My youngest two children are black and white. They surely have a sprinkle of other races, too, but they are of both African American and European descent.
We’ve had some continuous challenges that I need to bring to light.
This is really for the white apologist, who has no experience or education on the subject, and hasn’t been around many black people, but on some level needs to prove to the world that they are not racist or homophobic. Look, maybe you have some buried racist thought forms that make you feel guilty, maybe your grandpa was racist, maybe you have simply been indoctrinated by the crazy trains that came through in 2020 and are really just ignorantly compassionate, but you need to understand something.
Using my children to prove to yourself and the world that you aren’t racist is, in fact, racist. Treating my kids as poor victims, or like they are less capable at all, is the literal definition of racism. Fostering the belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities is racist. It doesn’t matter if you think “oh, poor baby, it’s not their fault their black”. Or you think you’re compensating for something they are missing in life, due to their blackness. And therefore somehow virtuous. It doesn’t matter if you feel bad about all the things that happened in the past, or you wish things weren’t the way they are. If you are treating someone different because of the color of their skin, especially like they are less capable, you are being racist. Doesn’t matter if it’s you giving them an extra ice cream cone.
Furthermore, most of you aren’t doing it to actually help them, or because you actually care if they are “oppressed”, you are doing it to make yourself feel better. Stop.
My children do not need special treatment for being black, in fact, it’s detrimental to their development. And it’s to the point where they don’t WANT the special treatment either.
Leaving their personal social and emotional development aside, do you understand the social repercussions of this type of adult and authoritarian behavior? No one likes the kid who got the cookie and didn’t earn it! No one likes the kid who gets away with everything that they get in trouble for. Furthermore, if my children receive less social accountability than the other kids, because they are black, they are being deprived of the social development they need in such crucial years. Years that will create lifelong wiring in their brain. This means they will suffer MORE in life and have more difficulty in relationships. Not less. You aren’t helping.
My children want to be treated well because they earned it. They want the cookie, because they did a great job. They want to be given a fair shot, just like everyone else. No, of course they don’t want less of a shot for being black. But they don’t want more of a shot either. They just want to be normal kids, like everyone else.
The most challenging situations my children have faced, because of the color of their skin, have not come from old school racism. They’ve been born of this new age “treat all black people as oppressed victims” type of racism. You can’t pay African American ancestry back for all they’ve been through by sabotaging the lives of living people of African American descent. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re causing further damage and literally taking steps backwards, to make yourself currently feel better about what happened in the past. Things you didn’t care about in the least, until it became trendy.
If you feel bad about our history as it relates to African American people, do Martin Luther King jr a favor, and just do what he implored us to do over 50 years ago.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.”
My children are not oppressed. They are not victims of a cruel society who hates them for being black. They are fully capable of the same things as every child is, intellectually, emotionally and socially. Stop giving them less of a chance to be the best they can be, by treating them like fragile, broken, ostracized victims, who never get any ice cream.
Written by Holly Kellums
Image by Nas Mato
Holly Kellums 