When Color Causes Confusion

February is almost over, and it can’t happen fast enough. I don’t care about the gray sky, the cold wind with no snow to play in and I don’t care about short days.  You see, we’re a biracial family -- the kids are Asian and the LSH (long suffering husband) and I are white -- and Black History Month inevitably ends up painful and divisive for us.

You see, our kids, who are Chinese and Indian (and who define themselves as "brown,") spend much of the month learning about the terrible things that white people have done to African Americans.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not denying any of it. I know that white people enslaved black people, treated them sadistically and murdered them. White people separated children from their mothers, and sold their fathers. But it’s hard to watch my kids begin to view white people -- all white people -- as the enemy.

I’m prepared for each February now, but the first time this emotional tsunami hit our family was in preschool. The children learned about slavery, and saw pictures of white people mistreating brown people.

I explained that the United States had changed, which prompted my oldest to point to his very brown sister with her wide, innocent deep chocolate brown eyes and ask, “If you had met her back then, would you have killed her?”

We -- their parents -- were suddenly The Other.

The kids are older now, but February is difficult again this year.

Son is doing a biography of Jesse Jackson, and was reading about the Klu Klux Klan last night. Fearfully, he asked if the Klan would come to his house. Then he locked all the doors.

Don't get me wrong. I’m no fan of sanitized history. As a reporter, I don't shield my kids from news stories about war, crime and upheaval. And I'm not questioning any of the facts my kids are being taught.

At our home, we end up talking about the white people in history who were not the psychopaths and slave-owners. We talk about the Quakers who fervently supported abolition. Yes, a white man shot Martin Luther King, but it wasn’t that the American justice system cheered his killing. His murderer, James Earl Ray, was in fact arrested and died in prison.

My daughter -- who is very brown but has African-American and white friends -- was once chastised by an African-American classmate, “Black people can’t be friends with whites,” he told her. Wisely, she disagrees.

Takoma Park is full of biracial families, both biological and because of adoption. I'm curious how this plays out in your families. Is my son extraordinarily literal? Or sensitive?

Meanwhile, I’ve a secret hope that for the youngest children that Black History Month will give way to Black Culture Month.

Celebrate the  women who made the amazing quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Celebrate Duke Ellington and the other pioneers of jazz. Celebrate Warren Brown, who left his job as a lawyer to start Cakelove baking empire. And, of course, celebrate Barack Obama, who is making Black History in a way that was unthinkable 20 years ago.

Save the ugliest part of American history -- including FBI surveillance of Dr. King -- for the older kids who had the sophistication to know that the Klu Klux Klan will not come knocking.

And please spare my youngsters the confusion of thinking that the caring parents who would walk through fire for them are secretly racist and abusive.