‘You Don’t Look Black’: How I’m Talking to My Kids About Being Mixed RacePosted in Articles, Canada, Family/Parenting, Media Archive on 2018-04-22 20:48Z by Steven |
‘You Don’t Look Black’: How I’m Talking to My Kids About Being Mixed Race
CBC Parents
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
2018-03-15
Kara Stewart-Agostino
Photo by @criene/Twenty20
“Mama, am I black or white?” This was the question I received one night before bed when my son was in grade 1. A boy in his class had been called the N-word at school and he was full of questions.
He wanted to know what it meant and if someone could call him that. Some of the kids had insisted that he is black because (to their eyes) I am black. Others insisted that he’s not because he doesn’t “look black.”
Although the kids on the school yard perceive me as black, I am the child of a Jamaican born mother and a Scottish/Irish-Canadian born father who met in Winnipeg in the 1970s. As a mixed child, questions of racial identity are not new to me. I think of my kids as second generation mixed Canadians — the cultures of their grandparents are layered and entwined. Their skin is fair enough that they could “pass as white” but both have a head full of curls and tan to a golden brown in the summer sun. Meanwhile their Italian-Canadian born father will burn on a partly cloudy June day…
Read the entire article here.