Alternatively, if they don’t play the expert, parents sometimes acknowledge that actually the child is the expert on what it means to be mixed race so they feel they can’t do anything but sit back and let their child figure things out for themselves. My parents tended more towards this attitude. They didn’t see themselves as experts so they left me and my siblings to fend for ourselves in navigating our mixed race identities. I learned about my black identity and my white identity but not about what it meant to exist successfully incorporating them both. As much as I love my parents I see this as negligent. Just because the child is the ultimately the expert it doesn’t mean parents get out of educating themselves and offering any guidance whatsoever to their children. And of course, there are the parents who neglect to think about mixed race identity in any meaningful way whatsoever.





For white parents the first thing they need to do is to acknowledge the racial privilege that they have in comparison to their child and learn about what white privilege means. They need to accept that their child will live a life outside of their own range of experience. They also need to develop a thorough understanding of white racial framing and how this plays out in the present day. I have met white parents who have done and are continuing to do this work but not many when considering the number of white parents of mixed race children I have met.





Many mixed race children grow up in the face of continuous racial micro-aggressions from well-meaning white parents which can have impact on self-esteem and self-understanding. I love my mum but I have to admit that this was my own experience. In most cases this will be to some extent inevitable but white parents can help themselves by doing some reading and listening instead of writing about mixed race issues of which they know little. At the very least if they must insist on writing they would be better off writing about their own experiences rather than trying to speak for their mixed race children.