![]() ![]() Depending on who is holding him or on the proximity of the on-looker, he doesn’t look Black. His hair started to curl at 12 months and still might kink. My husband has no recollection of this interaction, but it pissed me off for weeks. Pride and love for their Blackness do not erase the fact that just being Black can be lethal under far too many everyday circumstances. I should’ve told her to mind her business. ![]() At that point, she said, “Are you… are you his mother?” And I said, “I am.” Just to confirm that she had no social grace whatsoever, she insisted, “No you’re not! I don’t believe it.” Wanting the interaction to end, I laughed and said he favors his father, but he is absolutely mine. Again, since my husband was trying to fill out some paperwork, I hopped in. She gave me a sideways glance and turned back to my husband to ask his age and his name. This older white woman ambled up, looked at our baby, turned to my husband, and said, “He’s gorgeous.” I chimed in with a thank you. I was tending to him and my husband was filling out paperwork. One day, we were in the post office getting things organized for our son’s passport. There was one woman in particular who could not fathom that he came from me. Furthermore, for the first 12 months of his life, his hair was stick straight, really eliminating any trace of my heritage in him.ĭuring my maternity leave, many, many women assumed I was his nanny. I just assumed that our oldest son’s complexion would fall in between my husband’s and mine and that he would clearly, unequivocally look Black. My expectations were blown up pretty early on. Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week. We were getting him ready for a journey he maybe thought he’d never be on: fathering Black boys.Īll the while, I didn’t give much thought to my own journey: being the Black half of the equation for our multiracial children. To his credit, he dove into reading and research and frank conversations on his own. We knew early on that we wanted children, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant with our first son that I really started to dig into my husband about being a father to Black children - Black sons, no less. My husband and the biological father of my two boys - one toddler and one in utero - is white. ![]()
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