one thing if I’d interacted with a mom or two and had a disagreeable interaction and was thus shunned. Instead, it’s that most of the other moms won’t make eye contact or even speak to me. Literally. Even when I say hello. Of the few who have, one wouldn’t let me into her home (I am the only black parent in the entire school and the dads had arranged a play date for our sons at her house, so there was no mistaking who was knocking on her door in the subzero temps outside), another refused to show up for our play date (which took months to arrange) and made her husband cancel all his court appearances and client meetings and drive an hour and a half from work so he could do the play date (she = SAHM). The last mother said she and her daughter (who’s best friends w/my littlest one) would be at a particular place. After 3.5 hours of waiting for them, I coaxed my kids back into the car and my littlest one wept. Heartbreaking. Again, it’s not as if I’ve had a disagreement with any of the parents; most haven’t even acknowledged that I or my sons exist. I have never encountered this before moving here.

I want my little ones to spend the remainder of their childhood where they -and I- will encounter less overt hostility from adults. I can only observe from the outside. What would cause white moms to literally and completely ignore one’s existence, regardless of how long your children have been friends and attended class together? I understand being reserved, but after a year or two of seeing me and my children in the class/hallway several times a week, couldn’t they at least look at/greet us (maybe allowing our children to play together is too presumptuous)? I’m not from here so there are still cultural nuances I don’t get.

Anonymous

Julia’s response:

Dear Anonymous,

I’ve been thinking about your stories and they break my heart. I wish I could offer you a rational explanation for the (completely despicable) behavior of these mothers, but there isn’t one. This is racism, pure and simple, and boy, is it ugly.

I don’t think you’ve made any cultural missteps. You are absolutely right that there is no reason for these mothers to completely ignore your existence, fail to look at you, fail to greet you, fail to open the door to you, etc. This not about them being reserved or about you missing a cultural message. You’ve seen evidence of this yourself, in the fact that mothers are setting up playdates with each other and not with you…
 
They invite your children to birthday parties because they don’t want to teach their children to exclude others. *Cue bitter laughter.* They fail to see how inconsistent this is with their behavior toward you, probably partly because (and I’m just guessing) they’ve found a way of projecting something onto you that they can dislike.
 
You mentioned that your children are the only black children at this school. My guess is that these parents are not used to having to “share” their school with anyone who doesn’t look like them. My guess is that they think that they’ve already made allowances for “letting” your kids go to “their” school, and that they’re annoyed that you “demand” more of them by asking them to be involved in a semi-personal relationship. All of this is, of course, unmitigated hooey. I also suspect that these parents would deny–both to themselves and to anyone else–that they think this way, which adds a layer of crazy-making mind game to the whole kit and kaboodle.

I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with this.

Julia

Readers, what do you think? Has this happened to you? How do you account for this behavior? How do you negotiate relationships with parents of your children’s friends? How do you find places that are supportive and welcoming of you and your family?

What are you thinking about today, readers?

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for another gratuitous cute kid pic. This one comes from reader Theresa and features her gratuitously cute daughter, Sehana.

Got cute kids? Send us a photo at team@loveisntenough.com.