What Do I Tell My Blond Son About Being Black?Posted in Articles, Law, Social Science, United States on 2013-08-18 20:46Z by Steven |
What Do I Tell My Blond Son About Being Black?
Gawker
2013-08-17
Anita DeRouen, Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing and Teaching
Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi
“I think we should teach him to use his privilege to his advantage.”
It’s Sunday morning, July 14, 2013. My husband and I are talking, have been talking, will always be talking about race in our world and how it shapes our understanding of race in our home. Melissa Harris-Perry’s show is on, and she’s wearing black, and she and her guests are subdued-yet-passionate as they do a post-postmortem on that dead black boy in Florida, on so many dead black boys, on what black parents should say to their sons and daughters about dead black boys. Our son is sitting next to me playing with his alphabet game while his father and I talk about him like he isn’t there.
I am not sure where to take my husband’s statement, but the horse is out of the barn, so someone’s gotta ride it.
“Why? He’s never going to be profiled the way Trayvon was.”
And he won’t. My just-about-white-passing child is unlikely to ever have a person cross to the opposite side of the street when they see him coming, is unlikely to be followed through stores as he browses, is unlikely to wonder if a cop’s behavior on a traffic stop is shaped by the color of his skin.
I know these things as sure as I know that a day will come when that sweet dirty-blond headed, blue eyed boy will have to decide whether he will see his half-blackness (and, therefore, me) as a blessing or a curse. My husband disagrees, though, and I find myself having a conversation about skin tones and shades of blackness that leaves me questioning the facts I’ve long just known about race in America…
Read the entire article here.