Introducing My African-American Children To Their Blackness

I wrote this originally in 2005 when my son, Jacob was six and his sister, Antonia was one years old.  It was published in Adoption Today in 2007.  I am posting it now for those who may not have had an opportunity to read it.  But, also so that I can spend some time critiquing it.  My son is now ten and my daughter will turn six soon.  Some things do not seem nearly as important, for example, attending the Juneteenth Celebrations, while others we are still struggling with - hair care for one. 

Though I may be too quick to judge.  Perhaps the Juneteenth Celebrations have helped with Jacob's overall identity.  I know that he knows that Juneteenth marks the time in 1965 that slaves in Texas got word of the Emancipation Proclamation which had become effective in 1863.  It took that long for federal soldiers to bring Texas back into the Union and force emancipation of its slaves.  On June 19, 1865 the slavery ended in the United States.  I'm not so sure how many of his friends know this.

If after reading this piece, please share any other ideas that you may have.

Thanks, Erich

Introducing My African-American Children
To Their Blackness


by

Erich P. Ditschman
Adoption Today, August/September 2007




Jacob steps out of the tub, takes the yellow towel I hand him and pats down his wet brown curls. After a minute or two I realize he is still pushing the towel down on top of his head. “What are you doing ?” I ask him. “I'm trying to straighten my hair,” Jacob says. I restrain from saying the first thing that comes to me - “I wish I had dark brown curly hair like yours rather than my too straight blond hair.” I don't say the second thing either, “your mom has brown curly hair just like you and she loves it.” I have been a father through adoption long enough to know that these simple responses only provide short term comfort and more likely, long term confusion.


My son and daughter will never look like their mother or me. They do share mannerisms and facial expressions but their physical traits can only reflect those of their birth parents. My wife and I are white and our children are African-American. Technically they are bi-racial, each having a white birth mother and an African-American birth father, but reality dictates that in our society they are black. Acknowledging this is the first step in raising our children to love themselves for who they are and who they will be – a black man and a black woman.


That step isn't easy. When we accepted our son from his birth mother we were overjoyed with love. We had traveled a long and bumpy road to become parents. When he was placed in our arms we didn't see white skin, brown skin or black skin, we simply saw the son that we had waited so long to hold. It wasn't until sometime later that I came to understand that on that day I wasn't simply holding my son, rather I was holding my son and his skin was brown and one day he would be a black man.


As we delved deeper into adoption as a choice for building our family we first had to come to grips with the knowledge that it made no sense to attempt to adopt children that would look like us. It would be hoping for the impossible to think that a birth mother resembling my wife and a birth father resembling me would select us to be part of their adoption plan. Despite the remoteness of such an occurrence, I found myself looking for similarities at our first meeting with birth parents. Ultimately the only similarity was color and they chose not to go forward with their adoption plan after their baby was born. It took those difficult meetings with that couple to remind me the only way we would have children resembling us would be if we made them and after ten years we knew that wasn't going to happen. More importantly the meetings reminded me of what I truly wanted – children. This sounds like simple biology and it is, but it is also a very complex emotional truth. Children are what we wanted and genetic similarity was merely a side effect of one pathway to obtain them. Once I came to understand this my heart opened to freely pursue our dream of parenthood.


I don't have to ask my six-year old son why he wants straight hair. I know. At his age the people in his life that he most wants to emulate are his classmates and me. In his school he is one of four brown skinned children in his class and two of four which are African-American and of these two he is the only boy. In our neighborhood there is only one other person of color who is African American and is four years older than Jacob which means he might as well live across town. While I would like to think that our nurturing environment hasn't had an impact on his development, I fear that wanting straight hair may be the tip of an iceberg of concerns of how comfortable he is in his own skin. I realize that a biological child of ours could easily end up with dark curly hair and that child may want to have straight hair like me, but as hypersensitive as it may be, my wife and I want to do all that we can to make sure our son, Jacob, grows up to be a confident man who is comfortable with himself.


To do this our second step is to submerge ourselves in literature. We know we aren't the first white parents of black children and that there should be case studies, and perhaps even how-to-guides, for raising confident and happy African-American children. There are some. There are others specific to African American children being raised by white parents but most relate to biological parents.


In addition to reading How-To-Books and Case-Studies we also intensified our reading of books by African American authors like Cornel West, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Terry McMillan, and Penny Mickelsbury. We also read more books about African American leaders and historical and contemporary issues. Two books that I keep close at hand are The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois and The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. edited by Clayborne Carson. Our literature submergence is a catalyst for integrating the information into the fabric of our lives. The issues, history and art that we discover are shared by all of us. This is an important distinction from gathering information merely to share with our children. Having African American children extends my and my wife's cultural heritage beyond our German, Polish and Italian ancestral roots. Together our family now shares our ancestral heritage as well as the African American heritage of our children.


One of the truths that the literature provided is that a color-blind philosophy simply does not work and that our physical characteristics are critically important in defining who we are. Our skin and eye color, hair type, and body shape need to be celebrated not homogenized. These characteristics are directly connected to our cultural heritage. While our family enjoys the schnitzel platter at our local Bavarian restaurant, we also delight in the spicy ground peas mixed with greens served at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant. The point is that while it may be natural for my wife and I to expose our family to our shared German heritage, both birth mothers have German ancestors, it must now be natural for us to share in the exploration of our children's African-American heritage. Our third step is to celebrate their blackness.


The question is obvious, how can a white man from a small Midwestern city and a white woman from the country introduce blackness to anyone? We are not sure that we can, but as responsible parents it is our duty. These are some of the things we do to bring blackness into our family's life. They are not all easy. Many take my wife and I out of our comfort zone. Some of the things we try just do not work for our family. The things that we do that seem to work fall into the following categories: role models, cultural events, hair care and home environment.


Role Models The African American population in our greater community is fifteen percent. Because of this we need to actively seek out individuals to whom we can introduce our children. Of course people of all types of ethnicity can be good role models, it is just that we have come to believe that it is particularly important that our children see black people in prominent positions so that they see that skin color is not a barrier to achieving their dreams. Examples of some of our children's role models include, our pediatrician, a professor at a state university, my son's barber, and a long time friend. Our children's pediatrician is a woman from Nigeria who has been a primary source of assistance in caring for our children. In addition to the excellent health care, she has provided hair and skin care advice and child care recommendations.


On a recent vacation to Florida my friend Kevin, who I've know since high school brought his family down from Atlanta to join us in celebrating my daughter's third birthday. He also mother-in-law was with him. So while our kids played on the beach my grandmother and Kevin's mother-in-law shared stories and our wives sat in their beach chairs enjoying the sun while watching the kids, I was filled with joy. In addition to seeing African American role models that we associate with such as a our doctor and barber, my children need to see African Americans who are part of our extended family – friends that we care for and care about us.


Cultural Events We are fortunate that our community has a number of events which celebrate African-American culture. In addition to music festivals such as Jazz Fest and Blues Fest which draw large African-American crowds, our community sponsors an Annual African-American Parade and Family Reunion Barbecue. The Parade and Barbecue is a great opportunity for our children to play in a predominately black environment. At first I was tentative about attending the Family Reunion Barbecue which occurs after the parade. My concern was that we would not be reuniting with anyone. I feared our little brown and white family would be alone in a sea of large gatherings of reunited African-American families sharing jokes, barbecuing, telling stories and having good old fashion barbecue fun. But, the barbecue is set up like a festival and includes a number of barbecue and soul food vendors as well as health and community service providers. My wife and I take great joy in watching our children play with other children who look like them. But, as with any large gathering, there will always be people who have views that differ from ours. This is true as well at the barbecue. While it is not noticeable by our children we occasionally get the stares and whispers that suggest white people have no place raising black babies as we stroll through the barbecue grounds. Such affronts tend to role off like rain on a slicker and do nothing to damper our enjoyment of the festivities. Occasionally they do stick, graying our spirits until we again look down and see the sparkle in our children's amber brown eyes.


Hair Care Andria knew hair care would be important when we decided to adopt an African-American baby. Having straight blond hair I had know idea that anyone would ever need anything more than shampoo and a comb. For Jacob's first few hair cuts we went to a local salon that specialized in children's hair, it wasn't until he was older and noticeably becoming our little man that we realized that we would all benefit from taking him to an African-American centered barbershop.


When you enter Barber Love's you see a set a chairs where patrons wait until their barber becomes available. Past the waiting area are six cutting chairs where the barbers show their skills. The sounds of men joking and discussing the latest Playstation release bounce off the walls, while in summer the smell of the perpetual barbecue sneak in through the back door. Jacob selects a cut by pointing to the poster of styles on the wall. Each time we go there I mention that Jacob's mom wants to keep some of his curls in tact. We always leave with a beautifully tight cut but not a curl to be found. Through his cut, the barber silently is telling us how a young black man's hair should look.


Home Environment The most intimate aspects of our life routinely occur in our house. Our home is where we sit down to eat together, read to each other, plan trips, and tuck our children into their beds. This is where we entertain friends, celebrate holidays with family, talk to each other and play. It is the most important place to nurture our children's identity as African-Americans.


Most things that we do to reinforce pride in being African-American come naturally to us. When we look at our children we see beautiful brown skinned children and it is natural to buy dark skinned baby dolls, Rescue Heroes, and Little People for them to play with. Similarly, we look for books that feature African-American characters. We base the children's television viewing on similar criteria. We also seek out books that feature African tales and introduce African languages. Unfortunately we haven't found many books that feature a family with two white parents and black children. For Jacob's fifth birthday we bought four puppets, one to represent each of us. Through these puppets we reinforce the normality of our family.


I am not sure how we will ever know whether our steps are successful. Perhaps we will have an idea when our children are grown and on their own. However there have been some hints with Jacob that perhaps we are on the right track. At a recent cub scout den meeting, I asked if anyone knew why the flags had been flown at half mast the day before. One hand flew up and the cub scout said because of Rosa Parks' funeral. “That's right,” I said and asked, “what important thing did Rosa Parks do to improve our lives?” At first no hands, then slowly one brown hand rose among the circle of white faces. I called on Jacob who said, “People with white skin had to sit in one place and people with brown skin like me had to sit in another. Ms. Rosa Parks sat with the people who had white skin.” He forgot the bus, but he knew why Rosa Parks' life was being honored. While he was answering the question I glanced to the back of the room to see the surprise on the other parent's faces. I felt an enormous sense of pride when my son explained segregation to a group of fellow white people.

We know there are more things that we can do to ensure our children grow up to be a happy, kind and confident black man and woman. We will continue to explore these opportunities as we find them and build them into our lives as they support our family. As for now we will keep applying these steps and when I see Jacob flattening his hair I will remind him that he is a beautiful black little man who's mocha brown curls are part of his proud identity.