For some of you who have not read my first diary entry, here is the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/31/21128/8420/247/487915
This is a journey into the bias within myself, a conflict I live with and try and work through everyday.
Today's story is about my daughter, not my biological one but one that I made my own. She was 10 months old when I first set my eyes on her and fell in love with her, now she is 12 and I love her more everyday. Even though her mother is not part of my life my beautiful daughter always will.
I am a brown guy (you know tanned naturally), people mistake me for Pakistani, Indian, Spanish, Greek, Arab, Brazilian but mostly Mexican. I had problem with that whole "where are you" question from people making the assumptions that I was from some place they could relate me to and decide to make judgments about me. It made me hypersensitive. So I usually saw a brown person and I almost had to react in a way that was different from someone of another color.
My baby looked like a little white girl, with blond curls and blue eyes. Beautiful, charming, cute and adorable. Her mother mixed, her real father a white guy.
I liked the little baby the moment I saw her. I was a neanderthal when it came to kids then. I remember an incident where she bit my finger and wouldn't let it go and so I bit her back. Yeah ! I was stupid that way. But I got better. But she always wanted her mommy regardless of what I did with her or for her. We were never close, maybe because I was stricter with her and gave her a few timeouts. Then her mother went on vacation for a week when the kid was 3 years old and left her with me. We bonded and became buddies, she never called me daddy, always by my first name, still doesn't. When she spoke to her friends though, she always called me her Dad. But we got close and she looked forward to my visits.
A year goes by and then one day I come home tired from a business trip and eager to see her, so I drive down to her daycare and pick her up. She hasn't taken her nap I was told and she is grouchy. So I take her to get some ice-cream and take her home. She eats her ice-cream and then starts throwing a fit right away about something really silly. I put her in timeout and she is even more upset. She turns around and says, "You are my Brown Daddy, one day my White Daddy will come and beat you up."
I was shocked for a moment and hurt considering she had never met her dad, who wanted nothing to do with her. Here I was being a father to her and she was rejecting me because I did not look like her. She continued to say that for a couple of years but that did not hurt me as much as the first time she said it. She could tell that her Mom wasn't exactly a white person, yet she thought she was a white girl.
She has grown now and the blond curls have gone dark brown and the hair very curly. My baby has almost become a little girl. She seems more comfortable in her skin these days. She still doesn't call me Dad, still my first name. But to me at least I will always be her "Brown Daddy".
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