ARP Tuesday Links
A comment from SF Mom in the previous thread led me to the blog Harlow’s Monkey and the must-read essay, “China Connections: Fearing the Adult Adoptee:”
My first official “job” as an Adoption Poster Child™ occurred when I was 16 years old, in the living room of an adoptive family and fellow church members. That day I sat with several adoptive parents of younger kids and answered questions about how I felt about being adopted. Since then, I’ve spoken with adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents at conferences, trainings, on panels and one-on-one. I’ve found most adoptive and prospective adoptive parents are eager to hear what I have to say about “adoption issues,” which means they want to learn about how to deal with issues of attachment, loss and grieving.
Talk with white adoptive parents about race and racism, however, and the walls go up. Read more…
Back in March, one of my favorite blogs, Mixed Race America, explored racial over-sensitivity and insensitivity:
It is impossible to know why he didn’t “see” me–why I was overlooked. And let me also underscore something important: THIS IS MINOR. I am not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, not when there are real racist incidents, like the example of the reporter being attacked (see March 13 post)–but I am trying to make a larger point about the ways I, and others, try to figure out our racial difference from others–and to figure out whether our discomfort is racially inflected or coming from a different source (like the minor irritation of waiting an extra 5 minutes for someone to take your order, which, again, in the bigger picture of important things to worry about, is very low on that list–and yet, putting this incident into the context of others is important in trying to figure out how to read circumstances, racially, not just for yourself but for others. And if this restaurant HAD been discriminating people on the basis of race, well, that’s something important to figure out because from a social-justice point-of-view you would want them to be held accountable for this behavior, which I think almost all of us would agree is discriminatory, wrong, and actually criminal). Read more…
Image courtesy of MadLimes on Flickr.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Ji In wrote:
That’s funny. For a second I thought that photo was mine. I went on a “motherland” tour to Korea several years ago. The tour was organized and led by the American adoption agency I was adopted through as an infant. They hand out those cards to the Korean adoptees — youth and adults alike — on the tour to carry around with us to show to people and explain why we were gawking around Korea looking Korean yet not speaking the Korean language. On the back side of the card is the Korean translation of the message. Somehow, I found the fact that they had these pre-printed cards ready to distribute to all of us presumably hapless adoptees MORE humiliating than the experience of actually being interrogated by Koreans about who/what we were.
Looking back, I think it would have made more sense to replace or at least modify “American” with “white.”
Posted 12 Aug 2008 at 4:00 pm ¶
slackermom wrote:
“Talk with white adoptive parents about race and racism, however, and the walls go up.”
gee, i wonder why?
yes, i am a white adoptive parent, but i am not clueless, and i consciously seek out conversations and thinking about race and racism. and so do other transracial adoptive parents i know. while i am quite sure i’m not getting it all right, i have talked about race, asked for advice, and listened to adult adoptees. i have been very grateful for the insight, so i find it insulting to be lumped into a group of people, identified solely by our inability to try and understand the role race plays in our lives and our children’s.
this is a lifelong journey for all of us, but there are adoptive parents who realize, grapple with, and honor that. we have friends who have backgrounds like our children, we live in diverse neighborhoods or send our kids to diverse schools, have books, dolls, and toys that reflect our children and our family, provide social situations so that our children know how to be with their “own” group, realize how tricky it all is and that love is only a very good start, etc. etc. etc. …
and yes, i did read the entire blog… i frequent harlow’s monkey, and find it very informative. but the use of “some” and “most ” later in the article doesn’t erase the sentence pasted above and the overall message that white adoptive parents are clueless and afraid, and i just don’t agree. some are, some aren’t. i’d bet most aren’t, otherwise they’d probably not adopt transracially.
and i have been thinking this awhile, but will go ahead and say it here. in my experience, ARP used to be amazingly thoughtful about honoring each person’s journey, and now it feels to me that it’s shifted to showing people how little they really get, even when they’re trying. racialicious has that tone, and when that’s what i’m looking for, i head over there, but i thought ARP had a different purpose altogether.
Posted 13 Aug 2008 at 3:29 am ¶
Jae Ran wrote:
slackermom, maybe the context of why this article was written would help. As the author, I was contacted by the editor of China Connections in New England precisely because there had been a lot of resistance of parents in the area who wanted to focus on issues of race and racism vs. “culture.” So, I was invited, along with several other adult transracial adoptees, to write about our experiences with adoptive parents. This has been MY experience after working with adoptive parents for over 10 years now.
Sorry that you felt it “lumped” all adoptive parents together. Maybe it would be more helpful to be an ally to us TRA’s rather than excoriate an article you feel doesn’t speak to your experience. Feel free to write your own. No one is stopping you.
Posted 14 Aug 2008 at 6:31 pm ¶
slackermom wrote:
jae ran, thanks for providing context. as always, it helps to understand and reads differently in the context you provided, particularly here on ARP. i don’t doubt that it’s your experience, but as i said, it isn’t mine. i know many TRA parents, and have read many pieces with the same tone and conclusions as yours. the frustrating part about it is that race is something that many of us think about all the time. we worry constantly if we’re doing it right, and are working daily to strike that balance between being “just” a mom with kids and being a mom who is raising a transracial adoptee. these issues are central to our parenting.
i AM an ally. and yes, a diversity of voices is needed. i hear plenty of voices, frustrated by the “all you need is love” and “we don’t see color” TRA parents. i too am beyond frustrated by that approach. and i am also working on writing… in fact, i am working to create a website for transracially adoptive parents, one with a blog, message boards, book groups, and thoughtful information that goes beyond how to do hair. i started a small yahoo group for TRA parents who i know, and we read weaving a family together. we were beginning good conversations, but all despised the yahoo groups format, so the idea was sown for a more functional website. when it’s up and running, you can be sure there will be lots of links to places like ARP, multiracial sky, PACT, and certainly your truly thought-provoking site.
i did not intend to excoriate your work; i know that mindset exists and i value your experience in dealing with it. i simply wanted to speak to the many parents who thankfully do not fit that mold and come to ARP for that very reason.
Posted 15 Aug 2008 at 12:13 pm ¶