Image Credit: mom.me
Do white parents become “less white” when they have non-white kids? That question is burning up my Facebook feed right now, thanks to an essay published last week in the New York Times.
In the piece published in Motherlode, Jack Cheng (a Chinese American man married to a white woman) writes of his wife:
She became less white when our son, and then our daughter, were born. I think the first bit of doubt surfaced the day we were on the subway with our newborn and a woman came up to my wife and said: “Oh, he’s so cute! When did you adopt him?” I was livid: Did it not occur to this woman that the father was sitting right next to his wife and child?
But that is not becoming less white.
Is she experiencing a bit of racial discomfort?
Is she being singled out for random, invasive questions based on the way her family looks?
Do her children sometimes wish they could look like the people they see on TV and in the movies?
Is she getting a sample of what non-white people go through on a regular basis?
Yes to all of the above. Yet none of that makes her less white.
Read the rest of Having Mixed-Race Kids Doesn’t Make You Non-White at mom.me…
Totally agree. This was a strange article. Whiteness isn’t something you decide on, it’s something that’s formed both of your race and the experiences you have over the course of your life. Having nonwhite friends, a spouse, or child doesn’t change the fact that the world sees you as a white person and treats you as such. It might just make you realize that being white means something.
I have a Chinese mother and a white father and, believe me, he is still white. He also considers me simply “white” – possibly because we live in a very Asian community and by contrast I am less Asian than my full Asian counterparts. Also probably because he really doesn’t understand that being nonwhite in any way shifts your experience and perspective.