Obstacles I face raising children of a different race

I am about to be real honest and talk about something that many people don’t want to hear. I know, because I was previously one of them.

When I married my husband and we had Kaynin and Kai, as they were babies we were consistently stopped to be told how cute & sweet they were from the majority of people we encountered. My picture perfect vision was that society would always treat the boys this way.

My husband has told me how he was treated growing up as black and going to school in a predominately white community that he did face a lot of racism and had tough things to go through that the white children never had to experience. I just kept telling myself, “things have changed it’s not like that anymore.” What I did not realize is, no times haven’t changed, I just grew up as a white child WITH privilege and never was forced to go through the experiences he had growing up, but now as a mother I am seeing my children (who society sees as black) go through the same things my husband went through, and it’s not something can stand by and quietly watch.

I read an article about a year ago that has changed my view on a lot of things. I’ve realized that I was in denial that white privilege was actually a “thing.” And before you get your panties in a wad, no it’s not saying whites don’t work hard to earn their things and are handed everything. It simply means whites are given certain societal privileges simply because of the color of their skin.

I am now seeing that my boys have been cloaked in my protection when they were small. What I did not realize until now is that the cloak I was offering them was identification with my whiteness. As Kaynin grows independent, he steps out from my cloak and loses that protection. The world sees “him” differently without me.

In one study that looked at white mothers of children of African descent, it was found that the black family members perceived the mother as “unable to empathize with their children and incapable of dealing effectively with the children’s experiences of racism.” (Twine 2000).

5 years ago I was told by a black family member that I would have challenges to deal with raising boys of color but I blew it off & ignored it. It is just within the past year I am seeing just how true this quote is and that I truly am unable to empathize with them or my husband because the things they may experience are things that I have never experienced.

I am now navigating a world of race and culture previously unknown to me, while also stepping into an entirely new understanding of my own identity, examining what it means to be a “white” person in America. I have a lot to learn but that is one thing I love doing. So I will be learning more on this topic and how to appropriately prepare my boys for the things society plans to throw at them making them mentally STRONG men of color.

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