I am not interested in being one of those moms who persistently asks my young adult kids when they are having children. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they will. I will always have children in my life by virtue of my work and my choices, and while I would love to be Grand Jan one day (yes, I have chosen my own grandmother name based on Jacqueline Onassis’ grandmother name), it’s okay if it doesn’t happen. My kids are fairly perfect with or without being parents themselves.
BUT . . . if HH and I should be so blessed, I would like grandchildren in any and all colors.
Tom Brokaw has apologized for his recent comments on Meet the Press, but his words stung because there are probably millions of white people who secretly – or not-so-secretly – share his concern about “intermarriage.”
Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, “Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies.” I mean, that’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other. I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time.
Lord have mercy.
This reality is gross and disappointing to say the least, but it’s real. We are a systemically racist nation. Systemic racism is ingrained in our culture, our history, and our deepest psyches. It’s one of our most common and ugliest sins.
Do I really have to say that children are children? They are human beings created in the image of God in every color, shape and size. How do we continue to miss this in the year of our LORD 2019?
I feel ridiculous writing about this today. Good grief, Tom Brokaw. But the good news is that I could have brown grandbabies someday which would be amazing.
Image of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with one of her grandchildren in 1992.
A Church for Starving Artists 
re brown grand babies: It IS amazing and beautiful and energizing and like a fountain of youth for this grampa who just began to enter my eightieth year. Two of them in fact and live in the same city. And their sibling and cousins love them and we love ALL of the grandkids, no reservations. We are truly blessed.
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Thank you for this, Jan. Just simple and real. I have four amazing nieces and nephews who were born in other countries and don’t have white skin. It makes our family diverse and interesting in some ways, I guess. But, holy cow, they’re young adults like anyone else! Just people.
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