Grateful to the Wall Street Journal‘s Expat Blog for publishing this piece focusing on some of the issues I’m trying to work out about race, privilege, and identity as a white parent married to a native Japanese man and raising a mixed-race child in Japan.
From ‘Blind Spots’ and Other Problems in Globally Blended Families:
As a woman in a multicultural, multinational, and multiracial couple, I’ve sensed how some people assume I must be uniquely open to cultural differences, and thus uniquely equipped to raise a mixed child. But this assumption betrays a flawed logic. Globe-trotting parents in mixed marriages who grew up in the majority may be aware of racism and may even have faced it themselves, but most still lack a deeper understanding of racism during a child’s formative years.
Read more in the Wall Street Journal online.
thegoodshufu 
Congrats on other fine piece in the WSJ! So glad you’re tackling issues of racism, a subject close to my heart.
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Excellent post! Thank you for writing this.
I completely agree. Speaking as a mixed race kid from two monoracial parents: monoracial parents are not necessarily equipped to raise a mixed race child, even if the two parents are international, open-minded, color-blind, progressive and multiracial in other senses (including their own relationship and in their international experiences).
That isn’t a criticism of anybody at all, more stating a general truth.
Lovely piece.
(I might link to this, if that’s ok with you?)
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