That's one of the junk emails I got today from the Gill Deacon show. Some talk show on CBC, nevermind I don't watch talk shows, but the Supermom label caught me.

I'm starting to get really annoyed with people in general insisting what makes a good parent and what doesn't. I'm pissed off with people who insist on absolutes when it comes with kids and parenting and I'm just tired in general of the whole group of people coming in saying that "this is right, this is wrong, that's impossible, that's unethical, that's because the parents have no life" It's strange because I've been watching/participating in a potty training debate where the discussion is around infant potty training. I don't have a dog in the fight, since my 14 month old isn't near potty training and I couldn't care a less about holding a three month old over the toitoi and watching every precise movement they make when they're about to pee or poop, but really I'm not going to slam someone because they do care. Anymore than I'm going to slam someone because they don't want to start potty training until their kid is 3. Neither is quite my cup of tea, but I don't get the labelling and silliness about people's choices around their kids. So long as they're not hurting the kids, really is it any of your concern to begin with? Can anyone say authoratively that this is right or wrong, possible or impossible? Unless they've witnessed every single parent at work, I can safely say that they can't.

I guess why it's grating on my nerves so much because whether it's much ado about poo, or the age old breastfeeding, natural birth, attachment parenting whatever debate, it's people going to town on other people's parenting choices. It's annoying, fuck already, you disagree, the kid isn't being hurt, people are doing it for whatever reason and if it works, great, if not, I guess people will have another thing to cluck their tongues about. Because I have been at the opposite ends of other debates and have had people tsk tsk me, I guess ultimately I'm pissed off on behalf of other people who are now in those same sights of those who tsk tsk.

Supermom doesn't exist folks. We all do the best that we can. We make choices based on information, some coming from books, some coming from tv, some coming from that of friends, family and other moms (something that has been systematically devalued since the Inquisition!). If you're sitting from the outside watching in, try to reserve judgement and remember back to the day when you were sitting on the floor wondering what the hell you were going to do with your kid, or know that someday you will be in that position, worried, tired and unsure of what your next step is. Mom's do the best that they can and godwilling, that will be enough.

Sorry for this disorganised rant!

My god, a big brew ha ha over the fact that a Toronto Mothering forum has opened an area for queer parents. I'm trying to keep my calm, but admittedly it's hard, because sure enough, one itty bitty forum creates a call (albeit from one poster) a forum for "traditional parents". Or parents who are straight, have kids and think that gays and lesbians are evil and are going to go to hell. The only reason why I'm not going nuclear and letting my full arsenal of forum fighting loose is because I really like the forum owner and I suspect she'll have a big enough headache with what is already there.

You know, I've never understood how people could say "I respect gays and lesbians, I just don't want to know about it" Now granted, I don't want to know about anyone's private life in detail, but what those folks are usually referring to is holding hands, maybe a peck here or there, fighting for rights and freedoms the rest of us have that sort of thing. Guys, you cannot respect people, if you do not allow them to exist the exact same way you do. If you want gay people to stop holding hands in public, but straight people can make out at the movie theatres, something isn't quite equal here.

Frankly, I'm pretty shocked that there has been outrage over the fact that there is a forum created for queer parents in TORONTO. Guys, c'mon, Toronto has pretty much been a fairly safe place for queer people to exist for a decent length of time now. Even after the bonehead Tories brought the question of same sex marriage up for debate AGAIN, it was upheld and Canada is a place that recognises same sex marriage. Your kids are going to be growing up in a place where being queer is just the same as being women, black, wearing glasses or long hair aka NORMAL. Teaching your children to somehow believe that being queer is inferior or wrong is going to put them at odds with a lot of people, because as time goes on, those opinions are going to go the way of the dodo and those opinions are going to be the ones that are in the closet. And you know what? That's okay by me. Keep your silliness to yourself. Because I guarantee you, that if were to mention those opinions under any sort of regime where I had power, you would not be allowed up that ladder. Likewise with my husband, my children and those of many more Torontonians and Canadians.

So what I suggest is that you start adapting. Just like it's no longer acceptable to think that blacks are inferior, like it once was say 40 years ago, it's no longer acceptable here to think that queer people are inferior. And god willing in 40 years, that will be the dominant thought. So I have to ask "traditional" families, are you prepared for that? Or more seriously, are you preparing your children for that?

Sorry, it's been a while, I've got it all pent up!

I think I'm starting to lose patience with a lot of mothers of interracial children, in general, white mothers. I guess the same can be said for white fathers, but I don't encounter a lot of fathers (other than the Hunk, who I'll reference since he's picked up a thing or two all these years) these days, so I'll limit my rant to my experiences. 

There are some mothers who just get it, that they now have a piece of them invested in a little brown person. However others...many others...countless others do not. Many will go on to say that they are colourblind, or will continue to make political and social choices that will affect their children negatively. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that they should really consider changing, educating themselves, thinking about this world a little differently than what their white privilege and perspective has offered them.

Now this isn't to say that one must become a radical feminist, start using academically progressive language or enroll aggressively in every course, seminar and lecture on race and racism available, but I do think it's time to examine one's perspectives.

For those who don't know, I myself am an interracial child, my mother is white, father is interracial himself, but for all purposes looks and identifies as black. For the most part I was raised by my single mother. Until about 5 I honestly believed I was the only interracial person in the world. My grandmother who was olive skinned must have been from the same catagory. It wasn't until I moved from Scarborough (yes, you read right, Scarborough, now the interracial capital of the world, was only 22 years ago pretty black, white and a few asians) to downtown Toronto or more specifically Regent Park that I realised that there were lots of interracial kids. However, despite that, I never once felt like I was different in a bad way, although I do remember being confused.

Anyhow, growing up in Regent with lots of interracial kids headed by a lot of white mothers was an experience in myself. My mother never really did anything to the extent of teaching me about the other side of my history, but she never did anything to denigrate it either. Unlike other kids, my mother never once referred to my hair as nappy, to me as a product of jungle fever or said anything bad about my father related to his race. She never used the word nigger, in fact she would kill me if I ever used it, even to this day. She never tried to pretend that she was black or part of that culture, though she would easily sit down with black mothers to talk about parenting, community stuff or gossip (which was the lifeblood of Regent!). I always remember feeling bad for those kids who's mother would call them nappy-headed, it carried the same sting as nigger did and I could even then see it in their eyes.

It would (hell, it still does!) drive me crazy when a mother would defend the racist actions of someone else. Like when the cops would beat up someone for some stupid reason, they would come out full force defending those cops. Yes, the guy was doing something illegal, but last time I checked, that warrants an ARREST, not a trip down to Cherry Beach (place where they'd beat the snot out of anyone).

Anyhow, trip down memory lane over, I'm still surprised to see these behaviours today, from educated people with interracial children and more often than not, I'm biting my tongue to avoid yelling at these folks "Do you want to fuck your child up?" At some point or another, I firmly believe that every interracial child is going to go through an identity crisis, whether internally or externally. I have a friend who goes through a new identity a week! Fitting in in a world in which some segments would like to move forward to become some racial utopia, but where the overwhelming majority still catagorises everything isn't easy. When people ask me what is my background and I'm in a mood to answer them, it's sometimes pretty hard to come up with an answer.

So what does this have to do with parents attitudes? Well plenty, at some point or another, these kids are going to need support. They need white parents to be tolerant of other races, cultures, languages etc. so they know that they have someone to turn to. They need white parents to be educated. You might not fully be able to swallow that you automatically benefit from racism due to white privilege, but you should be able to know enough to explain it OBJECTIVELY. You should be able to understand that yes some right wing politicians are racist. It never ceases to amaze me how someone will vote for a party that supported labelling Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and have little brown children running underfoot. Do you think that somehow the fact that they have white in them will protect them? Got news for you, I'm 50% white on paper. My skin is brown, I'm a brown person. I might be treated better than black people, but for example, I was at a meeting with all rich white people (save myself and two friends-who were white, but not rich) talking about Africa of all things. I was interrupted, ignored...really ignored, not even eye contact, and just excluded from the conversation for a good hour and a half. The second question asked of me after the the "what do you do?" question was if I was from Africa. Okay, granted to most people, they can tell that I have some black in me, but after speaking with my Tranna accent and clearly Canadian experience, it seemed kinda stupid a question to ask. 

White parents, you have to start seeing the world from the eyes of a brown person. And not just one brown person, but many. Just because your partner is "colourblind" and has somehow magically made it through life without one negative experience related to the colour of his skin, does not make that true for the majority. Ignoring the colour of your child's skin is not going to make the issue go away. Like it or not, there are a lot of racists out there. They might not be out there calling people niggers, but they do have something to say about "those people". They might not even have something to say about "those people" but they carry a lot of outlandish notions. Back to my meeting with the white people in Africa, they were amazed to see that Kenya had supermarkets! Oh my gosh!!!! Kenyans are supposed to have all open markets with food they had grown in their yards and beef fresh from the Masai. Now I'm not African, nor Kenyan, but it still pisses me off to see people think that a civilisation that has lasted for umpteen thousand years didn't have the conveniences of a Loblaws! And these folks are do-gooders who want nothing more than to help Kenya, which moves them up from my verbal ass whooping to education.

My mother didn't have an ounce of knowledge about what white privilege was or advanced race theories until she joined a board of our local health centre and those theories were just starting to be whispered outside the brown feminist community. Now, you can't volunteer at a non-profit here in Toronto without being introduced to them. However I remember throughout the week, she'd come home outraged that the the guy giving the seminar (Carl James) had the nerve to tell her that she automatically benefitted from racism! Truth be told, I was pretty ticked off too. She was poor, she worked every day in her life, she hated racists and to boot, she even had a child with a black person! However as the seminar continued-and god knows how this man persisted, she's pretty stubborn! She came to realise that yes, when she walked into a store with a black woman, nine times out of ten, she was going to be served first, even if the black woman was there first. She could be carrying a cache of diamonds she just swiped in her purse, nervous as hell and dropping jewels as she trotted along, but chances are, the police would first question the young black man coming from bible study, book in his hand. And if those things could easily happen, and she could easily conceive it happening, it seemed pretty logical from there that other, more subtle racism could exist and affect the lives of other brown people including *gasp* her daughter.

So that was 15 years ago...well almost. Has the world changed much? Not really, on the surface it seems like Toronto has. And before I paint my city with a icky brush, I do feel the need to say that there are a lot of people who get it and a lot of people who can work with those of other colours and see them as humans first, and that is truly what makes this city great, even if they're not in the majority yet. However in the end, Canada still has a gov't with blatently racist members of parliament, there is no where near the representation of brown people in positions of power that should be...hell, nevermind that, what about women! (That's another rant, FOCUS Joy!) kids cartoons, shows, books, toys don't show nearly enough airtime of different races or interracial kids for that matter. Mothers might be happy with Tyrone the Moose, but loathe Uniqua the whatever she is from the Backyardigans, why? Her name, it sounds too....you know....Oh! You mean black!!!!

So what do white parents do? What do you need to do to be prepared for dealing with your brown kid's frustrations with racism.

First of all prepare. Don't think for a second that this won't happen to your kids, or be colourblind. To deny that racism exists is racist itself, it's condescending, it's telling billions of people all over the world that their experiences are dreamt up and phony. I hate it when someone does that, because I'd like to think that I as a very easy going educated woman can sum up when someone is treating me differently based on the colour of my skin. You do it, and your kids will feel the same way, except it's not from some ninny on the street or message board, but from their parents. Racism is ugly, you don't want to expose ugly topics to your kids, I understand, but just like we need to prepare them to deal with pedophiles or abusive mates, we need to prepare them to deal with racists.

Educate yourself! You know what, while it would be great that you bought into anti-racism living all the way, never supported a political party that tolerates racists, and denounced it every chance you could, I'm going to accept that many white parents aren't going to do this. However, learn about it white privilege, know that many people...including white people just ask my husband, believe it exists and just as there is a glass ceiling for women, it's also there for minorities.

Involve yourself. Get involved in cultural celebrations of your child's brown side, but don't become front and centre. You're there for them, not for yourself. You need to know about ceremonies, special days, rituals, foods, but also respect the space that might at some times or another might be focused on the brown side. Don't, for the love of god demand that people speak your language, adapt the foods to your tongue, or assimilate in any way shape or form. Most people have to assimilate themselves in some way shape or form to live in everyday society, don't ask them to go further at times designated to be their times.

Shut up and listen. Don't dismiss feelings of racism from your child, your partner or others. Ideally you've taken steps to educate yourself and if you put your feelings on the side for a moment and go through it logically, more often than not you can arrive to a place why so and so might feel this way. 

Just shut up! Have a feeling that these damn immigrants aren't good for the country? Or that everyone needs to speak the same language because you say so. Maybe it's best to keep those thoughts to yourself until your child is at an age where you can have a big long discussion on the topic. If you're going to teach your child to be intolerant as you are, chances are you're just setting them up for a bigger identity issue at some point or another when they're hanging around their brown friends and their brown friends call them out to be an Archie Bunker.

Expect Backlash. I have to admit, a lot of my experiences of white parents with their interracial children leaves me a bit guarded around them. I'm more likely to stick to fluffy topics and avoid anything of depth until I get to know them. A lot of people are more vocal about their disapproval and many of them are brown! Why? Because I'm willing to bet, they too are tired of white people with brown children saying something stupid and racist. But isn't it racist for them to generalise against you? I'm not claiming it's perfect, it sucks. However presumably, you've read to this point because you're interested in parenting interracial children, and once in a while it requires you to understand that you're going to have to suck it up. It might not be fair in that moment, but I can guarantee you, me being a little less willing to discuss meaty topics doesn't suck as much as sitting beside someone who has brown kids rattle off every racial expression known to man.

Open yourself up. Parenting requires flexibility. It requires you to be open to new things, new opinions, new information included. You don't have to become a card carrying member of Radical Feminists Unite! But in order to benefit your child, you do have to be aware of the information and be able to objectively present that to them and incorporate it in your parenting style. Put down the defenses and realise that that doesn't mean you lose anything in the process of accepting new ideals.

Phew....well my fingers are barking, arthritis is settling in, the weather sucks, I feel purged and ready to do some christmas crafting. Nice how that all works out fairly well.