I got an ask earlier this week from mariposa-enchantress and she responded to a post I had made about my mother and parenting. She asked me why I had tagged the post as ‘Black parenting’ rather than just ‘parenting’ and if there was a difference. At the time I was at work and not really able to give a full response, but I wanted to write further on this topic.
First, I try to be very meticulous with my tags because I like looking through tags and finding representation of my experiences. Often if I type in an interest of mine I will have to scroll for pages before finding a single Black perspective, Black body, etc. I’ve looked through the ‘mumblr’ and ‘parenting’ tags often enough to realize that those parents often do not face similar challenges and I cannot relate to their experiences.
It is important to me for my tags to reflect my experience which is an innately Black experience. I am a Black mother, I have a Black child and our experiences are defined by many things, however Blackness is what I see as a dominant factor in our lives. Black parenting is different from parenting because it carries with it a host of inequalities and oppression that are not reflected in the parenting of a white child.
Black parenting means that as soon as I became pregnant the racism and injustices of the healthcare system checked the box of ‘poor Black unwed mother,’ and treated me as such for 9 months.
Black parenting means that the nurses in the hospital did not respect my choice to breastfeed because i “didnt understand how hard it was” and fed my sun formula anyway.
Black parenting means that people are constantly shocked by how well behaved my sun is.
Black parenting means that when I take him to a predominantly white playground I see other parents not let their kids play with my sun.
Black parenting means that strangers feel compelled to give me parenting advice such as, “you know he could get a basketball scholarship right?”
Black parenting means that I wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats fearing for my sun’s safety as a Black child in Amerikkka.
Black parenting means that I will have to fight to get my sun what he needs at school and supplement every educational experience he ever has with truths about himself.
Black parenting means that my sun has already confronted overt racism and he’s only 2.
Black parenting means that people assume my sun ‘has no father.’
Black parenting means that when I choose to buy my sun Jordans my finances become a matter of public opinion.
I literally could go on and on, but I think walkingthenarrowway said it best: “Blackness affects practically everything.”
