White mom hoping Filipina daughter’s prepared
Yael Silverberg Urian,
Montclair, NJ.
Yes My Mom Is White…
Marisa Boessneck,
Moreno Valley, CA.
Yes my mom is white so what? Just because I have dark brown hair and a tan skin color doesn’t mean I am not mixed. It really bothers me when I go to the grocery store with my mom who is blonde hair blue eyes and I get asked if she is my “step mom” and if she is, we have a good relationship. Just because we look different doesn’t mean we are related. I love being mixed and how that has shaped me into the person I am today.
CBU HIS311
Adopted, how much did she cost?
Gail O’Rourke
Brooklyn, NY
White Mom + Chinese daughter: Said right in my face, with my 5 year old daughter in my lap. She clutched me, buried her face in my chest and sobbed. I put my arms around her said don’t be disrespectful and walked out of the shop.
Yes, those boys are my brothers.
Julia Guerra,
Austin, TX.
My brothers are very important figures in my life. They were born to a white mom and a white dad. They are blonde and red-haired, with blue and green eyes. When they were little babies, my white mom married my Mexican dad and he adopted both of them as his own. I am biracial, with brown skin and hispanic features. The majority of our small hometown almost refused to believe that we were siblings for the 16 years that we lived there. People would say to them, “that brown girl is your sister?” Even after leaving that small town, we are constantly mistaken as friends. People who meet us for the first time are baffled when we tell them that we are related. People who see them across the room say to me, “but they’re white.” We have been together all of our lives. We share a mother, a last name, and a lifetime of memories. Yes, those white boys are my brothers.
Glad my daughter is not white.
Nice White Lady,
San Francisco, CA.
I’m a white mom to a brown daughter who can’t shake the shame and embarrassment that stems from a long history of white women instigating and being complicit in violence against Black people. When people see me, they see someone who is too fragile, too protected, too privileged, too clueless and too annoying to be taken seriously. I know this because this is how I often feel about other white women I meet for the first time.
Mixed kids are always screwed up.
Mary Zosel Hawes,
Savage, MN
White mom of three very successful and well-adjusted Black children.
Don’t worry honey, he’ll brown up.
Jen,
Bowie, MD.
My husband (African American) and I (Caucasian) took our son to his one month doctor appointment. The nurse asked us if he was Caucasian or non-white and wanted me to make a decision so she could check a box. When I asked for other options like a biracial or two or more races, she said there were none. I said well at the moment, he looks white and she said don’t worry honey, he’ll brown up. She checked non-white.
“Beauty Inside Shines through the Outside”
Matthew Powers,
Riverside, CA.
“Growing up Irish and being raised by a single mom in the 50’s and 60’s in Omaha I saw racial tension and acts all around the city, but I can’t say I understood anything about it until my younger sister and I were transferred to a different school because mom couldn’t afford the tuition at the Catholic school we were attending. The elementary school we were moved to was an all African-American school and we were the only “white” kids there, we took a lot of abuse and faced the fact that our skin color wouldn’t allow us to fit in or be accepted. We were the target of a lot of being beat on, racial slurs, isolation, and being chased home daily but eventually we did make a few close friends and things settled down. I can’t say we ever fit in but we survived and built a few relationships. It was one of the best things that could have happened to me from an understanding point of view as I saw and felt from the other side what being defined by a color or race felt like, it didn’t matter who I was inside. My family reflects that lesson we learned, my seven children’s mother had a white mother and African-American father, my children are mixed and they are proud of it, and have spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends from other races and it’s a beautiful community. My sister married a Mexican man and had three boys. Through the experience I learned that true beauty, goodness, and humanity comes from the inside, and shines through the outside regardless of what color or race that outside is and we taught the kids to see all people in the same way, individually from the inside out.” CBU HIS 311
I don’t care; will my kids
Becky Lynn Washington,
New York, NY
I got pretty lucky I guess-grew up in the desert where there was little diversity. Our family was different for a lot of reasons-my father’s job took him out of town often, we didn’t go to church, my brother was a tortured genius so we were always switching schools, and no one in our family looked alike. My mother is white and my father is black. Against a vanilla backdrop, everything about us made us outliers, so the question of feeling different because of the race was somewhat muted. The heaviest-handed questions were about my mother because she was around so often, and people would question why I didn’t look like her. It could have been a child innocence on my end but she seemed so gracefully separated from any of these questions or comments she’s my daughter, he’s my husband, he’s my son. There was really no confusion, they were just my family. In my mind, it was almost a novelty to meet families that perfectly resembled each other, because that wasn’t my reality.
This doesn’t quiet thoughts or experiences I’ve had with race- my personal thoughts on which race box to check, my personal conflict with affirmative action, small frustrations with my hair and my appearance, the conflicted way I feel when people ask me “what I am” and the conflicted ways I feel about how they ask it, my own conflict in identifying with any specific ethnicity. My first thought in the “race card” was where to begin. That all pushed aside, I’m comfortable in my skin and where I stand with my identity and respecting other people’s as well.
What hit me lately was a Cheerios commercial. No, not even the cheerios commercial-because, well it’s cheerios. The headline for the cheerios commercial-“CHEERIOS AD INTERRACIAL FAMILY CONTROVERSY.” Cheerios-controversial? Interracial family-controversial? Nothing about the headline made sense to me or went together. Racism and race controversy exists, I know. I don’t live in a bubble, I’ve left the desert and moved between different populations, and as mentioned it’s a reality that discomfort with race is the norm. But a 30-second snip-it calls for mention because of the featured mixed-race couple. Not a television show that goes any further into their lives, just an image of a mixed-race family is confusing to people.
The thought crossed my mind for the first time that my kids aren’t going to be safe from this bullshit. 25-30 years removed from my family who was a novelty, regardless of who I procreate with someone is going to have all kinds of questions for them about why they are different because the odds are way heavy that they are going to have a slew of mixed features like I do. I guess it’s part of the job and the challenge to arm them with the kind of self that makes this a non-issue but the reality is I’d figured it was one place that was simple progress-that the questioning of mixed-race was something that my generation was going to have to deal with and wasn’t something I was going to have to pass on to my kids.
Black kids, white moms, strong family.
Jennifer Meyer
Eugene, OR
Why Yes, My mother is white
Taylor Miller,
Kansas City, MO.
I’m sick of people not believing my mother birthed me just because we have different skin tones.
What’s having an Asian baby like?
Taylor Pederson,
MN.
Almost 2 years ago I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl. She has my smile, my big eyes, my fine hair with a touch of red that shows when the sun hits it, my long fingers, and so much more. But no one sees this. They don’t see me in her because I have round blue eyes, light brown hair, and fair freckled skin. All they see is her olive skin, dark hair, and the way her eyes pinch in the corner like her daddy’s do. They see an Asian baby and I feel forgotten. Don’t get me wrong. I love my beautiful girl and I love that her Korean side shows. I’m proud of my brown eyed girl and I wouldn’t change a thing about her. But I hate the way people take one look and classify her as different from me. Not just different, but separate. They check a different box for her. She’s my baby. She comes from me. She’s part of me and I’m part of her. Her coloring shouldn’t define her away from me.
I don’t look like my mother. We are both white but I’m slim and she’s curvy. I have brown hair and fair skin, she a natural so-blond-it’s-almost-white with tanned skin. If you didn’t know us you wouldn’t guess we were related. But no one ever walked up and asked her “what’s having a brown-haired baby like?”. No one ever asked if she was my nanny or where she got me from. I wasn’t immediately judged as different.
So to answer the question, I don’t know what it’s like to have an Asian baby because I don’t have an Asian baby. Or a White baby. I have my one-of-a-kind HUMAN daughter and that is pretty wonderful 🙂
Mom’s white. Dad’s black. I’m spotted.
William Jones,
Reisterstown, MD.
It’s Vitiligo. Yes, it’s what Michael Jackson had. It basically means the cells that make skin color stop doing that. All though you can’t see it as well in lighter complexions, anyone from any race can develop it, and at the age of about 30, I became one of the 1% of humans who do. What’s funny is that, as a bi-racial person, I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with race issues, from both sides, and wondering exactly where I fit. Now that I have white spots that will slowly but eventually completely cover my whole body, the idea of the color of a person has taken on a whole new meaning… and a much smaller one I think. When people ask about the spots, I explain. When people ask how I feel about it, I simply tell them that I spent the first half of my life as a really attractive black guy, and I plan to spend the second have as a really attractive white guy.
White moms. Brown kids. Colorblind love.
Melanie Gilbert,
Boston, MA.
Love who you are not what you are.
I’m always asked “What are you?”
Madysen Phororo,
Corona, CA.
South African dad, and white mom: I’m pretty ambiguous in terms of my race. There were questions I got in high school along the lines of “Do you think you’re more white or black?”. My mom was told that I’d have to choose what race I was when I went to college. And, yeah that’s true, but at the same time, I’ve never been the type to find my identity (even racially) through the means of others’ view. I’m black and white, it’s not an all-or-nothing type of deal.
