Read it. I’m comfortable talking about race. I am not comfortable breaking the news to my sweet innocent 4-year-old that once upon a time he would have been considered property in our country.

Sorry. If you are comfortable talking about race, perhaps you are uncomfortable talking about history. To me the history of things is so important I can’t not talk about history. I can’t quite understand why my MIL, for instance, is content to have sprouted yesterday and never refers to her past.
Perhaps if you approached talking about history in other subjects first you might feel more comfortable broaching racial history, because your children would be a little more used to the idea of history. History is about how things used to be–sometimes very different from now. History is a story of why things happened how they did and how we got to where we are.
If your child lived 200 years ago in the USA as a black child he would have been considered property. But what about if he in another time and place?
My daughter watched Pride and Prejudice and thought about what it would be like to live in that time. I pointed out, but what if you weren’t rich? What if you were the maid? I then proceeded to try to describe that kind of life.
If we lived 200 years ago there would be many, many foreign things to us. We would be far more likely to die in infancy. No toilets or indoor plumbing. No cars. We’d live on farms. Start building some context for them to fit what they learn about history so that learning the history of slavery and black history in America has some context for them to view it.

ESO,

Aren’t your kids half-Kenyan? Why wouldn’t you teach them about their own heritage instead of saddling American slave history on them?

I would really question the value of pushing many of the current American cultural ideas about black history on young black kids. Compare African-American cultural thinking to that thinking in the Caribbean and you see a distinct difference.

Why would you think that your daughter, after seeing all her little friends and cousins being baptized by fathers/uncles/grandfathers, suddenly expect to be baptized by her mother. I just can’t see 99.9% of kids coming up with those ideas on their own. But that being the case, why wouldn’t you expect your sons to have the same sentiment?

I’m sorry if I’m sounding mean. I truly don’t mean it that way. I have a six year old myself (my third). I love history and I was trying to point out that you DON’T start with talking about the worst parts of history. DON’T start with slavery. Start with something else!!!!!

JKS–I didn’t think it sounded mean. I too enjoy history and you are correct that to start with the ugly would be troubling. Unfortunately, American history curricula has very little content about black people that is not troubling.

Annegb–right on, that I am shielding. I don’t think you should have felt shame about your parents, and obviously I don’t think it is shameful to be black. The book that JKS mentioned (Nurtureshock) has an interesting chapter about race which discusses, in part, that parents who talk a lot about race in the moment of distress, teach their kids a certain level of paranoia. While we often talk about pigment and heritage, I don’t want to get deep into discrimination yet. The things you say about President Obama bother me only when I feel you are saying them without sufficient information. That is much more of a political divide at play than a racial one.

MAC–my kids are Kenyan and we talk about that often, including speaking a Kenyan language at home, using their Kenyan names, eating Kenyan food several times a week, reading stories, talking about family etc etc. The fact remains that they are growing up black in America and going through American schools. When her teacher talks about black people not being able to sit down on the bus, my daughter does not distinguish and think, I’m an African, she includes herself in that narrative as a person who would be segregated out. Just as JKS’ daughter, when putting herself in the narrative of Austin doesn’t say, oh wait, I’m an American–that isn’t about me. I think my daughter would expect me to baptize her because when I asked her who she wanted to baptize her she said, “you.” I don’t know if my boys will feel that way–she is first up to bat. Maybe she is an oddball, but I think gender is fairly meaningless to her at this point. I’m OK with that.

“Answer her questions if she has them about why it is boys.”

The problem is that there is really no good answer to that question. The answers you suggest: “I don’t know” or “that is how God decided to organize things” are ultimately not going to satisfy anyone. Especially since we don’t really know for certain that God did organize it that way. Maybe it’s just the errors of men.

Yes, kids accept that things are just the way they are sometimes, but that doesn’t make the answer any more satisfying. Ultimately, the only thing that makes it even slightly ok is having a testimony of the truth of the gospel, so that’s what I choose to focus on. I think it’s also ok to tell your kids that they don’t have to just accept things the way they are. It’s ok to think it’s wrong and to want to change it. That’s how we got where we did in 1978.

JKS–great advice, thanks.

MCQ–I like that emphasis on testimony–that’s a good inclusion to this discussion.

DKL–very interesting comment! I am fascinated that you somehow identify more with southern American landowners from 200 years ago than Germans from 70 years ago. By birth, we could have been either one. I fear that, had I been of that time and place, I wouldn’t have been such an independent thinker as I’d like to think I am.

Oh please, Tim; US slavery and the Holocaust are simply shorthand for discrimination against black people and anti-semitism, and everyone in this conversation gets that. Who do you think you are schooling?

“Who do you think you are schooling?” I want to ask that every once in awhile.

I thought of your post several times during my work day. I tried to remember when I realized my family was trash. I remember my first grade teacher being really mean to me–she hit me! So I was six, for sure, but I don’t remember not knowing shame. I think. ESO, that it’s because the shame started at home when I was an infant. I’m not sure I can say this right–and I’m not going for sympathy—but, if a Black child spends the first few years of their life surrounded by love, stability and acceptance; if they’re not hungry or dirty or afraid, if they are adored so much that they think they’re God’s gift to the world, they will not embrace the shame as much when they’re treated badly that first time by a bigot.

I put that all skeewampus, but more and more I’m coming to believe how important love and acceptance are those first few years. I wish I’d known that when my kids were small.

I’m not encouraging teaching children to be narcissists, I’m just saying that if you’ve loved the hell out of your little daughter, this might not be the blow we imagine it to be. Awful to learn, yes, but rather than internalizing it as shame, she could be guided to see it as a failing on the part of society 200 years ago and of racist individuals today. Did you follow?

Maybe that’s kind of what Mac is saying. Although, Mac, did you mean to say your kids might not meet other kids of their experience? We know a ot of mixed race kids quite well. Their experiences have been varied and similar. Really.

Aside the point, but my neighbor adopted, as I said 5 mixed race children. Both parents had master’s degrees. They never spoke to or taught their kids about their unique heritages–one was from a south American country, one an American Indian (is that pc nowdays) and three the children of a white mother and black father. I know their kids were treated badly at times. Don’t you think it would have lifted their self esteem to know more of their genetic culture? To feel racial pride?
I honestly am asking.

anngb,

I know the term “third-culture-kids” typically refers to the children of ex-pats who are raised outside their parents culture. Our kids are that and have been raised in a bi-racial, bi-cultural, bi-lingual home. Add to this the fact that both my wife and I are 2.5 culture kids, without deep personal roots in a particular geography, and our kids may meet other children of similar racial make-up (they have) or international/gypsy experiences (they have) they will most likely never meet any kids who have both. They are particularly unique to the outside observer but we are careful to not encourage them to develop feeling that they are exceptional, that their challenges are bigger or more difficult than others. They are not allowed to use a particular grievance or what they “are” (racially, culturally, socially) as significant with respect to what they “do.”

where do you get this from my post: “what appears to be an encouragement of this racial affinity, that would seem to have the effect of foisting a culture of grievance or an expectation of racism on your children.”

From your comment 2: “I am not comfortable breaking the news to my sweet innocent 4-year-old that once upon a time he would have been considered property in our country.” It makes about as much sense as telling little girls at P.S. 253 in Brighton Beach that they have a special status because so many Ukrainian girls have been trafficked into sexual slavery in Amsterdam or Prague.

Let me wax hyperbolic for a second, in ten years while chatting with her friends, does she say “my white mom is really concerned about the impact of slavery-residual racism, but my dad is Kenyan and I am not even descended from slaves.”? It is a pretty loaded sentiment.

Better to tell them that “Yes, you appear different and people may make a big deal about this sometimes, but don’t let this change the way you think about yourself. Don’t let yourself think that kids who are not externally different don’t have similar or greater difficulties rooted in their social/mental/academic/religious/familial/etc. situation. My expectations for you are clear and I don’t want to hear any excuses.” IMO, anything else has the effect of pigeon-holing them, pushing them to select a racial identity at the expense of every thing else. Socially, this has the effect of perpetuating the racial problems that persist in this country.

At the end of the day, our children will have to find their own path, that is something that we decide for them when we choose to have biracial kids.

I do not think you are running a black power household. Slavery is a topic for older kids. My wife and I have spent a lot of time talking about slavery and segregation with our kids. I think that 7-8 is a better age then 4.

Reading the series Gabriel’s Horses was our launching point.

ESO,

Not at all. I am suggesting that a “200 years ago you would be property” approach to race, if reflected on and to what ever degree absorbed by your children’s worldview, could have a net negative impact on their happiness and well-being. It suggests that their challenges are exceptional and this exceptionalism should factor into their self-image (your poor daughter, double handicapped, black AND a woman). And I am not talking hypothetically but from knowledge of how this approach has worked out for members of our extended family.

Disadvantaged-minority-identity may be emotionally satisfying but it it isn’t the 1960′s anymore, racial posturing in this country is no longer delivering measurable change as much as it is maintaining a racial divide.

Your kids are not descendants of slaves, why the angst about discussing American black history? One can only infer that you expect them to identify with black American culture to negative effect and this expectation, even if unspoken, will be felt by your children.