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Race-obsessed parents could learn a lot from their colorblind kids
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By Andrea Peyser
December 8, 2016

Race-obsessed parents could learn a lot from their colorblind kids

Kristin Davis is a political progressive who predicts a massive eruption of gloom and doom brought on by the New World Order — and suffers from the paranoid delusion that unspecific acts of physical or verbal violence committed by unseen villains are soon to threaten lives everywhere.

To those afflicted by these melodramatic-seeming daymares, the fear is real.

“I am white. I have lived in white privilege. I thought I knew before adopting my daughter that I was in white privilege, that I understood what that meant,” Davis, 51, declared, somewhat patronizingly, last month at The Greene Space in New York City.

“But until you actually have a child, which is like your heart being outside you, and that heart happens to be in a brown body, and you have people who are actively working against your child, it’s hard,” she said. “It fills me with terror.”

Davis played a shiksa goddess who converted into Jewish mother Charlotte York Goldblatt in “Sex and the City.’’

The actress, who campaigned for failed Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, never identified those she accuses of “actively working against’’ her child of color — Gemma Rose Davis, 5, whom she adopted in 2011 as a single mom. But her night sweats have driven her to ponder (or, hopefully, just fantasize about) taking stiff precautions.

“I wanted to move to the woods and learn to shoot a gun. It makes no sense. I’m fully aware,’’ Davis said she contemplated after the elevation of Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

“I’m 100 percent aware that it literally makes no sense … the fear of what is happening and how am I going to make sure that no one hurts my child, even in a subtle way, which was already a fear I had, obviously, but it just became so, so heightened.”


Kristin Davis and daughter Gemma Rose DavisPhoto: Splash News

It seems unlikely that anything but love and toys would be showered on Davis’ adorable daughter. But as the election of President Obama was supposed to bring about a post-racial society, it seems to have come up short.

Still, the great news is that a color-blind generation is growing up as we speak, with little regard for the people in elective office.

My teenage daughter’s friends, play sports and socialize with peers of all races and sexual orientations, without paying heed to identity politics. They’d prefer listening to Beyoncé, Ariana Grande or pre-meltdown Kanye West over enduring buzzkill lectures on diversity from adults.

Kids, including those of little Gemma’s generation, have not been conditioned to see the world in terms of race, gender, faith, wealth, size, physical ability, appearance or whom one loves. At least, not yet.


Sterling K. Brown on “This is Us”Photo: NBC

The popular culture lately has turned this into a thing: On the new NBC dramedy “This Is Us,’’ the young daughter of character Randall Pearson (Sterling K. Brown), nonchalantly tells her freaked-out dad, “Grandpa is gay. Or at least bi.’’

On the ABC sitcom “black-ish,’’ Anthony Anderson plays Andre Johnson, a prosperous black reverse-version of the white “All in the Family’’ race-obsessed TV character Archie Bunker. But his four kids (and his TV wife is pregnant), who are growing up in a fine house in an overwhelmingly white Los Angeles neighborhood, don’t share his racial angst.

In one episode, his teenage daughter is thrilled to learn that she was dumped by her white, French boyfriend — because she’s shallow. Race is a non-issue.

My own daughter, now a teen who is white, doesn’t possess a racist pore. That didn’t stop her fourth-grade teacher in Brooklyn, a white guy, from telling her and her best pal, a black girl — within earshot of her parents — to never forget that their skins were of different hues. I believe he meant well. But I watched as a look of utter bewilderment crossed my daughter’s face, as innocence was stripped away.

In the interview, Davis recounts telling her daughter, ‘‘Your curls are beautiful, your black skin is beautiful. You’re beautiful. You’re powerful. You’re a goddess.’’ She said she says this “because she needs to know this,’’ and also displays pictures of strong female African-Americans, such as tennis great Serena
Williams, in their home.

Davis should relax.

Her daughter is the one who should be teaching her.

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