As a multiracial Asian American, Jason Sperber writes, navigating race is always a parenting matter.
It seems that whenever a new conversation about race in America is started, no matter the good intentions, the starting point is always the same. The American historical experience and conception of race is grounded in the opposition of blackness and whiteness, two categories socially constructed over time in ways that have served to define “the other” as “not us” and “us” as “not them,” while at the same time preserving power and privilege for one “us” over the “not us.” Thus, it’s no surprise that The Good Men Project’s call for a new conversation about race and its intersection with what it means to be “good men,” begins with four personal, deeply felt, and honest essays that nevertheless fail to acknowledge that when we talk about race in 2011, it’s no longer enough, if it ever was, to color the dialogue in only black and white.
♦◊♦
When I am called to put a racial or ethnic label on myself, I call myself, among other things at other times, a multiracial Asian American. I am also the stay-at-home father of two multiethnic Asian-American daughters. Short version of the long story, three of my four paternal great-grandparents were Austrian Jews, and all my maternal great-grandparents were from Japan (yes, my family was in camp), and I’m from LA, married to a woman who came from the Philippines when she was one. What does it all mean, and what does it matter? It means that I am a father of children of color in a United States in which multiracial, by no means, equals post-racial, and it matters a hell of a lot.
Race may be a social construction, but it continues to have real consequences upon people’s lived experiences.
|
When I was a newbie SAHD in a new town, I started blogging. But before I was a dad, I was a college activist on race and diversity issues, an ethnic studies major, and a social studies teacher at a diverse, urban LA-area public high school, not unlike the one I had attended myself. Issues of race and social justice were intimately intertwined with my journey as a new father—how could they not be? And so, besides writing about the archetypal SAHD-out-of-water experiences and the daily routine of diapers and naps, I co-founded a group blog for Asian-American dads and joined a nascent blog whose blunt name needed no explanation, Anti-Racist Parent, which has since been renamed Love Isn’t Enough.
Countless times, I’d encounter commenters asking, “I thought this was a parenting blog! Why are you always talking about this race stuff?” For a parent of color, navigating race and racism is a parenting issue. Already, as one of the few Asian Americans at her school, my six-year-old has come home asking me why classmates insist she’s Chinese or ask her where she’s really from. And I know that it will be far too easy for my smart, personable girl, who also happens to be really shy in large groups and with authority figures, to get lost in the stereotype of the quiet Asian girl, and that it’s my job to monitor, teach, and intervene.
♦◊♦
Race may be a social construction, but it continues to have real consequences upon people’s lived experiences. I know that my experiences as a biracial Asian-American boy growing up in the Los Angeles of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s (I graduated from high school just a few scant months after the National Guard used our blacktop as a staging area) will be very different from my daughters’ experiences as multiethnic Asian-American girls growing up in a more conservative, more homogeneous Central Valley in the early 21st century. But I know that having a biracial black man in the White House and mixed folks as a Hollywood trend doesn’t equal the end of racism, and that colorblindness leaves us unable to see, and that sometimes it isn’t enough to just love our children and hope for the best but that we must equip them with the lessons of our past, the tools with which they can shape their world, and our guidance with which they can learn to do so.
This conversation isn’t a new one, and it’s not one with an end in sight. And that’s OK. Because we don’t have this conversation for our own sakes. But as we move forward, we need to make sure that more and different voices telling more and different stories are heard, because in those different stories we will find the common experiences that bind us and learn what we don’t know we don’t know. Only then can the conversation include everyone, and move forward.
♦◊♦
More articles On Race:
On Race
White Boy in a Black Land
Black Boy in a White Land
‘Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race’
Eating While Black
Facing Mecca
Beautiful on All Sides
♦◊♦
—Photo OliBac/Flickr
A great topic for so many of us with biracial kids. I’m German-American and my husband is Chinese-American. As we live in the mainly white Midwest I know this will become an issue for us as our daughter gets older. I recently read an interview with Jennifer Beals whose mother shared a lot if Greek mythology with her growing up, focusing on what made someone different typically made them special.
Great piece! I’m a mom of two mixed-race kids in L.A. and I’m also mixed. I agree with you that the conversation about race continues and changes. We have ongoing conversations about being mixed, race, racism in our house as the topic arises. Thanks for the post. Sharing on my FB page .
I’m hesitant to talk about race with my kids. My husband and I are both biracial – I identify as black, he identifies as “mixed” because he’s very light-skinned. The children in my dayhome are Asian/German, Portuguese/Italian, Irish/Metis, and Ukrainian. My half-brother (German/Irish) married a Fijian woman (East Indian/Fijian) and are due to have their second child. My husband’s cousins (Jamaican/Canadian) have married women from Vietnam, Mauritius and Hong Kong respectively. My kids understand that their friends and cousins have different features, the same way they understand that they have a mix of their own parents and grandparents features. My… Read more »
I love that you mentioned that race IS a parenting issue and one that people miss or gloss over. It’s a part of our regular, daily conversations on LIFE and that’s why it’s easier for us to talk about. It’s also why we become leaders on the discussions of race on our blogs and in person. Thanks for being my partner in doing that, Jason. Loved this piece.
As a white woman married to a first generation Indian American, mom to a half caucasian half Indian little girl (with a 2nd on the way) living in Singapore…Race is impossible to disentangle from parenting for me. When we moved to Asia, part of me was excited that my daughter would be able to get dolls that looked like her Imagine my naivete exposed for just that in the middle of every toy store filled with white baby dolls with blonde hair and blue eyes, white models in advertisements, and the ever present Disney Princess invasion in full swing. To… Read more »
Jason, great article about multiracial kids. I would like to talk with you about some things our organizations may be able to share. Please take a look at our website http://www.projectrace.com -Susan Graham, Project RACE.
Great article. As a dual-ethnic Latino dad, I’m always dealing with race issues. When I write Latino poetry or fiction people are always thinking I’m Greek or Italian. Yet my own grandfather was a farmworker. My Dad and uncles were seasonal farmworkers. Kids? White as white can be. But I try to expose them to their Latino heritage when I can. They see culture through me and I know it carries over and that makes us all proud. Thanks for your words, Jason.
Great blog. As a biracial woman (Asian and black) with no kids, I know race will be an issue when I eventually have a child. However, I feel with each generation,the color of someone’s skin matters much less than the generation before.
Christopher, thank you for commenting. You point out a key experience in this dialogue: the realization that some people, due to the way race has worked in our society, have had the privilege of not having to think about race, but don’t even know that until they have an experience that makes them think about it.
For your future reference 😉 here’s a document that I found very useful when I was coming up thinking about mixed-race identity in college: http://www.drmariaroot.com/doc/BillOfRights.pdf
And on a lighter note, dude, when are you having us over for dinner? 😉
I agree, race is definitely a parenting issue. It’s not something I gave much thought to growing up, but being married to an amazing lady that is half-Chinese and half-Canadian(white) it started to become something I thought about. But to make things a little more complicated, my half-Chinese wife was adopted my a Chinese couple that are originally from China, but grew up in the Caribbean. So she’s half-Chinese, grew up with full-Chinese parents with a Caribbean upbringing. It should make for an interesting race discussion as our children grow up eating perogies and farmer sausage one day and the… Read more »
Christopher, thank you for commenting. You point out a key experience in this dialogue: the realization that some people, due to the way race has worked in our society, have had the privilege of not having to think about race, but don’t even know that until they have an experience that makes them think about it.
For your future reference here’s a document that I found very useful when I was coming up thinking about mixed-race identity in college: http://www.drmariaroot.com/doc/BillOfRights.pdf
And on a lighter note, dude, when are you having us over for dinner?
Jason, You are an excellent writer and I’m so very pleased to know you. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, Sondra!
Great piece, Jason! I’ve got multi-ethnic kids too, and although it’s so common as to be unremarkable here in SoCal, I know we’ll have to deal with these issues when they get to the age where kids figure out that they look a little different from one another.
Thanks, betadad! For your future reference, here’s one of my favorite pieces of writing on multiraciality: Dr. Maria P.P. Root’s Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People:
http://www.drmariaroot.com/doc/BillOfRights.pdf