BY MICHAEL MORAIN, EDITOR dsm Magazine
During a recent panel discussion at the Des Moines Art Center, three distinguished panelists – journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and artists b. Robert Moore and Jordan Weber – talked about the challenges of raising biracial children in a society that often sees things in Black and white.
Hannah-Jones grew up in Waterloo and now lives in New York. “My child has lived in Brooklyn since she was 1 year old,” she said. “We live in a low-income Black community, but at any given time in our house, you might have Ta-Nehisi Coates stop by, or the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. So she’s seeing every type of person there is and can move in any Black circle. She doesn’t think she’s better than our Black neighbors or the other Black kids at her school, but she can also walk into any room.”
Hannah-Jones explained why she built “armor” around her daughter: “I did not allow a white society to build her self-concept.”
In day-to-day terms, that meant giving her daughter Black dolls and books with Black characters. Her daughter couldn’t watch Disney princess movies, except for “Mulan” and “The Princess and the Frog,” and had to explain herself the day she came home singing a song from “Frozen.” “Where’d you learn that?” her mother asked, only half-joking.
Hannah-Jones’ goal is simple: “By the time my child starts going out into the world and seeing different messages, you can tell her anything and she’ll have no shame about being a Black girl. She loves being a Black girl. She wears her natural hair, right?
“So if you build that armor, your child isn’t going to avoid suffering or avoid racism, but she won’t internalize it,” she said. “She’ll understand that racism is the problem of the racists and has nothing to do with herself.”
