Finding Fernanda is a sobering story–even more so when you stop to think that it focuses on two women out of thousands at opposite ends of a corrupt system.

Journalist Erin Siegal’s book stretches across the continent: it examines the notorious child adoption business in Guatemala via the ordeals suffered by both Guatemalan native Mildred Alvarado, who loses two of her children not just to kidnappers but to her country’s legal and political processes, and Tennessee resident Betsy Emanuel, an American lured in by a Christian adoption agency when she begins the process of adopting one of the children, not knowing the dirty business behind her wish for another child.

Working with a local journalist over the course of three years, Siegal sheds light on the various players: the American agencies and their in-country networks of handlers and attorneys; the medical professionals and court officials who are either on the take or willfully negligent, like the Guatemala City pediatrician who sees his practice expand as he becomes a go-to resource for adoptionists:

On a child’s first visit to his office, Dr. Castillo would ask about his or her background and felt he had no choice but to take the answers provided to him by cuidadoras (caretakers) at face value. Every time one of the women hesitated, he felt chilled. More than half the children examined at his office didn’t have proper paperwork, such as a birth certificate. Sometimes the names would change. It wasn’t his responsibility to investigate, the pediatrician told himself; he was just there to make sure that the kids were being cared for.

Over time, cases like Mildred’s become a cause celebre in Guatemala, attracting more and more attention from the press and the underfunded authorities before a human rights organization represents her in court. For her part, Betsy also feels her own betrayal at the hands of the agency, pushing her to ask questions of her own, culminating in an encounter with Mildred.

In an e-mail interview with Racialicious, Siegal shared more details about the women at the heart of Fernanda, the industry that brought them together, and her own experience as an American journalist working in Guatemala. The transcript, which includes some spoilers, is under the cut.

Racialicious: Let’s start, literally, from the beginning: you went from wanting to do a human-interest piece on Guatemalan adoptions to finding out about the sordid industry behind it, to shifting your entire storytelling style to cover it. Could you tell us a little bit about your experience at Columbia University, and how it prepared you to put this book together?

Erin Siegal: Spending a year in an intensive program like Columbia’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism was a starting point, a shortcut of sorts towards assembling an investigative skill-set. Before this book, I’d written some freelance pieces, but mainly worked as a photographer. I wanted to feel confident taking on complicated investigative stories. A friend who’d finished the Stabile program ahead of me offered very sage advice: J-school is worth it only if you get into Stabile, and if Columbia underwrites your study. It was a huge privilege and a joy to be able to spend a year under the tutelage of Sheila Coronel, the director of the Stabile program. She’s an incredible investigative journalist, and a founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

As far as first-time book writing, “Finding Fernanda” had an intrinsic narrative structure—the book flows in chronological order, from beginning to end, as both women’s experiences unfold. Much of the time, it felt like my chief role as author was not to get in the way of the story.

I would have loved to write a book filled with sparkly, snappy writing, but it didn’t feel appropriate. Instead, I tried to reflect some of the awesome, understated grace and dignity of some of my sources; some of the book’s characters.

R: How long did it take for Mildred Alvarado to trust you with her story? What was going through your mind when you reached her on that initial reporting trip?

ES: Frankly, I was a bit terrified the first time I met Mildred. Her safety and the safety of her family was a primary concern. I also didn’t want to re-traumatize her or pry too much. I wanted her to understand that she didn’t have to speak to me, even though Norma Cruz had asked her to—Mildred feels deeply obligated to Norma, the director of Fundación Sobrevivientes, and I wanted her to understand that she could say no; that it was fine for her to say no.

When we first spoke, I didn’t know how much of Betsy Emanuel’s story checked out. I was still a student, trying to get a handle on what exactly had happened. Mildred and I had a slow conversation, without many direct questions. That first interview was brief in comparison to later ones, when highly specific, difficult details had to be drawn out. Much of the time, my interviews with Mildred were long and meandering; her story came out in chunks and pieces.

R: Throughout the process, you worked in tandem with a local journalist, J (Note: name withheld by request.) How long did it take you to feel comfortable living and working in Guatemalan spaces with J, the journalist who helped you?

ES: Dumb luck and mutual friends led me to find J. When we met, there was an instant connection. What was supposed to be a quick morning coffee turned into a day of hanging out, driving around and trading life stories. It’s rare to find a best friend so quickly, but that’s what J. became, faster than anyone I’d ever met. I still count my lucky stars that I not only had someone like him to turn to for help with context and insight for the book’s investigation, but that I have him as a friend. By the time of my last month-long reporting trip in Guatemala, I was sleeping on his couch. It was invaluable to be able to talk the story through with him, to see what he thought about certain hypotheses. It was also invaluable to have someone to crack stupid jokes with, as the investigation unearthed some incredibly sad situations. He also accompanied me to some rough neighborhoods to knock on doors. J. never admitted how he was scared was with me in certain situations until after the book was written.

R: We’ve talked about transnational adoption on Racialicious in the past but focused more on South Korea and Haiti. I know you mention Congo and Ethiopia in the book; have you gotten a chance to compare the “cultures” behind the adoption industries in various countries? Is this a case of one racket fits all?

ES: There are certainly parallels that can be drawn between the developing countries that have served as “sending” countries for adoption: endemic poverty; a lack of social structures or programs supporting women and families; deep-rooted corruption. Many, including Vietnam, Cambodia, and Guatemala, are postwar societies that have struggled with socioeconomic and governmental stability.

I’d say the “racket” is quite simply the lack of regulation—not abroad, but here in the United States. These gaps in oversight mean that child buying, selling, and trafficking for the purpose adoption can still happen today, with little consequence. No adequate legal framework exists in the U.S. for prosecuting adoption crimes, aside from trying to prosecute adoption agencies or facilitators based on money laundering or tax evasion charges. The definition of human trafficking relates exclusively to either forced sex or labor. There are good arguments both for and against expanding that definition.

During my research, I filed numerous public records requests for official U.S. government communication around the issue of adoption fraud. It took three years, but the State Department finally sent me hundreds of pages of previously-unreleased cables. I compiled them into a collection, The U.S. Embassy Cables: Adoption Fraud in Guatemala, 1987-2010, which exposes the U.S. government’s struggle, for over 20 years, tried to navigate the demands of providing fast “customer service” to adopting American families while avoiding complicity in cases of presumed child trafficking. The book of cables is available from www.findingfernanda.com or Amazon as one 718=page paperback or a 3-volume ebook.

R: I saw Adoption Today’s positive review of the book on the FF website. How has the adoption industry at large reacted to the stories you brought to light?

ES: Finding Fernanda has gotten a very positive reception from the adoption community; and I’m very surprised and happy about that, as I tried to make this book widely accessible. My colleague E.J. Graff from the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism warned me beforehand about the probability of receiving hate mail from adoptive parents after writing what some may call a “negative” adoption book. It pleases me to no end that adoption advocates are able to understand this book; to read it and take away information. If there’s a takeaway to Finding Fernanda, it’s that ignorance can and does perpetuate abuses.

Buying and selling children isn’t just an issue to the adoption community—it’s a basic human rights issue. We as Americans need to hold our own government accountable. Through the late 1980′s and 1990′s, the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City faced serious problems related to adoption. As Guatemala’s adoption industry began to grow, so did fraud. Women mysteriously turned up dead. Unknown people relinquished children they weren’t related to. Adoption lawyers, whose profit margins depended on volume, acquired “orphans” in any number of creative ways.

R: Regarding your initial conversation with Betsy Emanuel, you wrote that you didn’t understand “how adoption hooked some families.” How close was the answer you got to Melissa Fay Greene’s statement that “we simply wanted more kids”?

ES: It was pretty close! Betsy felt called to adopt. Many other adoptive parents I spoke with related a similar sentiment.

R: Staying with Greene’s statement, it sounds like she came around to thinking about her own privileges and how those played into the adoption game. Did the Emanuels–who undoubtedly had their hearts in the right place–make any similar realizations during their experience?

ES: Betsy’s experience with Fernanda, and then Mildred, was an eye-opener for her in many, many ways. She was forced to confront the ugly side of adoption: entitlement, imperialism, greed, selfishness. She went head to head with people she had considered to be close friends and community when she chose to speak out. She lost friends in doing so.

Both she and Mildred are regular women, who made mistakes, acted naively at times, and then had to face the consequences of their actions. Their story is painful but important. Through the experience of Fernanda and her baby sister’s kidnappings, both women lost a great deal of innocence. Yet they both, Mildred especially, found an incredible amount of inner strength and bravery.

Today, Betsy Emanuel is much more savvy and worldly than she was before. She’s still so very warm, loving, and spunky as hell, but she’s definitely also more cynical; she’s lost her ability to blindly trust. The same is true, perhaps more so, for Mildred. She lives in constant fear that someone will take her children away from her again.

R: And speaking of privilege, companies like CCI seem to play on that, as much as a parent’s heartstrings, what with their focus on adopting children as part of “God’s plan” and whatnot. Is that a fair assessment?

ES: I’d say so. Many of the Christian adoptive parents I spoke to selected adoption agencies based on faith and the desire to do business with those who shared their values.

R: Finally, could you give us an update on the Alvarados? When was the last time you heard from Mildred? Have you gotten to talk much to Fernanda and Ana Cristina?

ES: I heard from Mildred this fall. She had a bad dream, about J. and I getting kidnapped and killed in her neighborhood, and she called to make sure we were OK. Communication isn’t easy: she had to have her sister take her to an internet café, pay to use a computer, and then send us an email asking to call her, since she didn’t want to write the dream out. I’ll be returning to Guatemala later this spring and will be see her then.

Today, Mildred and her family are doing well. Both kids continue to heal. Fernanda is still a beautiful little girl, she’s still crazy for Pollo Campero fried chicken and she attends school. Ana Cristina doesn’t really talk much, she’s a very quiet child. Both girls are close to their other siblings, too.

The last time I saw Ana Cristina, we were standing in Mildred’s patio, and one of the family’s two chickens strutted past. Ana Cristina reached out, quickly, and grabbed it—this tiny kid, who at age four still teeters when she walks and struggles daily with the aftereffects of severe trauma– she caught a chicken, effortlessly. Then she looked over at Fernanda, holding the bird, and grinned.

By Guest Contributors Amber Jones and Elizabeth Lowry

Episode Recap: Cameron writes a book entitled “Two Monkeys and a Panda” about Lily’s adoption (to dispel any possible stigma) and learns that Mitchell purposefully did not hyphenate Lily’s last name on the adoption papers. Jay and Gloria argue over where their remains will go once they have died. Phil spends the day at a spa while Claire tries to keep peace between her daughters over a shared sweater.

Liz: Ok Amber… a Panda? Really? I know Modern Family likes to make a joke of the ignorance of Cameron and Mitchell when it comes to their transnational adoption, but I had to roll my eyes.

Amber: Girl, I was rolling mine too. I cringe often when Cam and Mitchell talk about Lily. The writers do attempt to make a joke of the ignorance, but I think when it comes to Lily, it gets really hard for me to just laugh it off. For one, Cam and Mitchell seem to be completely OK with exoticizing Lily most of the time. What is that about? Modern Family is so interesting because even though it does show different familial structures, most of the characters are white and upper middle class. :-/

Liz: Yeah, I’m always amused that this show is called Modern Family, as if it’s the “new” family. I’m usually thinking, “whose family is that?” As far as the jokes, I find myself sometimes laughing at the ignorance (cuz the reality is there are ignorant parents) and sometimes cringing when the joke is played less as criticism and more as “awwww look how silly but really cute they are…she’s a panda!” Because you’re right, the jokes exoticize Lily.

Amber: I actually appreciate that the show is called Modern Family, because it does challenge the traditional “nuclear family” ideal. Having two gay dads with an adopted daughter doesn’t fit into that model, and I definitely appreciate having that image (a reality for many people) on screen. And I agree with you, the jokes are executed very well. I often find myself doing the uncomfortable “oh man did they have to go there?” laugh. But I think the “panda” thing kinda turned me off because there isn’t much context for it other than Lily’s “Asian-ness.” Acknowledging that Lily is “Asian,” Vietnamese specifically, is a good thing and extremely important, but I don’t think that Cam and Mitchell explore enough what it means to be two white male parents raising a Vietnamese daughter. I think instead they tend to place the weight of difference on Lily, i.e. in the story Lily is a panda because she’s “Asian” (and they think it’s so clever) while they are monkeys because Cam can draw monkeys (they can choose to be whatever animal they want, with no added connotation or underlying meaning). *Rolls eyes* It just seems as if they fail to see that their whiteness shapes their familial structure just as much as Lily’s “Asian-ness” does.

Liz: You’re right about Modern Family challenging traditional ideals (justly chastened). What makes me pause, however, is that it’s still primarily white families – with a few people of color sprinkled into their world and thus not challenging other representations of “normal” families. And you’re so right about Cam and Mitchell, which is what makes transnational adoption so layered – how do you navigate the terrain of race and culture? In this episode, Cam works hard to take away the stigma of “adoption” (b/c of Oprah lol) and I’d like to see them put the same effort into exploring how they parent as two white male parents of a Vietnamese girl. (Although let me give them kudos for the adoption angle.) At the end they want to write their own parenting book (because they’ve achieved the pinnacle? mmmhmmm), only to discover so many have been written. How about they read those! Lol. Assuming that they’re any good though…cuz I’m sure there are some bogus ones.

Amber: Oprah changes lives, girl. That’s real. Accept it! Lol. So, um … Pandas aren’t even native to Vietnam. * Fierce side-eye * WOMP. Way to make a stupid (and pretty offensive) generalization. Cam and Mitchell definitely struggle with how to really appreciate Lily’s ethnic background and therefore, how to deal with the ways it will inevitably shape her life experiences and self-perception.

Liz: Girl I was gonna look that up! Plus, notice that they said, “Panda because she’s Asian.” It’s hard to appreciate her background without knowing much about it. And although that is her background, she’s growing up in a completely different environment that will be just as much a part of her identity. It’s a balancing act that any parent isn’t just born knowing how to manage. Which is why you hear of the dumbass approaches some parents have to questions that arise.

Amber: I agree it’s hard to appreciate something that you don’t know or understand, but I’m sure that they could educate themselves on some of the specifics. I think an important part of the parents’ job is to learn about it! The purpose of Cam’s scrapbook was to help remove the stigma from adoption. It seemed as if Cam was trying to emphasize where Lily is from originally and how she ended up with himself and Mitchell–the entire process. (Sidenote: the scenes with Cam freaking out pre-adoption were priceless. I was doubled over with laughter.) So, I think it may be unfair to trivialize her ethnic background in order to “better” integrate her into their family, because her race/ethnicity is something she won’t necessarily be able to ignore and she may very well have questions about her “differences” as she grows older. It would be nice if they were prepared. On another note, in a way Manny is also part of an interesting familial structure. Having been adopted by Jay and the son of a first generation immigrant, Gloria, his identity also may very well be shaped by the clash of cultures there.

Liz: Totally. Parenting is never easy, in any circumstance, so there’s no reason to not try and be prepared! One of my favorite episodes is the one where Gloria has Jay doing all kinds of crazy stuff because “it’s her culture,” and in reality, she’s getting back at him for making fun of her culture. Love it. (I know someone who has told people she grew up with lions in Africa and they believe her. Ignorant white people. Lol.) It is interesting to see Manny also navigating two “worlds.” And Jay clearly is not the type to “prepare” for parenting – he’s already raised two children and still makes the most ridiculous comments/actions towards his gay son.

Amber: Lol. Yeah, I think Jay is supposed to represent that cocky white male, who probably initially didn’t care much about Manny, but has grown to really love him. His interactions with his own kids are definitely interesting, but I think realistic in a way. He loves Mitchell, but is having trouble adjusting to his lifestyle. That’s real and frustrating, but I think it’s a little refreshing to see them work it out on screen. It is also refreshing to see Jay relinquish some of his stubborn “What do you mean? I’m ALWAYS right” (read: wealthy white heterosexual male) privilege in dealing with Manny and Gloria. Btw, Sofia Vergara is excellent and hilarious…I must admit though that I’m often asking myself if I’m OK with the way the writers use her character. Gloria fits neatly into many stereotypical representations, read: fiery, sexy, often objectified (like in this problematic interview) latina. Also I’m often uncomfortable with the way the writers sometimes use her accent as the butt of a joke.

Liz: I feel you on Gloria. I feel like we could do an entire post on her character and Sofia Vergara. In the same way that the writers try to dismantle the problematic representations of Lily through jokes, they’ve tried to do that with Gloria – she struggles with appearing as a trophy wife to others, but not feeling/acting that way herself. And yet, they do use those stereotypical representations wrapped up into funny exchanges. It takes a funny turn in this episode, when Jay and Gloria’s age is brought up – where to be buried? Oh the dilemma. (I feel you, Gloria. I don’t want to be in a drawer.) The accent, however, has also given me pause. There are moments when I laugh, stop and wonder “was that funny without the accent?” And the answer is no. It’s a little bit like Fez in That 70’s Show who didn’t even have a name (dissect that one)! But I do think accents in general can create funny situations. Mispronounced words can be humorous. I’ve tried pronouncing Danish words in such a butchering manner that I’ve been laughed at mercilessly by my cousin….BUT it’s a tough line to walk, because me mispronouncing Danish words does not feed into a particular stereotypical representation (although occasionally maybe the dumb American).

Amber: Yeah. I think the big question is “who’s laughing?” I think you hit it on the head when you mentioned stereotypical representations. Non-native English speakers “butchering” American English on television is a familiar and problematic image. So, I totally agree with you, it becomes a very thin line. And of course, those representations are often harmful and damaging. BUT, it’s important to note that Sofia Vergara does speak English with an accent, so that definitely brings up a lot of interesting questions…

Liz: Definitely – is it more problematic to have someone who doesn’t have an accent fake it for the sake of the joke or to have someone with a real accent be the joke? Television writers might claim that the accent is the butt of the joke, but that, in turn, makes the person the butt of the joke. Plus it’s even interesting to examine my own response to it – do I laugh? Is Gloria the joke or is the situation the joke? Fine line the writers are walking. And I think they’ve slipped more than a couple times.

Amber: Gaaah …kinda reminiscent of Blackface? Smdh. Definitely deep stuff. Well, let’s hope the writers don’t fall flat on their faces because at the end of the day, I really do love this show.

Liz: So do I. And we didn’t even get to Phil and Claire. Next time? * side-eye *

Amber: Oh, I’m aching to go in on how “normal” they are. * catches your eye and joins in on the side-eye* Lol. Definitely.

Canada is an officially multicultural country, but multiculturalism does not address racism.

The Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist Multicultural Institution shows six stages from being a monocultural institution to becoming an anti-racist multicultural institution. Canada appears to be at Stage Three:

3. Symbolic Change: A Multicultural Institution

• Makes official policy pronouncements regarding Multicultural diversity
• Sees itself as “non-racist” institution with open doors to People of Color
• Carries out intentional inclusiveness efforts, recruiting “someone of color” on committees or office staff
• Expanding view of diversity includes other socially oppressed groups

But…

• “Not those who make waves”
• Little or no contextual change in culture, policies, and decision making
• Is still relatively unaware of continuing patterns of privilege, paternalism and control

Stage Four is “Identity Change: An Anti-Racist Institution”. As Canada has never thought of itself as an anti-racist country, it remains at Stage 3 of this model.

In Canada, there is the mistaken belief that racism is caused by cultural differences, and that if multiculturalism is embraced, then there would be no racism. However, when Canadians face discrimination when we travel while black, go fishing while East Asian, protest while brown, or seek medical care while indigenous, the problem is not “cultural differences” to be solved with “cultural sensitivity”. This “cultural” problem formulation still insists that people of colour must have done something differently from white people to provoke discrimination. It ignores the possibility that people of colour might do the same things as white people and still be treated differently due to our race.

A clear example of people of colour being discriminated against because of race—not culture—is the fact that children of colour adopted by white (American) parents and raised as white still experience racial discrimination. In the past, white adoptive parents adopted Chinese children and raised them as if they were white biological children, cutting their ties to Chinese culture, under the same false belief that racial discrimination is caused by cultural differences:

Americans have adopted an estimated half-million children from overseas in the last four decades. During the early period of international adoptions, most parents believed their children’s lives would be easier if they shed their native culture, said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on improving adoption practices.

Parents believed that their children were a “blank slate” that should be filled in exactly the same as biological children, Pertman said. This sort of evenhanded treatment would be a buffer from any possible discrimination — or so parents believed.

Of course, this turned out to be false and harmful. People of colour raised as white people and raised in their white parents’ culture still experienced and experience racial discrimination.

It is not culture—or cultural intolerance—that causes racial discrimination. It is racism. Race and culture are two different things. Multiculturalism is not the same as anti-racism.

Multiculturalism does not stop White Canadians from assuming that I am a foreigner to Canada. In fact, the multicultural narrative tends to confuse racial diversity with cultural diversity, encouraging White Canadians to assume that Canadians of colour are culturally different and culturally other, based only on our racial appearance.

Canada’s problem mirrors the problem of white adoptive parents, who are now celebrating “Chinese” culture with their adopted Chinese children, falsely believing that multicultural celebration will protect against racial discrimination:

“They are trying their best,” she said, “but the truth is, no one likes to talk about race or acknowledge race.

–

Photo courtesy of Mollena, who sells actual race cards.

Natasha M. Ball at Texas A&M University is conducting a study on the experiences of black adult adoptees.

Who: African American/Black adults (21+ years of age), who have been legally adopted by Black or White families.

Why: The purpose of this research is to investigate the experiences of Black adult adoptees from same-race and mixed-race families.

What: Interviews will last from 1 to 2 hours. Participant’s identities will be kept in confidentiality;pseudonyms will be assigned during transcription.

Where: Meeting locations will be scheduled according to the most convenient location for participant and interviewer.

For more information contact:
Natasha M. Ball
979.209.0753
Natasha.M.Ball@tamu.edu

This research is conducted under the direction of Texas A&M University, Department of Sociology.

Open Call for Submissions: OTHER TONGUES: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out

Co-editors Adebe D.A. and Andrea Thompson are seeking submissions for an anthology of writing by and about mixed-race women of Black/white heritage, intended for publication in Fall 2010.

The purpose of this anthology is to explore the question of how Black/white mixed-race women in North America identify in the 21st Century. The anthology will also serve as a place to learn about the social experiences, attitudes, and feelings of others, and what racial identity has come to mean today. We are inviting previously unpublished submissions that engage, document, and/or explore the experiences of being mixed-race, by placing interraciality as the center, rather than periphery, of analysis.

Please send one (1) submission of up to 2500 words of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, or spoken word as a SINGLE attachment to othertonguesanthology@gmail.com

Black and white images and artwork should be 300 dpi and sent as attachments in jpg. of tiff. format. Artwork and photography limited to three (3) per applicant.

Please include your contact information, including your name, address, phone number, e-mail, title(s) of work submitted, type of submission, and a short artist bio (50 words max) in the body of the email, with your name and the type of submission in the subject line (e.g. “Jazmine – Poetry Submission”). All submissions are due April 15, 2010. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.

If you prefer that your contribution remain anonymous, please include this preference at the top of your submission. All personal information you provide will be kept strictly confidential.

If you have any questions about this project, please contact the Editors, Adebe DeRango-Adem and Andrea Thompson, at othertonguesanthology@gmail.com

For more information: http://www.adebe.wordpress.com, http://www.andreathompson.ca or visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=276479812662

We look forward to reviewing your submission!

Reader Carleandria sent us this LA Times article over the weekend:

The telephones kept ringing with more orders and although Duan Yuelin kept raising his prices, the demand was inexhaustible. Customers were so eager to buy more that they would ply him with expensive gifts and dinners in fancy restaurants.

His family-run business was racking up sales of as much as $3,000 a month, unimaginable riches for uneducated Chinese rice farmers from southern Hunan province.

What merchandise was he selling? Babies. And the customers were government-run orphanages that paid up to $600 each for newborn girls for adoption in the United States and other Western countries.

“They couldn’t get enough babies. The demand kept going up and up, and so did the prices,” recalled Duan, who was released from prison last month after serving about four years of a six-year sentence for child trafficking.

When we post articles about taking the time to consider children in the adoption discourse, I am always surprised at the number of comments that assume we are anti-adoption (or as one amusingly put it, leaving these poor children to rot) when we believe in listening to perspectives from adult adoptees and adoptive POCs.  The perspectives are quite different from the standard narrative on adoption.  Just check out what Paula, of the Heart, Mind, and Seoul blog had to say:

[W]hy do so many people casually accept (and perhaps even secretly celebrate) it as fate, good karma, a higher power at force, destiny, luck, etc. when a woman who is without a true, just selection of choice or is told that the only real choice she has is to place her child, and believe this to be perfectly acceptable so long as it benefits our agenda?  Our plans.  Our lifelong hopes and childhood dreams.  Why is okay for other women to find themselves in a position to have to make arguably the most God-awful and heart-wrenching, hellish choice or worse – to find themselves WITHOUT choice – when it suits us or those we love?  And why aren’t more of us or more of those we love willing to make the same kinds of sacrifices that we expect, assume, hope and accept that other women will do?

Please let me be clear. I am not trying to make adoptive parents feel guilty, ashamed or regret over their decision to adopt.  I myself, along with my husband, made the very conscious and intentional decision to adopt our son and I know that we personally did not cause or create the circumstances behind our son’s relinquishment.  However, that being said, I absolutely accept responsibility for my role in the collective mindset that this society too often has about portraying first moms in the image that we want them to be, so long that it suits the needs of those who feel that they deserve to be parents, too.  People might not come out directly and say, “Thank God there are women out there who cannot parent their own kids, because without that, I’d never be a mom”, but instead we might hear a more politically correct spin ala “I know that the world is an imperfect place.  But it is what it is.  Should we just let these poor kids starve and die in orphanages?   They need a family and we want a child.  Adoption is the very best solution for everyone.”

And so while we may not exactly be rejoicing in the fact that children are available for adoption, we’re certainly not doing anything to prevent it from happening here or in other countries; well, at least not until we’re able to adopt ourselves.

Maybe at the heart of the issue is the belief amongst many that as long as we love adopted kids “as our own” and promise to do our very best by them and to give them the world and have them not want for anything, that it’s somehow okay to keep averting our eyes away from the cultural, socio-economic, political, societal and religious reasons that we cite to help justify to ourselves why it’s “unavoidable” that women are continuously forced or asked to give up their children.

And when one does a bit more digging into why so many children are given up for adoption, the realities can be grim. Last year, the New York Times published a piece on the stigma mothers in South Korea face when they have children out of wedlock:

Ms. Choi and other women in her situation are trying to set up the country’s first unwed mothers association to defend their right to raise their own children. It is a small but unusual first step in a society that ostracizes unmarried mothers to such an extent that Koreans often describe things as outrageous by comparing them to “an unmarried woman seeking an excuse to give birth.”

The fledgling group of women — only 40 are involved so far — is striking at one of the great ironies of South Korea. The government and commentators fret over the country’s birthrate, one of the world’s lowest, and deplore South Korea’s international reputation as a baby exporter for foreign adoptions.

Yet each year, social pressure drives thousands of unmarried women to choose between abortion, which is illegal but rampant, and adoption, which is considered socially shameful but is encouraged by the government. The few women who decide to raise a child alone risk a life of poverty and disgrace.

Nearly 90 percent of the 1,250 South Korean children adopted abroad last year, most of them by American couples, were born to unmarried women, according to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.

In their campaign, Ms. Choi and the other women have attracted unusual allies. Korean-born adoptees and their foreign families have been returning here in recent years to speak out for the women, who face the same difficulties in today’s South Korea as the adoptees’ birth mothers did decades ago.

One such supporter, Richard Boas, an ophthalmologist from Connecticut who adopted a Korean girl in 1988, said he was helping other Americans adopt foreign children when he visited a social service agency in South Korea in 2006 and began rethinking his “rescue and savior mentality.” There, he encountered a roomful of pregnant women, all unmarried and around 20 years old.

“I looked around and asked myself why these mothers were all giving up their kids,” Dr. Boas said.

Here’s how deep the stigma runs:

Unwed mothers often lie about their marital status for fear they will be evicted by landlords and their children ostracized at school. Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, according to a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women’s Development Institute.

“I was turned down eight times in job applications,” Ms. Lee said. “Each time a company learned that I was an unwed mom, it accused me of dishonesty.”

Adoption is a complicated thing, and there are no easy answers. There is no silver bullet that will solve all of these problems. And we haven’t even delved into the personal stories yet of adult adoptees, and their varying narratives. But we are  concerned for the best interests of children, which may or may not match up with the dominant narrative around adoption.

Update: I wrote this post on Saturday – two more pieces have come in that add additional insight into the aims of this post.

MSNBC reports that a church group is being accused of child trafficking after they attempted to “rescue” children in Haiti and drive them to a hotel (they were converting to an orphanage) in the Dominican Republic:

Ten American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital Sunday after trying take 33 children out of Haiti at a time of growing fears over possible child trafficking.

The director of the charity now watching the children told NBC News that one child said she still had parents and was only expecting a brief vacation.

He added that a policeman believed the group was trying to sell the children for $10,000 each, an allegation denied by the church members.

The group clearly thought they were doing what was best for the children involved, but that perception doesn’t always match the reality on the ground:

“As far as we know they would have been, I say it clearly, sold for $10,000 each,” said Georg Willeit, who runs the SOS Children’s Village outside Port-au-Prince. “That’s what one of the policemen told us. Every child was very desperate, hungry, thirsty. They all were in a bad condition.”

“One of the elder girls told us, ‘I’m not an orphan. I still have my parents,’” he added. “She thought she was going on a summer holiday vacation given by friendly people from America and the Dominican Republic.”

The church members, most from Idaho, said they were trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children. But officials said they lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.

MSNBC ends the article by noting that some Haitians would want to give up their children to families in the United States to provide them with a potentially better life.  So there are people who would welcome the assistance of such a group.  The moral of the story here is to check first.

Resist Racism has been on fire with posts about this topic.

About the idea of help:

So here we have all this money, and we have “orphans” in Haiti.  We could fix the problem.  We could provide supplies.  We could help first families stay together.  We could actively solicit kinship care.

And I am sure that there are some organizations working towards that end.  But what we mostly hear about is the “saving” of “orphans.”

Here’s a radical thought:  If some of those “orphans” were relinquished for adoption because their parents could not keep them, how about we airlift entire families from Haiti to the U.S.?  If you’re seriously talking about the welfare of the child, isn’t it best for the family to remain together?

But that wouldn’t serve the needs of those other families.  You know, those good families who wish to save the orphans.  The ones who are putting their power and privilege to work on our government.  So although the country is in shambles, children are being removed.  We’ve put pressure on Haiti’s government, even though officials said “no” at several points.  Because the unspoken quid pro quo is out there:  Do what we want or else.

On the concept of “Orphan”:

“Orphan” is about a relationship that begins with pity.

Pity is a shitty place to start.  And I have deep misgivings about individuals who saw the devastation in Haiti and then felt “moved” to adopt a child.  Because adoption should never be about pity.  It should not be about saving a child.  And it’s not about a feel-good gesture.  It’s about a life change–for both the child and the parents.

On”strings” :

Well, it looks as if parole is being used to avoid those “normal visa-issuing procedures” and to bypass immigration.  And the significant public benefit?  Babies!  Babies for parents!  Yay!  Everybody wins!

I predict significant problems in the years to come.  Remember Allie Mulvihill?  She was brought to the U.S. on humanitarian parole because there were suspicions she was a trafficked child.  No matter.  Her parents got what they wanted.  Her story attracted the intention of somebody with immigration services. Lucky for her.  Otherwise she’d undoubtedly join the ranks of deported adopted persons.  (Video here.)

If children are being removed without Haitian legal safeguards in place, what is the recourse if these same children are later found to have been removed erroneously?  Will the children be restored to their families?  Or will possession be 9/10ths of the law?

Of course, you must think about the children!  What do you want, for more children to DIE?  They CAN’T LIVE under those conditions!  Isn’t it BETTER for them to BE HERE than to be in an ORPHANAGE?

Because those are the only two choices we have.  It’s the same old argument about intercountry adoption.  Would you rather the child grow up to be a prostitute?  Would you rather she work in a factory?  So what if he maintains his culture but has no family?

Because you can’t argue because everybody knows that adult Haitians are poor and clueless or corrupt and incompetent.  But not the babies.  So let’s save the babies.

It’s about giving aid but only on our terms.  The strings attached are the children.

And of course, benevolence by the numbers:

The following is from the blog Adoptees of Colour Roundtable:

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.

We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking….

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin.

As adoptees of color many of us have inherited a history of dubious adoptions. We are dismayed to hear that Haitian adoptions may be “fast-tracked” due to the massive destruction of buildings in Haiti that hold important records and documents…

Read the entire statement here.

–
Thanks to Michelle for the tip!

Haitian American Adoptive Parent Margalita Belhumer

I’m a foster care adoptive parent. I can’t speak for all of us, since we’re a diverse bunch. Some of us have also adopted internationally and support international adoption strongly. Others despise the institution, and are angry about what the perceived hypocrisy of parents who walk past the foster kids in their own cities and states so that they can adopt from a far-away country. I’m somewhere in the middle, but definitely leaning more towards the anti side, especially after this week.

This week, I’ve been deeply disturbed at the swelling public desire to adopt Haitians. Haitian orphan babies. The very name is problematic. In our imagination, an orphan has no family, but the vast majority of “orphans” all over the world have living parents, and almost every single one has living extended relatives. And the children that need family care are, overwhelmingly, older children.

Quite a few other parents I know are really pissed off about it. If you want to adopt, why not consider adopting from foster care? Why Haitian babies? I can guess at some of the answers. Most of them will not be very flattering.

There’s a certain group of white adoptive international parents that dominate much of the discourse around adoption in this country. The most organized of these are evangelical Christians, but many of them are secular in their beliefs on adoption. They’re across the political spectrum, ultraconservative to ultraliberal, though if I had to hazard a guess, most of them are center-right in politics. I believe these people are, basically, a force for evil. If I put it in any nicer words, that would be a lie. Examining their belief system, and their potential political influence on the recovery efforts in Haiti, is a pretty terrifying process.

I was first made aware of the Rumor Queen website several years ago. I was doing some research on Chinese adoption for a blog post. They’re a large community of parents adopting from China, and the site is known for posting a lot of useful data about wait times. A few years ago controversy happened in the forum when some Chinese-American parents were accused by white parents of “jumping the line”. There is, in fact, an expedited program for some Chinese-Americans; it’s quite restrictive and any Chinese-Americans greater than second-generation do not qualify. The fact that some of these Chinese-Americans were possibly more worthy of Chinese babies because of factors like “language” and “culture” and “race” apparently enraged some of the white parents. I read about it second hand from a couple of really angry, hurt Chinese-American families. This episode should give you a taste of the quality of discourse at this and similar websites. There are dissident voices, but the environments are most often dominated by white parents who refuse to consider any of the complex ethical issues surrounding transracial, transcultural, international adoption. They’re saving children. How can you argue with that, right?

These online communities are often very hostile places for adoptive parents of color. They’re even more hostile, of course, to adoptees and birth/first parents who want to discuss more complicated perspectives of adoption.

I stumbled on Rumor Queen again recently and was shocked to see what was going on. The whole site has gone gaga over adopting Haitian babies. It began with concerns about Haitian children, and is evolving into a coordinated plan of action to put pressure on political representatives for a Haitian babylift.

Also, I’m hearing about plans to bring more children (as in, thousands) into the U.S. all at once on airplanes. There are some precedents for this, there was Operation Peter Pan / Pedro Pan in Cuba in the 60′s, and then there was Operation Babylift in Vietnam in the 70′s. IIRC they did something similar in Korea in the 50′s, but I’m not sure it was given a name. At any rate, there is precedent for allowing a whole bunch of orphans into the U.S. who do not already have parents waiting for them. The U.S. government has not yet given the green light on this, and I’m unclear at this point who exactly gets the final word on it. If anyone out there has more information about it, please share. If it can be done in a way that ensures they are only bringing true orphans over then I’m all for it and would get behind it in a letter writing campaign. However, I would want someone overseeing the effort who can make sure things are done ethically. Someone with the ability and the clout to insist upon it.

The concern that “things are done ethically”… that’s a nice thought. The comments dispense with that window dressing. They’re full of demands that we have to get the kids out now, now, now, before they die, die, die. The practical reality is that after a horrific disaster of the magnitude of the Haiti quake, it’s completely impossible to determine whether any abandoned child is a “true orphan”. It’s a process that is going to take months and even years.

This post from a more informed international adoptive parent blogger is a more reality-based examination of the issue. Adoptee bloggers who also study adoption academically — among them Harlow’s Monkey and A Birth Project — are deeply concerned about the parallels to massive child extraction events like Operation Babylift. These were not shining humanitarian moments. Many of the adopted children found out later that they had parents and siblings left behind who wanted them, or even relatives in the United States who were searching for them.

In countries like Haiti that suffer so severely from poverty, citizens have to take the risks of globalization, but reap few of the rewards. Families are split apart as young people go to the cities to work, or to other countries, leaving their children in the care of relatives. Family ties are weakened by poverty, by the constant presence of disease, death and loss, but also paradoxically strengthened as families come up with new ways to endure hardship and stay together. A white middle-class Midwestern mother doesn’t understand why a Haitian mother would leave her children at an orphanage, hoping to take them back later. The white mother could understand if she really thought about it on a rational basis. But the lure of the white savior narrative is powerful, and sweeps her up in a rush of emotion: fear, longing, desire. It’s because the Haitian mother is a bad mother who doesn’t deserve her kids anymore. The innocent baby is not yet contaminated by this evil culture. They deserve something better, cleaner, richer, more tender, whiter.

Here’s another comment from that thread.

RumorQueen Says:
January 21st, 2010 at 2:07 pm
And how many children will die while they are building a new infrastructure?

Sometimes you do what you can, not what the ideal would seem to be.

It’s like the guy rescuing starfish on the beach, there are a hundred thousand starfish and a guy is throwing some of them back in the water. Someone tells him there are too many, he can’t possibly make a difference all by himself. And he says, as he throws one in the water “I made a difference to that one”.

There are going to be all kinds of issues these kids will deal with. I’ve gone out of my way so my kids know I did not “rescue” them… but that isn’t going to be able to be said for these kids. Sure, it’s not an ideal situation. But would it be better to let them die?

Analogies simplify complex issues, sometimes in an accurate way, but this analogy is just smoke and mirrors. International adoptive parents are really fond of this starfish analogy and this is not the first time I’ve seen it in play. It always boggles my mind. Why is adopting a third-world “orphan” like throwing a starfish back in the ocean? Maybe the poor starfishes needed to be on the beach as part of their mating cycle and the guy is messing with them because he’s sadistic. Maybe he has a weird sexual fetish about echinoderm-hurling. Or maybe he’s just a dumb-ass. The analogy effectively obscures the issue of motivation, as well as the implication of “saving”.

Let me try another analogy. Let’s say you live with your child in a house that burns down. You’re dazed, confused, and burned. Your neighbor says, “I think I should take care of your child”. You say, “Thanks for your offer. But my child really needs me now, and I think they wouldn’t sleep well in a strange house. If you could just give us a tent and some food and some bandages so we can camp out while I get better and look into rebuilding, we’ll be OK.” Your neighbor says, “that’s too logistically complicated and I’m concerned about the security situation. I just want your child.” You say, “Thanks again for your concern and I’m grateful for any help you can give me. If you’re so worried about my child, maybe you could let both of us stay in your guestroom for a while? That way my child could be safe and would sleep well too.” Your neighbor says, “No, we have an interdiction-at-sea policy and visa restrictions will not be relaxed. Just give me your child. Actually, nevermind. I don’t even need your permission anymore. I’ll just take them.”

Here’s the worst comment on the thread. It was let through without a rejoinder. Mine was blocked.

49.Proud2Adopt Says:
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:03 am EthioChinaadopt – the issue is that if someone is paying $30,000 to adopt a child, they want a baby! Its as simple as that! I’m really tired of hearing about how so many of these kids are just split from their parents. Lets get the 380,000 kids that were ALREADY orphans OUT of the country & into waiting homes, that way the focus of orphanages can be on those children who are NEW orphans or split from parents & families. The reality to me is, I would LOVE to adopt one of these children. No, this isn’t a NEW passion spurred from seeing photos on TV. But hopefully with the dire situation they will waive much of the 25K+ fees for families like mine to adopt one of these children here! Amen!

I admit I wasn’t nearly as diplomatic as I could have been. But that’s not my strong point. I was way too irritated with these people. In case you’re wondering why the maniac above me was referring to $30,000 for a fresh baby, I really don’t know. I’m not up-to-date on the latest prices in the international baby market.

The next babylift thread was racist beyond belief. Rumor Queen ran footage of a riot at a food distribution point.

Desperate target Haiti’s orphanages

In a country where it is survival of the fittest, what chance do babies and children in an orphanage have?

The Vietnamese Operation Babylift was driven both by racism and fear of communism. But this framing, on the other hand, is pure 100% unadulterated racism, invoking the most damaging stereotype of black people invented by white imperialists. “Survival of the fittest” implies that Haitians are nothing more than animals. Their children need to be removed immediately or they won’t even grow up to be human beings.

I haven’t watched a lot of news in the past week — probably less than 10 minutes of footage a day from sources like CNN — but in those brief times, I’ve seen plenty of examples of orderly food distribution. I’ve seen Haitians rescuing each other. I’ve read accounts by independent media, small media and even the mainstream media — “Despite isolated incidents of looting, violence and other criminal activity, the overall security situation remains calm” — that security fears have been massively overblown.

Rumor Queen attacked me for my blocked comment later on in that thread. I then left a harsher comment (I refrained from profanity but did use the word “strip-mining”) and my comment was, of course, also blocked.

Luckily, policy makers aren’t listening to these people with full attention anymore. There are competing voices. UNICEF, Save the Children, SOS Children’s Villages, pretty much every single large secular children’s aid organization, plus some of the religious ones, are advocating a total stop to new international adoptions until quake recovery gets underway and far-flung families begin to come together again. Adoption should be the last resort. I agree with that. I’m somewhat moderate in that I don’t see a huge problem with removing children who have already been through most of the process and have already met their adoptive parents. If a bond is already there, there’s no point adding another loss. And a lot of the adoption process is true red tape that doesn’t serve anyone’s interests. But airlifting children who just “appear to be orphans” (as several Catholic leaders in Miami have been demanding) and almost certainly cutting them off from their roots… this is wrong. It’s wrong for the children, it’s wrong for their relatives, and it’s wrong for the country of Haiti.

There was an adoption story I heard on NPR yesterday that really touched me. It’s not the typical adoption narrative we’ve been hearing:

Margalita Belhumer, a Haitian-American who lives in New York City, was visiting Haiti when the quake struck nine days ago. She shaded her eyes from the tropical sun as her 8-year-old daughter, Melissa, squatted at her feet.

“I’m seeking to leave with my daughter. People are dead, place crumbled. She has nowhere to live, so I can’t leave without her,” Belhumer said.

She said she raised Melissa since the girl was a newborn infant, wrapped in a sheet and left on the sidewalk in front of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Child abandonment by destitute mothers is not uncommon in Haiti. While Belhumer worked at her job as a security guard in New York, she paid a family to take care of Melissa. Belhumer said she had begun the adoption paperwork before the quake struck.

“I started the adoption process, but I started last month. But I’ve had her since the first day she was born,” she said.

If any adoption is expedited, it should be these ones. But these are also the people who are least likely to have the ears of politicians. Everyone wants Haitian babies. Haitian adults, and Haitian families, are another matter. There has been no announcement that more visas will be granted to reunite Haitian-American families.

This report by a US adoptee-rights blogger, based on notes from a USCIS teleconference, has a chilling quote.

Hundreds of adoptive parents, paps, orphanage directors with dozens of children, and even, apparently, loose children gather outside the US Embassy. Many come unannounced demanding entry. Officials have set up and are refining procedures for entry into the compound, interviews, and decision making. (Procedures were discussed in detail, but I”ll hold that for another entry.) They emphasize that the Embassy needs advance notice of petitioners so someone can go outside, locate them, and escort them through the gates. Only adoption cases are being handled. (Haitians with other Embassy business, including those with pending pre-quake visa and immigration applications are being turned away for now.)

Talk of adopting orphaned Haitian babies seems to be swirling all over. And though I’m concentrating my ire on a certain class of white adoptive parents, I’ll have to note, not everyone full of this dangerous desire is white.

“I wanna just go down there and get some of those babies,” Latifah said on the Today Show Thursday. “If you got a hook up, please get me a couple of Haitian kids. It’s time. I’m ready.”

As someone who has adopted before, here’s some questions I’d ask of anybody in the U.S., of any race, who is really serious about this.

- Do you know what a homestudy is? Are you ready to pass one?
- Do you realize it will be almost impossible to adopt a baby, hard to adopt a toddler, and that the vast majority of children who really need to be adopted are older children?
- Do you know what attachment disorder is? Children with inconsistent caregiving in early years often develop this to some degree. They may experience the expression of love as a terrifying loss of self. They may do anything in their power to make you stop loving them, including physically attacking you, your pets or your other children. There is no known 100% effective therapy for this.
- Do you understand the effects of various prenatal exposures? Do you understand and accept that your child may grow up with irreparable brain damage?
- Are you ready to establish routine visits to one, two, three, all of these and more: therapist, psychiatrist, physical therapist, neurologist?
- Are you prepared that your child may resent you or hate you for taking them away from everything and everyone they’ve known and loved? And that even if you’ve explained to them that they’re never going back, they may still try to push you away, because in the back of their minds, if they’re bad enough, you’ll send them away, and they’ll go back to everything and everyone they’ve known and loved?
- Are you prepared to have a child so terrified from trauma that they act as if they were half their developmental age? That they wake you up screaming every night at 3 in the morning? That they rage uncontrollably if you don’t stay by their side every waking minute?
- Are you prepared for your friends and family to perhaps shrink away from you because they don’t understand why your child acts the way they act — maybe it’s because you don’t love them enough, or you don’t spank them enough — you’re doing it all wrong and it’s all your fault.

If you can answer “yes” to all of these, congratulations. You might be ready to adopt from foster care. To adopt from Haiti, answer all the above questions, add the effects of malnutrition, add a language barrier, and multiply the child’s trauma by a factor of ten. And subtract a lot of money. Unlike foster care adoptions, which are basically free, you’re going to have to pay legal fees. Maybe even $30,000. And children from foster care will have permanent Medicaid, no matter your income level, but if you adopt internationally, it’s up to you to find a way to pay for all those psychiatrist visits you’ll almost certainly be needing later on.

Here are some additional questions:

- Are you aware of transracial adoption issues? If you’re a black American, are you aware that transcultural issues can be just as intense as transracial ones?
- Do you have a connection to a Haitian-American community? Do you speak Kreyol or French?
- Your child will likely be Catholic and think of themselves as Catholic. Are you? If not, how will you handle the difference?
- The ethical thing to do is to try to establish contact with your child’s relatives in Haiti. Are you prepared for the fact that you, as a rich American (no matter what your income level) will then be regarded as a financial benefactor/patron? If you’ve grown up in the US and absorbed our surface-egalitarian values, you will be unaccustomed to this kind of role, and extremely bad at it. If you refuse to make contact because of this issue, or because of fear that your child will love you better if you cut them off from their roots, then… well… you suck. I’ll leave it at that.

You’d better be sure you can handle it. If you can’t, your child will pay the highest cost. If the adoption falls through, your child may end up in foster care, possibly so scarred that they’ll never get another chance at a family.

I’ve said a lot of harsh things in this post. But I also want to note that this desire can also be understood in a positive way. Children inspire love. I believe in certain universal values, and across every culture and all of history, people love children and want to take care of them. An equally universal trait, unfortunately, is the desire to exploit children. Children don’t speak fully for themselves, so we speak for them. It’s necessary, but it’s also dangerous. Exploiting a child can be as blatant as child sexual abuse, or sweatshop labor… and it can be as subtle as wanting our children to validate us as parents. Wanting them to love us, and being angry when they don’t show us love.

We’re getting into grounds of philosophy and religion here, but I don’t think a completely pure love is truly possible on this earth, because love needs knowledge, and pure knowledge is impossible. We try, but we don’t know fully what’s best for the other person, so we make guesses, and our guesses are based on imperfect knowledge. And so exploitation creeps in.

My religion talks a lot about the impossibility of individual purity and makes the acknowledgment of imperfection absolutely necessary. I think many other belief systems address the same issue in different ways. For example, in Christianity, Jesus Christ represents a pure kind of love, and other kinds of love exist in relation to that standard. The answer is not to stop loving, or to stop trying to understand, but to realize that our love is always endangered by selfishness. If we ever think our love is pure, we need to stop thinking along that track, take a step back and think again. Don’t stop loving, just stop thinking that your love is infallible and all-knowing.

I’ll close with a few reality-based ways to help Haitian children in Haitian families in the short term:

- Donate to SOS Children’s Villages, Save the Children or UNICEF.
- Sign this AIUSA petition to request an end to interdiction-at-sea policy
- Contact your representative. Ask them to support an increase in refugee visas for Haitians and expedited family reunification visas for Haitian-Americans. Ask them to support the airlift of Haitian children unaccompanied by family ONLY for the purposes of temporary medical hosting and NOT for the purposes of adoption.
- If you live close to a Haitian-American community, contact their organizations and ask if there is anything you can do to support community efforts.

Time Magazine reports on women migrant workers who have been raped, and the resulting pregnancies:

While globalization has turned much of the world into a wide-open labor market, it has also created complex human and societal dramas. Women account for up to 50% of the world’s 100 million–strong migrant-worker population — and there is no effective entity to protect their rights and dignity. In 2008, Indonesians working abroad, commonly as domestic staff in the Middle East and parts of Asia, contributed about $6.8 billion to their national economy via remittances, according to the World Bank. And while statistics are difficult to come by, there are increasing reports of many who are physically abused, raped and — in some cases — killed by their employers…

…female migrant workers are raped and then dumped on the streets by their employers, who refuse to give them their passports after discovering that the women are pregnant. The women are then arrested by police and placed in jail. Sometimes they are deported before the child is born.

Normawati says there are dozens of children who were abandoned by migrant workers in homes throughout Jakarta and surrounding areas.

I really appreciate the way this article draws attention to the intersection of gender and workers’ rights.  The article focuses on Indonesian women working in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but their stories are an illustration of a wider problem — those hit hardest by callous economic policies are almost always poor women of colour.

But it must be said that I do not care for the way Time Magazine characterises the women migrant workers.  The article doesn’t interview any actual migrant workers;  as a result both the mothers and the children they leave are painted as voiceless victims, when there is definitely a lot more to their existence than that. (For example, the women are referred to as “raped migrant mothers” – not “women who were raped while doing migrant work.” Potentially a small difference, but the first phrase reduces the women to the word “raped.”)  As well the article repeatedly emphasises how these women have ABANDONED their children; leaving the reader with a rather crude and over-simplified picture of women in unimaginable situations, forced to make terrible choices.

And while the article points out that countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan provide insufficient protections for migrant workers, it’s the same story everywhere.

Perhaps another bone to pick with the article is the way it localises problems that pervade the entire world, especially industrialised countries – like the exploitation of migrant workers, violence against women, patriarchal prejudice towards children born of rape – to the Middle East and Indonesia.

For example, Canadian organisation Justicia for Migrant Workers works to protect the rights of migrant workers in Ontario and beyond. J4MW tries to protect workers from both their employers and the Canadian government, whose policies sacrifice workers’ rights for “economic stability.” Their Campaigns page will give you an idea of the kinds of rights violations workers are facing.

Below is a list of other organisations that work for migrant worker rights. I found most of them by asking around and random google searches; if you have more you’d like to add to the list, leave them in the comments! I had trouble finding any organisations that specifically represented women migrant workers and their issues, which is probably pretty telling.

Damayan Migrant Workers Association Holds Health Fair & Gender Rights Training (North Star Fund Blog) (US)
Damayan Migrant Workers Association (US)
United for Foreign Domestic Worker’s Rights (Southeast Asia)
Migrante International Website (Philippines)
Migrante International Blog (Philippines)
Immigration Advocates (US)
United Farm Workers (US)
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (US)

Thanks to Jane, Angela and Sunny for their help!

Note: This post isn’t about Buffy Sainte-Marie, but her photo seemed like a good one to meditate on while I wrote this harrowing piece.  See my endnote for more info.

I get a little sensitive when it comes to how transracial parents represent themselves and their families.

So when reader Carleandria sent us a tip about Anita Tedaldi, the white adoptive mother who 1) terminated an adoption (i.e., after 18 months with her adopted South American son, she put him up for re-adoption) 2) wrote about it extensively for the New York Times AND 3) in early October went on the Today Show to talk about it, my stomach turned. It was like watching a car wreck. I couldn’t stop myself from following the links to ingest more and more about this woman, and the portrait she draws of herself.

A little backstory: Tedaldi was already the mother of five biological children when she took on the baby she calls D. D. had a host of physical and emotional issues, Tedaldi writes, all the result of being abandoned by the side of the road. When D. came to live with her, Tedaldi found that D. was not forming a bond with his new family. And Tedaldi’s family did not really take to him either.  So Tedaldi found a new home for D.

Now. I should make it clear that my issue here is not that Tedaldi chose to give up the baby.  She chose to adopt a special needs baby when she already had five kids and a deployed husband.  That seems like a pretty bad choice, but I’m glad that Tedaldi was able to admit to herself that she was not fit to parent D.

What really disgusts me is the way that Tedaldi is trumpeting this story all around town.  And while very little has been made of race in this story, I wonder what Tedaldi’s white lady privilege has to do with her apparent total lack of guilt.  Or let me correct that: Tedaldi doesn’t just seem remorseless.  She seems proud of herself.

Like everyone, I have some skeletons in my closet.  But I wouldn’t have Matt Lauer interview me about them. I might write an essay about the things I’d done if I wanted other people to learn from my mistakes, but I’d probably publish it anonymously. Why? Because I am ashamed of my skeletons.  Isn’t that the regular human response when you realise you’ve really messed up?

Yet in Tedaldi’s essay, she doesn’t show self-reproach.  She shows herself to be distraught, she writes extensively about how bad she feels; but she does not once use the word “sorry,” for example. Or “regret.”  Or “I was wrong.”

And sometimes, she recounts horrifying details with seemingly no self-awareness at all.  Behold the moment in Tedaldi’s essay that gave even the gushy and fawning commenters on the NYT some pause.  Describing the moment that D.’s new mother came to take him:

My daughters were watching SpongeBob and said goodbye to their brother almost nonchalantly, as if he was just going out for a bit and would soon be back.

When I was 8 I adopted a bunny. After about a week my parents decided it just wasn’t working out, and we gave the bunny away. I remember trying to talk to the bunny and say goodbye to it. If I was more concerned with my week-long bunny companion than Tedaldi’s children are about their adopted brother, then something is really really wrong.

Yet Tedaldi doesn’t say so.  That’s all Tedaldi tells us about her daughters’ reaction.  She doesn’t say that she needs to address this pretty shocking callousness in her children.  She doesn’t worry that she did a dismal job of creating familial feeling between her bio children and her adopted child.  She includes this scene, but it seems more as a means to illustrate 1) how hard it was for her and how alone she was 2) how justified she was in giving the baby away because clearly her family didn’t like him.

It almost feels like Tedaldi is on a mission to represent her behaviour – which deviates pretty wildly from the regular mothering narrative (at least I hope so) – as natural. Or she wants her actions to be viewed as a symptom of the complex nature of human life.  The copy on the NYT article states that Tedaldi wrote the article in the hopes that:

it will trigger a deeper understanding of how fragile and fierce the bonds of adoption can be.

The tagline on Tedaldi’s blog says:

Beware, by coming here you may be exposed to the frailty of human nature and to the many contradictions that permeate our existence

In the comments section of an adoption blog criticising Tedaldi, Tedaldi chimes in:

I chose to share the inconsistencies and the human contradictions in my own life in a public forum precisely because I believe we are all made up of good and bad

There’s something of an obsession here.   When faced with her own horrible mistake, instead of examining her actions, Tedaldi starts waxing philosophical.  Hey, it’s not that she messed up by taking in D. when she had no business doing so, it’s that the whole world is messed up! It’s that adoption is just so complicated! It’s that human nature is just so frail!

Bullshit.

In the material that I read about Tedaldi and D., there is no mention of race anywhere, or that this was a transracial adoption. Yet to me there is something here — if not particularly of white privilege — then of massive gargantuan privilege of some kind. Because the more privilege you have, the less likely you are to feel guilt.

This is because people of privilege are encouraged to think that it is logical they should have better Everything than people without privilege.  As people of privilege they are entitled to almost anything they want, even when what they want is a very sick baby that they do not have the means to care for.  People of privilege are also strongly discouraged from feeling compassion and connection to the world at large.  And people of privilege are discouraged from taking on responsibility or guilt.

Just look at said NYT comments section (and hang on to your lunch):

Anita – thank you for sharing. It really was courageous

I admire Ms. Tedaldi’s honesty

Thank you Anita. You are one courageous woman.

You did your best

God bless you.

This is a cliche, but has the whole world gone mad?

Why is this woman seen as being brave, why is she getting spots on primetime daytime, simply for admitting a grotesque mistake? Apparently because she was honest enough to admit she made a grotesque mistake.  But where do you draw the line between honesty and shamelessness?

And not everyone who admits to wrongdoing gets a hug from the internet.  See, for example, the stark difference in the way the internet treated Britney Spears, another unfit mother. So why the Tedaldi love haze?

I guess because her story comes under the rubric of the mommy industry.  But I figure most of all everybody loves Anita because the one she let down is not really human.  At least not according to her.

Nowhere in her tear-stained narrative does Tedaldi tell us enough about D. to turn him into a human being.  Most of what she tells us about him has to do with his health problems, the quiet implication being that no one would want such a difficult baby:

The first few weeks at home, people often asked me if he had experienced a brain injury. D. also suffered from coprophagia, or eating one’s own feces, which my pediatrician assured me the majority of children outgrow by the age of four. Most mornings, when I went to pick him up from his crib, I’d find him with poop smeared on his face and bedding.

Instead of details about what D. looked like, or what made him smile, or what kinds of things he liked to do – or even some unique ways he acted out! – we get this heartless description.

Why didn’t she just say “he had coprophagia,” explain what that was, and leave it at that? If we love someone, we usually try to describe their moments of sickness with the most dignity and respect possible.  But Tedaldi gives us this extremely graphic image and does not say anything like “but obviously it wasn’t his fault” or “but it was ok because he was my son and I loved him.”  For all her faffing about the intricacy of human nature, Tedaldi does not give D. the chance to be human.

If she thought of D. as human, would she be telling everyone who wants to listen the story of how she rejected him? The fact that D. might one day come across these articles and interviews of herseems like reason enough for Tedaldi to freakin’ shut up.

But she doesn’t.  And the print/TV/internet circus around Tedaldi accepts this dehumanisation because in the age of Angelina and Madonna, this is how we have learned to treat transracial adoptees.  D. is just another news item about a body of colour who needs to be rescued by white people.

At the end of her article, Tedaldi describes what D.’s new mother said to her:

Samantha squeezed my hand and reassured me that D. would know I had loved him and that I had done a good job.

And then Tedaldi to Matt Lauer:

“I’m not sure that I failed him. I loved him and I tried my best — in that respect I didn’t fail him,” she said.

When a person of privilege is accused of having been negligent (or racist, or sexist, or…), a classic move we often see is  the accused dissolving into sobs. They will berate themselves, they will proclaim how terrible they feel, they will soak your t-shirt with their tears. In other words, instead of owning up for whatever they did and focusing on the pain they caused – and how to reduce it – they completely focus on their own pain. In fact, they revel in it, Tedaldi-style.

Discussing Tedaldi’s article in the context of their own adoption process, AfroSpear states:

The one thing that has stuck with me is the words of one of the [adoption] counselors that impressed upon us that once you adopt a child, it’s no longer about you! Once that child enters into your care, their well-being is now are your primary responsibility and you must be committed to deal with “the good, the bad and the ugly”. They are not disposable, like a family pet that is returned to the pound after a few months because no one wants to be bothered to care for it…This [adoption] is not about her, although I did find that her article is all about her and her feelings.

Tedaldi’s article is one of the most grotesque manifestations that I have ever seen of the way that privileged people make EVERYTHING about themselves.

Tedaldi describes her feelings as “grief.” Grief is what we have when we lose a friend or a family member to death, or to the vagaries of life. Grief is not – at least not mainly – what we have when we utterly fuck up and totally let someone down. That is called guilt.

Grief is also what we have when we lose a dream.  But D. is not a dream, not a realisation of the adoption fantasy Tedaldi admits to having had her whole life.  He’s a human.

This is not a story about a mother and a child.  This is not even a story about a woman and a baby. It’s a story about two humans.  But that keeps getting lost in the mix.

–

So why is there a picture of Buffy Sainte-Marie on this post? I have zero desire to contribute to Tedaldi’s pity party by perpetuating images of her. I wanted to put up a photo that represented D., and not Tedaldi.  So I looked up the internet for well-known POCs who were also adoptees, and Buffy Sainte-Marie popped up.

It is beautiful that people can open their lives to human beings of any background, but I think that all of us – every human being – runs the risk of being commodified in a hypercapitalist culture. For example, I feel that as a biracial person I have more social currency now that we have a biracial president. So when we think about which bodies have currency, it’s an interesting question.

One of the writers [whose piece] didn’t make it into One Big Happy Family wrote about how the process of adopting a child from another country made her more aware of human trafficking. Ultimately, she had to question whether her child had been put up for adoption or was stolen. If we look at plunging fertility in developed nations and raging underdevelopment and poverty in others, we can see how children can become the ultimate product.

Many people don’t realize that there are more human beings in slavery today than ever before. The discussion of transracial adoptees should be part of a growing awareness about the modern slave trade, but I think the glamourization of them in popular culture often does not lend itself to a deeper dialogue.

— “All In the Family: A Q + A with author Rebecca Walker”, Bitch Magazine, Fall of 2009, interview by our own Nadra Kareem

Note: Racialicious often critiques transracial adoption practices. However, we prefer to not demonize the participants, and to respect the narratives of those most directly affected. Please keep this in mind when commenting.

Reader Ray tipped us off to this musical currently playing at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival: Mercy Madonna of Malawi.

Putting an African spin on the story of four-year-old Mercy James who was adopted by the original Material Girl earlier this year, Mercy Madonna of Malawi is an upbeat musical that takes stock of a world in which a global superstar and a developing nation can find common ground. Without taking sides, it asks whether it is right for a child to be taken away from her culture if it means enjoying a life of privilege.

No matter what I might think of trans-racial/cultural adoption, I think it’s really admirable that Mercy Madonna of Malawi is trying to portray both sides of the adoption debate without judgement. And as reader Ray said, the fact that Madonna is being played by a man makes the whole thing even more intriguing.

I mean, you gotta love that picture.

If you’re lucky enough to be in Edinburgh, Mercy Madonna of Malawi runs Aug 7-31 at the World @ St George’s West. And let us know what you think of it!

Angry Asian Man reports on the story of Xiu Ping Jiang, a 35 year-old Chinese illegal immigrant diagnosed with a mental illness who has been stuck in immigration limbo for over a year. From the New York Times:

[Jiang] has spent more than a year in jail, often in solitary confinement, sinking deeper into the mental illness that makes it impossible for her either to fight deportation or to obtain the travel documents needed to make it happen, according to a pending habeas corpus petition that seeks her release. It contends that she is suicidal, emaciated and deprived of proper medical treatment.

More distressing is the report of her first court appearance in the NYT, which led to her deportation order:

Twice the immigration judge asked the woman’s name. Twice she gave it: Xiu Ping Jiang. But he chided her, a Chinese New Yorker, for answering his question before the court interpreter had translated it into Mandarin.

“Ma’am, we’re going to do this one more time, and then I’m going to treat you as though you were not here,” the immigration judge, Rex J. Ford, warned the woman last year at her first hearing in Pompano Beach, Fla. He threatened to issue an order of deportation that would say she had failed to show up.

She was a waitress with no criminal record, no lawyer and a history of attempted suicide. Her reply to the judge’s threat, captured by the court transcript, was in imperfect English. “Sir, I not — cannot go home,” she said, referring to China, which her family says she fled in 1995 after being forcibly sterilized at 20. “If I die, I die America.”

The judge moved on. “The respondent, after proper notice, has failed to appear,” he said for the record. And as she declared, “I’m going to die now,” he entered an order deporting her to China, and sent her back to the Glades County immigration jail.

As Angry Asian Man says:

The situation illustrates the vulnerability of the mentally ill in the immigration system. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps putting increasingly strict enforcement measures in place, more and more people with mental illness are being put into detention — and no one is really looking out for them.

In a bizarre twist, the only reason Jiang’s case is getting attention is because she happens to have the same name as the ex-wife of Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese American who shot 13 people in April at a Binghamton immigration services center. In looking for Wong’s ex-wife, reporters stumbled across Jiang.

Yet Jiang is by a long stretch not the first (or I imagine) the last immigrant of colour with a health issue to be forgotten within the double prejudice of a system that is both xenophobic and ableist. Jiang’s case is a disturbing 2009 echo of something that happened in 1935, when the government of British Columbia deported 65 Chinese nationals back to China. The documentation of these men, kept by the courts and their psychiatrists, is for the most part is so paltry and dismissive that it is difficult to tell if all the men were actually struggling with mental health. In any case the men were deported because they fit into neither the ethnic nor medical norms of their day.

The level of bureaucracy under which Jiang is struggling multiplies when we look at the conditions under which she came to be in the US in the first place:

In their home village in Fujian province, in southeastern China, the sisters said, Jiang was married under age. She hid in their mother’s house when she was pregnant with her second son, they said, because under China’s one-child policy, the village government would have forced her to have an abortion.

“She did not deliver in a hospital, and she almost died,” said the younger sister, Yu, 33, the first to emigrate. A few days after the birth, she added, officials found Jiang, sterilized her and imposed a heavy fine. Later, divorced and desperate, Jiang borrowed the equivalent of $35,000 to be smuggled by boat to the United States, hoping to find political asylum and bring over the young sons she left with their grandmother.

But grueling months at sea left her emotionally fragile, and in the summer of 1997, about a year after her arrival, she became so despondent about her separation from her children, and the burden of her debts, that she tried to kill herself by drinking bleach, her sisters said. The police took her to Bellevue Hospital Center.

“She was afraid of being arrested, so the next day she ran away,” Yu recalled. At times over the next decade Jiang seemed better, as she moved from work in Manhattan garment factories to waitress jobs in Chinese restaurants across the country. But an effort to bring her younger son into the United States through Canada when he was 8 or 9 backfired: he was caught by Canadian officials and placed in foster care.

“He intended to join up with her,” the younger sister said of the boy, now 16. “Now it’s impossible, because he’s being adopted.”

It is impossible to disentangle the different strands of prejudice; where the psychiatric system is used to persecute people of colour, the justice system or immigration system persecutes people with disabilities, and inhumane systems in general combine to drive people to madness — or as in the case of Jiang and Junius Wilson, a combo of all of those things.

In 1932 Junius Wilson (pictured right), a 24 year-old deaf black man in North Carolina was castrated and imprisoned in the state hospital after being found guilty of rape. In 1990s, when Wilson was in his 80′s, after 65 years he was cleared of charges and released. He did not actually leave the hospital though – after all that time it had become his home.

It is not a coincidence that both Jiang’s and Wilson’s story involves the brutal violation of reproductive rights; the role forced sterilisation has played in the dehumanisation of both people of colour and people with disabilities is nauseating. You can go here, here and here to read about how the forced sterilisation of indigenous people has been used to colonise the land we live on, and you can go here to look at how contemporary birth control programs are used to try and restrict the reproductive choices of young indigenous women.

Our history is rife with examples like Jiang and Wilson; but for the most part people are forgotten in a system where it may be easier to keep someone institutionalised, rather than probe the massive bureaucracy and prejudice that keeps them there.

The original articles I have linked use the term “mentally ill” to refer to Jiang; I choose not to use that language. As with Wilson, in Jiang’s case it seems more important to recognise that it is the illness within our system that creates the real tragedy, not Jiang’s condition itself. A huge part of ability rights activism (which, as is painfully clear in both Jiang and Wilson’s case, has innumerable links with anti-racist activism) is recognising that the problem is the system, not the person with the disability; it is not our bodies that are the problem, but how we culturally define health, and how we treat people who don’t fit with that definition. In the words of Jiang’s sisters who have been fighting to Jiang’s deportation order overturned:

The exact nature of Jiang’s illness is unknown, and immigration authorities would not release her medical records, even to her lawyers, saying she had refused to sign a privacy release. Her two sisters, who live in New York, describe her as a sweet, quiet woman whose mind broke under the strain of life as an illegal immigrant seeking asylum.

When it is clear that the catalyst to madness lies just as much within the systems we have in place to deal with bodies as it does within the bodies themselves, terming something simply a “mental illness” and placing the onus only on the body just doesn’t seem to cut it.

I came across an article on the Pact website written by Elizabeth Bartholet. In it she says:

The research does indicate some interesting differences in transracially-adopted people’s attitudes about race and race relations, which critics of transracial adoption cite as evidence that supports their position. But this evidence is positively heart-warming for those who believe that Blacks and Whites should learn to live compatibly in one world, with respect and concern for each other and with appreciation of their racial and cultural differences as well as their common humanity. The studies reveal that Blacks adopted by Whites appear more positive than Blacks raised by Blacks about relationships with Whites, more comfortable in those relationships, and more interested in a racially integrated lifestyle. They think race is not the most important factor in defining who they are or who their friends should be.

The Editor’s Commentary makes some good points concerning Bartholet’s ignorance of the realities of transracial adoptees and people of color. Part of me laughs at her myopic interpretation of the study she mentions while another, less eloquent part screams, “Duh!” Of course “Blacks adopted by Whites appear more positive than Blacks raised by Blacks about relationships with Whites, more comfortable in those relationships, and more interested in a racially integrated lifestyle.” It’s not like they have much of a choice. Being raised by white people forces the adoptee of color to be open and tolerant towards white people because “White” becomes the dominant race in their lives.

Whether transracial adoption promotes “respect and concern for each other and with appreciation of their racial and cultural differences as well as their common humanity” is questionable. It might force an adoptee to be tolerant, but it doesn’t necessarily carry over into the larger community. In fact, quite the opposite can happen, or even worse, cause an adoptee to be alienated or rejected from that community. Did Bartholet ever stop to wonder how comfortable those adopted “Blacks” would feel in relationships with other “Blacks”?

Are TRAs suppose to act as Trojan horses sent out to win over the rest of the community? Are we suppose to scream out, “Look! My white adoptive parents saved me (from you), and I turned out great! White people rock!” It seems in her zeal to create this racially tolerant world of hers, Bartholet forgets something. Most transracial adoptees don’t grow up with an appreciation for their birth ethnicities, they grow up with an appreciation for that of their adoptive parents.

Bartholet appears to be pushing that unrealistic “bridge” ideal which dehumanizes and forces the adoptee into the role of go-between. TRAs do not exist to serve her or anyone’s goal of creating a colorblind society and shouldn’t be used as pawns toward that end. How is it that she tells her adopted sons that their racial differences “makes no difference” to her and yet on the same page speak favorably about society’s “appreciation of their racial and cultural differences”? She puts the onus on “Black” adoptees by concentrating on their “relationships with Whites”. All together now, boys and girls! PRIVILEGE. Did she stop to think about how “Black” adoptees might be perceived and treated by “Whites” in our racialized society?

I didn’t think that race was important either until I took a closer look at my dating history. Throughout my teen years, my boyfriends had always been white. While environment is the obvious thing to examine, I wanted to try and paint a more complete picture of how my surroundings contributed to my developing psyche. The mental wall that existed between myself and other people of color was as incorporeal as air. It was that intangibility that gave it strength. The only way to bring it down was to reverse engineer it and then deconstruct it brick by brick.

For the most part, I’d been isolated from other Asians, but that didn’t explain my homogeneous dating history. There were plenty of African American and Latino guys from which to choose. Why had I only seriously considered white guys as possible dating partners? Was that a reflection of my attitudes towards men of color? Had I simply internalized the whiteness of my family as the default or was there something more to it?

My small town while legally integrated remained socially segregated. Everyone went to the same school but whites and people of color lived almost completely separate lives outside of activities that forced them together. The town itself was mostly divided by a set of railroad tracks between white and the “others”. There was a significant number of people from the white population who lived on the mostly non-white side of town, but almost all of the African American population was confined to a small area on the outskirts. From what I remember, Latin Americans, consisting of mostly Mexican Americans, divided themselves between rural areas and “the other side of the tracks.”

Human memory, however, is flawed, so perhaps it only seemed that way in my small world. My young life revolved around my family which consisted of and centered on a predominantly white sphere. My family, the congregation at the church we attended, the birthday and slumber parties I went to and my circle of friends all consisted of white Americans. Interaction with my town’s non-white population was restricted to school and sporting events. Even then, it was very limited.

My mother never specifically told me I could only have romantic relationships with white males. She didn’t have to, because the racial boundaries were already set into place. Unlike my adoptive father’s side of the family, few members on my mother’s side of the family were overtly racist. As a matter of fact, blatant racism was frowned upon. However, my existence in an all-white family and the rules of acceptable social interaction enforced a definite dividing line that placed me on the opposite side of other people of color. Attempts to cross over would have been met with strong disapproval from family members and friends and might have forced me to choose between the two sides.

Still, my parents have never been shy to remind me of my stubborn, rebellious nature and how it manifested itself during my early childhood and adolescence. Even though I would like to think of myself as being a goody-good (and in many ways, I actually was), I notice a history of defiance. Whether that was just normal teenage rebellion or something more is beside the point. It doesn’t make sense that acceptable social norms alone would have been enough to keep me where I supposedly belonged. Even though I rebelled, I didn’t go beyond the limits of acceptable social interaction between races.

In addition to the social aspects, I wonder how much racial imprinting contributed to my preferences. My family was all I knew for the first few years of my life. They were the familiar and trusted while people of color were the strangers – the Other. My perception of them would have been mostly filtered and shaped by my family, friends and the media. I think that would also prove true when it came to standards of beauty.

I can remember wishing as a child that I had blond hair and blue eyes or eyes that at least weren’t “slanted”. It makes sense that if I internalized Caucasian standards of beauty when it came to myself, that it would carry over to apply to the opposite sex. Combined with everything else, men of color were almost completely relegated to a forbidden and/or undesired status. However, none of that stopped me from trying to peek over the wall especially when it came to anything that even remotely resembled “Asian”.

I needed to see that there were others out there like me whether it was in the theater, on television, in books, department stores or the Chinese restaurant in the next town. I can remember going to the local furniture store and making a bee-line to the “Japanese” section to stare at the large silk screen on display. I envied the fake, silk kimono my best friend’s mother owned. My intense craving for all the Western, pre-packaged Orientalism I could find points to feelings of deprivation. I was like a starving person digging through the garbage for something to eat.

There’s also my reaction to Vien to consider. He’d been adopted by another family in my hometown and arrived from Vietnam when I was around 10 years old. I’d sustained a crush on him until the age of 12 or 13. I’ve yet to figure that one out. Years later, we tried to talk about it, but couldn’t come to an agreement. I told him I’d had a crush on him, and we mused over why we never ended up dating. I can count on one hand the times we had any personal interaction.

Around 14 or 15, I moved to Bellevue, Nebraska which was much more diverse, but that did nothing to alter my choice of dating partners. I had even met and befriended Asian boys my age, but it had never occurred to me to date them. I’m sure stereotypical media portrayals of Asian men didn’t help. They did anything but make Asian males desirable. Even though I did find them attractive, I still question what the exact source of that attraction was.

Maybe the point is moot anyway, because desire alone didn’t translate into a realistic expectation. Me dating real Asian males with real Asian families? How was I suppose to pull that one off? I didn’t know the first thing about being Asian. Either way, I felt like a big fake. Moving to a more diverse environment only emphasized the fact that I felt more comfortable being around white people than I did around other Asians.

I suppose even that is of little importance because by that time I was living with my adoptive father. He made it clear that white was not only “right”, but the only option.

Despite all of that, I still believe that race shouldn’t be a factor in who one loves nor do I believe my case is the norm. However, the potential is there. The sad reality is that sometimes race does matter especially when it involves the sin of omission. When my parents omitted my ethnicity in favor of their own, they drew the first dividing lines between me and other people of color. To remain trapped behind those boundaries, all I had to do was remain oblivious to my own blindness.