Intersectionality, Color Blindness, and Critical Race Parenting

• In Event: Critical Race Parenting: Teaching for Our Children's Lives and Humanity

Abstract

Interracial couples and biracial children are increasingly common in the United States (US Census, 2012), as are families where at least one parent is an (im)migrant (Pew Research Center, 2013). This theoretical paper will explore the ways in which intersectionality applies to critical race parenting within multiracial, transnational families. I employ counterstorytelling (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001) to further illuminate the situated nature of critical race parenting and the ways in which the racial and cultural identities of parents impact their parenting perspectives on race and racism. I am a US-born White woman and critical race scholar married to an Afro-Cuban artist who immigrated to the United States two years ago. While racial identity and cultural difference are salient, bilingualism and colorblindness also significantly impact our respective understandings of critical race parenting. Cuban society relies on colorblindness in ways that are similar to the United States in terms of defining racism as individual prejudice rather than institutional. However, multiracialism is much more normative and colorism (Quiros & Dawson, 2013) often stands in for more overt forms of racism in Cuba. Therefore, it is often my role to resist colorblindness and push for more race conscious forms of parenting within our family. Concurrently, my husband and I have to negotiate racial, cultural, and language differences within our relationship in order to be more unified and effective as parents. We also have to recognize the distinct challenges of both the Cuban and US contexts and prepare our son to survive and grow within both. In Cuba, for instance, our son is solidly middle class and is privileged in regards to skin tone, nationality, and language. In the US, he is more likely to be considered marginal in economic status, skin tone, and language even as he sometimes is treated as exotic. Our challenge as parents is to critically reflect on our own identities within multiple contexts and in relation to each other, and develop strategies and lessons for our son. This is an ongoing process and one that has implications for the situated nature of identities as well as the importance of an anti-essentialist approach to critical race parenting.

Author

• Christin A. DePouw, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay