I didn't always think this way. When my first daughter was born - in South Texas of all places - I naively took it for granted that we could all just "get along" and enjoy one happy, harmonious, multiethnic culture. In fact, since my husband's Jamaican, we've even got the whole "one love, one people" thing going on. Of course, this idea was just too good to be true.
I wish I could say that, as a bleeding heart liberal born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd always noticed the way our society simply defaults to white, but I can't say that I did. In fact, having been raised in mostly black neighborhoods in Vallejo and Oakland, I grew up feeling most comfortable among people of color. It wasn't until I went to college in Arizona that - had I not already known better - I might have thought the whole world was white (not to mention blond, blue-eyed and half-naked).
Similarly, my husband comes from a predominantly black culture where little kids run up to white girls like me, stroke our hair and run away laughing hysterically. So his experience, too, is atypical compared to many in the United States. In the beginning, I think we both tended to focus on the positive and just feel grateful that, after 40 years and the Civil Rights Movement, at least it wasn't still a crime for us to shack up and have babies.
We tried to ignore all the ignorant things that perfect strangers would say in response to the site of our multiethnic family. Like the big shot attorney who exclaimed how great it was that we were going to have "a little Halle Berry or Mariah Carey." I wasn't yet comfortable with the idea of changing a dirty diaper, and this guy was already sexualizing my daughter with sequins and hooker heels.
Eventually we moved to Seattle in search of some diversity of thought and community. We hoped to find a few families that resembled ours, or at least didn't look like everyone else. Naturally, we ended up in the Valley.
And while it's true that 83 percent of Rainier Valley residents are non-white and 32 percent African American - compared to less than 10 percent throughout the city of Seattle - I still can't shake the realization that my brown, curly-haired girls are getting the idea that it's better to be white and blond than themselves.
The message is everywhere. From the steady gentrification and socioeconomic segregation of our community to the lack of brown dolls on the toy store shelves and the way that we all consistently use color to identify blacks, but rarely whites. It's from the Glamour magazine editor who recently advised black women to "just say 'no' to the 'fro'" in favor of harsh chemical relaxers and hot-iron presses that help achieve a straighter, what some would call "whiter," look.
It's even on the pink princess Pull-Ups that a perfectly well-meaning friend gave us. Naturally, I was totally down with the free diapers, until I realized that there wasn't a single brown princess in the bunch. I have a hard enough time cloaking my kids in characters, so I just could not bring myself to put a picture of a blond white-girl on my brown girl's bum day after day.
After all, what would that say to her? As a white woman, I'll admit that I'm not entirely sure, which is probably what unnerves me the most.
According to writer and activist Bell Hooks, "These are the subtleties of racism that people often miss because, let's face it, many of us do have a lot of privilege in this culture compared to what many people experience in the world, in terms of daily terrorism, hunger, all of those things. So it becomes very difficult sometimes for people to articulate the more hidden levels of racial assault."
Hooks also identifies the "danger in not articulating it and in not confronting it," which is why I tossed the Aryan diapers, sent every one of our white dolls on a permanent vacation and carefully cut the medallions of white princesses from our Goodwill Disney costumes before giving them to my girls.
I doubled up on dolls that resemble them and their dad's side of the family, as well as kids books like "Happy to be Nappy" and "I Love My Hair" and adult titles like "I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World."
I purchased Brandy's all-star, multiethnic Cinderella remake and arranged for us to attend Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center's production of "Cinderella: A Love Story with the Sound of Motown."
We visit friends and relatives in the West Indies as often possible, and our home is filled with art created by and representing people of color.
And I remain vigilant as my little darlings get older and more cognizant of race, class, culture and their respective places in all of it, because the most important messages are not those taught by media, mainstream or pop culture, but by loving parents who know that all children are beautiful and just as perfect as their maker intended them to be.
Othello writer Amber Campbell may be reached at this link.. [[In-content Ad]]