Here is the eighth in my series of quotes from Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting. I’ll be running them for a couple of weeks courtesy of the book’s editor, Rachel Epstein. I’m choosing the quotes I feel are most intriguing and thought provoking; I don’t always agree with the sentiments, but I hope they will spur some discussion in the comments and encourage you to seek out the book for yourselves.
For more on how to get this Canadian-published volume (and you should!), see my original post about it.
Today’s quote is from “Little White Children: Notes from a Chicana Dyke Dad,” by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, who is stepmother to her white girlfriend’s two white children:
Five hundred years of Latin American mixed-race families, and three generations of my own, have proven the notion of family does not save us from racism. . . .
And hiding racism does not stop the hurt. However, the fear of speaking through such difficult issues should not hinder us from loving anyway. What love does not involve fear, or submission, giving over so thoroughly you would sacrifice your own life to save your child’s life, or your lover’s? What love does not rely upon the difference between two bodies as a source of hunger? What do we imagine that we lose in acknowledging the racism between parents and children, and between siblings of different colours?