It was inevitable that I would marry a white man. When Dan and I got married in 1992 I made an irrevocable choice that suited me well then.
Decades later, as a middle-aged Black woman and mother, I would examine not only what I’d gained by having a white man on my arm but what I’d irretrievably lost.
I see in my daughter’s light skin the possibility of “passing,” which I’d studied as an academic concept, a historical relic, in college and law school. What will this racial ambiguity do to her? Who will she be? Where will she locate a self to love? Where will she find belonging?
I see in my son—who looks out at me with soulful dark brown eyes like Trayvon Martin looks at all of us out from under his hoodie—a boy who cannot know what he might have learned if I’d given him a Black father.