I can’t imagine bringing an innocent child to a celebration with blackface at all, let alone never talking about the history and cultural context of it.
#LETTER TO MY MOTHER THAT SHE WILL NEVER READ SKIN#
I am hurt and shocked because he was so incredulous to hear about the Asian obsession with lightening our skin and the anti-Black history in the Philippines, but he is offended by the idea that his culture could have any prejudices he might have to unlearn. I tried in several ways to explain how this applies to every culture, but he shut down and wouldn’t hear my arguments. I believe in respecting and learning about your own culture and heritage while understanding and breaking the cycle of its prejudices (and we’ve talked about this extensively, as I’m a Filipino immigrant and have worked very hard to unlearn the racism and prejudice I grew up with). When I tried to talk to my boyfriend about how we needed to discuss this “tradition” for what it is (racist) instead of the funny costume his family seemed to think it was, he got offended and said I was being disrespectful of his culture. I was shocked that my mother decided to write about his health struggles this past year, and perhaps what most pained me was that she made a false claim that “in a year he’ll be fully recovered.” We have never hidden that, but we also very intentionally advocate for his privacy and are careful about how much information we share with the world. Before this setback, he already had permanent deficits.
This past year brought a major medical procedure with an unexpected outcome, a brain injury, that will affect him for the rest of his life. “They’re not part of the immediate family, so why are they broadcasting news about them?” And yet, this year, she devoted a paragraph in her Christmas letter to my 17-year-old son, who has been fighting a life-threatening illness since he was 10. Įvery December, my mother, who is in her 70s, starts talking about one of her pet peeves: when people send out Christmas letters and include updates on their grown children or grandchildren. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column.
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