Passing and Privilege

I have been thinking a lot about passing and the privilege my passing bestows upon me, whether I want it or not. Riding on the airplane alone out to the Loving Conference, I realized how much my family outs me–in a positive way. I don’t like feeling as though I’m hiding who I really am–but short of announcing my racial and sexual identities or whipping out pictures of my kids, the business man sitting next to me cases my wedding ring, my apparent race, my approximate age, my clothing and hairstyle (and thus, my presumed socio-economic status) and has his picture of who I am. And I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.

Privilege of all kinds has had so much influence in my life. I’m self-aware enough at this point to know my family’s societal position and where I am personally in my life is not the sole product of my intellect and how hard I’ve worked. My life and my accomplishments are built in part on the backs of less-privileged people (and often their ancestors) who do not have the same advantages I do, and thus my family does.

My parents were both the first college graduates in their families. In my family, I am the first (and only) college graduate of my generation, although both of my brothers and one of my cousins are of the age to have finished an undergraduate degree. It was not for lack of resources that my brothers have chosen different paths. My husband’s family has been college-educated for 100 years. (I am not exaggerating.) Even the relatively minimal socio-economic and class differences between our two families give us (sometimes dramatically) differing perspectives.

My husband has accused me of being perpetually in favor of the ‘underdog’. All I can say in response is, I recognize that most people in this world have not had the opportunities that he or I have had, and continue to have. Most people do not have the family resources and support we enjoy, and that our children benefit from. And so yes, when push comes to shove, I will root for the person with less privilege, whether it is because they are a person of color, a member of the LGBT community, a recent immigrant, a woman, or from a lower socio-economic class. I have nothing against a straight White male English-speaking U.S. citizen with two advanced degrees; I just figure he has enough going for him already with out my de facto vote. He receives his vote from society every time he steps out of bed in the morning.

I am rarely at a loss for words. Some in my family would argue I talk too much, have strong opinions on too many subjects. I recently met someone friends have been trying to hook me up with for weeks; her family is planning to adopt. She had heard about me, and I must admit I was excited to talk to her–another multiracial family in our community! (I should know better by now.) I asked all the standard questions and, with a sinking heart, received all the standard answers. They chose international adoption because they were told they couldn’t choose gender with a domestic adoption, and they don’t want ongoing contact with birthfamily (although she likes the idea of meeting their child’s birthfamily once). They chose Ethiopia because the children are young and healthy, there are girls available, and the wait for China is getting long (up to 2+ years). They also find “African culture fascinating” although neither parent has travelled to the continent. They do not plan to adopt a second child of color.

She left and I felt something inside of me I was not expecting. I was about to cry. What is surprising about this situation is how it gets me every single time–because this could be the description of more than half the internationally adopting families I know. (Actually, this family has more adult adoptee connections than most adopting families.)

Part of what pushes me to tears is the total frustration I feel. How can I possibly reach this woman? How much White Privilege is at work in the world, in our society, in an individual White family’s life that a couple’s choice to adopt includes considerations of (a) gender, (b) health, (c) amount of time the adoptive family will have to wait, but NOT (d) what it will be like for their child to grow up as the only child of color in their family and one of the few people of color in the community, or (e) what it means to become an inclusive, educated, multiracial family.

As my husband pointed out, no one has to complete a class or fill out a race-awareness form before they become a multiracial family through birth, and I don’t believe they should. What is different about creating a multiracial family biologically is that an adult of color (and usually their extended family) is present in the child’s life–and the White parent first has an intimate relationship with this adult of color. In the case of transracial adoption, White parents do not have to know (or have ever known) anyone who shares their child’s heritage; and suddenly they are head of a multiracial family. If White parents are not fully invested in learning about their child’s heritage and incorporating their child’s culture into the family’s traditions and culture, this responsibility falls to the child. The fact that race does not seem to matter to many transracially adopting parents is the epitome of White Privilege.

White adults can say things like, “Race doesn’t matter to me,” or “I don’t see race.” But I have yet to meet an adult of color in this country whose experience would allow them to say such a thing. It is scientifically true that all people are part of a single human race; however, the societal construct of different races affects us all.

I don’t know if a person can learn about their own unearned privilege until they are ready and open. I didn’t consciously process my multi-level privilege for many years. Nowadays I refuse to be closeted by passing. Periodically my husband threatens to remove the bumper stickers from our car because he is frustrated by all the tailgaters. But he also laughs when he is out with the kids and one of their uncles, and people clearly assume they are a young gay couple with children.

Maybe I should offer this woman some of my stickers.

The stickers too small to read:

1. Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. ~Bob Marley~
2. What you think, you become. ~Buddha~
3. Love Thy Enemies implies not killing them.
4. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. ~The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States~

That Old Familiar Feeling

I left Chicago early Sunday morning after three days immersed in the multiracial community. Sunday night I received an email from a new friend. He likened being back home to returning from summer camp.

There were so many amazing people at the Loving Decision Conference, every one of them a child, parent, or partner in a multiracial family. The hard-working conference coordinator was Jungmiwha Bullock, president of Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA), who was assisted in conference planning by Ken Tanabe, founder of Loving Day. I spent time talking with Beth Hall, Co-Founder of PACT adoption alliance, spent an evening with Michelle Hughes, Co-Founder of Bridge Communications, and found an ally in Tarah Fleming, Co-Director of iPride.

Ten large drawings of multiracial individuals were on display throughout the conference events, and I talked with the artist that created them, Laura Kina. I spent time talking with the artist Katrina Grigg-Saito, creator of The Fishbird Project. Also at the conference was the creator of Please Mark Only One, photographer Mica Lee Anders.

I saw the short film My People Are…, celebrating youth pride in mixed heritage, and talked with producer/director/writer Jessica Chen Drammeh about her upcoming film Anomaly. I viewed a cut from the award-winning documentary Silences, while sitting next to the film’s creator and star, Octavio Warnock-Graham.

There were many writers at the conference, most notably Lori Tharps, author of Hair Story and Kinky Gazpacho (2008); Joy Zarembka, author of The Pigment of Your Imagination; Elliott Lewis, author of Fade; and Janet Stickmon, author of Crushing Soft Rubies. Last, but certainly not least, I was excited to meet and spend time with the author of My American Meltingpot (a multicultural family blog I have been reading for months) and make another new friend.

It was a long-awaited getaway for me as a mama (I haven’t left my kids since Jaja was born more than five years ago). Spending several days with so many brilliant and committed folks reinvigorated my dedication to antiracist activism, education about race and privilege, and increasing resources for multiracial families.

Somehow all four of my children have gained new skills and grown older in the four days I was gone. Although it is good to be home, I too remember that lonely feeling of the day after camp is over.

P. S. Jaja and Gretel suggested I take everybody with me to my next conference so we won’t miss each other so much; they’re also hoping for a ‘kid conference’ next time. Maybe for the 45th anniversary of Loving Day in 2012 . . .

Loving Conference

I am speaking at the Loving Decision Conference tomorrow on the enormous topics of Race and Adoption, specifically Adoption as a First Choice and Multiracial Families. I wrote my presentation abstract back in January and, of course, some of my thinking has changed in the past five months. This is the central part of my abstract:

The majority of families seeking to adopt are infertile White couples, and most potential adoptive parents are unwilling or unable to parent a child of another race. In domestic infant adoptions, social work practice often pairs a pregnant woman with hopeful adoptive parents instead of matching them by the pregnant woman’s criteria. Pairing is more common practice when a child is multiracial, especially with African American heritage, because few adopting couples are willing to transracially parent a Black child.

Race can be the largest barrier for a woman in the United States considering an adoption plan for her child of color. Multiracial babies are often placed with monoracial White families, and their mothers are forced to choose an adoptive family from the available candidates.

Some adoptive families are unwilling to embrace their child’s multiracial identity, and most transracially adopting couples (domestic adopters) will only adopt multiracial children with one White birthparent.

My concluding paragraph is somewhat of a pitch for fertile multiracial families to consider adoption because, “Multiracial families are practiced at uniting diverse pieces into a cohesive whole–the most important skill of a successful adoptive family.”

My previous post explains my increasing disillusionment with many transracially adoptive parents. And so I must explain my personal connection to adoption (I am not adopted, nor was anyone in my immediate family when I was growing up), and why I chose to adopt some of my children in close concert with the birth of my biological children.

My very first friend was adopted, as were his subsequent siblings. I had friends in high school who had been domestically adopted as infants and as older children out of foster care. In college, my best friend was adopted as an infant from Korea. I grew up (and still am) connected to various adoptee perspectives.

What I have slowly come to realize (a lot in the past two years), is that most adoptive parents do not share my connection with adult adoptees. I’ve also begun to acknowledge the power of the infertility-adoption connection. Because infertility is not part of my experience/story, I find myself alienated from the most prevalent viewpoint of the adoptive parent community.

It is not a perfect world, nor do I expect it to become one in my lifetime. I imagine there will be a need for adoptive families as long as I am alive. And so I advocate an unusual position: Multiracial families with and without biological children need to consider adoption. I’m talking about Adoption as a First Choice.

My Clues

I’ve started and stopped several posts over the past few days, and they all end up canned for the same reason: I am trying to find a way to say what I need to say without offending anyone, but I don’t think it is possible.

My Way: I wrote about how choosing to do things differently has led more than one person to accuse me of making life difficult for myself on purpose, and how I know I’m a PIA (pain in the ass) and a perfectionist about a lot of things.

Where’s That Village?: I wrote about how much my husband and I both work, and how we don’t live near family (by choice) but how burned out I get sometimes because I am over-protective of letting my kids go off to friend’s houses, schools, babysitters, because most everyone around here has a monoracially-White perspective.

Meant To Be: I wrote about how strange this phrase (as used in the adoptive parent community) is to me, and how I can’t imagine my life without each of my children–but I can imagine their lives without me.

The Same Coin: I wrote about the duality of race, how scientifically there is only one race, but the social construct of different races affects us all.

Transracial Adoption: I wrote about some of the transracially adoptive parents I know. I started with a quote from a friend who is an adult transracial adoptee. At a domestic pre-adoption orientation, our friend said to a bunch of hopeful adoptive parents, When you consider transracial adoption, give it as much thought as you give to whether you could accept each of those serious life-long medical conditions. I got the closest here, writing about adoptive parents who verbally denigrate their children’s birthparents/families (”My child’s birthmother was a truck-stop prostitute; why would they want to have anything to do with her?” Yes, this is an actual quote), White parents in multiracial families who use terminology like “mulatto” or “blacktown” (she’s talking about Africa), and a transracially adoptive parent who expected me to nod my head in agreement with this atrocious statement:

The social worker asked me what we were going to do to honor his [African American] culture, and I thought to myself, What do you want us to do? Take him back to Africa? Get him naked and make him dig in the dirt? Teach him to say ‘ooga-booga’? But I just told that social worker what she wanted to hear.

My starting and stopping these previous posts comes from something inside of me that balks at challenging or upsetting other parents. But the problem is this–I am disturbed by the views espoused by many adoptive, especially transracially adoptive, parents. I agree with adult adoptee perspectives a lot more often than I understand or agree with adoptive parent perspectives.

I will not be surprised or personally offended if my child (a) seeks out their birthfamily, (b) reunites with their birthfamily, (c) chooses their birthmother instead of me (for a while or forever), (d) thinks I was part of the problem instead of the solution by choosing to adopt, (e) tells me I will never be able to understand them because I am not visibly a person of color or because I do not have African American heritage, (f) wishes their parents shared all of their ancestry, (g) wishes they had not been adopted.

I am not pro-adoption. I am not anti-adoption, but I do think adoption should be used as a last resort and should be open whenever possible. I do not think adoption should be about providing babies/children to families unable to have biological children. The adoption ’system’ is corrupt, and adoption reform and social welfare reform are imperative for ethical treatment of all people, as well as for consistently ethical adoptions. I think separating a child from their birthfamily is a traumatic event. I think separating a child from their birth-culture, through transracial (domestic or international) adoption, is a very serious thing to do to a child, more significant than most adoptive parents are willing to admit.

Raising a transracially adopted child in a community where virtually (or literally) nobody looks like them or shares their ancestry/heritage/birth-culture forces the child down a very difficult road.

Imagine it this way: There is a man (we’ll call him Mike) married to a man, living in a community where all of the adults are male (married and single). Mike and his partner have decided to adopt a girl, although there are no adult women in the community. There are a few other adopted girls around, and Mike figures that kids are kids; they need basically the same things and he will raise his daughter the same way he would raise a son. (Maybe Mike is one of those enlightened adoptive parents who has photos of women and books about women in his home. Points for him from the social worker.) Plus the wait to adopt a girl is shorter–girls really need homes right now. Mike’s daughter can meet other women later in life, starting when she goes away to college.

This is a bizarre analogy, but not much stranger than the couples I met at a pre-adoption training who lived in all-White communities, and had never had any interracial or cross-cultural friendships or experiences in their entire lives–and they were in the process of adopting transracially. If a transracially adoptive parent has never known an adult of color (especially of the same race as the child they are adopting) how do they plan to raise an adult of color (which is what their child will be for the majority of their life)?

I don’t think I’m a god of multiracial parenting or transracial adoption. I know I can’t possibly have everything ‘right’. I will spend my entire life moving along the multiracial-parenting learning curve. What I do know is, at the very least, I have a clue (maybe even a few), and hopefully my clues are leading me in the ‘right’ direction–if there actually is such a thing.

Rocket Hair

Hair is a race issue. I’m not talking about the unique care and styles for people with kinky or curly hair. I’m talking about how society identifies a person by their hair. I am talking about the intrusive and rude questions some people ask about one of my daughters because her hair-texture and her heritage do not match up in their minds. I am talking about people’s willingness to accept my Cherokee heritage because I have long, thick, straight, dark hair.

My children have hair color ranging from blonde to almost black, hair texture ranging from super-curls to wavy to poker-straight. After the internal processing of a person’s skin-color (a whole encyclopedia of posts awaits there) comes the analysis of a person’s hair. Many people use visuals alone to assign someone a racial category; multiracial people often baffle these categorizers.

Genetics function in many a strange way. I know children who are a quarter Filipino (and three-quarters White) who appear completely White, and children who are a quarter Korean (and three-quarters White) who appear completely Asian. I have worked hard with my kids to drill home the point that you cannot know a person’s full heritage from looking at them. Luckily, we currently know many multiracial kids (outside of our family) whose ancestry defies how society would classify them.

My kids pour over the liner notes of Ben Harper’s albums not only because he’s my favorite musician, but also because he has African American, Native American, and European American heritage. The anomaly in our family is Daddy, who only has one kind of racial heritage (”Pee-in American” as my son used to say, with a giggle).

I’ve found that many of my favorite contemporary musicians happen to be multiracial: Lenny Kravitz, Nick Ogawa, Laura Love, Jimi Hendrix (I know, Jimi’s not exactly contemporary). Each of their CDs brings photos of creative and successful multiracial adults into our home, and fills our ears with the beautiful and powerful voices of people who have walked some of the paths in front of my multiracial children. 

Rico revels in seeing other boys and men with long hair, whether it’s in the CD liner notes, at the skate park, or on a Traveling Wilburys video his dad showed him on YouTube. A young biracial male friend with thick cornrows braided past his shoulders is someone Rico hopes to emulate. (He is also hoping for a tall green mohawk this summer–we’ll see.)

On the days all four of my children insist on the same hairstyle, I love that it turns out so different on each of their heads. Rocket hair (coined by Rico) is a current favorite, involving one pontail in the front and two on the sides–a pilot’s seat and two wings.

I cannot control how society views my children, what racial box a stranger puts my child in after assessing their skin-color, hair-texture, hairstyle, and countless other intangibles. What I can do is help my children understand that, just as people won’t necessarily know about Gretel’s Cherokee heritage or Jaja’s African American heritage just from looking at them, neither can my children know a person’s heritage (or much else about them) without even saying hello.