It has been a long time since I felt like people were staring at our family.

In our city, there are lots of families that look like ours and in our daily life, our family doesn’t stand out anymore.  No one seems to pay us any attention–which is good because my children are usually making farting noises or singing completely inappropriate songs.  So–being nothing to look at is good.

This past weekend we went to Myrtle Beach for our annual family vacation.  I was excited as I had never been there and boy do they have a lot to do. It’s like Orlando, but with out the overpriced theme parks.  We could have stayed another 2-3 days and still not done everything the kids or we wanted to do.

The hotel we stayed at was huge and packed.  It was also packed with lots of white families and lots of black families and only one family like ours.  We might not have been the only family like ours (in my defense, I didn’t see another family like ours all 5 days we were there and out), but we were certainly were not a frequently viewed family makeup.

I will say that the looks we got weren’t mean or dirty, in any way.  But they were clearly curious.  I had several black kids (about 8-10-years-old) ask me “are you their mom.”

“Yes” I would respond.

The responses from them varied–“cool,”  “oh.”

I got lots of comments from other black moms on Zoë and her hair–they were all positive so that was really nice.  It amazes me how many more people of color I get to interact with because of my kids.  I love it and it makes me sad that I might not otherwise interact so easily with people who are different from me.

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Another thing that stood out (not to me) was the number of black families.  One of my brother’s commented on how great it was to see so many happy black families.  This struck me.  Why was that odd?  But it is to people who live rather sheltered lives.  Especially in our city that is very segregated.  We certainly don’t see any on TV.  I know that in my city the only time we see black families on the news usually has to do with tragedy and heartache and crime.

How sad is that?  It makes me think that I need to make sure my kids are exposed to more positive images of blackness and family.  I want to make sure that they feel good about their skin color and the perceptions people have about what that means.  It reminds me that even though our president is Black, the rhetoric and media images of minorities still perpetuate images that are mostly negative.  This isn’t right–this isn’t reality.

I don’t know how we change that.  I thought we were on to something in the 80’s with The Cosby Show and A Different World, and then Damien Wayans had a show.  But then what?  Nothing.  Really, we have one or two shows and then networks say “okay–glad that is done.”  Just like with the election of our first Black President, people were so quick to claim that “racism is over.”  Racism is so much more than one elected president and one or two positive and successful shows about black families.

Racism is how we portray and treat people every day.  Racism is giving a group their own TV channels and then keeping anything else remotely minority focused off network television.  Racism is hiring one black newscaster but running 8 lead stories that feature black or other minority criminals and two stories about some amazing thing a white person did.

We have so far to go.