Ten Reasons Why White Mothers Can Raise Multiracial Children:
by Susan Graham
- We conceived or adopted our children and we knew exactly what we were doing.
- We are fully capable of raising our children as equals with their other monoracial or multiracial siblings.
- We do not have to be the same color as our child to give them the history and knowledge of their other ancestry or ancestries.
- We know how to say, “No thank you; my child does not need you to tell her what she is.”
- We know and respect how President Obama chose to self-identify (as black). He could have identified as multiracial, but that wasn’t his Do not “Barack Obama” my multiracial children.
- We can say without laughing, “Yes, I’m the mom. Want to set up a play date for our kids?”
- We can say, “I learned how to do my child’s hair” or “I found it was easier to have someone else do my daughter’s hair.”
- We will stand up for our children’s right to be included on forms that require racial and ethnic identity.
- We fully understand the question, “What are they?” We can choose to answer any way we like and can explain one more time that the thing called the one-drop rule is not a law.
- We can happily live without you if you’ve programmed your family to be uncomfortable around our family.