She loves me, she loves me not: Black, White, or Illegal Alien?

I touched on issues surrounding the term illegal alien* a couple weeks ago in Walking the (color)Line, when I mentioned a couple ways I suspected this term has affected my children’s perceptions of the Hispanic community. There was a part of me that wondered whether I was reading too much into things… but let’s just say that’s no longer a concern. Within the last week or two, I read a blog or article about multiracial girls being asked what color their husbands would be. I wondered if Halle had ever heard or been asked something like this. I made a little note to self to bring it up, but Thursday night in the car, she raised the subject. She was talking about how she was going to date a boy for one year when she grew up, and asked if that was too long. I told her it depended on the boy; with some boys, a year might be too long, with another, a year may not be long enough. She suddenly started talking about whether this boy might be white or black and something about so and so… I interrupted and asked if people asked her that, and she confirmed. Then I asked, “Do you guys talk about that?” and she responds matter of factly, “Oh, yeah.” I asked if that was something that had just come up this year, and she said no, it was last year too. I asked how it came up, and she said, just when they talk about who they think is cute. She continued with her story…

“Anyway, so and so asked me once, and I said he would probably be Black or White, but not Mexican, but then I met Tristan, and I like him and I think he’s cute, and he’s Mexican…”

Her voice trailed off.

Q1 Report Cards & Halloween Costumes

Tyler has C’s in Albegra & Language Arts and B’s in Science, Social Studies, PE & Electronics Band. Overall I’m happy with his report card; his average GPA is better than it’s been for a while. I’m not happy about the C’s, obviously, but I’m most concerned about his grade in Algebra. He has tests each semester that he has to pass with a 70% in order to get high school credit for the class. I’m having a hard time figuring out how much of his grade is effort (or lack thereof) or subject content. I guess the district has a new policy where kids have to be re evaluated for 504’s every three years. This gets on my nerves for several reasons, one of which is that on the paperwork I have to fill out, they ask me to provide copies of report cards. ?!?!?!?!

Halle has a C in math (what’s UP with math this quarter?) and has herself convinced that it’s soooo hard. I watch her try and use strategies to solve problems that I swear to God add like, three or four extra steps. So we’re working on that, and she’s got A’s in every other subject.  She says she wants to run for Student Congress this year instead of Conflict Manager, which is a relief to me. Iasked her if she was going to join Buddy Club this year, and she said no… if she does Student Congress and Buddy Club it’s just too much running around (all these activities happen during lunch recess). I thought that was pretty impressive… hopefully she’ll be able to maintain that awareness of what she can handle & what’s going to just stress her out, unlike those of us who “should” ourselves to death.

Daija is coming along… she’s got self control & taking esponsibility as areas of concern, and everything else is developing or proficient (she doesn’t get letter grades yet). We’re working on that as well… Mommy needs to be more consistent! We spoiled the baby, and now I’m paying for it (and sadly, so is her teacher).

We went and got costumes last night, and somehow, not one of the kids is a vampire. Tyler is an “underworld outcast” and Daija is a US Diva. Halle said over the weekend she wanted to use last year’s costume (she was cleopatra). So I may be dressing up as cleopatra’s mother again… and we’ll be doing our usual Halloween tradition of trick or treating around the neighborhood for a minute and then heading to Doomtown at Rawhide.

White Parents, Black Babies

 I was reading a post at Womanist Musings about transracial adoption last week. I left a brief comment, but decided to post my somewhat lengthy thoughts here because a) my thoughts are more related to multiracial families rather than transracial adoption and b) I think she makes several excellent points that are relevant for biological parents of multiracial children.

I know what it is to love a child. I know what it is to hold their little hand and see the world through their eyes but children of color require more. This is not about special treatment, as much as it is arming them and protecting them from the certain cruelties ahead. The first time my child was demeaned because of his color, it was to me, his Black mother that he poured out his soul and not his White father. Children know intuitively who can be of help. Without a parent of color, each assault is new and shocking.

When I taught my child that officer friendly wasn’t necessarily friendly, it was with the passion of Black mother that has heard far too many laments of Black mothers, who have lost their children to police violence. When I inform him that his behaviour must be different than his White friends, it is with the knowledge that though they are both children, the world will see my gentle Black child much differently. When it comes to children of color, there are harsh lessons that must be taught and to believe that a White parent is prepared to do that is to deny the racist culture in which we live. Children need love and they need a sense of community to grow, though these things are quickly forgotten when a White person steps up to adopt. Whiteness may be the dominant culture, but it is not the only culture or community of value.

I think Renee makes some really, really excellent points. I do agree that when it comes to transracial parenting, whether by birth or adoption, white parents are often poorly equipped to address the cultural needs of children of color, or prepare them for a racialized society. But (yeah, I know… you saw this coming) I disagree that it’s the black parent by default or that it’s impossible for a white parent to handle. When my 10yo daughter was troubled by a classmate dropping the n-word in conversation, she did know, intuitively, who could be of help, and it was her white mother, not her black father.

It happened because I am parenting with purpose, and not depending on luck (or love) to get us through.

I think first and foremost, she came to me because I initiate dialogue about race and she knows that I am open to discussion, that I am going to stay calm and LISTEN to her, whereas her father tends to overreact to the most benign scrapes & bruises. Secondly, there’s the whole African vs. African American dynamic in our family. Like many African immigrants, Dad has picked up a lot of negative stereotypes about Black Americans; furthermore, he has no ties to the African American community. Between the two of us, I am more familiar, for lack of a better word, with Black American culture and history than he is. That’s not to say that as a white woman I know what it’s like to be black or that I have more experience with racism, but his experience in this country is as an African man in America, and my daughter’s is that of a biracial/Black American.

I have no experience with transracial adoption, but I ran into the challenge of raising a COC without a COC (community of color this time) when my then 3yo’s dad moved to the opposite coast and took the “color connection” with him. I worried how my son was going to develop a healthy sense of self during summer visitations. Over and over in multiracial parenting bulleting boards & support groups I ran into white mothers who dismissed the importance of actively providing their multiracial children with a healthy culture of color when the father wasn’t playing an active role. “Well, his (absent) father doesn’t consider himself african american, so I don’t worry about it.

So I tried not to, and I told myself love would be enough (love, and the massive stack of books featuring black children of various cultures). And it was pretty easy at first, because my son wasn’t much darker than I was. We didn’t get many comments from strangers. But I was about to give birth to my second child… and then the cat was out of the bag. After Halle was born, it suddenly became glaringly obvious that Tyler was biracial. People were suddenly very curious about where Tyler’s curly hair came from, and I began to worry that Tyler was going to slug some well meaning white lady in Target who loitered too long and gushed too many compliments.  Strangers aren’t supposed to talk to kids! or Strangers aren’t allowed to touch my sister! he would tell them.

Like you should need a four year old to tell you that.

As the years went on, and the zooing got worse, I began to contemplate “reverse white flight.” So I moved. And I thought, that was that. My children had love, a community of color that included teachers and peers, tons of black children’s books, and I’d thrown in brown baby dolls and a Ruby Bridges movie.

But all that wasn’t enough, because I still didn’t get it. I still had to let go of what I believed about race, and accept someone else’s reality.

via Womanist Musings.

“the only color”

A new mommy friend mentioned looking for a sport for her daughter, and I started telling her about Halle’s wonderful experience with the Starlings/TEAM AZ, and reminiscing over last season and how much she grew in the experience. While I was reminiscing, I remembered how nervous Halle was at tryouts, and her fear when she thought she was going to be placed on a team where she would be “the only color” and emailed a friend about it…

my daughter confronts the N-Word… with love

I wrote a blog a couple years ago about the controversy surrounding the Don Imus fiasco, where he referred to a championship basketball team of women as Nappy Headed Hos… which led to a conversation with my children about the words ho and nigger, among others. In this entry I titled Don’t call me out of name, a phrase which comes from street vernacular and means don’t label me something I’m not, I struggled with a heavy subject… how could I give my children not only the tools, but also the strength to take a stand for themselves against the lure of the n-word in peer situations. While it’s probably unlikely my kids would feel pressure to use the word themselves, I wanted to empower them to “be the change” and influence others in a positive manner to not only discourage others from using the n-word to address them, but to also reconsider their use of the word, period.

I realize that’s a mighty tall order… and from a white girl at that. Like black folks haven’t been trying to discourage their kids from the use of the word for more years than I’ve been alive. And I can get up on my soapbox with other white folks and let them have it over the n-word… cuz to paraphrase a handful of white folks who are way smarter than me… racism is a white problem. We created it, we benefit from it… we need to address it within ourselves, our families, and our communities. And I feel pretty confident in teaching my children not to tolerate for one second a white person calling them by that pejorative. But I really struggled with how to guide my brown-skinned children through the minefield of the n-word when it’s used a so called endearment or as a sign of solidarity. I’m not naive enough to think that being called a nigger lover gives me any kind of authority on what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the n-word, whether from the mouth of a white or black person… and while I know that anyone who lived through the civil rights movement and the first generation after would be hard pressed to justify or tolerate it’s use, but I guess part of me did figure that it was somehow less painful for the younger generation to hear, that whether they used it themselves or not, they were desensitized to the vulgarity of the word due to the prevalence of it’s use in music and media. I was very much mistaken in this assumption, and exactly how deeply wrong I was became very clear to me last year as my daughter first encountered the complexity of social cliques… part of the shrapnel I mention in that post was one girl’s foul mouth, including her use of the word “nigga.”

4th Grade Cliques

Last year as my (then) nine year old found herself mired in the drama of the 4th grade cliques… which I remember being the middle school cliques. 4th grade is the new 7th, or so they say… but getting back on track…

In fourth grade, Halle ran into a “mean girl” situation in her classroom… and even worse, it was between two friends who couldn’t stand each other. They threatened each other, spread rumors about each other, and each tried to rally Halle to their cause, which was very distressing to my little diplomat. She had played an official role of “Peer Mediator” for younger students the previous two years, and very naturally fell into a role of trying to mediate a situation that was way over her head.  And because so much of the conflict was playground politics and lunchroom underground, it wasn’t visible to teachers & staff.

That Magic Mom-ment…

That magic moment…
when your lips are close to MIIIIIIIINE…
will last forEVERRRRR…

No no no… not THAT magic moment… I’m talking about how (OF COURSE) you tell your kids all the time that you love them, and praise their accomplishments. But especially as you approach the turbulent tween & teen years, you wonder if you tell them enough, and whether it just goes in one ear, stopping only long enough to roll the eyes, and right back out the other. Every once in a while you get the opportunity to tell them something about themselves that isn’t about them as your child, but about the phenomenal individual they are growing into… and you know, with every fiber of your being, that they are going to carry that moment with them for the rest of their lives, and it will be a talisman between them and all the bullshit they are going to have to wade through in middle & high school.

Bike Riding…

So tonight at dinner we’re having some nice conversation.

Tyler: I wish we could go for a bike ride.

Halle: Where at?

Daija: Colorado! 

Tyler:  WHY in Colorado?

Daija: What?  I dunno… cuz it’s as big as our world… it’s medium-large…

God, I love these kids…

a woman of authority

So about a year ago I went to Barnes & Noble with the intent of buying Simple Abundance and wound up buying several other books instead… books that I have yet to read.  I bought The Good Son, Shaping the Moral Development of our Boys & Young Men by Michael Gurian, and picked up The Wonder of Girls, Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Daughters, also written by Gurian, simply because if I’m going to buy a book about the boy, as an Equal Opportunity Parent, I feel compelled to buy a book about the girls.  After I bought these books, I checked some reviews and was a little put off by one review that classified The Wonder of Girls as an attempt of a man trying to tell women what their nature was when he, by nature, could never have a true understanding of women.  Although both books were overall very well reviewed, that may be why I’ve never started reading them… but in fairness, in the year since I made these purchases, I have been consumed by the reading of other books which seemed more relevant to where I was in my own personal growth as well as my parental growth… Eat Pray Love, White Like Me, and Does Anybody Look Like Me come to mind. Those were all books that I read intensely and voraciously…taking them everywhere I went and unable to put them down at night.

OPEN THE DOOR!

So we were up late Saturday night, my little Easter/Christmas Elf and I, assembling Easter baskets and watching The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  It was a warm weekend, but I refuse to turn on the air conditioning this early, so I popped the baskets into the fridge, intending to get up about half an hour earlier than either of the girls usually wake up to set them out and to go outside and, using the chalk stamper/stencil I got at Target, to stamp bunny feet going to and from our front door.

The girls woke up at 6:30. 

So I herded them into the tub before they could look any further than their rooms, pulled the chilled chocolate and jelly beans out of the fridge and set them out, and ran outside in my jammies to stamp the bunny foot prints. 

Dear Mr. Exterminator… (by Halle)

Dear Mr. Exterminator,

Please do not destroy me and my home.  If you don’t, I’ll continue to help you out with your bedbug problem.

I know I’m nasty, but that’s just the way I am… forever.

Sincerely,

Cockroach

Apparently, cockroaches eat bedbugs.  Who knew?  And Tyler shares with me that they can live without their heads for three weeks, go without food for a month, and hold their breath for 45 minutes.

Gotta love public education.

Live, from the kitchen…

Current mood: annoyed 

I’m in the kitchen multitasking… cooking dinner and on the phone with reservations to change Ro’s itinerary and check on the company’s policy on emergency travel for employees.  I’m holding patiently while Ms. Fabulous Reservations Agent it searching the policy (made me feel less dumb, I couldn’t find it either). 

 

Daddy’s Girl appears.

 

Momma, I am so tired of Princess.

 

Really, Daddy’s Girl?

Yes.  I am JUST SO TIRED of Princess.

Why are you tired of your sister?

Because I told her two times to clean up the poop.

Daddy’s Girl… what poop?

THE POOP.

Daddy’s Girl, where is the poop?

In you room.

Daddy’s Girl, can you show momma the poop?

O-tay…

Damn dog.  Anyone want a Shih Tzu?  Ms. Fab Res Agent declined as politely and professionally as one can while choking on laughter.

Daija and Halle, Live from the back seat…

I’m editing this post because the back seat entertainment really started this morning. 

the trailer

I have several books that I had as a child, that I’ve had so long I don’t know quite how I got them, but whenever that was, they were already old.  I’ve been trying to get Tyler to move away from paperbacks he’s read over and over and trying a couple of these classics.  Monday night, I found success and he chose Black Beauty for his nightly read & respond.  Daija, not to be outdone, chose Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  I put Huck away, but I keep finding him all over the house.  Daija gets him out, I put him back, Daija gets him out, I put him back… not so much because it’s inappropriate literature for a child of three years, nine months… but because Huck is 58 years old.  OK, so not the story itself, but this book, is 58 years old.

the opening act

This morning we leave for preschool, and Daija smuggles Huck out to the car.  I reminder her that the contraband (she always has contraband) must be left in the car when we get to the preschool.  She agrees (she always does) and announces she is going to read to me.  I buckle her into her booster seat, she opens the book in her lap, and we start our commute.

I don’t remember Mark Twain writing much about an octopus… but Daija is aware that “O” stands for OCTOPUS, therefore, if there is an “O” in the book, the book is about an OCTOPUS.

Daija likes the story, and expresses her desire to take the book into the preschool.  I express my desire the book stay in the car.  She screams NO.  We have a brief discussion about how Momma’s are to be spoken to.  She says, in a more favorable tone of voice, that she doesn’t want to leave the book in the car.  I explain that I do not want the book to get broken or lost.  Daija responds, in her “Silly Rabbit” voice, that the book will not get lost.  I restate that the book must stay in the car. 

Momma

she says as she lays the book in the center seat.

Look at this book.  Someone will take it out of our car.

I frantically yank the plastic off my bottle of starbucks and pray the caffeine kicks in quickly enough to make a strong rebuttal that no one will break into our car to steal a 58 year old copy of huckleberry finn… and wonder how much it’s going to cost me to put Daija through law school.

the final act

I wound up leaving work early because Tyler was in the nurse’s office twice complaining of head and stomach aches.  We went home, where I was almost immediately hit with an extended family crisis, then went and picked up Halle & Jelani from the community center and Daija from daycare. 

On the way to daycare, Halle and Jelani are chatting in the back seat.  I’m preoccupied with the family issue so I didn’t catch the whole conversation, especially since Jelani tends to mutter.  But here are the snippets I did catch out of Halle’s mouth…

Real mermaids don’t have those things up here.  But mermaids are real.

I think by up here, she was referencing the bikini top or seashells often depicted on mermaids’ breasts.  I leave that alone, and interject that no one has ever been able to take a picture of a mermaid to prove they exist.

That’s because we live in a DESERT.

I don’t hear much because I’m choking back laughter.  When I manage to tune in again, Halle seems to be theorizing that God created mermaids.

[static, static, static]

God… [pause] Who VOTED for God? I mean, did somebody vote for him, or did he just get it because he was the first one?

[static, static, static]

I wish I knew what was in the clouds.

[static, static, static]

Jesus is like… Jesus is just like awesome.

[static, static, static]

How am I supposed to drive in these circumstances?  And poor Jelani, having to hold the other end of that conversation!

Halle’s perspective on ‘monoracial’ families – 2006

Halle’s perspective on ‘monoracial’ families – CURLYGURL’s MySpace Blog | Cyndi–s Jewels

February 15, 2006 – Wednesday 8:54 PM

Kids ask me if I’m Halle’s mom on a pretty regular basis since she started school… I’ve had a child ask, if I’m her mom, why is Halle black?  I’ve been asked whether Halle is black or white.  I’ve kinda gotten to a point where I can see it coming… some small child I don’t know will just be standing there, head cocked to one side, contemplating me.  I don’t mind answering… from a child it’s genuine curiosity about a concept they may not have realized possible, that families can consist of different races. It’s a little unnerving sometimes though, that it happens as often as it does. There aren’t a lot of white people in this part of town, and I’d wager that the majority of the white people who do live here, are in an interracial relationship.  So if biracial children/relationships are a foreign concept to a child, I may well be the first white person she or he has had direct contact with.  But I imagine as Halle gets older, I’ll get that question less often as her peers have more exposure than they’ve had in kinder and first grade.  But I’m rambling… this really just leads into something Halle said tonight that tickled me.

Cool! The whole crew’s gonna be at the sock hop!

Just let the title marinate for a little while. It’s not just me that thinks there’s something fundamentally hysterical about any sentence that contains both the term ‘crew’ and the phrase ’sock hop’, is it?

Friday after I picked the kids up from the community center, Tyler asked if Jelani would be going to the sock hop at their school that night. The subject line was his response when I answered yes.

I managed not to laugh, and just gave a little hiccup as I inquired, “You have a crew?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tyler responds.

“Who all is in this crew?” I ask, as if I don’t already know the answer.

“Me, Cameron, Elijah, and Jelani,” Tyler informs me.

If you follow our blog on myspace, you probably remember Cameron and Elijah from my posts on Tyler’s stint as a small business owner and attempt at petty forgery. They’re getting quite a little reputation, the three of them. The last time the staff at the community center shared a concern with me, the story began like this… “Tyler and his posse were by the bingo machine…”

You don’t mess with the bingo machine at a community center that has a thriving senior group whose primary social entertainment consists of B-I-N-G-O. You especially do not allow oragami claws to enter any part of the machine.

I finally got a chance to meet Cameron’s mom at the sock hop, and she says she hears Tyler’s name just as often as I hear Cameron’s. I think it’s a tossup as to who gets who in trouble. I told her about the little conversation Tyler and I had about their little crew, she laughed and called them the Fab Four. In the Cha Cha Slide, she’s the lady in the denim outfit and baseball cap; I think Elijah’s mom is the lady wearing gray slacks and a burgandy top.

Halle, upon hearing Tyler list out his crew, decided she has one as well. You can probably just dub Halle, Chaz, and Kennedy ‘The Pink Ladies’ and be done with it. I wish I’d gotten more pictures of her, but in case you couldn’t tell, she wasn’t real interested in the camera.

Daija had a great time at the dance… she jumped into the picture Jelani wanted me to take of his face painting, and then grabbed his hands and started dancing. I think they may well have been the only boy/girl couple at the dance!!! But that’s my Daija, she knows her own mind and isn’t afraid to take matters into her own hands.

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