Raising Multiracial Children Quotes

“It is essential to build a community of support and belonging around the child by creating or participating in spaces that are multiracial or that are tied to the child’s own individual ethnic communities.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Adults can buttress a perceived inferior sense of racial identity by offering positive examples of culture and race, to produce a larger picture rather than a negative image that can make anyone feel disengaged.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“It can be very tempting to distance oneself from a marginalized community if the recognition of oppression is overwhelming.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Our young sons have an olive complexion and will likely be categorized as ‘White.’ I anticipate that our family’s challenge will be in educating them about their multiethnic history and what that means, particularly as White privilege will be conferred upon them.” This is where conscious dialogue can come”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“to allow for the child to process their experiences as they come into contact with sources on their race and culture, in order to eventually be able to embody a definition of identity for themselves.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“to allow for the child to process their experiences as they come into contact with sources on their race and culture,”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“This can also come in the form of exposure to art, music, dance, theater, photography, and other expressions of culture and race.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“This can also come in the form of exposure to art, music, dance, theater,”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“The most direct source of having contact with culture comes from family members—but this may not be accessible to the child, depending upon the situation of the child and family (due”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“How can children learn knowledge of or pride in their own racial heritage if they don’t have contact?”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“It is especially important for multiracial individuals to have purposeful guidance about their multifaceted identity.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“That being said, there can be the danger of overlooking real differences in focusing too heavily on similarities.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“The journey in supporting multiracial and transracially adopted children starts with you.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“If a parent or educator resents their own culture (polarizes) and tends to take on another culture more than their own culture, they may pass on that sentiment to their child, even though the child is a product of more than one culture. Or, if a parent or educator vehemently favors their own culture over another culture, this bias can also be passed onto the child.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“When reflecting upon the above, where do you fall in the continuum of intercultural development? What about your colleagues? Or family members?”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“A person with an Acceptance orientation can acknowledge the differences of others but may have difficulty making decisions that impact a range of cultural groups.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“The drawback of this mindset is that the depth of cultural differences is masked or may be trivialized or romanticized.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“This real difference in the lived experience of racial identity can be present among teaching staff or within couples where different racial backgrounds of adults are present.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“As we can see, the experience of being a marginalized person can prompt the conversation about race and ethnicity in families.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Parents from POC groups who had heard feedback about their own identity throughout their lives were more likely to talk to their children about race and ethnicity.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Instead of being able to look away from race, the opposite experience may occur, where adults and children can’t look away. They will likely be faced with racially driven experiences and issues on a regular basis. A study of six thousand parents, conducted by Sesame Workshop and NORC at the University of Chicago, published by NPR confirms this.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“One important note related to an inequity of experiences is that the ability to “look away” from race is largely tied to privilege. This is usually done by parents and educators who are themselves positioned as part of the dominant race in their society or institution, or who have mitigating characteristics such as economic and social class that buffer the experience of race.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Color-blindness in a society that is far from color-blind does not work.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“The thought is: if we don’t look at it, it won’t come up in our lives.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Instead, the default approach may be to minimize the situation by taking the color-blind position that “all children should be treated equally” in an attempt to make the problem go away. With this, people feel all bases are covered. After all, teaching children citizenship and values of respect and being good people should be enough for a family or classroom. But is this really so? Does this truly prepare children for instances of sudden self-awareness that they are different? Or for instances of intentional or unintentional othering by the child’s friend who notices that their facial or other physical features don’t match others around them? The absence of dialogue may cause”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Part of the discomfort that adults feel comes from the absence of reflection on the part of the individual to explore and face the positionality of their own identities within the larger context of society”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“The problem with the lack of dialogue about race due to the fear of offending another person is that children will be wholly unprepared to deal with situations having to do with race if they have not talked about it with a trusted adult.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Many teachers and parents are extremely uncomfortable in doing so, sharing reasons of feeling unprepared or inadequate in being able to talk about race with children. They also state that they don’t want to cause negative impact by raising a topic that doesn’t seem to be an issue up to that point. This may be you, and if it is—know that you are not alone.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Do not make assumptions about a child’s racial or ethnic identity.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

“Saying a person is “half-Brazilian and half-Japanese” or is a “quarter Black” is commonly heard. However, this can be viewed as cutting a child into parts, or identifying one’s affinity to a racial heritage by the racial percentage or blood quantum count. Given the punctuated historical context we live in, this can be problematic. Instead, a way to invite a child to honor all aspects of their racial heritage equally would be to say that they are “Native American and Lebanese.”
― Farzana Nayani, Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World