I was about 10 years old the first time someone accused me of “talking white.” My daughter Collette was 3 when it happened to her.
She asked me what it meant. I shrugged my shoulders and asked her what kind of crazy classmates were going around talking to crayons. “You speak like you’re supposed to, Sweetie. Don’t worry about it.”
When she was 4, a kid at her day care told her she was mixed. “With what?” I challenged when she came to me with this information. “I guess all that running you do could make it seem like you’re part cheetah, but I assure you you’re all human.”
This year Collette decided she was white. We later found out that in kindergarten, the Civil Rights movement and its issues are simplified into “Blacks were mistreated because of the color of their skin.” Collette saw the color of “their” skin and took a look at hers and decided that Mom and Dad were most certainly black and she was white. Taking her back to the crayon box, I managed to get her to settle for beige.
Finally, this year it became clear that we had to figure out a way to address issues of race, ethnicity and culture. It was a blitz attack. First Collette came to me and told me she didn’t like the way she looked, specifically, she didn’t like that her hair wasn’t bone-straight and blonde. Of course, this was just her way of padding the next conversation: that she didn’t like my hair (I stopped straightening my hair a year ago; turns out this was extremely traumatic for Collette.)
And finally, she started being more vocal about how she preferred all things white, to anything black. All her favorite friends were blonde, followed by Hispanics (with long straight hair). Her favorite characters on TV were all white. And most heartbreakingly, the only dolls she wanted were white — that one hit me the hardest. It was straight out of the “Brown v. The Board of Education” chapter of my fifth-grade history book.
It wasn’t a subject I could avoid any longer.
So we started to talk. And her arguments started to make a lot of sense. Why wouldn’t she like white girls more? On all her favorite TV shows, they’re the main characters, the cool ones. The black kids are the sassy, eye/neck-rolling sidekicks, or worse, the extras. And why wouldn’t she want straight hair? How many afros and natural black styles are popping up on Nickelodeon or on popular dolls?
But, maybe I kind of jumped to conclusions. When I asked about her friends, it turned out that I kind of jumped to conclusions on that one. When I asked about friends, I didn’t realize there were only three other black girls in her class and her favorite friends change every week. So odds are that most weeks, some straight-haired girl is going to be her bestie.
As for the dolls, she just wanted a doll that looked like her. She’s not dark brown. There’s not a lot of diversity in the toy aisles.
After our little talk, I decided that it was my job to help my daughter see the beauty in all people, instead of avoiding the issue of race completely. I still try to not to use labels, but I encourage her to take interest in other cultures and to try to learn from them.
Sigh, it’s a work in progress.
Here are some things I tried to get my daughter to appreciate and embrace her culture:
I started watching her shows with her and pointing out all the cool things I could about the brown people. “Isn’t her hair pretty like that?” “Wow, that’s a cool outfit!”
I found shows and movies with black main characters and helped her to discover them
“A.N.T. Farm” on Disney is good. So are the channel’s “Doc McStuffins” and “Jesse,” which features a multicultural family.
I started teaching her how to braid and twist her hair. Now she even wants to try beads.
I’m much more vocal about my choices to be natural and not change my hair to look like “everyone” else.
