The first thing I learned (am learning) is that I really had a lot of stupid white liberal expectations. Boy was I dumb.

I thought that by giving my daughter an African name and raising her in a mostly-black neighborhood that the delicate racial issues would be pretty much ingrained in her. I thought she'd have a jump because what little white girl is called Ashanti? (Can I mention that I named her that before that singer what's-her-name ever came around?) I wanted to give her a sense of her black-ness but I completely bypassed her African-American-ness and concentrated on her African-ness.

I can say that I shunned giving her a "white" name and I shunned giving her a "black" name too. I've gotten very angry at people mis-pronouncing her name as "Ashant-ay" (usually my white siblings). I get angry at my sibs for mis-pronouncing her name because I feel that they're deliberately ghetto-fying her name, her beautiful African name. And then I have to examine what the fuck is wrong with me that I don't want her name ghetto-fied, as if that's such a bad thing. Hell, I basically live in the ghetto (according to my friends in the burbs) although I'll always be quick to say I don't live in the ghetto, I live in the hood. Oh boy. White nonsense going on here big-time.

I've learned that there's no shame in asking my friends what to do about her hair. Everything I know about taking care of her hair I learned from asking. I learned that moisturizer is very, very important. I also learned that total strangers will call me out on the street if her hair's a mess.

I've learned that just because she's racially mixed doesn't mean that she's not culturally white. All my attempts at racial balance have added up to very little, as long as her primary influence is white, white, white. And just cuz she's half-black doesn't stop the other kids from calling her "white girl." And it's not just a reference to the relative lightness of her skin, either. It's her cultural identity. And there's really not much I can do about it that I'm not already doing.

And the big stuff, the stereotypical stuff that I thought she'd be exposed to (racism from both sides) hasn't really happened like I thought it would. There was one time when the boy next door called her a "white nigger", but she didn't even know what that meant. The white kids at school treat her like one of them. The black kids, too. Who knows what the parents are thinking.

I've learned that I had a lot of liberal ideals that meant pretty much nothing. In fact with both kids I learned that everything you assume you know ahead of time doesn't mean anything when it comes to the day-to-day business of raising a kid who refuses to be anything but a basic human being.

*cross-posted at Super Babymama.