"She never expected to be met with hostility and suspicion. Like me, my sister is a Black mixed-race woman. My son is, at a glance, white-presenting, with blond hair and blue eyes. As they travelled together on the London underground, a woman looked at my son, looked at my sister and asked coldly: Are you child-minding? It was humiliating and invalidating."
"I know this feeling well. I have experienced it myself. Surprised looks, invasive questioning. In the 14 months since he was born, I have been asked: Is he yours? a number of times. Sometimes, I am tempted to reply: No, I kidnapped him and strapped him to my chest, just to see what would happen. It isn't the question itself that's an issue. I am not against having a conversation about heritage approached in the right way."
"It isn't the question itself that's an issue. I am not against having a conversation about heritage approached in the right way. But it's the presumption that strangers are entitled to know anything about me, my family and our background, simply because we don't look how they expect us to. And, lying just beneath innocent curiosity, there is often something much darker the implication that a family that looks like mine is inherently suspect, questionable. That we don't automatically belong."
A Black mixed-race woman experienced humiliating public suspicion when a stranger questioned whether she was 'child-minding' a white-presenting baby she was caring for. The child's mother reports repeated invasive questions about parentage and heritage since his birth, provoking feelings of invalidation and anger. The mother sometimes contemplates sarcastic replies to expose the presumption behind such queries. The problem lies in the entitlement of strangers to demand family background and the implication that mixed families are inherently suspect. These daily indignities reflect a wider social trend toward normalising racist and exclusionary attitudes that undermine belonging.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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