{"id":59590,"date":"2020-03-06T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59590"},"modified":"2020-03-06T16:09:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T16:09:19","slug":"my-daughter-passes-for-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59590","title":{"rendered":"My Daughter Passes for White"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Daughter Passes for White<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2020-02-29<\/p>\n

Seema Jilani<\/strong><\/a>, Pediatrician and Humanitarian Aid Worker
\nWashington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nSally Deng<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

She belongs in a way I never could. I\u2019m comforted \u2014 and worried.<\/em><\/p>\n

I stand in the aisle of the school bus while the other seventh graders snicker and block me from sitting next to them, as they have for the entire school year. Taking my seat next to the bus driver, I look out to the road with resignation. My great-aunt, adorned in a colorful sari, waves goodbye to me while the entire school bus looks on. I want to disappear into the dingy brown vinyl bus seats. With the newfound cruelty of adolescence, I scoff and loudly tell my classmates, \u201cThat crazy lady is just my maid.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am still ashamed of how I treated my great-aunt. I also know it was a form of preteen self-preservation. I desperately wanted what so many other children that age do: to be as bland and vanilla as possible, just so that I could get through the day without being ostracized.<\/p>\n

I now find myself in a mixed marriage, mother to a 3-year-old mixed-race girl who easily passes for white<\/a>. Her fair skin, auburn hair and light brown eyes do not even hint at her Pakistani background. When I tell people at gatherings that I speak Urdu<\/a> at home, some are very concerned about whether my daughter will be confused. Yet some are the same families clamoring for their children to get accepted into French-immersion kindergartens. Strangers have asked me whether I am her real mother or have assumed that I\u2019m her nanny. It\u2019s not their belief about my profession that\u2019s disturbing \u2014 it\u2019s their certainty that my daughter and I can\u2019t be related because of the colors of our skin…<\/p>\n

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

She belongs in a way I never could. I\u2019m comforted \u2014 and worried.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,8,6462,20],"tags":[2640,30804,2327],"class_list":["post-59590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-new-york-times","tag-seema-jilani","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59590","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=59590"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59592,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59590\/revisions\/59592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}