Mother Made Me This Way: The Emotional Fallout of Biracial Black Men Raised by White Women
How permissive parenting and pedestalised femininity fuel a unique brand of racialised misogyny
I. Introduction – A Difficult Conversation
Ah, mothers.
Probably the most contentious subject to critique in feminist discourse due to their polarising, yet foundational position in the functioning of society. Much heated debate has been stirred on whether they are to be perceived as patriarchy’s vanguards and enforcers or its most mistreated and exploited prisoner. Those with more nuance on the issue tend to place them in between, or along a spectrum of complicity dependent on the mother in the question.
I consider myself to fall in this camp.
I have endless empathy for mothers, even as a childfree woman myself. It is that well of empathy—for both mothers and the little girls they raise—that informs my decision not to reproduce. It is challenging, often thankless work subject to unceasing scrutiny, with little to no recompense or gratitude—and it only seems to be growing increasingly more expensive, arduous, and even frightening over recent years.
Not to say we haven’t made great strides since the days pregnancy was all but guaranteed to be lethal. Mothers today can at least soothe themselves that they will have the opportunity to be present in their children’s lives past the painful process of birthing them. But it is often that presence—that agency they take in shaping their child’s worldview—that can replicate the structural harm already present in society.
I want to lay this groundwork to say I understand the topic I am about to parse is one of an intensely delicate nature, but it’s for that reason that I consider it more vital than ever to approach it. We are living in a world that is growing ever divisive by the day over topics of race, immigration, and societal unity. As the West’s ethnic demographics continue to alter, we will likely see more panicked reactionary backlashes from the white majority to keep their foothold in power and their numbers strong. Nothing threatens this more than the existence of interracial relationships. Particularly, seeing white women (their prized vessels for continued lineage) cross racial lines to birth children for “enemy ranks”.
Especially, when those children are fathered by Black men.
Discussions of the mixed-race experience are more marginal when it comes to race, racism, and interracial relations. Understandable, since they are a minor demographic of the population—but they are also the swiftest growing. This intersection between oppressor-oppressed makes for a highly politicised existence that can be emotionally confusing and turbulent, not helped by being raised by a mother who is often ill-equipped on how to approach racial hierarchy with the child she is raising, or acknowledge her complicity within it.
I want to state that this is not intended as a blanket indictment of white mothers who raise mixed-race Black children, but to interrogate the ways raising a mixed child in a society that thrives on an imbalance in racial parity might negatively impact their growth, and how this impact can be further compounded when introducing the element of gender.
Because I don’t have the authority to contribute on the lived experience of mixed-race daughters, the focus for this article will be exclusively on white mothers who raise mixed-race Black sons, and how dynamic that can implicitly or explicitly contribute to misogynoir.
Once again, I must impress this essay is intended as a cultural and emotional dissection, not a personal attack. But without further delay, let’s get into it.
II. The Myth of the “Colourblind” Household
Perhaps one of the greatest failings of well-meaning white people today is the phrase:
“I don’t see colour.”
At first glance, it can seem innocuous, even virtuous. It’s an attempt to separate themselves from the more blatant racists of their demographic, the ones who not only see race but allow it to dictate where they live, work, and socialise—and more crucially, whom they befriend, sleep with, and marry.
However, this is an individualistic solution to a communal problem. And to consider it even a solution is, quite frankly, naive.
We do not live in a post-racial utopia. Your race still greatly informs how you’re treated, perceived, and how your life trajectory unfolds. For this reason, white liberals adamantly claiming “colourblindness” is, at best, clueless and, at worst, willfully ignorant. And if said white person decides to date a Black man, settle down, and raise children with him, this ends up becoming more than just a personal failing. It then becomes a generational burden.
Let’s be frank: these women are not prepared for what it means to raise a Black son. Raising a Black boy is not the same as raising a white one. And a lot of them learn that the hard way—if they admit it at all.
Many white women who raise their Black sons believe showering them in an abundance of affirmation and physical affection will be enough to shield them from the ugliness of the world. They may even uphold his existence as proof that her love can triumph over a hateful society. That his whiteness will protect him from harm, while his Blackness will lend him “flavour”, “coolness”, “edge”.
It’s a lie. A dangerous one.
Because when—not if—her child experiences racism, the response breeds not only shock, but defensiveness. After all, her son is different. He’s not like those “other” Black boys running in their gangs. He’s a good boy.
And when that worldview collapses, it’s not just the mother who feels betrayed by the world. Her son does, too.
This creates harmful psychological split within the son—between the comfortable, ego-inflated environment he receives at home to the racialised profiling and microaggressions he is subject to outside of it. Rather than being taught resilience and community solidarity, he is taught exceptionalism. To protect him from the looming threat of being labelled a “thug” his white mother might uphold him to certain standards. He is raised to believe he is not like those other Black people—he is smarter, softer, more special. This makes him even more self-conscious of falling in with the “other” Black boys, and furthers his distancing.
Through this, his mother inoculates him not just against racism, but against accountability. His household, while superficially loving, transforms into one of emotional repression, covert entitlement, racial identity confusion, and unprocessed anger. What results is a young man with no emotional tools to process critique, no tolerance for discomfort, and no meaningful relationship to his Blackness beyond the praise it brings him from white people who find him palatable.
A man like that is easy prey for resentment. Especially towards Black women. Especially when we dare to point out how he benefits from his proximity to whiteness. Especially when we do not coddle him the way his mother does. To protect his fragile ego, he will vilify us for refusing to play a part in his fantasy.
For seeing race.
For seeing him.
III. Permissive Parenting, Masculine Entitlement
To better understand the sort of environment that mixed-race Black men are being raised in, we must examine the parental dynamic a little closer. Starting with the kinds of women (and men) who enter into interracial relationships.
Obligatory disclaimer: what I’m about to say does not apply to all white women (or Black men).
I’m speaking in broad societal strokes based on the intersecting systems of oppression that are anti-Black racism and white supremacy—a hierarchy that places white people at the top and Black people at the bottom.
Because of the way these systems work in conjunction with one another, the kinds of white women willing to cross the racial boundary downward (from dominant to subordinate group) often aren’t the ones with a lot of social capital. Why? Because whiteness already rewards them for staying in bounds. If a white woman has beauty, education, and pedigree, she’s not generally incentivised to partner down with a Black man, unless he has some rare upward mobility (celebrity, wealth, etc.).
So what kind of white woman does enter into that relationship? Often one:
With less education
With fractured family ties
Who fetishises Blackness
Who sees the relationship as rebellion or rescue
Who has her own unprocessed trauma or marginalisation
That doesn’t make her evil. But it does make her less likely to provide stability for a mixed-race child, especially a son navigating Black masculinity. You can’t raise a Black son while being unaware of, or complicit in, racial power structures. It creates a rupture.
Contrast this to Black mothers of mixed-raced children. Under white supremacy, Black women are placed at the bottom of the desirability hierarchy, and thus, any relationship she enters into with a non-Black man (especially a white one) is seen to elevate her status.
Because Black women have to be exceptional to get even half the credit, mixed-race children raised by Black mothers tend to benefit from:
Higher levels of maternal education
Stronger extended family ties
A cultural fluency in Blackness that helps them self-narrate
Less racial confusion around “where they belong”
It doesn’t mean Black mothers are perfect. But they’re usually more equipped to parent in racist societies than white mothers who were handed a Black son and thought love and hugs would be enough.
But don’t think I’m forgetting to mention how fathers contribute to all of this. Because, trust me, they do plenty.
That’s if they stick around to raise him.
Child abandonment isn’t any less common of Black men when the race of the mother is non-Black. And if a white woman is left alone to raise the mixed-race child, then she may find herself woefully unprepared and lacking in a support system from her white family. This could incite her to over-bond with him to make up for her failed relationship—making her emotionally over-invested and defensive of her son’s faults, even as he begins replicating those very same fatherly patterns.
I have already spoken at length about how Black men leverage misogynoir to serve as a courtship strategy:
When you pair a Black father who is most likely steeped in uninterrogated misogynoir to a white woman who is either indifferent to it, or actively benefits from it, the mixed-race child, especially a son, becomes the battleground for all that unresolved gendered and racial trauma.
If the Black or biracial father is present in his child’s life and has internalised anti-Blackness and misogynoir he hasn’t dismantled, he often models that belief system to his child. Whether he realises it or not.
He’ll likely:
Criticise or diminish Black women in front of his children
Frame whiteness (especially white femininity) as the prize
See the white mother as a redemption arc from his “rough upbringing”
Perceive softness, rest, and femininity as only accessible via white women
This teaches the son—especially if he’s mixed and light-skinned—that whiteness is not only desirable, but necessary for comfort, status, and worth.
So what does he internalise?
“My father didn’t value women who look like me. So I shouldn’t either.”
Even if he has no contact with Black women in his formative years, the disdain is inherited by osmosis.
In contrast, white women in these dynamics are often pedestalised by default. They’re seen as:
More feminine
Easier to deal with
“Less mouthy” or “more grateful”
Symbols of upward mobility
But they’re not usually equipped to:
Address the nuances of racial identity in their children
Counteract the misogynoir of their partners or their children
Check the racialised gender trauma the son is already absorbing
Instead, many white mothers double down on their role as the “special exception.” They recognise that their pedestal is built on the backs of non-white women, especially Black women, and they refuse to do the inner work to remove that artificial inflation of their value. That teaches the son that only whiteness will protect him, and that the anger, critique, or strength of Black women is something to be feared or rejected.
As a consequence, the son learns to:
Emotionally bond with white women and emotionally exploit Black women
View Black women as “less safe,” “too critical,” “too difficult”
Seek comfort, validation, and approval from whiteness
Repress affection for Black women or shame any attraction he feels
Tie this in with the way the Black side of the family often mirrors the exceptionalism he receives at home by lionising his mixed heritage:
“You got that good hair”
“You’re the cute one”
With the way Black men are already granted leniency, forgiveness, and endless amounts of labour, and you get a dynamic rife with potential for a superiority complex.
In an attempt to seem “down” with the paternal side of his family, the mixed-race Black son will absorb enough cultural lexicon and mannerisms to blend in. He’ll talk the talk. He might even believe it. But underneath the buzzwords and borrowed ideologies is a man raised by a household that implicitly or explicitly told him that Black women were dangerous, unlovable, or less-than.
So when a Black woman does love him, challenge him, or hold him accountable, he implodes. Because she’s forcing him to confront the lie at the core of his identity:
That proximity to whiteness made him good.
You’ll see this play out in how mixed-race Black men will treat different women:
The light-skinned or non-Black woman gets softness, patience, understanding.
The dark-skinned or assertive Black woman gets hostility, dismissal, and exploitation.
It’s not personal. It’s structural. But the personal cost to Black women is immense.
IV. The Collision with Black Femininity
You might be wondering: if biracial Black men are raised with the assumption that Black women are inherently less-than, why bother associating with us at all?
If they’re going to pedestalise whiteness, pine after ambiguous “ideal” women, and treat Black women like rehab centres or self-worth stepping stones—then why not go where their fantasy lives?
The answer to that is emotionally fraught, but comes with a similar rationale for Black men: because they need us. And they resent us for it.
Because they know we’ll understand them more deeply than anyone else. They know we’ll extend more grace. That’s why they keep coming back—but only to extract, not to pour into. They orbit us for validation, drain our empathy, and then run back refreshed to the women they believe are inherently “softer” and “more desirable” while scapegoating us for all their unhealed wounds.
They’re eager for our validation because they (correctly) perceive us as the gatekeepers of Blackness. We are often the cultural preservers, community glue, and moral compasses of the diaspora. We set the tone. And because these men are raised by white mothers, often in proximity to whiteness, they grow up with a diluted or fragmented sense of what Blackness is supposed to feel like. They resent that we carry it so effortlessly, so unapologetically, and they feel both drawn to and diminished by that.
It’s classic inferiority masked as superiority. They know their Blackness will never be affirmed in white spaces the way it is performed in them. But when they enter Black spaces, particularly with women, they quickly realise proximity to whiteness doesn’t elevate them here—it often cheapens them, exposes them. It magnifies the internal fears they’ve likely harboured regarding their racial identity—that they are fraudulent, watered-down, inadequate.
Instead of rising to meet us, they try to humble us. To fracture our self-worth so that they can feel superior again.
Misogynoir offers a way out. It tells them:
“You don’t have to reckon with your race, your masculinity, your privilege or lack thereof. Just blame Black women. Hate them. Humble them. And then take from them the belonging your white mother couldn’t give you.”
They should treasure us, but the systems that raised them told them to destroy what they fear. And they fear us, because we see through them.
V. What White Mothers Can Do Better
As bleak a picture as this paints, I do want to end on a hopeful note. But I’m afraid it’ll be a bitter medicine for a lot of white women—especially those who pride themselves on being liberal and anti-racist—to swallow. Because I am going to ask them to do the unthinkable with their sons: to talk about race.
I am going to request for them to do the discomfiting work of interrogating their complicity with anti-Black racism and misogynoir. I am going to ask them to take their male partner and child to task if they see them perpetuating it or replicating it in their household. It is imperative that they do this, not only if they want to see a better world and future for their biracial child—but also for the Black women and girls they will encounter.
These boys deserve better, yes, but so do we.
Because who will hold these men accountable if their mother won’t?
I recognise the fear these women have of being tarred with the same brush Black women have been for centuries—that of being “difficult”, “militant”, “combative”. Many white women are socialised for the placation of male egos and deference to their partners, and it’s that behaviour that often lends them the reputation of “soft, cosseted femininity” that they wield over Black women. To ask them to go against that image is to ask them to surrender their privilege for a greater purpose, and I have no illusions that the vast majority will be willing to do it.
But for those who are interested, I have only this advice: broaden your perspective, and check your ego at the door. There is a huge body of work created by Black feminist scholars discussing misogynoir. Read books, watch videos, or even (respectfully) reach out to the Black women in your circle.
It is time for you to do your part.
VI. Conclusion – From Symptom to Pattern
We must break the vow of silence surrounding how maternal influence shapes little boys into the men they eventually become.
It is not to say mothers are solely responsible for the moulding of their sons, but it is inarguable that they become the formative blueprint for how boys relate to the women in their lives.
By ensuring misogynoir is countered early, in the home, it alleviates the burden of labour that these men inevitably dump at the door of their Black female friends and partners.
This is far from being a black-and-white matter. But, if we are to have any hope of resolving it, we can no longer pretend not to see colour.
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