Chocolate & Vanilla Swirl with a Sprinkle of Cinnamon on Top: All about raising biracial children.

The first time I saw a nonwhite person was when I was ten. The society I grew up was very ethnocentric, homophobic, and racist. That's putting it politely.

Immigrating to a new land that embraces different views can cause conflict within generations. The elderly hang onto their cultural beliefs and preserve tradition, whereas youth acculturates at a faster rate, causing friction between tradition and the new culture. It shouldn't surprise us that there are families that can't communicate with their children or grandchildren, as they face a language barrier, along with a cultural disconnect.

Since a young age, I was used to arguing with my dad's friends who tried to explain to me how wrong interracial marriage was, or tried to interrupt me when I defended gay rights. They tried to persuade me how to vote, and tell me what to believe. Well, actions speak louder than words, so my first act of rebellion was bringing a Black baby home at 15. Although it wasn't a real baby, it was a message, and a powerful lesson.

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The moment the bell rang for 3rd period I ran to my Child Development class. It was my turn to bring the baby home for the weekend. The baby was a very realistic doll, I had to take care of it when it cried and woke me up in the middle of the night, cuddle it, dress it, feed it- my grade depended on it, and I have been looking forward to it all year! The reason I was in a rush was because I wanted to be the first one to get the pick, and I wanted my classmates to see that the Black baby was the first pick. This reasoning made sense in my 15 year old brain.

That weekend taught me a couple of things, like that I didn't want babies for a loooong time, and how uncomfortable our society gets around the topic of race. My family was used to going out to dinner, church, doing all that fun stuff. That weekend, though, we only went out once. My "baby" was the only nonwhite person in that restaurant, and as I was taking care of it, I looked like a very young mother, and it made people stare, question, and the conversations silenced quickly as we passed the tables. That was the one and only time we went out that weekend, and I was allowed to skip church on Sunday.

A little more than 13 years later, I would be shocked to find out that not much has changed, and it didn't matter where you went. My children are biracial and occasionally, we face micro-aggressions, and even though they were jarring at first, we have learned to laugh them off, and they aren't as shocking anymore, and maybe that's not a good thing.

There was once an incident when my husband and baby attracted so much attention in the Polish part of Chicago, that a lady crashed her car. She was too busy staring at the novelty of an interracial family, and smashed into the only thing in the parking lot. I thought the incident was a Midwestern thing, and the issue was the lack of diversity in that part of the country, but I was wrong. A couple months later when we moved to CA, an elderly woman at Costco cooed over my baby, while whispering, "Is he adopted?" as if my 8th month old might overhear, understand & answer her. Maybe that incident was due to a generational gap, I thought, or just general nosiness, since a couple weeks later, a young dad passing by with his daughter would stop me and insist on getting no more than three guesses on what my son was. Maybe it was a US thing, then? Not quite. When I lived in Spain, I spent a year cringing in embarrassment, every time young Spaniards taunted my Japanese & Taiwanese friends with racist gestures. In Poland, while waiting in line for ice cream, I entertained myself by eavesdropping on the young women behind me in line, gossiping freely about my family in Polish. The looks on their faces when I ordered my ice cream in Polish and flashed them a smile were priceless.

I have learned that the best way to grow, think critically, learn about others & yourself is through travel, becoming a world citizen, and stepping outside of your comfort zone. I have been the only white person in the room many times, and I have had my own kids question their own skin color. Kids are not colorblind, and knowing that, I have made a conscious choice to raise them as open-minded global citizens, not to label my kids, not to adhere to, promote, or glorify any specific race or culture. Instead, I strive to create our own micro-culture & traditions that will give my children a secure identity and make them exceptional world citizens and human beings. They're not 1/2 anything, they are a whole, they are a complete human being. They know they are the best of both of their parents, and that strength is celebrated daily.

In Obama's "A Promised Land", the President discusses W.E.B. Du Bois's "double consciousness" of Black Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century. This quote hits home as it loosely describes the experiences of every immigrant & nonwhite person, "Despite having been born and raised on American soil, shaped by this nation's institutions and infused with its creed despite the fact that their toiling hands and beating hearts contributed so much to the country's economy and culture, Black Americans remain the perpetual "Other, " always on the outside looking in, ever feeling their "two-ness," defined not by what they are but by what they can never be. Being that outsider means you constantly feel the need to fit in and be accepted. That means, don't rock the boat too much, don't be too FOB-ish, but don't be too "white washed" either-it's quite a tricky dance. This need for seamlessly fitting into the American culture is perfectly captured in the film "Selena". In the 1997 film, Selena's dad (Edward James Olmos) offers this perspective, “Being Mexican American is tough. Anglos jump all over you if you don't speak English perfectly, Mexicans jump all over you if you don't speak Spanish perfectly. We’ve gotta be twice as perfect as anybody else, I mean, we gotta know about John Wayne and Pedro Infante. We gotta know about Frank Sinatra and Agustín Lara. We gotta know about Oprah and Cristina. We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time. It’s exhausting!” It's true. In the US immigrants get racial slurs hurled at them, but back in their home countries, their friends turn their backs on them and proclaim them "Americanized" or "sell outs".

Like Obama says, while taking the inventory of his own experiences, "We'd grown skilled at suppressing our reactions to minor slights, ever ready to give white colleagues the benefit of the doubt, remaining mindful that all but the most careful discussions of race risked triggering in them a mild panic."