Maturity brings with it pride in being able to be different and feeling comfortable. Kids just want to fit in with their friends-especially when they get to the teenage years. Evaluate very carefully how important it is for your interracial kids to miss out on the biggest high school event of the year for a cultural event or insisting on traditional or cultural wear.
Our children just want to be themselves, and I agree there is a fine line between wanting to imbibe important values, morals and ethics onto our children and imposing our own ideas. Finding the balance, through talking it out, explaining your reasons and not dogmatically insisting without allowing for dialogue is easier said than done but necessary if you want to pull them along.
Keep with it, encourage it in gentle ways. In reality, there WILL be a time when the need will arise to learn and to speak it. And your biracial children WILL show more interest. Make decisions based on what you and your partner believe is right but keep your minds open as they get older. All of this will make them feel unable to relate to how you grew up and may make them feel like a tourist in your home country.
Many old traditions are built around births, deaths, weddings and milestones such as coming of age. My husband recently took my daughter to one of his family naming ceremonies for a new baby. The ceremony became quite emotional and the scene brought up many questions for our little one. My husband was able to explain what was happening and why- giving her context and insight into the emotions of the night.
If they do experience racism, you need to be ready for it. Children as young as two can understand injustice and inequity. You may not have all the answers and it might be uncomfortable for you if you are the white parent talking about how people can be treated differently because of their colour.
For tips on talking about racism to your children, click here. Your children may appear racially ambiguous and therefore able to pass in different circles. That brings with other issues on identity which you can read about here. But when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I realized with a kind of glee that my future child could have blue eyes. In science class, we studied dominant and recessive genes, drawing Punnett squares.
My eyes were the dark brown of my Japanese American mother, but I discovered that in my genes I also carried the blue eyes of my white American father.
In class, a Punnett square revealed that with a mate who also carried the recessive blue-eyed gene, I would have a 25 to 50 percent chance of passing on that hue.
I grew up in what is currently the whitest town in California, a picturesque enclave north of San Francisco with lots of open space and liberals and not a lot of diversity. Blue eyes were an emblem of whiteness, and as a child I aspired to whiteness, wanting to fit in. I directed my anger at my Japanese first name.
No one could pronounce it; it seemed to trumpet my Otherness. You can be Nicole. Neither seemed possible. The future, though—maybe that I could change. Someday, I could have a child with blue eyes. The first time I locked eyes with the man who would become my husband, I glimpsed something familiar. He wore a plaid shirt and jeans, and in his eyes I perceived a sensitivity, a way of seeing the world that I recognized.
Over beers on the patio, we talked about what we shared: His mother was white; his father was from Kobe, Japan. By then, I was no longer the girl who had studied Punnett squares.
I had realigned my brain in college ethnic studies courses, lived in Japan and Honolulu, and come to embrace my name and racial identity.
Access downloads for this and all our Action Guides by completing the form below! Mixed kids may look different over time and may need to actively assert all parts of themselves to others. Mixed kids may be treated in ways inconsistent with the way they see themselves.
Mixed kids usually benefit from affinity group experiences. I have the right to be what I say. I have the right to not be teased about who I am.
I have the right to call myself what I want to call myself. That dissonance led to difficulty being accepted by her peers, and she wrestled internally over her identity. A big part of the biracial experience is being treated—or not—like a black person in society. Sneed worked hard to prove that she was black, using beauty products made for black women and going to a black beauty salon, but that, too, made her feel ashamed. As humans, we have a built-in tendency to want to belong to groups, says Gaither.
Typically for people who are half-white and half-black, a big part of their experience is being treated—or not—like a black person in society, says Gaither. You look ambiguous, so you have more choices of identity. Like Sneed, Heikkinen has spent most of her life having to prove her blackness to those who questioned it. It became common practice for her to show a picture of her and her mother to those who needed verfication. And while constantly having to justify an identity is frustrating, Heikkinen recognizes the privilege that comes with looking white.
Ashley Ferguson believes that people demand so much from mixed-race people because they are trying to make themselves feel more comfortable. Depending on how someone is raised, they might need to put a person in a box in order to understand their version of that person, posits her sister, Samantha. Samantha Ferguson, who graduated from Bowie State University, a historically black college, recalls being treated differently at that school because of her white features.
Her fellow co-eds also judged her based on her perceived race. I am black.
0コメント