My Kids' Ancestors Were Enslaved. Mine Enslaved.
Jul 16, 2025That’s not just a sentence. It’s a mirror.
Even if you never heard those stories growing up—especially if you didn’t—they’re still part of your legacy.
Even if no one in your family "owned slaves," your lineage may have stood by while others did.
Your country may have built the ships. Traded the bodies. Passed the laws.
And now, you’re parenting a child whose family tree was uprooted by all of it.
You didn’t choose this past.
But you do choose what you do with it.
Parenting across this legacy isn’t about blame. It’s about truth-telling. It’s about noticing the silences you inherited—and breaking them so your children don’t have to carry the weight alone.
You don’t share blood, but you share history.
Your child comes from people who survived the impossible—who were bought and sold, but never broken.
You come from people who benefited—directly or indirectly—from a system that taught you not to see.
Some days, you may want to say, “But I didn’t do it.”
And yet, your child lives the consequences.
They feel it in the classroom, in the sideways looks at the store, in the assumptions, the lowered expectations, the heightened suspicion.
So you ask yourself:
What will I pass on—denial or truth?
What will I protect—my comfort or their dignity?
This work asks everything of you.
It asks you to:
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Listen more than you speak.
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Get uncomfortable—and stay there.
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Love without pretending love alone is enough.
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Learn your history—not the whitewashed version, but the one your child deserves to have acknowledged.
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Disrupt racism even when your knees are shaking and your voice trembles.
Because love is not neutral.
And silence is not innocence.
When you begin to face your lineage—not with shame, but with integrity—something shifts.
You stop trying to be the “good white parent” and start being a real one.
One who tells the truth.
One who teaches your kids they are sacred—not despite the world’s lies, but in defiance of them.
One who models what it means to grow, to take responsibility, to repair.
Your child’s ancestors were enslaved.
Yours may have enslaved—or looked away.
You parent in the space between those truths.
And if you’re willing to stay there—with your whole heart and your sleeves rolled up—you just might help build a bridge.
You don’t have to do this alone.
If you’re a white parent raising Black or Brown kids, join us in the White Awake Parenting Facebook support group. It’s a space for honest conversation, shared wisdom, and fierce, transformative love.
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