So, you may wonder why I still care about abortion when my story isn’t statistically reflected.

Though I’m not in the numbers, I’m in the reasons why some Black [child-bearing people] seek the procedure, and why quite a few cis women — in solidarity with [some] trans men, trans women and non-binary people of many races and ethnicities — fight so hard to keep it legal.

My mother did an excellent job of both encouraging me to get my education and discouraging me from having children while I was a teenager. My mom failed to convince me in my 20s and 30s to “have children.” My co-workers failed, too. The rare co-worker nowadays still tries to talk me into it — and yes, even my mom still tries — appealing to some notion of an impending spinsterhood if I don’t essentially create my future caregiver and “someone who’ll love me.” As I had to remind Mom, having children is, essentially, a crap shoot as far as their “loving you” and you “loving them”: how many stories have we heard of people who give birth but who don’t form that “nurturing instinct” with their newborns? How many stories have we heard about children disowning and getting disowned by parents, let alone loving you enough to want to take care of you in your old age? (The resentment and burnout of grown children taking care of elderly parents are real.)

My long-held reason, I tell them all, is that I simply do not like children enough to gestate or adopt and rear one (or two or more). I don’t have the patience to provide that long-term emotional support and don’t wish to share my material resources with a child. This is very much in line with a study cited by the Guttmacher Institute in August, 2011: “The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.”

Now that I’m entering the middle part of my life, a colleague summed up my new viewpoint about [having] children: “She’s not just running down her biological clock. She’s taking the clock and throwing off the Empire State Building.”

–Excerpted from “Heading Toward Menopause, Still Caring About Abortion,” On The Issues 

Photo Credit: caribdirect.com

Just last month I was on a flight where I was on the receiving end of blatant racism. I have no doubt in my mind that the manner in which this particular airline employee (a white woman) spoke to me and treated me was a direct result of the color of my skin. As I am wont to do when it comes to processing the acts of racism that I am subjected to, I felt the immediate pull to name and claim my own responsibility in the situation. I know this undoubtedly is the result of being socialized from the collective culture who repeatedly and authoritatively tells me and other people of color that our experiences with racism actually have nothing to do with race at all and it’s a notion that I find imposed upon me on an all too regular basis.

Luckily, I had the good fortune of traveling with a friend who helped keep my perspective in check. My gut knew that this flight attendant’s behavior was racist, but I still found myself trying to make excuses for her. I was pissed. Both at her, and at myself for not calling her out right then and there. Then again, she did threaten to take my bag off the plane if I didn’t do what she said (although my friend heard that it was me the employee was threatening to remove from the plane), so I promptly obliged and sat down in my seat.

With a highly critical letter already half composed in my brain (which I did write when I got home), I looked across the aisle to my friend and said “Gee, I’m thinkin’ she would have never treated or spoken to S. (my husband, who is white) that way.”

Fast forward to the following month. Last week my family and I were on a return flight finding ourselves in the same predicament that I was in just several weeks before: trying to position and accommodate our airline approved carry-on luggage in the already crammed overhead compartments. Like my flight a month before, it was full and the overhead space was at a premium. Even though my husband’s luggage didn’t fit (just like mine didn’t quite fit when I was on my flight), he didn’t find himself on the receiving end of yelling, scolding and condescending behavior. Rather, two flight attendants made triple the amount of attempts on behalf of him and his luggage that I made with my mine – attempts mind you which were met with hostility and a threat to have my suitcase (or me, as the case may be) removed from the plane.

Admittedly, these events were not truly identical in that not only did we have different flight attendants, but that my family was on a completely different airline than the one I flew on last month. I get that. But that doesn’t change the facts of how I was treated and how my husband was treated. I wish I could tell you that these events happened in isolation and that our family has never experienced another situation similar to these. But of course we all know that not to be the case. I am aware of it. My husband is aware of it and our kids, ages 9 and (nearly) 7 years are fully aware of it as well.

After my incident on the plane several weeks ago, my husband and our kids had numerous discussions about it. My kids outright admitted that they didn’t think that their dad would have been treated as poorly as I was and using their own language, both were able to identify sexism and racism as part of the equation.

When this most recent event took place on our flight last week, both of my kids were quick to comment. My son especially is an astute observer of the particular behaviors people around him exhibit. Without any prompting, he matter-of-factly remarked to me that “people are nicer to daddy because he’s white and that people like to help him more. You have brown skin and people don’t like that as much as they like white skin”. My son’s daily lexicon does not include the phrase white privilege, but he witnesses it on a daily basis and is intimately familiar with the weight that it carries. (I would argue that we all bear witness to white privilege on a daily basis – some are just more adept at identifying it for what it is.)

I remember feeling such dissonance when I was about my kid’s ages regarding my white privilege by association. Like my son, I didn’t identify the way my parents and brothers were treated as “white privilege”, but I certainly knew enough from my experiences to know that I ranked a helluva lot higher as a human being when in their white presence. It did not go unnoticed that I would receive top notch treatment and be given the benefit of the doubt – all of the time, regardless of the context of the situation, whenever my parents or brothers would be with me. It continues to this day – with my family, my husband and my white friends. Alone, I am a suspicious person who is on the brink of doing something unlawful or untoward; with my dad in tow, I am suddenly transformed into a prospective client whose whims and desires are found charming and are offered to be met. Alone, I am a dispensable and barely seen customer who is relegated to waiting until the older white gentleman has been served; with my husband by my side, I am magically elevated to a more deserving status and ushered to a table straight away. Alone, I am presumed to be submissive and impervious to snide remarks and stares that suggest I don’t speak English; with my girlfriends suddenly I am a living, breathing, vibrant woman who is recognized for having a personality. Is this my dad’s, husband’s or friends’ fault that they are treated this way? No. Is it their responsibility to recognize that their white privilege affords them opportunities, access, benefits and preferential treatment that those they love as well as others of color are repeatedly denied? Absolutely.

It’s not uncommon for me to hear from white adoptive parents that it’s somehow okay to use their white privilege as long as it benefits their own child of color. But what is this really teaching their child? Whether my parents consciously used their white privilege to advance my own (or their own) best interest is irrelevant. No one is arguing that they did not have good intentions. The fact of the matter is that as a person of color, the impact is that I left the proverbial nest woefully ill-equipped to navigate this racially charged world. I may have been raised by a white family and treated as an honorary white person in their presence, but I had not been taught to anticipate how the world would treat me as an Asian woman, which is what I am. I was so conditioned to be treated as the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. X, that when I was no longer under the tutelage of two white parents, I was left unprotected, unprepared and uneducated on what to do when I was subjected to racist acts and behaviors.

The whole “Just stick by me, kid, and you’ll be fine” mentality does a child of color NO FAVORS. Because God willing, our kids will grow up to be adults and the world WILL see them not as your son or daughter, but as a person of color. Here’s a newsflash: The world already sees them as people of color because that is who they are. And like it or not, that means something in this society. We owe it to our kids to acknowledge this and to empower them with the language, the skill set and the permission to talk about race, racism and white privilege. My kids need and deserve to have their experiences validated in a way that mine were not. To recognize that yes, they are my kids and that of course I love them unconditionally, but to get over myself and to help my husband get over himself to know better that the greater world will first and foremost see them as a bi-racial female and an Asian male. And that those identities mean something in how they will be received by many. I harbor no illusions that they will be afforded the same privileges, benefits and unearned rights as their father and I challenge my husband at every turn to check his privilege at the door and to see the world from the eyes of his children. . . to acknowledge and observe that the standard of treatment he has come to expect often far exceeds what his wife, kids and other people of color are offered in identical situations.

To paraphrase the words of a white, male adoptive parent from Pact Camp who I admire and respect so very much, it is incumbent upon white parents of children of color to be intentional about NOT using their white privilege to their advantage and especially not cashing it in for their children’s benefit. In essence the message being relayed is “You, as a person of color, will never be worthy enough to stand alone as the person you inherently are and without the rightness of my whiteness, you are and always will be seen and treated as less than.”

To my son I say, yes, honey, you are right. Many people do treat your mom differently than they treat your dad and that is not right. I am worthy enough to stand alone. YOU are worthy enough to stand alone. We are not less than and we will not allow to be treated as such.

(Image Credit: Sxc.hu)

This past Sunday was mother’s day in the United States.

However, we all know all mothers are not seen as equal. In our increasingly charged political climate, a lot of mothers are being blamed for the ills of society. Immigrant mothers are scapegoated, working mothers are ignored, low-income mothers are demonized, and single mothers have been painted as the downfall of society for decades now. Much of our public policy and national debate is based on a rhetoric of shaming, instead of trying to figure out how we support families and create an environment where mothers and children can thrive.

Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice seeks to change all that. As an offshoot of their Strong Families initiative, ACRJ has started Mama’s Day:

This Mother’s Day, we will be commemorating Mama’s Day: a celebration of the mothers in our lives who are often overlooked during traditional Mother’s Day conversations. In particular, we want to give love to those mamas who are immigrants, single, young, queer or low-income. We know these mamas are often at the core of our families and communities, but are often overlooked or worse — they are scapegoated by policy-makers and right-wing conservatives. Watch the stories unfold on our blog. Download this image and others like it here.

To celebrate, we will be holding a series of actions and events including parties, marches, blogging, a congressional briefing and the release of an original Mama’s Day music video.

Mother’s Day began as a call to action by mothers to protect their families from the violence that was engulfing the country. In that tradition, members of Strong Families and our friends are celebrating the many mamas around us. But we know that celebration is not enough. We will also be working for recognition, rights and resources for the mamas and families in our lives.

Music video is below, lyrics are here:

Mama’s Day is important because this is reproductive justice in action – honoring different life choices and providing a world where we look to help, not shame or stigmatize. Because we all benefit from a society that invests in its citizens.

“[I]t’s clear those who fight against reproductive choice for women of color know nothing of why women choose abortion Rather than create fake concern for a community these people have never set foot in, Life Always should spend their energies helping us address the reasons why women decide to choose abortion.  The procedures we help fund are because out community is among the least likely to have regular access to healthcare, family planning and comprehensive sex education.  Our services exist because our women are among the most likely to be victims of sexual assault…

“Women have a legal right to access abortion services and should not be shamed regarding the personal choices they make.  Abortion is a personal decision, not a political discussion.  We will not be moved moved by this anti-choice attempt to hijack our communities.”

~~Chicago Abortion Fund‘s Executive Director Gaylon Alcaraz

If you want to let Life Always know how you feel about their billboard, you can sign a petition here.

Photo credit: groundswellfund.org

I was going to work on an essay in response to Ms. Chua’s article. I had several pages of notes, and was going to take the two or three hours it took to condense those notes into some type of narrative. Since I have a guest spot on the Strib’s blog, I was thinking about posting it there, just because I think alternative perspectives from Asian Americans need to exist – but I was also a bit wary about the energy it would take to endure the hateful comments that were sure to be leveled at me. As a parent, these days I have little time and even less patience for stupidity.

Part of me was trying to talk myself out of it. Plenty of Asian American bloggers have responded, covering such issues as whether or not the controversial Wall Street Journal excerpt really did justice to her book (see Jeff Yang’s excellent article on that subject), to whether or not raising a child in this fashion is really a good idea.

So, why should I write anything at all? This is not my fight, I said to myself. Even though there seems to be some conflation of Chinese with Asian American, and you have some Chinese blood in you besides, why throw down and risk a flame war over this? It has nothing to do with you. It’s not like Ms. Chua cares what you think – after all, it’s clear that people like me are not her target audience.

But then, don’t Asian Americans like Ms. Chua, who have a large mass market platform to express themselves, have some power over how the perceptions of me, and my family, are shaped? And if so, shouldn’t I use my own platforms to express an alternative perspective?

Damn, it’s recycling night though. It just snowed and I still gotta shovel the walk. And tonight is my partner’s night to have writing time while I watch baby…

Okay, let’s do this.

In this essay, I was going to be careful to point out that my feelings and opinions were not an attack on Ms. Chua, as she has the right to write about whatever she wants. As I have the right not to read her book, a right I fully intend to exercise.

I was going to be careful to say that my critiques had more to do with representation, rather than a debate on parenting. Ms. Chua’s reality is her reality – this is not an attack on her authenticity. I am more interested in the reaction, from Asians and non-Asians alike. There seems to be an acceptance that there is some true essential “Chinese” (and “Asian”) way to raise your kids and some “Western” way, and by “Western” it seems the author means straight upper middle class white male, and no one seems to be talking about the problematics of such assumptions. That no one is talking about how these assumptions play into very specific consumptions of Asian Americans – culture without politics, as if we live in a vacuum devoid of things like race, class, gender, sexuality. At this point in my essay, I’d take my partner’s advice and say that the idea that there is an essential, Western (male) and Eastern (female) way to raise children, and the idea that the melding of the individualist male West and the feminine East as some sort of liberating, uplifting redemption narrative is a colonialist social construct straight out of Said’s book Orientalism…

Aw man, I really don’t want to write this.

Then I was going to talk about my own upbringing. How my parents literally saved my life, as a baby, as they shielded me from harm in their arms, bombs shaking the shelter we hid in with other Vietnamese families as the Communist Party tried to kill us and prevent our escape. How I grew up in America trying to understand contradiction: that people said this was the greatest country to live in, while as refugees we lived in a neighborhood made up of mostly impoverished and disenfranchised Native Americans, African Americans, Southeast Asians, and Chicano/as. How my parents wanted me to know my culture but lie about my ethnicity and tell everyone I was Chinese because they felt Americans would blame us for the war and hated Vietnamese people.

These struggles that my mom and dad (YES, my dad, America! Asian men and Asian fathers DO EXIST) faced. How my father sewed designer labels onto handmade clothes so we could pretend we were more well-off than we really were. How a group of kids stood on one end of a block for an entire hour and relentlessly shouted racial slurs and taunts at my mother as she worked outside of our house, knowing she could do nothing to them, knowing she did not have the words to shout back. How my father had to deal with the contradictions of being a war veteran invisible because of his race, and see two of his sons enlist in the American military.

And yes, those dynamics, combined with my parents’ own personalities, effected how we were raised. There were days I was scared of my parents, days I felt guilty that I disappointed them, days when I had no idea what they wanted from me, days I tried to run away from home and days I wanted to kill myself.

I’d also write about joy – how my parents would take me to work and I would sit in their break room, drawing pictures and reading books for hours while waiting for their 15 minute break so they could come hang out with me. How my mom would bike around town with me clinging to her, how my dad would sew stuffed animals out of bargain bin fabric for me. I was going to write about the magic of going to a friend’s birthday party and playing his Atari, how my dad taught me to ride a bicycle in an empty parking lot, how a Black Panther saw me get bullied on my block and offered to teach me martial arts. And how our poverty led to my love of books and stories, because loaning books from the library was free.

In this essay, I’d own up to my own privilege – both as a male and as the youngest son, and while I went through struggles of race and class, I’ll admit that expectations were less for me than for my sisters and my older brothers. I will not dismiss patriarchy or make excuses for it – at the same time I’d assert that patriarchy and male privilege is far from just an Asian problem, it’s a problem and has been a problem in many cultures the world over. And the expectations and gender roles for Asian men are also limiting and damaging, albeit in a different way than for women.

I’d also write how, as I got older, I came to understand that a lot of the pressure I felt to pursue a white collar career came from my parents wanting me to escape the life of poverty and violence that they lived through. Around us was gang warfare, drugs, injustice, genocide – and all this to a family who just lost their country to war. I can understand why they would want me to pursue anything that would get me out of there.

I’d write about how my parents have come to understand that I can survive while working at something called a “nonprofit.” Though sometimes my dad does suggest to me that it’s still not too late for me to go to nursing school.

Then I’d write about my own struggles, and joys, of being a father to an amazing, hilarious daughter. That if Ms. Chua’s book, or any book, could contain the answers on being a good parent, I’d have read it 10 times over by now. I would write about how this process has been difficult, challenging, amazing. That I fear how my past, both as a child and as an adult, may have negative consequences on how I parent. And how nothing scares me more than the things I want to protect our child from, in this world. Sure, my partner and I have a say and choices to make, we have a duty to make informed choices about how to raise our child.

But there are some things we can only try to prepare her for. Homophobia, classism, sexism, racism. How can we, as Asian American parents, prepare her adequately for these things? How do we teach her about tragedies like the recent death of young father Jason Yang, and young son Fong Lee, both to police brutality – how can I teach her about these things when I barely know how to deal with them myself, how these things effect me on an emotional level so intense that I want to retreat entirely from the world when I think about them? Jason Yang’s kids will never see their father again. Or how it seems trivial to me to think about piano lessons and sleepovers when I try to imagine what it’s like to be Fong Lee’s parents, dealing with indescribable loss as well as continued systematic injustice. Then I’d apologize for making references to piano lessons.

I was going to stress that I offer these things not as some type of authentic substitute for Ms. Chua’s experience, but rather to question if there are certain Asian American stories and voices are privileged and consumed, more than others. If certain perspectives and stories from Asian Americans that carry specific racial, gendered, class-based assumptions keep getting reinforced time and again, within our communities and outside of them.

My story and opinion are not meant to replace Ms. Chua’s, but to question perception and consumption of Asian American identity – an identity that we are often powerless to shape ourselves in the mainstream. And my story is not the only one being neglected: what about Asian American Adoptee parents and children, Queer parents, parents who have to deal with deportation of their sons and daughters? I’m not insinuating it is Ms. Chua’s responsibility to tell these stories – I am saying that these stories exist, and it is worth asking whether certain perspectives and stereotypes are constantly being reinforced and consumed.

And in the end, I came to a compromise. It would have taken me hours to write the essay I aimed to write. Instead I wrote this messy, and perhaps poorly written, essay, so that it exists. That my parents exist, that I exist. That many different stories exist.

And I plan on spending the time I saved by hanging out with my baby daughter and my smart, lovely partner. I don’t pretend to have the answers and for damn sure I’m not going to write a book about it. But my family and my people are worth fighting for, in the way we raise our child, the way I struggle to maintain my relationship with my parents, and at the very least throw down with some messy words on an essay. Because my family is worth it. They are absolutely worth it.

p.s. I should also probably go visit my parent’s house and see how that whole ceiling-falling-down-because-of-ice thing is working out. My parents are worth it, too.

(Image Credit: Matsoc01)

Amy Chua — author of the controversial parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which gained notoriety recently when an excerpt from it, about the superiority of strict Chinese mothers, appeared in the Wall Street Journal — would agree that assimilation into the American system doesn’t make much sense. In many ways, her experience as Tiger Mother represents both the disease of and cure for modern parenting.

Many have inferred from her much discussed new memoir that disproportionate Asian academic success can be attributed to a regimen of no sleepovers, no playdates, no quitting, no coddling, no praising mediocrity and lots of drills. The ancient Chinese secret is, in short, demand perfection and accept nothing less. Children are not so fragile that they will break under these expectations.

This is the same immigrant work ethic that catapulted my parents from poverty in Guyana to the country-club class of North America. Ditto for my husband’s parents in Jamaica, and Allison’s husband’s parents in the Caribbean. Ditto, it should be said, for Allison’s grandparents, who, as Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant book on the Great Migration showed, had their own immigrant experience moving from the South to Northern cities, where their achievements in culture and society forever changed America. 

But Chua is also part of the disease, because she has essentially written a manual for how to create superior sheep. But I still share many of her philosophies on the sturdiness of children, and in general have enormous respect for her. There she is, a Yale Law School professor, married to a white professor at the same school — technocratic royalty in the land where privilege was invented — and yet she has not allowed that success to be a reason to lose her identity, melting away into the American pot.

–Natalie Hopkinson, How to Raise a Model Minority

Since people are dabbling in gross generalizations about motherhood, children, parenting and ethnicity, I thought I’d compare the ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother‘ to that of black mamas… or at least my mama.

Chua defines her children’s success as their ability to get good grades and play musical instruments. My mother defined her children’s success by their behavior. . . and securing their eternal salvation through regular church attendance, but that’s another post.

I’m not alone in noting the similarity. Culture writer Danielle Deadwyler did her own comparison between Chua’s Tiger Mother and “Southern Black Mothers,” showing they have a great deal in common:

No wuss nurturers are allowed below the Mason Dixon line; Southern black women have been hardcore disciplinarians for generations. Results have been varied… However, there seems to be a ‘get it done’ through line in black parenting that echoes Malcolm’s ‘by any means necessary’. (Danielle Deadwyler)

Danielle goes on to tell a familiar tale about the time her classmate’s mother came to school and whipped him “in front of the whole school” — something we have all seen, heard about, or worse, experienced. Her friend wasn’t alone. We all know many black parents tend to favor corporal punishment, also known as spanking, as a preferred form of behavior modification. In addition, many people of other groups are horrified by this. Yet just as Chua bragged to her peers over dinner about her harsh mothering methods, the black mother is not ashamed to administer punishment in broad daylight.

Having the correct answer wasn’t nearly as important as knowing how to navigate yourself in a world where your “backtalk” would result in death. So frequent beatings were not only the lesser of two evils; a beating was also a lesson that could save your life. Much higher stakes than what Chua is dealing with. But the intensity of her methods is something that black mothers can understand.

Alexis Stodghill, Tiger Mother vs. Black Mamas: Is an Iron Hand the Key to Prosperous Children?

Chua has the kind of theory of life that many black people just cannot stand. There is no mention in the book of a larger purpose, God, community or interest in anything other than herself, her kids, and their grades and accolades — preferably from famous people like the jurists she invited to her home to listen to her children perform.

While she does pause to care for two very ill family members and has potlucks for her students, you really get the sense that she is oblivious to the lives of everybody else in the world who does not touch her life directly; that, say, a drunk driver could mow down somebody else’s kid on her street and she would be too busy drilling her kids with flash cards to take the bereaved parents a casserole. Perhaps most aggravating is that Chua has no patience with those who challenge the status quo, implying that people who challenge the power structure — no matter how stacked or rigged it may be — are just too lazy and selfish to master it.

And that’s all too bad, but black people should still buy this book and study it for its underlying message, which is this: There are no shortcuts to achievement — and no racial secrets — only strategies.

..[W]e need to keep talking about the habits of success, especially the habit of persistence in the face of failure. Ironically, those are the kinds of habits for which our top black athletes, such as Donovan McNabb and LeBron James, are best known, even in the face of the ongoing stereotype that they are all about luck and raw talent. And it is all the more crucial for black parents, who, unlike Asians, are burdened with the stereotype of being considered lazy, unintellectual and all about the party.

Every day, I see kids who will practice jump shots and blocking and tackling for hours a day, with their parents’ support, because they know that the harder they work, the more talented they get. Yet they shut down when it comes to applying that same effort to their academic work.

Similarly, I’ve personally seen white and Asian kids apply time and time again for coveted fellowships and internships, despite rejection, while black kids react to rejection by withdrawing altogether from contention. I know heads of schools who have to fight with black parents to get them to fight to turn off the Playstations and the televisions until the grades go up — and fight they must, because that is what the job of being a parent entails. 

We all know this, and it’s time to name it and fight it.

But we also know that even as we try to teach our kids the habits of success for a tough, new world, there is a time for everything: for joy, for laughter, to lift as we climb and to speak truth to power. Without the sacrifices that African-American parents made and continue to make to advance the cause of equal opportunity in education, I very much doubt that women and other minorities like Chua would have the opportunities they have today.

And this is something that Chua can stand to learn from us.

Michel Martin, Parenting to Win

Image Credit: Chua/You Offend Me, You Offend MyFamily; Black Family/mymajicdc.com

By Arturo R. García

The controversy over Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother spread out this week online, when her oldest daughter shared her own story with The New York Post.

Written as a letter to her “Tiger Mom,” Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld (pictured above, on the right) defends her mother’s sense of humor and her parenting (“No outsider can know what our family is really like”) but also, unnervingly, seems to cast aspersions on critics:

A lot of people have accused you of producing robot kids who can’t think for themselves. Well, that’s funny, because I think those people are . . . oh well, it doesn’t matter. At any rate, I was thinking about this, and I came to the opposite conclusion: I think your strict parenting forced me to be more independent. Early on, I decided to be an easy child to raise. Maybe I got it from Daddy — he taught me not to care what people think and to make my own choices — but I also decided to be who I want to be. I didn’t rebel, but I didn’t suffer all the slings and arrows of a Tiger Mom, either. I pretty much do my own thing these days — like building greenhouses downtown, blasting Daft Punk in the car with Lulu and forcing my boyfriend to watch “Lord of the Rings” with me over and over — as long as I get my piano done first.

Everybody’s talking about the birthday cards we once made for you, which you rejected because they weren’t good enough. Funny how some people are convinced that Lulu and I are scarred for life. Maybe if I had poured my heart into it, I would have been upset. But let’s face it: The card was feeble, and I was busted. It took me 30 seconds; I didn’t even sharpen the pencil. That’s why, when you rejected it, I didn’t feel you were rejecting me. If I actually tried my best at something, you’d never throw it back in my face.

Based on the comments many have left on articles regarding both the book and the excerpt posted by the Wall Street Journal – which Chua has rejected – what many of “those people” are are hurt, a point Disgrasian’s Jen Wang raised late last week, while recommending the book:

I mean, okay, Dr. Chua, self-proclaimed self-esteem guru. I guess while you were busy berating your daughters and forcing them to play piano and violin, you didn’t have time to read this research study about how Asian American women are more likely to attempt suicide than the rest of the general population or come across these Department of Health and Human Services statistics identifying Asian American women ages 15-24 as having the highest suicide rate of any race or ethnic group in that age group and how being pushed to achieve most likely plays an important role in this.  But by all means, keep exhorting those little pieces of garbage to play on!

Red flags notwithstanding, I encourage those of you who found yourselves hating Chua after reading the WSJ excerpt–as I did–to read the book itself. I say this because I think it might make you feel better. I believe there are a number of you experiencing PTSD–as Lac Su, author of the memoir I Love Yous Are for White People, described feeling–after reading that excerpt. It didn’t just hit close to home, it hit home like a heat-seeking missile. It brought up a lot of bitterness. Shit was too real. It was a reminder of why so many of us will spend the rest of our lives talking almost exclusively about our mothers in therapy.  Yet, after reading the book, and realizing that Amy Chua is less of a monster and more of a deeply flawed human being who just isn’t all that introspective–which is sort of how we strive to see our parents when we have complicated relationships with them, no?–I felt a genuine sense of relief. It took a lot of energy hating her, in the same way it takes a lot of energy hating your own mother, more energy than forgiving her does, in most cases.

Wang also raises a key question – why did Chua feel the need to raise her kids as she was raised? As Wang points out, Chua calls this style “immigrant parenting,” yet she herself was born in the U.S.:

By the time she becomes a parent, Chua’s done very well for herself, as children parented “the Chinese way” often do, at least on paper. She has an undergraduate and law degree from Harvard, she’s on her way to getting a law professorship, her husband, whom she met at Harvard Law, is already a professor at Yale Law, and they have enough money to hire a Chinese nanny to teach Mandarin to the children. Eventually, Chua also gets a teaching job at Yale Law–where she and her husband both still teach and are tenured–and publishes two non-fiction books. By her own admission, Chua and her family have a comfortable life.

I’m not saying that people like Chua, who are successful, upper middle-class, and lead comfortable lives should be soft on their children, but I do think there’s less urgency and imperative to raise them the way Chua has chosen to raise her daughters. And without urgency and imperative, the Chinese parenting method–which Chua describes accurately as intolerant to failure–makes much less sense. At times it even seems cruelly unnecessary. When there isn’t a safety net, it’s easy for a child to grasp that one misstep has grave consequences. When there is a safety net, but someone’s insisting that even with one, a misstep has the same grave consequences, it’s confusing and breaks down trust.

By Arturo R. García

In a pair of interviews posted since Latoya’s column on Amy Chua’s recent Wall Street Journal piece, Chua elaborated on both the themes of the book it was taken from, Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother, and said the newspaper mis-represented her book.

Chua told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Jeff Yang she was “very surprised” by the excerpt that ran in the Journal, entitled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” saying she had limited input into editing it, and none before it was nearly about to be published. She told Yang:

The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they’d put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn’t even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end — that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model.

Yang describes Battle Hymn as riveting, and Chua’s voice as “slightly rueful, frequently self-deprecating and entirely aware of its’ author’s enormities. It’s a little, but not quite, like a Chelsea Handler book — if Chelsea Handler were a Chinese American law professor and Momzilla of two.”

Yang also quoted Disgrasian’s Jen Wang’s take on the book:

The book isn’t a how-to manual, as the Journal excerpt would have you believe — it’s a memoir. As such, you’ll see some truth in it, and you’ll also see glaring blind spots and a sometimes-woeful lack of self-examination. That truth, instead of making you hate Chua, will cause you to reflect on your own upbringing — and your own parenting style, good and bad. And I think this is especially important for Asian Americans who feel that they were parented Chua-style, and are bitter about it — that is to say, most of us.

Chua uses a similar description for the book in talking to Yang, calling it “a coming of age book for parents.” She also refused to retract her statements about “Chinese parenting.” In another interview, with Time’s Belinda Luscombe, she called that parenting style, “tough immigrant parenting,” and said it wasn’t the same as being a “helicopter mom”:

As I understand it that term means the parent is hovering over the child and talking to teachers and principals. When I was little, my father used to say that if something doesn’t seem fair, you prove yourself by working twice as hard and being twice as good. Now I think if a kid in school does badly on a test you rush into the school, you question the teacher and the curriculum. I think the kids are strong to be able to hear “Start with yourself, maybe you didn’t work hard enough.”

Neither story touches on the kind of anecdotes that have been posted on its’ respective comments thread, of the tragic effects “tough parenting” can have on a family. Let me repost this comment Elton left in Latoya’s thread:

My big sister was what I used to jealously call “every Asian parent’s wet dream come true” (excuse the crassness, but it really does sum up the resentment I used to feel towards her). She got straight As. Skipped 5th grade. Perfect SAT score. Varsity swim team. Student council. Advanced level piano. Harvard early admission. An international post with the Boston Consulting Group in Hong Kong before returning to the U.S. for her Harvard MBA. Six figure salary. Oracle. Peoplesoft. Got engaged to a PhD. Bought a home. Got married.

Her life summed up in one paragraph above.

Her death summed up in one paragraph below.

Committed suicide a month after her wedding at the age of 30 after hiding her depression for 2 years. She ran a plastic tube from the tailpipe of her car into the window. Sat there and died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage of her new home in San Francisco. Her husband found her after coming home from work. A post-it note stuck on the dashboard as her suicide note saying sorry and that she loved everyone.

Mine is an extreme example of course. But 6 years since her passing, I can tell you that the notion of the “superior Chinese mother” that my mom carried with her also died with my sister on October 28, 2004. If you were to ask my mom today if this style of parenting worked for her, she’ll point to a few boxes of report cards, trophies, piano books, photo albums and Harvard degrees and gladly trade it all to have my sister back.

To be fair, perhaps Chua only wanted to tell her own family’s story; she says to Yang that she does not intend for Battle Hymn to be a parenting manual, and that her own parenting style has become more temperate after a confrontation with her youngest daughter, which is documented in the book. But as more of these stories emerge in discussing Battle Hymn, anecdotes like this one from Chua get a little more unsettling:

The story I’m getting most flak for her is one I stand by. My daughters find the trouble I’m getting in for it incredibly funny. My kids were maybe seven and four and my husband had forgotten my birthday so at the last minute we went to this mediocre Italian restaurant and he said “O.K., girls you both have a little surprise for mommy.” And my daughter Lulu pulls out a card, but the card was just a piece of paper folded crookedly in half with a big smiley face and it said Happy Birthday Mom. And I looked at it and I gave it back and I said “This isn’t good enough. I want something that you put a little bit more time into.” So I rejected her birthday card. People can’t believe I rejected this handmade card. But she knew as well as I did that it took her about two seconds to do it. That’s the story that’s coming off as the most outrageous, which in our family is like a standing joke.

Seems like more and more people have heard that one before – and they’re not laughing.

by Latoya Peterson

Hardass Asian Parents have hit the mainstream – and they came with a healthy heap of stale stereotypes:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too.

That’s Amy Chua, writing for the Wall Street Journal‘s Life section. Her article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” garnered over 1000 comments – and countless discussions over the nature of the model minority stereotype.

Chua tries to broaden the umbrella early on in the piece:

I’m using the term “Chinese mother” loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I’m also using the term “Western parents” loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

But it is passages like this that push Chua’s tongue-in-cheek explanation of cultural differences in parenting too far:

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can’t. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me “garbage” in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn’t damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn’t actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty—lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of “health” and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her “beautiful and incredibly competent.” She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)

Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

While I recoiled from some of Chua’s ends-justify-the-means tactics, some applauded her stance. More than a few of my 1.5 gen, black identified friends shared links, pointing to this passage in particular:

Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

And Terry Hong, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, paints a broader picture of Chua, using her forthcoming book to fill in the gaps left by her article:

“This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs,” the book’s cover declares. “This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.” [...]

With two gifted daughters, Chua is determined to reverse the predictable “family decline” she sees as a “remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years”: The immigrant first generation sacrifices all (never scrimping on strictness) for the children’s education and expected future success; the second generation will “typically be high-achieving” but less draconian with the children; the privileged third generation “will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,” leading to disrespect and disobedience … and guaranteed generational decline.

“Well, not on my watch,” Chua decides.

But that’s the nicest of the responses -others start to take Chua to the woodshed.

Many of the commenters at the WSJ were horrified at both the premise of the article and the description of coercion Chua proudly positions as normal. One commenter snarkily said something along the lines of “Asia Carrera [the former adult film star] was playing Carnegie Hall at age 15 – look at how she turned out.”

Interestingly enough, Carrera does talk about her life and experiences – and mentions fleeing from a household similar to the one Chua describes. On her blog, she reveals:

OK, we all know I was an academically gifted little girl. What I don’t publicize, is that I was not an especially motivated one. I was an overachiever only through a)genetic luck, and b)incredible pressure from my parents. My parents wanted me to go to Harvard and be a doctor or a lawyer, and I wanted to play piano and hang out with friends.

Needless to say, my parents and I butted heads. My father was born in Japan, and my mother was born in Germany. They were from the “old school”, strong on discipline, and overachievers themselves, so they were in no way being hypocritical with their demands on me. (My dad went to Caltech on full academic scholarship for math and physics. He’s the biggest nerd I know)

I was grounded for every “B” I got, and beaten for getting anything lower than that. I was not allowed to socialize at all, or go to parties, because they said there’d be time for that after I got into a good college. Well, I did what any red-blooded American kid would do, I’d sneak out. And get caught. And get beaten. And get grounded again. Without launching into too much detail, let’s just say I was unhappy. (I tried to kill myself a lot) (Asian kids everywhere have e-mailed me to verify that this is standard practice in Asian households – what a relief to find out I’m normal, huh!)

Shortly before my seventeenth birthday, I ran away from home. I stayed where I could, with a rock’n'roll band, with friends, with strangers, in hotels, at one point in a tent. I worked when I could, but I couldn’t do much at seventeen, so I had no money. I had friends drive me to school every day, and I begged people to bring me Doritos so I’d have something to eat. Everything I owned fit in two garbage bags. Sometimes I fucked people I didn’t want to, so I could have a place to sleep, or a good meal. I gritted my teeth a lot, and did what I had to, rather than crawl back home and grovel for my folks’ forgiveness.

But it isn’t just Asia Carrera speaking out.

Both Arturo and I have been amazed, dismayed, and impressed with the level of candor exhibited Hyphen Magazine’s “Ask a Model Minority Suicide” series.

Sam, the writer, pulls powerful stats:

To save communal face, we don’t allow each other to admit publicly that sometimes the pressure is too much. The options are too narrow. Standards are too high and the demands to meet them, too lonely.

We can’t so much as talk about it?

Meanwhile, Asian American women have achieved the highest rate of suicide of any race/ethnicity between the ages of 15 to 24.

You do the math.

The CNN article Sam links to specifically notes:

First and foremost, they say “model minority” pressure — the pressure some Asian-American families put on children to be high achievers at school and professionally — helps explain the problem.

“In my study, the model minority pressure is a huge factor,” says Noh, who studied 41 Asian-American women who’d attempted or contemplated suicide. “Sometimes it’s very overt — parents say, ‘You must choose this major or this type of job’ or ‘You should not bring home As and Bs, only As,” she says. “And girls have to be the perfect mother and daughter and wife as well.”

Clearly, this type of pressure isn’t just brushed off, the way Chua suggests. And there are even more nefarious issues at play. But thank goodness for Resistance, who put up the most eloquent, Cee-lo Green style takedown we’ve seen yet:

So fuck you, Amy Chua, for reinforcing that tired old model minority stereotype. For speaking for an entire group of people and ascribing your abusive parenting to your culture. [...]

And fuck you again, Amy Chua, when I think about the high rates of suicides among Asian Americans, especially young women. Fuck you for the fifty percent of crisis calls at the university from Asian American students.

Fuck you for every person who expresses surprise at my chosen profession. Because we don’t do that. [...]

Fuck you for the kids who are made to feel like idiots because they are not geniuses. Or musical prodigies. Or the kids who are told that our people don’t speak out, don’t protest, aren’t politically active, aren’t activists. [...]

Fuck you for perpetuating racism. And fuck the Wall Street Journal for promoting your majority view voice.

(Thanks to readers Elton, Elaine, and Emjaybee for the tip!)

I could barely contain my rage when I saw this item:

In Seattle, Wash., a white male teacher had an 8-year-old African American girl removed from the classroom. In most cases, children are removed for behavioral and disciplinary issues, which is clearly understandable and acceptable; however, this wasn’t the case here.

The teacher removed the girl, claiming her Afro was making him sick. Naturally, the father of the child, Charles Mudede, was extremely concerned after the incident, and, as a result, the girl, who was the only black child in the advanced-placement class, has missed two weeks of school.

The incident, which occurred at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, was featured on KIRO-TV. The segment showed the hair product the girl used, Organic Root Stimulator’s Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion, as well as interviews with her mother and lawyer.

Checking out Afrobella’s Facebook page, I found the link to the original story filed by reporter Tonya Mosley, in which she interviewed the student’s mother, the lawyer taking the case, and others:

Bellen Drake still can’t believe she’s here, at a news conference with the NAACP, fighting to get her 8-year-old daughter back into honors classes - all because of hair moisturizer.

“I couldn’t comprehend it. I was trying to make sense of it and it took awhile,” said Bellen.

Bellen says late last month, the teacher pulled her daughter out of class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary and into the hallway.

“My daughter reports that she kept saying she’s afraid and it’s your hair and that she could go to another class for the rest of the day.”

Bellen says the school never contacted her about it, but instead removed the girl from her honors class and into a regular classroom.

“This is about the conduct of an adult and the ramification of that conduct by the principal,” says Vonda Sargent, the family’s attorney.

Someone who reblogged the quote from my Tumblr blog responded that the student’s father, Charles Mudede, has been writing about the situation.  Come to find out the white teacher in question was a white woman, not a man as first reported:

[Just] last week, my daughter—who is 8 and happens to be the only brown person in her Accelerated Progress Program class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary—was ordered out of the classroom because her teacher did not like the smell of her hair. The teacher complained that my racially different daughter’s hair (or something—a product—in the hair) was making her sick, and then the teacher made her leave the classroom. My daughter was aware of the racial nature of this expulsion not only because she was made to sit in a classroom that had more black students in it (the implication being that this is where she really belongs, in the lower class with the other black students), but because her teacher, she informed me, owns a dog. Meaning, a dog’s hair gives the teacher less problems than my daughter’s human but curly hair. Most white people do not have to deal with shit like this. Shit that if not checked and confronted will have permanent consequences for the child.

Over the weekend, KIRO-TV ran a story on its evening newscast about the situation. The news segment showed the hair product that my daughter used, Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion, and brief interviews with her mother and lawyer. The lawyer smelled the hair product and claimed it was harmless; her mother expressed distress about the whole situation. The story wrapped up with a reporter standing outside of my daughter’s school in the Central District, explaining that he could not get a response from the teacher or the school’s principal because the school was closed for the long weekend. That was all you learned from the KIRO story.

What was significantly missing from this report is that my daughter is black American (the only black student in that teacher’s class) and the teacher who forced her out of the classroom is white American. The reason why this racial dimension was not exposed or addressed in the KIRO report is understandable: My daughter and her teacher were not interviewed. But my wife was interviewed—and she is white. So it follows that viewers would assume that her daughter is also white. But if the public had seen that the little girl has brown skin and curly hair, and her teacher has white skin and straight hair, then it would have been impossible to exclude race from this story.

If a white teacher—a person who is supposed to have a certain amount of education and knowledge of American history, and who teaches at a school named after the man who successfully argued before the court in Brown v. Board of Education for equal opportunities for racial minorities in public schools and went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court justice—removes a black student from a predominantly white class because of her hair, it is almost impossible not read the action as either racist or expressive of racial insensitivity, which amounts to the same thing for someone in that teacher’s position.

When we, her parents, were later informed of this incident, we also learned that once my daughter was removed from the class, the teacher felt much better. We were also told that the teacher had experienced something like a fainting spell because of our daughter’s hair. Feeling the seriousness of this situation, we decided not to send our daughter to school until the teacher had medical proof that our daughter’s hair or something in her hair was to blame for the nausea. (The last thing you want to happen to your daughter is for a teacher to faint or vomit at the mere sight of her.)

Representatives from the school district responded (original emphasis):

“The district agrees that it is not acceptable for a teacher in our district to ask a student to leave a classroom for the reasons that this child was asked to leave,” says Kevin O’Neill, senior assistant general counsel for Seattle Public Schools, the attorney who is handling the case of Mudede’s daughter.

The district’s position, in a nutshell, is that the teacher erred by kicking out the student, but race wasn’t a factor and an investigation is underway. However, O’Neill also says he doesn’t know what exactly happened or “the reasons that this child was asked to leave.” Until the investigation is complete, he says, it’s unclear what was offensive about the hair product that reportedly made the teacher sick, why the district hadn’t done anything for three days, whether an incident like this had ever occurred before, whether anyone had spoken to the teacher about the incident, whether school district rules prohibit any cosmetics, or what current or future steps are required for the investigation.

But he insists race was not a factor. Any allegations of racial insensitivity or negligence are “wholly untrue,” O’Neill says, “because, well, because the district would not tolerate employment of a teacher that has racial animosity towards a student.”

How can O’Neill—who doesn’t even know if anyone has talked to the teacher or what is occurring in the investigation—be so certain about this one aspect? “Based on preliminary information I have, it is clear that the removal of the student, as inappropriate as it was, had to do with a health issue and not a racial issue,” he says. “To the extent of the health issues, what was said to the child, the circumstances, that is a matter that is still under investigation. Based on our preliminary investigation, it isn’t a result of racial animosity, as far as I understand.”

But of course not.

Even if we give the teacher the benefit of the doubt—that her intention wasn’t to hurt the pupil with her racially insensitive comment in attempting to stave off her own allergic reactions—the fact remains is the teacher just may have done exactly that.  I won’t address what others have so ably stated, namely alternatives to the teacher’s handling (such as calling the parents in for a private sit-down with her and the principal, providing medical proof that she has allergies to the product at the parents’ request, etc.)  The teacher employed, according to what Mudede’s and Drake’s daughter said, a very gendered racial rhetoric, namely the Delicate White Woman Frightened by the Negress’ Physical Being.  In stating to the daughter that “she’s afraid and it’s [her] hair” evokes the stereotypes that:

1) Black people (including mixed-race people who self-identity as Black—though, in this case, it’s the father who states his child is Black.  No reports so far say how the child identifies herself) are a constant physical threat to whites—like all we think about is how to inflict maximum bodily damage to them.

2) that Black people (as well as other people of color and white ethnic people) smell bad, especially because they use “cultural products” that white USians aren’t used to.

3) Black people’s hair is in a dormant or active state of “fright wig,” which dovetails into the idea that Black natural hair is inherently ugly and the people possessing it as inherently unattractive, especially if the possessor is female.

and

4) the teacher implicated herself in an insidious stereotype about white women, namely that of a frail femininity that must be protected from any “offending coloredness”–in this case, a Black girl with some hair-care products for her naturally curly head attending an accelerated class at a school named for a staunch legal defender of civil rights.

Mudede says toward the end of his post

Getting entangled in a racial dilemma is something most black parents do not want for their children. It’s just not worth the trouble. Then again, like I said, if not checked and confronted, the incident will have permanent consequences for my child.

The NAACP agreed: they are planning to file a complaint with the US Department of Education, though I can easily seeing them argue that this may be a possible result of the Supreme Court ruling that Seattle’s attempt to integrate were illegal.

Mudede’s final thoughts:  “The whole thing is a mess.”

Indeed…and an avoidable one, at that.

Thanks to Dr. Torrence Stephens for the original link, Afrobella for the great leads, and Sarah for the legal decisions!

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.

Okay, I’m done.  Just done with this sh–.  I am so sick of hearing people talk about mixed folks like we are some sort of science experiment.  “Positive” stereotyping out of ignorance and lack of exposure to make us just a new kind of “other.”  And I know people mean well, but . . . it gets tiring, to say the least.

A few days ago, my cousin (“E”), his girlfriend (“J”), and I (“me”) met up with a married couple that they are friends with.  In this couple, the man is a white Australian man, and the woman is a Chinese woman.  (*1)  The guy’s a nice one, but he’s not killing it in the looks department.  The woman (also quite wonderful) is average-looking. (*2)  She’s pregnant.

So after we part ways, “J” (also Chinese) is excited about the baby, and she says, “I can’t wait for their baby to be born – she is going to be so beautiful.  Because she is Chinese and he is a foreigner, the baby must be so pretty.”

Record-scratch.  I look at her, “What?!”  I don’t say it, but I’m thinking – ‘Has she looked at the father?  What the Hell is wrong with people?’

Because this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this kind of thing.  I hear it all the time – “mixed kids are just so pretty.”  And – although I’d love to bathe in the ego-stroking that entails (an interesting counterpoint to “Asian men aren’t hot”) – I’m not having it.  And before I break it down further, let me just say my family is now chock-full of mixed kids, and there’s not a whole lot of “beautiful” running around (I’m so sorry family, but I just got to be honest here).  (*3) The few kids that are actually above-average?  Well, the ones with the above-average parents, of course.  Just like with the majority of pretty “mono-racial” children.

It doesn’t end there, though.   I’ve also heard that mixed kids are “so intelligent” (mostly here in China).  I’ve even been told (back in high school) that “all mixed kids are just so nice.”  (*4)

When this topic gets brought up on a larger level – how beautiful and wonderful and healthy mixed kids are – we inevitably get a reference to “hybrid vigor.”  In these cases, the person making the argument (wrongly) describes “hybrid vigor” as the genetic superiority of “cross-bred” animals and plants in the world.  “It’s science,” they say – and people usually buy it.

Well, sorry, people – but this particular gorgeous, super-intelligent and wondrously kind mixed-race “cross-breed” has a science background.  And y’all – apparently, from your mis-use of scientific understanding – don’t.

So step into my class for a second.

First-off, don’t wrongly cite Gregor Mendel and his pea-experiments as any sort of evidence – either way – of “hybrid vigor.”  Yes, his cross-breeds did better than those plants he did not cross-breed, on an overall level.

But . . . uh . . . you’re missing a vital fact here: those plants that he didn’t cross-breed?  He self-pollinated them.  As in, they were inbred.  Even closer relatives than brother and sister – because the sex cells  came from the same plant.  It was practically cloning.  And even though lots of people like to say members of a particular “mono-racial” group “all look the same,” you’re really not all clones.

Okay, so then our faulty scientists will say, “well fine, what about with dogs and pigs and horses and sheep, etc.?  Cross-breeding them increases fitness.”

Well, yes and no.  First off, “hybrid vigor” actually just references the times when cross-breeding happens to increase fitness – not a fact that it always occurs.  There’s another term,  “outbreeding depression,” for when cross-breeding causes more problems.  So, again, y’all are skipping some important details.

“But cross-breeding more often increases fitness, then.”  Sure, sure.  In dogs and pigs and other domestic animals, that’s true.  But again – look at the comparison – those animals that do not get cross-bred:  these are either “pure-bred” animals (like pugs, for instance) or “inbred” animals.  We’ve talked about inbreeding (and no, I don’t think mono-racial folks are all the products of thousands of years of inbreeding), so . . .

“Pure-breeds”?  Artificially, selectively-bred animals?  These are animals that have been forced to breed together for many many generations to enhance some specific physical characteristics – at the cost of a lot of health problems.  These are not real-world animals.  Outside of the domesticated world, “pure-breeds” simply do not exist.  Because, in the real world, “pure-breeds” would die out within a couple generations because of all their problems.  All that remains in the natural world are cross-bred animals.

So comparing races or ethnicities to “breeds” is just stupid, and poor science.  Every racial and ethnic group out there is a result of “cross-breeding.”  Our human gene pool is all mixed up – because we have been (mostly) avoiding the inbreeding and artificial selection that creates domestic animals.  Our DNA is more varied within any particular “racial group” than it is between them.    Which then suggests that – if any of this “science” can be applied to human beings – then, perhaps, so-called “mono-racial” offspring would be more likely to have the advantage of “hybrid vigor” than multi-racial offspring.

Of course, that would also be abusing the science, but I hope you can see my point – there is no such thing as “purity” in race.  Every “race” is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of inter-breeding, cross-breeding.  We’ve survived as long as we have because we are not “pure.”

Mixed kids?  The result of exactly the same reproductive processes and selection pressures as the rest of humanity.  Flat-out.  (*5)  Some of us are super-hot or wondrously intelligent (or both), for sure.  But, sorry, some of us just have to pull on inner beauty or wouldn’t exactly astound others with our coherence of thought (or both), as well.

B.S. “positive” stereotypes like this are just as damaging as negative ones (on a large scale).  Allowing ourselves to be reduced to the equivalence of domesticated animals?  Hell no.  Let somebody “other” you in a “positive” way, and you’re just setting yourself up for the negative stereotypes and prejudice to follow suit – and trust me, it’s going to happen.

And, finally, for those anecdotalists (*6) out there who want to say, “but, really,  all the mixed people I know really are beautiful,” I’ve got some things for you to ask yourself:

First off – are they “beautiful” simply because they’re “different” and “exotic?”  That would be my first guess if they literally all are so gorgeous, in your eyes.  And I don’t need to go further into that one about why that’s not okay.

Second – honestly, how many normal, everyday mixed people do you make note of?  What does it take for you to even get to the point where you know for sure that we are mixed?   Chances are, for us to be noticed on that level, we either have to be in the media (which is going to obviously over-represent the “hot” mixed folks), or else we just have to stand out from the backdrop of everyday life.  And if we’re good-looking, that’s one way to do so.

I mean, how often do you think about or even ask some “below-average” guy or gal, “wow – you have such an interesting look, what is your racial background?”  Right.  You don’t.  So you likely aren’t even aware of the thousands of mixed people you walked right by on the street that were not “beautiful.”

It’s Confirmation Bias, people – look it up.

And that’s it.  I’m done.  I’ve gotten it out there now.  I feel confident in my breakdown of that particular line of “othering.”  And, even if I didn’t, I tired myself out.

Mixed folks are great – GO US – but it’s simply not due to our genetic difference from the rest of humanity.  We are not aliens; we are not dogs or other domesticated animals.  We’re just another socially-defined group of people, and a force to be reckoned with – like the rest of our species.

And if you still don’t believe me . . ?  Well, sh–, please don’t make me fully throw my extended family under the bus and send you photos . . .

(*1) In general, if I say “Chinese” without specifying another country of origin, then I mean born and raised in China and of Han (majority) ethnicity.

(*2) For perhaps the only time on this blog, I’m working off a general, shallow-as-Hell societal concept of physical “beauty” here, because that’s the level on which I mean to take this stereotype down.  If people were talking about mixed-race folks being “beautiful” within a completely different framework for beauty, then we’d be living in a better world than we do.

(*3) All my Chinese-American cousins except one – 8 of them – married white partners.

(*4) Man, I thought of so many ways to disprove that last one after the fact, but – in the moment – I was too surprised to do much of anything.

(*5) This is just plain-damn common-sense, and it just irritates the Hell out of me how people who have no idea what they’re talking about mis-read scientific findings to “prove” stupid theories like this.

(*6) I make up my own words, sometimes – because I’m so vigorous, I can do that and make it cool.

(*7)  And yes, I am wholly conscious of the fact that this entire post so fully falls out the way I lament we teach our kids to “argue” in my “Broken System, Part III.”  Sigh . . . see what prejudice can do to a guy?

This article is part of a series appearing on RH Reality Check, written by reproductive justice advocates responding to recent efforts by the anti-choice movement to use racial and ethnic myths to limit women’s rights and health. Recent articles on this topic include those by Pamela Merrit, Gloria Feldt, Kelley Robinson, and Maame-Mensima Horne.

At first glance, it’s nice to see the anti-choice community pretending to care about communities of color. But within a few minutes, the skepticism sets in. What’s really behind these tactics, coming from a group that is majority white, middle-class and Christian? In the end, we know this isn’t actually about women of color and their well-being. It’s a sensationalist attempt to pit women of color against the reproductive rights movement. Classic divide and conquer.

Women of color within the reproductive rights and justice movement have brought light to the policies (often perpetuated by our own government, medical providers and researchers) that serve the mission of population control within our communities. We’ve fought back against the connections and alliances with those in the environmental rights movement who blame the challenges of resource scarcity on women of color and their family size.

We’ve fought back against governmental policies like welfare family caps and limits on access to certain types of contraception over others. We’ve fought with the reproductive rights community to get them to care about these issues and how they affect our communities—and we’ve won.

We’re fighting for access to contraception, to abortion, to options for childbirth and parenting. And now we’ll fight the racist and paternalistic logic behind the eugenics arguments being made by anti-choicers.

In the Latina community, we’ve dealt with all sorts of attempts at controlling our families. In addition to welfare family caps and abusive immigration policies, we’ve also got a long history of sterilization abuse. The height of this was in the 1970s, when Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias and others discovered that doctors and residents at a Los Angeles hospital had sterilized hundreds of Mexican women, without their knowledge or full consent. We’re talking women being asked to sign consent forms in languages they did not speak, being lied to and told that the procedure was reversible, or being offered sterilization in the midst of labor.

The result of this was a major organizing push by CESA—Committee to End Sterilization Abuse–to enact federal informed consent laws for sterilization. They won, and in 1976 these laws were enacted, mandating processes for informed consent, waiting periods for sterilization consent, and forms that had to be in the patient’s language, among other things.

But the fight did not end there. We’ve also dealt with a campaign to bring the population growth in Puerto Rico to zero—which actually worked in some cities, according to the documentary La Operación. Sterilization promotion was the primary tool here as well.

These days, the abuses are less obvious and more insidious. When I worked with pregnant Latina immigrants in Pennsylvania, I saw their options limited by the technicalities of their emergency Medicaid coverage. They could get sterilized, for free, right after their deliveries. But if they wanted the pill, the shot, or some other short term birth control? They were out of luck.

But what we know is that reproductive justice isn’t just about freedom from coercive sterilization. It’s also about access to a full range of reproductive technologies, whether that’s birth control, sterilization, abortion or even childbirth. Rodriguez-Trias understood this, which is why she formed CARASA a decade after CESA. CARASA, the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, understood that women needed options across the spectrum of reproductive technologies in order to truly achieve reproductive freedom. It’s clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide vital services to low-income Latinas, many of whom are uninsured.

Latinas and other women of color don’t need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We’re working in those clinics you attack, we’re helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.

We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don’t need limits on what services we can access.  And we don’t need your ideological bullying.

The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of “sex and race selection” legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families—we’ll talk.

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Photo of Helen Rodriguez-Trias from mississippi appendectomy

From How to Raise Racist Kids by Jonathan Liu:

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that <insert your ethnicity here> is better than everybody else.

Surprised? So were authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman when they started researching the issue of kids and race for their book NurtureShock. It turns out that a lot of our assumptions about raising our kids to appreciate diversity are entirely wrong:

It is tempting to believe that because their generation is so diverse, today’s children grow up knowing how to get along with people of every race. But numerous studies suggest that this is more of a fantasy than a fact.

Since it’s Black History Month, I thought it would be a good time to talk about race, particularly some of the startling things I found in this particular chapter of NurtureShock. What Bronson and Merryman discovered, through various studies, was that most white parents don’t ever talk to their kids about race. The attitude (at least of those who think racism is wrong) is generally that because we want our kids to be color-blind, we don’t point out skin color. We’ll say things like “everybody’s equal” but find it hard to be more specific than that. If our kids point out somebody who looks different, we shush them and tell them it’s rude to talk about it. We think that simply putting our kids in a diverse environment will teach them that diversity is natural and good.

And what are they learning? Here are a few depressing facts:

• Only 8% of white American high-schoolers have a best friend of another race. (For blacks, it’s about 15%.)
• The more diverse a school is, the less likely it is that kids will form cross-race friendships.
• 75% of white parents never or almost never talk about race with their kids.
• A child’s attitudes toward race are much harder to alter after third grade, but a lot of parents wait until then (or later) before they feel it’s “safe” to talk frankly about race.

Thanks to Elton Joe for the tip!

Photo of Telfair Museum in Savannah from UGArdener’s Flickr.

The other day in convo with a friend, I burst into tears when he mentioned a couple he knows who are in the process of adopting. As a Korean couple, they have been discussing the potential race of their baby and whether or not having a Korean child is a priority for them.

My reaction was pretty over the top. Maybe it was because I was tired and stressed. Maybe it was because it was close to 4 p.m. and I hadn’t talked to anyone except my cat that day, and I don’t deal well with isolation. But the truth is on an ordinary day, when I hear parents talk about choosing their child’s race, or the politics of having a child of a different race, I immediately clench up.

My mother is English and Irish, and my father is Singaporean Chinese. Neither of them are particularly involved in radical race politics, and I will never know what or how they thought about having mixed race children before my sister and I were born, because (at least at this point in my life) I am afraid to ask them that question.

I often imagine that their thought process was similar to that of Nicole Sprinkle. In her article for the New York Times Magazine, Sprinkle talks about being the white mother of a white/Colombian daughter*:

When I was pregnant, the thought of having an “exotic” looking child based on our combined genetics – Jose’s inky black hair, dark eyes, and round face coupled with my waspy, delicate looks and tiny build – hadn’t really occurred to me.

Sprinkle talks about how this attitude changed after the first time she and her husband experienced discrimination as a mixed race couple:

Would her choices of where to live or travel be compromised by her looks? Or would her mixed genes work in her favor? Not being quite Hispanic-looking enough to make her a victim of racism, but enough for, say, college scholarships? Maybe she’d walk through different worlds at will, be whoever she needed to be for any situation. Nice in theory, but the idea of conveniently shifting identities to protect or promote herself left me cold.

One of the first posts I wrote for Racialicious discussed mixed race parenting, and I remember being quite moved by a comment Abu Sinan made:

Thanks for the article. As a father of two bi-racial children I try to understand as much as I can about the issues they are going to face here in America.

As the daughter of parents who, for better or worse, never discussed what it meant that my sister and I were mixed race (except to regularly tell us that we were “beautiful” and “special”), I am captivated by parents who want to talk and learn about how being mixed race might be a big deal for their kids, and even further, white parents who can admit that – even though they came forth from their own bodies – their children will have experiences that they themselves can never understand.

Sprinkle goes on to describe her family’s attempt to navigate the hairy terrain of multi-racial experience, and even lovingly accepts the reasons why her husband is hesitant to speak Spanish to their daughter, based on his own experiences of discrimination. Yet despite her initial sensitivity, Sprinkle quickly lost me.

I began to panic. Yes, I wanted her to be bilingual, but I didn’t want Spanish to be the language she identified with most. Yeah, my kid was of two cultures, and, yes, she would learn Spanish and English, but to emphasize her Latina side,I felt, was somehow a disservice. Frankly, I didn’t want her to lose any of the privileges of being white.

To emphasize her Latina side was somehow a disservice. Ouch.

On the one hand, I am ready to admit I don’t have children and so I don’t understand the profundity of that desire to protect your child, even when that means doing something that (as Sprinkle herself admits) expresses slightly f-ed up racial politics.

But honestly, while I appreciate Sprinkle’s bluntness, there is a unarticulated vein that runs through her article that says that she doesn’t simply want her daughter Nina to be considered more white than Colombian just so that Nina has access to as many opportunities as possible: Sprinkle also just thinks white is better. (For instance, later in the article she associates schools with large immigrant populations with subpar education, and she again openly states that she wants her daughter to be more white than not. But I’ll get to that.)

And that’s not so surprising. She’s a white lady whose had the privileges of being white her whole life, and received the corresponding messages that clearly white people are just inherently better – or why else would they be most powerful and successful ethnic group in America?

In some ways Sprinkle’s article frustrated me so much that I felt speechless. (Any regular readers will know that I am a bonafide chattypants and it is unusual for me to be struggling for words) There are close to 300 comments on Sprinkle’s article (mostly negative) and L at #31 articulated a simple conclusion that I was unable to get my tongue around:

There is no problem in feeling conflicted about racial or ethnic identity, but people like Ms. Sprinkles who continue to promote ideas that White equals privileged and Latina/other minority equals disservice are doing nothing but perpetuating inequality and frankly, racism.

Despite all her protestations, I was clearly not the only one who picked up the sense that Sprinkle assumes Latin@ heritage is inherently inferior.

When Nina is ready for real school, the choices in our neighborhood don’t thrill me either. Because of the dominant immigrant population, many have a heavy focus on learning English. While I understand that need, I can’t pretend I don’t worry that my daughter’s education will be slowed while she waits for other kids to learn her native language…[so] We enrolled her to start in a private midtown nursery school instead — when she turns 2. It’ll cost us almost my whole paycheck, but there won’t be any rough Spanish — or any homemade rice and beans for lunch like the current day care. (I’ll miss that delicious smell.)

I do not care for that offhand remark about good-smelling rice and beans. It almost sounds as if Sprinkle is saying “Your schools aren’t good enough for my daughter, but y’all do have some good food!”

At another point Sprinkle says:

I didn’t want prejudice or any extra hardship or confusion — like my husband still feels. I just wanted the eyelashes, and cheekbones, and that lyrical Spanish when appropriate. I wanted the good stuff, and from both sides. I wanted it all.

Again, so those oh-so-dreamy eyelashes are good enough for your kid, but your husband’s culture is not. Nice. Also, if you didn’t want “confusion” you should’ve thought twice about having babies with a man of colour. I like to think people put some thought into things like that.

But to get away from the snark and back on track: in terms of education, I’ve heard this debate before. I have friends of colour who’re from middle class families, and whose parents sent them to good, predominantly white schools – where they felt alienated and lost until they transferred back to schools that were predominantly immigrant/mixed cultural. I also have friends whose parents were poor immigrants of colour who had no choice but to send them to neighbourhood schools that actually did have lower educational standards. This latter group now say they plan to do what it takes to get their own kids into the good white schools.

Yet the difference between my friends who plan to get their kids into the best dadburned white bread schools they can afford is that they come from a place of experience, where Sprinkle – especially because she offers no information on whether or not these immigrant schools actually are worse – seems more prejudiced than anything.

And Sprinkle completely disregards her daughter’s cultural needs. She states that there will be other biracial children at the private school where she’s sending her daughter, yet she does not mention whether or not her daughter will have the chance to connect with as many Colombian children as white children, or how she will be able to orient and find herself in this whiter environment. Sprinkle makes offhand mention of the fact that Nina’s Colombian grandma will teach her salsa, but generally she doesn’t seem too concerned about her daughter’s cultural education.

Motherhood is constantly realizing that so much of her life will be out of my control. So is it so terrible for me to see that one of her cultures maybe edges out the other? Just a teeny, tiny bit? If Latinos ruled the world, maybe I’d push things to go the other way, but political correctness and cultural diversity aside, I want her doing well in life — money, success, respect, opportunities, and, most of all, safety.

This last paragraph really turned my stomach. Yes, Nicole Sprinkle, there is something terrible about you wanting one culture to edge out the other. Because the culture you want to WIN!! (and isn’t there something inherently gross about wanting one culture to pwn another?) also happens to be YOUR culture, and it also happens to be the dominant culture in the US.

This rhetoric of the white parent who consistently attempts to assert their mixed child’s whiteness over their non-whiteness reminds me of white folks in a room of colour who pout when the conversation attempts to focus on the issues of people of colour. The experience of no longer being the centre of attention can be disorienting and uncomfortable for some white folks. They make a fuss in order to recentre the focus on themselves: it is too painful to not be in control of the perspective.

When I talk about myself as a woman of colour, sometimes my white mumma asks why I describe myself in that way, instead of saying I am half-white. She feels I am erasing her contribution to my life. I try to be sensitive to her feelings, though sometimes it is hard. Incidentally more often than not I refer to myself as a mixed race POC, yet the few times I want to emphasise my non-whiteness, she tends to flip. Or she asks why I am so engaged with my dad’s culture and not hers.

The answer is simple: when you live in a country where white culture is dominant, you don’t gotta struggle to learn about whiteness. You may, on the other hand, have to struggle to learn about your culture of colour. And you may have to struggle to assert your non-white side, especially if you are middle class, or especially if – as in Sprinkle’s daughter’s case – you are the child of parents who want to subvert your non-white side.

I don’t buy Sprinkle’s insistence that the bottom line is wanting to ensure her daughter’s well-being. This is what Sprinkle says, but what I hear is that she wants to stake racial ownership over her daughter, regardless of what her daughter wants or needs.

To be honest, perhaps my own issues and baggage make me the wrong Racialicious correspondent to unpack this article. When I hear parents talk as if they know what is best for their kids (who are of a different race), my knee jerk reaction is rage. It makes me seethe to hear parents take ownership over something they can’t possibly understand.

Unreliable bias or not, if I was in the business of educating white parents, I would send an email to Sprinkle saying this: You know what would really help your daughter? Not removing her from schools where she might get a subpar education because of the immigrants – children who might become important lifelong allies and friends. The problem is not immigrant dominant schools, but that schools with more immigrants (of colour) tend to get receive less resources. Don’t make the issue about individual students and individual schools when it’s actually about the system. In short, the problem is racism.

Of course it is your parental right to place your daughter in the school of your choice. But if you really are as devoted to your daughter’s well-being as I assume you are, you may just serve her needs better by advocating against systemic racism and its effects on the school system. You definitely are not serving her needs by reinforcing racist beliefs and ideas in the freakin’ NYT.

–
Yes, that is a gratuitous Mariah pic. It made me feel better, ok!

*I recognise that saying white/Colombian might not make much sense as some Colombians are white. Sprinkle doesn’t specify what kind of white she is or what kind of Colombian her husband is, but from her descriptions of her daughter I guess we are supposed to assume Nina is white/non-white Colombian.

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.

White ladies have a bunch of kids and get TV shows. A Hispanic woman pumps out eight babies and gets scorn – and maybe a few high-profile interviews.

California woman Nadya Suleman birthed octuplets late last month after having six kids earlier this decade – all through in vitro fertilization. Having 14 kids isn’t the soundest family planning – throw diaper subsidies into the stimulus package, Barack! – but we’ve seen this before, and we’ve seen a celebration, not a simultaneous national gag reflex.

The 2003 remake, “Cheaper by the Dozen” and its 2005 sequel track the craziness and hilarity of a couple with 12 quirky, good-looking kids. Audiences saw that it was tough managing a small army of mouths to feed, but in the end, it’s all just really quite funny and heart warming.

“John & Kate Plus Eight” on TLC has tracked the trials of the Gosselin family as they manage their eight little offspring. They somehow manage, and viewers send money.

Another TLC show based on overactive ovaries and warrior sperm is “Seventeen Kids and Counting,” a reality program about Michelle and Jim Bob – yes, Jim Bob – Duggar, who have 18 children.

Every episode is a new way of praising the family for its relationships and unflappable faith.

Then Suleman, who is Hispanic, goes and has eight kids all at once. People freak. Someone asks me, “What color is she?” Unsure how to respond, I tell him she’s Hispanic. He nods his head in disapproval and makes a tisk, tisk sound.

Let’s not forget the sexism – how can a woman raise that many kids without a bread winner, without a brawny man to bring home the bacon? And lots of it.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” Suleman admitted having a platoon of babies can be perceived as “selfish,” but I’ve never hear anyone call the Duggars selfish or irresponsible. The sentiment seems to be the Duggars and their ilk might be freak shows, but damn it, they’re lovable, respectable freak shows.

Columnists and talking heads have taken their shots at Suleman, too. Phyllis Chesler called Suleman’s baby-bearing “a Frankenstinian moment.”

“It is grotesque, a freak Circus Act,” Chesler writes, pointing out that “Osama bin Laden’s father had 57 children.” Hear that, TLC? A pilot of “Suleman and bin Laden Plus 71” for spring sweeps? Ratings gold.

The Daily Mail, a British paper, quoted a perturbed doctor calling Suleman’s pregnancy a “medical disaster.” Another baby guru said the births were “clearly not a medical triumph.” I know the white families referenced above didn’t have octuplets, but Suleman having 14 kids to raise is cast in an unwaveringly negative light when compared to the predominately Anglo-Saxon baby makers starring in their own shows.

If you’re going to hate on families with enough kids to run Halliburton, hate equally. It shouldn’t matter what “color” the baby machine is or whether she’s hitched.

—
Ed. Note – Reader Calisha wrote in about this story as well, pointing our attention to this LA Weekly blog post which summarized some of the racially motivated vitriol surrounding the births. There were a lot of assumptions that Suleman was not in this country legally, with one reader asserting “she looks Middle Eastern” and implying a terrorist connection.

Calisha also notes:
Aside from the obvious race issues here, the thing that most concerns me is that many, in their need to govern others based on their own moral code, have declared that they will boycott any companies that provide support to the families. It concerns me that we would punish the children because we don’t agree with their mother’s actions.

I agree. It’s interesting to see this story slide from “oh, babies!” to “she just had them for the welfare checks.” The fact the Suleman is a single mother who had these children as a result of IVF treatments fuels a lot of the hatred, but the significant racial component of this is not to be discounted. – LDP

Update: Cynthia and Rchoudh in the comments clarified exactly why there are mixed racial insults. According to Rchoudh: “It’s turning out that Nadya’s father is Iraqi and her mother Ukrainian. Her being considered as Hispanic is due to her keeping her ex-husband’s last name after the divorce (he was hispanic).”

UPDATE 2: This thread is now closed to comments.

Political pundits have celebrated president-elect Barack Obama’s sweeping and historic victory as evidence that the United States has taken an initial step toward a “post-racial” or “colorblind” society.

In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, Shelby Steele provocatively asked, “Doesn’t a black in the Oval Office put the lie to both black inferiority and white racism? Doesn’t it imply a ‘post-racial’ America?” Analysts on both sides of the political spectrum have answered yes. Phillip Morris of the Cleveland Plains Dealer declared, “America has completed its evolution into a racial meritocracy.” While Jonathan Kay of Canada’s National Post wrote, “Electing a black president won’t instantly cure ‘the ugly racial wound left by America’s history’ (as The Economist put it in its Obama endorsement). But it will at least prove that America has finally become a fundamentally post-racial society—a place where tribal loyalties are based on ideology, not skin color.” Meanwhile, another conservative columnist, Laura Hollis of Townhall.com, flatly claimed, “Racism is dead.”

Most interesting, and perhaps troubling, is the way Latin America is being used by observers to symbolize what a “post-racial” future will look like for the United States. In a syndicated report for McClatchy Newspapers, Tyler Bridges remarked, “This year’s election presents intriguing story lines for Latin Americans. Race is a less important issue here than it is the United States, but many dark-skinned Latin Americans are quietly cheering for Obama.”

U.S. commentators most often point to the concept of mestizaje as an example of Latin America’s seamless racial integration. Mestizaje, or racial mixing, is often seen as diametrically different to historical U.S. legal sanctions against miscegenation—the so-called “one-drop” rule. Mestizaje is cited as a prime example of how Latin Americans have been able to move beyond race. Although mestizaje has different historical roots and trajectories within different Latin American countries, there has been a rhetorical emphasis across the board on a kind harmonious racial exceptionalism at work in Latin America.

The everyday practices and lived experiences of many Latin Americans, however, paint a different picture. Writing for NACLA, Marisol de la Cadena notes, “One of the most puzzling, disconcerting phenomena that the non-native visitor confronts while traveling in Latin America is the relative ease with which pervasive and very visible discriminatory practices coexist with the denial of racism.”

It was that sense of disconcerting confusion that bloggers and journalists felt when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez repeatedly referred to Obama not by his name, but as simply “el negro,” during a press conference in March. One part from Chávez’s speech was particularly telling. Roughly translated, he told reporters, “For a Black man to become President of the United States is no small thing… We are not asking him to be a revolutionary or a socialist. No, [we ask] only that this Black man who is about to become President of the United States realize the circumstances that this world is living in. From right here and right now we who are Indian, Black, Caribbean and South American are sending positive energy to el hombre negro.”

Although Chávez was clearly expressing excitement—even solidarity—over the prospect of an African-American holding the highest position in U.S. government, the fact that Obama remained basically nameless and was only referred to by his race throughout the press conference is a telling example of the seemingly innocuous discriminatory practices and racism that permeate everyday life in Latin America.

Chávez’s statements were so shocking to many people precisely because he was so open about referring to Obama only in terms of his race in an international and public setting, disrupting the idea of Latin America as a kind of “post-racial” utopia. Some might dismiss Chávez’s comment as a linguistic misfire attributable to Latin America’s unique racial lexicon. But such a dismissal is a missed opportunity to poke holes in the underlying myth of racial democracy that is clearly at work.

As one blogger quipped, “We know some might find it tempting to dismiss Chávez’s statements as a product of cultural difference in talking about race, but this is a man who is in charge of a nation – not your uncle Tito watching Sabado Gigante.” It was not the first time a Latin American national leader has made offensive remarks about race on the world stage. Recall President Vicente Fox’s statement about Mexicans doing jobs in the United States that “even blacks don’t want.” Or when Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso publicly claimed to have some African ancestry by explaining he had “one foot in the kitchen.” Moments like these lift the thin veil of racial democracy in Latin America and exposes the long road ahead on issues of race and social justice in the region.

The promotion of mestizaje and racial democracy in Latin America has often existed alongside, and as part of, the suppression of populations of African and indigenous descent. National identities based on mestizaje served the dual purpose of “uniting” fractious nations under one banner while at the same time promoting the mass marginalization of racial and ethnic groups by denying their discrimination.

Several scholars have helped dispel the myth of racial democracy in Latin America by documenting what is often referred to as blanqueamiento (whitening), or mejorando la raza (improving the race). In one example, blanqueamiento is actively sought out by marrying a lighter-skinned person, thereby producing lighter, racially mixed offspring. Sociologist Ginetta E. B. Candelario has traced the many ways blanqueamiento is promoted in Dominican society. As evidence, she points to the range of skin creams and hair products marketed to produce a whiter-looking phenotype among Dominican women.

Any observer scratching the least bit below the surface would realize Latin America is far from a racial democracy. Statistical indicators consistently show indigenous and African populations in Latin American countries at the very bottom of the social and economic ladder. Proposing Latin America as model for U.S. racial harmony is absurd, and doing so negates the current climate of colorblind racism still operating in the United States.

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes about how rhetoric of a color-blind society functions to perpetuate racial inequality without appearing or sounding deliberately racist. Color-blind racism, or the idea that race is no longer a significant issue deserving of our efforts or attention, works to justify the continued marginalization and disenfranchisement of people of color in the United States.

As Moya Bailey, an activist academic, points out in a recent blog post: “Structural racism depends on the exceptions (Obama, Oprah, etc.) to hide the rule that is inequity…. So I pledge to stay vigilant, critical and skeptical. I pledge also to be active, visible, and hopeful for the world I wish to see. It will take more than one man’s rise to power to undo centuries old structural oppressions built along the axes of race, gender, sexuality, ability and age. The struggle continues.”

Racial hierarchies are still at work in the United States and Latin America, and this injustice will continue until these hierarchies are actively deconstructed.

Last night, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accepted the nomination to the vice-presidency at the Republican National Convention.

Originally the buzz about Palin, focused on her having a vagina. Her presence was analyzed as a calculated McCain strategy to lure disgruntled, hard core Hillary Clinton supporters.

Then the shift went internal, to her uterus, her identity as a mother to five, the youngest with some form of developmental delay, and a 17 year old daughter, unmarried and pregnant.

So what does this Palin parranda of information and analysis mean to mamis of color, Latina mamis like me? Not surprisingly, nada.

Sarah Palin wants to put herself out there as “every woman”. She wants to be seen as “just your average hockey mom”, and other mommies see themselves and their reality reflected through Palin, except, mamis of color, that is.

The talk returns to mommy wars, not mami wars, because the entire conversation excludes Latinas and other moms of color. We are not even soldiers. Even for so called progressive white feminist, the war is fought by them and maybe, if mamis like me are lucky, we’ll reap some benefit. When I was a pregnant teenager, in a Latin American country where abortion was and still is illegal (Chile), there was no opting out of pregnancy or working. Which is why the debate of how Palin could go back to work after having a baby with special needs or how a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter is being used, feels like a sideshow with little significance in reality. The politics of choice is being raised, with the emergence of a woman who is anti-choice, even in cases of rape or incest and with no talk of how for women of color, choice goes beyond an abortion and means the very right to have children (forget 5!) Imaginate if Michelle Obama had five children? Imaginate if one of the Obama children were older and pregnant? Imagine the hate and stereotypes that would be unleashed? Oh wait, I don’t have to imagine, as a single mami of color, I live it. Palin’s large brood isn’t seen as a strain on the system. They are a beautiful portrait of an “American” family making every other family, families like mine, ugly.

And let’s talk about the perceived double standard, that if a man had five children no one would be making a big deal of it, that men are held to a different standard, as stated in the video above. Claro if you take race out of the picture, it’s easy to follow along, pero if Obama was the father to five instead of two children, you don’t think the media and politicos would be making all sorts of references to black men and their hyper-sexuality? Or black men and responsibility? I hear no one telling Palin’s husband to put on a damn condom.

Just as many of women of color couldn’t get behind Clinton and her campaign because of racist attacks on Barack Obama, attacks that asked women of color to choose a candidate based not on a complex and painful history and reality, but rather because of perceived shared genitalia. Palin positions herself as continuing Clinton’s struggle, as continuing the struggle set forth by Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate. Let’s not forget that Ferraro called Obama “lucky” for being black. Is Palin then lucky for having five children, like my abuela did before being forcibly sterilized? You wanna talk about Palin’s uterus or the uterus of her daughter? I want to talk about my abuela’s uterus, how it’s power was deemed dangerous because of it’s power to bear brown Spanish speaking babies, my uterus and it’s abortions, miscarriages, and pregnancies, violations upon it, the uterus of an immigrant woman being viewed as a weapon in a culture war and the need to put those immigrant women in chains as they push babies from them and the need the U.S. government has to separate mamis and babies and deport and dispose.

My uterus and my head is tired.

Sources of info and Ire/ NYT The Kitchen Table Jack & Jill Culture Kitchen