I don't get asked this kind of question a lot because I'm white... or more pink, really. I even debated with myself over whether to post something. But, of course, I do have to help my daughter figure out her racial identity, don't I? And it just sort of hitting her these days, at three-and-a-half, that people we know have different skin colors from what she has. She's going through that sorting process.

As I wrote more of my answer, I was careening into essay territory, so I'm going to keep this brief and maybe do some writing on my own about it. But, I will say that in thinking about this for the last several years, I do know that I want to avoid some of the racial identity lessons that I got growing up in a mostly white. liberal community in the 70's: white people are boring and repressed, black people are passionate and noble and justified. I grew up near Boston, during busing, a really tense time. It wasn't until I moved to New York that I felt relaxed enough to say that a black guy was an ***, and to this day I have white friends who are uncomfortable with a white person saying anything critical about a black person.

I  hope that my daughter grows up with less tension, with a greater ability to see individuals. I hope that she can see that some things "white" things are cool, and some are lame, and some "black " things are cool and some are lame. That's my very simplified equation. I don't want her to feel shame about who she is and who she comes from, and I want her to know the complicated realities of her mixed background of DAR and third-generation, Yankee and Southern, Irish and German and Scotch and whatever else.

This is really something that all Americans wrestle with, isn't it? Or should.

Thank you for this article.  I was struggling over a comment that was made to my, non-understanding two year old, at a Chinese restaurant the other night.  He was talking, in his own way, to the waitress who pointed out she had lighter skin than his.  He is a very friendly out going baby, so should skin color or race made a difference in her conversation with him?  My family, like many others, are truly a melting pot of races – Irish, African, Native American, German, etc.  Many years ago a college recruiter listed me as “other” as she was embarrassed to ask my ethnicity.   I too shield my children from radical people who push identifying themselves as one race or another.  We are what we are and I’m personally glad God made me this way!

I think this is a complex question for everybody. We all approach our children trying to right the wrongs that happened to us, and do more, do different, do better for our little people.  I am not sure if we always get it right.

My family is black or African American (it is good to have more than one way to describe your race, especially as an author)  with all the multilayered, multiracial meaning present in many black families. The history of race and racial meaning in America is part of who we are.

I have really taken a hands off approach when it comes to assigning meaning to the labels that my four -year old is hearing around her.  I want her to feel in coalition with people of color, to value her skin and hair and see beauty and connection in the variety of people that she knows and love.  She calls herself brown and she links her brown skin to people of all colors and racial backgrounds.  But mostly I stress who she is as a whole --a great artist, a great reader (at 4, yes I am bragging), a creative and outgoing person, a good little chef, an athlete, a dancer, an engineer (you should see the block castles).  Race will be what it will be--people from outside will eventually call her names, judge her skin and her hair, but in the mean time I am building the fortress of her soul strengthened by details of how she is truly fabulous.

Hope I didn't insult you by making you an honorary member of black mammas for Obama--we can change the name of the club if you like! ;) ( I am enjoying Baby Love!)

I (we) are struggling with this right now.  I am Hispanic.  My partner is Caucasian.  Our adopted daughter is biracial--African American and Caucasian.  She and I are the same color brown.  She knows she is different at age 5, but doesn't really have the vocabulary or depth of perception to understand it. Should she?  How do I talk to her about it?  She is around black and white and brown people because these are the people in our lives.  But how do we make black culture part of who she is when it isn't part of us?  I understand it's important.  I am just not sure how to bring it about.

My husband and I deliberately avoided the subject of our son's racial identity, in an attempt to see how long it would take him to raise the subject on his own.  He was five before he even seemed to notice that people came in different colors!  Of course, we were friends with so many families that looked like ours (brown mom, pink dad, beige kid), that he may have assumed that mommies were always brown and daddies were always pink, until he started daycare and discovered kids whose parents "matched".

These days, his self-portraits feature a boy who is a darker brown than either of us is in real life (lousy crayons!), so he clearly identifies as a black American, but he's also quick to claim full kinship with the Native Americans, West Indians, French, Italians, Germans, Czechs and assorted African and Celtic tribes that helped to shape his features.

Although he identifies mostly as black or mixed (depending on the day), he doesn't seem to stress over the limits of color.  For example, as a child, I despaired over not looking like any of the characters I wanted to be for Halloween (that means you, Wonder Woman and Princess Leia!); my son is able to choose heroes and secret identities for himself that don't clash with his self-image.  Some days he's Robin, some days he's Cyborg and some days he's Beast Boy.  I hope that means we've made him so comfortable in his own skin that white, black and green are all equally plausible and palatable options for him.  

i'm black. my three nieces all as light as many biracial children, are black. my girlfriend who is white, has a black son. my family members...all black...there is not one interracial couple among a family that includes 9 aunts and uncles and eight cousins....(unless you include latino, there is one). i think this is a much simpler answer when you are not biracial. but yes, i look at barack obama and say "black, with a white mother." sorry, but that's how i look at it.

i do want to ask you a question just out of curiosity...though mabye you covered this in a blog post or a book...but i'm much more interested in how you were with a woman and then with a man and what that means. i'm truly curious, not trying to be funny. i don't know if this is the appropriate place for that answer, but yes, i was curious about that.

i have to say though, it seems as though this is a question that only biracial folks really struggle with. i don't have any problem whatsoever identifying as black...and i don't see what the problem is with that.

it's just not that complicated for me or for folks who don't have a parent of a different race. i guess for those who do, it is more complicated. i'm proud of black music, black food and black culture and are happy to be identified with both oprah winfrey AND Lil' Wayne. Why does it seem like some biracial people want to identify with anything BUT black? I've seen people handle it by being "black identified" or by being clearly biracial or commonly "black with white parent" so I don't know...because again, it doesn't require that much thought for me.

So sorry I just now read your post... It's late and I've got work in the morning, and a class to teach tomorrow evening. That to say, this is a topic I have strong feelings about, and not enough time in the next 24 hours to respond with as much thought as I would like. As brief and meaningful as I can.... I am a 59 year old Irish/German woman. In 1969 I married a young Black man, and in 1974 gave birth to my first daughter. We lived in San Francisco, the bastion of left coast tolerance, or so we believed. Without going in to all the challenges of a biracial family (we added a second daughter in 1980), this issue of racial identity was an underlying theme... always. The i-Pride movement (introducing "interracial" as racial designation of it's own) began here in the Bay Area. However, as I looked at my brown babies, as I took them out in public, it was very clear that they were not perceived as "interracial" but as African American (Black in those days). Very early on, it seemed to me that in a society as color conscious as ours, it would not serve them well to lack a primary racial identity. It seemed to me that unless they were comfortable in their own "brown" skin, they would not be able to happily survive in the world. I made a decision, or rather, grew into a decision, to raise them as young Black women. If the word "I" seems out of place here, let me say that my ex-husband and I did not agree on this concept. They were raised in the Black community, in the Black church, with Black extended family, godparents and friends. What I could not provide them out of my own white experience, was provided for them by a myriad of loving folks. I am very close to my own family, and this decision did not negate their white family... We lived some distance away but made the effort to forge close connections with them, and my girls became culturally mobile. This was challenging and took a great deal of care, effort and sometimes pain... but I am proud of my girls and the wonderful young women they have become. While they have a primary identity as Black women, they are clear that they carry the strength of their tough German grandmother, and the gentleness and kindness of their Irish grandfather. They have suffered some pain through all of this; but that had more to do with the fallout from their parents' tumultuous relationship, then it did with their struggle for identity. Many people do it differently, but looking back, I believe I would make the same choice again... and this time I would understand my choices; then, understanding was incomplete, and sometimes it was simply a matter of faith.

At age seven,  my biracial daughter is still, as she always has been, very clear about her own definition of color: she is Light Brown, Daddy is Dark Brown, and Mommy is, to use the term she coined at age 3, "Creamish". Once, when she was 3 or 4, and was in the bathroom at night with the only light coming in from the hallway, she chastised me for blocking in the light and casting a shadow on her. "You're ruining my beautiful skin!" she told me, holding out the back of her hand for me to observe the change in color I was inadvertently causing. I always wondered if she thought that her father's skin was somehow "ruined", then, being much darker than hers. Regardless, she is clearly enamored of her skin color even now, as am I, though for other reasons than pure aesthetics. She is still in the early stages of the process of working out what racial identity means, and her friends are as diverse as her moods, though she doesn't really seem to see their color at all. As for cultural identity, though, I have only heard her describe herself to others as Jewish, and none of the rest has yet to matter to her.

Is it time to start asking her what she thinks? Or should I just let her confront the subject when and how she is ready on her own? Will she then feel she can talk to me about it? Where's the line between opening a dialog preemptively and creating an emotional struggle where there hadn't been one before?

I'm a light-skinned biracial black woman (in NYC I was often thought to be Puerto Rican, which is, basically, another way of being "mixed") but I have never felt "mixed" in society. I am perceived as a black woman in the corporate world, in the South, and in rural areas (I grew up in an all-white, pretty redneck community). I sometimes worry that those of us with white parents really fetishize our white heritage to separate ourselves from a race that is really, at the end of the day, demonized and despised. It can be damaging to live in that "colored" space--not only for our children, but also for ourselves. Tenzin needs to be around loving, kind, truth-telling black people who can prepare him for the obstacles he will face in society. I understand that you want to protect him from racism and want him to be aware of his genetic makeup--and that's good. But at the end of the day, he will be perceived as a black child (and eventually a black man). He needs to have a really strong sense of self (think of Barack Obama) so that he can become a healthy, functioning human being capable of interacting and loving people of all races.

your children aren't going to take this nearly as seriously as all of you are.  just as many of you who are multi ethnic are saying there is already a difference in perception from when you were children.  my advice?  stop worrying so much.  raise your children to be informed about and exposed to as many different cultures as you can.  raise them to identify with others as human beings and not because of a skin color and you'll be just fine.  the rest of life works itself out.  deal with each question and situation as it comes.  if you worry about little thing your child is or isn't exposed to, don't be surprised when they end up neurotic.  

Maybe I am off the mark but it seems like you are very concerned with racial identity while trying to insulate your son from the same issues.

" Also, we don't expose him to a lot of people, white, black or other, who are so identified with their idea of racial identity that they project it all over him and demand he relate to them based on it"

This statement seems to contradict your viewpoint expressed here.

there are some really great comments here.  as someone who is very clear about my own racial identity as an african-american, i think what often goes missing in these conversations, to paraphrase growth12, is the highly racialized way in which we have them. we hide behind high-browed claims of not caring about race, yet feel the need to litter these same conversations with references to our Scottish, Irish, Native American, and Ukranian ancestors as if this means nothing in a supposedly de-racialized conversation.  It would seem to me that in a quasi-nonracial conversation this need to "fetishize", to paraphrase growth12, our non-Black/African/African-American ancestors is just as problematic for me.  Moreover, and I will end here, it presupposes that those of us who may not claim a multi-racial identity don't have one because our mommies/daddies aren't White and that deeply, deeply troubles me.  There are many ways to be multi-racial and in America, even for "African Americans," multi-racial heritage is a fact of life due to the legacy of slavery.

Here is a link to an article characterizing my awareness and search for understanding:

http://www.interfaithfamily.com/relationships/interracial_and_intercultural_relationships/Pointed_Towards_Israel.shtml

Your child will be both who you tell him he is and who the world tells him he is.  So many of us are mixed with so many races (including people who look what we called "white") that it almost doesn't make sense to even say that.  In fact, we all come from mother Africa - we are all connected and are all reconnecting.

I reared my children to live in the whole world with their brown-black selves.  I am African-American and Puerto Rican and I have never felt confused about my blackness.  It is a part of my very being and informs my point of view but I don't see it as limiting in any way.

My children, my grandchild, your child are living in a world that they will have no limits in - if the world lives long enough to heal.

Candelaria

When my oldest was three, she asked, "Mommy, why are you and Daddy different colors?"  I answered, "God made people different colors to make the world a prettier place, just like He did with flowers."  As she got older, and as her sister began asking questions, the answers got longer--we talked about how people from the same places ended up looking alike and didn't have planes and trains and automobiles to travel around and meet people from different places, but that now we did, and how wonderful it was to get everyone to meet and be all mixed up together.  Regarding those "what ARE you," questions, we answered the ones asked in friendliness or even ignorance, but those with an "ewwww. . . ." in their voice got "I'm an AMERICAN."  My family has grown by various non-biological methods and now encompasses children of three different ethnicities or combinations  and four distinct appearances, and I let them tell people whatever they want (two are in college now and two in high school, so they are all VERY creative).  Questioners with prurient curiousity in their voices get told "our mother gets around," and everyone else gets whatever the girls feel like saying that day.  Variously, I am labeled by them as mixed race (I'm not); they label themselves all mixed race (not all are); they claim ancestry they don't share with a sibling ("yes, we're really sisters, we don't know why we don't look it," or "do you think Mom isn't telling us something"); the "I was a KMart Blue Light Special"; and of course the one I've given them permission to use, the "our mom will have a baby with ANYONE" response.  It has worked wonders.  They are all proud of themselves and proud of each other and we ALL have fun deciding which response each questioner gets.  

My white husband and my brown self have two kids with our daughter looking like me and my sisters and our son the spitting image of his daddy. People often think we are a blended family. Before they started school they never thought of race at all. They knew that some people were brown and some people were light (their words) and that people generally looked like at least one of their parents.

They go to a school in which the student body is 1/3 black, 1/3 white and 1/3 hispanic and have since learned about the civil rights movement, slavery and racism. They think that racism is as silly as hating someone because they have a different way of talking to God.

Unfortunately we live in a world in which racial and religious discrimination do exist. Somehow I will have to prepare my children for that reality without making them believe that it has to be that way.

I read your book and unfortunately could not get into it. I too grew up mixed race in Park Slope just a few years behind you and almost expected to find my own story in your pages. But I was fortunate. My family, all of them from both sides, thought that my sisters and I were smart and beautiful and told us so often. Whatever issues the outside world had with us, we never had them within our own families. The best you and your husband can do for Tenzin is to have all the important people in his life love him as you were not loved and should have been.

May the blessings of God follow all of those children who will bring about an end to biggotry through their very existance!

One more comment--I want to share my favorite biracial children story.  When my oldest (biracial) daughter was six, she got on the subject and wanted to know about the ethnicities of her friends' parents.  The conversation continued like this:

Daughter:  What about Jessica?

Me:  Jessica's mama is Japanese and her daddy is while.

Daughter:  What about Leah?

Me:  Leah's mama is Chinese and her daddy is white.

Daughter:  What about Antoinette?

Me:  Antoinette's mama is white and her daddy is black.

Daughter:  What about Diana?

Me:  Diana's mama is white and her daddy is latino.

Daughter:  What about Julie?

Me:  Julie's mama is Korean and her daddy is white.

Daughter:  What about Carmen?

Me:  Both of Carmen's parents are white.

Daughter paused, thought a moment, then asked me suspiciously, "Is that ALLOWED?"