by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber
Before my daughter was born, I knew what kind of father I wanted to be for her. My babygrrl was going to be raised to be a fierce, strong woman of color. I was going to make her iron-on onesies emblazoned with portraits of Yuri Kochiyama, Angela Davis, […]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber
This is where we live.
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I took our almost-three-year-old daughter to her first county fair. She got to eat French fries and funnel cake, look at cows, and dance like crazy to Los Lobos, performing live in a concert sponsored by an […]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber
Last week, the parentblogosphere (or at least the neighborhood I frequent) was buzzing, post-BlogHer, with HKMIC (that’s Head Kimchi Mama In Charge) CityMama/Stefania Pomponi Butler’s smackdown on clueless PR flacks trying to get mombloggers to flog their stuff for free to their highly coveted demographic. Seems that that demographic […]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber
My wife and I have been talking and thinking about this for a while. Last December, we heard a heartbreaking episode of This American Life in which a Muslim American family’s American dream dissolves in the face of incessant bullying—by students and a teacher—of their elementary-school-aged daughter. The segment, act […]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber, originally published at Rice Daddies
I’ve been reading a bunch of posts lately, by hapa parents and/or parents of hapas, about that periennial old miscegenated bugaboo [no, not the stroller, look it up], the “why don’t I/how can they/who’s keeping me from fit(ting) into the group(s) I/they claim as my/their […]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber, originally published at Rice Daddies

I’ve always been that friend or relative that you either love or absolutely hate around gift-giving time: I like to give books and “educational” stuff. Of course, that also means that I love to get those kind of presents too, and I hope The Pumpkin picks up that tendency from me. Here’s a list of all the multi-culti and/or educational presents my toddlergirl received this Christmas (and no, they weren’t all from me!):

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber

We put up our Christmas lights this weekend — well, we tried to put them up, but seeing as how four of five strings of icicle lights, which worked when I tested them individually, decided not to work when I had already gotten them up on the frakkin’ house, I guess I’ve gotta run to Target on my lunch break tomorrow.

Here in Bakersfield, of course, the first weekend of December is already late — Christmas-happy residents tend to follow the big-box retailers’ decorating lead and get stuff up by Thanksgiving eve, if not before.

by ARP columnist, Jason Sperber
A recent post on Rice Daddies, the group blog by Asian American dads that I coordinate, incited a lively debate among commenters about whether racially or culturally based Halloween costumes were well-meaning or racist, or worth getting upset about at all.
On the one hand, we could throw up our hands and […]

by ARP Columnist, Jason Sperber
If you surf certain corners of the parentblogosphere, chances are you’ve read, or even participated in, some pretty heated discussions about the intersection of race and parenting. Most parentblogs, however, are the creations of individual writers with individual points of view, with debates in the comments forming between readers who agree […]

by ARP Columnist, Jason Sperber
Where I’m Coming From
What does it mean to be an anti-racist parent? Thinking about this question makes me flash back to the diversity trainings I was involved with during college, both as a participant and a facilitator. One of the recurring exercises we did was sort of a personal history inventory, […]