Rochelle Fritsch’s husband’s instinct is to protect his daughter. She wants him to see her as a bi-racial woman who will be seen, more often than not, as black.
To My Dear White Husband,
Remember when our daugther found the tallest inflatable slide at the festival? She crawled to the top with a trail of fifty kids lined up behind her waiting their turn. You panicked while I beamed with pride at her fearlessness. She decided the top was too high and refused to slide down, damn the kids behind her. But you were her Prince Charming that day, scaling up along the side and coaxing her down. She felt safe, was unapologetic and I saw you relish your role as her protector. My heart melted at the scene, and I took her stubbornness as an early sign of an independent attitude, nearly immune to the herd mentality.
♦◊♦
She’s our biracial daughter, and though we know she’s both white and black, the truth is some people outside of our small circle will see her as black.
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It has been ten years since that day. She’s now a fearless teen and you still see yourself as Prince Charming. And that’s sweet. But, honey there are some things from which Prince Charming can’t rescue her. She’s part you and part me. She’s our biracial daughter, and though we know she’s both white and black the truth is some people outside of our small circle, will see her as black. Like me. While I know what that means personally from assumptions about her musical tastes, to curiosity about her hair, to the possibility of being stopped for DWB, Driving While Black, you know it only anecdotally.
We talk about this from time to time, and you bristle at the thought of someone prejudging your Princess. She will face dragons you can’t slay or castle walls you can’t breach, even though you are her knight in shining armor. But there are things you can do to help her along this journey which she and only she is taking.
♦◊♦
Ask Questions
Ask her what she thinks about the graphic novel that features a black heroine. Ask her about how she feels identifying as both black and white, versus some of her bi-racial friends who identify as one or the other but not both. Ask her how she feels about her natural hair. Ask what goes through her mind when she hears about Sandra Bland, Mike Brown and Tamir Rice.
Listen to Her
As much as you may want to interject or correct, don’t. Just listen. She tell you about the world as she sees it through her eyes and experience. Discounting her experience simply because it is not yours will leave her feeling like she’s crazy and fighting imaginary windmills. If you listen, she’ll learn to trust herself and stand up when/and if she feels slights or side eyes.
She doesn’t need you to change the world. She just needs to know you will walk beside her.
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Walk Beside Her
Some of what she may tell you will have you rolled up in a ball of worry and anger. These feelings will likely be rooted in helplessness. This is her world; this is the world. Hold your tongue, hold your sigh or even your reflexive rant. Look her in the eye, and understand that she is trusting you to hear and hold her fears, opinions, and insecurities. She doesn’t need you to change the world. She just needs to know you will walk beside her.
Expand Her World and Yours
You may not remember showing her a YouTube video about two black guys who are classical violinists, but it made an impression on her more than you’ll know. She talked about it for two days on our morning ride to school, which led to us talking about the senslessness of stereotypes.
Then there was the time we were front and center for a spoken word performance by black, urban poets. You showed genuine appreciation for the show when you could have easily written it off as boring or too foreign to your culture; but your wordless nods and smiles spoke volumes. And she heard it.
When we went to New York, you commented on all the different kinds of people we saw, and then we all talked about how our hyper-segregated city could take a page from downtown Manhattan. It may have been a small conversation to you, but even mighty oaks were once small seeds.
My dear husband, Prince Charming, I wish you could rescue our daughter from all high towers that race will erect throughout her life. But you’re already doing so much to help her rescue herself. I’m proud of you, and proud of us.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
This post originally appeared on The Late Arrival and BlogHer.
My heart aches while reading this, as a ‘white’ male without children but wishing I had, especially ‘bi-racial’ children. I go all Quixote on our cultural penchant for categorizing and typing human beings, each one of which is absolutely unique in all of history. I am NOT a ‘white’ man, no matter how my worldview has been skewed and contorted by being treated as such by those who don’t see ME but see my skin color and toss me unthinkingly in the bin of ‘whites.’ And I’m not color-blind and don’t want to be. I love the diversity of humanity… Read more »
Thank you, Mike. With your attitude and perspective, your Prince Charming Days can’t be too far around the corner. 🙂
I always hated referring to my kids as “bi-racial” To us and everyone we knew/know, they’re simply Charlie and Margaret Where as our daughter has a lighter complexion with hazel eyes and thick wavy brown hair, Charlies darker complected, brown eyes and his hair was alway very curley. I say was because he now had dreads down to the middle of his back. We have always had a diverse group of friends which span a range of ethnic groups as well as religions.and non religious. We’ve always stayed away from labels …. labels limit people. When my wife and I… Read more »
Thank you so much for reading. It sounds like you have a lovely family and a healthy outlook on the WHO you all are without the emphasis on the WHAT. That’s really where our family is and continues to be. My worry, as a protective mama bear who is Protective Prince Charming’s wife, is that I know just because we think this way doesn’t mean everyone will. And different thinking is okay…until thinking translates into treating our daughter differently, or as “other.” So we constantly perform a precarious balancing act: seeing ourselves and others around us as human, while understanding… Read more »