Karin Coyne,
Pittsburgh, PA.
My sweet man is black and I am white. Our baby girl is both. but the world is a complicated place… and she is light-skinned and people ask her daddy, “Is that your child?” This deeply offends him… because it makes him feel as though folks are suggesting that he has stolen her. Or that her blackness is not a real part of her identity. Being black is not easy in our culture, but I think it might be just as hard when you always have something to prove to someone, depending on the audience. Light-skinned enough to pass for white, but my daughter shouldn’t have to explain, or pass, for that matter… or being anything but herself. And her whiteness, or her blackness, should never be a viewed as a deficiency by anyone from the white or black communities.
