Asher, You're Black

Earlier this month I posted on social a funny exchange Asher and I had:

Me: Asher, you’re black. Mommy’s white. Me, Aaron, & Jada are Asian.
 
Asher: I want everyone be black.
 
Me: OK.
 
Asher: I gonna be rainbow.

They say with adopted kids that you should tell them they're adopted many times during their childhood, so that there is never a time when it is a surprise or a secret.  With Asher I'd add that he should grow up knowing he is black, so that there is no confusion.

This may sound patently obvious.  But when we were first becoming adoptive parents with Jada, during orientation we learned that all too many white parents never broached the subject with their Chinese daughters, and it wasn't until these girls went out into the world (say, leaving home for college) that people identified them like Asians, and these girls had no concept of what that meant as an identity.  Terribly dishonoring and jarring, to say the least.

"I am black" is both a factual statement I want our youngest to own, as well as a point of identity and pride.  In this country in this time, it of course comes with some unique and difficult challenges, which it is on us to prepare him for and eventually on him to live with.  But it is also what makes Asher Asher, something I never want him to not know and something I want the older version of him to embrace.  And it all starts with the simple sentence, which we have uttered to him many times and will continue to: "Asher, you're black."