While I was slathering sunscreen on my daughter at her weekly swim lesson in Tustin, she held her caramel arm up against mine.
“I hope my skin is never as dark as yours, Mommy.”
Wounded, I grasped for what to say. To acknowledge my hope was the same would be admitting life is more difficult with skin as dark as mine. To dismiss her comment would mean such things aren’t important -– but aren’t they? Especially now, with divisiveness raining down on us? We’re choking on it – the injustice, hate, name-calling and violence.
But how do I explain all this to my 6-year-old daughter?
Cowardly, I chose silence. The moment fell away as my daughter bounded carefree to the shallow end of the pool. Only then did I allow myself to process her desire for skin lighter than mine. For years I had suppressed the pain associated with having dark skin, but it was impossible to ignore any longer.
I spent my first seven years in Grand Cayman, where race doesn’t drive perception. My childhood friends were varying shades of pink and brown. We slung British accents and the sing-songy brogue of the island. It didn’t matter what we looked like. We all played together underneath the canopy of sea grape trees dotting the shoreline.
When my mother and I relocated to the United States, I felt a shift. My new school in Florida was private, rich and white, and I was one of two students of color in the entire elementary. In the islands, there was segregation, but a different sort. There it’s about class and rarely about race. What divides is schooling, brand clothing, car model, house size. Not skin color.
My new classmates informed me I was “black.” I had never heard that label. I pointed to a post at the corner of the playground, “I’m not black. That post is black. I’m brown.”
They were insistent, and by day’s end, when Mom picked me up, I was in tears. It was my first taste of the strict sorting in the United States. People are instantly dropped into categories: skin color/ethnicity, religion/beliefs, finances/economics, etc. I suspect my daughter has already begun sorting.
It has become my mission to stop it.
To do that I must first acknowledge my own scars and pain to prevent them from being passed to my daughter. It has been my experience that most whites can’t see past my color even as most blacks say I don’t match their expectations of what our color represents. I’ve been told that I sound and act too “white.” I’ve been ridiculed for dancing like a white girl and admonished for dating non-black men. I’m a disappointment and an enigma. Yet I’ve walked around optimistic, believing most people see the world as I do, that people are people, which has kept hurt and anger at bay.
The truth is I am not black. I am not white. I am me, a person in limbo, often isolated and rejected by two worlds. That anguish feels more pronounced within the fractured state of our nation. How did We the People drift apart?
Then it struck me: We were never together. Americans have been divided by race, segregated to respective corners, since the beginning.
This is underscored when I walk into my local grocery store in Irvine or my daughter’s elementary school, where I see white and Asian faces looking at me. They stare, and I can almost feel them forming opinions of me based on my skin color. In today’s political climate of diatribes against “others,” it’s gotten worse. I feel saddled with the burden of representing all blacks in a community where there are few.
But when even my daughter repudiates my pigmented skin, what is happening around me slams into focus. These long-simmering conflicts have come to the forefront of our nation’s awareness. Tensions rise. Anger spills onto the streets. Another person of color killed for seemingly no good reason. Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Ferguson, Baton Rouge, Oakland. On and on. I feel more lost than usual, outraged
and scared. With a leader who fans the flames of racism, misogyny and bullying, my blinders don’t work anymore. I’m reminded that no matter what I accomplish, I will just be seen as a black girl.
Less than two years ago we had a president who represented what I believed the future would be. As groundbreaking as that was, I cannot ignore the fact that, in the U.S., anyone who is part black is simply considered black, even if part of their heritage is white. Assumptions about race have swelled from a dull roar to a haunting bellow. I anguish over what kind of society my caramel multiracial baby girl will grow up in.
Back at the pool, questions swirled in my mind as my daughter swam. What do I teach my daughter when our country’s highest authorities have trouble acknowledging the antagonism and racism being fostered? How do I groom her to be colorblind without getting hurt? How do I coach her to avoid land mines of rejection and be her authentic self? Where will she fit in?
There is a whole generation of mixed-race children coming, but how will she view herself until they have arrived. Will she recognize the change and its significance as she becomes part of a blended, somewhat unidentifiable, non-white majority? White people will become the minority. We’re seeing this shift happening already in Orange County.
Take the demographic makeup of Irvine, where I live. A historically white community, Asians now comprise the majority with 43 percent of the racial composition. Blacks? Only 1 percent. This is the opposite of Atlanta, where I lived before moving here. Blacks made up 54 percent of the population, whites about 38 percent, and Asians just slightly above 5 percent. I went from being surrounded by faces that looked like mine, to a community where I am nearly non-existent. I am an anomaly, a freak on parade. Going from a city that touts “Black Pride” to a city where I feel shame for my blackness made me fear I was to blame. Was my daughter adopting my shame? I needed to act.
On our drive home that afternoon I found the courage to finally address my daughter’s comment. She sat slick and damp in her car seat, chomping on white cheddar popcorn. I caught her eyes in the rearview and spoke slowly.
“Hey, sweetie? Remember at the beginning of your lesson when you told Mommy you hoped your skin was never as dark as mine?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that a little bit. I wanted to first of all remind you how beautiful your skin is. It’s gorgeous and reminds me of sweet caramel. And you know, not only do I think your skin is beautiful, but I think my skin is beautiful too. And so is Daddy’s and Mrs. Badua’s and Nana’s. We all have different shades of skin, and I think they are all beautiful.
Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do, Mama.”
“And you know, just how we all have different shades of skin, we all come in different shapes and sizes too. For instance, Daddy is really tall, and I think that makes him very handsome. And Aunt Joan is round and soft, and I think that makes her beautiful and warm. And you have lots of friends and teachers that come in all shapes and sizes, right?”
“Yeah!”
“I just want you to remember that no matter what color, size or shape you or your friends are, you are all beautiful. Promise me you’ll remember that.”
“I’ll remember, Mommy.”
I took a deep sigh which felt like I was exhaling for the first time in a long while. Then I sank into my seat and focused my eyes, and heart, forward.
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