{"id":48323,"date":"2016-07-19T19:16:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T19:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48323"},"modified":"2016-07-19T19:16:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T19:16:11","slug":"daddy-i-wish-there-werent-any-black-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48323","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDaddy, I wish there weren\u2019t any Black people.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDaddy, I wish there weren\u2019t any Black people.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Medium<\/a>
\n2016-05-05<\/p>\n

Abe Lateiner<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Taking a deep breath, I respond to my daughter with a wish of my own.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve begun to see that it\u2019s not about having the \u201cright\u201d answers when kids ask about race. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I think there are better and worse answers to offer. There\u2019s also a lot to be said for having a calm, thoughtful answer in the first place, sending the important signal that it\u2019s fine to talk about race openly.<\/p>\n

At the end of the school day this past fall, I drove to pick up my 5 year-old daughter, Estella, from kindergarten. As we walked down the steps outside, Estella said she felt like walking instead of driving. It was a beautiful day, and so I happily agreed to take a walk around the block and then drive home.<\/p>\n

We were at the tipping point of the New England<\/a> autumn. Some of the leaves were beginning to turn yellow, and a few were already burning red. We were admiring the colors as Estella skipped along, her little hand in mine, when she said, \u201cDaddy, I wish that we lived in a world where people couldn\u2019t change their skin color.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been intentional about talking race with Estella. As a White father with a multiracial daughter, I don\u2019t have any sort of grand strategy beyond teaching her that race<\/em> and skin<\/em> color are only tangentially related. \u201cBlack\u201d people don\u2019t have skin that is the color black, \u201cWhite\u201d people don\u2019t have skin that is the color white, many \u201cBlack\u201d people have lighter skin than some \u201cWhite\u201d people, and so on. So when we talk about racial categories, I\u2019ll often say, \u201cIsn\u2019t it silly that we use those words to describe people? They\u2019re just made up.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also careful to explain that even though race is<\/em> made up, it gets people hurt, traumatized, and even killed. I\u2019ve told her that the people we call \u201cBlack\u201d are more likely to be treated unfairly by the police just because of the way that they look…<\/p>\n

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

\u201cDaddy, I wish there weren\u2019t any Black people.\u201d Medium 2016-05-05 Abe Lateiner Taking a deep breath, I respond to my daughter with a wish of my own. I\u2019ve begun to see that it\u2019s not about having the \u201cright\u201d answers when kids ask about race. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I think there are better and worse […]<\/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":[24517,18537],"class_list":["post-48323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-abe-lateiner","tag-medium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48323","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=48323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48324,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48323\/revisions\/48324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}