Russo: Telling my biracial boys the truth |
Russo: Telling my biracial boys the truth
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati, Ohio
2016-02-21
Hyde Park resident Regina Carswell Russo is a public relations professional, cultural arts ambassador and CEO of RRight Now Communications.
My beautiful sons are blissfully unaware of their blended heritage. More specifically, their blended race. It’s how my husband and I have been raising them. You see, we teach them that they are African-American and Italian, and we teach them about our respective cultures. But we haven’t really taught them about race and color. Each year they get older, I’m faced with the certain reality that if I don’t, the world will.
Don’t get me wrong. My elementary school-aged children know Daddy is Italian and has white skin, and Mommie is African-American and has brown skin. They get that, but they don’t know what it means to be a brown-skinned boy with a white father, or to be a light-skinned male with a black mother in this time of Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Black Lives Matter. They are just children – pure, innocent and unaware of the different lines people must walk based on their race and color.
And unfortunately, it’s going to have to be me, their African-American mother, who breaks it to them. Their fiercest protector will have to crack the lens through which they view this world, before the world does it, so that I can protect them…
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Tags: Cincinnati Enquirer, Regina Carswell Russo, The Cincinnati Enquirer