Dreams for My Son

I wrote this essay during the 2008 presidential primaries, and I had the audacity to submit it to Newsweek for their My Turn column. At the time, I did not know that Obama would become president, and I certainly did not anticipate the disappointment I feel now. However, this essay is more about my son (and me) than it is about Obama. Although I never heard back from Newsweek, I feel it is one of my finer efforts so I am including it here.

The contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination was historic in ways that have been thoroughly examined by the press and pundits. Women and blacks had run for president before, but we had never before been guaranteed a Democratic candidate who would be one or the other. As a woman not much older than Obama, I benefitted greatly from the trailblazing women of Clinton’s generation, but still encountered many of the barriers that young women today may not fully understand or appreciate. I have a strong desire to see a capable woman become president of the United States.

As a woman, I admire Hillary Clinton for what she has accomplished, but as the white mother of a black man, I have been personally and deeply affected by Obama’s candidacy in ways that have surprised me. I have not read Obama’s book Dreams from My Father but what I have read about his life with his mother brings back memories of the years I spent raising my son Peter and worrying about his future. Hillary Clinton was right; it does take a village to raise a child. Although his father was absent during a significant number of Peter’s childhood years, my parents and siblings gave us support and stability that I never could have provided on my own.

Being a single mother was not my only challenge, however. As I traveled on buses with my toddler in tow, I encountered disapproving looks and comments that made tangible the racism that until then had been an abstraction. Mothers of sons with absent fathers worry about not having strong male role models in their children’s lives. White parents of biracial children worry about not having enough diversity in their own social circle to keep their children from feeling culturally or racially isolated. White mothers of black sons feel doubly inadequate to prepare their children for what lies ahead. I can provide food and sustenance for my child, I can teach him to read and write, I can nurse him when he is ill, and I can instill in him the values that my parents instilled in me, but I can never know what he will face as a black man in America.

What I know now is that perhaps I worried too much. My son, now a college graduate, has been navigating the cultural divide between black and white America, and has emerged with a profound sense of his own identity and worth. He identifies himself as black, he knows that others see him as black, but that does not diminish my importance or influence in his life. He becomes angry at the suggestion that Barack Obama isn’t “black” enough, or that because Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents he can’t relate to the African American experience. Obama’s candidacy gives my son hope, and therefore it also gives me hope. Obama has crossed cultural lines much more diverse than my son has experienced, and I believe this gives him a global perspective that should be valued rather than mistrusted.

Many would like us to believe that Obama’s candidacy is not about race, but in some measure it is. We do not live in a color blind society, and the experiences that have shaped Obama’s character include all the interactions that he has had with people who first saw him as a black man. In the American culture that we have collectively created, Obama and my son are black men who have white mothers, not white men with black fathers, perhaps simply because their skin is notably darker than mine. Because I have a zoology degree I know that there are more genetic differences within races than between them, and that a relatively small number of genes accounts for all the variations in pigmentation that we observe in humans. Yet the scientist in me often forgets that there is a significant social, cultural and historical context for race that can’t be ignored or willed away. That a large percentage of voters in our nation may be ready to embrace a black man as president does not mean that skin color doesn’t matter. It may be due in part to our recognition that Obama’s experiences as a black man enhance his many qualities as well as his perspective.

The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. still resonate. I, like so many others, want my child to be judged by the content of his character. When people look at my son I want them to see all the qualities that I cherish in him: his compassion for others, his winning way with children and adults alike, his curiosity and interest in the world around him, his upbeat nature and unflagging optimism; the list could go on and on. But before they can know his character they will first see his handsome face and beautiful dark skin. And that’s okay with me.