My daughter Mina is biracial – ethnically half Chinese and the other half white German. Apart from her dark brown hair with the odd hamster gold streaks she looks very much East Asian, like me. As far as we can visually tell she’s only inherited her lighter hair shade and narrow feet from her father but nobody’s comparing those.
In her earliest years we didn’t point out any differences between her and the kids in her mainly white German kindergarten. She started going there from around 18 months old. Occasionally when I picked her up, her educators would tell me Mina had taught the children how to say some words in English and the kids had fun saying these odd words. The educators themselves seemed to enjoy learning too. One day, one of the educators asked me how to say aeroplane in English but was confused because it wasn’t what Mina had said when she’d pointed at a plane flying over the playground that day. I explained she must have said it in Cantonese Chinese, and we had a chuckle about that. Mina’s best friend Zara had also taught some words in Arabic and the kids had fun with those funny words too.
There were at least 4 kids with Middle Eastern backgrounds in Mina’s kindergarten. Her second best friend’s mother came from Latvia and one other kid had a mother who originally came from China. Neither the children nor the educators made a big deal about their backgrounds. The children had important things to contend with like who was hogging the best toys, who threw sand on whom, who didn’t clean up properly and which kid was insufferably bossy.
When Mina was four, we travelled to Corsica with a one-night stop over in Pisa on the way back. During our walks in the city she noticed some groups of black people hanging around in the streets. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a black person so I was surprised when she asked me why they were dark. My answer went awry. By the end of my explanation, she was not only wondering why they had dark skin but also why they weren’t in Africa and thought that countries are home to specific colours of people. I vowed to do better. Incidentally, I told her for the first time that we looked Asian, but she had no idea what I was talking about and wasn’t interested in the topic anymore anyway.
After just turning five, we flew to Australia to visit my parents and siblings. On the way home to Germany we did a two-night stopover in Qatar, staying at the Al Najada Doha Hotel in Doha. On the first evening we had the luck of seeing a street parade with performers on stilts and a group of women wearing hijab and battoulah, singing and playing instruments. I regret not asking someone what the parade was for, but at the time I was too shy and too tired to ask after flying 13 hours with a small child. I always get travel anxiety. I was wondering if Mina would mention anything about the way people were dressed, but she didn’t.
The next morning, we came down to the beautiful breakfast area of the hotel. It was light and airy with high ceilings and huge doors leading onto steps to a wide courtyard with water features. Most of the other guests wore traditional Middle Eastern attire. The men wore long white Thobe and the women wore abaya, though many also wore black niqab. The scene seemed elegant and the outfits apt as these men and women glided across the shiny, patterned floors while a gentle breeze blew through the open doors. A few times women would gently stroke Mina’s head with a maternal smile in passing as we walked by one another to and from the breakfast buffet. I was touched by their gestures and Mina wasn’t bothered by it.
Finally, sitting down to our luxury breakfast she asked me why the men wore dresses. I thought she’d be more inclined to ask me about the women, especially the niqab but I was wrong. Four years later during a similar trip she didn’t question it either.
It was when Mina was still five that kids began to get curious about her “origins”. Not much, but she told me a kid in kindergarten had asked her where she was from. She said Australia because for some reason she rejected her German birthplace for years. I wondered if I should break it to her that she looked Asian.
I was about her age or slightly older when I was blindsided with this information. There were kids in my all-white school who started teasing me about having a flat nose and slanty eyes, but when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see that. I honestly didn’t understand what they were talking about until later.
To spare Mina the surprise I told her what made our looks unique in our German society. When I was done, she said, “Yes, and daddy’s Asian too.” I disputed this at first but she ignored my protests, so I let it go.
When she had just turned six, we were strolling down the main shopping street when Mina said, “That woman looked like you.”
I turned and realised she meant an East Asian looking woman. I asked her why she thought that, but she couldn’t say. So I filled her in again on how our features are a little different from the mainstream German population.
Later that year, Mina started grade one at the local primary school and as the years rolled by, the curiosity of the kids around her increased. Sometimes kids would tell her she wasn’t German, which she scoffed at.
After the first year she accepted she looked different. Telling kids she came from Germany wasn’t enough to stop them from repeatedly asking where she was from. They weren’t satisfied until the origins of Mina’s maternal grandparents unlocked the key to her “exotic” looks. Even then the same kids would need to ask again and again as though she was the teller of a fascinating, unbelievable tale. Like when children have a favourite story and they want you to tell it again and again and the parent, like Mina in this case, get more and more annoyed at the repetitiveness of it all.
Over time, she has accepted her father doesn’t look Asian. Eventually she also conceded that she was in fact Australian and German.
Mina is ten now and will still occasionally say an Asian stranger in passing looks like me. It kind of annoys me because it’s reminiscent of the times I’ve heard people say Asians all look alike. But I know she’s looking through innocent eyes and a reminder to me that I sometimes need to let go of my old reactions. Every situation is different.
I have never had a strong inclination to point out differences in culture or appearance between races. That’s how I was brought up. I want Mina to interact with people in the same way, regardless of what language people speak, what differences in culture they have, or what clothing they wear. People are not exotic birds and animals to be gawked at or put into cages and categorised according to a stereotype.
Seeing Mina going through her first years of life has been fascinating. It’s highlighted the differences in how children and adults think. Our children need to let stories unfold on their own while we, the adults, educate ourselves enough to give them the most impartial and correct information as they grow.
Prejudices and stereotypes are learned. As much as it is good to talk about this, it’s even more important to show how you interact with people who may be different from you. I am blessed to associate with people of different nationalities, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, marital status, education, and employment status. I talk to everyone the same and Mina’s attitudes and response to negative prejudices give me the impression she may have learned something positive from this. We focus on giving time to positive human interactions and discuss the negative ones. Especially the ones that hurt her.
I’m so thankful Mina had such impartial kindergarten educators in her earliest years, and that I haven’t screwed up her upbringing in this regard … yet.
Featured image by tonodiaz on Freepik
