As a white mother of a biracial daughter, I am presented with many challenges I never had to consider growing up as a young woman myself. In a previous post in this series, I wrote about the challenges of being a white mom and caring for biracial hair.
I am so excited that a couple years later, Dove has now created a campaign around black and biracial hair for both women and girls. One of their latest short videos, Dove Love Your Curls, celebrates curls from all races. I showed this to my daughter to help her embrace and love her hair exactly as it is! I am hoping that if she embraces the curly part of her identity, she might be more comfortable finding her racial identity as well.
I know from stories of other biracial individuals having one half of your identity being white and the other half black can cause confusion during those critical developmental and young adult years. The one thing my daughter will have to realize is that even though her mom is white, the world, in general, will only ever view her as a black woman.
I want her to understand both sides of her ethnic history. There are parts of white history that I’m not proud of, but she needs to know that that blood runs through her veins. I want her to feel pride in her African heritage and love and understand her culture from those bloodlines as well.
I am so excited that P&G has created their “My Black is Beautiful” campaign, which really tackles this identity issue for African-Americans. I particularly love The Talk from this series that is directed towards our black youth. It was a little controversial when it first came out but there is so much truth to the short video and it contains so many of those conversations that parents of black children have to have in our world today. Parents of white children may not understand the relevance but I am glad that P&G is elevating the awareness of our society through these clips.
I think the more we have these conversations among each other, the better off our society might be and the easier it will become for our children to embrace their own identities. Our daughter is only 8, and she already questions why she looks like her daddy and not like her mommy, and why her curls are so tight while my hair is wavy, etc. I want her to love herself exactly as God made her. I will continue to instill pride in her for the racial identity the world will see in her – and let her know it is okay to not look like her mom but understand that side of her identity as well.
This will be a continual learning process but I’m excited for the challenge!
Have any of you dealt with this with your own biracial children? I would love to hear your stories as well.
