Your Children Will See Color and There's Nothing You Can Do About It

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As much as some folks invest themselves in saying Black women hate to see Black men marry/date/procreate with white women, I don't concern myself with anyone else's partner until I see a Black man telling anyone who will listen why he doesn't desire Black women. At that point, I'm inclined to believe that their "preference" is actually a self-hating pathology. But I digress.

Though the relationships don't bother me, I am often dismayed by how little non-black women with black partners care to know about the realities of life as a Black person in the world. Their Black significant others never seem to get around to that, particular, discussion, and it emboldens them in their claims to post-racialism.

Far too often non-black women with a Black significant other proudly claim "they don't see race" or "race doesn't matter." Worse yet they'll claim expertise on the Black experience because they birthed a child of color much the way Ellen Pompeo of "Grey's Anatomy" did on The View a couple of years back. Pompeo went on to rail against "segregated" black instituions like the NAACP and HBCUs. Ironically, these comments only reveal the combined ignorance and privilege of the woman saying them.



Black people didn't build institutions centered around our blackness for fun. We don't press racial conversations for attention. We do it because they're imperative to addressing systemic discrimination. I've found that those who profess the greatest "color-blindness" are often the first to take advantage of the spoils of whiteness.

Take for example comments by Love and Hip Hop New York's Jen the Pen. Her confidence in her ability to get things done -- going so far as to yell "I'm white"  at a Woman of Color don't gibe with whatever post-racial dream she's selling. It is this breakdown between readily trotting out privilege as a means to an end and disavowing color difference that strikes me as disingenuous.

More recently Kim Kardashian, whose entire career is a testament to (damn-near) white privilege, claimed that she will teach her child not to see color. We could talk about how Kim's comments wholly contradict her own quest to eliminate every trace of her Armenian heritage from her appearance, but, of course, that doesn't count. Perhaps, Kim believes money will insulate her child from discrimination. Even that seems odd considering how frequently Kanye speaks about the racism he faces as a high-achieving Black man.

As a Black women who has endured the alienation of navigating through the world in this body, the arrogance of assuming understanding through association offends. I'm dismayed the failure of women who are mothers of black and brown children to seek understanding. Mothers of multiracial children do their kids a disservice by propagating blatantly false understanding of race relations.We cannot be post-racial until we're post-racism. No matter what you say or do your children will see color. The racial caste system touches the life of every child. Ignoring that solves nothing. The best we can as caretakers is teach kids to recognize and respect the beauty of difference.


Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor of For Harriet. Email or   .

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