… you are black, or appear to be a different race from the kids you are caring for?
Note that there are black people whose own kids do not appear to be black (and similar for other race/ethnicity), so this is not just an issue for those providing babysitting or child care services for others.
Oh gosh, evidently this person doesn’t get out much. 30 years ago I lived in Manhattan and when I’d take my kids to the park I’d see many/most situations where the children looked to be a different race than the adult who was with them. I was one of the few stay at home parents in the park and the majority were at the park with the nanny/sitter/au pair. It’s an incredibly common situation. And I doubt that it’s become less common over the years.
And yet some give you an eye roll when you explain we always have to navigate this world differently. I’m so over these nosy nellies calling the cops. I wish just once one of them would suffer repercussions.
No eye roll here. Infuriating.
Also infuriating is that occasionally one reads about people not being called out for abusing their children in public; meanwhile, stuff like that referred to in the original article above is going on.
It’s not that he’s black. It’s that he’s a black MAN. There’s a gender thing going on here as well as a racial one.
I don’t think anybody would even notice a black woman accompanying white kids or vice versa. It would be assumed to be a babysitting situation.
It’s nowhere near new.
This type of thing happened to people in my old church all the time. There were lots of ethnically mixed families. You’d hear stories from a white mom worried that her black son had been pulled over by the cops for speeding, or that a Chinese dad got the stink eye when he picked up his black daughter after school. And this was in an area where there were tons of people from many ethnic backgrounds. It doesn’t just happen in majority white communities.
I agree that it’s probably the fact that he was a black man, not just that he was black. That doesn’t make it any more infuriating or wrong.
When I used to travel across the northeast US/Canada border with my eldest son with or without siblings, I got questioned by US immigration all the time regarding my relationship to a young man who did not appear to be even remotely the same ethnicity as me, but who is my biological son. Same border, but I never got questioned by Canadian immigration regarding our relationship.
Wherever we went in the northeast US, people didn’t believe that my Asian husband and I were together or that my half-Asian son belonged to me either. This hasn’t happened in the other areas of the US we’ve visited or lived in. Eventually I chose to live in an area where there are a lot of mixed Asian families. It is very off-putting to be singled out and questioned regarding your relationship with your children.
My friends husband is black. His biracial daughter has blonde hair and fair skin. He literally took to carrying around a a picture of the family when his daughter was little from a Sears Portrait studio ( which he felt seemed “wholesome”) because he got stopped so often by police when out in public with her if she was crying in the normal ways that toddlers do. The picture did help. It’s infuriating that it was necessary.
But I agree that black woman with white kids “reads”to many as “ Nanny”. Black man totally different story.
@Marian In the Deep South in the era of Segregation, say before 1968-70, a black woman, and to a lesser extent a black man, could take a white child anywhere; there was simply no place that was off limits. A black woman with a white child could enter a white-only restaurant and be served, or sit in a white waiting room, etc., so long as she was with a white child. One of my college professors told us that an opponent of segregation had a publication called the “Carolina Israelite” in which he repeatedly suggested that the solution to the integration crisis in the South was simply to issue each black person a white baby doll.
I have tried to find reference to this publication on the Internet without success. I do not doubt my professor. There were many publications with only a few thousand subscribers.
(And by the way, I realize that’s not what you meant by your babysitting comment, but it is in fact the reality in many areas. I’m not trying to dis you or put you on the spot, it’s just that your comment made me think of this.)
@EarlVanDorn I just found dozens of references to the publication. Instead of using Google use scholar.google. For $9.99 you can buy an ebook about the publication. It’s available through Amazon. Just enter “Carolina Israelite” in the search box and you’ll find it.
A store clerk pulled my son aside to ask him who I was. I have brown hair and eyes and my son has blonde hair and blue eyes and is adopted. We were also reported to children’s services for our daughter’s birthmark, which looks like a bruise. I wasn’t angry in either case, as these people really meant well. If it happened on a regular basis, I might think differently.
My guess is she wasn’t at all thrilled to find the children had a non-white man as their mentor assuming the kids told her what was going on. (sigh) I sure hope the next generation can fix these issues. I don’t have high hopes for those past their teens if they’re still racist/prejudiced with all the knowledge that is out there today.
I think that a lot of people today who are decades part their teens have made and are continuing to make huge progress on this. I know a lot of people who are consciously and deliberately addressing the assumptions they were raised with.
@Consolation I agree. Those who have open minds have already or are changing. There’s a lot of knowledge out there now that didn’t used to be widespread for various reasons and it’s changed many.
It’s only those with closed minds who cling to their prejudices - at least in my experience. Those are the folks I’ve pretty much lost hope for.
That is so bizarre. I have brown hair and brown eyes and olive skin. My D has bright blue eyes and blonde hair. No one ever did that, I presume because most people understand the concept of recessive genes, even if they don’t necessarily know the terminology for it.
I think things are changing but it may be slow. Last night I was watching TV with my son and a guy on the reality show was eating a banana. The way the camera panned across the scene it looked like he was eating it peel and all which seemed strange (and gross). I rewound the show and looked at it a couple of times due to how strange it looked. My son finally asked me what I was doing and I told him right as I realized the banana had been cut in half and he was actually just starting to peel it from the cut end.
I laughed at how stupid I was and my son gave me a look and commented how racist I was, that I would make a big deal about an African American eating a banana. Race never entered my mind, it was all about someone eating a banana peel but to my high school son it was a sign of racism. The younger generation is becoming more aware and trying to stop these types of things or call out actions of others. This is a good sign but I get concerned when a non-racist action from someone he has known his whole life can trigger an accusation of racism, what would happen in the same situation in the outside world.
This young man was just trying to go to his apartment when a woman attempted to block his access. She stated that she just wanted to be sure he actually lived there. Later, she says she is uncomfortable with him entering the building without proof that he lives there. But assuming she is worried he is up to no good, she actually gets on the elevator with him to see where he gets off. And even AFTER witnessing him using his key to enter his apartment, she calls the police on him. Unreal.