I’m struggling right now with some things. My partner and I have never had any issues with the interracial aspect of our relationship (I am white, he is black). We were both so excited for our son to be born and see what he looked like and how our features mixed. We adored him right from the start and thought he was perfection.

Then his family started making comments about how they were disappointed that he never “darkened up” or would tell us that he was “passing white” because he had somewhat fair skin and reddish brown curly hair that isn’t textured. He still is VERY CLEARLY a mixed child though. We’re pregnant with our second and his sister said that she hopes the next one is darker. She also commented that because he’s home all day with me, he’s going to “act white.”

After almost 2 years of these comments, I can tell they’ve gotten under my partner’s skin even if it didn’t initially bother him at all.

We live in a fairly diverse community. The family across the street from us is black, immediately next door and two houses down are mixed families. We also have a couple Asian families, etc. I would say our neighborhood is actually about 30-40% white. Well now he wants to move to a predominantly black neighborhood because he thinks this area is too white for our son to grow up. The neighborhood he’s looking at has terrible schools and a high crime rate. Regardless of the race of the citizens there, it is not a place I want to raise my child. I like the diversity here ESPECIALLY being a MIXED family.

Then the other day, my son was watching cocomelon and he no longer wants him watching that as it’s “too white.” Yes, the main character is from a white family but his school has diversity. I also don’t think things containing white families should be banned from him! Half his family is white!

He also got rid of his soccer ball saying it was a white sport and gave him a basketball instead (he already has 2 🙄 it’s not like he only had a soccer ball; he also has footballs and baseballs too!)

I tried to talk to him about it one day and he tried to pin it all on me saying I don’t put enough diversity into his life so he has to go over the top then. He wasn’t like this AT ALL until his family put so much focus on it.

That’s absolutely not true! I’m the only one that has bought him any books that include diversity (dad has never even bought him books mind you). I purposely have him watch Sesame Street when tv is on because it’s more diverse, but he’s not yet 2, he almost never watches tv yet. So it’s not like we’ve done a lot of exploring of tv shows. We don’t GO anywhere because of the pandemic, if he goes to family parties, he has us stay home because he doesn’t want our son getting exposed to covid. In turn, he’s only getting exposed to our household! Which includes mom dad and himself.

I can’t teach him about black culture that I don’t know so if dad doesn’t teach him and I, how am I supposed to? I grew up in a white family in a white community, I’ve told him before that he needs to take the lead when teaching black culture and let me learn too! His family is veryyyy different than mine and I love and appreciate their differences but I also haven’t lived in their shoes, I can’t teach what I don’t know myself 😩

I feel like he’s feeling like the white part of our son is bad and in turn, our son is going to feel that way and think badly of his white mother and family.

Can I get some other perspectives? What would you do in this situation?

*in response to one comment, I have done my own genealogy, I am as white as white gets, entirely Northern European (Scandinavian). He is not interested in doing his at all. We talked about it when we were filling out the census and he didn’t know what area of Africa his ancestors came from and I said it would be fun to find out for our son. He said it wouldn’t be 😞 and that he didn’t care at all as it didn’t matter