{"id":37819,"date":"2014-10-19T22:47:30","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T22:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37819"},"modified":"2014-10-19T22:47:30","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T22:47:30","slug":"i-raised-my-sons-to-be-racially-neutral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37819","title":{"rendered":"I raised my sons to be racially neutral"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/10\/19\/i_raised_my_sons_to_be_racially_neutral\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>I raised my sons to be racially neutral<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\" target=\"_blank\">Salon<\/a><br \/>\n2014-10-18<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/terrybakermulligan.wordpress.com\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Terry Baker Mulligan<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Two mixed-race boys, one lighter skinned than the other. Did I make a mistake telling them they were the same?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>One Saturday night in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/St._Louis\" target=\"_blank\">St. Louis<\/a> about decade ago my younger son, then a teen, was driving around town with two white friends. I\u2019m black and my husband is white, so our two sons are biracial. This particular son has his father\u2019s straight hair and aquiline nose. His skin is brown like mine.<\/p>\n<p>The friend in the back seat behind my son stuck a paint pellet gun out the back window and shot a stop sign. He didn\u2019t see two police cars parked just ahead. The cops hustled out of their squad cars and did the \u201cWhoa, what the \u2018F\u2019 are you doing?\u201d routine. The kids were taken to the police station, the gun was confiscated, and eventually all the parents were called to come to the station.<\/p>\n<p>Back up about eight years. As a young family, we usually didn\u2019t talk about race or even acknowledge it, because at the time we didn\u2019t see the need. Then one night at the dinner table I got my first reality check when our younger boy, who was 7 at the time, said, \u201cDad, I want white skin and braces. And a new first name, like Michael.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/10\/19\/i_raised_my_sons_to_be_racially_neutral\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I raised my sons to be racially neutral Salon 2014-10-18 Terry Baker Mulligan Two mixed-race boys, one lighter skinned than the other. Did I make a mistake telling them they were the same? One Saturday night in St. Louis about decade ago my younger son, then a teen, was driving around town with two white [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,8,20],"tags":[10962,18204],"class_list":["post-37819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-salon","tag-terry-baker-mulligan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}