You’re going to hear about how to prepare your multiracial child for the realities of anti-Blackness, and how to help them handle microaggressions from family.
Multiracial children are often pressured to choose only one of their ethnic or racial identities with which to identify. Dr. Nanika Coor talks with psychologist Dr. Jennifer Noble to get some tips for parents hoping to raise their multiracial child to have a healthy racial identity that includes all of their family ancestries.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor.
Find Dr. Jennifer Noble on the web:
https://www.drjennpsych.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drjennpsych/
Have a parenting question? Email Dr. Coor at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.
Find Project Parenthood on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the Quick and Dirty Tips newsletter for more tips and advice.
Project Parenthood is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.
Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/subscribe
https://www.facebook.com/QDTProjectParenthood
https://twitter.com/qdtparenthood
https://brooklynparenttherapy.com/
Hey parents! You're listening to the Project Parenthood podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor, clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll introduce you to the same respectful parenting practices that I use to help parents repair and deepen connections with their children. You’ll get tips for cultivating more parental self-compassion, more cooperation from your kids, and more joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
In today’s episode, I’m talking with Dr. Jennifer Noble, a multiracial psychologist who works with mixed race folks. You’re going to hear about how to prepare your multiracial child for the realities of anti-Blackness, and how to help them handle microaggressions from family. Stick around till the end to learn about ways to help your child embrace all parts of themselves.
—
Dr. Jennifer Noble (Dr. Jenn) is a licensed psychologist, lover of adolescents and coach for parents of mixed race children. She is the creator of The Mixed Life Academy, an app and online coaching community for parents of mixed race kids helping them raise confident, resilient children. She has a private practice in Los Angeles where she works with teens, their parents, women of color, and other marginalized groups. She taught collegiate-level psychology for over 15 years. Her passion for identity freedom and the mixed race experience is fueled by her lived experience as an African American and Sri Lankan Tamil woman.
Here’s my chat with Dr. Jenn:
The following is a rough transcript of the conversation. Please refer to the audio for final quotations.
Dr. Nanika Coor:
Hi everyone. I'm here now with Dr. Jennifer Noble. Dr. Noble, I'm so glad to have you here at Project Parenthood to shed some light on how we can help multiracial kids develop a healthy racial identity.
Dr. Jennifer Noble:
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
NC:
Before we jump in and start talking about the, like how-tos of parenting multiracial kids, can you tell us a bit about your journey and what led you to working with multiracial folks?
JN:
I guess, you know, part of the journey is, it's my own journey. So I kind of spent a lot of time just thinking about my own kind of mixed race identity. My own processing started in high school, but definitely in college is when I started kind of digging into research and kind of realizing that, “Oh, it's not just my own experience. There are lots of other people who are like me,” you know? I did an independent study and, I had to go and find these research articles and, I found a lot on Black, white mixes. And what really shocked me is, I started to find articles,and dissertations on Black and Japanese or Black and another and I was just like, “what?
This is amazing.” There's like groups of people. And so that kind of led me down this journey where I found an organization, which I always talk about. It's called Multiracial Americans of Southern California.I was going to school in Michigan at the time, but I was like, “Wow, there's even organizations. This is wild.” So I joined it as a student and I went to a conference and met some bigger names in research, and I just stayed connected in that way. And then when I started graduate school, that was the focus of my dissertation and I became on the board of that same organization I was talking about. So I was president, past president, vice president, blah, blah, blah. I was just really heavily involved. We did a lot of work with people doing seminars to social events, and I just started hearing some similar themes and a lot of the same topics either from parents or from mixed race adults that would come to our events.
And along that time, the undercurrent was I was finishing up with psychology, doing internships, doing all these things. So somewhere down the line I was starting the private practice and I realized everyone at those seminars would always ask, “Who could I send my kid to?” Or, “What should I say as parents?” Or, “How could I do this?” So I was like, “Why am I not doing this
NC:
It's always interesting to know how so many of us psychologists come to our niche based on our own personal experience, so many of us. Before we really dive into the nitty gritty, I wanted to sort of define some terms that we might end up using. And one that comes to mind when I'm thinking about multiracial people and especially multiracial people of African descent, is the one drop rule. And I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about that and what that means and how it intersects with things like colorism and passing?
JN:
Yeah. Well, I think there's probably a lot we could say about the one drop rule. The one drop rule was designated after the US Census attempts to quantify genealogy in people. For Black folks and all people of color, they wanted to know how much of some sort of minority group you had in your bloodline. So you had names for those with Black parentage like Quadroon, Octa, Mulatto, all of these antiquated terms that we no longer use, but these were ways of saying you have a fourth an eighth, et cetera. But they used these same numbers for Native Americans, et cetera. And I think once the math got too hard, like once you got to like one eighth and they're like, “Oh no, we're running outta words for like one 16th.”
They just kind of simplified it and said, “If you have even one drop of a non-white heritage in your background, then you are no longer white.” And so it was just a way to maintain white supremacy and this false idea of the purity of the white race, because if you have one drop, you're no longer pure, so you gotta go in the people of color box. So that's the simplified way of looking at it. It did apply to all minority groups, but because in our country perhaps we have this really strong Black/white binary,and perhaps because Black Americans also internalized this one drop rule, then it's lived on. Because white people used to say, “Oh, you have one drop of Black, you're Black cuz you can't be anything else anymore.”
Black people have also adopted that and said, “Well, if you got one drop of Black you’re Black, and you need to own that. You need to be proud of it.” It comes out of that experience of oppression, “Well, that's what you told me I had to do. Well then gosh darn it, I'm gonna do it,and you're not gonna hold me back, and I'm gonna fight and resist whatever else you're trying to say that means.” But it caused a host of complications as well since then.
NC:
I'm thinking about the way that you spoke about white supremacy as well and the way the one drop rule really upholds that and the idea that you're “contaminated” if you have a single drop of Black blood, if you will. Right. And, how making white people one thing and everyone else another thing also allows white people to be the only ones who can own land. The only ones who can have property. It separates white people, “We can have these things and everyone else cannot.”
JN:
It maintains their power.
Maintains their power and keeps a whole other group oppressed or marginalized. And so you mentioned passing, so that's where that comes in. If you had folks that maybe had white parenting back in the day, but for whatever reason their phenotype is very light skin or their hair,maybe it's curly, but they can straighten in such a way that people can't tell, et cetera, then they would choose to live life as a white person. So this is passing, which means then they were able to get access to the things they would be prevented from if they were Black. Being cognizant that passing was quite a serious choice, it came with a lot of stress. Sometimes people had to hide or to separate themselves from their family, perhaps their own parents because they couldn't get found out all because they were just wanting to try to survive and move on up in the world or have-
NC:
Access to white privilege.
JN:
Exactly. Right. So then they would get a negative connotation from those who perhaps could not pass, or maybe could pass and chose not to out of solidarity with their group. It just caused a lot of division and separation. And I think that piece has carried on today through colorism.
NC:
And can you talk a little bit about colorism?
JN:
Colorism is anything closer to white being somehow better, preferred, getting more access, getting more opportunities, maybe being even perceived as safer, smarter, more beautiful. And then anything darker being the opposite of all of that. So when you speak of colorism and passing together and that division that it created, I think so many years ago, you really did have a lot of passing Black folks really maltreating the Black folks that couldn't pass. And that created a lot of contention and that just means that other people would be like, “Oh, I know who your family isn't. You think you're doing this, but I got your number.” And that causes a lot of,just a lot of pain. You know, it's a lot of trauma and a-
NC:
Lot of pain. It's a lot of internalized oppression. All of it. The idea that colorism is just this internalized notion that lighter skin is somehow better. Andd how that passes down through generations and generations and how it still is can be seen today in films and in media.
JN:
I guess what I was trying to get at as well, I think it's been passed down and we've lost this original context of where all that pain and actual conflict and ostracizing and oppression came from. And now someone who is light-skinned might be told, “Oh, you think you're better,” or “You think you're this,” or “You're that” when really, they're like, “But I didn't do anything. I wasn't even trying to like wield anything over you yet
NC:
We're all sort of caught in that web whether we like it or not,and as you're saying, we're all perpetuating something and we don't really even know why. And it just seems like it's normal and natural.
JN:
It's out of real pain and real trauma for darker folks to be maybe suspicious or be like, “mm, I don't know.” You know, “You think this,” or “I've experienced a lot of pain.” because think about the fine tooth comb hanging at the door and you couldn't get in or paper bag tests. I mean, that was done by Black folks too, Black folks. So there's just a lot of, like I said, we took that one drop rule and ran with it trying to get access to that power.
NC:
Right. And we didn't even create that. Right. That was all just a made up thing so that a certain group of people could have power, but then it affects generations of humans.
JN:
I think it's also fair to say colorism is worldwide. We see that impact of white supremacy and trying to maintain that this is the best and we should have the most power. Every single country has it.
NC:
And where colonialism was.
JN:
There you go,
NC:
Thanks for that and thanks for clarifying those things. So switching gears, and thinking about parents and their multiracial kids, what can parents do to support multiracial kids? Can you talk a little bit about how imposing a Black monoracial identity on a multiracial person of African descent might perpetuate the one drop rule?
JN:
Yeah.I see this happen so much. I think a lot of times parents, especially the parent that does not identify as Black, thinks they're doing a good thing by saying, “look, you're Black. Just go into the world and be Black.” That's great. I don't have a problem with that, except for when it's, “You're only black and that's what you are and you just gotta forget everything else.”The simple way of saying it is just perpetuating again, this notion of if you got this minority thing, you can only be that you have no permission to be a member of the other group, which is already wrong.I think sometimes parents don't realize that that's what they're saying, but for that child who has a parent who is not Black, at some point they're gonna come up against a wall of like, “Oh wait, I'm not just,” you know, like, okay, everybody kept saying,
I'm Black, I'm Black, I'm Black.” Either I'm gonna meet a peer, or I'm gonna think about my family tree. I'm gonna go to grandma's house. Something is gonna make me have this moment of conflict internally to say to myself, “Oh wait, but I'm not just that. Now, how do I reconcile that?” And if the parents are not able to give enough language, it's just a thing that that child has to navigate on their own, and it shouldn't be.
NC:
So it sounds like it can be somewhat damaging to a person's self-esteem or self-concept of how they understand themselves. If there's only one way they're allowed to “identify”. What about this other side of my family? What, who am I to them? What does that side mean to me? Can I claim that? Is that okay? There's a lot of not knowing if it's okay to even claim the other parts of yourself, and then having to sort of choose one side of your family over the other. It seems like it would be quite a conflict internally.
JN:
It's just a lot of conundrum, and especially if the parent who told you that is not Black, then you're kind of like, “So what does that mean for us? How does our connection now make sense in the world?” It's a really powerful statement that I don't think a parent can hear because they're saying it from a monoracial space.
NC:
Can you explain a little bit about what monoracial means when you say that?
JN:
Sure. Monoracial just means that both of your parents are coming from the same racial group. This is a person that would've all their life understood themselves as one racial group, checks that off on any kind of census form. And then multiracial or mixed race is when you have one parent of one racial group and another parent of either a different racial group or maybe two or more racial groups.
NC:
How do we help multiracial Black kids or multiracial children of African descent cope with anti-Blackness, especially when they don't phenotypically fit society's vision of what Black is? To one's eyes, they don't necessarily look like a black person. They may come up against a lot of anti-Blackness and how do we help them manage that?
JN:
I think for me it has to be through discussions, a lot of open, honest discussions about the truth of the matter, which is talking to the kid and saying, “This is what you look like. Let's just be real. These are the things that are your phenotype. Here is what everybody thinks this group should look like. They're gonna expect that feature. They're gonna expect these things and that's what they've classified as Black.” But then you get to present the truth of the matter, which is, “Who is your mom? Who is your dad? Those are your parents.” And let the kid be like, “Yeah.” “So then you are a member of both of those groups, no matter what anyone says or whatever kind of category they feel that you should look like to be a part of that group.”
I think to me, being able to start those types of very matter of fact attitude conversations, and almost just dismiss the pressure of it all and come back to that kid and be like, “But who's grandpa? You know, like, “Okay, but who is auntie so-and-so Is that your auntie?” Like, “That's your auntie Right?” “ Yeah.” “Okay, well then what does that mean about you? Do you look like auntie? No. And that's okay. Does Uncle Fred look like, whatever.” You can find people in your family that don't look alike, but helping that child really understand, okay, what I look like is not the only thing that ties me to this group of people. So to me that means that not only does that matter of fact conversation have to happen, but a lot of cultural exposure is gonna be really important so that that kid can say, “Yeah, I might not look like what you think I should look like, but I know the things I'm familiar with, this richness, my history, the current, the past, all of it.”
And let them feel that connection of like, you can't take that away from you. Oh, okay. I get it now. . I think you get a great example of that with Zendaya. I know she's like a hot topic for a lot of young folks, but she is one person that a lot of people try to say, “Uh, she ain't Black.” Or “Look at her, she doesn't look this enough. She doesn't look that enough.” And she's like, “I wish you would tell me anything other than what I already know myself to be. And I will continue to be bold about my heritage and I'm not gonna deny who my mom is. I'm gonna be open and honest. I am white, I am Black, and I'm mixed race. and I'm pro all of it. I'm not about to hide anything.” So you have a lot more people that are taking that stance. And if a parent struggles, I think showing some of those examples of like, look, she doesn't look it and she's still doing it. That kind of thing.
NC:
Thank you. It makes sense to even think about how parents can use people in the media and other people who are expressing these sentiments that you are trying to impart to your child. Especially if it's someone they look up to. Right. And I think it's really great what you said about dismissing the pressure right from the beginning, like letting them know, “People will pressure you. And so I'm letting you know that's not something you need to even take on. Because that's not even the truth.”
JN:
It's not your problem, it's their problem. You kind of present that matter of fact. Like, “Look at how much they got themselves stuck in a box by defining this group only by this thing. And that's as far as they got. There's no flexibility there. Well that sucks for them cuz we already know the truth.” You can give past examples. I think Frederick Douglass is a great example, like the history of Frederick Douglass is unquestioned that he's a Black man, he did all these great things until you're like, “You know, he had a White parent Right?” Wait, what, okay. But he gets to be Black, but this person doesn't just based on what you think they look like. I mean, that's the logic you get to present to your kid and show the fault in the logic so that they can kind of be in on a secret of like, “Oh, they don't get it. Okay. Oh, they're ignorant. Oh, that's just silly.” And help that child embrace that. It gives them resilience when, when they hear it.
NC:
Things are gonna come at you, but here's how you might deal with that and here's how to think about that. And so, as we're talking about that, I'm thinking about,the history, right? The generations of systemic oppression and unconscious bias, negative stereotyping, discrimination, you know, a multiracial child most likely will come up against these things. And do we handle those the same way? How do we prepare our children for the fact that someone may discriminate against them because they're not a white person?
JN:
I think it's a great question. If we're talking about children, then again, you bring it up in an age appropriate way. Presenting the idea of racism, and it doesn't have to be a painful discussion. It again, can take that matter-of-fact approach. So in my view, I would start with melanin. Cuz melanin is a fact. You can just be like, “Did you know what melanin is? How does melanin work?” And then you can have a week or two of fun when you're out and be like, “Look, that person has a lot of melanin. Oh, they have less than me.” You know, just letting the kid be like “melanin all around,” you know? And then help them understand, “Did you know that some people decided to classify people by the amount of melanin they had and they just decided that one level was better than another?
And isn't that silly?” There's a great book that does a great job of explaining this. I think it's, Our skin: A First Conversation About Race and it literally spells it out in that way and breaks down race, racism, why it's a problem, et cetera. But to me, that's where you start because everything comes from that. If a kid can at least understand that concept and then they go somewhere, or, God forbid they are not invited to Sally's birthday party because I don't know, she said she can't have brown kids at her birthday party. Totally possible thing that still happens in 2023. Allow them to process that pain. But then you can say, “Look, she didn't even get to enjoy your friendship because she was focused on melanin only. She didn't even get to know you.” And that kid can start to kind of just internalize that and be like, “Wow, that's the only reason. Yes, that sucks, but also that's dumb.”
It's just dumb.
NC:
Yes. The next question I have is sort of about, you know, teaching kids about race in a way that doesn't leave them feeling like you're reinforcing negative stereotypes. Like as you were talking about a mixed race person who might be white and Black. Right? And so they have both histories, right? So how do we, help a child with these two histories to reconcile that without having a demoralizing sense of racial identity?
JN:
I think that one of the ways is demystifying the whole concept of the hierarchy and the white supremacy of it all. But then I think this is something a lot of parents struggle with, especially if there is a white parent and a Black parent, especially if it's white American, because the experience of many white Americans is, “I don't know, my culture, all I'm made aware of is this power that I've been afforded or this privilege that I've been afforded.” For me, it's very important for all parents to look at their own racial identity. So that would mean, white racial identity is a necessary piece of this puzzle, but maybe they can start to be like, “You know what, okay, how did I grow up?
What foods did I eat? Where did we live? Is there a certain identity from living in the Northeast or being from California or maybe I grew up, white and Midwest and we love green bean casserole or whatever it is.”
NC:
I think it's important as you say that a lot of white people may not know about their Irish heritage or their German heritage or whatever that is. And if you did find out about that, there is a history there. You're not just white period. Right. That's a made up thing.
JN:
Yeah. I think it's really important. I mean I've definitely worked with some families where again, it was, you know, a white parent and that parent upon being forced to talk about it, started to realize, “Oh wait, my grandparent actually spoke German. Like I didn't get to learn it, but wait, so then maybe my parents might still speak. Why didn't they speak German to me?” And then that parent was like, “You know what? I wanna connect myself to my German heritage and then I can pass something on to my kid.” So I think it's a great example that exploration and the journey can happen for all the people in the family.
NC:
Absolutely. And speaking of families, I recently did an interview about transracial adoption and we discussed unpleasant messages that some Black kids get from their own non-Black family members and having to deal with microaggressions and racism in your own home. And some multiracial people also have the experience of invalidation and microaggression and rejection by their own families because of how they choose to identify. And so I'm thinking if there are any young people listening, and I know you work with young people, what advice do you have for a young person about how to cope with invalidation about how you identify, especially when it's coming from your own family and you feel that feeling? We were talking about you're not enough to claim that identity. You're not enough the way you look. What could you say to this young person who might be listening?
JN:
Well, of course it depends on how young, but if they're getting a little bit older, 12 and up, let's say,and if they've had enough conversations where both of their parents have made them feel confident and secure that they can claim their heritage no matter what they look like, I think beginning to push back with family in a gentle, loving way. It doesn't have to be disrespectful and you're tearing up the place and causing conflict. But it is again, an opportunity to call family members out on either the bias that they don't hear, or just the illogical nature of what they're saying. Because if a family member wants to say, “You know, boy, you ain't Black, get outta here,” something like that, then the kid can be like, “But aren't you my uncle?”
You know, like, “ Aren't you like the brother to my whatever?” And then let the person answer and then be like, “Okay, well then you don't make any sense. I'm literally related to you, so what are you saying?” Or,If they use it as an excuse to kind of deny some other thing that they're saying, then they can call that like, “Oh, well, don't try to reject me when it's convenient for you because you don't like what I said,” but I think it would need a lot of practice for that kid to feel comfortable to speak up in a way. It could be jokey kind of side remarks to remind the family member like, “Oh, come on. you can't call me that forever.” Or, “ You know claim me,” or, you know, something like that to kind of, “Haha, but also please stop.”
You know? So there's ways of setting boundaries, and being encouraged by the parents to have permission to assert themselves in that way. Because I think what happens is, or why it's so painful is that number one, a kid doesn't know that they can defend themselves verbally. Maybe the parents are silent in the same moment, so now this kid is getting called some nickname by their family, and maybe their parents are also kind of giggling along because they don't know how to stop it, then that child is like, “I don't have any voice here, so I'm going to have to suffer in silence.” And that's painful.
NC:
I like what you said there about, giving your child permission to speak up. You're allowed to assert your truth. You're allowed to say, even if it's an adult, you're allowed to say, “Hey, that's not okay to say about me.”
And so as we're coming to the end of our time together, I'm wondering if there are any myths about multiracial identity that you wanna clear up?
JN:
Gosh, there's so many, but I think one of the ones that I think is the most pervasive, I guess especially when I think of mixed race folks that have a Black parent, is this idea of, “oh, you're confused.” It's a common one across the board. But I think it's a myth because there's no confusion for the person. They know who they are, they know who their parents are, but perhaps the struggle is trying to fit society's expectation that you should only identify with one category. So then that can become confusing when you sit there and you're like, “Wait, but you only want me to check one box, but I'm literally not.” You know? And so then they sit there and like, “Well, then which one should I choose?” And everybody else is like, “See,you confused.
You don't even know who you are.” And they're like, “No, I do, but your form doesn't let me,” or, “You are telling me I can't.” So I think to me, that's a really important distinction to make really for everyone, but especially for the kids, so that they don't feel, “Oh, I'm confused. I'm lost. I don't know who I am.” It's like, “No, no, no, you've known who you are since day one cuz you know who your family is. This is just set up in such a way that it doesn't allow for you to exist. It doesn't allow you to affirm yourself.” You know?
NC:
Absolutely. It is not your problem. Society, your environment, is what has the problem. And I think that that's true for so many things.
JN:
Right. You can be more than one thing at once, but I think it's just hard for people to accept that concept because it's about race and we've spent so much time making distinct “racial categories”. But I think if we were to ask somebody, “You're a sister and you're also a daughter, but which one are you?” And then-
NC:
“Are you a sister? Are you a daughter?”
JN:
“I'm both.” “No, well, you can only be one.” “Are you half sister? Are you half daughter? Like, which one are you more, what are you more identified with?” And the person's gonna be like, “What the heck? I'm both at the same time.”
NC:
JN:
Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. This has been fun.
—
I hope that’s helpful!
You can learn more about Dr. Jennifer Noble’s work at https://drjenntherapy.com/ and follow her on Instagram @drjennpsych.
You can learn more about my work with parents at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com and follow me on Instagram at BKPARENTS.
If you have more questions about raising multiracial kids, or any other parenting questions or stories, leave me a message at (646) 926-3243 and be sure to let me know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. Or, send an email to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to Project Parenthood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch you next week!