Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(27)

Jessica and her mother’s relationship is nuanced, at once deeply loving and deeply painful. It speaks to a number of complexities about racism – showing a truth that is often left out in clunky media coverage – that it is not enacted by malicious monsters driven by ill will, but that it happens by way of whiteness. Rather than mixed-race relationships proving that society is over race, they prove that people’s actions often move faster than social progress.

It makes sense that interracial couples might not want to burden themselves with the depressing weight of racial history when planning their lives together, but a colour-blind approach makes life difficult for children who don’t deserve this carelessness. It seems that in the same way long-term couples might discuss marriage, money and children, couples of different heritage must discuss race – what it means to them, how it currently affects their lives, and how it might affect their future children’s lives.

In among the ‘ending racism’ confetti being strewn upon mixed-race families is the suspicious eye of busybodies who can’t quite understand the set-up. Our demographics are changing faster than our attitudes, and it is causing confusion. Anecdotally, I hear from adult children of other mixed-race families who tell me that as children, they’ve been stopped and questioned in the street when out with their parents, and have endured insults and slurs when their family is travelling out as a group, the tamest being ‘rainbow family’.

And there is very little talk of white privilege in transracial adoption – when children of colour are adopted by white families. In 2010, journalist Joseph Harker wrote: ‘My own Nigerian father abandoned my Irish mother before I was born. Three years later she married an English local, who later adopted me, and I took his name. I was never short of love, support and encouragement. But when race regularly collided with my life I was ill prepared. I found it difficult to cope with the playground and classroom taunts and, as I grew older, the disconnect with my African heritage became more of an issue. I’ve spoken to many black people of similar upbringing and they often talk of the same experiences.’12

His words strike at the heart of the issue. There’s nothing to suggest that a black child with a white parent, or who is adopted into a white family, won’t be on the receiving end of immeasurable love and support. But, having never experienced it, the parents might not be well equipped to deal with the racism their child will receive.

In 2012, in the ultimate act of colour-blindness, former Prime Minister David Cameron laid out his plans to remove the legal requirement for local authorities to consider a child’s racial, cultural and linguistic background during the adoption process. The move was not without goodwill. In 2013, the Department for Education told the press that black and ethnic minority children are adopted, on average, a year later than their white counterparts. The longer a child is in care, the more likely it is that he or she will develop attachment problems later in life, they said, so finding a good family fit with speed is critical. ‘If there is a loving family ready and able to adopt a child,’ said the then education secretary Michael Gove, ‘issues of ethnicity must not stand in the way.’13

It was with a cunning linguistic sleight of hand that the politicians insisted that considering a child’s race was actually fuelling racism, with Gove’s remarks implying that the fact that black children waiting much longer to be adopted was because of politically correct ‘barriers’ that (Cameron branded) ‘state multiculturalism’ had put in place, rather than systemic racism. Why black children wait longer to be adopted is not something easily explained. But we do live in a world riddled with racism, and these waits indicate another blow to a black child’s life chances.

Meanwhile, white parents who adopt children of colour take on a new responsibility to be race aware. They embark on a very new journey of self-discovery, and they have a duty to no longer commit to the limiting politics of colour-blindness. They have this duty because a black child cannot be burdened with the responsibility of weathering the world’s prejudices on their own. Not all white parents take the time to learn. Sadly, I’ve met white parents of mixed-race children who have angrily confronted me, insisting that they ‘just don’t see’ race, and telling me that what I’m doing isn’t helping at all. Of course, I don’t demand that they agree with every point I make, but I do think that it is important that they recognise that we are still living in a racist society, if only so they can counsel their children with some ease. Not for their sake, but for their kids’ sake. I really believe that it is the least they can do. On the flip side, I have also met white parents of mixed-race kids who express a real eagerness to understand what their child will face. These are efforts to bridge an information gap that white people don’t often have to make. Pretending that everything is fine helps no one.

Despite the title of this book, I knew I couldn’t write about race without speaking to at least one white person who thinks about race as much as I do. Jennifer Krase is an American, but has lived in the UK for the last seven years. She is a white immigrant in Britain, which makes her both an outsider and insider: an outsider because her country has its own culture, and its own well-documented racism, and an insider because her white American-ness will have her positioned as an ‘expat’ rather than an ‘immigrant’. She is refreshingly self-aware about all of this. ‘I think white people get defensive when you call them white,’ she tells me over Skype, ‘because they’ve internalised a message that goes it’s rude to point out somebody else’s race, and it’s dangerous territory because you might inadvertently be racist, because they could take offence at that mention of race. There’s a really bizarre circuitous logic that doesn’t touch on any of the underlying issues.’