Today’s Painting Pictures post comes from Angie Washington. Last year I received an email that changed my writing and online relationships. The email was from Angie and Laura Parker, the brains and vision behind the beautiful, uplifting, unique, and challenging website A Life Overseas. Through this site and other writing, Angie is serving and helping people around the globe. Here, she shares her life with wisdom and her colorful family brings an important perspective to the topic of race and racism, every day realities for families of mixed race and for people living in countries where their skin color draws extra attention. I am thrilled to host her voice today. Plus, she and her husband run a bowling alley. That’s cool.
Embrace Race
Upon my shelf sits an extensive collection of Oz books. L. Frank Baum, the Royal Historian of Oz, takes you to worlds full of wonder, adversity, and fantasy. He worked closely with his illustrators in the creation of his stories. In the adventure called “Road to Oz” even the pages are different colors depending on which part of Oz Dorothy is wandering through. Her companion Polychrome – the Rainbow’s Daughter – goes with her to the green pages of the Emerald City, the blue pages of the land of the Munchkins, the purple pages of the North Country of the Gillikins, and the yellow pages of the Country of the Winkies, to name a few.
The fictitious worlds in literature and cinema tell the truth of cultural connections. They teach us to attend to, and thereby value, what makes us so very different yet, all the more, the same as one another. Music matters. Art matters. Food matters. Language matters. Race matters.
I am the Royal Historian of The Washington Family. As such, I keep alive the stories we live together as a family. My first three kids were 3, 2, and 10 weeks when we moved from the U.S.A. to Bolivia, South America. That was over 10 years ago and we have added two Bolivian born children to our family since. As the title Third Culture Kids implies they are growing up as multi-cultural humans. We knew that even if our dream to become missionaries never materialized that our children would be raised multi-culturally.
My husband is black. I am white. I have heard our children call themselves: white, black, pink, and brown. They compare skin color after a day in the sun. Then they add to the descriptive list: red, freckly, tan, and super dark.
We talk about race and racism quite often. Even in the tiny country of Bolivia racism has a hold. One taxi driver saw my chubby, light-skinned boy on my lap and told me I was “improving the Bolivian race” by allowing a white child to be born as a Bolivian. My kids notice it, too.
“Mama, they were talking bad about a kid at school.”
“Oh? Tell me what happened.”
“They were saying mean things to her because her skin is dark.”
“Yes. That happens. What do you think about that?”
“I am a different color than they are. I wouldn’t like it if someone treated me different because of my skin color.”
This was spoken by a little person who has only a textbook knowledge of their racial roots. They can watch youtube videos of the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.; but they have yet to feel the pain of racial slurs. Concepts like slavery and prejudice have a unique skew in their minds because they are also mixed with the Bolivian history of conquistadores and colonialism.
Chronicled in the annals of mankind, lay side by side the embarrassing behaviors of racism next to the celebration of individuality. We mustn’t try to cover up one by exalting the other. Nor must we adopt the victim mentality of one and deny the redeeming power of the other. The stories need to be told.
My kids were born in a nation still figuring out what to do with their race. Now they have been removed from that tension. We have a new tension to manage. I am grateful for the third culture of “The Washington Family” so we have a platform to discuss things like race, pride, and nationalism. We can’t ignore it. We embrace it.
Parents, how do you experience, and talk about, issues of race with your Third Culture Kids? TCKs, how have you experienced and discussed race? What has been helpful/not helpful?
Angie Washington and her husband, DaRonn, have five children. Adoption is very close to her heart. One of their kids is adopted, but they also run an orphanage called The House of Dreams, located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where they live. For over a decade she has been serving alongside her husband to establish and administrate: a church, the orphanage, a K-12 school, and a network to aid pastors and church leaders. Her passion for words takes form in writing, blogging, and teaching (all bilingually).
You can find Angie on:
Twitter , Facebook, and her blog: “the @”
You have articulated the experience of our family (minus the move to Bolivia) and this conversation continues to this day, 45 years after my aunt married a Fijian. It continues with their daughters, and their grandchildren, and it is revived anew in my own family. My grandson’s father is Jamaican.
The context has been mostly Northern Canada where my cousins were mistaken for First Nations or East Asians, and regularly subjected to racial slurs and discrimination in ‘tolerant, multi-cultural Canada’ that have scarred them both.
A recent observation by my six year old grandson that “no one has skin like —-(his cousin)” made all of the adults present comprehend that this little boy is growing up Third Culture in the land of his birth. It galvanized us into initiating what turned out to be a hilarious conversation with two four year olds and a six year old about skin colour; being the only “blackish” person around; and why there are no more “like me” in the white bread city where my daughters live. The look on my grandson’s face when we showed him a picture of his Fijian uncle made us realize we have been seriously remiss in not discussing what we, the adults were blind to. He is different, he knows it, and he needs the opportunity to talk about it.
Thanks for another great post in this series.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Susannah. Conversations with children of those ages are always amusing and enlightening. As adults we have learned the socially and politically acceptable script regarding race. The millenials, with a higher percentage of acceptance for mixed race couples than ever before, are teaching us a new way to speak about race. Racism still exists, but unlike before, more voices also exist to help us see other perspectives.
The conversation of race comes up rarely in our family, but when it does it usually centres around how we are all created in God’s image and therefore perfectly made. I teach in a third grade class, with 9 children from Bolivia and beyond. This conversation comes up more with them and for sure I centre it around God’s image and we are all equal in His eyes.
Hey Carin, my friend! Thanks for chiming in! Such an interesting concept: equality. It would be very interesting to hear how your third graders define equality. And even beyond grasping the concept mentally, how they feel they live that out in their interactions with others.
I just had a new idea dawn on me sitting here thinking about your emphasis on God’s image. Hm. Pure light fractured by a prism shows us the infinite band of colors contained in that light. Jesus is the Light of the World. All peoples are created in His image. Every skin tone is a facet of the glory of God… hm. Need to ponder that more…
Thanks, Mrs. Guthrie 😉
we used to laugh a bit at our kids – they were convinced that all black skinned people spoke french… my uncle (from deep south mississippi) did not appreciate it when they tried to speak french to him. it was also an eye-opening and uncomfortable and a huge learning experience to become the minority after having always been a part of the majority in my home culture. it has made our children more sensitive to recognizing others who are different and they often try and make them feel welcome… because they’ve been there and understand how hard it is to be the only one who looks like they don’t belong ~
great post, angie!
Richelle, your kids have been given a rare gift. What a great joy to know they are not bitter about it but they have turned it for good. They must have some very intentional and kind parents to help them choose to let feelings of being ostracized tenderize their hearts with compassion.
At the beginning of this year our missionary team consisted of: two black men, two Latina-White women (Puerto Rico and Ecuador), and me. One of the black men and his wife with roots in Puerto Rico have just gone. So as a white person I have always been, and continue to be, the “minority who is not from a minority group” on our team. Once another missionary in town who was the majority race in his passport country asked one of the black men on our team, “What is it like being a minority?” He went on to explain the odd feelings of being the minority here in Bolivia. Growing up a minority is a very different thing than being thrust into a minority position in your adulthood.