BIPOC Parenting Series: Afra's Story

As a community-focused company, Kabrita USA strives to be inclusive and to continuously celebrate diversity. In honor of Black History Month, Kabrita USA is featuring a BIPOC Parenting Series, for the entire month of February. The BIPOC Parenting Series centres BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) parents’ experiences. Our goal is to enhance greater representation of BIPOC parents in the media, as well as to amplify BIPOC voices and stories.

Today, we are sharing Afra’s story about her family being part of the Muslim BIPOC community, and the future she wants for her children.

Afra's Story:

Our parenting journey started in 2013 when we were blessed with a baby boy, then 2015 with baby girl and in 2017 another baby. With each child came different blessings and challenges. Our births were eventful and, in many ways, traumatic.

Deep down inside as a BIPOC I do feel that played a part in our experiences. However, despite the births we had absolutely beautiful healthy children and the most rewarding part has been to see them grow up and love everyone the same.

As parents of different skin tones, there was almost always the discussion of how our kids didn’t have their father’s skin tone and looked more like me. About 5 years into parenting we don’t have to hear those discussions anymore and as a BIPOC I didn’t want my children hearing them being labeled. Especially with the state of our country at the moment, I fear for them and their future especially being Muslim BIPOC.

I want a future for them where there will be no judgment based on their skin tone, where they will not be singled out at school, or at a store. I want my son to embrace his beautiful curly hair and not feel like he needs to flatten it down to have straight hair like his classmates.

As parents, and as humans we need to look at everyone the same way, we are all humans, coming from One God, We ALL have a responsibility to educate our children, instill good values in them.

Kabrita USA BIPOC Parenting Series shares genuine stories written by parents from the BIPOC community. Each story offers a different perspective from their personal parenting experience. To read more stories, please visit our Nourish Blog.