I know what you're trying to do when you say it. You're trying to tell your Black child that race doesn't matter to you. That they matter to you exactly as they are, with no qualifying conditions. That love doesn't have a color requirement. I get it. The intention is love.
But your Black child is hearing something different.
When you tell a Black child you don't see color, you're telling them something they can already see isn't true. They look in the mirror and see brown skin. They look at you and see a different color entirely. They go to school and the teacher calls on them differently. They go to the store and the security guard watches them closer. The world is showing them color all day long, and then the person who loves them most says the color they see everywhere isn't something they see at all.
When you say you don't see color, you're not protecting them from race. You're asking them to believe that either the world is wrong about what they see, or you're not really looking at them.
Every white parent raising a Black child asks themselves these questions. If you're trying to figure out what to actually say, download the free guide “The First 5 Signs Your Black Child Is Carrying Something They Haven't Told You” at beyondthemomentadoptionstudio.com/#community. It's what we should have been taught in the first place.
I'm a 54-year-old Black man raised by white parents in Nebraska. By the time I was seven I already knew that color existed, that it meant something, and that my parents had decided together not to name what they were looking at. I loved my parents anyway. But I learned something about what happened when I couldn't trust what the most important adults in my life were saying about what was right in front of them.
Here's what you could say instead.
You could say: “You have beautiful brown skin. I see it. I'm glad you're my son.” That's it. No dissertation. No conversation about systemic racism or representation. Just one sentence that tells your child the truth about what you see and that you're not going to pretend you don't.
If you're trying to understand what conversations are actually needed at different ages, grab the Race Talk Toolkit ($37). It's the conversations you're afraid to have, plus what to actually say.
Your Black child doesn't need you to erase their identity to love them. They need you to see it, name it, and tell them it's not something to hide or apologize for. It's not a race talk. It's just honest.
I've spent my life around white parents trying to get this right. The ones who land it are the ones who stop trying to fix race and start trying to see it. Not as a problem. As part of who their child is.
Your kid doesn't need you to stop seeing color. Your kid needs you to stop being afraid of naming what you see.