New color theory: now with more 6-year-old!

June 8, 2015 12:08 PM

"Have you ever turned white?"
"No."
"Will I ever-?"
"Nope."
"Daddy??"
"Daddy's already white."
"But was he always?"
37 Impossible Questions From My Mixed-Race Son (SLBuzzfeed)
posted by Metroid Baby (43 comments total)

Great, cute little comics.

One thing to throw out there, tho:

The answer to "can an indian-eastern european kid grow an afro" strikes me less as "cultural appropriation" and more of "it's awkward".

A completely ignorant statement follows, but if you have curly hair that isn't forcibly straightened doesn't it just kind of… happen?

Wouldn't the kid pass more often as having jewish descent if he had curly hair, even?
posted by pmv at 12:30 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

god i love this
posted by entropone at 12:38 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just saw this, and almost posted it as my first-ever FPP. I'm a white mom of a mixed-race adopted kid who loves Michael Jackson and I really loved this.
posted by SeedStitch at 12:39 PM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]

"ferguson is far away, right?" is where i started crying.
posted by nadawi at 12:45 PM on June 8, 2015 [33 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. Super relevant to me, as an Indian woman who plans to have kids with a white Jewish man.
posted by peacheater at 12:56 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

So - what IS the guy who wants to sit but can't? Is it a junkie?
posted by symbioid at 1:03 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

"And then I will show them my moves. And then they will understand."

DAMN, indeed!
posted by ignignokt at 1:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [17 favorites]

A completely ignorant statement follows, but if you have curly hair that isn't forcibly straightened doesn't it just kind of… happen?

Well, yes and no. I was born with a very full head of curly hair that could be termed an afro by those standards, and I'm Afghan. But it still didn't look like anything like the kind of afro someone of African descent would have, see my mixed race little cousins who definitely have afro-afros, if that makes sense. In my experience, the big cloud of short curly hair just a thing that inevitably happens when you have sufficiently curly hair, but it's still a hairstyle that looks totally different from a "real" afro. I'd say the appropriation is more in calling it an afro than anything else, really.
posted by yasaman at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

The mystery of the guy who wants to sit but can't held me up too, now I'll wonder about it all day!

Really loved it though, I can't relate to the color aspect but I can definitely relate to the 1000 questions by a 6 year old game.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2015

Is it cultural appropriation when a six year old wants a certain hairstyle?
posted by synthetik at 1:26 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, imagine a six-year-old wanting blackface. You can't attribute malice to that child, but you can't give that child what they want.
posted by ignignokt at 1:31 PM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

I wish my mom was still alive so I could ask her what kinds of questions I asked her, brown child of a white mom. I hope I was half as entertaining and insightful!
posted by rtha at 1:37 PM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Granted, maybe she doesn't know but I was fairly uncomfortable with the answers she supposedly gave about MJ's skin condition. She made it sound like his skin lightened on a whim, and that he liked it? It's a serious disease and people gave him shit about it for decades.

And as for hairstyle cultural appropriation, the real problem is not acknowledging the roots of those styles, pun intended. I feel like I read at least once a month about some blogger or fashion columnist implying that a hairstyle that black women have been wearing for generations is new just because they happened to first see it on a runway.
posted by girlmightlive at 1:41 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Either her kid really did say those things, or she knows children very, very well.

Probably both.
posted by jamjam at 1:52 PM on June 8, 2015

Is he Radar?
posted by chavenet at 2:05 PM on June 8, 2015

Is it cultural appropriation when a six year old wants a certain hairstyle?

That one is really funny because she starts talking to a 6-year-old about cultural appropriation, and by the end it's just "you'll look silly," which I think means she is acknowledging that she looks silly talking about cultural appropriation to a 6-year-old, however precocious and/or wittily cute.
posted by chavenet at 2:07 PM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm mixed, and i've talked to several of my friends who also are about it... We were ALL obsessed with Michael Jackson at that age.

Never came up with a better answer to why than "because MJ rules duh", but yea, it's a thing.

Is it cultural appropriation when a six year old wants a certain hairstyle?

Is it cultural appropriation if your hair just... grows that way? Like it either does or it doesn't. I'm assuming for this kid that it wouldn't, and you'd need to get a perm or something at which point yea... but if your hair just sort of grows into a poof? meh.
posted by emptythought at 2:20 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

"ferguson is far away, right?" is where i started crying.

Came in to say more or less this. So, yeah.
posted by nzero at 2:30 PM on June 8, 2015

"Jewish in the winter and Indian in the summer."

Hahahaha gold.
posted by nzero at 2:31 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

I interpreted wants to sit but can't as someone who is comfortable squatting, but now I'm wondering if I underthunk the beans.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:40 PM on June 8, 2015

A completely ignorant statement follows, but if you have curly hair that isn't forcibly straightened doesn't it just kind of… happen?

In my experience, Indian curly hair trends towards loose curls, stretching out to waves when the hair gets longer and sags under its own weight. Afros probably would not be achievable.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:24 PM on June 8, 2015

Is it cultural appropriation if your hair just... grows that way?

I think pretty clearly it's not but big curly hair doesn't necessarily curl quite the same as an afro, it's not necessarily styled the same way as an afro, and it tends to signify something different or at least pride in a different ethnicity. If someone not of Black African descent tried to force an early MJ afro it could be weird.

I had an argument with my S.O. - who is fastidious about straightening her hair when going out - about whether it's popular for other white women to wear theirs naturally curly, only to realize later that the reason I thought so was that most of the people I grew up with were actually Jewish.
posted by atoxyl at 3:59 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Along more serious but similar lines, there’s a good article about the history of racial passing in the current issue of The University of Chicago Magazine.
posted by LeLiLo at 4:05 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think "wants to sit but can't" is a zombified crack user. Wrong plate of beans?
posted by SlyBevel at 4:05 PM on June 8, 2015

Nope, heroin addicted person— nodding while standing. Crack makes you edgy, not sleepy. Or, it could be someone, um, going to the bathroom in public?
posted by Maias at 4:13 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think the crack user guess was thinking of someone who can't sit still? But I agree with Maia - the whole lean against the wall/nod out/almost fall over/come to/repeat routine.
posted by atoxyl at 4:24 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yup, heroin is what I meant. I have little experience with opioids, so I get them mixed up.
posted by SlyBevel at 4:40 PM on June 8, 2015

I took it to mean a street person who would like to sit down, but can't without being rousted by police/retail security.
posted by jamjam at 4:57 PM on June 8, 2015

She did a wonderful job with this. Thanks for posting it.
posted by Songdog at 5:08 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Jewish in the winter and Indian in the summer.

no kid go Indian for springtime to save Passover cleaning. You can still get Chanuka in winter/fall.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:11 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Jewfro is a thing, y'all, and has been for half a century.

But it looks best if you're, say, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or defending Angela Davis.

Sorry, kid. Maybe when you're older.
posted by feral_goldfish at 5:19 PM on June 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Thank you for posting this! It made me laugh and genuinely cry, especially on the last frame.
posted by spelunkingplato at 5:43 PM on June 8, 2015

I took it to mean a street person who would like to sit down, but can't... I can't believe I'm going to be the one to post this, but I was pretty sure the implication was the guy was masturbating.

Ahem. Great post.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:09 PM on June 8, 2015

Really needed a post like this after spending the last hour reading about what happened and is happening in McKinney.

Thanks, Metroid Baby.
posted by lord_wolf at 8:08 PM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

6 year olds don't talk like that, and parents don't talk to 6 year olds like that. Ugh.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:23 PM on June 8, 2015

uh, yes they do
posted by iotic at 4:18 AM on June 9, 2015 [19 favorites]

My six year old did (different topics though).
posted by h00py at 4:28 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

These conversations are 100% plausible.
posted by padraigin at 5:45 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

6 year olds don't talk like that, and parents don't talk to 6 year olds like that. Ugh.

Man, you need to talk to more 6 year olds then. They are hilariously prescient. My cousin's kid once told him that the reason he came home with a disciplinary note from kindergarten was that he messed up early on in the day, decided that he couldn't recover from it, and just went on to make the most trouble possible.
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:06 AM on June 9, 2015 [18 favorites]

Yeah I know a 6 year old who talks like this. She's more into dinosaurs than MJ but it's much the same. When you take kids' questions seriously instead of giving bullshit answers or making them be quiet, they expand the range of things they're willing to say to you. And they pay attention to your answers, giving them back to you at logical but awkward moments.
posted by harriet vane at 7:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

I think it's wonderful that six-year-olds are still so into Michael Jackson. He's been dead about as long as this child has been alive!
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 10:29 AM on June 9, 2015

Have you people never seen a picture of Art Garfunkel? Jesus.
posted by bq at 10:45 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

Have you people never seen a picture of Art Garfunkel? Jesus.

Leo Sayer.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:45 PM on June 9, 2015