Bold, Beautiful, and Biracial
Aaronica and Reign
Reign stands attention at the entryway, chatting to the moms and kids who are running back and forth grabbing dinner, eagerly awaiting the start of the holiday celebration. She introduces herself and asks if I like her pajamas. Her steel blue eyes are captivating, her vocabulary extensive. I can’t tell her age exactly, though she seems to be about 3, however she speaks and acts like she is 12. I’m in awe of this little girl, who is doing her name justice by taking charge and holding court here at this event on a cold December night.
Reign’s mom is standing close by wearing pjs that match her daughter’s. We are introduced and I learn that Aaronica is a proud momma who is also a Raise The Barr scholarship recipient. I gave her a big hug. You see, I am on the scholarship committee and in reviewing the personal statements, I get an inside glimpse into the lives and stories of our applicants, and though they are all compelling, some stand out more than others. Chatting with Aaronica felt like visiting with an old friend, someone I’ve known my entire life. She is strong, warm, and determined. I told her Reign seemed like an old soul, older than her years, and Aaronica matter-of-factly agreed. One of the other things that made me feel connected to Aaronica was the fact that both of our children are biracial. Reign is Russian and Black, and will tell you that she is a brown baby! At her tender age, she already knows who she is and how she wants the world to see her. Aaronica and I recently spoke about what it is like to raise children of mixed race. I am working on a separate project on that topic, to be revealed at a later date, but today I wanted to share a little about the conversation we had.
Aaronica is a Black female who lives in Minneapolis. When her daughter Reign was a baby, Aaronica would call her “my Beige Russian”. As Reign got older and started recognizing the difference in skin tones, Aaronica started to reinforce that she was Black like mommy. One day when picking Reign up from daycare, her teacher called her a little White baby. Reign looked at her teacher and said “no”. Aaronica had to politely let the teacher know that Reign is Black like her mom. Aaronica recalls being taken aback by the whole encounter considering her teacher was a multi-racial woman. Soon after that experience, Reign was with her dad (who is a Russian adoptee) and she told him that she was White like him. Her father gently said, "your skin is light but you are Black like mommy. You are mixed; your mom is Black and your dad is White.”
These are common experiences when raising a biracial child. So often, the outside world decides what race a person is based on what they see, or what they think they know. Fortunately, Reign has a very loving mommy and daddy who help her discover the words and ways she can express who she is. At a young age, she has been given the power of identity and is supported, instead of ashamed, about being who she is.
Helping my son understand what it meant to be biracial was a little different, but also empowering and validating. Anthony was raised in a White household, without the influence or interaction of his Black father who lived across the country with his new family. When Anthony was about 3, he asked me if he was “brown” because he drank so much chocolate milk. I loved that he was using what he knew to try to understand himself and his place in the world. Using the chocolate milk metaphor, I told him that like chocolate milk, he was a combination of a Black daddy and a White mommy, who together made him the beautiful color brown. He laughed and laughed and said he loved being brown. I told him that I loved it, too.
No matter how much you teach your child how beautiful and loved they are, it’s important, when the time is right, to also teach them that the world isn’t always going to see them the way their parents do. It is a difficult and necessary conversation to have, especially with Black children, but also with biracial children. We need to give our kids tools to engage and interact with a cruel world, so they can do their best to educate and inform folks, to call out micro-aggressions and implicit biases when they occur, and use these experiences as a guide for the future.
It is completely ignorant, inappropriate, and incredibly offensive when someone tells you something like, “I can’t believe she is your daughter.” Aaronica says she got that a lot when Reign was a baby because she had very fair skin and had significantly different hair texture than her mommy. Aaronica wants people to know that this is a micro-aggression that whitewashes Reign and is wrong. Though she hasn’t explicitly had conversations about race with little Reign, she has told her that sometimes people are not nice. Aaronica emphasizes the use of words and feeling statements, and says that when the time is right, she will talk about racism using a historical lens so Reign has the framework and knowledge she needs to understand the world around her, and her place in it.
My son is Black. He does not disregard his whiteness, but he has always identified and felt like he related to the world as a Black person. However, if you looked at us side by side, there is no denying we are related, but some people choose not to see that due to their own blind ignorance. In December 2013, Anthony was a nominee for a college football award. Together we attended the nationally televised ceremony, where he was announced as the recipient. It was one of the proudest moments of both of our lives. But it was also sprinkled with disappointing and hurtful exchanges that take up equal space in my memory. I wish they didn’t exist side by side, but they do. As I waited around for Anthony to finish interviews, a woman approached me and said how noble it was that I adopted a Black child. Shocked, I responded saying her comments were ignorant and that actually Anthony was my biological son, and I remembered the day it happened, the labor, the pain, the absolute pride and overwhelming love as I lay with him in my arms. She smiled an uneasy, embarrassed smile, said “Oh!” then walked away, leaving me standing there holding a bag full of crappy feelings. For Anthony’s sake, I pushed those feelings aside, not wanting to do anything to ruin his night. We did talk about this later, as there were other comments made that evening that were hurtful. We agreed to correct and educate people, like I did with the woman who suggested I adopted Anthony, but we shouldn’t have to do so. It creates anger, feels uncomfortable and disappointing, but I would rather that than allow folks to decide my son’s experience. It is important that we talk about these things openly and honestly so we can acknowledge the painful experiences of racism. We need to share these stories so we can begin to heal and create a better, more just society for all of us, especially our children.
If you met Reign, you would agree that she is destined for greatness. She has a presence about her and can easily bring people together, even at the young age of 3. Anthony’s always been a quiet leader on and off the field, letting his actions speak first. These are our children. Bold. Beautiful. Biracial.