Hmmm…there is something bugging me about the article “Raising the Obama Generation,” written by Stephen Tally in the most recent issue of Best Life. I need to spend some time pulling it apart. In the meantime…
My wife and I were driving our 2 1/2-year-old son, Asher, to school recently when he suddenly piped up from the backseat.
“Daddy, what color are you?”
My eyes went wide. I slowly turned to my wife. Marie’s mouth was agape, as if someone had slapped her. She’s Haitian-American and I’m pure Irish, so our charming and strong-willed Asher is what’s called “biracial” these days. Or, as my mother-in-law once said, “halfie-halfie.”
“Um, what do you mean, Ash?” I asked, stalling for time.
“You’re white,” he said.
It was the emphasis that made it sting. He made it sound as if he’d just found out I was an escaped convict.
My wife looked at me with sympathy, but after half a minute, she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “And what color is Mommy?” she asked.
“Mommy’s brown,” Asher said, with great exactness.
My wife has always joked that light-skinned Asher will one day pass her off to his friends as the black maid. I saw a flicker of hurt in her eyes. We both sensed what was coming.
“And what color is Asher?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, and in the rearview mirror I saw him glance down at his bare arm. “Asher yellow,” he said finally. Then he lost interest. Read more…
Okay, one thing that is definitely bothering me is that the scene above infers that Tally and his wife are horrified that their son notices differences in skin color, as if that alone is bad. Say it with me now…There is nothing wrong with noticing that someone has brown skin. The problem only comes when you treat the person differently because of it. Colorblindness is very, very silly. In another part of the article, Tally speaks of losing his son briefly on a playground and questions why he tells a fellow parent to look for a boy in blue shorts who is “mixed.” He seems disappointed in himself for mentioning his son’s race, but how else could he give an accurate description of the child?
Thank God the article includes a sidebar with a quote from Carmen and a shout out for ARP. The sidebar hasn’t been posted yet, but I’ll link to it when it is.
What do you think of the main article?
YES! YES, EXACTLY! My daughter was roughly the same age as Asher when she noticed a difference. She’s always proudly called herself “tan”.
There’s nothing horrifying or sad about this-there ARE color differences, but as you say, it’s when color is seen as a problem that you have, well, PROBLEMS.
We took the exact opposite tack (from the author of the piece) with our child, recognizing and celebrating the differences. Wouldn’t life be boring if we WERE all colorblind?
Was it foolish for this Dad to be saddened and to think this wouldn’t matter? Sure – but as a caucasion male, this may truly have been the first time that the issue hit him at a personal and gut level. No doubt,he really WANTED to believe it was irrelevant.
As a parent, I too would have been taken aback by the words “white” and “yellow” from a child this age. Children use a whole host of words to describe skin color when they start to notice that, but I have never heard a child, in complete innocence, call anyone “white.” Dad really might have skin like plain paper but I doubt it. I would suspect similar outside sources told the child he was “yellow.”
I also suspect that may be what is really maddening/saddening for these adults. NOT that their child was noticing skin color, but that the the colors are all ready being assigned by society, rather than the child himself.
It feels like the author is projecting a lot of worries onto his very young son. When he’s older his son will be bringing more to the table than just his skin color and that will effect how a lot of the things that the dad is worrying about will play out, the article seems to be borrowing trouble.
Wow, I just did a piece on almost exactly this, because my three-year-old brought up skin color,and we had our first real discussion about race: http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2009/02/race-skin-color-and-the-threeyearold-mind.html
The dad looks older to me, judging from his photos, maybe even a product of the 1960s. White people, at least in this area, are socialized very strongly NOT to comment on race or color, to at least pretend to treat and view everyone as just people. I take photographs a lot for the newspaper I work for and I’ll have to describe the people in them so the copy-editor knows which person is which from right to left. I get the occasional odd look when I’ll refer to the black girl or the fat kid or the dark-haired Indian girl to distinguish them from the blonde white girl in the photo or the kid in the blue shirt. And sometimes I feel guilty for describing them by race or by weight because it feels impolite. I think this guy feels bad that he has to think of his son in terms of race, that he has to identify him by color to a stranger. He’s half Irish-American. It is kind of sad people don’t identify his father in him as well as his mother at first glance.
As the mother of 3 Black (biracial) young adults (21, 19, 16), this article sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I’d probably have to go read it again, but in addition to the parents being horrified at Asher noticing color, and seemingly ascribing something negative to that, there were other things. Like the parents half expecting their child to “pass the mom off as the Black maid someday”. What? Or expecting the child to someday be horrified when his White dad approaches a group of his friends, as if that’s just par for the course. Also the parts about the Black teens “dressing like thugs”, the sister-in-law’s date (that was disturbing, as he said his child could do worse than being like that guy), and expecting the child will have to push back against Black friends wanting him to “be more street”, and calling the Black bow-tied tenor from Dad’s college days “whitewashed”.
I don’t know, it just seemed to me like the author was leaking his conception of what is Black, or what is White, and what does that mean for his child. He seemed to be bothered that his child could end up “too Black” or “too White” – whatever that means. He seems concerned with keeping his child safely on that middle path.
Is it out of the realm of possibility that a White kid could someday pressure his son to be “more street”?
Do White kids dress like “thugs”? Sure they do. Do people attribute it to their race? Not so much. Oh, there’s the difference.
Why do the African American men “acting up” at the restaurant in the date scenario automatically reflect their race? If a bunch of White guys were acting up that day, would there have been comments made about White folks always acting out, and not wanting to reflect that?
Would a White bow-tied tenor be labeled as somehow out of the norm? Why would singing tenor in a choir be seen as a White thing?
My eldest daughter is a classical piano major. She sang in an early music ensemble for several years before college. She sings in her college choir. Try telling her she’s whitewashed … I guarantee she will give you a mouthful about your ignorance, because she fully identifies as a Black woman who’s not half anything. (that’s if she decided to waste her time on a comment like that)
I can certainly relate to the author’s concerns about wanting to do right by his son as a White parent, and his concerns about the struggles his son may face, but … I don’t know. I think one thing White parents of children of color would do well to keep in mind, is how our ideas of race and racism will shape our children’s ideas on those subjects – whether we’re aware of it or not.
(sorry for the excessive use of air quotes)
If you really want to grasp Stephan’s views on this issue read all 288 pages of Mulatto America: At the Crossroads of Black and White Culture, his other well received non-fiction or his extensive contributions to the New York Times Magazine.
Granted as the photog for this story I do have a bias but if we are even going to start this argument we need to set parameters and the comments above have totally missed his attempt to Introduce the Existence of this topic to 95% of the readers of Best Life. Had he submitted this drastically simplified article to ARP it would be a different post all together. I am not trying to let the audience of BL of the hook for anything or somehow condone any racist views they may harbor but I do truly believe that Stephan took all this into account when he started typing.
I recall something a young black guy said to my wife’s sister on their first date. Watching some African-American men acting up at the restaurant they were eating in, he turned to her and said,”Listen, I want to get something straight. I’m a black man, but I ain’t no nigger.” I don’t ever want Asher to say that; I don’t want him to believe something called a nigger even exists. But someday he will probably have to push back on black peers who want him to be more street. His skin color makes it seemingly inevitable.”
On page 5. maybe I’m reading too much into this but to me this comes across like he is saying that there IS such a thing as a nigger…and not just as a label.
He wrote a book called Mulatto America??? Isn’t even the title offensive???
I admire him for his courage in writing about his situation, but I found many things to be just plain silly. Like, does he worry about getting mistaken for the plumber or the exterminator?
Why is singing in a chorus group “whitewashed”? What will he ever do if his son actually does sing in such a group?
Mike,
However well-intentioned the writer may be, his writing reveals some serious biases about what “black” and “white” are. Why worry that his half-black son will wind up hanging on a street corner? Vagrancy isn’t some genetic predisposition of black people. Why describe a bow-tied black man who sings inthe chorus “whitewashed?”
I’m concerned at what the writer associates with black culture. Racism begins at biased assumptions NOT benignly noticing skin color.
I appreciated his article for bringing a fresh POV on raising biracial children. There are a few missteps, but his concerns are similar to many parents of black children–wanting to keep them safe from racism, raising them to buck widely held racial stereotypes, hoping they can have successful lives despite systemic racism. And the concerns of all parents–wanting their children to be safe, raising them to be productive citizens of the world, hoping they will have successful lives.
I’m inclined to agree with Mike McGregor, that Tally was probably tailoring this article to his target readers, who may not be familiar with the subject matter.
As a mixed person, I found Mr. Tally’s article highly problematic for so many reasons…too many to list here, but I’ll address a few things:
“Only practical racism–the kind that actually affects my son–is what matters.” UM what IS practical racism?? The kind that actually effects your son? Dude, racism of any kind EFFECTS ALL OF US. This alone speaks volumes to me about the amount that Mr. Tally needs to educate himself about the brown experience and anti-racism.
On raising a mixed child – You cannot force your child to live in a neatly compartmentalized box of what you think being mixed or biracial is (“not TOO this and not TOO that”), it doesn’t work that way. All of his hypothetical fears about what his child will face seems panicked/excessive to me because Mr. Tally cannot understand/anticipate what his child’s experience as a mixed person will be. It seems like he should try to educate himself more on anti-racism and the real-life experiences of real-life mixed people (of the non-”tragic mulatto” variety) instead of speculating based on all these preconceived notions he has about black vs. white. Expose your child to all parts of his culture and ethnic history, embrace that yourself and he will be who he is, don’t force your own ideals of his racial identity upon him.
@ Mike McGregor
The context of this article being an “introduction” to people who aren’t familiar with these issues makes it even worse to me than if it were posed towards “a more seasoned audience,” if you will. The “if this were for ARP it would be totally different” argument would be applicable if people were making criticisms to the likes of “we’ve said this before, didn’t you get the memo?” However, as Tami said, Mr. Tally is posing some “serious biases about what ‘black’ and ‘white’ are” not to mention what an “ideal” mixed person should/shouldn’t be. Planting these seeds or reinforcing stereotypes in an “intro” to mixed people/mixed race parenting only makes it harder for us mixed folk.
one last thing:
I just wanted to add that if Mr. Talty (I just noticed his name is not “Tally”, the print in the article is super tiny – sorry about that!!) had recounted his thoughts/feelings/experiences in the same manner, but also addressed that these were largely affected by his personal biases or that he’s working on or wants/needs to work on, then this would have been a totally different article.
I read the article and the white father seems to be well-meaning BUT he’s placing being “black”, being “white” and being “mixed” into a small BOX.
There is NO set criteria on what is “white”
There is NO set criteria on what is “black”
There isn’t nor should there be a set criteria on what constitutes the “ideal” mixed person.
This is what I got out of this article. A writer who had the courage to put down some of what he thought and felt about raising a mixed race son. Yes, some of his biases did show but don’t we all have them. At least, he had the courage to put it out there. As a writer, it scares me when others attack your honesty. It’s okay to point out what could be considered a bias but it’s not okay to attack one’s honesty. If you do so you might prevent others from being equally as honest then we could never have the wonderful dialogue we have in ARP. Please be mindful of this when you critique a writer’s work especially when they are being honest about something as near as dear to them as their own child.
@gm
I think there is a difference between criticism and an attack. You didn’t specifically cite any comment regarding what you thought was an “attack on honesty,” so I’m not sure what you perceived as an attack.
I recognize that it takes courage to be honest and frank about the types of feelings that Mr. Talty expressed in his article, and props to him for that. However, he never made a point to recognize his biases or acknowledge that his assumptions were harmful to both him and his son. As I tried to say in my comment (#13), it would have been much different had he discussed his biases as biases and not simple truths.
Calling someone out is not the same as attacking them, and from what I’ve read in this thread I didn’t see anyone calling Mr. Talty names or saying that he was wrong for having the feelings he does. To speak for myself, I wasn’t insinuating that he is a bad person or a bad parent for all of this, but I was pointing out that it’s irresponsible of him to not further educate himself on these topics, especially before presenting them in such a fashion. Being honest and having good intentions doesn’t negate the fact that those types of assumptions are damaging to everyone, and they should be recognized/dealt with.
Do we all have biases? Yes, and we should be willing to be called out on them. How else are things going to change?
this article fills me with lots of mixed feelings – yes it’s a personal sharing of his experience but it is filled with many strange juxtapositions – he stood on a street corner as a youth but is determined his son will not, he is devastated when his son notices skin colour yet he is hoping to instill a sense of pride in his heritage? Overall I suspect the heart is in the right place but I did feel uncomfortable with many elements of the article – oh and as an irish person from ‘the old country’ (co mayo to be exact!) the river liffey has not been blue for generations! and in the past 20 years Ireland has had a lot of immigration from all over europe and africa and asia and the culture is being impacted greatly – that does not mean that racism is less evident (i wish!) but it does mean that the white mono-culture is no more – with so many references to his own irish heritage he may find that ireland has changed greatly in recent history
gm, I do admire him in his courage about writing about race issues, and normally I would agree about not attacking him for his silly ideas if it were something he posted on his personal blog.
But this guy is a PROFESSIONAL WRITER. He wrote a book and is making money off those silly ideas. He deserves to be honestly critiqued. That’s part of being a professional writer.
Can I just say that my kidlet is adorable behind her bunny in Mike McGregor’s photo collage accompanying the article?
And in truth, when I read the article, my sense was of the man trying to figure out things that I had to figure out (issues of race/identity) a lot earlier in my life as an assimilated black child in 70s America. If he’s just “getting it” now, it may take a little longer to figure it all out. Hell, we black people haven’t figured it all out in any uniform way. We just find an approach that works best with our personal ethos.
Yes, you can, and yes she is!
I find this to be an interesting dynamic in conversations like this. Discussion quickly turns to the (potential) hurt feelings of the person being critiqued for problematic racial statements and views. Such persons are expected to be “given credit” for trying, for their honesty, etc. Critique and disagreement is re-framed as attack.
Instead of conversation moving towards better articulating the things that make (some of) us uncomfortable, we may spend our efforts trying to make sure no feathers have been ruffled.
This is not the way to have honest discussions about race. Once you put yourself out there in the public sphere–no matter how personal or honest your writing–you must be prepared to be called out, to feel uncomfortable, and even to have your feelings hurt. Those of us who are “of color” have had to take these risks forever when speaking out about race. Actually, even greater risks than just hurt feelings or being called out of our names.
If someone’s speech is shut down after experiencing this kind of discomfort, then they probably were not yet ready to have these conversations in the first place.
@ PPR Scribe: Yes! This is such an important point, and you explained it so clearly.
I run into this all the time with my local school district. The conversation always turns from our goals to how the white adults will FEEL. There’s always this push to be more diplomatic, sugar coat things, take baby steps, hand out cookies for the least little concession. Very frustrating, not to mention ineffective.
Yes, it’s hard to get called out on things, but I’ve learned that it’s something of an honor. If a person of color spends their time to take the risk of calling me out on something ignorant I’ve said, that’s something they didn’t have to do. I need to listen and take the opportunity to learn, and to appreciate that they’ve taken a chance on me they didn’t have to take.
It’s especially important for white parents of children of color to realize it’s our responsibility to listen to people of color in those situations, to recognize it as a resource that will benefit our children. We are not the experts. We need to listen up.
As a mother in an interracial marriage similar to his–Black woman, White man. I felt his article illustrates how imperfect human beings really are. Being in an interracial marriage doesn’t automatically bestow upon you racial enlightment…it just makes you more aware of your own personal confusions, contradictions and processes you are working through within yourself about race.
I have known countless Black women who were mistaken as the nanny when they were out and about with their biracial children.
The same fears he has about his son, alot of Black parents I know have–those who are not in an interracial marriage but in same race marriage. Because your son is Black, the fact that he is NOT going to make less of himself than stellar becomes something you are almost painfully aware of. I have aunts who are in same race marriagers who are proud of the fact that their sons are doing well in life and aren’t hanging out in the corners being caught up in trouble…because the truth is, in many Black families, even if you are a successful family–meaning educated, and ahead of the socio-economic game, its not that far back in your family that you will have family members who are struggling with sons who want to be cool rather than smart, want to hang out and prove they are “down” whether they are upper middle or lower in the socio-economic status. I have known many a middle class Black boy who felt he had to prove how “ghetto” and how “down” and how “hard” he is because most of the images of Black boys and men on t.v. is of hard men who are tough with an edge of danger, and hypersexualized….even though we have a Barack Obama, Cornell West, Henry Louis Gates, Montel Williams, Dr Benjamin Carson who also appear on the same tee vee.
The message that some many not get from this White father’s article is that–we also live in a materialistic culture. I still to this day see Black boys wearing expensive jewelery–diamond studs in the ears, name brand designer clothing, haircuts every week, expensive “kicks” because they are trying to emulate who they see on t.v. who looks like them and are trying to fit in with their peers–the classic teenage story but with a twist given that the images they see on t.v. promotes materialism. Ive seen poorer Black children with clothing, haircuts, earrings–their whole outfits worthing more than White teenagers I also grew up knowing whose parents were higher up on the socio-economic status.
The lure of peer pressure is strong for all teenagers, regardless of race.
But because of race, and socio-economics, I also knew Black teenagers who got robbed for their clothes, haircut, diamond studs or judged as not as smart, not A-students by those who interact with them who are not family and friends (i.e. strangers, or adults within their school) precisely because they sag their pants and dress this way.
Hanging on the corner. I will go get my child if he ever does some mess like this. I am not stupid enough to think that because my child lives a slightly privileged life that he is protected from visiting dangerous neighborhoods where the expensive stuff you wear will be robbed from you, or where standing on certain street corners will get you noticed by the cops and assumed to be a drug dealer. Not far from our so-called suburban oasis are drug dealers slinging drugs right near a popular amusement park.
In short, I will not be naive, but be aware, informed and always talk to my son about who his friends are, where he hangs out, and how he conducts himself and dresses will get him more attention than the average White teenage boy often gets away with.
That is just reality. Racial profiling by the cops is reality. Doesnt matter if he’s driving a nice car his parents paid for or that he worked hard to buy. Doesnt matter if he’s an A student.
And over my dead body will he hang out on any street corner doing nothing, being vulnerable to someone making trouble with him for being there, or getting into trouble for being there hanging out with friends. Drive by shootings are a risk even for suburban kids standing at that same corner as a child of the city.
And I think that many parents who care, wish their children to do better than they did.
I also think that being a professional writer doesn’t take away your humanness, such as how you think and process your own feelings about race and expectations about your children as they grow. It doesn’t take away your humanity as flawed as it is. It doesn’t take away your own personal contradictions.
I knew exactly what he meant by whitewashed. What he meant was a Black person who is uncomfortable around other Black people, who cannot relate, who is unfamiliar with the commonalities that Black people might have with each other in some, a few or alot of ways culturally. Someone who is uncomfortable being Black, who is not comfortable within his/her skin, literally and figuratively.
It is not a way of speaking, and it is not someone who speaks the Queen’s English beautifully…but a person who seeks out the approval of White people for who he/she is, because he/she believes that White people are the ideal and Black people are not.
It is a Black person who avoids other Black people, goes out of their way to avoid eye contact if he/she is aware they are in a room full of White people and makes eye contact with other White peers, and then stiffens up and ignores the Black peers in the same event in the same room.
Example: a conference for lawyers within the same company and everyone greets everyone, but the whitewashed Black person warmly greets every White person but ignores their Black peers.
It is rare that I encounter a Black person like this. But when I do, I notice it…it has a feeling behind it that you pick up on immediately as it is pretty obvious when someone who is Black is uncomfortable around Black people, if you are Black yourself and their peer by virtue of working within the same career, same company, same division/department et cetera.
Reading the article ,I can only say “kudos” to the white father who dares to express all the anxieties and self-doubt he has, looking at his beautiful brown child. It is a situation I never encountered.
It is also a situation that, only in America, has so much gravitas. As a mainland European, I never thought anything of the fact that some of my girlfriends were brown ,some of them “pinkish” , some of them ochre. It was just my preference. To me it was like having red hair or something. Beautiful on its own merit. They were all very aware of their skin-tone, however they never expressed anything but pride in their color.(although, obsessing over their hair like any other girl
)
Overhere, the painful divide between the races is not as strong, not as controversial. Color is not connected to certain unwanted “cultures” most of the time.
I am not saying that there is no racism..far from it..!! but looking at the sheer amount of mixed couples and mixed toddlers in buggies One tends to see overhere on a Saturday shopping spree, it is less prevalent as it is in The States.
Yes, we do have the aspiring “gangsta boys” funny bit is though that even those “gangsta” groups are fairly mixed, proof that it’s a lot of “MTV” and not much more than that.
I am really convinced it has to do with the fact that, in general, we are fairly wealthy, whatever skintone. Most European countries have a egalitarian society. Super-rich and Super-poor are very scarce, thanx to pretty steep taxes for the well-to-do like me . I do not mind paying them. It guarantees security if something unfortunate happens to me, and I pay for those that have less,are less fortunate, despite hard work.
The only thing that can be detrimental to racial relations, is the fact that europe as a whole, is mainly protestant and does not react very well to the influx of muslim-north africans, who are, as far as skin-tone goes, very much on the “white end” of the scale.
In the end a lot of us have decided that there is no gain in spitting and hissing over the fence to “the other” Our youth seems to be quite colorblind in a good way. They are not ignoring the fact they look different ,but they also do not automatically connect color to culture.
Well ,America has a colored president with two beautiful brown daughters and a stunningly chique wife. It is a good start me thinks… Things HAVE to change otherwise American society will go under in racial strife before it could get things in order. (I HATE the word “race” black-race, white-race..bla blah..what am I ..a “mutt” or a bastard? Just because my great-great-great gran was a “cafe au lait” from Martinique, I look absolutely white, still technically I have no “race” . technically I’m MIXED….blagh..another “box”.. see the sheer stupidity of it all??)
Oh,by the way, notice I said “brown” instead of “black” ? That is because in my society being called “black” is a derogatory term, not a generally accepted description for people of african-descent.. We tend to call those of african-descent “dark” , encompassing every hue and shade.
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