Postcolonial parenting
<We thought we were raising an enlightened child, Tama Ward writes, but have we robbed our daughter of her cultural roots?
<At breakfast, in the glass-towered city of Vancouver, five-year-old Abigail looks glumly at her half-eaten bowl of cereal.
<"What is it, honey?" I brush the bangs back from her face.
<She lets out a big sigh. "I wish I wasn't white."
<I start. Nothing in the parenting manuals has prepared me for that.
<"All we've ever done is hurt people," she continues. "I wish my skin was dark and that I had a culture."
<We live in a part of the city where immigrant families abound. Our neighbours are homesick, first-generation Mexicans, which means that salsas and pinatas and Aztec legends feature prominently at shared social gatherings. Our family regularly eats in Little India where we gush over the flavours of curry and dhal, and every February, we attend the Chinese New Year parade in the slanting rain. Plus, my husband and I are children of missionaries and harbour an acute guilt for the cultural imperialism of our forebears. To compensate, we've raised our children with a deep appreciation of non-Western cultures.
<So when Abigail laments the colour of her white skin, part of me is programmed to protest. Is it not my moral obligation to tell her that her feelings of poor self-worth are nothing compared with the psychological ruin of real racism? Girl, everything about Canadian culture weighs in your advantage and you have no right to snivel!
<Instead, I feel a sadness settle over me. We thought we were raising the enlightened child of the 21st century. We thought we were doing our part in setting the history record straight. Yet, in doing so, it seems we have robbed our oldest child of something primal to psychological health, something elemental to her well-being as a human being: cultural roots.
<I don't know what to say.
<I consider the you-are-Canadian spielPost too long. Click here to view the full text.
