16
Benjamin Lampkin
looked like a little mixed boy. He just looked like
himself. Like me.
Maybe there is no tangible connection to a
Native American ancestor; maybe his African
American roots will remain hidden behind that
ambiguous shading. That fear was back, the
DNA results almost a confirmation that any
links my son had with those black names and
faces would fade away, become just a collection
of photographs he’d never look at and stories of
people he’d never meet.
It’s on me, then.
My wife will always be an important factor in
helping my son embrace all aspects of his heritage,
but I feel a sense of responsibility to be the catalyst
for his lifelong immersion in the wide cultural
identity that comes with this whole mixed thing.
Let him know those numbers and those
percentages mean something, but they don’t
mean everything.
He’ll always have a beautifully-tangled family
history, myriad intertwined paths forged by slaves
and immigrants and doctors and laborers and
teachers that became this little boy.
But it will be up to him to take that history and
build his own self, an identity unencumbered by
the weight and expectations of DNA and ethnicity
and genetics.
And I can’t wait to see what that looks like.
BRIDGING THE GAP.
Almost Complete
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