I Don't Know How to Break it to You, Baby

Before my lovely little girl arrived, I used to think of how fun parenthood was going to be.

I have done a lot of teaching--from toddlers to retirees and everyone in between--and I love that kind of work with people. It's fun to be part of someone's growing experience and/or learning process. It's fun to watch a toddler learn about ants and fun to watch a teenager learn how to question authority (even mine) and fun to watch a grown up learn that something in the Bible that's bothered her all her life is not the awful thing it was represented to her as when she was 12.

But having my own child was going to be this opportunity to have a front-row, center seat on the whole process in the same person. In fact, just like teaching--perhaps even more than teaching--it would be a chance to be there with someone and learn to see things in new ways through her new eyes. I was really excited about all the things I would get to tell her and teach her and I was, frankly, excited about the fact that I would get to tell her my version of the truth first (well, alongside my partner's version, and they're the same anyway, often enough); that even as she grew and rebelled and learned other perspectives and perhaps changed her mind, I would at least be there to give her the groundwork, to provide the launching pad for the process.

What I never really thought about was the bad news. It never occurred to me that of course, I was going to have to figure out how to share some pretty tough information about this world she got born into without being asked if she wanted to be here. But now that she's here, I find myself worrying about this job from time to time.

Uncle Sasha will sometimes talk to her about how, as "brown women" they have to stick together. Once, she said something like that to Nat, looked up at me and said, "she doesn't know she's Black, yet!" Well, no, she doesn't. And as I've preached here, ad nauseum, she certainly will know it and she'll be proud of it if we have anything to say about it. But what we have to say is not the end of the story.

And thus I found myself bawling in the children's book section of our local bookstore last week, when Cole handed me a picture book about a little girl escaping from slavery with her family. I had an (adult) Harriet Tubman biography right there in my other hand, so my reaction took even me by surprise. But I hastily put the book back on the shelf and said "not yet, not today" while Cole wondered what the heck my weird mood swing was about.

It's not that Nat is Black. That fact changes the dynamics, of course, but I'd be sad having to break the news of American History to any child of mine of any race. It's hard enough breaking it to children who aren't mine, when they're not even quite children anymore. I have had college students look at me with tears streaming down their faces asking me why no one ever told them--in their 12 years of privileged education--what Columbus did to the Arawaks. And it's not as though I gave them some melodramatic lecture, I just assigned them chapter one of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States.

But no child of mine is going to college without that information, and that means I get the job of telling her. No book can do that for me. Not that I don't think the picture book about the underground railroad is a great thing. I'm really glad such books exist, as they certainly haven't always been around. But the book, if it's a good one, will probably raise questions more than give answers and the story isn't a child's fairy tale, however happy the picture book's ending. Telling Nat the kinds of things that people have done to each other throughout history not because of racial difference, but just using racial difference as an excuse to treat each other as less than human--for profit, for sport, for sheer power--is not a job I relish. I'm just glad she's too little to know quite yet. It gives me time to come up with a plan.

*****

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if I had a white child, I wouldn't have burst into tears at the bookstore. The news that your ancestral ratio of slaves to slave-owners weighs heavily (though doubtless, not exclusively) on the slave-owner side is bad news indeed. But it's bad guilt-inducing news. White guilt, in my opinion is entirely useless except as a starting point for getting serious about racial justice, but guilt is not the same as the thing I fear might happen to Nat when she hears the news that her ancestral ratio of slave to slave-owner weighs heavily (though doubtless, not exclusively) on the slave side. That little girl in the book looks like my little girl. And as much as I hope she'll read a book like that and see the little girl as the American hero she is, and be proud of her, I freeze when I contemplate how I, the mother who loves her beyond infinite treasure, can possibly explain to her that she--or anyway little girls who looked like her, 200 years ago--were regarded as subhuman property.

And in addition to freezing at the thought of breaking that news, I squirm with the knowledge that not having to break that news to my own child is a white privilege that I've lost. Does that make my tears in the bookstore whiny tears of entitlement vanished? Probably. Black parents have to do this sort of thing all the time. I remember the first time I realized that. I had a teacher's assistant in my preschool classroom who was black, and her kids came to the school with her some days. I overheard her once, talking to her children about a racist epithet someone had shouted on the playground and I thought "God what an awful thing to have to talk about with your kids!" I felt so sad for my colleague that her kids had to go through that. But I didn't think it was my problem, though of course, it was. It would be years before I realized that racism is more my problem than hers or any other of its targets.

Meanwhile, I realize that being the geneological decendent of people who struggled against oppression successfully for centuries and thrived and told the tale in beautiful art and literature is not all bad news. After all, I'm the teacher who tells my guilt-ridden white students that they might as well identify with Frederick Douglass as with Andrew Jackson; they're not related to either of them personally and they're both famous, dead Americans, but only one of them shares my students' professed values. I'm proud to say Ida B. Wells is my hero because she was an American fighting for justice and so am I.

But the little girl in the book looked like my baby and hard as it is for me to admit, it tugged my heart, not my head.

Comments

[cluttergirl]

Very thoughtful entry. I find myself entertaining this type of thought now that I will in most likelihood adopt a non-white child. One thing that helps me ground is that I could very conceivably had given birth to (as a white mother), a "black" kid, if I had had a black lover or sperm donor for the child. Because sometimes I have fears about my adequacy at just that. My black child may see herself in the black girl in the book... but I cannot say that like the black girl's mom in the book, that I have been through it all, know what it feels like, and can give practical advice based on what I did or think about racism towards me or having my race be a target. It is something I struggle with. Thankyou for the post.

[Mary]

*hugs*

This entry put me at a loss for words....

[Mieke]

This is an issue I was recently confronted with as I searched for books to give my friend's 8 year old son for his birthday.

I asked the store keeper for some recommendations, she pointed me towards three, which I bought, brought home, read and then returned. It is hard enough to find books with black protagonists, but it would seem that almost all that do have some sort of lesson about the negative “black experience". I didn't want that. I called my friend and asked her what her policy is about books because my gut was not to give books about slavery, the segregated baseball league, or the courage of a black man to stand up to a white man to an 8 year old. She said they didn't have ONE book in their house about those issues. Her attitude is the same as mine and why we have no books about war, violence, or which talk about anti-Semitic malice. We are both trying to preserve the innocence of childhood for as long as we can. We want them to grow up with a strong sense of self and identity so that when they are confronted with the ideas of bigotry and our American history they will be shocked and find the concept absurd because it is not their experience at home or within their diverse community. She said that these issues are not touched upon in Blaine’s school for another three years when they are old enough to process the story in a more historical concept and not internalize it as some previously unknown truth about who they are and that they are some how, suddenly different from their friends.

This isn’t to say our children are totally sheltered, we talk in general terms about the importance of being kind to others and standing up for our friends when others are being mean to them. We have a painting of MLK JR in Jonas’s room (he’s three and half) and we talk about what a great man he was and how he worked to ensure that all people were treated equally and with kindness without going into Jim Crow or Slavery. We talk about how important it is to be a leader like MLK or Gandhi when they see their friends being mean to animals or people. I suppose it’s a lot like talking to your children about sex, the level of information, the details increase as they get older. Right now Jonas is content to know he came from my belly and I pushed him out (from where he never asks).

I don’t know when it is, but right now Jonas has NO awareness that he is white and Blaine is black. My mother has taught a very diverse Montessori school for 38 years, and she has always said that even the five and six year olds don’t see color as anything more significant than curly hair – it seems it is something that has to be taught. So I advise to preserve the joy and innocence of life for Nat for as long as possible, she has a lifetime to learn how cruel we can be to each other.

In the meantime I found some great books about children of color that are only about children being children – they just happen to be black. Which, to me, is the way it aught to be. Let me know if you are interested in the titles.

[suzoz]

I've just been posting on my blog about how kids aged five and six *do* think and talk about racial difference.
From my (limited) experience, kids of school age are very receptive to notions of what is 'unfair' and 'mean' behaviour and they can see in the schoolyard that some kids are prone to being bullies. I think this is a way in to discussing larger injustices, such as why there are wars, why some people don't approve of his two mothers and that some people are racist.

[Sue]

Nodding like a bobble head. Our babies don't know the world they were born into yet. When mine came home (int'l adoption at age 3) she didn't know there was a significant difference between genders and it took her a good nine months to get the pronouns down, which she still gets mixed up on, and I only correct her because I know she has to survive socially.

At first, even though she has a mom and a dad, she easily accepted, as parents, our friends who are lesbian moms and gay dads. Then after 9 months of being indoctrinated into compulsory heterosexuality at a Jewish preschool, she was having dinner with our gay friends (who have a son) and abruptly asked where the mom is? Damn.

And then there is racism. During her 9 months of (all white) preschool she was systematically excluded from play dates. As far as I could tell, she was oblivious but it was so consistent, that I couldn't miss it.

I had to wonder if it had to do with her brown skin but was left to feel like it was my fault, somehow, even though the moms who were connecting are just as socially awkward as I am.*

A black friend said her daughter experiences the same thing in all white settings, which made me feel less crazy but more grieved. I am so used to being left out, I can hack it, whine about it sure, but I hack it. But when it happens to my baby, it hurts in a whole new way.

*I learned from that experience that if I do not make sure she has a diverse community of peers growing up, she will be so screwed.

[Dawn]

Is that the book about the freedom quilt? I just wondered 'cuz we have that one.

This is something that Jewish parents think about early on, too. It's one thing to talk about the slavery of our people on Passover, (which reads like a fairy tale) and it's another thing entirely to talk about WWII.

J brought over a book (we're storing some of her things) with a history of slavery in it and as I was flipping through it I asked, "When you look at this, aren't you so proud of your ancestors?"

And she said, "Why? For getting lynched?"

And I said, "When I see pictures of the holocaust, I am awed that my the Jewish people survived no matter what history threw at them. And when I see pictures of slavery, I feel the same way. We both come from strong people who refused to be destroyed."

She said she'd never thought about it before but maybe she would try seeing it that way.

[Yvette]

Great post.

I think you're on to something about mourning the loss of *not* having to confront this type of thing. I admit I (a Black parent of Black girls) never reacted this way--maybe because I always assumed I would have to address these issues with my children.

I just see it as another task of parenthood. It will be one I perform to the best of my abilities, but in the end it will still not be enough. Sure, I know what it was like growing up Black. But I can not know what growing up Black *today* is like. The time difference will create unique challenges for which even my Blackness cannot compensate.

[momof2]

Trust me, dear... regardless of the ethnicity of your child.. it still kills to explain racism and past events in history that were horrible. I have one white child, and one native american child (that everyone on the planet automatically assumes is hispanic, urgh) and it makes no difference- I get heartsick talking to both of them about such things.
But it's very real.. it's all still very much out there.. especially in my homogeneous state, unfortunately.
I bought a book last year- it's out of print and hard to find but luckily I got it on ebay. It's called "Whitewash" by Ntozake Shange. You must locate this for your daughter. It's geared towards 7-10 year olds but it's good to have in your collection for Nat. I cried when I read it to my sons.. but I needed to.

[Changeseeker]

Ah...I remember the adventure at that stage...and it continues to unfold. I mention the first forced conversation I had to have with my mulatto biological daughter at four-years-old in a blog post at http://whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com/2006/03/do-i-look-ethnic.html. I'm not sure whether or not there's a "more excellent" way to handle this, but to assume that the outside world will not introduce the issue or that it can be controlled for "later" may not be reasonable.

Despite a house full of multi-ethnic and multi-racial books, art, music, maps, etc., and many people of all kinds coming to the house over the years, when I recently asked my daughter (now 25) why most of her friends are White, she pointed out to me that she was raised by a "White" mother with more or less middle class White reference points and values and that being in gifted classes in public school often made her the only African-American child in the class, and so forth. She was very matter-of-fact about it and I felt a mixture of feelings both positive and not so positive. It goes with the territory.

After our first "talk" about it, though, twenty-one years ago, she crawled up into my lap and said, "You're one of the good White people, Mom." And when things get rough, I cling to that.