Jodie-Turner Smith Says Her Biracial Daughter Helped “Heal” Her Conversations Around Colorism: ‘It’s The Universe Teaching Me Lessons’

Jodie Turner-Smith

Jodie-Turner Smith Says Her Biracial Daughter Helped ‘Heal’ Her Conversations Around Colorism: ‘It’s The Universe Teaching Me Lessons’

British entertainer Jodie-Turner Smith is opening up about her motherhood journey.

The 36-year-old discussed her initial hesitancy towards becoming a mother during a recent interview but ultimately said the experience healed internal wounds regarding race and colorism.

Jodie Turner-Smith holds her daughter (circa August 2020)

Jodie-Turner Smith welcomed a daughter with her husband of three years, actor Joshua Jackson, back in April 2020. According to the UK-born model/actress, the only thing she was originally certain she wanted out of motherhood was having Black children with a Black partner. She reportedly explained:

“It’s interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother…Throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world.”

Jodie Turner-Smith

After wedding her husband in 2019, however, Jodie Turner-Smith said not having children with “somebody you love just because they’re white” was out of the question. Still, the “Queen & Slim” star shared she still held on to reservations as she understood the child would have a very different experience than her growing up biracial. She reportedly continued:

“I did have this mini pause, where I was like, she’s going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I’d always felt a little bit tormented by,” 

However, Smith added that having a half White child actually did the opposite of the expected torment. Instead, the experience reportedly allowed the new mom to heal internal issues she had growing up as a dark-skinned woman.

“Now that I’ve got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I’ve been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colourism.”

Jodie Turner-Smith

The international entertainer spoke more about the influence of race in her upbringing, expressing how lack of representation and discrimination warped her “psyche.” She stated:

“For a longtime in entertainment any sort of dark-skinned figures were held up as unattractive. That has a huge effect on the zeitgeist and it trickles down,”

She added:

“Anyone who has known me throughout my life would say, ‘Oh, Jodie has very high self-esteem.’ But it affected me, I just faked it till I made it. It wasn’t until adulthood that I began to come into myself. For a long time, people would even say to me, ‘You’re so pretty … for a dark-skinned girl.”

[VIA]

Do you think Jodie-Turner Smith has a point about learning from a biracial family? Leave your thoughts in the comments!