The danger of not talking to your children about race

NaturalBlond · April 2012

tartaruga:
NaturalBlond:
My husband and I talk about this quite a bit. I'm white. He's Mexican. What is Mexican? What race is Mexican? He's not black. He's not Asian. That leaves caucasian, but that doesn't sit right with him either. Is he raceless? How is it that we live in a race obsessed country and era yet he can't answer this question? And he's not alone. Look how the media is struggling with George Zimmerman. A man with a Peruvian mom and a Jewish dad. He's white. No he's Hispanic. He's a White-Hispanic. What is this?
So funny - we ran into the same thing when we got our census form a couple years ago. I was filling it out and asked H, who's Puerto Rican, what he wanted me to put for race. It went kind of like:

"What do you want me to put for race?"
"Put Hispanic"
"That's not a choice"
"What are the choices?"
"White, black, American Indian, Asian Indian, a bunch of Asian categories that are not you"
"Well I'm none of those"
"Well, what are you?"
"I'm Puerto Rican, baby!"
"Yeah, I know, but 'Puerto Rican baby' isn't a choice"
"Well I'm Hispanic"
"But that's an ethnicity and isn't under race"
"That's dumb. So I don't know, whatever, put whatever you want"
Sigh.
If you looked at him, you'd see his point, though - he isn't black, but he has darker skin and is really not white. He has Taino Indian blood which you can tell by looking at him, but doesn't identify with that, exactly. So neither of us had any idea how to categorize him. And like you say, he isn't alone. This can't be an uncommon situation.

Hilarious!!

michaeldbaran · April 2012

I can understand that the idea of an app for a serious topic seems strange at first. I am a cultural anthropologist, and I had been studying and teaching about how kids learn about race for about 20 years. But no one reads academic stuff because it's really just written for other academics. So I wanted to figure out a way that learning about race and diversity could be more popular and more fun. And that's why I created these apps. So all I ask is that you check them out before judging them. I think you will find them a lot more thoughtful than you think, because I did put a lot of thought into them, as well as years and years of study.

Thanks for starting this important discussion. Best, Michael Baran