Sadly, we live in probably the whitest town in Northern California–and possibly in the whitest neighborhood thereof. I was pretty disappointed when I figured it out–we came from San Jose and it hadn’t really occurred to us to think about the difference we would find. It seems to be better at the high-school level, I don’t know why.
DangerGirl, age 3, just doesn’t meet a lot of kids who aren’t different from her. When she does, she doesn’t seem to notice anything. She will eagerly make friends with any small person she meets. Luckily, our (DangerDad’s and my) many brothers have married all over the place, so she will have a good crop of varied aunts and cousins.
My younger daughter is 17. We live in a very diverse town, and there is absolutely no thought of race in friendships - one of the nicer things here.
When we lived in New Jersey a lot of my kids friends were adopted - Korean and Columbian. A lot of the adopted Korean girls had these great traditional Irish names. We used to laugh that some personnel person was going to be very surprised someday.
Looking at these kids, I can only conclude that they are a lot better than we were. What a fantastic improvement in only 30 years!
My kids (all girls) are 16, 12 and 4. We don’t live in a very diverse area. Probably 60% white, 20% mixed, 10% black and 10% various minorities. Most of the folks in our local Baha’i community are Iranian, and we certainly count them among our friends. My 12-year-old’s best friend in the world is half-black/half-white (the black community being so small around here is, IMHO, at least partially responsible for the proportionately larger number of bi-racial children). My oldest daughter has had several racially diverse friends; she also thinks that Iranian boys are “hot” and would be very interested in finding a nice one around her age to date. Unfortunately, the only Iranian population in our little town seems to be the folks in our church, and none of them are in her age group. I suppose she might fall for someone at a Baha’i conference or something one of these days.
As for interracial dating, it wouldn’t be an issue at all. Whoever my kids want to date is cool with me (and their father) as long as they’re decent people.
LifeOnWry, you’re right. Didn’t think about the age of the kid. Although I think it’s emblematic. I’ve been in plenty of situations where people went out of their ways to not identify someone by race when it would have solved the confusion.
(just to clear things up,. myself, my wife and daughter are white)
My daughter is 12. She’s never had a problem with anyone of a different race. Her friends are a very wide mix of people and she doesn’t seem put off by anyone “different” then her -be it race, size, height, sex, ect.
There is one boy that calls her non-stop now. I just saw him for the first time the other day and he’s light skinned black. Perhaps one parent is black the other white. I’m not sure. In any case, I don’t care what race he is as long as he STOPS CALLING ALL THE TIME. heh heh.
But,. in our house, race isn’t an issue. I’ll let her date anyone as long as they aren’t idiots.
I grew up with some friends that were not Caucasian. Most of them were Indian (from India) or Asian. And everyone was just as “white” as I was. Only mattered sometimes, like when we made fun of where each other came from.
My ex wife and I seemed to have a knack for making friends with biracial couples, so my kids earliest friends were of mixed race. Now, they live about 300 miles from me so I don’t know who their friends are. I know some of their names, but their race has never been brought up.
I wouldn’t have a problem with them dating outside their race (when they’re old enough), but unfortunately, my wife’s family would. I’m not sure how it would play out seeing as how they’re only related my marriage and they hardly ever see the kids, but knowing my father-in-law, he’d probably disown us for letting it happen.
Two kids. Flodjunior is nearly ten; totnak, nearly four. They have a whole passel of cousins, two of whom were born in Vietnam and adopted into our family.
Flodjunior goes to a small school and off the top of my head I can only think of two kids who are non-white. (One has a Japanese mother and a Norwegian father; the parents of the other child are both from India.) He also plays on a baseball team for American and Norsk/Am kids; one boy on the team is mixed-race, with a white Norwegian mother and a black American father. To be honest flodjunior did not seem to notice this at first. He was more interested in the fact that they, like him, are bilingual. Then a mixed-race teenager was murdered in Oslo and he started asking questions. He’s become more aware of race now. However, being aware is as far as it goes; he shows no signs of picking friends based on race, and in fact he and the mixed-race boy on the baseball team quickly became best buds, based on common interests.
Totnak started asking questions earlier; one of his preschool teachers last year was black. He asked why she had such dark skin. We talked about how we all look like the mamma who gave us an egg and the pappa who gave us a sperm, even though sometimes they’re not the mamma and pappa we grow up with. That seemed to satisfy him both regarding his teacher and his cousins. Of course he may have learned that too well as he now sometimes recites it when we happen to see someone with dark skin :o Fortunately they usually laugh. He doesn’t actually know any kids who aren’t white-European.
We live in a single-ethnicity neighborhood. We are a single-ethnicity family. My daughter, aged six, has a large circle of friends. Her closest two friends are different ethnicities from her, and from each other. Of course, we’ve been sending her to the best schools we can find, and those schools all seem to have a very wide spectrum of ethnicities.
You raise children to see people as people, and life will be it should be.
We are white. My son is South Korean (Hi, Cartooniverse! Culture Camp is on the schedule for this year - he is five and starting to get really interested). My daughter - a year younger - is our bio child - and blonde and blue eyed. The friend was Black. The thing they all notice is the hair. African hair is very funny to my kids, but Asian hair (at least my son’s) is thick and course. And my daughter still has that baby fine blonde stuff. Touching heads was big. But, interestingly enough, skin color didn’t come up at all.
In our group of friends (white, white and more white), we have a lot of international adoptees, so our kids are used to interracial families. And a lot of interracial families with one bio child, so the mix thing is normal to them as well. Funny how things work out.
I expect race to become a bigger deal as they get older. My son certainly knows he is Korean (and looks “Chinese” - all Asian is Chinese to him). But I am hopeful that each generation sees a decrease in the percentage of bigots. Some parents of older South Korean kids say their kids gravitate towards other Asians as they get older, other kids don’t.
I’m not a parent, but I’m 17. I go to a very white high school; I have four or five Asian friends, but two of them don’t go to my school. I have two black friends (one is from my church) and several friends who are half black (one is from church.) I have one Middle Eastern friend. The rest of my friends are white. It’s not like I planned it that way, and I don’t have problems with being friends with people of other races; it’s just that there aren’t many around to be friends with. If I were interested in dating, I would be open to dating someone of a different race.
I’m sure my parents don’t care that I’m friends with non-white people; my mom even complains a lot about how white my school is.
