A few weeks back, I got several comments from someone who accused me of brainwashing M and forcing her to ignore her white half. The commenter said M is going to grow up hating her white half (and hating me!) because we teach her to ignore it.
While I was annoyed by these comments, I thought I should take a few moments to reflect on whether or not there was any truth to her statements. Also, I am quite selfish and would be very sad if my kid hated me. Emergency hate-prevention techniques must begin immediately!
Just in case she is right, we at the American Family household have decided we need to amp up our focus on our family’s white cultural heritage. Yes, we are instituting an Emergency Code Whitey and taking the following steps to make sure M is comfortable around white people and can function in white culture.
To institute the Emergency Code Whitey the American Family family must do the following:
- Celebrate white people holidays, preferably with other white people.
- Progress so far: Excellent. Thanksgiving and Columbus day celebrated by one and all. Does the 4th of July count as a white people holiday? Maybe it is a truly bi-cultural holiday because fireworks were created by the Chinese and exploited by the white man for our Independence Day rituals??
- Seek out other white people for M to see as role models.
- Progress so far: Good, but room for improvement. Lucky for M, she lives with one real-life, full-blooded white person (me!). She also has many family members who are also full-blooded white people. We also know a neighbor who is white. While most of her classmates are Asian, M is fortunate that there are three white kids in her preschool class.
- Expose M to white role models on TV and in books.
- Progress so far: Poor. The only TV M gets to watch is Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street, both of which are dreadfully lacking in white people. To improve on this area, we should let M watch a lot more Disney movies. As for books, we should be ok with this one because my grandmother keeps giving us “Dick and Jane” books ane weird books that have a lot of angels that seem to be chock full o’ white faces.
- Make sure M is familiar with the kinds of foods white people eat.
- Progress so far: Fair. M is blessed to have a mama who grew up in White People Central the midwest eating lots of meat and potatoes. Our cooking at home tends to be white people food about 30% of the time. When we go out, however, we fail dreadfully at giving M exposure to corporate chain restaurant garbage white people restaurant food because her father and I prefer more “ethnic” type restaurants. Maybe adding some white ethnic restaurants to the mix would be good for M’s white identity? Some Italian maybe. Or Greek? Does Turkish food count as white people food? I suppose if we are trying to be strickly adherent to our desire to have her be in touch with her American white heritage, we shouldn’t allow her to have any food that is spiced with anything other than straight-up salt.
- Teach her the language that white people speak.
- Progress so far: Poor. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that M’s dad doesn’t speak White People dialect at all. It isn’t his fault, but he wasn’t raised to speak it. The burden of teaching M to whisper when she mentions racism or people of color falls on my sorely inadequate shoulders. I fail miserably at pretending to be color blind, while at the very same time managing to discuss race or make racist comments. Despite my best efforts, I mention race out loud when it occurs to me, which is a horrible example to set for M. To help M achieve true fluency in White People Dialect, we need to put her in more situations where only white people are in attendence. For a truly authentic experience, we should try to make sure that these white people don’t know that M is only half white.
In conclusion, I think my commenter was right. A and I still have a fair bit of work to do if we truely want M to be comfortable in her half-white skin. We are throwing Emergency Code Whitey into high gear and expect M to be fully loving her half-whiteness by Valentine’s day, if not sooner.
PS. There is a follow up post in which I reply to the wackadoodle commenters HERE.
Zoe, this has nothing to do with AMFam’s post, but I do want to respond to your comment “white people don’t go around asking other white people “what’s your ethnicity?” or the dreaded “WHAT are you?” when they first meet.” They actually do. If your name isn’t Jennifer Miller or something else equally common and Anglo, you get tons of questions every time someone meets you.
My first and last name are very ethnic (European), and I get the same “Where are you from?” “Ohio.” “No, where are you FROM?” rigamarole that I know lots of people with anything at all different from the American stereotype get. And I’m blue-eyed, with a Midwestern accent.
I also get “randomly selected” by the airlines to be searched around 25% of the times I fly. I don’t know anyone else who gets pulled over that often except for my friends and acquaintances with obviously ethnic names.
I’m not in any way trying to compare the challenges of being Hapa or Asian-American, etc. with my situation as a white-but-not-generically-American person, but I am saying that there are experiences that you don’t realize other people have if you’re not in the group that is the recipient of them.
Moxie, thanks so much for your above point, that is totally true. See, it’s really easy to jump to assumptions about people if you’re not in their shoes.
And I should know better, because growing up in small town Illinois, my own mother was ridiculed for her very long and hard-to-pronounce Greek surname, and thus she happily took my father’s one-syllable Chinese last name. When I wrote my long comment, I was very tired and not thinking straight, so thank you for calling me on this.
Loved this post! Great satire.
Oh my gosh, this is hilarious! I love your satire. I think yours is the only blog I read that has me laughing out loud more often than not. Thanks!
Whoa.
Your post cracked me UP. Seriously.
But then I got to the comments.
Oh. My. God.
Props to both Lisa and Faith–great comments. I also especially agree with what Faith said about the whole “getting back to your european roots = jealousy at having no ethnic celebrations, etc.” I see a lot of ethnicity-envy from white peeps.
Zoe, ha! about your mom taking your dad’s easy name. I didn’t change mine when I got married, but always joke that if I’d married someone with an easy 2-letter last name I might have.
For Jennifer (from her rant she is obviously not Asian) to use the “C” term in her comment is racist and insulting to Asians. If you object to AF using the term “whitey” (AF is white, not Asian, not Chinese) then express your disagreement without invoking racist terms that describe ethnicities to which neither of you belong. You, Jennifer owe Asians/Chinese people an apology for using that term.
Lin
This post was hilarious.
I am extremely intrigued and a tiny bit scared about these books Jennifer could help AmFam find. Jennifer, your use of “chink” was seriously rude, over played, and frankly it makes you look like an ass.
好可笑啊！ 我很爱读你写的故事，希望你会继续谈你自己和你丈夫的文化和生活情况。
Keep up the good work!
Edited by AmericanFamily:
Google tells me that the Chinese above says:
Good ridiculous! I love reading what you write stories, I hope you and your husband will continue to talk about your own culture and life.
*clapping*
Kudos to a good post.
Oh heavens I am giggling over here. Seriously giggling.
It’s pretty damn hard to ignore White, mainstream American cul-cha in America. Come on. Shouldn’t the fretting of many immigrant parents that their kids are becoming too “Americanized” tell you something? Those children aren’t being raised in White American households, but they’re doing a darn good job soaking up the culture despite their parents’ best efforts to persuade them to do otherwise. (No, I’m not bitter.)
Whew- what a relief to read this post. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t taking this seriously. I’m relieved to see an action plan.
Heh heh! Great post!
[...] Emergency Code Whitey – American Family …someone who accused me of brainwashing M and forcing her to ignore her white half… we at the American Family household have decided we need to amp up our focus on our family’s white cultural heritage. Yes, we are instituting an Emergency Code Whit (tags: interracialrelationships parenting asianamerican) [...]
The burden of teaching M to whisper when she mentions racism or people of color falls on my sorely inadequate shoulders.
This made me laugh so hard! My poor 3/4 white children don’t yet do this, I must be raising them up all wrong….
Omg this is so funny.
After I first got “in touch” with the existence of racism and white supremecy, I went through a period of trying to reclaim my own ethnic roots, which had been “whitewashed” over the generations and subsumed into our monolithic white culture. I had about five or six ethnicities to choose from, and those were only the most prominant influences. That was the first problem. Picking one or another seemed so self-serving. Then the second was that no generations anywhere near me were influenced particularly by any of their cultures. The third problem was that it didn’t help me to get to know myself any better.
What helps me know myself better is to try to take a look at the water in which I swim, white culture, which is easier to do if I listen to the observations of people of color around me. Nondefensively. Not easy but gets easier with practice and a little technique I call Not Taking Everything Personally.
[...] Emergency Code Whitey (American Family) [...]
[...] What she’s talking about are the levels of adoption loss — the loss of a biological connection and then the loss of a cultural connection. If we adopt transracially/transculturally, our children become biracial/bicultural regardless of their biological roots. Both Twice the Rice and A Birth Project wrote about this recently (click the links). (American Family also just wrote about this in her infamous and hilarious Emergency Code Whitey entry.) [...]
[...] Rather than somewhat crazy rantings, I am just going to pretend that those bizarro comments in the last post really meant to ask me this: American Family, you write a lot about trying to integrate Chinese and Asian American culture into you daughter’s life, but I don’t think you’ve ever written anything about your own cultural background and how you share it with M. I would be interested in hearing more about that. Is there anything you would care to share with us? [...]