Its a complicated little life we've created here for our children, everything we do as parents and as individuals have effects both large and small on our children. The manner in which we speak and the things we say to them and others might teach them tolerance, patience, kindness..the way we treat our environment might teach them about responsibility and longevity, the way we feel about ourselves when we look in the mirror might teach them about confidence and acceptance. We all imagine our children's lives in the most positive light, we go to great lengths to protect them from things that might hurt them or taint their innocence but sometimes even that is not enough to shield them from the pressures of life.
Since I wasn't born in this country and spent a fair amount of my life living in my home country before moving to the US, in some ways my attitude towards issues of race and religion aren't in line with some of the philosophical debates or always in the forefront of my thinking or even clearly defined, I try not to see people by the color of their skin but realize that there are a lot of very strong opinions and stereotypes built into the social structure of this country so I realize I am often seen by others as a color, whether that color is black, brown, chocolate or considered to positive or negative. Certainly, it makes things easy for me to wake up every morning and walk out into the world expecting to treated with fairness and respect but this isn't always the case, so how do we prepare our children to face this almost inevitable form of prejudgement? I thought a lot about this before getting married to a "white Jew from brooklyn"(with all its grand connotations..") and felt it wasn't enough of a reason to now go out and make an effort to find a man who was considered a 'match' for my color, religion, upbringing, social class etc. Again, when my daughter was born and had to decide if she would be exposed to Catholicism, Judaism or nothing, we decided to just go with nothing, we didn't Baptize her until last summer and she was almost three.
Since I wasn't born in this country and spent a fair amount of my life living in my home country before moving to the US, in some ways my attitude towards issues of race and religion aren't in line with some of the philosophical debates or always in the forefront of my thinking or even clearly defined, I try not to see people by the color of their skin but realize that there are a lot of very strong opinions and stereotypes built into the social structure of this country so I realize I am often seen by others as a color, whether that color is black, brown, chocolate or considered to positive or negative. Certainly, it makes things easy for me to wake up every morning and walk out into the world expecting to treated with fairness and respect but this isn't always the case, so how do we prepare our children to face this almost inevitable form of prejudgement? I thought a lot about this before getting married to a "white Jew from brooklyn"(with all its grand connotations..") and felt it wasn't enough of a reason to now go out and make an effort to find a man who was considered a 'match' for my color, religion, upbringing, social class etc. Again, when my daughter was born and had to decide if she would be exposed to Catholicism, Judaism or nothing, we decided to just go with nothing, we didn't Baptize her until last summer and she was almost three.
I have recently begun thinking about these issues of race and religion again when she asked me one night if the baby was going to be "my color or her and her daddy's color.." and I had no good answer to this, I just laughed and said we would find out when she was born, but this indicated two things to me, firstly she now sees me as different than her daddy and she identifies with his 'color'. I asked her what color I was, to which she responded "brown" and her dad "white" and herself.."white" and then her cousin (pictured above).."black"! So that completely went out the window.
Th next scenario was a few nights ago when she chose a book to read before bed and it happened to be the children's bible she received as a gift at her Baptism! She asked my husband who is a non practicing Jew and is very skeptical of all religions to read it her. He went along with it until she asked him who 'God' was because he was the only character not shown in any of the illustrations on the pages, he hesitated and provided no answer because he has no belief in this but also didn't want to say that to her. After she asked a few more times he pointed to a giraffe and she was satisfied.
This past weekend, we celebrated both Passover (Seder with her great grandmother) and Easter (egg hunt at home) and although she didn't really acknowledge what the meaning of the days were she eventually will and if anything, she will inevitably chose and identify with one tradition or the other right?
As a parent, I feel like I must be prepared to tackle these questions with confidence and in detail because at almost 4 years old, her questions are getting quite sophisticated and she senses a lot from being around us as well, I would hate for her to learn intolerance as a result of our carelessness but also she needs to be able to identify herself within the context of recognized races in the US which is technically defined as 'mixed race' or 'bi-racial'. We all know how complicated this can be, in almost 4 years, the race and citizenship of our own president is still in question, you'd be surprised how many people think he's black (technically, the first African- American president of the US) and non-american till this day (he's actually mixed-race born in Honolulu, Hawaii) but why does he never get referred to as white (his mother was properly white, from Kansas)?
I had heard of a project by another blogger called The Mixed Race Project which quotes that according to the 2010 census, more than 9 million Americans identified themselves as multi racial-a jump of 32% in 10 years. I wasn't sure why I was drawn to being featured on it but now I realize that at least its a small step towards placing us, our family, within a group of others who also struggle to define themselves and be defined.
