Born with a Skin Disease?! – A Mother’s Whitewash

My mother and step-father had four more children together in the space of nine years after I was born, and we grew up together in a middle-class household in white America where the subject of “race” was never discussed. My earliest recollections of having to be aware of race were when I was asked questions about the color of my skin by other classmates in first grade. “Why was my skin dark?”, “Was I adopted?” race was certainly a hot-button issue in 1965-66 when I began school, but any awareness that my mother and step-father had achieved from growing up in their white neighborhoods in the 40’s and 50’s was insufficient to prepare them for raising a biracial child, and to complicate things, they were both in complete denial of their complicity in my mis-education.

By the time that my step-father transferred jobs and our family of seven had moved from the all-white Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Stow to the all-white school district of Portville in Western up-state N.Y., it was the spring of 1970 and I was in fourth grade, already the veteran of many racial incidents and altercations with classmates and even some adults. My four younger siblings had also been told the same story, and had to explain the same things to their friends when asked why they had a brother who was black… “Hey, did your mother fool around a little bit??” I remember how much that hurt me when I heard it, and I’m sure they felt just as badly when they did… nonetheless, this was a “subject” that we never discussed as a family, not once, at least not in my presence.