{"id":42009,"date":"2015-07-27T03:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T03:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42009"},"modified":"2015-07-27T03:00:48","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T03:00:48","slug":"as-a-white-mom-helping-my-multiracial-kids-feel-at-home-in-their-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42009","title":{"rendered":"As A White Mom, Helping My Multiracial Kids Feel At Home In Their Skin"},"content":{"rendered":"

As A White Mom, Helping My Multiracial Kids Feel At Home In Their Skin<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity<\/a>
\nNational Public Radio<\/a>
\n2015-07-24<\/p>\n

Kristen Green<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last year, after months of watching \u2014 and re-watching \u2014 the movie Frozen<\/em><\/a>, my daughter Selma, who is 6, announced she didn’t want to be brown. “I wish my skin was white,” she told me one day in our living room, where we were hanging out after school.<\/p>\n

I knew she idolized the film’s alabaster-skinned heroines, and it made my heart ache. Our daughters started picking up on the differences in our family’s skin color at a very young age \u2014 I’m a white-skinned woman raised in the South, my husband, Jason, is part-white, part-American Indian, with medium-brown skin, and, depending on the season, both of our girls look more brown than white. There’s research showing that children can recognize differences in race as early as infancy, and can develop racial biases as early as 3.<\/p>\n

Knowing all this, we’ve tried to raise our daughters to be comfortable in their skin, making sure they’re in schools with other black and brown children, searching out books and movies with black and brown main characters. I had even tried, unsuccessfully, to steer her away from the snowy princesses.<\/p>\n

But our attempts clearly weren’t foolproof. “You’re beautiful the way you are,” I told Selma, stroking her long hair and trying to mask my sadness. “I love your brown skin.” She wasn’t convinced. “I wish it was like yours,” she told me…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As A White Mom, Helping My Multiracial Kids Feel At Home In Their Skin Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity National Public Radio 2015-07-24 Kristen Green Last year, after months of watching \u2014 and re-watching \u2014 the movie Frozen, my daughter Selma, who is 6, announced she didn’t want to be brown. “I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,125,8,20],"tags":[14788,20536,2309,2833],"class_list":["post-42009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-code-switch","tag-kristen-green","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42009","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=42009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42010,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42009\/revisions\/42010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}