In which a frank family conversation reveals what’s wrong with America…
“Telling It Like It Is”
I’m the doting dad of two teen boys, ages twelve and sixteen. By acting more like their friend than their parent, I’ve spoiled them rotten. But the good news is we enjoy completely direct and honest bro-to-bro conversations about everything from the video-game trivial to the sex-and-death profound.
We dive in so deeply, so recklessly, and so frequently that topics most eavesdroppers would consider alarmingly embarassing or taboo have become commonplace. So even I was caught off guard the other day when my half-Asian kids matter-of-factly told me they would prefer being totally white.
My ethnicity is first generation Hungarian-American-Jewish, the only child of Holocaust surviving parents; my ex-wife — their mom — is Korean-born-Catholic. That likely makes our boys the only Hungarian-American-Korean-Catholic-Jews on the planet. Message me if your own kids happen to match.
Not only is our family biologically, socially, and culturally complex, but we’ve lived in Chicago, LA, and New York. Since birth, my diverse kids have grown up in equally diverse communities, attending schools that actively and passionately teach post-Civil Rights values of equality, humanism, fair play.
So I assumed we saw the world similarly until a random conversation about dating rapidly shifted into a robust discussion about race. For backstory, add uncircumcised to my kids’ physical profiles. The topic of “cut vs uncut” was breached, my younger son Nick asserting au naturel is a disadvantage.
“Being in a minority,” I insisted, “is by definition ‘special,’ which gives you an edge.” “No it doesn’t!” Nick replied, “girls will think I’m weird.” I pushed back, suggesting different strokes for different folks, so to speak, and how most medical professionals would agree a pristine penis is nowadays healthier.
Neither kid bought my argument, which unexpectedly dovetailed into their perceived disadvantage of being a racial minority, too. “Being white is always right,” Nick continued. “It gives you a big boost in everything you do. People treat you better, and life is so much easier: school, dating, jobs — you name it.”
I was flabbergasted, not only because I was so caught off guard, but because they meant it, took it for granted, tacitly assumed it obvious. Here we are living in Brooklyn, their schooling in Manhattan, bluest-of-blue cityscapes chock full of every color in the rainbow, and my mixed race kids are racists.
Fish In Water
Or are they? “Just because being white is better doesn’t mean white people are better,” Vincent, his older brother, clarified. “And just because we wish we were born totally white doesn’t mean we don’t like our half-Asian heritage. All we’re saying is the totally obvious truth that white people have it easier.”
Hold on a second. They weren’t white, but by any stretch of the imagination they’d had it relatively easy so far. Despite being biracial, nothing had ever deprived them of anything they’d wanted, everything they’d tried to accomplish. But the sentiment was strikingly clear. How did I miss this?
Parents often overlook major changes in their kids, day-to-day living often blurring even major milestones. Just as you suddenly realize your child has grown a foot since you last noticed, one afternoon they say and do things that stun you into the instant realization they’ve become young adults.
So I asked myself: Where had they learned that being white is so much better than being darker skinned? I’d married an Asian woman, befriended from coast to coast a vertiable UN of blacks and latinos, Muslims and Hindus — neighbors, local businesses, professional colleagues, low income to high.
I also wanted to understand the difference between acting racist and being racist. Kate Manne of Cornell describes prejudice against women analogously: misogyny doesn’t need men hating women in order to thrive, since society already deems men superior, encouraging most of us to just act that way.
That’s illuminating, and helps explain why my precocious mixed race kids had already thrown in the towel on their Asian DNA. Impressionable fish swimming in racist waters, they flourish in a pluralistic cosmopolitan culture where endemic prejudice stealthily betrays truer preceptions of the world.
The Internet helps feed the fire for sure. Thanks to the immediacy of social media and on-demand video, our kids’ exposure is exponentially vaster and more varied than prior generations’. Good content and bad, today’s kids get so much of it they can hardly tell the difference anymore, and no longer care.
What do they believe, and whom do they follow? Instagram memes are addictive, viral videos are prime time, Peter Griffin from Family Guy is funny, and Donald J. Trump is President of the United States of America. If my two NYC sons are implicitly racist, imagine kids from the rest of the country!
Blame Game
What a mess. Ideas now weaponized, constructive debate is impossible. That’s shut down meaningful conversation, poisoning our entire society. Since we can’t talk to each other anymore, the only thing left is blaming each other for everything that’s gone wrong, further fueling our unwillingness to listen.
Meanwhile all fingers point to who’s allegedly causing our communication breakdown: The Right uses political correctness as an excuse for violating rights, while the Left uses the violation of rights as an excuse for political correctness. Round and round we go, end state the destruction of Democracy.
At first I blamed everybody for my racist kids, of course: I blamed toxic politics for normalizing our worst qualities; I blamed big tech for indiscrimately disseminating garbage for ad dollars; I blamed the government for neglecting public education; and I blamed myself for not taking this more seriously.
Such pointless catharsis can be dangerous when it whips you up into a frenzy, tiny grievences catalyzing into a full blown life crisis or cultural revolution, like what happens every day online. But reckless kvetching also has its benefits, forcing you to pay attention to nuances you might otherwise ignore.
So a few days later I brought the issue back up: “Guys, I still can’t believe you’d rather be white.” “Come on, dad,” Nick smirked, “as a white guy you should know better.” Then it suddenly hit me, I should know better. I finally realized my mixed race kids were right: being white in America is better.
All this time I’d bestowed my kids advantages, including their mixed race. Biologists call it heterosis, the opposite of in-breeding where hybridization leads to vigorously improved quality of offspring; and millions call it Keanu Reeves, Alicia Keys, Tiger Woods, Mariah Carey, Dwayne Johnson…
But my kids don’t look at it that way, instead seeing this country through the lens of how this country sees itself. That’s what I’ve missed, because white privilege is easy to take for granted when you’re white. Certainly the greatest joy of parenting is learning from your own kids — but this one’s still a shocker.
Whether or not the long arc of the moral universe eventually bends back toward justice, I now see the damage through the eyes of my own kids. Stuck in this period of moral licensing, I’ll do my best despite my shortcomings to remind them that strength comes from within, and I’m forever proud of them.
Commenti