Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

As a black mother raising a black son in a majority white culture, Jasmine Holmes says there are a lot of important messages she wants to make sure her son hears from her.

That doesn't change the truth of the fact that God loves you and cares for you in your brown skin and in your brown body. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. What's it like to be a minority family raising your kids in a majority white culture?

We'll spend some time talking with Jasmine Holmes about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I would think if we were having kids today – You already had kids, Bob. I know, I know. And we had them in a time that had its challenges, but I would think – It's very different today.

Yeah. If you were a new parent welcoming a son or daughter into the world today, you would be thinking, what is ahead? What kind of a world are they going to grow up in? The issues we're facing in our culture today are just very challenging. I think it'd be challenging to know what conversations to have and how to have them. It's a real different time, and I think it's important that we have those conversations. I'm sort of glad we're grandparents, you know, because we can just sort of take them and then give them back. Here's our advice. We'll see you on the other side. We've got a friend joining us.

In fact, this is kind of fun. I don't know if she remembers this, but Jasmine Holmes is joining us on Family Life Today. Jasmine, welcome to Family Life Today. Thank you so much for having me.

It is a delight to have you. Do you remember the first time you were on Family Life Today? I do remember, actually, yes.

Well, I thought we ought to just revisit that for a second. How long ago was it? This was more than a decade ago. You are 19 years old. Jasmine's dad was our guest that day.

His name is Vodi Bakkem, and he had written a book called What He Must Be If He Wants to Marry My Daughter. And we thought, well, we ought to call Jasmine and just see what she thinks about this book that her dad has written. And so, are you ready to hear what you said back when you were 19 years old? Oh, she was 19.

19 years old. You ready for this? Here we go. No, but go ahead. Jasmine, you're 19 years old right now, right? Yes, sir.

Are you still going to give this book the Jasmine Bakkem Seal of Approval when you're 25? Yes, sir. 28, I am 32.

If the guys haven't stepped up, you're okay with that at 32? Yes, sir. There you were at 19. Now you're 30 years old, right?

Yes. I want to hear this process. When your husband, Phillip, how old were you when Phillip approached your dad? I was almost 24, just under 24. And how did that go? How did you feel about it?

It was interesting. So we met each other at a conference on my 23rd birthday, and we walked up to him, me and my mom, and for my mom, it was love at first sight. She was like, elbowing me in the arm, and she goes, and Phillip's going to kill me, but he's not in here, so he can't stop me from telling you. She goes, are you crazy?

Do you not see that tall chocolate hunk of marriage material standing right in front of you? And I was like, oh my, no, I don't. And so the first words that Phillip ever said to me were, are you Vodie Bakkem's daughter? And I was like, great.

That's never going to be a thing. He's like a Vodie fan, and I don't want to talk to anybody who's like a Vodie fan. And he wasn't.

I mean, he was, but not in a weird way. He was talking to my dad because they were going to do an interview together, and so he was looking for him legitimately, not for an autograph. And yeah, we talked a little bit at that conference, and he actually interviewed me for a podcast, and I was very cold because I wasn't interested.

And so he couldn't even use the footage because he would ask me things, and I'd say yes, no, maybe. And so a year later, we were both in California for different reasons. And I saw on Twitter that he was on the same beach that I was on, and I was like, that's so funny that we're both here. And he said, yeah, we should get together. We should get dinner. I'm with a friend who we also know, like we should all just get dinner together. And that night at dinner, I realized that I was like, okay, maybe my mom was kind of right.

I kind of do like him. And we started talking a little bit afterwards, and then all of a sudden, right after I feel like we figured out we were interested in each other, he just stopped talking to me. And I told my dad that night, I was like, you know, hey, I've been talking to Phillip for the last few days. And I felt like he was interested, but then he just went completely cold and stopped talking to me. And my dad was like, oh, well, you know, Jasmine, like the right guy is not going to be intimidated by you and not going to be intimidated by me. And, you know, you won't have to worry about him stopping talking to you. Little did I know he had sent my dad an email like three days before that. And so they were already talking back and forth, but I didn't find out for another, I guess, week or so. My mom was like, this is not funny.

You need to tell her because she's like really wondering why this guy stopped talking to her. So, yeah, that was in March that we officially started dating, and then we were married by October. I think Phillip needs to put in his online profile, big chocolate hunk of marriage material.

Seriously. Your mom was right, though. She was, and she likes to rub it in my face all the time. She's like, I picked him like you did, mom.

Good job. Jasmine is not only Phillip's wife and Vody's daughter. Jasmine is an author. She's a mom. She's a speaker. She's a podcaster. Together with Jackie Hill Perry and Melissa Kruger, they've got a podcast. What's your podcast called? It's called Let's Talk.

Yeah, and it's a great podcast. She is a schoolteacher. She's written a book called Mother to Son that you actually wrote when you were pregnant with your second child. Did you know it was going to be another boy when you were pregnant? I didn't until like halfway through writing the book. I talked to the publishers. The day that I found out that I was pregnant was the first day that I talked to them about the book idea. And so, and the day that I turned in the final manuscript was two days after I gave birth to him.

So, they were like twins. And when you were writing this book, a part of what was the inspiration behind this book is raising a son who's going to grow up as a minority in a majority white culture. You had no idea that we would be where we are today in that conversation and in all that's gone on since you wrote the book. Would you change what you've written given where we are today?

I don't think I would. I really think that God gave me grace to talk about things that, truths that were transcendent regardless of where we were going to be in the next, you know, six months to a year. And I'm grateful for that. It was when I turned in the book, I was very, I was excited to be done with it. But I was also when I started writing it, you know, some other things are going on in the country that by the time I finished writing it weren't really going on anymore. And so I said, you know, people, this is not really something people are thinking about and talking about as much anymore, but hopefully it comes back up. And when it does, this is a helpful book because as a black mother, it's something that I'm, we're always talking about and I'm always talking about.

And I had no idea that a couple months, a few months after the book actually came out that more people would be talking about these topics. Help us understand what black mothers are talking to one another about that we just don't have a sense of. I'll give you a good example. I, the other day took my son on a play date and it was kind of rough. My son is, he's similar to me in that he's like really expressive and really dramatic. And so every time he like throws a tantrum or, you know, has a crazy exorcist head spinning moment, I'm like, those are my genes.

I'm sorry. And so I took him on a play date and he was not treated very well by the kids that were at the play date. They kind of knew each other better than they knew him and they weren't very nice to him.

And then his response was very like level 10 response. And so it was just one of those situations where I was coming home and I was just feeling really upset. And so I ended up talking to some black mom friends of mine and just sharing with them. Hey, it was really hard for me when Wynn acted this way at the play date because he was the only black kid there. And it made me feel like maybe they'll make assumptions about him because of the color of his skin.

Or it made me feel like I really had to stop and separate. Okay, these kids don't know him as well. They're not treating him this way because he's black.

They're not treating that. You know, I just had to like go through all of these mental checklists to make sure that my heart was right to make sure that I was having expectations of my son that you should normally have of a four year old and not special expectation just because he's the only black kid in the room. So there was just a whole checklist that I went through that these moms understood uniquely because they're the kinds of things that they're thinking about for their sons all the time. Yeah, I know that as I read your book, Mother to Son, I was thinking the same thing Bob did.

It's like it was so apropos for 2020. You know, I was amazed that you wrote it months or maybe years ago. And here we are in this thing. And at the very beginning you said one of the reasons I wanted to write to my son, Wynn, was to help him understand if he feels other because of the color of his skin. And you just told a story about that, right? So explain what that feels like for a mother to be able to explain that to her son. It can be difficult because as parents, and you guys know this, it's funny that I wrote a book that deals with parenting. It's not a parenting book, but I'm only 30.

I've only been doing this for four years. But I have learned as a parent that oftentimes my parenting comes out of a place of hurt in my life or a place of unresolved things in my life. And so when I look at my son, and I'm able to kind of see through his eyes, all of those little childhood wounds that I have all the little childhood stuff that I have going on. I just want to speak to him the words that my parents spoke to me, the words that God speaks about me, the words that I wanted to hear, which were that you're loved, you're black on purpose. God made your skin for his glory. He made you for his glory.

He didn't make an accident. You are beautiful because you're fearfully and wonderfully made. And regardless of how the world responds to the way that you've been fearfully and wonderfully made, that doesn't change the truth of the fact that God loves you and cares for you in your brown skin and in your brown body.

And I think I'm talking to him, but in a way, I'm also reminding myself as well. Let's talk about some of those wounds in your own life, because you get into some of this in your book. Do you remember when you became aware of the fact that your skin was different than other kids' skin that you were playing with? Yes, I was really young.

My mom had just given birth to my brother, so I was maybe three, three and a half, going on four. And I was at a daycare center and I was the only black kid at the daycare center. And I would get into fights, like really big scuffles, and my mom would come up to school and ask what happened.

And I would not be able to really articulate what happened. So one day she came up to the school because I had sprained my arm running away from a little boy on a play set, fell off the top of the place, let arm was sprained. And finally, the entire story came out, which is that the kids were calling me the N-word, calling me a monkey, chasing me around the playground. And in my little three-year-old brain, I didn't know quite what that word meant, and I didn't know quite what those things meant, but I knew that it meant that I was different. And I knew enough to feel shame to where I didn't want to tell my mom what they were saying about me.

So that's, I think, the first time, and it's sad that, you know, it's sad that it was a negative experience the first time that I realized that I was different, but that was definitely it. Well, you know, I read that story last night and I teared up for you as a little girl. And yet I also was amazed at, was it your mom or your grandma that went back and said, we're not doing this, you know, she stood up for you. That was your mom that went back there.

Yeah, talk about that. So if this happens to win, or one of your sons, how are you going to respond? So it's one of my best memories because my parents are, like a lot of Christian parents, when we get into a fight or we get into a scrape, they come up and they're like, what did you do, Jasmine? Like, I realized that he hit you, but what did you do first? Or I realized that you're not getting along with this teacher, but what have you done? And there are a few key memories in my life where my mom just was complete and total mama bear. And that was the first one that I remember of her just kind of grabbing my arm and talking to the teacher.

I don't remember what she said, but I just remember like a whole lot of hands flying and a whole lot of, you know, just like very expressive. And I never went back again. And she was like, you never go back again. I'll keep you at home until you start school.

We're not going to do this. And it just made me feel so safe and protected. And that's a feeling that I want to duplicate for my son at any opportunity. I hope that I don't have that particular opportunity to duplicate that for him.

I can't imagine that. I hope that I never have to live through that as a mother. But on the receiving end, as a child, my mom just showed me a great deal of love in that moment and kind of embodied what it means to be a mom.

Right. To protect your child. Jasmine, do you remember when you told her all that happened? What did she say to you? I just remember her just saying, this is not your fault.

No, this is your fault. And it was so hard for her because for weeks I had been getting sent home with like, because she, you know, your mom gets you all ready for school and she puts your hair up in the cute little puffs and braids and your little outfit. And she said she would come to pick me up and I would just look like I had been scrapping, like my hair would be all over the place.

My clothes would be disheveled and she would just be like, what's going on? And they're like, Jasmine's a fighter. Which again, I told you about my son when he's a drama king. I'm a drama queen. So my mom was like, I mean, you know, Jasmine is a fighter.

So this this makes sense to me. But I think once I just remember her being so hurt that she didn't realize all the time that she was giving me these talks of like, Jasmine, you know, you got to stop fighting at school. You got to start listening to your teacher.

You got to start. I think once she realized that she had been not aware of the full story of things that were going on, she just felt so bad and she just kept telling me, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

If I had known, I would not bring you back. So you're four years old and you're really the victim of racism on a playground. Did you experience a lot of that growing up? I didn't experience a lot of outright racism growing up. I experienced a lot of casual prejudice growing up.

What does that look like? Just little things of, you know, when I was a teenager or I'll start before that, the first boy that I ever had a crush on. And it's so funny.

I was when I was getting married, I was moving out and I have had the same furniture in my bedroom since I was like six years old. And so I was clearing out the back of a drawer and I found a valentine from my very first crush. I was like, oh, this is so funny. And so Phillip was like, who's this guy, you know, being kind of silly. And he said, you know, he's asking me for the story. And I was like, actually, I didn't remember until you asked me the story that I told a friend that I liked this boy. I was nine. And he told the nine year old boy that Jasmine really likes you. And the nine year old boy kind of looks at me and he goes, oh, no, that's gross. I don't like black girls. They're not pretty. And so my very first like, oh, I feel like I feel butterflies about this boy thing ended like that. And so there were just a lot of little things like that of, you know, your hair is not very pretty.

It's really frizzy or your skin looks weird, you know, just little, little things. And then as a teenager, just lots of questions that weren't motivated by a heart of racism. I don't think, but made me uncomfortable sometimes or made me feel different or made me feel other.

But nothing is outright as that. As you talk about that, I'm thinking about the fact that those of us who are a part of majority culture, we didn't have the experience of feeling other or feeling different because we're part of majority culture. Is it front of mind for someone who is in a minority culture? Is it something that's kind of always present there? I'm different than the other people in this room. Yeah, I think it's always in the back of the mind.

Right. It may not always be right up at the forefront, but it is something that as a black child growing up in majority culture, when I was in private school, my parents did talk to me differently. And I distinctly remember my mom having conversations with me and saying, you know, Jasmine, like when you act out in these ways, it is not the same as when your white friends act out. When you do X, it is not the same as when your white friends do X. So almost like being held to a higher standard and wanting to be exemplary because I was the only black person and often person of color in a room. And then also just, you know, people I always joke that everybody talks about the white people with the one black friend and I was like the one that was me.

And so all of those stories involving the one black friends, I have some version of those stories for sure. And did you feel that as well in the church, in the community? Because I know that you, I think your dad was at a church that was predominantly white. So did you feel pressure there as well? Yeah, I just felt different. And I was homeschooled from fifth grade until the end.

So most of my social interactions in that junior high, high school age range were at church with young people from my church. When you write a book, it's part of you, especially this, if you're writing it to your son, it's your passion, it's what you're bleeding. As you were writing it, what were you hoping? Like, oh, I just want you, like what was going on in your mind as you were writing this?

I wanted him and really everybody who read the book to feel seen. I think that's such a huge piece of identity, which I love to write about anything having to do with identity. Motherhood, womanhood, being a black woman, being an American, all those things that kind of go into the pie of who you are. And as I was writing to my son and to the church at large, I just wanted people to feel seen and understood, to feel something that they could connect to, because even if you're not a black mother, most of us have an experience of a mother's love. A lot of us have children. We're supposed to be a family of faith, and so this is a sister of faith writing a familial story.

So I wanted it to be familiar and to feel like we were connected. Jasmine, there's a phrase that's used today that describes a lot of what you've described for us here. People will talk about experiencing microaggressions. And I've heard that phrase, and part of me is like, well, doesn't the Bible say you just overlook that stuff and kind of move on? Or is this something that we should be more alert to and more sensitive to and be dealing with? So how do you process the whole idea of microaggressions? And as you think about your son who will undoubtedly experience some of those growing up, will you coach him to just, it's a man's glory to overlook an offense? Or will you say, no, you need to stand up for yourself in these situations?

I guess it depends on the offense. So I think that there can be a couple of different categories of microaggressions, which is not a term that I like to use. I tend to stay away from some of those hot-button terms because I feel like they're really loaded and people kind of immediately have this gut reaction to them. But there may be one category of person who is literally just asking a question because they want to know the answer to it.

Right. I have had friends who ask me all the time about my hair or do I have to wear sunscreen or do I have, you know, those questions in some people's minds could be construed as microaggressions. In my mind, it's, you know, people are curious. People want to know. I understand.

I get it. But sometimes people say things that are rooted in assumptions or sometimes people say things that are rooted in prejudices. And I don't feel that is loving to let a person continue in that kind of thought process. I don't think that it's loving not to shed light on something that a person may not know. And so it might be the difference between assuming that that person means you ill or maybe just saying, hey, I don't know if you realize that what you said could be offensive.

I did feel a little bit offended. I would love to talk to you about why would you be open to that? And I've had several of those conversations as an adult and most of them have ended really well. It's always awkward.

But I think it's important to love people by setting light on areas where they can love you better and being open to when people want to shed light on how you can love them better as well. To do that when you're 30 years old is different than when you're 7 years old and there's something that happens that's a sliding or when your son, I'm just imagining that your son is the last one picked on whatever sports team because his skin is different and people just have a prejudice or think there's something wrong with him. How will you train a 7-year-old to deal with that kind of a sense of slight or being acknowledged as different? What will you tell him he ought to do in that moment?

In that moment, I honestly don't know because my son is 4. But I do think it's really important for me at this stage of Wynn's life to kind of front-load helpful truth into him so he knows that he's brown. He knows that God made him brown on purpose. He knows that that's beautiful. In fact, if you say, Wynn, you're so handsome, he goes, I know. And I'm just like, say thank you. And it's like that thoughtful, like, yeah, he's nodding. Like, I know. I know. So he knows.

He knows that about himself. And so I am more concerned at this point in his life with solidifying his identity than I am with teaching him all the ins and outs of advocating for himself because that's going to come with time. How does any child advocate for themselves? How does any child learn how to say no? How does any child learn bodily autonomy? How does any child learn? It all just comes from practice. And in my case, as a 30-year-old mother, a lot of it comes from trial and error. So my concern at this point of his life, at this point of his understanding, is just teaching him who he is and how he's fearfully and wonderfully made. And as those other things come up in a developmentally appropriate way, just kind of saying, like my mom did, this is not your fault.

You are beautiful. God made you brown on purpose. What you're saying is so insightful because as he turns 10, 12, 14, 16, he may say, I know, when you ask him that question. I think inside, though, there's going to be a doubt because he's hearing all these other people say, and you're planting a foundation that's going to be so critical in the years to come. Whether that's a white boy or a black, it doesn't matter.

It's like, oh, my goodness, that is going to be challenging, your mom and dad instilling that. I just wonder if you will someday say to him, you know, you're a big chocolate hunk of future marriage material. I might.

It's possible. You probably will say that. I think I will. There is so much in your book that is applicable for every mother-son relationship and yet so much that I think for majority culture readers to read and go, I've never thought about that.

I've never stopped to consider what this relationship is like and the uniqueness of it. And I think it gives all of us a better idea of how we support, how we navigate, how we help in this process, how we can learn from one another. I hope our listeners will get a copy of your book, Mother to Son, Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope, written by our guest Jasmine Holmes. We've got the book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can request a copy of the book from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get your copy.

Again, the title of Jasmine's book is Mother to Son. You can order it when you go to familylifetoday.com or you can call to order 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. By the way, if you are a regular Family Life Today listener but sometimes you miss hearing us on the radio, you can download the Family Life app, the brand new Family Life app. It makes it really convenient for you to listen to Family Life Today whenever it's convenient for you. Go to your app store, type in Family Life as one word, download the new app, and start listening whenever you'd like.

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One home at a time. We're grateful for those of you who support this ministry. In fact, if you can help with the donation today, we'd like to say thanks by sending you a couple of books written by our friends Matt and Lisa Jacobson. They were on Family Life Today earlier this year talking about how we can more effectively love one another in a marriage relationship. Their books are A Hundred Ways to Love Your Wife and A Hundred Ways to Love Your Husband, very practical books that we'd love to send your way. Again, as a way to say thank you for your ongoing support of the Ministry of Family Life Today. We appreciate you.

You can donate online at familylifetoday.com and request the books there or call to donate 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. Now, tomorrow we're going to continue a conversation with Jasmine Holmes talking about raising a black son in a majority white culture, how you help that child understand his identity, which transcends but does not overlook his ethnic background. Jasmine joins us again tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.