I am not the babysitter

I am not the Babysitter

One of the unspoken but extremely visible New York occurrences is the number of black nannies that populate the city. I have always found this fascinating phenomenon that we truly have not come that far from days before slavery was abolished. Rich white folks with black nannies. Anyone with eyes who goes to the park or mommy and me classes will see that a vast majority of nannies are black and mostly from the Caribbean.

I will admit that before I adopted my daughter, I never noticed this phenomenon.  Frankly, I think most childless people don’t notice families unless the child is making noise and disrupting their space.

When I was on family leave going to the park everyday, that is when I noticed that 99% of the nannies were black with the ocasional Eastern European/Hispanic nanny thrown in for good measure.

This is when the first rather ludicrous question popped up, when one of the black nannies asked me “is she yours?” She really threw me for a loop and I stumbled out a “yes, she is” and wandered off with a perplexed look on my face.

Now over the years, this crazy question has been posed to me again by another black nanny on the street and a Eastern European (okay maybe she was Russian, I am not good a distinguishing the accent.)

This really did not bother me but over the last few months, this crazy question has been posed to me by children, one white and one black. One day at after school, I asked a little girl if she knew where my daughter was.

She asked me point black, “Are you her babysitter?”

“Uh, no,” I stammered in an admittedly annoyed tone.

What kills me about the incident was her reaction. She, seriously looked at me with skepticism and later when  I found my daughter, she literally stood by and watched me with a somewhat leery eye.

The most recent event happened at the playground. A boy  asked if he could use my daughter’s scooter. I told him he had to ask my daughter. His friend, an African-American boy asked his white friend, “Is that your babysitter?’ Before the kid could answer, I shot back admittedly in slightly harsh tone, “No, I am the mother of the girl with the scooter.” Okay,  maybe I might shot a somewhat dirty look with the harsh tone.

These latest incidents somewhat surprised given that our school is pretty diverse and there are black kids at the school and they see black moms, I just cant figure out why their assumption  is that I am the nanny. Maybe I look a nanny??? I have no idea.

But it’s food for thought as to what kids actually internalize when they see all the non-white nannies at the the playground and at pickup.