r/Parenting AITA
Cutting the Galtonian Knot
They say racism is a learned behavior but may be in reality it is antiracism that is learned, or even is merely an affect. But, if racism is a learned behavior, then I (37, M) have a daughter (8, F) that may be an exception that proves the rule. She had been from birth have been deathly afraid of African Americans. I first noticed this the first time my wife (then 28, F) and I (then 29, M) visited Whole Foods as a newborn. The older (54, F) AA cashier leaned over and said, “Oh, she’s precious”, and our little Mackayla (not her real name) started screaming bloody murder immediately in the express checkout kiosk. We laughed it off and the cashier shrugged and said, “Well she sho is cute anyways.”
I think I need to add a bit more context here. I’m an epidemiologist and I study population genetics. The early debate in genetics was whether traits developed over the life of a subject would be inherited by the offspring, an idea promoted by Lamarcke and widely disproved. For example, if you undergo weight training and became a world class weightlifter and maxxed out your myosin light chains and fast twitch muscle fibers, your children will still be weak and flaccid upon birth. This is always the example used because it is so painfully obvious how weak and helpless a newborn is, and as such became a metaphor for acquired skills cannot be inherited.
But more recently this field of epigenetics has just exploded and for example this one Israeli scientist said that traumatic memories in the nematode can be stored in methylation changes in the DNA, and this confers a very specific change to the offspring and apparently in nematodes this continues for several generations. Which begs the question as to what traumatic event in my lineage led to traumatic memories resulting in this innate fear developed in my daughter? The larger implications of this finding is that while every generation must strive for their own excellence, the only long-term generational effect they can have is to traumatize others. Curious.
Maybe a Lamarckian explanation isn’t necessary. One could explain using basic evolutionary principles that a newborn child would be primed to recognize their parents and a fear of being kidnapped by some foreign tribe would be an evolutionarily preserved trait that would confer benefit to the in-group. The great psychologist John Watson proved that the only stimuli that produce innate fear are snakes and a sudden loss of balance or support, but that doesn’t explain our little Mackayla’s histrionics.
We bought little board books with diverse characters to introduce to Mackayla, she wouldn’t let us read them, she would cry every time we opened them up or she just pretend to sleep. Mackayla learned to navigate the world over time and her absolute panic became more nuanced. Nevertheless, the trouble became worse. One of my co-workers, great guy in business development, Abaeze (35, M). Abaeze’s dad was a cardiologist in London and he was a business development rep (average salary $150,000). Abaeze invited us to a picnic in the park, with his son. My wife (33, F) had a newborn (F) at the time so I took Mackayla (5, F), thinking this may be a good “exposure therapy”. Not that she has to fall in love with Abaeze’s son Marcus (6, M) or anything but maybe Mackayla can have a nice polite visit and start to overcome this phobia of hers. I had just recently bought this pulley system for my garage to store my bicycle (Schwinn, Phocus) since my last one was stolen, and there was slack in the rope. Mackayla begged me to cut the slack so she could have the rope as a keepsake.
Imagine my surprise when Mackayla brought the rope to the picnic. Abaeze cut up some watermelon and there were other parents from work there, but Mackayla spent most of the time climbing trees. Little Marcus was a bit of a chubby chungus (he was actually very articulate) and he couldn’t get higher than the lowest branches. Mackayla would get sly digs on him, teasing him and showing off how high she could climb. Eventually Marcus got bored and started throwing frisbee with some of the other kids. I was talking shop with Abaeze, I had an interest in business development, after all you get an expense account.
I heard Mackayla call out, “Hey dad!” and then she showed me pleased as punch how she wrapped her rope around the lower branch of the tree and tied a knot with a little loop. Abaeze had just finished preparing a fresh plate of watermelon and we both look at the rope as he hands me his plate and my jaw just dropped and I kind of shook my head and said, “I don’t know, I didn’t know”.
I honestly don’t know where she picked this up from. We do the best we can to be actively anti-racist. One time, we were at the YMCA and I needed sunscreen, I politely asked an African American lady if she had sunscreen before I asked a white lady, just to be fair. Because I didn’t want to assume that there are racial differences. The African American lady didn’t have sunscreen, but I made it a point to teach Mackayla this important lesson. But maybe it is a little bit crazy to note that in genetics and statistics, epidemiology and nearly every other field of science that the tools were developed by men like Francis Galton, Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher to quantify the comparisons between groups in any disease state or age level or socio-economic status or education level or differences in animal breeds or which fuel is more efficient, could not be applied to differences in humanity? It was a few men from England, that in this particular field, developed the intellectual infrastructure that the entire scientific community rests on today. Galton founded the journal Nature which is the leading scientific journal throughout the world. Pearson and Fisher’s multiple statistics tests are used in nearly every scientific paper in existence. But what’s curious is that, despite their tremendous contributions to this infrastructure of thought and scientific validation, their observations on differences in the human races, and thoughts on how to develop humanity, are considered verboten today. Weird, huh?
Anyway, when Mackayla was 8 and Clarissa (F) was three, our au pair (22, F) returned to the Czech Republic and left us in a lurch in the middle of Covid and we had to find an English-speaking babysitter in our city (3+ million metropolitan area) willing to work or $20/h (USD). Eventually, we thought we took a chance on Shannyn (20, AA, F). After all Shannyn was a junior in college and had a clean track record. So we gave Shannyn a list of our do’s and don’ts and showed her how to prepare snacks and dinner for the girls before we arrived back from work. We had a delightful master suite (479 sq ft) with wooden French doors leading to a hot tub, a spacious walk-in closet. We even renovated with Lavezzi tile. Clarissa needed to have her bath salts and bubble bath and toys to enjoy and relax long enough to have her hair washed. We asked Shannyn to help her bath when my wife (36, F) and I returned from work (combined income $140,000).
After a couple of peaceful weeks, at 4 p.m. one day I received a text from Shannyn about Mackayla. Shannyn and Mackayla was arguing with her about dinner and Mackayla locked herself in her room. I told Shannyn not to worry about Mackayla and just give Clarissa her bath. Then at 4:30 I received this text:
“Mister Faisal, Mackayla tied the two doors together outside the bathroom and locked herself out of the bedroom so we have no way to get out the bethroom.”
I frantically called Shannyn and told her to get some scissors and try to cut the rope through the doors but she had trouble doing that so I had to reassure her that I would be home as soon as possible (20 minutes commute). Tears were streaming down my face as I drove back, shaking at my head at Mackayla’s transgression. I pulled up into my driveway of our townhouse ($450,000 Zestimate), bounded two steps at a time up the stairs, gave Mackayla the worst angry glower I could muster, unlocked the master bedroom suite and untied the knot. Shannyn responded with stony silence at my profuse apologies, and, naturally, ghosted us.
TLDR: My daughter is threatening African-Americans despite our anti-racism stances. AITA here?
Top form.
Dying