What color is your Momma?

by Heike Boehnke-Sharp

(written in 2000)

Today we were in the local newsroom, being interviewed as a family for a Sunday insert. We were picked because we had an “interesting” story as a family, and because we are a “Multi” family.

Of course, in our case we are both multi-racial and ethnic. The journalist asked us how we felt about raising our daughter here in the U.S., not asking about the color issue, but insinuating it. Fine with me, since one of my missions is to educate the masses that there are “multi” families out there that are fully functional. Of course, running a story on my family is the perfect outlet.

I told the journalist that we do all possible to raise our daughter European, that we teach her three languages, and that we try to uphold traditions from both of our backgrounds. We are making her aware, and she is becoming more  knowledgeable and in tune with her heritage. My daughter is still too young to understand; now everyone is just blown away by her cleverness and cuteness. As she gets older she will be confronted with the color issue, and hopefully we will have prepared her.

One thing caught me off guard. During the interview, my husband asked my daughter: “What color am I? Black. What color is your Momma? White. And what color are you? Brown! She said this laughing, and I know she really knows that we are all different colors and our friends’ families are not. At that moment it sounded like a drill to me.

Afterwards, I pondered on this moment. I am wondering if we parents of multi-racial children try too hard to “prepare” them? Are we so afraid of what they will be confronted with because of their color that we drill comebacks into them? With the comebacks, are pressing our own fears, implications and opinions into their head, not leaving any space for them to form their own? 

This discussion is one you hear often in Multi-family rounds. Do we teach, teach, and teach? So that if one day a black child says she is NOT black, she knows she is, half? Or when she is claimed Black because she has “ a drop of black blood” (must be a left-over phrase from slavery days) that she knows to respond that, no, she is also white. Does she have to recite that one of her Great-Grandmas was part of the bus boycott in Montgomery, AL,  and that the other carried her family through the war alone, proving that she knows and is proud of her rich heritage? Are we drilling too much? 

I watch my daughter on the playground, where kids of all ages, colors and sizes play together. Perfect strangers one moment, playmates the next. They don’t care about race, religion, rich, poor, etc; all they care about is playing together. How often do I gaze at them wondering, “If they would only stay so innocent and tolerant!” Maybe it is time we packed our own fears away, and let the children develop their own experiences. Who knows, all of these playmates may become our next generation of unbiased adults!

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