Reply #16: My advice [View All]

[kwassa]

as a white man married to a black woman.

Most African-Americans are of mixed-race background, with either white or Native American heritage. They don't know their background, unless stories are passed down, because the US Census didn't have a means, or kept changing that means, of recording it.

The upside for her is that her father and his wife lived just up the road from her when she was a child. She spent a lot of time with them, and both of them (her father AND his wife) referred to her as "our daughter," and treated her as such, and loved her as such, unlike the torture she received from her "real" family. That, of course, didn't sit well with her racist white grandparents (with whom she lived, because her mother abandoned her when she was a baby). But, could those racist (sorry for the repetition) bastards acknowledge her heritage, and let her live with that couple who loved her; that couple of which the male half was her FATHER?

Your wife has a great gift. She knows her father and her mother, for better, and for worse. I think she should connect with both. She should give her attention to those that express care about her most.

My wife does that. She is between two families, though both are black. It is not unlike any divided family from divorce that remarries, though the additional component of race is thrown in there. For some blacks, there is some ingrained, self-hating racism involved, denying their heritage, because it has always been a huge liability to be black in this country. Historically, if one could pass for white, one would do it, because it would make their whole life easier.

PBS had a funny little documentary on descendent's of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. There is a modern branch of the family that denies any black heritage. It happens.

We whites have mixed heritage too, though much of it is not visible. Some recent DNA explorations have been very surprising.

edit to add:

An essential point on this topic was missed by me.

White people NEED to understand that this is a unique experience that they can't have. It is fundamentally impossible to walk in a black person's shoes, no matter how strong their powers of empathy are. It will always be outside the white person's experience. The best we can do is to listen and recognize and support.