The Babble post “Does My Three Year Old Have Race Issues: An Ugly Statement Gets to a Complicated Truth” brought me back to the 90’s when my daughter was in elementary school. We were living in Long Beach, CA, where I still live and work. Long Beach is a very diverse community, but with many fairly segregated neighborhoods. My daughter’s preschool (where I also taught) had been very reflective of the ethnic mix in our city, and most of my daughter’s school experiences that followed were equally integrated both ethnically and economically.
In 1995 when Nicole Brown-Simpson was murdered, my daughter saw a photo of Nicole with her once husband, O.J. Simpson. She asked me if the couple were married, to which I replied “yes.” Her next question shocked me; “Is that legal?” she asked. It took me a moment to realize the inference. She wanted to know if it was legal for a white woman and a black man to be married.
We had sent her to diverse schools! We had provided a cache of ethnically diverse dolls. I had read We Are All Alike, We Are All Different” to her Daisy troop. I thought this was “enough.” Clearly our “enough” was insufficient. What had we missed?
It didn’t take me long to realize that although her classmates were diverse, my daughter had only one mixed-race friend and she was being raised solely by her African-American father; no white mother on the scene during playdates. Our household had two white parents. Our married friends were of the same race and mostly white, too. I soon came to see my own complicated truth; seven-year-olds still broadly generalize and what happens at home creates their reality much more than the outside world.
We had a situation we needed to remedy. We couldn’t run out and start rounding up friends of color, but like Franziska Green, we began talking about race and skin color and the make-up of different families. Our friends, along with our daughter’s, became more diverse as we integrated further into our community, and our daughter’s life at home and away became more congruent.
Today our friendships represent the diversity of our city even more broadly; black, white, brown, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, agnostic, atheist… Our world is larger and we believe our life is richer because of it.
Are you addressing, or have you addressed, these types of issues in your family? Please share your thoughts.
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