Rejecting the Poison
This essay originally appeared in the December 2017 issue of Hold The Line Magazine.
Not until I became a mother did I begin to question the language and ideology of racial difference. My son presents as white, with light skin, blond hair and blue green eyes. I have caramel skin, dark brown hair and dark brown, nearly black eyes. My son is Ecuadorian and Jewish American on my side and Irish and German American on my husband’s side. His physical appearance should come as no surprise given his ethnic mixture, but his presumed whiteness has revealed a new world to me. Motherhood has motivated me not only to challenge systemic racism but to question the ideology and language that both created it and that perpetuates its destructiveness.
My son’s physical appearance affords him privilege and protection. I have been told how “lucky” I am that he presents as white. I refuse to accept the privilege of his presumed whiteness. To accept it without question or examination is not only to be a part of the continuation of systemic racism but to further empower the foundation that created the system. A foundation born out of anti-blackness and a belief in the sanctity of whiteness.
My son should not be considered lucky as a result of his physical appearance. His presumed whiteness should not automatically protect him. His life should not be valued more than the lives of children of color. His life should not be valued more than my own as a woman of color. And yet, because of our society’s acceptance of race as immutable and inherent, it is.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I wrote essays examining my identity and experiences with racism. This lifelong awareness of the intersection of racism and identity has heightened the values and full sense of self I hope to instill in my own son. I refuse to raise him to adhere to the destructive ideology at the root of systemic racism. If my son is lucky to present as white, then I, and all other dark-skinned people, are unlucky.
To teach my son that his light skin equates good fortune would be a tacit, if not overt acceptance, of systemic racism. To show him that it is acceptable for his light skin to protect and privilege him would perpetuate the notion that racism is inevitable. Racism is not inevitable — it is the vicious manufacturing of humans. Human beings created racism, as well the ideology to uphold it. As human beings, we must undo systemic racism by taking an ax to the root of the poisonous tree.
In our fight against systemic racism, we have to fight the ideology that created it. My son, like me is a bilingual and multiethnic individual. He is not inherently different from me by virtue of lighter coloring; he should not be entitled to a life of privilege and protection solely because of his presumed whiteness.
My son already understands himself and others to be more than the American system will have us believe we are. He sees the physical similitude he shares with me despite the difference in our coloring and often assumes that an adult and child of different hues are family. Since he was a toddler, I have read him books about the nuance and complexity of identity, such as Gugi, Gugi by Chih-Yuan Chen. For children who live between languages and cultures, this book is the perfect message about their reality being what it should be and that they dictate who they are, no one else. Being bilingual has taught my son to understand his totality, but it’s also enabled him to think more abstractly and to be able to see the world through different eyes.
I speak to my son directly both about the dangers of assuming we know who a person is based on what we perceive as well as the hazards of attaching value to physical appearance. I tell him he is handsome (he receives this message all of the time, often from people enthralled by his lightness), but that his beauty has nothing to do with his coloring, or even with his facial features. I tell him he has a handsome face, but ultimately it is who he is, and how he treats others, that will make him a beautiful person.
An ideology of inherent, immutable difference is what birthed systemic racism, and as my husband and I teach our son to challenge racism, we also make certain not to emphasize the cruel and destructive lie of racial difference. My son is not inherently different from me, or other people of color, and he should not accept the automatic privilege and protection of his presumed whiteness.
As he matures, I hope my son will understand that the fight against systemic racism is central to his own survival as well as the survival of everyone else. His humanity is indisputably connected to my husband’s and my own, but we are teaching him that in fact he is innately connected to all of humanity. Racism dehumanizes all of us, and we must combat it at its root.
My son is not lucky because of his presumed whiteness. My son is lucky because my husband and I understand the inception of racism, as well as its perpetuation and we are raising him to reject its poison.
