091: Do I have privilege?

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting.  Click here to view all the items in this series. Each time I think I’m done with this series on the intersection of race and parenting, another great topic pops up! Listener Ann reached out to me after she heard the beginning of the series to let me know about her own journey of learning about her White privilege. Ann and her husband were a ‘normal’ White couple who were vaguely aware of some of the things they could do to help others (Ann works at a nonprofit) and saw politics as an interesting hobby. Then they adopted a Black daughter and had a (surprise!) biological daughter within a few months, and Ann found that she needed to learn about her privilege – and quickly. She’s had to learn about things like the features of a ‘high quality’ daycare for both of her daughters, how to keep them safe, and we get some feedback from Dr. Renee Engeln about how to help Black girls to see and be confident in their beauty. Ann is openly not an expert on this topic, and does not speak for adoptive Black children, or even for all White adopting parents. But she finds herself far further along this journey of discovering her privilege than the vast majority of us – myself included, until I began researching this series of episodes. Read Full Transcript Jen: 01:24 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. When I started this series of episodes on the Intersection of Race and Parenting, I had no idea it was going to go on for so long. I had initially planned to do the episodes on White Privilege and Parenting with Dr. Margaret Hagerman and White Privilege in Schools with Dr. Allison Roda and then How To Talk About Race with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. After the conversation with Dr. Tatum, I realized that we hadn’t talked a lot about what we should teach about topics like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, and so we went on to cover that with Dr. John Bickford and then I got to chatting via email with Ann Kane who is a listener and who’s our guest today. And so before I tell you about Ann, I just wanted to tell you a snippet about my own journey toward learning about my privilege. Jen: 02:06 I was actually listening to an episode of The How To Get Away With Parenting podcast, which is published by my now friend, Malaika Dower. And in it Malaika made a comment about how it might not be safe for a Black toddler to have a tantrum in a store. And the implication was because the White parents would potentially find this threatening in some way. And if you’d ask me before that moment whether I had White privilege as a parent, I would have said, I really don’t think so because I’m really not sure I could have named a single way in which I experienced this. So uncovering my privilege has been a very deliberate exercise for me that’s taken a lot of hard work because the point of privilege is you don’t really see it. It’s there to protect you from having to see it. Jen: 02:48 But our guest Ann has been forced to confront her privilege in a completely different way. So Ann who is White, spent 10 years working in the field with Doctors Without Borders and she left to work in Program Finance for a nonprofit in New York City so that she and her White husband could raise a family and she adopted a daughter, Alice from the foster care system. Alice was 8 days old at the time and is now just over two and she is Black. And then Ann and her husband had a surprise baby named Audrey who is almost two and is White. So when Ann and I started emailing about this, she told me, “Raising Alice in a society that still has so much structural racism is my biggest parenting worry. I’m so afraid that my White privilege is going to harm her. There’s so much I’m unaware of. And as a White person, I don’t feel I can prepare her for all she’ll face.” Jen: 03:35 That’s when I knew I had to talk with Ann in an episode, because while she isn’t and doesn’t claim to be an expert on race or racism or raising a Black child, she’s been forced to confront her own privilege as a White person and as a White parent to a much greater extent than I have. And then I think probably many of my listeners have as well. So my goal for today is that perhaps you hear something in Ann’s journey that resonates with privilege you didn’t know you had, and maybe you’ll take an action to lift somebody else up who has less privilege than you. So with all that said, welcome Ann. Ann: 04:08 Thank you. Hi Jen. Jen: 04:09 Hi. Welcome to the backside of the microphone. Ann: 04:12 Okay. Jen: 04:13 So, we started each episode in this series with both me and my guests stating our privileges. And so you have heard this before and some of the listeners as well. So I’m just going to state mine really quickly. My Whiteness, my economic status in the upper middle class, heterosexuality, able-bodiedness, my education, and my presence on the land of the Chochenyo Ohlone native Americans to whom I pay a voluntary tax called the Shuumi Land Tax as a form of reparations. Could you please start by telling us some of your privileges? Ann: 04:43 Sure. I think I have pretty much all of the privileges. I’m White, my economic status is the upper middle class, I’m heterosexual enabled body. I have a Master’s Degree. My upbringing in a working middle class family back when it was more financially feasible to do so. I have two married parents who have always been supportive. I think the list goes on and on. Jen: 05:04 Okay. So, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about what you thought about racial prejudice and structural racism before you became a parent. Did you already have an understanding of your privilege? Ann: 05:16 I thought that I did. The more I learned, the more I realized how much I don’t know and how much I still need to learn. Before becoming a parent, I realized how unfair the world was to Black people, but it’s become so much more apparent as the parent of a Black child. Growing up, I was pretty clueless behind the basic history lessons of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Race wasn’t something that was discussed in my family. However, as I get older, I moved to a diverse liberal city and started traveling internationally. So, I became more aware of our country’s long historical structural racism and how it still exists today. We knew when we became foster parents, it would most likely be for African American child. So, we did take that responsibility seriously and really tried to learn all that we can. But as I faced these issues on a daily basis with my daughter, I have learned how much I was unaware of and how much I still have to learn as she grows. Ann: 06:14 I don’t pretend to know anything about what it’s like to be a Black person in America, but being Alice’s mom has taught me a lot about my own privileges. Jen: 06:24 And so what are specifically some of the things that you’ve learned about your privilege as a person? Just as a White person, not even as a parent of a Black child over the last few months? Ann: 06:33 Sure. I think the main one is how much I didn’t have to think about things as I go throughout my life and have conversations in my job and with people on the street and I never have to question anything. I take it at face value that they’re talking to me as me and not as a minority or as how they view me because of my skin color as the dominant race in this country. I know that people are talking to me because of me and with Alice, I have these questions all the time. Is this because of her race or is it for something else that I’m not realizing? So that lack of understanding of how it’s in so many situations that race is a factor. Jen: 07:10 Yeah. I had one of those realizations recently. I went to an event at work, it was called a building bridges conversation and they started out with an exercise, they made us all dance around the room and of course as a profound introvert, this is extremely uncomfortable for me. And so I was kind of annoyed that they were doing this thing. Most of the people who work in a consulting firm are pretty extroverted. They get on well with clients and like socializing and that kind of thing. And I was annoyed that they were putting me in this situation. Jen: 07:41 And then I had a realization afterwards, what if this was how I felt at work all day, every day. The absolute discomfort with just being in this situation with people and also the annoyance that they would put me in that situation. And that was a really profound awakening for me. And I’m not sure that was the lesson I was intended to take out of it, but it was profound for me. So I wonder if we can go on and talk about some of the things you’ve learned since you became the parent of a daughter who’s Black. You told me that you can no longer live just anywhere and you have to live in an accepting community with people who look like Alice and so I think you live in Harlem right now (which for those of you who don’t live in the US is a neighborhood of New York that 60% Black and it holds a huge place in Black history and culture). Did you live there before you became a parent? Ann: 08:30 Yes, I moved here to go to Grad school roughly 15 years ago. Jen: 08:33 Oh, okay. And why did you pick that neighborhood? Ann: 08:37 It is near the university that I attended. It’s actually been gentrified quite a lot. I’m not far from a predominantly White university, but this area was within walking distance but still did not have a lot of White people. And I moved in basically for affordability issues and I...