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Children's hands - Getty Images
“Daddy, what's it like to be white?” my young daughter asked over dinner.
“Yah Mom, what's it like?” her older brother echoed.
My wife and I glanced at each other and then across the table at our Korean-born children. We were speechless for a few moments, which is rare for either of us. Nobody had asked before.
“Well, it feels like me,” I stammered. “I mean, I never really thought about it and, frankly, it doesn’t matter much to me one way or the other.”
Hardly a profound response, but it was all I could muster.
“How is it being Asian?” my wife asked back.
“I like it!” my son boomed confidently.
“We're the only kids in school from Korea,” my daughter added.
“Maybe our color doesn't make much difference in how we feel,” I suggested.
“Yup,” they both agreed, but I wasn't sure I believed my own words.
Racism’s Sharp Sting
This conversation occurred many years ago, but it seems particularly relevant today. At that time, my children had yet to personally endure the sharp sting of racism. They lived something of a sheltered existence. However, before long, they came face-to-face with that ugly “ism,” and their innocent curiosity took some major hits.
Interracial families, like my own, were uncommon back then, but are much more prevalent today. Then and now, they are social microcosms that play out the questions our society has long struggled with.
Can people of different races live in harmony? Can they truly love one another? Do the colors of our skins really matter? Is there something in the human spirit that is thicker than blood or genes?
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When I’ve discussed this with racially homogenous parents, some of the more honest ones admit they would feel "odd" looking at a son or daughter who did not resemble them racially.
“Do these children really feel like your own?” one particularly clueless acquaintance asked me.
His question caught me off guard, but after a brief pause, I managed to respond. “Regardless of where they came from, our children are not our own. We don't own them. They belong to themselves. I love my children for who they are, regardless of where they came from.”
He seemed unconvinced, as if my children and I experience less of a bond by virtue of our separate genetic and racial backgrounds. An opinion apparently shared by the man who asked me, “Don't you ever wish you could have your own biological children?”
“No,” I replied. “Do you ever wish you could have someone else's?”
Physical Contrasts
He didn't laugh and neither did I.
When I look at my children, I see our physical contrasts, but these are as much or more reason to love them than if we appeared the same. Perhaps these outer differences help us better see our inner similarities, the kind that matter, like caring for each other, sharing the good and ill, the laughter, the downers, the need to love and be loved.
But, among some frightened, hateful souls, this view is anathema. The cold core of racism and, in particular, so-called “white nationalism,” survives because some small-minded people insist they can bond only with those who look like them. “My own kind” as their clannish mentality puts it.
Studies show that, upon meeting someone new, their race is the first thing we notice. Some claim this is a tribal tendency encoded in our genetic lineage, but I don’t buy it.
As author Denis Leary noted: “Racism isn’t born, folks. It’s taught. I have a 2-year-old son. Know what he hates? Naps. End of list.”
When I hear people say, directly or in their behavior, that they cannot find common ground with someone because of differences in color, religion, gender or ethnicity, I assuage my despair by thinking of my children, my family.
Not that there is anything noble or extraordinary in our situation. For us, our family feels matter of fact, and we simply don’t perceive the differences that some others do.
So, while my children and I do not look even remotely the same, there is something vital in us that is entirely the same.
And that something gives me hope for our species.
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