Seeing

I grew up with the message that we shouldn't point out differences in people, especially when it comes to a person's race.  I grew up hearing that love is colorblind and that race just shouldn't come into the equation of who a person is at all.  Granted, I also grew up in an area where it was easy to have that mentality.  After all, we were a bunch of white people living in a town, with little to no diversity to ever question our feelings on race relations.  It was an easy existence.  I do remember my first interaction with an African American.  It was a girl around my age (I was around 12 at the time) and she was visiting my little town to visit extended family.  I was fascinated by her! I had never met an African American. The whole experience was exhilerating.  It was a hot summer day, and she mentioned to me that she couldn't play outside for too long because her mom didn't want her getting too dark, which was a concept that confused me completely.  Afterall, she was already dark.  I being around 12, of course asked for clarification, and she said that her mom doesn't want her being one of the dark black girls.  I looked at her, shocked.

"What are you talking about?  You're black?"

Yep.  I asked that.  And I of course knew she was African American.  But I thought by noticing it, that it somehow made me prejudice or racist, so I pretended that I didn't notice it.  Looking back, that's pretty silly if you ask me.  She noticed I was a pale freckled face girl.  Why wouldn't I notice that she was an African American girl?

Because we should all be colorblind, right?

I went through a lot of my life with these ideas.  And then came the adoption of Nur, and I found it important to learn everything I could about parenting a child of a difference race than my own.  I took classes through my adoption agency, reached out to other parents who have children of a different race, and did research on race in general.  The overwhelming consensus was that race should be discussed.  That pointing out differences doesn't make us racist.  In fact, acknowledging differences without allowing those differences to form a certain view of an individual is how we overcome racism. 

We talk about race a lot in our home.  Nur actually began the conversation a long time ago when we were studying colors.  He looked in the mirror and said to me, "Nur is brown."  That was the beginning of an ongoing conversation in our household.  I told him that Nur is brown.  I also told him that he is beautiful.  I also pointed out that TT is very light brown, but that Nur and TT share the exact same eye color.  I also pointed out that Mama is a peach color, and that Baba and Nur have the same hair color.  My objective of these conversations is so that Nur knows that being brown is beautiful, and that although there are differences between us, there are also many similarities as well. 

Many people seem uncomfortable by how openly my family speaks about race.  We were at Sunday School several weeks ago, where I am a teacher.  All 20 kids were sitting around eating their snack, and I was talking to a couple other teachers.  I mentioned that 18 of the twenty kids in the room were all blond haired, and then there is my brown haired TT, and then there is Nur, who is the only African American in the room.  One of the teachers looked at me shocked.  She had a similar reaction that I had when I was 12 years old.  Did she really want me to believe that she hadn't noticed that my Nur was an African American child?  Or was she shocked that I openly said it?  Either way, I found the reaction silly.  There is nothing wrong with pointing out contrast. 

I've also been questioned by many family and friends about openly talking about race.  We celebrated MLK Jr day and I had many people mention that we shouldn't make race too big of an issue in our house because "love is colorblind." I've also had people question why we talk about Nur being brown.  I have many people in my life who seem to be of the opinion that we shouldn't talk about this at all.  At least not until Nur has a better understanding of it all.

I am of the opinion that both adoption and race need to be a conversation from day one.  Nur is a very bright 3 year old, and TT is a very bright 2 year old.  They get that we all look different.  Nur completely understands that he looks more like the Somali family in school than he does his own parents.  They get that TT looks just like her half Egyptian cousins where Nur doesn't look much like any of us.  Nur understands that he was born in Ethiopia and TT was born in the United States.  These are all conversations we choose to have, and I believe we are doing it the best way we know how.  I believe that we are fostering a relationship with our kids where race discussions are not taboo. 

It's okay if you notice Nur doesn't look like his parents.  It's okay if you notice he's African American. 

Because let me tell you. . . He notices.