For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On MLK Day—the Federal Holiday it took decades to secure—we are to remember a great changer, Dr. King, and to commit to ensuring his legacy: that freedom ring, that the color of a person’s skin matters less than the content of his or her character.
That’s worth more than a day. That’s lifetimes.
**
My daughter, turning three very soon, was born on Super Tuesday, 2008. We had waited—our anticipation so great—for her. She was a feather, under six pounds. She embodied all that hope so prevalent in Dr. King’s speeches, as he was clear on this point: children represent the Future; children carry with them the potential for a Better and More Equitable World.
That day of her birth the televisions in the hospital showed image after image of candidates at polling places. Democrats had two frontrunners and wondered if the day might conclude with a definitive sense of the Party’s next-step. Those frontrunners, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now President and Secretary of State. He is a biracial man. She is a woman. In vying as frontrunners as they did three years ago, each one represented a possibility that had seemed—as little as three years earlier—closer to impossible; we were poised to elect—and did—a biracial man. We were poised to elect—and didn’t quite—a woman.
Our daughter is obviously female and she is biracial. It seemed like she was born on an auspicious day. I wrote a haiku months later on Election Night: Our biracial girl/Born to dreams Super Tuesday/May she know no bounds.
**
But here we are nearly three years later and my daughter’s begun to grasp—in her toddleresque way—the idea that she didn’t come into the world from my belly. The family of origin she has access to—her first mama’s—is white. Her first father, who has never met her, is Jamaican. My daughter “passes” as white (in fact, she “passes” as “ours,” especially “mine”). That she’s part of a whole culture she really does not know is pretty certainly news to her.
That she likes Bob Marley won’t cut it.
She goes to a preschool that’s been honored for its efforts to support diverse families. She spends her days with other children of mixed heritage and other children who are adopted. What she sees reflected through her friends are mirror images; she is not solitary in her rich identity. That, too, is not enough. The books on our shelves reveal faces that are black and brown and yellow.
The books on our shelves speak to adoption and history and belonging and sharing and compassion and passion. She lives not far from where Sojourner Truth lived, in a community that celebrates its historic commitment to abolition. She lives in a place that is committed to food security. She lives in a place where Gay and Lesbian is decades’ old thinking and LGBT is even a little old school. There’s plenty here to celebrate. What really is enough, though?
Big ideas cannot be integrated in a day, not even a day each and every year. Still, I’m glad for a day that reminds us all of the everyday commitments we each need to make. As her parent, my job is to walk in short steps—preschooler-sized—alongside her as she grows into herself. I’m so glad she’s her. As her parent, my job is to help her find her gladness, her strong sense of self. That’s what parents do: we try to make sure our kids are glad to be themselves.
