I do love that you are approaching these issues so carefully and thoughtfully, and I love reading what you write about your girls. :)
My mom's approach was basically to not really address differences in my race/ethnicity at all. I believe my aunts and uncles and cousins saw past it when dealing directly with me or my sister, but also that side of my family isn't filled with the most otherwise tolerant people, and I would bring up questions to my mom about why they seemed to treat me fine but would talk about other people of other races in a negative way, and I'm sure this flustered my mom. I think she was just concerned with how we were treated, and not how we'd interpret that outside of our family eventually. I struggled with differentiating between observations or experiences of racism versus just being treated differently. As an adult, now that I've learned a little more about the nuances of social privilege (being white or male or whatever), I've been able to articulate some of the issues better and talk about it in a non-personal way with some of my family. It is an interesting topic, and I think had I stayed in the academe pursuing Sociology, I probably would have gravitated toward these issues for research purposes.
My mom's approach was basically to not really address differences in my race/ethnicity at all. I believe my aunts and uncles and cousins saw past it when dealing directly with me or my sister, but also that side of my family isn't filled with the most otherwise tolerant people, and I would bring up questions to my mom about why they seemed to treat me fine but would talk about other people of other races in a negative way, and I'm sure this flustered my mom. I think she was just concerned with how we were treated, and not how we'd interpret that outside of our family eventually. I struggled with differentiating between observations or experiences of racism versus just being treated differently. As an adult, now that I've learned a little more about the nuances of social privilege (being white or male or whatever), I've been able to articulate some of the issues better and talk about it in a non-personal way with some of my family. It is an interesting topic, and I think had I stayed in the academe pursuing Sociology, I probably would have gravitated toward these issues for research purposes.
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