Motherhood, and race

This is one of those “gotta write down the BONES” 4 a.m. witching hour posts.

Let’s give it a fair starting point. I set my alarm on Saturday night for midnight, hoping for another opportunity to catch the Aurora Borealis waxing spectacularly into the Lower 49 in a way that included Vermont. Unfortunately, Saturday got downgraded significantly (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric predictor, available as an experimental app here: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental). I was already awake, and had gone to bed early so I could be up around midnite. With no where to go, I turned to my audible app for a short read/listen before trying for sleep, again.

The short read that I chose— or, that Spirit/ Higher Power guided me to chose— was a gobsmacking one.

I picked a 35 minute “earworm” entitled “Would You Like To Choose The Race?” by Arvind Ethan David.

In retrospect, I had been warned that this was from a series of EARWORMS; and earworms are defined as “a tune or a piece of music that gets stuck in your head”.

And, that is exactly what happened to me, with the content and the message in this story.

In the summary on the title page of this production, we find ourselves in a slightly near future world where a mixed race couple expecting their first child is offered a new genetic engineering option: to preselect the racial traits presenting in their baby. They won’t be able to choose from ANY race, but the British/ Scandinavian genes of the aristocratic father and the Sub-Saharan African/ British/ Indigenous American genes present in the African-American mother-to-be can be “adjusted” to the physical appearance desired for their 5 month gestating, baby boy-to-be.

YIKES. Earworm, indeed.

Arvind Ethan David is a Malaysian born Brit, educated at Oxford. The issues presented in this production rang very true to me, as the white father to be becomes more aware of what every day life is like for a Black human, in this colonized world of white supremacy. Sure, he’s been married to a Black woman, but that’s not the same as taking responsibility for creating a human who will face significant discrimination and safety risks, simply because of the color of their skin in a rigid caste system. David clearly knows the world of which he speaks.

It is chilling to listen to the options presented/ the risks to be taken.

“Did you know that African-Americans have the highest rate of cancers of any race, for ALL Cancers? And, an infant mortality rate that is twice whites? And a life expectancy that is five years shorter!” says the White Brit Dad—chalk audibly scraping in the background of this radio play as he frantically crunches numbers for his to be son.

“You think?” replies the Black mom, sarcastically.

I won’t continue with the plot of this “audible original”, as it is a good listen, and I want to stay away from spoilers:

Listen to Would You Like to Choose the Race? by Arvind Ethan David on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B0CT3XKRPD

But its story is also the story of my life.

On this Mother’s Day…

With offspring ages 40 and 36…

And 36 years without a living mother, myself…

That short audible originally confronted me with several realities; leaving me ashamed of my own racial naivite.

In my world, my white Baby Daddy was not an aristocratic Brit from a wealthy family with peerage. He was the first generation college, state university product of life south of the Mason Dixon line. I had spent three years with him, before marrying him. Our marriage lasted nine more years, but as you can see by crunching the numbers, that still left me parenting those two bi-racial children for an additional 17 years without a “cohesive base camp” for The Race Work.

My oldest child had been born light skinned enough to present as a blonde, “curly hair like Shirley Temple” little girl. Her life has been that of a Golden Child and of a Daddy’s Girl.

My second born— assigned male at birth— was dark haired and just dusky enough in their skin tone to produce “what ARE you?” microagressions everywhere they went. Their life has looked something like The Dark Side of Hell since age fourteen: alcohol and drug abuse/ psychiatric illness/ a suicide attempt that left them with a broken back and two crushed ankles. They physically healed from that jump off of a bridge onto concrete, but their life in their thirties has descended into a lifestyle of legally prescribed psych meds, psychiatric day programs, and secure public housing. Most relatives agreeing that this is pretty good, “considering the circumstances”.

And what exactly were the circumstances, in the case of my son?Enough stories and dramas with racially motivated themes to turn this essay into a novella!

Here’s my narrative, of What Happened:

—I forced my already inadequate and showing signs of relationship failure husband into a second pregnancy; and he held (STILL holds) too much personal trauma (legacy drama too) to have been expected to parent ANY boy child well.

— the racial ambiguity in my second child, combined with a suburban Boston upbringing, led to many gas-lighting and micro aggressive incidents thoughout his young life.

—the whiteness of his father allowed him to get away with shoplifting and with only minor slaps on the wrist for other actual confrontations with the law. Papa Dear could (and did) bail him out, repeatedly.

—Most significantly, a helter skelter trip as a twenty something adult to his father’s home state of Kentucky resulted in a 911 call from a white uncle for mental health support. The Kentucky police arrived before the mental health team and paramedics. His mis-identification by the dispatcher as “white” is the reason he remains alive today. The police only tazed him— they didn’t shoot him dead— when he surprised them by getting himself out of the handcuffs in the police car ride to jail. Yes, to JAIL— not to a psychiatric ward; because by then he was already charged with physical assault of two police officers.

—my son was as much a Mama’s Boy as his sister was a Daddy’s Girl. Which means that I have been physically assaulted twice in my life by my own flesh and blood, and tolerated levels of verbal abuse that are mind-numbing. And that second assault was life threatening.

If it truly takes a village to raise a child, than my village failed.

After I dissolved my marriage, I parented in a community of seven adults, my own biologic children, and two other children for the next seven years. And, I remained embarrassingly racially naive. There were only two “fully Black'“ adults in that community of seven: myself and my biologic brother. My Baby Daddy’s partners in serially monogamous relationships have been white.

Back to that audible earworm. I hope some of you will listen to the story yourselves. In summary, it is a story that simply posits a future with choices two steps down the slippery slope of genetic selection that has already morphed to a trippy rabbit hole.

EXISTING EXAMPLES

“Why would anybody chose to create a Deaf child when there is a clear option for a ‘healthy’ one?” after the medical success with cochlear implants.

“Why risk a girl, when we can select the sex of our firstborn child, and we want a boy?” once ultrasounds became savvy enough to visualize the sex organs of the fetus, in utero

(elective sex selection results in 164 males born for every 100 females here in U.S https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10504547)

There’s even worse gender selection bias around the world, as we continue to live under patriarchy:

“Worldwide, 142 million girls are missing as a result of son preference, daughter aversion and gender-biased sex selection. These girls were unwanted, neglected, abused or malnourished – deprived of the care they needed to survive.”

(https://www.unfpa.org/son-preference)

So it should be no surprise that white male calculates out as the winner, in “rational” conversations about gender and race.

Just look at what is happening around the world with skin lightening creams. While the meta analysis of use/distribution of dangerous products concludes, “With continued education, online forums, and broadcasted interviews, dermatologists and the media can work together to highlight the beauty of all skin tones and promote skin health and well-being for our patients and society.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072511/

We live in a world where discrimination and prejudice based on different abilities, gender, and race continue to produce abject suffering and misery for far too many.

Slow down the science.

Grow the heart.

Happy Mother’s Day.