My Daughter’s — and My — Mary Poppins Moment

Questions of racial identity and parental inadequacies

When my middle child was three years old, she and I watched the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins one day. During a close-up of fair-skinned, light-eyed Julie Andrews, my brown-skinned, brown-eyed daughter turned to me and said, “You look like Mary Poppins. Why don’t I look like Mary Poppins?”

This was the first time she’d seemed to recognize the fact that she didn’t resemble me. And while she strongly resembled her biracial father and his sisters (while her older brother resembled my family and her younger sister resembled my dark-haired, dark-eyed, yet fair-skinned French-Canadian mother-in-law), this was also the first time I realized this detail might be a source of concern for my soon-to-be preschooler.

Preschool, thankfully, wasn’t problematic on this front due to at least a little diversity in the classroom. Neither was kindergarten — despite a distinct lack of diversity in the classroom — but around first-grade kids started asking my daughter some pointed, and painful, questions.

One day she came home sad and (after a little prodding) said a friend had asked her why she looked different from other people not only at school, but in her own family. Reviewing what we’d learned from a favorite book (Black, White, Just Right! by Marguerite Davol), we talked about the fact that she’s a combination of both sides of our family; she’s not black or white, but both, just like her dad. From then on, she began answering tricky questions from friends with a straightforward explanation that she has more melanin in her skin, an answer that usually silenced other kids long enough for the subject to be changed.

My answers that I am not just black and that I am not just white are not accepted, at least not willingly, and not without endless explanation. —Emily Cashour

What Are You?

To many Americans of multiracial heritage, the “What Are You?” question they face (over and over) usually equates to a demand to know if one is either Black or White. And some people won’t give up until this question is answered.

At times when she was younger, my daughter would simply cut to the chase and, upon meeting someone new, announce upfront that her mom was white, and she looked like her dad. And I thought that was a good thing. I thought, though she’d been taught she wasn’t obligated to explain herself to anybody, my daughter seemed to enjoy explaining that she’s unique and why. And for a while the perplexed frown she gave me during that Mary Poppins moment we both shared when she was three changed to a fun-loving smile whenever she told stories of her latest “What Are You?” moment.

I began to believe she’d become more comfortable with such conversations because she’d grown more confident in who she was, and who she was becoming — the ultimate goal, I think, for a parent who’s ever understood their child faces challenges they’ve never had to face and hoped they were providing the guidance their child needs.

After nine years at a K-8 school surrounded by friends who’d known her since kindergarten and seen her with her multi-hued family many times, my daughter went to a predominantly white suburban high school with hundreds of kids she didn’t know, most of them white, and now she’s a student at a diverse urban university. Wherever she goes, though, she faces the dreaded “What Are You?” question — or at least the curious looks — on a regular basis.

And lately, my daughter has been voicing increased frustration with this. She’s realized just joking around about such questions doesn’t do her, or the people asking the questions, any good. While it may be easier for her to make light of such situations, attempts at levity only exacerbate the feeling of not belonging to any particular racial group because she refuses to pick one over the other — and doesn’t seem to be accepted by one or the other. Meanwhile, empty reassurances from her mother that she’s perfect just the way she is fall painfully flat.

Once I realized my daughter was struggling with her racial identity as a college student, I began doing what I’d done for years as a white parent of children who shared a multiracial heritage — I looked for resources to help me help them. When my kids were little, this led me to host a blog focused on issues of diversity, so I could increase my understanding of the challenges so many people face and hopefully raise awareness of those challenges and point to resources that might help. Luckily much more is available online now with regard to growing up in a multiracial family, and my children have access to a treasure trove of resources they can access on their own. But I still send along any gems I come across.

Recently I stumbled upon two remarkable personal essays by a writer who is just a few years older than my daughter and has a very similar background. In “Growing Up as Mixed-Race Alongside My White Mother” and “Moving Forward in the In-Between,” Emily Cashour explores her relationships not only with her parents, but with her extended family and the world around her. She notes that she became most aware of issues related to her identity as a college undergrad, but it wasn’t until later that she fully realized the barriers her identity as a person of multiracial descent placed between her and her full acceptance by any one group.

I knew these insights would resonate with my daughter and sent her the links to both of Emily’s recent articles. By the next day, she had sent an email to Emily, who responded immediately and provided reassurances and validation I could never provide, reassurances and validation that really mattered to my daughter. I will always be grateful to Emily for that.

Lifelong lessons

Do I wish I could do more for my adult daughter than provide links to articles I think might help her? With all my heart, but we both know I’ll never fully understand the challenges she faces on this front. The least I can do is listen, which I know I sometimes fail to do as patiently as I should, and remain aware, the way I did when she was three, that her awareness and concerns will shift as she moves from one phase of her life to another, and another. As do my own.

Some actually wonder if a parent with a child who looks nothing like them can possibly feel as close to that child as much as a “typical” parent, a ridiculous suggestion. While neither of my daughters resembles me, there is always something — an attitude, a look, a tone, a shadow of a smile — that does indeed remind me of myself or one of my siblings — and leaves me amazed by the wonders of genetics.

When my daughters were little, one was a dreamy singer who read everything within reach while the other was a busy bee who moved from project to project as though fueled by an inner to-do list a mile long — and also read everything within reach. These things they inherited from me. Even if they hadn’t inherited any characteristics from me, though, my children are my children; the love a parent feels for their child is hardly determined by familial resemblances. Any parent will tell you that.

And yet, for many children of multiracial descent, that love alone is not enough. And all parents of such children can do is help as much as possible in any way they can. That starts with understanding when they embark on raising a multiracial family that there will be challenges. Their children will likely be asked rude questions — and maybe even dismissed by some of their peers. Or they may be treated like an exotic object that others believe they have the right to question, dissect, and discuss due to its novelty.

Since both my husband and I were raised in predominantly white towns, we thought nothing of raising our family in a similar setting. But now that my children are grown and speak openly about what they endured growing up and the questions they still have about their racial identity, I believe they would have greatly benefited from growing up in a much more diverse place and attending much more diverse schools.

But where one is raised is only a single piece of a complex puzzle when it comes to racial identity. And while there have never been easy answers to the challenges faced by people of diverse heritages, talking about such challenges can at least help raise awareness. Simply put, many who don’t fit neatly into any one racial category struggle because of this. Once a man told me this was why his elderly father had always been strongly opposed to interracial marriage. It wasn’t fair to the children, he said. I found it interesting that he felt compelled to tell me this after he saw a photo of my family.

As a parent in a multiracial family, I’ve been asked a few times if any of my children were adopted, and I always chalked such questions up to curiosity. One time when I was in a grocery store with my middle child, a woman stopped and stared at us and said, “She’s yours?” The look on her face revealed that she was truly dumbfounded, and I just laughed and assured her yes, my daughter was my daughter. Another time I showed up at my pediatrician’s office for an appointment for my son, one daughter on my hip and the other holding my hand, and a new doctor asked if I was babysitting that day.

While it helps to take such things in stride, that’s easy for a white American adult to say. When a young child or young adult of multiracial heritage is trying to make sense of where they fit in their world, there comes a time when dismissing rude comments or burying the hurt of dismissive behaviors begins to take its toll, a time when such comments and behaviors need to be recognized for how much damage they do. And a time when those who know their child or spouse or other loved one is hurting wish they could do much, much more to help.

Sometimes it helps me to remember when it seemed I was all that loved one needed. In the case of my middle child, I think back to when she was a baby, a baby who arrived after a few long years of wondering if I would ever have a baby again. And I remember holding her and rocking her and just taking time to absorb the immense beauty and joy she’d already brought to my life. Such remembering reminds me not only of how important my daughter is to me, but how important I am to her. And regardless of our outward appearances and what others might think of us, that’s all that truly matters.