Cloudscome tagged me for this Anti-Racist Parent Meme, and I’m finally getting around to doing it.

1. I am:
Maternal side: I’m 1/4 Norwegian overall and that comes from my maternal grandfather; the rest is Danish and Swedish. Paternal side goes way back in the United States, and is: German, Scotch, English, Irish.

2. My kid is:
Nate (5 1/2): Vietnamese.

3. I first started thinking more about race, culture, and identity when:
I’m not sure exactly when. I went to the most diverse school in my hometown, which still wasn’t that diverse, but it at least had people of color there — it was near what was then (and I think still is) the “black side” of town and was where most of the children of international students of the university were bused. So I thought about it some then, and then more later when my parents had people of different backgrounds to the house for dinner — colleagues of my father. I don’t mean for this to sound so cliche because this is actually true — my dad’s best friend for years was a black man, a fellow education professor at the same university.
In those ways I thought about race somewhat, but I think I was still pretty naive about race and peoples’ reactions to different races. When I moved up to the junior high school, that was more when I realized how people reacted to those of different races. For example, some students would remark that I:

*gasp* went to the “black school,” when in reality, whites were still very much the majority at that school.

Between that and having a best friend from India, I think I started thinking more about race, culture, and identity.

4. People think my name is:
They’re usually not sure what it is! Just that it is a difficult name with too many vowels. Typically people ask “what nationality?” It’s Dutch. My maiden name was German, but it had too many letters in it as well due to some nutty ancestors who actually added 2 letters to it. What was THAT about, Ancestors??

5. The family tradition I most want to pass on is:
A strong sense of humor and play, including laughing so hard your stomach hurts.

6. The family tradition I least want to pass on is:
Having family secrets; like Cloudscome’s family, not communicating important things.

7. My child’s first word in English was:
mama

8. My child’s first non-English word was:
I can’t quite remember, but I think it was Spanish from Dora and probably something like “Hola!”

9. The non-English word/phrase most used in my home is:
“Oy vey!” Yeah, and neither one of us is Jewish! HAHAHA!!

10. One thing I love about being a parent is:
All the different stages of his life so far. Watching his wonder and joy with life and seeing life through his eyes.

11. One thing I hate about being a parent is:
Not being able to protect him from life’s difficulties as I’d like to be able to. Also, I hate not being able to be with him more since I have to work full-time.

12. To me, being an anti-racist parent means:
Showing him, through action and words, that people are valuable no matter what the color of their skin, what culture they grew up in, or what nationality they are. In addition, we add to that their religion and their sexual orientation. As Frank and I said to him when we were explaining gays:

What matters is if someone is a good person. That’s what we care about.

The rest of it — the outward trappings of the person, the identifiers — gay, straight, Christian, Jew, atheist, pagan, black, white, Asian, etc. etc. etc. — don’t matter. We will do our best to judge people, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “by the content of their character.” That’s what being an antiracist parent means to me.
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OK, I have the worst luck with tagging people, meaning that those that I tag don’t take me up on it. HAR-UMPH!! But I will try, and hope that these peeps, MY HOMIES, please do this little meme. PWEASE??!!!

OK, I tag Michelle of Angelica’s Little Brother, Abebech of New Flower Blooms and Tina of Hearts Wide Open.

Your response: