(Sorry there was such a delay in posting the follow up to the last post. Summer got in the way.)
Over 4th of July, we were at my mom’s house and I saw M reading that book. The book was from a box of antique books my grandma had given my mom. I nudged Mr. A and we both rolled our eyes when we saw the cover, but we didn’t bother to stop M from reading it, since she was already more than half way through.
Once M said that her views on cheekbones came from that book, I expected the worst, but I hadn’t read the book so I didn’t know exactly what it said.* I was convinced that M was now harboring self-hatred because of the 1950s racism in that stupid book.
“Well, that book was written a long time ago.” I said as I was struggling to figure out how to handle this conversation, “Back in those days, some people thought that only white people could be attractive. They thought white people were better than people with ancestors from other places, so sometimes they might have said bad things about the way they look. But now we know that is silly, right? We know people with ancestors from anywhere can be beautiful.”
M looked thoughtful.
“Ooooh,” she said, “So that is why people think I am so pretty? Because I look so WHITE??”
Doh.
So, uh, that was not exactly the direction I was hoping our conversation was headed.
The first thing that popped into my head was ‘No, actually the reason people think you are so pretty is because our culture tends to fetishize mixed-race people.’ But that topic was a even more complicated than the one I was already mangling.
The second thing that popped into my head was ‘Well, at least she still has a positive self image, even though it is for a screwy reason. The book obviously didn’t totally ruin her self esteem.’
While I was thinking those things, M just waited for my answer.
“Uh, M, I know that you think you look white right now, but really, you look just like someone should look if they have ancestors from both Asia and Europe. I know people tell you you are pretty, but that is just because they like the way you look. I don’t know if what they think has anything to do with looking white or not. We know other people who are pretty who don’t have any European ancestors at all like _____ and ____ and ______, right? Things are very different now than they were 60 years ago when that book was published and they are still changing now.”
From there, I managed to clumsily steer the conversation to the civil rights movement, segregation, interracial marriages and race relations. It was not a coherent conversation and it was filled with dumb metaphors that M didn’t really seem to grasp. The whole time I was just wishing we could get to the Dairy Queen and get our ice cream so M would be distracted and drop the subject.
To be clear, this conversation was not well-packaged for an after school special. It was a mess.
During our conversation, I kept telling her “Well, it is complicated,” and “I am going to have to think about that question” and “Maybe we can get a book from the library so we can learn more about it.”
That’s life, you know? I wasn’t expecting that conversation. I struggled with it. I am embarrassed that I (of all people!) didn’t handle it better.
It is OK. We have talked about race in smaller, more manageable chunks in the few days since the original conversation. Now I know M is noticing and trying to figure things out. She is starting to think of herself and where she fits in the world. And even though I bungled that conversation, I will have many opportunities to do better.
We will just keep talking until we both figure it out.
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*I read the book this week and was quite relieved that it was really not too offensive, despite the weird cover. The main Bad Guy had “high cheekbones and a scar over his eye” and the description was repeated over and over, but there wasn’t much more too it. How M extrapolated that description into “ugly”, I don’t know.
I’ve seen pics you’ve posted of your kids, and I think M is pretty because she is pretty, and L is pretty because she is pretty, too! They are both beautiful kids.
I don’t think M looks especially “white” more than “Asian”. To be honest, I think she looks quite mixed Asian/white. (Saying that as a mom to a hapa kid, too.) But she obviously thinks of herself as looking more white–my son thinks of himself as looking more Asian, although he doesn’t talk about it much. If you ask him, he will say his hair is black although it is really dark brown.
Both your kids are gorgeous from the pictures you have posted. I guess she’s trying to figure out where she “fits”.
As a mixed-race person myself, I strugled with that(and sometimes still do). I guess it is hard to know where you fit because you don’t look entirely as one race or the other, and it’s hard to “identify”/”label” yourself. I think it is hard to pin-point where you get your looks from as you don’t look like one or the other, which leads to some confussion as you can’t identify with neither beauty cannon (the ‘white’ or Asian). She just needs to, and will slowly, identify as being both and also something else, and at the same time embrace herself and realize her own beauty. You just keep doing what you’ve been doing so far, guide her so that she knows she’s beautiful even if she doesn’t fit into either pre-defined cannon of beauty, and people value in different ways both her ancestries.
Having not read the book with which you speak nor witnessed the conversation about cheekbones, I am (based on conjecture) guessing that M’s initial reaction to high cheekbones being ugly had more to do with ugly = bad (as in bad guy) than ugly = Asian.
It is a common issue that kids with disabilities face, as many bad guys/villians in fiction are discribed as ugly, disabled, deformed, missing a limb, eye, etc. The ugly = bad; pretty = good ( and of course how we define ugly and pretty which then is unfortunately extrapolated to race) is pretty significant issue to cross in young children. It is everywhere in society.
Anyway, I’ve stumbled over many an awkward conversation myslef about these issues. I guess we just keep trying!
I am multi racial, 1/2 Mexican and 1/2 African American. I am inter-racially adopted into a Minnesota world of Swedes. My awkward conversation cup runneth over. I am mistaken for being Indian at least once a week, last week, it happened twice.
What I love about my mom and dad is that they would/still will talk about anything, anytime. There never was a topic off limits and they stumbled sometimes but I could see they were trying. That’s what M needs and you do it so well with her. I love reading your conversations.
It takes just one comment from a “well intentioned” person to chip at your confidence, how many times in my lifetime will I get asked “What are you?”
Who knows…but I do know that my mom and dad will laugh/cry everytime I relay a story.
I went after a Loss Prevention guy in Target one time, told him to stop following me and that while he was other people WERE stealing and asked to speak to a manager when I checked out…I was telling my parents the story and my dad looked at my mom and said “Remember laying in bed at night and hoping that she would always feel confident and not be afraid to speak her mind? Well I think we can check that one off.”
Out of the mouths of babes. Sadly, I think there’s a grain of truth in what M said. But it sounds like you handled the conversation very well.
It’s really amazing the things that kids pick up on and generalize. Rain once read/saw something where the bad guy was bald and from that he interpreted that all bad guys are bald and all bald men are likely to be bad guys. To this day he comments to me in a very confused manner when a bald man smiles at him.
“I am mistaken for being Indian at least once a week, last week, it happened twice. ”
And, do we mean the native people’s of the Americas, or of the Indian subcontinent?
My children are hapa, Indian (of the subcontinent sort)/white (of the Ashkenazi Jewish sort). In general, their race is difficult to identify, because their particular mix comes out looking like a lot of different things, especially if you don’t know what those mixes actually produce.
My daughter has had people come up to her and ask awkward and inappropriate questions, like “What are you?” with some frequency. When she was four, and and on a field trip with her pre-school class, she answered that she was “half Indian, half Jewish, and all American.” I’ve also considered teaching them to answer that they are “human.” But, I’ve resisted, because I want them to be comfortable stating their background, which influences their lives.
One important reason why I am happy that they identify with both — when they might potentially pass as either — is that there will always be people who wish to shoehorn them as one or the other. If they identify as white, then, they’ll encounter people who will tell them they’re not (as, I suspect, will M.; context, clothing, hair style, foils, age, all influence our identification of race). The same will hold true if they identified as Indian.
Sorry I was not specific. Morning brain. The Indian Subcontinent. I would have said Native American if I meant Native American.
I feel for your daughter as that question has followed me for so long. One day I was super tired after being asked “What are you?” I said “I am half Black and half African American.” The gentleman looked at me and asked “Isn’t that the same thing?” and I said “No.” I just did not feel like talking about myself. I bet he still wonders what I was saying.
Funny that you said you resisted the human answer, I was at lunch one afternoon and my hubby had met us, a woman wandered over to our table and asked “Excuse me, but what are you? My family and I were wondering.” My husband took one look at her and snapped “Human.” I was horrified for a second and she looked at him and said “I know that but WHAT are you?” I got really irritated quickly and said what I was and told her that I was lucky enough to have my husband join me for a lunch and would she excuse us.
My kids tell it like it is, My mom is brown my dad is peach and we are a little of both.
My daughter and I had a similar conversation once about how her friend’s mother was white and her father was black, but that neither her friend, nor her friend’s siblings were either white or black. Since I thought genetics to be over her head at that time, I used the analogy of mixing chocolate and vanilla ice cream together to make ice cream that was neither chocolate or vanilla. Her next question: “So, friend’s mom eats vanilla ice cream and friend’s dad eats chocolate ice cream?” Needless to say, I started over!
It must have been awkward to have this conversation sprung on you. One thing you might want to tell her that is scientifically proven – people view other people as pretty who have symmetrical features. This is true in every culture. The more each side of the face is symmetrical to the other the more beautiful they are considered. Asian, African, European features don’t seem to matter to anyone, it is all about symmetry. Hope this helps M realize that her race has nothing to do with why she is pretty. Thinking of you and wishing you the best!
What wonderful conversations! My hapa kid, Chinese/Irish, identifies asian and at this point looks more Chinese than white to most East Coast eyes. (Very different story when we are at chinese school.) What she has picked up on from my family in Hawaii is that hapa multi-racial “is always better/prettier than uni-racial- especially white”. I’m not sure what to do w/ that – great for that old self esteem but hardly true. In talking with other parents of mixed race kids around here (x/white) it appears that at least in the early elementary grades most of the kids are identifying with the X and not the white although they acknowledge both. Interesting.
I find it hilarious that someone else considers saying things like “our culture fetishizes mixed-race people” to their small children. My poor kids get this kind of response from their parents all the time. Race is problematic in our family as well. My 7 year old wants to dye her black black hair light brown because she thinks she looks too Indonesian (she doesn’t at all) and the 3 year old wants to dye her brown hair black because she thinks she looks too much like her Caucasian Canadian friend (she doesn’t at all). They are both from China. But are Americans. Living in Indonesia. With Whitey white white parents. And many mixed race friends. Confusion abounds here as well.
I think you handled it well, given the circumstances, and I’m thankful that you have lots of readers with so much to contribute and personal experiences to share — I saw some book suggestions in the previous post. Sometimes I feel a bit sad that I won’t be working at Kelvin’s school anymore because the little group of kids was just SO DIVERSE that I usually had good chances of talking to the kids bout race (in my class of 6: 3 siblings 50%African American & 50% Puerto Rican children, 1 hapa, 1 Asian & Kelvin, the only actually Caucasian, but fully Brazilian — here in terms of culture, not race).
Anyway, I always learn so much from your experience and that of other bloggers I read (Dawn, for example), thanks for sharing!
“What she has picked up on from my family in Hawaii is that hapa multi-racial “is always better/prettier than uni-racial- especially white”.”
I try to avoid the ranking (so I’m not going to say that hapa is prettier than white), but I do love being in Hawaii. It’s the one place where I can actually loose my kids.
BTW, the data on attractiveness and faces is more complicated than just symmetry — it also suggests that the “average” face matters. That is, the average face is ranked as more attractive. Average correlates with symmetry (since averaging will remove imbalances).
Excellent post… Our kids identify with the Asian part of their culture even though one of them is half-Asian.
Have you read the book “Does Anybody Else look like me? A parent’s guide to raising multiracial children” by Donna Jackson Nakazawa? I enjoyed this book since the author is a white woman married to a Japanese American man and they have two kids.
I think you handled that great considering it was on the fly! Good for you. I also agree that mixed race kids are fetishized, but I didn’t have to words to describe how people react to my infant son. I just knew it was weird that people aside from myself fawn over him.