Black Mothers of Biracial Children: We Need Your Voices

Many of my artistic role models are African-American writers and artists.  I am always intrigued to discover that a number of these black women are (or have been) married to white men, and have biracial children.  On my notable short list: writer Alice Walker, poet Rita Dove, artist Betye Saar, and writer Jamaica Kincaid.  Nowhere in their work do I find mention of their experiences as black women of biracial children.  (Yes, I have looked, but please someone prove me wrong.)  Rebecca Walker, Alice’s daughter, writes about her biracial upbringing in her memoir Black, White and Jewish.  Lezley Saar, Betye’s daughter, deals with issues of biracial identity in her art.  But where are the accounts of the mothers?  Is it a mothering difference that they have considered in the same way that Jane Lazarre or Maureen T. Reddy have examined?  Add to my list of admired black women artists, Kara Walker, whose solo show continues through mid-February at the Whitney Museum in New York.  Walker who is known for “best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of America's racial and gender tensions” has a biracial daughter with her former white German husband.  The daughter in one of the artist’s video installations. 

In the video, Octavia repeats: “I wish I were white.”  But she is white, isn’t she?  Black and white.  What does this say about the artist’s concept of biracial identity?  Is it something she can recognize or acknowledge?  Last week on Mixed Chicks Chat, [email protected], a weekly podcast I co-host , we talked about the multiracial political agenda (if there is one) and how it has seemingly, until recently, largely set by white women specifically white mothers of biracial children.  I would like to hear the voices of more black women raising biracial children talking, theorizing, and adding to the on-going conversation.  I can think of two bloggers whose stage deserves to be bigger:  My American Melting Pot and That Black Woman.  Both are black women married to white men and raising biracial kids.  I wonder: what are the difficulties as a black woman for encouraging your children to embrace a biracial identity?  What if any barriers have you found in joining, creating or transforming a multiracial movement?  I think there is much to learn from the perspectives of these women.