I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla
I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World by Marguerite Wright. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998
Although intended as a guide for parents and teachers of black and biracial children, this book is useful for all parents who want their children to grow up with healthy attitudes in a world that uses race to separate human beings. Recognizing that children are not born with racial awareness or hatred, the author focuses on the developmental stages of race consciousness from preschool through adolescence.
Citing her own research as a child psychologist, Wright reveals the nature of the confusion that children experience when dealing with racial difference. They lack the cognitive skill to understand the terminology of race. For example, they don't understand the terms black and white, grouping light-skinned blacks and Asians with whites, and are confused when brown-skinned African Americans are called black. The author notes that preschoolers who develop racial prejudices do so because of an overinsistence on the subject by their parents.
The book focuses on the need for African Americans—parents and caretakers—to create nurturing environments for their children. Given that these youngsters will inevitably meet conflict around race, how their adult models deal with the issue is significant. Adults obsessed with anger and resentment will communicate their emotions to their children, a point well developed in the book. Not as clearly developed is how African Americans, who continue to live in impoverished settings, whose lives are affected by the subtle and not-so-subtle aspects of racism, can find the necessary support to maintain healthy attitudes about themselves and others in the face of their experiences.
The most significant chapter deals with the development of self-esteem in black youngsters and draws some interesting relationships between the way that many youngsters feel about themselves and the way that they are disciplined by their family members. The author describes the "spare the rod, spoil the child" philosophy of many black parents and caretakers who use physical force to discipline, and she relates this philosophy to the legacy of slavery. She links the "whipping, popping, beating" of youngsters to how slave masters and their surrogates disciplined their "chattel" and correlates this to the black child's own endangered sense of well-being and identity. She describes more positive methods.
In contrast, the material on bringing up biracial youngsters and the discussion of "Black English" in the Oakland Unified School District need more research. This criticism aside, this book is a worthwhile read.
Published by Jossey-Bass Pubishers, 250 Sansone St., San Francisco, CA 94104. Price: $22.
—Reviewed by Folasade Oladele, Oakland, California.
