Yes, This Baby is Mine

Happy Mother's Day! In honor of this day, I am featuring a guest post from one of the feistiest, funniest,  most thoughtful and thought-provoking mom bloggers I know: Martha, from Momsoap. Thank you so very much, Martha, for sharing your experiences of being a mom on this Mother's Day.

Photo courtesy of Momsoap.com

If you look at our features, my daughter looks exactly like me, not her dad. But most people don't notice it until they get to know us. Most people don't look past the color of our skin.

I'm white. My daughter is, as she puts it, "light brown." Her father is Nigerian, so he is very dark. I'm as waspy as they come, full-on European background and raised in west Texas.

But since becoming the parent to a biracial child, I've become accustomed to  the once hurtful, now simply, banal, question, "Is that your daughter?" Or, "Is she adopted?"

Yes, yes she is my daughter. And no. No, she is not adopted.

I carried her around for nine months. Spent 19 1/2 hours in painful labor, pushed her out and nursed her for a long, long time. She is fully mine.

I made her with him. And we are different colors. The conception doesn't seem to fully register with many people until they see us all together. Or get a glimpse of my daughter's dad, who is now my ex.

Over the past four years, I've been asked if my daughter is adopted; had strangers insinuate that I'm the nanny; poked fun at, until they realize I'm not joking, that she really is mine; and just been stared at in general.

All because my daughter and I have different skin colors.

If you look at us up close, I mean, stop, and look past our skin, we look very much alike. I've been told that my daughter is just a mini version of me, with brown skin and curly brownish/black hair. She is mine, through and through. It's difficult for me to see how people don't see it.

Yet, over and over again, we get questioned.

Once, we were at a funeral of a distant relative. My own flesh and blood looked me in the eye and said, "How long have you had her?"

As I bounced my baby in her Mei Tei, I thought it was a strange way of asking me how old she was, confused, I responded, "She's almost a year old." At that point, I had not yet learned to see how we looked to people outside my own frame of reference.

I had a baby. She was mine.

It never occurred to me that people would question my parentage. Until it started happening.

He went on to tell me that he and his wife as missionaries in third world countries had adopted some biracial children. Too.

Too. It was that word that sent my mind quickly to what he had assumed.

I laughed. "Oh, she's not adopted!"

Stammering for a moment he finally managed to spit out, "Uh, uh, OH! You mean your husband is African American?!"

Once he realized that I had indeed procreated with a man from another race, I thought it best not to bother correcting his assumption that we were also married (we were never married) and move into the realm of a hell-bound sinner who had sex outside of marriage. After all, I was at the funeral of Bible-thumping west Texas Christian. There was no point in asking for a prayer session to bless me away from the eternity of hellfire.

Not to mention, possibly confirming for him the stereotype that white women who sleep with black men are sluts. Yes, another small town Texas stereotype that I battled as a youngster when I began exploring men of different cultures, and had long forgotten after living for nine years in Detroit where mixed race couples were much more common, but still not without stereotypes.

Motherhood to a Biracial Child

Now that it's been a few years into motherhood of a biracial daughter, and I've worked out the basics -- like how to comb her unbelievably thick hair; how often to moisturize her skin; and managing to mostly ignore that mini punch to the gut when someone asks me if she's mine --  I realize that I am in a wonderfully amazing position here in between the racial discussions in our society.

Something I learned from a mentor years ago, and I'll share with you here today, is we do a great job with racial discussions here in the United States. We do the most important thing when it comes to relieving racial tension. We talk about it.

We may not always agree. But we talk. It's the most important thing. To not be afraid to talk about race and ethnicity. Because it's all around us.

And as a white woman, who grew up around lots of racism and negative stereotypes about people with brown skins, I know how and when to measure very subtle racism. I also know how to address to my own people, which is an important part of the talks.

And best of all, I have come to realize that there is an important place for the biracial family in the midst of racial conflicts.

We see both sides. We really do.

Since having my daughter I am truly and honestly able to look quickly past the exterior and see a whole person, no matter what color the skin, what kind of clothes they are wearing, and what side of town they live on.

Many people believe that we are already living in a post-racial society because we have a black president. Because we got rid of Jim Crow laws and because everyone has the right to vote.

But we are far from a post-racial society. There is still racism in our culture. And it's time we talk and try to see the other side. All of us. Because eventually, if you don't already, you will probably have someone in your family who has different color skin than yours. And they probably won't be adopted.

___

Photo Courtesy of Momsoap.com

Martha Wood lives in Austin, Texas where she is a single, self-employed, work at home mom. She runs a small social media business, and blogs as a freelancer. She also authors her own blog at http://www.momsoap.com where she writes about racism, attachment parenting, and just general motherhood.

Soul Music & Respect

Music moves me. It sways my body, sings in my soul, and sinks deep in my bones. Thanks to my parents' wide variety of musical interests, I grew up listening to everything: the folk singers of the 60's and 70's, the jazz stylings of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms--not much was left un-listened in our house. My parents allowed me to develop my own taste in music and at age 7 I was allowed to buy my first 45 rpm vinyl record. One of my first purchases was Donna Summer's "I Feel Love." I loved Donna Summer.

Image via classic45s.com

Donna became the first in a long line of women whose voices set my skin tingling, literally moving me and swaying me with their songs.

As I grew older,  I continued to listen to and appreciate a wide variety of music; but I've always had a special relationship with the music of women whose voices seem to come from some other spiritual place. They put the soul in "soul music," if you know what I mean. 

In 2000, I first had the mind-blowing pleasure of hearing Miss Jill Scott sing "A Long Walk." Her voice is the epitome of ear candy;  her lyrics are mellifluous poetry. She became my favorite female artist of all time. I can listen to Jill Scott any time, any day. She can send my spirit soaring, make me misty-eyed with mourning, lure me into laughter at memories of family gatherings.

When my children began noticing that their skin color was different than mine and my husband's, we all talked and decided that they were not brown, black, or white but Golden...and wouldn't you know it--Jill Scott had a song for that, too.

I hope that you get where I'm coming from: I feel huge amounts of respect, and admiration for Jill Scott. More than that...I feel a cosmic connection to this woman because of her music.

And that's why I was totally devastated when I read her piece in Essence about the pain she feels when she sees a black man married to a white woman. Written in March of 2010, it is on my mind these days because Jill has two new releases out. As I read the reviews of her cover of Bill Withers' "A Lovely Day," I was reminded of that wince she feels when she looks at people like my husband...like me...like my children. And when I think of her wincing, it kind of steals the joy I get from listening to her music. I begin to wonder how she would feel about me--a white woman married to a black man--listening to her music. Would it pain her? I almost want to apologize on behalf of humankind for the history that causes her so much pain. When I told my husband about my overwhelming urge to apologize, he said I was ridiculous because I am not the perpetrator of her pain. I am not that white woman she describes in Essence. He reminded me that my mother's family came to this country as immigrants almost 90 years after the Civil War ended. I heard him saying all of that, and yet when I read Miss Scott's commentary I still felt guilty. It is irrational, but there it is. I feel it.

At the same time, I also feel some anger and frustration.  My husband and I fell in love in 1993. He didn't hate himself or his heritage then, and he doesn't hate himself or his heritage now. Yet there are many people who say he must because he married a white woman (including another of my favorite artists, Common, who in 2005-- when I'd been with my husband for about 12 years--said that black men who are in relationships with white women show a "lack of self-love.") Our interracial relationship is not about a lack of self-love. It is about loving someone else so much that your love transcends all societal constraints, make-believe systems of racial classification, and social boundaries. According to her piece in Essence, Jill Scott sees my marriage as a betrayal. I find that extremely difficult to swallow.

I have given Miss Jill Scott my admiration, my time, my respect and my hard-earned money. I feel a bond to her because of her music, and I appreciate her beautiful voice, words, and music. But that bond is seriously shaken by the knowledge that Miss Scott views my marriage as something painful. My love, my family, my reason for being makes her wince. Knowing that, it is hard for me to feel her when she sings "Lovely Day."

On one hand, I feel she has given me so much through her music that I want to give something back, to somehow be the ointment that finally soothes the burn of the past. But on the other hand, I am deeply disappointed that someone I admire so much holds such a negative view of a love, a marriage, that I know to be so beautiful. I'm hoping with all my heart that the future brings Jill Scott a truly lovely day, where she can see that love heals wounds rather than causing them.

We DO Need Another Hero!!!

CC photo credit: Oscar J Baeza 

Up, up and away web! Shazam!  Go! Go! Go web, Go! 

He jumped on to the coffee table reciting those lines, mimicking the actions of his favorite superhero, the Amazing Spider-Man!

Since the age of two, my son has been a huge fan of superheroes: Spider-Man, Superman, The Flash, The Thing, The Incredible Hulk and almost every generation of Power Rangers. It seems like every superhero ever created eventually made their way into our home in the form of an action figure. At age three he started martial arts classes. The reason for the classes? Superheroes need to know how to defend themselves! At age four he started soccer and baseball. Why? Because superheroes need to know how to run fast and be coordinated! Any sport he was old enough to play, he joined...because those sports were a part of his self-imposed training regimen--the one required for him to become a real life superhero.

He loved watching and reading about superheroes who are always on the side of justice, always fighting to stop the spread of evil, always focusing on ways to make the world a better place (even though that is not always an easy job. "With great power comes great responsibility," he would say.) He watched the original Superman cartoons from the 1950's, read the original Marvel Spider-Man comics, was a different superhero each year for Halloween, and had superhero pajamas for every night of the week. Bath time was about more than getting clean... It was always an epic battle between Justice League action figures and  Lego bad guys, where the fate of humanity rested in the  heart of one superhero--my son!

All rights reserved jenmardunc

All rights reserved jenmardunc

copyright jenmardunc

It has been a pleasure to tease my now 6th grade son about the origins of his interest in sports! But honestly, he doesn't much mind the teasing. He still enjoys superheroes! This summer he saw Thor,  went to Captain America on opening night and watched several seasons of Smallville during our epic heat wave. These heroes still capture his imagination and make him dream about how he can make the world a safer, happier place.

There has only ever been one problem with his love of heroes: none of the mainstream superguys look like him. Green Lantern from the Justice League was the only brown-skinned hero in his collection of action figures. Recently he discovered the show Heroes on Netflix and was interested to see some people with powers who were not white (the Haitian, Hiro and Ando). He liked the Will Smith movie, Hancock, when he saw it. But that's about it. (Before any die-hard comic book fans argue, I will acknowledge the fact  that there have been other black heroes, but those heroes have never been marketed in a big enough way for my son to know about them. Those characters are never featured in kid-appropriate tv shows or movies, either.)

Marvel

So, I was excited to learn about the latest incarnation of Spider-Man in The Ultimate Spider-Man series. This version of Spider-Man is biracial, just like my son. The new Spider-Man is half black and half Latino, and his name is Miles Morales. I am absolutely thrilled that my son, whose lifelong dream is to serve humanity on the side of justice, can see a superhero who looks like him! But apparently, not everyone is so thrilled. Stories about the new Spider-Man were posted yesterday. Those stories are now flooded with comments, and not many of them are supportive of the new hero's secret identity. From Time magazine to USA Today, commenters are getting ugly. Some say that they are only angry because they are traditionalists who don't think Spider-Man should change. Some say they are angry because the liberals and their "politically correct"movement are pushing their agenda too far. Many people suggest that President Obama is to blame for the change--whether they believe the birth of Miles Morales is positive or negative. The Altanta Post featured an article today about the backlash being another sign of the fact that we are not yet a post-racial society as many people claimed when President Obama was elected.

Despite the controversy, I look forward to seeing my son, my young hero, find someone that looks like him in a superhero comic. It seems like it can only help him to realize his dream of being a real life superhero when there already is one who looks like him.

What do you think? Are you a traditionalist who thinks Spider-Man should only be the young, white, Peter Parker? Or do you welcome the biracial Miles Morales to the superhero scene?

**For more on Marvel's Black Superheroes, see the series of posts on their website: A Marvel Black History Lesson**

Featured on BlogHer: An Open Letter to the Mattel Corporation

Sometimes kids say things that are so unexpected that parents are literally left staring, open-mouthed. We may do all the right things, consider every angle and point of impact that our decisions could have on our children, and we may think we know exactly how our children will respond. But kids always find a way to surprise us. It seems like children are determined to send their  parents into that wild realm of the unknown, making us doubt ourselves and worry that we are scarring them for life.

Flickr photo by joanna8555 

As a woman, I had my doubts about bringing Barbie in to my home. I read, soul-searched and rationalized the implications of having the iconic doll in my house. Even after all of that thinking, Barbie made her way into my girls' lives. From the musical movies where Barbie is hero to the dolls and accessories that have made her such a popular toy for decades, we bought into it all. I thought a lot about exposing my girls to this warped image of womanhood, but was impressed by how much Mattel has done to make Barbie a confident young role model for girls. And that's why I was so surprised when I gave my daughters new Barbies as gifts and they gave me such a shocking response. It was so shocking that I felt the need to write to the Mattel Corporation about it. 

"An Open Letter to the Mattel Corporation," was first featured on Multicultural Familia and was recently picked up by BlogHer. You can read the letter and discuss it with the huge community of women on the website BlogHer.com, on Twitter (@BlogHer and @BlogHerCultures)
 and on the BlogHer Facebook page.






You can also read the original post at MulticulturalFamilia.com, a wonderful e-zine dedicated to sharing information and ideas with modern families.

I encourage any readers wo would like to share their thoughts on Barbie to send their own letters to the Mattel Corporation.  I sent this post to corporate.communications@mattel.com and received a response from ConsumerServiceCenter@fisher-price.com.  The more they hear from concerned parents, the more likely they are to make positive changes to their products.

Have your children ever shocked you with their response to something you gave them? Have they ever shed light on a slice of humanity that you'd never before considered? Out of the mouths of babes can come some very insightful things...

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow

Reading this book is like remembering the past through a dream-like fog. It's hazy, yet crystal clear at the same time. You know that something bad has happened to Danish mother Nella and her children, but you don't know exactly what. You know that Nella's daughter Rachel, is a survivor; but you don't know how or why. You know that Nella's husband is black, that her children are biracial, but you don't know exactly how that fact impacts her family. The story slowly trickles out in a series of flashbacks, rotating perspectives between Rachel, Nella, a young boy who named himself "Brick", and Nella's boss, a black woman named Laronne.  Rachel remembers her mother, remembers her Danish heritage, but is living with her black grandmother. She is made fun of at school for being blue-eyed and too light-skinned (not black enough.) She is also called by some derogatory terms that white society uses for people of color. We watch Rachel grow from child to teenager, struggling to make sense of her history and her identity.

Image via GoodReads

Heidi Durrow really captures the voices of her characters. Rachel's voice as a child is marked by shorter sentences and has a child-like quality that evolves as she gets older. Nella's voice is recognizably one of a non-native English speaker. Grandma's voice is undeniably African-American. By the end of the book, Rachel's voice is a definite mixture of it all--the Danish and the African-American--and as a reader, you want another chapter, another book, so you can watch her as she strengthens that mixed voice.

Books like this aren't easy to read. I was fascinated both by the story of Rachel, who searches for a place to fit in, but also by the story of her mother.  Nella learns some hard lessons about being the white mother of biracial children in America, and her voice really spoke to me. Her character voices concerns that are not easy to talk about due to our society's difficulty with the subject of race. At one point in the book, Nella finds out that her daughter knows what it means to be black:

 "She knows the word. She is black. I know she is not a word. If she is a word then she doesn't have me."

Here's the thing: I can relate to Nella's feelings. I don't know how to talk about those feelings very well, but here it goes:

As an educated white mother of biracial children, I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to help my children love their brown-ness. We talk about African-American culture and history. They've always had books with brown children in them, and played with brown dolls. They attend school in a building where white people are the minority. Most of their friends look like them. My husband and I are honest with them about what society is like and how they might be treated. But in all of that discussion and appreciation of their brown-ness, I sometimes feel like they are losing me. They are my children. I carried them in my womb, nursed them all until they were toddlers, and I hold them close to me each and every day. 

Adults in our world (both brown and white) seem to see them as only one color. Brown people all offer the same advice, "Prepare them for this world where they will only be seen as brown. They need to learn to defend themselves; they need to learn to be strong." They say, "Look at our president--he is biracial, but our society treats him as black! Of course he calls himself black." They remind me of history, "For generations, our society has adhered to the 'one-drop rule' and your kids need to be ready for that."

I hear all of that, but here I am. Their mother. White. I want them to be ready for whatever the world throws at them, but I also want them to know that they come not only from their father--they come from me. They carry my blood and the blood of my ancestors. There is more to them than their brown-ness. There is also German, Lithuanian, English, and Irish a blood in them. I want them to embrace it all--everything that is in their history, their genetics, their heritage. And I do not say this because of any sense of white privilege...I say this because I feel there should be some kind of "Mother Privilege." I believe this: if you have grown a human being in your body, and you have given your heart, mind, soul over to one purpose--making that human being grow up happy and healthy--why should they be asked to deny you as their blood? Why should they allow society to take away the fact that you are their mother...that you are white...that half of them is white?

__________________
I want to thank Heidi Durrow for writing this book, for her work on Mixed Chicks Chat and with the Mixed Roots Festival. Hearing Nella's voice, listening to the podcast, and reading about the Festival shows me that there is a group of people willing to call themselves Mixed, willing to honor all of themselves and all of their heritage. I hope my children can follow their courageous example.

Obama's gay marriage flip-flopping | Fred Karger

I came across an article this morning from The Guardian that got me thinking:

Obama's gay marriage flip-flopping by Fred Karger 
The author says:

"I am puzzled that a man who is the product of a biracial marriage, whose own parents could not have married in 16 states before 1967, seems unable to understand the extreme pain that bigotry causes."

That comment makes me think about something that has bothered me for a long while--President Obama does not identify himself as biracial. He identifies himself as black. Throughout his presidency, multiracial people have shared their feelings about his choice. Some feel offended, let-down and discouraged. Some argue that his decision to self-identify as black is proof that the "one-drop" rule--that originated in the era of slavery--still thrives today (in other words, if society sees him as a black man, why shouldn't he identify as a black man?)

Here are some opinion pieces that got me thinking even more about the issue:

• An NPR podcast (with transcript available) from 2008 argues that the term "biracial" is too vague for many. "Biracial" could mean Jewish-Korean, Filipino-Mexican, or some other mixture that isn't specific enough for the President.
• An Op-Ed from the LA Times that discusses the fact that Obama's personal history--being raised by his white mother and grandmother--led to him being labeled "not black enough" in Chicago politics. The author speculates that maybe this accusation pushed the President to focus on his black heritage.
• A truthdig piece that tries to tie Loving Day history to current same-sex marriage debates. (The author also mentions another story that has stuck with me: my favorite artist, Jill Scott's comments regarding the pain she feels when she sees interracial couples.)

When I put all of these thoughts together, and then I go back to Fred Karger's comment from The Guardian about how he doesn't understand how President Obama, the product of a biracial marriage, could be "unable to understand the extreme pain that bigotry causes," I wonder... What happens to that logic when you factor in that Obama doesn't identify himself as "the product of a biracial marriage?" If he doesn't identify that way, can you really argue that the Loving's legacy should make him  sensitive to the pain of LGBT people?

What about another explanation altogether: what if the extreme pain of bigotry is what caused the President to identify himself as only black?  Maybe carrying that kind of pain around makes it hard to empathize with the pain of others.

I don't know what goes on in the mind of our President. I do know that his choice to identify as only one race impacts both black culture and mixed culture.
Is the impact good? bad? indifferent? What do you think?


**Note** After originally posting this, I found yet another article on the same topic. Check out this article by a mixed race gay man, writing about his experience in London. A judge asked him, point blank, to choose whether he is "black" or "mixed race." What's Race Got to Do with Identity? | Same-Sex Couples News - gay & lesbian couples, marriage equality, gay weddings worldwide

First Encounters: What If?

Flickr: digitalbob8

Over the weekend while running some errands I was listening to NPR and heard a couple of stories that started me thinking/laughing/wondering (the podcast is at the bottom of this post.)

The episode focused on FIRST ENCOUNTERS of every sort--first kiss, first time meeting a foreigner, first time hearing. As human beings we are constantly bombarded by information. What happens in our brains when we see something or someone for the first time?

The simple answer: we categorize. We instantly compare what we are seeing for the first time to the stored information in our brains, trying to make sense of it. This instantaneous process sometimes leads us to jump to conclusions about what we are seeing. Sometimes we label things or people incorrectly. Much of the time there is no malicious intent--we are simply trying to make sense of the world around us. There is a problem, however, if we don't stop to check ourselves--to see if our brain's instantaneous classification system did a good job. There is a problem if we allow our brains to "judge a book by its cover."

Think about all the things that describe who you are. List them.

How many of those qualities are things that you can physically see in less than a second?

Think about the things that people see when they look at you.

How many of those things accurately describe who you are inside?

(If looking at yourself is too hard, choose someone you love--your child, for example, and list the qualities that make them who they are.)

The point is, that in the extremely short time it takes our brains to process information, we are making judgments about what we see. It is natural. It is necessary in order for us to sort out the endless stream of information we are exposed to. But our brains are not always seeing the full picture.

Wouldn't it be interesting if our brains could see deeper than the surface? Maybe there wouldn't be so much hurtful judgment of each other for skin color, body shape, hair type, or other physical differences. What if we could see the essence of each other? What if we didn't just settle on our brain's categorization and went past that first encounter?