Recently, I told my husband that I was a little annoyed about the fact that everyone identifies Barrack Obama as black when he is bi-racial. My husband’s response was he looks black so he is going to be black. This raised a lot of questions in my mind about my daughter. Would she identify herself as one race? How would I feel if she only identified herself as black? What type of situation would she be in where she was forced to identify as one race and how could I prevent it from causing her any kind of distress?
During the last U.S. Census, people were allowed to select more than one race for the first time. This raised a lot of issues abut how such a decision might effect everything from public funding for programs for minorities to compromising health data.
While the practical me understands
the complications such multiple identifiers create, the emotional mommy
side of me doesn’t understand why my daughter can’t be both.
But this issue is like most
parenting issues. You cannot control what the outside world does, but
you can control your reaction to it. I can only instill the confidence
and self awareness in my daughter that she will need to be comfortable
with who she is no matter how the world may identify her.
There will always be people in this world who will want to put others into simple categorizations. I want to make sure that my daughter believes in her heart in who she is and won’t worry about what others think. Will someone let me know when they find the magic formula for that?
This really made me think. Having a fully caucasion family, I take our shared identity for granted. I think I would find it somewhat disconcerting to have people classify my own biological children as being a different race than my own. It will be interesting to see what life is like for our children's generation since there is much more blending in families now. What boxes will be on the forms they have to fill out in 50 years?
Posted by: Kate | January 24, 2008 at 08:06 AM