How should you raise black daughters when you are white?
How will I raise my black daughters? Why is this an issue? Let me start with a story that occurred while they were still in foster care. Ethnic diversity in adoption is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
I was a (relatively) young foster mom and had my two small foster children in the dentist's office waiting room. These beautiful girls were biracial - their biological dad was black and their biological mom was white. I had the three-year-old sitting beside me. She was so well-behaved! The baby was in a carrier. She began to squirm. I got her out. A 'gentleman' said to his wife after she commented to him the words: "Be quiet."
"I don't care; it isn't right!"
I could not keep my big mouth shut. Of course, I knew what he was thinking... He thought I had married a black man. I had to reply. Right?
I said, "Sir, do you have something to say to me?"
"I'm not talking to you!"
"Well, you were talking ABOUT me, weren't you."
"I said, I'm not talking to YOU!" he said angrily.
"If you have something to say, go ahead and say it." I shook my head at him and leaned forward ever so aggressively.
He turned his head away from me silent - not another word or look. He ignored me.
That was it. It was over. I made a point and had won. I was happy and had proven that I was bolder than he was!
Right?
So, that was seriously the only overt bias that I've really encountered as a white woman with black children. I get stares. I feel people looking at me. It may be because there are seven children, the ages of the kids are from 20 to five years, or because they are trying to figure out who is with whom, like my oldest daughter may be responsible for some of them? Why are there so many girls? Where is the dad? (He is probably at work if he is not with me, thank you. Yes we both work; thanks.)
With all the racial-ethnic issues going on in the world right now, I began to contemplate, what do I need to know about rearing black daughters. How am I going to rear these children since they are not like me in color? I am in over my head. I am not prepared. Ethnic Diversity In Adoption began to spring up everywhere. From supreme court justice
Satan started to whisper.
I began watching Facebook's posts about black people being 'hunted' every day. Then I heard about police killing black people and black incarcerations that were disproportionate to white people. Later I heard discrimination and oppression exist today. Oh my. I had no idea. I thought, "where have I been?" How should you raise black daughters when you are white?
How could I have been so behind?
Or so blind? Why did I not know that there was a black national anthem? How did I not know that there was a white privilege? Why was I not aware of micro-aggressions? It is not nice to ask a black person about their heritage? or their hair? I actually did know about this because of my oldest daughter's college assignment a few years back (she is white and it was an uncomfortable assignment because who wants to call up a black friend and ask them if you can talk about their black-ness for a school project and bring up all the uncomfortable things you did not know about?). But I had forgotten about that assignment until all of this tension had begun in our country.
Confusion Regarding Ethnic Diversity In Adoption
I was getting so confused. What should I teach them? What will they need to know? I was becoming obsessed with all the information and the 'conversations' that were occurring. I was spending hours on YouTube and Facebook. That was where I was getting my information. My church even did a 'conversation'. I actually learned several things.
I listened to a police officer during a conversation from our church about his heightened sense of awareness that this may be his last shift; but how he wants to make it home and he wants to be able to walk his daughter down the aisle when she marries... For a Sunday sermon, we heard one of our pastors, who happens to be black, speak about his experiences. I then messaged him and his beautiful wife afterward and asked for some advice, because I had these black daughters to raise. They gave me some generally good advice.
I kept mulling over and pondering over what to do. During this entire time, my family kept walking on eggshells discussing all of the information because I was afraid of offending my black daughters as they may overhear us discussing it. I thought they may think I did not like them? or they were not up to par?
I heard about tearing down statues, Aunt Jemima's image changing. I had no idea what to say or do. Why was this all going on? What is behind this movement? I was pondering and sleepless. My entire world was changing and I could not explain it. And I had to try to say something to my 11-year-old, right. She deserves to know something. But what?
Then I had to stop.
I started searching for wisdom. I watched sermons from Voddie Baucham. https://www.voddiebaucham.org/about/ He had stories of his own experiences as a child/young adult but had such a sense of reason founded on biblical thought processes, which I was missing from all my other Facebook and YouTube 'research'. He made his children read a wide variety of books that I was impressed with. He sounded so reasonable and not angry and definitely not oppressed. I listened to many sermons from him.
Hmmm. Maybe there was nothing wrong with how I was rearing my girls and my future plans for rearing them - which there really was no official 'plan' that was any different because of color? But surely there had to be differences that I was just not aware of... How should you raise black daughters when you are white?
I had to search the Bible for myself.
What does the Bible say about black people? The first instance was about Moses marrying an Ethiopian woman - a black woman. His sister and brother were pretty upset. They were jealous and snarky about this woman he married.
Numbers 12:1 And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
Could the Bible mean we were not to intermarry other races? This was taught for many years and was illegal until the 1960s. I read the dangers of being unequally yoked. Well, that obviously had to do with one person being a Christian and the other not. Originally, God did not want the Jews to marry a heathen because they would influence them AWAY from the one true God. Later he did not want Christians and non-Christians to marry.
We are all one flesh - I love Ken Ham or Answers in Genisis (AiG) resources (https://answersingenesis.org/racism/one-flesh/) on the subject. We are not different races. Parents teach prejudice to children. Some children are taught that one ethnic group is less than another. This is wrong. But still... How was I to raise black daughters when I was white?
I spent weeks reading and researching the scriptures. I felt I had a better grasp of my calling as a parent and my eyes were more open to seeing from a parental perspective.
Critical Race Theory
This is hard for me. I am just now learning about this? How? I guess because I was too busy rearing children, doing foster care, working, teaching, being in my own life's bubble... And, not because I did not have black friends. I had a few, honestly. I regularly visited and loved a church that had a black pastor as the main pastor. There were several black people who attended and were my friends. I had my friend, Peaches. I love her dearly and would give her the shirt of my back and feel she and her husband would do the same for us. She came to my house, kept my foster kid for me once. We raised children together and worked together for two years. I even taught her kids in school.
While working at the hospital, I worked with other black people who worked hard and had a good time at work. I spoke to them every day and considered them my friends - they worked as nurses and managers and housekeepers. We went on coffee breaks together. Black people were no more oppressed than me. And, I'm not trying to prove I'm 'woke' because I know black people. I am trying to prove my ignorance of the subject.
Why was there a Critical Race Theory? Why is there a Black Lives Matter? What are their goals? And how does that affect me and my girls? How will this affect me rearing them from now on?
Honestly? It won't.
I watched this conversation, "Race, Injustice, and the Gospel of Critical Race Theory, With Monique Duson ā#72" and it totally explained so much: https://youtu.be/FwyJk1G_Dm0. This conversation put into perspective that CRT was divisive, and used to hold members of a particular ethnic group down. Monique had such an eye-opening experience and she communicates it beautifully.
Cops
Tammy, my best friend, and I were talking, and the subject of the police "pulling you over" came up. I said well no one has to tell me how to act when a policeman pulls me over. I know to be respectful because my dad and mom taught me when I was three years old up until the day I left their home.
She said, "My dad taught me specifically to keep my hands on the wheel; if I had to get into my purse, I was to say to the officer, 'I'm going to get into my blue purse sitting on the seat beside me here to get my license out.' Otherwise, my hands were to be on the steering wheel at 10 and 2!" And she was white. This was in rural West Virginia in the 1980s.
So yes.
We, as white people, do have these conversations. They are often a little different. There are statistics that show white people are killed more often than black people by police officers. No one is literally 'hunted' by the police as a famous basketball player eluded to in a speech after Amaud Abrey was killed. (There is more to that story, apparently.) Heather McDonald makes amazing points in the video as well. See below the chart for the video link.
Watch Larry Elder with the Epoch Times who makes amazing points -including fatherlessness, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPkkjvANE10.
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