Dear Kathy,
I have been in excruciating pain lately. For people of our age, what causes the strongest agony to us is no longer our heart or our body, but the extension of such: our children and our beloved. Their decisions, their struggles, and their suffering torment us more than anything else. I thought I was ready for this, that I could forgive my wife’s extramarital affair and that I could restart everything after the divorce. But there is no restart or rewind in life, and I was not ready when my daughter, Lacey, forced me to confront the past.
She paid a visit last week. For the first time, she stated to me, with clarity and dignity, that she identified as “black”. I knew it was coming, but I did not know how to respond, and stupidly, I chose to scorn at her, “what a surprise!”. She definitely sensed the note of sarcasm in my voice.
I will be honest. Although I am not her biological father, I have fulfilled every other duty a father is supposed to do. I love her and I try to provide the best education, living condition, and other resources to aid her growth. Yet, I think I can never understand her deeply—her quest to search for her identity.
I had an inkling of why she looked different from us at the beginning, but I kept it quiet. Part of that was because I felt ashamed, that my life was built on lies and failures. But the other more important part was that I genuinely hoped that she would go on to pass as a white middle-class jew. I knew this was selfishness on my part: not in the sense that I wanted her to inherit our religion and traditions, but that I wanted her to live a NORMAL life.
Throughout my life, I think of normal as great. Certainly, the trade off is that I was never put under a spotlight, I never took the risk to achieve something big, and I never fully lived up to my ideal self image. But what I enjoyed was a suburban privileged life with few disturbances. I understand that anti-semitism still haunts my community, but as white jews, we do not need to pass as white: we are white. Although we might not be at the top of the hierarchy, we certainly enjoy our fair share of white privileges. But Lacey insists to give up this normalcy and these potential privileges in her pursuit of true self and her fight against the system.
I am writing to you because you had the same feeling. You have said that the hierarchy and the privileges were merely “facts” that could not be changed, and you were enraged by your fiancé’s decision to climb down the ladder to help the Jews. Just like me, you are ashamed of the social justice issues that are occurring, but you choose the normal over the minority, silence over turbulence, status quo over changes. I know you were making these choices not just for you, but for your fiancé, for your family, and for your boy Tom.
One thing I know, however, is that Phil “climbed down” for the sake of an experiment. On the other hand, what is happening to my daughter is permanent. With only changing one word—from “Christian” to “Jewish”—, your fiancé has a totally different experience. At the restricted hotel, not even his socioeconomic background could cover the difference of this one word: the white people are still desperately holding on to their institutionalized oppression with the “wages of whiteness”. But the change my daughter is undergoing is far more than a word. She has been learning a new culture, experiencing a new living style, and even adapting to her skin tone.
I have no clue whether my selfish understanding of normalcy is actually helping or hurting her. I want her to understand and love herself, but I also want her life to be plain sailing. I heard that you were able to walk through this dilemma and make amends with your fiancé. Please let me know how your thought process went, as I desperately require your help.
Sincerely,
Lacey’s Father