The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

1.Memory of Prejudice: I have two mixed children and have dealt my share of people showing racial comments at me and my children. When I had my daughter I was only 19. My parents were very upset because I wasn’t married and I had stepped out of my faith and race. My mom has 7 siblings and my dad has 12 siblings all of which are in there 60’s and up . My family is really huge and not one person is of another race. I walked into my family reunion almost 10 years ago today and the whole room was silent. Over 400 people were staring at me and my mixed baby girl. My dad which was about 74 at the time had to stand up and give the speech of we love Rachel and if you can’t accept our grandchild you can’t accept any of us either. This child is our family and you have the chose to accept us all or none of us at all. Needless to say it took a couple of years for the family to get used to having an African American child in it. They all love both of my children now. My parents have dealt with a lot from people their own age. One lady stopped my mom in the store and said you must have a lot of love to adopt a Niger baby. I was so upset and mom was so calm and said I didn’t adopt any child I love my grand baby and held her close. She said, “ I am going to pray for you tonight. God don’t like ugly.”  

2. How did it diminish equity:People with little understanding of diversity. 

3. What feelings did this bring up for you: Both of these situations were tough for me because this is my children we are talking about. The first situation where the whole family gave us the nasty look really hurt because how can you turn your nose up at family? I think that it has gotten better of the past ten years. My whole family accepts my children for who they are now.

4. What would have to change in order to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity: I feel that with time people will get more comfortable with this biracial children. I know that there are tons of children in school right now that are of multiple races. I think that the more this becomes a norm the more that people will be able to understand that people are different and we need to accept everyone as they are.