Growing Family

Transracial Adoption and the Grocery Store Checkout

Why do half of the stories about strangers asking stupid questions, occur in grocery checkout lines? There must be a bizarre aura emitted from the scanner, that addles people into saying strange things.

Today, the checkout lady asked (as they frequently do), "Is he your son?" (sometimes it's "are they both your children?). I smiled and nodded, absentmindedly, emitting my "I am not interested in discussing my family with you, stranger" vibe.

She watched us for awhile, over the bags, before saying "he looks like his father, and she looks like you." Okay lady, whatever floats your boat. Again, the absentminded nod and smile. If that's what makes the most sense to her when she sees my brown skin-hair-eyed boy and my blond-blue-pale daughter, well cheerio.

I've actually heard that one before. I always acquiesce. My children do look like me and their father, and I feel no need to clarify that the father my son looks like is not the father my daughter looks like. I am especially wary of the grocery line questions. There is no where to move off to, and nowhere to remove your child to when a stranger's questions start to make them squirm. If the "bug off" vibe doesn't work, or the silent treatment, a clear "mind your own business" is the last resort. Today, my lack of interest in her interest seemed to do the trick.

Assimilation and Acculturation: Tough Stuff

First of all, may I just say that you all are superb and I think I am spoiled with some of the best online friends!

I've spent a lot of time thinking about assimilation,  acculturation, and cultural appropriation. Go ahead, click and read if you're not familiar with these terms. They're good ones to know.

Most of my processing on these issues has been around my role as a white mother to a son with African American heritage. As I seek to connect as much as I can, and learn all I can, I try to remain cognizant that I am not black, I cannot innately know about the black experience, and I don't have the right to consider myself part of black communities. A lot of adoptive families believe otherwise. It's not uncommon to hear people say something like "now that we have a daughter from China, it's like we're Chinese too!" My son is not a pass. I can do everything I can to provide him a comfortable proximity to his culture, but it's not my culture. Having African art in my home, and books by African American authors on my bookshelf, and brown faces on our dolls does not make me black. Anyway, I digress... That is the context in which I usually think about assimilation, acculturation, and cultural appropriation, but today I want to try to talk about something else.

Because of the horrific history many countries have connected to these terms (think Native American and Aboriginal children separated from their families in forced assimilation programs, stripping them of their cultural values and practices in order to bring them into mainstream -European, "Christian", western- culture), I always think of them in a mostly negative way.

Since being here in Australia, I've heard a sentiment that was not at all uncommon back home, and one I heard often in Holland as well: "If you don't want to speak our language and join our culture, go home." Basically, assimilate or leave. The dominant culture can take what they like, via cultural appropriation, and reject anything that doesn't "fit". The difference, is that previously, I'd always heard members of the dominant culture expressing that sentiment, and here I'm hearing it from immigrants. Here are some examples:

When we were buying our car we spent several hours with the car salesman. Towards the end of the transaction, he started a more personal conversation with me about our move here. He asked if we had had any troubles, as foreigners and was pleasantly surprised when I said our experience had been positive. He shared that he moved here 30 years ago, from South America, and was tormented by his peers at school. He said that so much has changed, and now when people find out he has South American roots, they think it is interesting and appreciate his heritage. He said that there are two kinds of people migrating to Australia, people who want to leave the politics and problems of them homeland behind, to come and become Aussie, and people who try to drag their home country with them, refusing to assimilate and making all sorts of problems. "If you don't want to be Aussie, go home", he said.

A friend originally from Indonesia, and living in Sydney after living in the U.S. told me about the trouble her daughter is having in school. Her daughter is in a class with predominently Korean classmates, who don't speak English in the classroom. The Korean mothers do not talk to her, or make connections outside of their community. My friend feels that this is hindering her daughter's education and she is considering changing classes or even schools. The sentiment is, if you want to be here, speak English, make and effort, assimilate.

Most of our friends here are not Anglo Australians. Most of them began life in another country, speaking another language. Yet, cultural heritage doesn't seem to be a very big deal to them. They want their children to be Aussie. I don't know of any of our friends who are teaching their children their first languages (which is understandably difficult given many of them are inter-ethnic marriages with two first languages represented). And when I've asked how they help maintain their family's cultural identity for their children, within Australian culture, I've gotten the hairy eye.

Coming from a framework where I've only been aware of two modes: majority culture forcing assimilation on everyone, and minority culture/ethnic/religious/linguistic families struggling to maintain those things for their children, the attitude I see here seems quite foreign to me. People say "we came here to be Aussie." Basically, to live the Australian dream (which is pretty much the same as the American dream): a better life for our children, a stable political environment, opportunities, advancement. Nurturing cultural identity doesn't seem to be such a big part of that. When I look around at our friends, I can imagine that their children won't be able to speak to their grandparents except in English, they won't know how to prepare the dishes their parents make, they may find their grandparent's religion to be odd, and their frame of reference for the world will be completely Western.

I'm really trying to understand this sentiment, and withhold judgment. I wonder if this is the way migrants to American processed things for a long while? Leaving the home-country identity behind to become a proud American? Is the current focus in American that you can be "both", more of a recent development?

For the first time this has implications for my own life as well. If we stay, will I become Aussie? When my children develop Australian accents and this place shapes their world view (as is evidenced already in the insistence of "biscuit", not cookie, and "wee", not pee), will I be fine to let our Dutch and American heritage slip away? I can't imagine that I will...but then my situation is quite different from many people immigrating from hardship, persecution, or lack of opportunity. It's something I keep thinking about...trying to understand this fierce Aussie pride that is predominant over historical ties.

Hair: The Identifying Factor

Small Sun's awareness of his skin color and hair texture, as well as those of others, is just exploding right now. All of a sudden he is seeing differences, and commenting on them.

Today, walking in our neighborhood, we passed a(n Asian) couple. Small Sun exclaimed, "hey, they were like B and J!" (Aussie friends of Vietnamese and Chinese heritage) I asked "what was it about them that was like B and J?" Small Sun replied, "their hair!"

For my little guy, hair is the defining factor. Not twenty minutes later, at the playground, we sighted a biracial boy we'd met before. He was at a distance so Small Sun didn't get to talk to him, but he picked him out of a crowd and said "that boy has curly hair like me!"

I can't tell you how relieved I am that we made this move before his awareness started to really come into focus. The color palette of the people in our lives changed overnight. At a recent birthday party for The Captain, there were a couple other people of European descent, but the majority migrated here with their families, from Asian and South East Asian countries. We also have a number of friends in inter-ethnic marriages, parenting mixed-ethnicity children. I am so relieved that when he starts to wonder about our family not "matching", that I have lots of friends to illustrate that families need not match. We still haven't connected with any of the members of our church with African heritage, but for now I am content that in children's church, at playgroup, and at the park, rather than being one of the only beautiful brown faces, now his is just a lovely addition to a multi-colored group.

Continuing Education

Shannon, of Peter's Cross Station, has an excellent resource post up. She has compiled her must-read list for (white) parents raising Black children. She writes:

I don't think most of the Transracial Adoption Books are all that great. And when you tell me that people have to start somewhere, and these books are good introductions, I will disagree in the strongest terms. Because books that give you tips for handling public curiosity, or tips on styling a Black child's hair are not the places to start. They are the last details, not the beginning steps.

I couldn't agree with her more. Of course we need to know how to respond to public interest, and we need to know how to care for our children's hair. Those are real needs. However, I think it would so benefit potential adopters to understand, more fully, the multitude of factors that work together in contributing to the situation that has made adoption a consideration or necessity for the child they hope to adopt. That includes history, cultural influences, economics, so many things that are never mentioned at all in most books you are encouraged or required to read to "prepare" you to adopt transracially.

I really feel like adoption systems do such a disservice to adopters and adoptees, by requiring so little in the way of education and preparedness for engaging in a transracial adoption. I consider myself to be a little bit hardcore, when it comes to my devotion as a transracial parent, yet I am only familiar with a few titles on Shannon's list! I am doing my best, going to the bookstore and buying everything I can find on the Black experience in America. For me, it's really been like grabbing in the dark, hoping I am reading things that are educating me well, hoping that I am listening to authoritative voices (recognizing there is no one "Black experience"). For this reason, I so appreciate Shannon's list and will apply myself to working through it. It is daunting, yes, but I am thankful to have a guide on the journey.

The School Search Begins

Today I visited an infants school (Kindy through Grade 2) that people RAVE about. Today was an open day for family of students and I went with a new friend and her son, who is six months older than Small Sun.

When we got there the Grade 2 class was putting on a dance display in the courtyard. As I began to look around and take in the surroundings, I began to notice the song the children were dancing to: Jump Jim Crow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_Jim_Crow (sorry, my hyperlink insert isn't working) Wikipedia says "Jump Jim Crow is a song and dance from 1828 that was done in blackface by white comedian Thomas Dartmouth (T.D.) "Daddy" Rice." Great... Just what I wanted to welcome us to the school!

I also noticed, rather quickly, that the percentage of children of color in the class was quite low and that no children seemed to share Small Sun's ethnicity.

We continued on our school tour, and the woman guiding us was extremely kind and helpful. At the conclusion of our tour I asked her if she knew the percentage that ethnic minority children represented in the school. She became visibly ruffled and explained that she wouldn't know that figure, as it would not be important to the school. She asked whether it would be important to me?

I explained that yes, it was important to me that my child was not one of a very few childed of color in his class. She explained, still flustered, that in Australia, all children are educated equally and that race is not something that they consider relevant in education. She assured me that they learn about different culture and religions and have a multi-cultural curriculum as part of government regulations.

I noted that in a class with a high percentage of children from varying backgrounds, children are less likely to be teased for being different. Finding her footing, she told me with gusto that I needn't worry about that! In their school they are extremely strict and no teasing of any kind is tolerated.

I walked home dissapointed. I have had strangers tell me, glowingly, how they loved this school, including a mother in a interracial relationship with biracial children. I had gotten my hopes up.

There are two things that I'm walking away thinking about: one is how we use this term "multiculturalism" like a big blanket. We throw it over anything we want to bring into our lives to "enrich" us without going to the trouble to understand the history or context. Like the Jump Jim Crow song. I can just imagine it being listed on a children's cd here as "African American Folk Tune" or something, and how teachers here might consider it a multicultural contribution to their curriculum, completely unaware that it is a racist stereotype from inception. I'm sure the teachers haven't done research on each song they played so judge whether or not it was appropriate. Nor have I done so with the "World Playground" cd my children love to listen to. We dance around to songs in other languages, enjoying their rythm and style without ever looking deeper to know what we are treating lightly.

Secondly, I am so tired of the polically correct position of "colorblindness". In efforts to avoid being racist or innapropriate we say "I don't see you as Indian, I just see you as a person", or "when I look at you I don't see brown skin, I just see a human being." We would never say to a colleague "oh, are you female? I hadn't even noticed! I'm so into gender-equality, I didn't realize you were a woman!" We wouldn't say "oh, you're wearing this clothing as part of your religious beliefs? I thought it was just a new fashion!" We don't ignore, or pretend not to see, gender, religious dress, age, etc, but we are trained that it is impolite to notice ethnicity.

Noticing difference is not descrimination. A child's ethnicity is one part of the many parts that make them unique. We recognize differences in learning styles in regards to gender. We are sensitive to teaching students from different religous backgrounds. Yet we deny that ethnicity should be seen in education.

On one hand, I think it is more true here when people say "where you come from doesn't matter, being Australian is what matters." There seems to be less of a divide between "us" and "them" (unless you are Aborigine: the media coverage of Aborigine issues seems very negative to me). There's just so much to sort out here.

Conversations of the Week

Conversation #1

Last week, we were walking down the street when a man was looking for the entrance to a construction site near our house. I pointed him to the entrance.

Man: "are these both your children?"

Me: "yes, my son and my daughter."

Man: "but they are...but he is...are there two different..."

Me: "we adopted my son"

Man (puzzled): "what"

Me: "we adopted my son"

Conversation #2

Visiting a home-group for a church we're considering, the members asked lots of questions about our family and were interested in Small Sun. We had already told them that we adopted him into our family.

People: "what is he?"

Us: "he is black American"

People: "is he all black? because his skin is..."

Us: "yes, he is biracial"

People: "the other half, what is it?"

Conversation #3

Today at the park, my kids were playing with a little boy who was there with his grandmother (I think she was his grandmother but she might have been his nanny.). 

Grandmother: "these are your children?"

Me: "yes, my son and my daughter."

Grandmother: "he is brown and she is white"

I nod.

Grandmother: "is he from mixed

I say "yes" while hearing her continue "mixed marriage?"

I don't correct her.

Grandmother: "children from mixed marriage are the most beautiful children. Such beautiful, beautiful children."

It might bear mentioning that the man in conversation #1 had accented English and appeared to be from the Middle East, perhaps? In conversation #2 the participants were Malaysian immigrants and Australians with Vietnamese heritage. In conversation #3 the grandmother was speaking accented English and another language with the little boy. I believe I recognized Italian, given that our neighborhood is historically Italian. Also, the more I look into it, the more my initial impressions are confirmed. Adoption is not common here. No one has assumed that possibility. At the playgroup I've attended for the last month, I'll mention that we adopted and people will say "I wondered why they looked so different" or someone asked me "does your husband have hair like your son?" with my daughter there as an obvious contrast.

I am facing two obstacles: back in the U.S., I would have quickly put people in their place for asking such forward questions. Here, I don't know what the cultural rules are, especially given the great mix of cultures, both first and second generation. Then there's the matter of Small Sun being at the age where he is listening and internalizing my answers. I feel like I'd know what to do, back in our old stomping grounds. But then again, back in our old stomping grounds I don't think I'd be fielding these type of questions. Or at least not three in one week! Suggestions?

Say It Loud

A lot of transracial parenting is just simple parenting. Then there are these moments that are just kind of...odd.

Today we were having a dance party in the living room (ahem), lounge, like we often do. Even Sprouty is starting to wiggle and twist these days. So Small Sun and I are dancing hard to James Brown and we're singing "Say it loud, I'm black, I'm proud!"

Now we love James Brown at our house. But what am I supposed to say? "Say it loud, he's black, I'm proud!"? And what about the little Sprout when she gets old enough to sing along?

I've made a new acquaintance here. She is also an American expatriate, married to a European, raising a biracial child. She is black.  I don't know if I should attribute it to us both being outside of American culture, or the common bond of raising biracial boys, but we have talked a lot about race and what surrounds it in the couple hours we've spent together.

The other day she asked me what I tell Small Sun when he asks me "what he is." She said that even though there are other children of color and other mixed-race children at her son's preschool, his peers ask her son what he is and so he comes home and asks her.  He's 3 1/2.

I told her I haven't told Small Sun anything. He hasn't asked me anything.

We read affirming books about being black. Like  Shades of Black, that shows lots of children with African heritage, all with different skin tones, hair textures and eye colors. But honestly, I haven't spoken to Small Sun about his ethnicity hardly at all. I tell him I love his curly hair or his beautiful brown skin, but that's about it.

The reason I haven't is that I don't want to draw his attention to the difference between us prematurely. I am ready to discuss it when he notices or when he says something about it, but it doesn't make sense to me to say "did you ever notice that you're brown and mommy is tan?" In my mind, I can't really figure out where that conversation would go. We talk about adoption, and we talk about his mother, and he sees her picture frequently, but talking about her wouldn't really lead to any explanation for his ethnicity.

About two months ago Small Sun was looking at his foot and he said "hey mom! My foot, it's brown!" and I said something like "yes, good job!" because he still can't tell his colors with any consistency.

So to wander around this topic, I guess I'm saying that I'm trying to affirm the idea of being black, in hopes that when Small Sun starts to realize he is black, he'll know it's a good thing. At this point, I think I'll continue to wait until he's asking before I start explaining why we don't "match". I guess I'll just have to start singing "Say it loud, he's black, I'm proud" next time we're grooving with James Brown.

Choosing to Parent the Vulnerable Child continued

First of all, thanks for not flaming me. I wanted to come back and respond to some comments and expound on this a little bit more. Because a lot of people are reading who don't normally read here, and who don't have a feel for who I am, I thought I'd fill it in a bit.

I am a gut-wrenchingly honest person. In my real life, some of my friends call me "The Diplomat" because I say what I think, but in a very careful way. Here, this blog, this is my place to open my mouth and let what is fighting around in my brain tumble out. I try never to swear because my mother reads, and I try to never hurt any friends through the airing of my frustrations, (and unfortunately I still have) but I consider this my place to work out my process. That's not always pretty. It also means that it is a PROCESS, and that I will admit here, the extremes of my thinking, not necessarily the thought out, measured, end result.

Thank you very much for your comments. I'd like to pull out bits and pieces to respond to.

Susan said:

...She managed to make real connections with her children's (Korean) community. I think she is a true inspiration and role model in this area.

(If I don't want my child's community peering over my shoulder as I parent, I can just adopt a child in complete isolation from their culture. That's a choice I can make.) Yes, you can, but please don't do that.

Real connections are what I'm after. I think music, food, holiday traditions, etc are important, but they are not what actually connects a person to their culture. Time spent with others is. I also think that a familiarity of the language of origin, if not fluency is also extremely important. Inability to communicate with kinsman is huge in people not connecting with their roots.

In regard to intentionally adopting a child in alienation from their culture for my comfort, I would never do that. It goes against everything I believe in. My statement came from my emotional reaction over realizing how much power of choice I have.  I've thought about it a lot before, but somehow being here, I am FEELING these truths on a deeper level and that is impacting me.

Cloudscome said:

...I feel the need for black friends who will call me on my blunders. One of the great things about the church we moved to a couple years ago - I'm building friendships in families that meet this need. In my old all white church I could go my merry way oblivious until my boys were old enough to realize what they were missing.

I completely agree and I'm glad you are finding that now. We were just beginning to make some friendship-level connections with black members of our church when we moved. Building friendships across racial lines in our city was so much harder than I expected. I hope things develop more naturally here.

Alice commented:

... I hadn't thought about the accountability side of things before, which strikes me as absurd now that you point it out. It really is a huge privilege to be able to avoid that kind of scrutiny, and therefore it's one to guard against even more assiduously.

In Nashville, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was in the grocery store with my son. His hair was pretty long at that point and I'd run out without fixing it. It was a windy day and his hair was messy, but not a mess. The girls checking me out (in the fancy place I shopped, most of the staff was black but most of the patrons were white) were asking about my pregnancy and when they heard I was having a girl they said "well, if you're having a girl, you'll need to learn how to do HER hair."

That was the closest thing to a criticism I received from the black community.

Alice again:

...I also think that we give too little weight to *children's* lack of agency generally. Children who are born into a family also don't get a choice as to their parents...

Adoption has many, many additional elements at play that will factor in, but the fact that our adult relationships with our families are *all* built on mutual choice is an issue I see very few people discuss...

You're right, and I've argued the same point. The reason I think the dynamics are different in adoption is that my son has another family. Many people grow away from, or intentionally separate themselves from their families, but there is not the dynamic of choice between two families. I've heard so many adult adoptees say they waited to search for their first parents until after their adopted parents passed, or that they wanted to search for years but didn't want to hurt their adoptive parents, even when they say their relationship with their adoptive parents is a great one.

In open adoption where there is ongoing contact (visitation), the child is building real and meaningful connections to both families. And in the case where a child doesn't know their first family, the romanticization of their existence can grow even stronger. I think many children and teenagers fantasize about having a different family out there somewhere, but for an adopted child, that is true. That is why I think the relationship has inherent vulnerabilities, because there is another family out there and your child might ultimately find more in common with them. It's not something I'm afraid of, but I am aware that my child will have needs that I can't fill, and that his first family might be the place he turns to to have them filled.

Amie said all sorts of nice things about me (see, I told you she's the best!) but let's talk about these:

...I understand what you are saying about your white privilege in general. What I can't comprehend (probably because I have only lived here) is how that is different in the US than it is in Australia...I find it interesting that you feel your power as a white woman being deflated, and realizing how much privilege you actually had...

...is this a legitimate concern culturally when you think about the environment your child would be raised in? Will there be a stigma on the child that he/she is "adopted" in this culture, and therefore the child may be treated differently or even shunned by the culture? Will the CHILD be scorned if they are not up to snuff as a member of that community, and also would that also be the case if they were BORN into the community in the first place due to the whole collective culture mentality? Maybe the accountability factor would be there regardless.

I am sure that racism is here (I've seen a little already), and we all know that white privilege is alive and well pretty much the world over.  I think the difference was, in Nashville I knew what that looked like, how it tinged my interactions with others, and how I was trying to live outside of it. Here, I'm in a snow-globe that's just been shaken and I'm trying to sort out what's what.

I've never lived in a place with such a high ratio of ethnic minorities to european ancestries. So I think, for starters, I'm justing getting used to being in "mixed company" ALL OF THE TIME, if that makes sense? I'm sure my privilege is still there, I just can't see it at work for me because I don't know the culture.

In regards to adopting an Asian child and navigating the "collective culture mentality", it is a very interesting thing to consider. Back in Nashville, I never really considered adopting a Chinese child, one reason among many being that the only Chinese people I knew of in Nashville, were Chinese girls adopted by middle to upper class white evangelicals (Steven Curtis Chapman being at the front of that movement). So, as far as I could see at face value, THAT was the Chinese community in Nashville, and it didn't seem fair to bring a child into a situation where they had no peers or role models.

Beyond the issue of isolation, there are cultural values to consider. I know that adoption of a non-blood relative is a foreign concept to many Asian cultures, even though the informal adoption of kin is not. At this point I wouldn't begin to know what it would mean for a child from any of the cultures I mentioned to be adopted by white parents and then re-introduced to their culture here in Sydney.

Finally, Mayhem said:

...Not blowing off your concerns at all, but you did JUST move about two seconds ago to a new country and culture(s). Maybe in a few months or a year things will feel different regarding potential acceptance of you, your family, and a potential child by the community around you. Maybe it won't feel different. But don't be too tough on yourself or other people too quickly!

You're right that there is no one to hold adoptive parents accountable for keeping kids connected to their culture or community of origin. (Other than *maybe* the adoptees themselves once they're grown.) It is a privilege, and good to acknowledge.

Whew, thanks Mayhem Mama! I don't need to figure it all out today. :) But back to what I was saying at the beginning, this is not my POSITION or anything, just some feelings I had to get honest about before I could move foreword. It will be really interesting to find out how people feel about adoption here. We see lots of mixed race couples with their biracial children, and I feel like that is a good sign. I have yet to see any obvious adoption relationships though.

Coming to the realization that no one is holding me to my intentions, which I think are right on, was kind of shaking.

Well, this is about beaten to death, isn't it? I'd like to come back in a different post and talk about our choice to move here that took us away from a significant black population to a significant diverse population in general, and what benefits we hope our children will gain in being here.

 

 

 

 

 

Choosing to Parent a Vulnerable Child

Adoptive parents are endlessly pushing back against the public's assumption that the strength of their bonds with their children are less real or permanent. Ask about an adopted child's "real mother" and watch them recoil, or ask a family with adopted and birth children if they love all their children the same and you are likely to get cold silence or an earful. We are used to people questioning the strength of our relationship so we defend it with the intensity any parent would.

I find though, that from one adoptive mother to another, the conversations go somewhat differently. In like company, our fears and vulnerabilities surface. So right now I'm going to speak to you as if you were another adoptive mother, and skip the mother lion routine.

I think that the adoptive relationship has the potential to be inherently insecure. When people ask if I can love the son I adopted in the same way I love the daughter I bore, (and they don't really ask that) I can ask them if they love the spouse they married as much as they love their children. The relationship has power because of a mutual choice. Couples fall in love and make commitments.  The analogy might work for the way I feel about the son I don't share blood with, but he will have to decide if he feels the same.

Not right now, of course. Right now he is insanely in love with me and I am the core around which his little life orbits. In the future is when he will have to come to terms with the fact that his presence in our family was decided by adults and was out of his power.

That's been on my mind as I think about adopting again. As the choosers in adoption, we have so much power. We pick everything. Maybe our choices are limited by circumstances like which programs we qualify for, but we are still making choices that result in a child joining our family. In cooperation with agencies, social workers, and governments, we bring a child into our family that has no say, whatsoever in the matter.

Personally, I think that's messed up.

I don't know how it could be any different. That's the way of the world: people with power make choices they think will benefit the vulnerable.

I'm not saying that children won't be benefited by being adopted, especially children who will grow up in institutions if they are not adopted. I'm just saying that when a child gets old enough to understand that they were vulnerable and other people decided what would happen in their lives, that's got to be hard to deal with.

I've been thinking of this specifically in regard to choosing a country program, or another U.S. adoption of a black child.

We were at the park this week and my kids were playing with an Asian girl. There is a massive Asian population in Sydney that includes primarily people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pacific Islander, and Vietnamese heritage, as well as a large Indian population. The area where we live and the places where we travel seem almost 50/50 Anglo/Asian or Indian. Anyway, at the park I was imagining how I would feel if I was parenting an Asian child and was at the park with this other mother.

I realized that I felt intimidated to parent a child of another ethnicity, right under the noses of people of that ethnicity, in a culture where adoption is uncommon. Back in Nashville I was interacting with the black community all the time (on surface levels), but adoption is not uncommon there. Here it feels like my child's community (if they were Asian or Indian) could really scorn me if I wasn't up to snuff as the parent of a child of their community.

As a white woman raising a (biracial) black son in the South, I think I was pretty isolated from criticism because of my white privilege.

Suddenly India (which was the more serious consideration) wasn't seeming to attractive and I started to think about Africa some more. That's when it dawned on me, how much power I have and how vulnerable children are. If I don't want my child's community peering over my shoulder as I parent, I can just adopt a child in complete isolation from their culture. That's a choice I can make.

I've always said that raising a child in close proximity to their cultural heritage is what I'm striving for, yet I find myself afraid of adopting a child from another country and being criticized and rejected by that community. I'm feeling the cushion of my power as a white woman in a highly racialist city deflated, and coming to realize how much it was there. I'm feeling myself accountable to the way I raise another culture's child. Before, cushioned by my whiteness in a white/black hierarchy, it was my aspiration and goal to raise my son to be connected and proud of his black heritage, but no one could hold me to it. 

So there it is, my nitty gritty dirty confession, talking to you like my closest adoptive mom girl friend who I know will listen with an open heart and help me find the high road. I'm talking to you like it's only Amie listening. Go easy on me, I'm trying to be woman enough to fess up to my own prejudices, even though I've seen others get flamed for it.

What's On My Mind

You might think that THE MOVE is working every corner of my brain space but I'm actually thinking a lot about something else. I just finished reading No Disrespect by Sister Souljah. I've mentioned that stories are what move me and her story acted as bait to get me interested in really digging down into the evidence of racism in our current culture.

People often ask me, in fact, someone asking me tonight is what fired me up to come drop a line after driving to Atlanta and back today, and only having dial-up at my disposal: people ask me if I still experience racism against Small Sun. Basically they are asking "come on, are people still really doing all that crazy racist stuff?" When I tell them that no, I don't often experience direct racism against my son, they relax, assured that the real bad stuff happened in the past and our country is pretty much cool right now.

We are not cool. And that's where you all come in. I'm looking for what to read next. I proceed to tell people that while my adorable, charismatic two year old does not experience much overt racism, that our country is riddled with systematic inequality and oppression as evidenced in education, job opportunities, wages, lending practices, incarceration rates, etc, etc, etc. 

I'm really ready to do another round of reading to educate myself on what is going on for African Americans in our country. What can you recommend? What should I be reading? What are must-reads for Black people in America?

Sister Souljah (or is it Sista? The book is in the room of my sleeping children or I'd go check) presents the opinion that Africans in America (her descriptor) have been so pillaged, spiritually, morally, and physically, that they are barely functioning as a people group. She holds that many of the African American people who are achieving success in America today (I should check when the book was published, it may be a couple years old) are people that have been emasculated in an education system invested in preserving white power.

Anyway, you can see it is an interesting topic and one I need to read more on instead of trying to talk about it when I'm exhausted.

So, let me know if you have anything I should read. I'll have to run out and stock up on books as I might not get them so easily from Sydney.

I miss writing and I miss reading blogs. Just a couple more weeks till we fly (April 1st) and then I'll have lots to write about.

Thanks to everybody for your comments and support. I'll do my best to catch up when I have REAL Internet!