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Is it possible to over-emphasize our children's cultural heritage? Obviously, it is important to help our children develop strong identities. This includes their race/culture, but that is not the totality of who they are. Or am I just being naive here?
As with everything, I believe it is possible to overemphasize a child's cultural heritage. Parents must deal with a child's identity holistically, while realizing ethnicity is a variable piece of this sense of self.
In the case of myself, this meant that while my parents recognized that they had children of African descent, and incorporated this identity into our home life, they did not point out this reality on a daily basis. I believe this would have led to us feeling singled out and compared to their three biological children who are European American. As it was, they made sure we went to an inner city African American church as a family of seven, observed holidays, attended cultural events and discussed relevant issues as they arose. There was no daily drill or the sense that we were somehow apart from the rest of the family.
Society told us daily that we were African American. Popular culture often left us out of the picture, or reinforced negative images. Our parent's reaction, then, was to combat these omissions by showing us heroes and sheroes not mentioned in our school text books, and introducing us to doctors and lawyers whose character extended beyond cultural icons of the time. They told us that racism existed, yet was not an adequate excuse for failure; that we had the same potential, and while opportunities were more limited, it meant we would and could fight a little harder for our dreams.
Research I conducted for my Master's thesis on interracial adoption led me to develop a model which I believe is relevant to parenting children with diverse ethnic backgrounds. First of all, either parents acknowledge or fail to acknowledge a child's cultural heritage. The child then either responds negatively or positively to having or not having this cultural identity, both during childhood and in adulthood. The hope is that the parent reinforces the culture to a level which leads a child to accept this identity as an adult, and if he or she chooses, to take ownership of this identity and transform it into life choices and supportive community relationships.
Parents who do too much or too little will certainly hear criticism from their adult children. Ultimately, parents must seek advice from people in their children's birth culture, and assess their children's needs as young children, then ask as they approach adolescence. Most children will choose to downplay their ethnic identity in their teens as they begin to explore gender and group identities, as well as begin to create autonomy from parental influence.
Parents must also remember that each child is unique, and will therefore have differing experiences and perceptions of the same cultural education. Hopefully, parents will build a solid foundation from which their children can combat and appropriately respond to racism, have high self-esteem, and all the tools to continue their cultural journey, if this in fact their desire.
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rev. 2/24/98
06/19/2007