This question has taken on a controversial aspect, but not so when my husband and I asked it before the birth of our first child. I am white and he was Black, so we were just kind of wondering.
Let me take you back a few years to the maternity ward a couple days after our son’s birth. My husband will be by later in the day and Mark, my eight-pound son, lies on my chest sleeping in newborn bliss. I am somewhat surprised at his skin color. I decide to call my friend, Tina, who is Black, and the conversation goes like this:
Me: Tina, I thought Mark’s skin would be more the color of his dad.
Tina: He’s lighter?
Me.: Yes.
Tina, laughing: All black babies are a little lighter when they are first born. I’ll tell you how to know what his color will be. Are you ready?
Me: Yes.
Tina: Look at the back of his ear. Turn his ear down and look at it.
I put the phone down and do as instructed. I pick up the phone again and Tina asks, “So, what color is he going to be?”
Sadly, I answer, “Red.”
Actually, Mark turned out to have a beautiful light tan skin, hazel eyes and brown curly hair. When our daughter was born two years later, she had the same skin and hair color as her brother, but azure blue eyes, most likely compliments of her Belgian great-grandfather.
“Do you ever have trouble with people, …you know, being prejudiced?” I was asked from time to time. I always said no. The neighborhood and the school were integrated. The worst Ollie and I had experienced when we were out together was an occasional cold stare. The kids never mentioned any problems and so I assumed there weren’t any.
Until. . .
Mark was seven and Gaby was five and we decided to take them to Yellowstone National Park. It was their first long road trip. We stayed at the Old Faithful Inn, which became our base for a four-day exploration of the park.
Coming home we stopped at a café in Wyoming. We sat at a table next to two other couples who I noticed were staring at us. Mark had a blue plastic Care Bear, and Gaby a yellow one, prizes from a Happy Meal. They were playing with the bears, dancing them around the table, in a quiet well-behaved manner.
While looking at the menu, my heart began to pound and my face grew flushed as I realized the two couples were discussing us. The tone of their voices was condemning. They were upset and shaking their heads in disapproval. Finally, one of them ended the conversation saying loudly, “WELL I FEEL SORRY FOR THE CHILDREN!” The others murmured in sympathetic agreement.
I looked at my husband. He looked back with a shrug of one shoulder and a slight shake of his head that said just ignore it. I knew he had faced many worse situations than this. The kids put the Care Bears down to eat their hamburgers. The fact that they would be the topic of someone’s conversation would never have entered their minds.
Back in the car and driving down the highway I thought of what I could have said to those people. “Sorry? You don’t have to feel sorry. Mark is a straight-A student. Gaby is already excelling in gymnastics.” Or I could have said, “We may be a mixed-couple, but we’re not DEAF! How can you be so rude?”
None of us ever mentioned the incident again. But for the first time I wondered if my biracial children would have trouble.
***
Lucy Bell, former writing consultant and published author, is inspired by James Baldwin who said: One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. Lucy mines her own experiences with a preference for the humorous. She is currently working on a collection of essays titled “Most of It Was Fun.”
