05/06/2025
Teaching kindness in an unkind world-
I was adopted by white parents and I am mixed race. I always identified as mixed race. I am African-American and Italian. My parents were born in 1931 and 1927. This was an era with noted marks in race relations. There was the rise of Jim Crow laws which marked the visible segregation of whites and blacks. Before my mother was born in 1927 the Ku Klux Klan had over four million members. My father, who was born in a small town in rural Oklahoma in 1931, was surrounded by racist thinking and segregation. In Oklahoma the 1920’s and 1930’s were marked with violence and strife for African-Americans.
I had asked my father one day how his mindset changed towards people of color. He said he attributed it to his time in the military during the Korean War. He chose to listen and to learn from people of color around him. He grew up with the intensity of hating people he did not know and was taught to have a certain perception of others who didn’t look like him or talk like him. It took four years of serving in the military to start the process of un-learning learned behaviors.
My mother was the youngest of 12 and I think that attributed towards her being a motherly, accepting person and looking past the color of someone’s skin. My uncles and my aunts were so kind and loving to me and I never thought I looked different or felt different just because of my skin color.
My parents raising me together were defiantly a mix of parenting styles. My father always told me “Don’t take any crap from anyone who treats you badly!” My mother was always telling me “if someone is mean to you, kill em with kindness!” it was confusing to say the least. Growing up, I stood out being mixed with white parents and I was always the brunt of micro-aggressions, blatant racism and bullying. It was hard to deal with all of that in a world with no social media and no internet. No bullying rules or laws and very little support. Some days it was an internal fight to not have resentment build up inside of me against people I shared the same color with who made fun of me for having a white family and white kids who made fun of me for just existing. Kindness is free though. And that’s what I chose. My mother instilled pride in me for being mixed, for being artistic and weird. It gave me courage to confront those who bullied me and talk to them with compassion for them to see I don’t let their words break me down.
As I transitioned to adulthood I developed a better understanding of why we are the way we are raised. Learned behaviors aren’t necessarily a bad thing. My father was exposed to what he thought was right. You can’t fault him for that. You can’t fault my grandfather for that. Being exposed to differences can help un-learn those learned behaviors. What I experienced in school with racism and bullying was learned behaviors. There was a developed bias from the assumption that was made about me. It existed within that social group and anything different then that behavior was unacceptable. I could not hate those kids for that. Raising my kids was also full of those biases because my kids are white and Hispanic/white. We did not represent what a typical family should look like and therefore judgement was passed. I know as a mother it made me tired. I wanted to go scream at my neighbor who called CPS on us numerous times. Who referred to me as the “black foster mother” long after I adopted my children. I had to stop and breathe because my energy HAD to stay on my kids. Not on others. I had to keep that mindset I developed as a kid and carry it forward.
My words, my actions matter. What I was taught growing up will translate to how my kids develop perceptions of others. I also have to have a willingness to learn and accept others differences and opinion’s. I can agree to disagree but learning is the key to growth. Racism in any form is not okay. Developing an understanding of how that person got to this point is ok. Giving them a teachable moment through your personal experience, through history is valuable and can last a lifetime in that person’s life.
People DO have the ability to change. People do have the ability to be kind.
