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This Is Us
Memoir of a White Brother
I love my brother as my equal. The outside world forced me to confront his Blackness.
I don’t remember when my brother and sister became Black. I was 10 months old when my parents brought the six-year-old twins home. It wasn’t planned or sought out, but my parents were moved to meet them after seeing their photo in the local paper alongside an article about the challenge to find adoptive homes for older Black kids. When my parents discovered that they’d already endured three foster homes, they couldn’t say no.
Before I knew color, before I knew people, before I knew language, before I could do much more than drool, or giggle, or stumble, I knew them. They were part of us. Learning that they were Black and I was white came in bits and pieces and had to be taught. Despite my parents’ best attempts at lessons of equality, everything else taught me differently.
My lessons came from watching. I watched white shopkeepers, white family friends, white teachers, white police officers eye me so differently than they eyed my brother. I watched television shows depict white people as heroes and Black people as criminals, and news highlighting Black crime and minimizing white corruption. I watched trauma — both generational and of his own experiences — trigger…
