Navigating Colorism and Co-Parenting Challenges
This is so random, but I had so many thoughts… and wanted to, I guess work through them. I also realized I hadn’t wrote a blog in a minute… I am writing though, and I wanted to put that here, so I’m not so hard on myself. And so when I look back I know what I was doing in these long absences.
Anywhooooo.
A woman in a group I’m in has a child with an absent parent. Recently, she learned the absent father had a child with someone else. More importantly, he has acknowledged the new baby on all his social media. He also appears to be more involved. So the woman is deeply wounded and outraged. To compound it, the new partner is white. In the Black community, we are still struggling with colorism (a colloquial for internal self-hatred/anti-blackness). So she attributes his involvement in the new child’s life to the race of the child.
Regarding the race of the white partner… This struggle is evident in urban music. Several Black rappers, rap they only date mixed women, women with good hair, or other WOC, but not wholly Black women. Some say they only date white women. One rapper said he doesn’t want any more all-Black children. And you can Google, where Kanye put out a video casting call for women with Black features but not fully Black, (biracial) and inclusive of any other Woman of Color.
It is also evident in photos and our magazines, that successful Black men tend to marry either very light women, or women of other races. In some cases, they actually divorce their darker wives and marry lighter Black women, biracial Black women (I understand the confusion of them being biracial and Black, it’s the one-drop rule white people created during the enslavement of Black people), or women of a completely different race. Currently, there is a movement by some successful Black men, where they suggest other Black men get a passport. This is a sly way of saying, don’t date Black women choose any race but Black..
There are tons of I.G. posts where these men claim women from other countries appreciate them the way they deserve. Then there are pictures of them with different women, they are objectifying, taking pictures of her from the back… Or the men being on dates with more than one woman. While the women are all fawning over them… I’m not going all into this. But I do see it a lot. I actually stopped following my favorite dancer in L.A. because he posted a video of a Black woman, he found unattractive, then insulted her because she had on lashes. He wrote a long post about how she only dates nonblack women, because he’s tired of the fake hair, fake lashes and nappy hair. Then all the “Passport Brothers” came out to disparage Black women, too.
When I noted that eyelashes and hair extensions are not solely a Black thing… A Black man told me I was too dark to hear. This was like last year.
There is a long history of colorism. In the past, Black people used something called “The Paper Bag Test.” A fair-skin group of Blacks used a paper bag to determine if other Blacks were light enough to join sororities, work certain jobs, be invited to events and there were even churches exclusively for people lighter than a paper bag. Madam Cj Walker and her daughter talk about being excluded from the Black upper class because of their dark skin, even though they had more money and resources than the people excluding them. While I was visiting Historically Black colleges in Atlanta, I walked the campus area and passed a church with a plaque noting they ended the paper bag test in the late 1980s. Like they were checking people’s skin color at the door.
Right now I’m fully appreciating the segregation in the Black community as I write this…
On top of this, marketing is a degree included in the psychology department. One of the best ways to sell magazines or any product is to be negative in a positive way. This means, preying on people’s insecurities. Creating demand for a supply, by pointing out their inadequacies and offering your product to overcome them. Today, shampoos and conditioners prey on people who don’t have their own ideal head of hair. “Is your hair too dry, brittle, frizzy, limp, too curly or too straight? Or they prey on women losing hair, which could be hereditary, hormonal, traction alopecia, alopecia in general, or ringworms. Of course, they are not going to refer people to see a Trichologist, which is a dermatologist who specializes in hair loss. I just learned about them a month ago… It feels like that’s because they are a secret… But anyway. These products make promises to heal their scalp and strengthen their strands to give them a healthy head of hair.
In that same way, products targeting Black people have always centered whiteness, and the benefits of lighter-skinned Black people. In addition to this, they pushed actual skin-lightening products that caused cancer, birth defects, skin burns and permanent skin damage.
In a different discussion, I want to explore why skin lightness was about survival and later became the standard of beauty… But this is about a woman whose child was neglected and now she’s witnessing a new biracial child receiving what she considers better treatment. Which may not be race-related… And then it could be. But I don’t think it’s beneficial to fight that battle. I think it is better for her mental health and her child, who is like eleven, to create actions that address his behavior past and present. Because honestly, this situation could have happened if he had a new Black fiancé. I mean, he and the mother of his new child are still together while she is pregnant and he is living at home with his family… All of the circumstances create an opportunity to be a better father. Family expectations, his guilt about the past and him still being connected to mom.
While this woman and the father were not together even during her pregnancy. She noted, she broke up with him because he was financially unstable, immature and irresponsible. She also noted, that he was petitioning the court to see their child, but then didn’t follow through. She attributes this to him having another child, but he could just be overwhelmed and not necessarily giving up on his first child. I think it’s important to not let our minds tell us the worst about a situation. I’m not saying see the best and be in denial, I’m saying don’t create narratives about someone that cause you agony. Don’t jump to all these conclusions. At most, remember you are human, you’ve made mistakes, and sometimes people didn’t know what was going on with you and made assumptions about you. Like we’ve got to stop thinking people are out here trying to hurt us… We have to remember how we’ve unintentionally hurt folks.
More importantly, and unfortunately, some fathers base their interaction with and responsibilities on their relationship with the mother of their child. Some men don’t think about how their relationship with their child is separate from their relationship with their mother. I’ve learned in conversations with absent parents. I have an uncle who doesn’t even know how many kids he has… He shared this with me when I arrived home to care for my father as he was dying…
He was concerned about who would look after him if he became ill. I realize this is selfish, but it started him to consider his role in his children’s lives.
As a result, I have a cousin, who we all know is his, I try to visit whenever I’m in town but she will not return my calls because she is done with the whole family as a result of her relationship with her father… See, how she loops all of the family in with her father? It makes me sad because we have similar names and were raised together. There are three of us girl cousins, all around the same age, who used to spend the night at my paternal grandmother’s together. The other girl cousin, by an entirely different brother, also doesn’t speak to the family… We were Facebook friends. She and her father got into an argument, then she deleted and blocked me. Which I didn’t notice until I realized I hadn’t seen any post from her… It was years before I told my dad about us disconnecting, and that’s when he told her and her father had it out. My dad like me, kept up with his entire family.
Tangent; AdHd… I’m kinda going with what comes up and also reigning it in. That cousin story could be so much longer. I love my family and try to keep up with them. I’m not sure why this is on my heart and I’m compelled to do this when so many of my relatives live in the same city and don’t see one another for years at a time. Back to what I was sharing about this missing dad that became super dad.
She also noted that the man had recently lost his job and hadn’t been able to find one in his field. As a result, he was evicted and had to move back to his parent’s home with his partner. Noting, that he told her he didn’t have the resources to pay child support. It’s not court-ordered, and it’s lower than the court would have required. But she didn’t want child support to do to his life what she’d seen it do to so many other Black men struggling. Now she’s angry with herself because she see’s him participating in his new infant’s life and the baby has all it needs, based on the dad’s social media…
I also know, when we are upset we can’t see the forest for the trees. The father stayed in contact with her although she wouldn’t allow him to see their child. He also paid child support without it being required and without visitation per her wishes. He also communicated that he was going through a difficult time and would continue his payments once he found a new job. I mean, it kind of seems like the situation is what she wanted it to be… And more importantly, she didn’t actually give him an opportunity to have a relationship with their child, (he was petitioning to see their child, which means he asked and she refused) so he had to get the court involved. And he might not have dropped the petition because of the current baby, legal action requires money. Sooooooo….
In any case, this was my response:
I completely understand why you’re feeling upset about this situation. It’s frustrating when someone doesn’t fulfill their responsibilities, especially when it comes to being a parent. Seeing your ex with a new family might feel like a punch to the gut, particularly when he’s not stepping up for your child.
It’s important to remember that social media can be deceiving. People often portray their lives in a way that’s not entirely true. The new baby might have been unexpected, and they could be doing their best to handle the circumstances. It’s possible that his actions aren’t about race, but rather about learning from past mistakes. Maybe he’s trying to be a better parent now, even if it’s painful to witness.
I hope his growth as a father benefits your child, as well as his new child. I also pray that witnessing him being more accountable and responsible doesn’t negatively impact your child. When you’re in a space to take positive actions and moving forward I hope you will consider my suggestions.
I would “encourage” him to have a healing talk to address any insecurities or inadequacies that may arise as a result of this new baby. I hope he is mature enough to have a healing conversation with your child. In that conversation, he should acknowledge this baby is their sibling and not a replacement. Also, he should acknowledge his mistakes and absences, reassuring your baby that they didn’t do anything to deserve less care. It was his own youth and irresponsibility at play. He needs to step up and include them in his life going forward.
Long term, he should have your child down to meet their sibling. And play up them being a big sibling to the child. So they feel connected to the baby and not slighted by their birth. Which normally results in the big sister or big brother feeling involved, protective, and not neglected. This last part is standard for people welcoming new babies. Especially if the other child has been their only child for a long period of time.
Sending Love and Light
Holding Space for your hurt, rage, disappointment and mourning.”
I also want it noted, that when people show us that they have changed we have to mourn who they were and who we were as a result of our relationship to them. This is like, forgiveness without actually telling them. We have to make peace with the new person they are so we can be present and be who we are in the moment. We can’t let people pull us back to traumatic periods.
I could just tell by her posts and her angry comments on her own post, not in response to other commenters she wasn’t present… And that happens. I can’t imagine being pregnant alone. I can’t imagine feeling the father was so irresponsible him being around was a greater burden than giving birth and raising our child alone.
Also, at the root of every time I struggled to forgive someone, it was because being angry with them kept me from being accountable for how I co-created the situation. Like, I’ve definitely abandoned myself for people. As a result, I’ve gone through periods of not being able to trust my own choices. So forgiving others, allowed me to forgive myself and build a healthier relationship with myself.
Let me also add, I don’t necessarily believe you need to forgive people to heal. Not in the traditional way we’ve been taught to forgive. I never want to encourage people to ignore their resistance to forgiving specific people. Otherwise, forgiveness is like when we were children and forced to say we’re sorry. Now we apologize without thought, to get across the room, to be rude af and interrupt someone speaking… Apologies in so many interactions are disingenuous. This can also be true for not evaluating how and when we will move through hurt. However, you need to put the past to rest so you can be present.
For me, I acknowledge how much I’ve changed and recognize that I’m not an anomaly. People do change. I’m part of an artist community, I see folks shift weekly. Whether that is learning a new language, craft, dance, instrument or way to better understand themselves and others. Acknowledging my own shortcomings and faults anchor me in my own humanness. Which gives me a lot of patience.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean telling the person, rebuilding the relationship or even having a relationship. Some of our deepest wounds may be caused by people who are not alive, or who we will never see again because we’ve physically moved away from the situation.
When you share children, you have to figure out how to have a relationship with the other parent for the child’s sake. At least until the child is an adult and you can limit your contact with the other parent, because the child is old enough to meet their own parental relationship needs. But in other instances, there aren’t always benefits to staying connected. Some people don’t actually change, or they change for the worst. I give myself permission to return people to being strangers and not allowing every time I see them to spiral and relive the past… Not even a little bit.
As a teen and young adult, I was extremely depressed and unmedicated. I was actually institutionalized a couple times before I turned eighteen. I didn’t even have friends in the traditional sense, I was too toxic. My energy was heavy and needy. People didn’t want to deal with me and I didn’t want to deal with myself, which is why the suicide attempts. Because of that period in my life, I realize that sometimes you have to let people go for your own mental health and peace.
That being said, I’d hate for someone to still see me and treat me like twenty-year-old me. In fact, I’ve removed people from my life for not allowing me to be who I presently am. I’ve had a lot of therapy, I have a better understanding of who I am, a better perspective on life, a better relationship with myself and goals that make me look forward to waking up. Not to mention I’ve created relationships with people who share my passions. Also, when you have Adhd, you may lack awareness, come across inconsiderate and seem like you’re on another planet. I literally went through behavior altering therapy. Now, I’m usually the most rational person among my friends, because of all that therapy.
Once I started taking account for the mistakes I made, I made better friends. Now I’ve got several friends over twenty years.
Not to mention, in the end, some people who really hurt me in the past have become some very good reliable friends. One friend, has taught me that a person can’t give you what they don’t give to themselves. Even today, they are not really kind to themselves, and because of health issue, they are finally setting healthy boundaries, and addressing why they didn’t make good choices for their own life. When we were dating, I use to think, how could you do this. As a friend, I’ve been saying, why are you doing this to yourself. I use to want to choke them. Now I spend a lot of time teaching them how to be gentler with themselves. Which for me is powerful. They hurt me for a moment, but they have been harming themselves a lifetime… And because they abandon themselves, they are actually a better friend to me than they are to themselves, which is wild to say, but it’s how it’s showing up in my brain… And I recognize the inconsistency from what I said above, but I”m leaving it. I think it’s important to see a person learning in real-time.
Yesterday, they text to say they love me… And then text to make sure I got it.
I see conflict as an opportunity, too. But that’s another discussion… I give myself permission to be my whole self on my blog, while trying to reign my thinking out of respect for the people who visit. Wrapping it up.
I always make this disclaimer, this is a stream of consciousness blog. I”m moving through emotions, memories, lessons and processing as I write. So, I’m choosing not to go back and edit. I find when I edit, sometimes my ego takes control and changes what I’m actually saying and makes me look either perfect, heroic or as a victim. I don’t want that. I’m definitely a villain… “With an understandable backstory,” Ego says.
