What my white baby taught me about racism

When my oldest child, Rowan, was born, I remember experiencing, like many new moms have, the interactions with family, friends, and strangers that were now solely about and focused on my newborn baby. Before becoming a parent, the topic of conversation you engage in is always something you have firsthand experience in, naturally, since you don’t commonly engage in conversation with someone about something you’re not directly related to.

​So having a newborn baby in my arms or pushing him around in a stroller, and having other people start a conversation with me about him, and only him, was a new experience in and of itself. “Oh he’s precious, how old is he?” “How much did he weigh at birth?” “Was he delivered via C-section or naturally?” “Did he latch on okay and is he still breastfeeding?” 

Yet there was a particular comment that was consistently made about him, especially from the older generation of Cuban and Hispanic women that surround us living here in South Florida. The comment was always a variation of this: “He is so white!”, or “he’s [as white as] a bottle of milk!” (“es un pomo de leche!”).

I remember feeling confused at these comments. I thought “What an ODD thing to say about someone’s baby?” As a new mom, everything already seemed foreign to me and at the time, I was still learning how to navigate the waters of polite questioning from strangers, family and friends, and the unsolicited advice I received from so many of them on how to feed, change, bathe, and raise my baby. So, I did what any sensible, Hispanic girl would do and I asked my mom. I asked her whether this kind of commentary, on my baby’s skin color, was normal in the realm of babies and motherhood. She couldn’t give me a straight answer. Instead, I recall her dismissing it as nothing out of the ordinary and she simply said, “well, he is very white and people can’t help but compliment him on it”.                

That’s when I realized the truth of what she said to me. These comments people made about my baby’s skin color weren’t meant as observations or mere side comments, they were being given to me as ​compliments. As in, it was a “good thing” that his skin was so light. In fact, they thought it was such a good thing, that it was worthy of mentioning, out loud to me, his mother, a woman they barely knew, that his skin was so milky white because they regarded it as a positive, as if on par with factors like being a great sleeper and having good health. 
 
The notion that my son deserved praise because he was SO WHITE unsettled me. 
                                        
It was a moment in my life that made me stop and assess my surroundings, the people that I interact with on a daily basis, and the community I was living in. How could they still value something as arbitrary as skin color this much? How could they comment on it, so frequently, and fail to realize the impact of their words? How could they throw around comments like that, praising the whitest baby in the room without listening to the damage their words were causing to the smallest and most sensitive ears those words fall on?  
                                        
All of these comments came from Hispanic or Cuban women, and typically all of an older generation. I understand that there is an entire cultural divide between myself and these women that will never be bridged. While I don’t expect to undo decades worth of unconscious (and conscience) racism, resentment, and hate that has been taught and built into these women, it’s frustrating to realize  how subliminal their prejudice is. It runs so deep that they don’t even realize that they’re saying something negative about an entire race when, in their minds, they’re just trying to be nice and pay me a “compliment” on my newborn baby. Hence how dismissive my mom was of the comments when I pressed her on it.

What is scarier even still about all of this subliminal and institutionalized racism is the lasting effect their words are making on the younger generation, not only their children but their grandchildren as well. What kind of example are these women setting for the youngest ears they’re likely spoiling, cooking for, and helping to raise in many households?  

Personally, this experience made me hyper alert of the kind of comments I make to people, including and especially around my children. I know I have to be extremely careful of the thoughts that come into my head that then turn into the words that come out of my mouth and ultimately become the actions I take. My kids are watching me and it’s my job to make sure I do better for them, so that they can do better for their kids, and each generation continues doing better than the last.

It’s obvious that this chain of negativity, racism, and hate continues to bind one generation after another. It’s all over the media, it’s on our streets, and it’s in our schools, businesses, and neighborhoods. People are hurt and upset, and rightfully so. But if you don’t stop to recognize the things you are saying to others, to your friends, to your family, and to your own neighbor, in your everyday life, and ask yourself, “WHY? Why would I think that? Why would I associate white skin with something that is good?”, then how will any of this change? How will we ever set better examples for our kids if we don’t correct our own actions and reverse those unconscious thoughts, that become seemingly harmless comments, and inevitably, conscious racist actions?

No matter if you’re white, black, Hispanic, or Asian, everyone wants a better tomorrow for their kids. EVERYONE. We all share that in common and always will. Yet to build that better tomorrow, the change needs to start today and with every one of us making the conscious choice to stop these small prejudices and discriminatory thoughts from becoming the unjust decisions of tomorrow.

For reference, here is a picture of my newborn baby boy, AKA my "Milk Bottle White" Baby