Let’s Talk About Race…

Last weekend, R. and I traveled down to the big city to attend an adoption workshop, presented by a well-regarded adoption and diversity consultant, on the subject of race. Jane Brown, the consultant, is a member of our FCC group here in AZ (she lives here) and is the mother of eight children–five adopted transracially, including a daughter from China–but conducts most of her workshops for adults (for aparents and educators) and “playshops” (for kids adopted transracially) elsewhere across the U.S. I thought I would summarize her main points about raising healthy transracially / transnationally-adopted children and supplement these points with excerpts from some of her emails on the subject.

Although she covers a lot of ground, Jane Brown’s two biggest points are:

1) our children are not Asian, but Asian-American, and we need to find ways to encourage their sense of self-worth as Asian-Americans. (In other words, teaching our daughters some words of Mandarin and celebrating the Autumn Moon Festival every year by eating moon cakes isn’t going to cut it when it comes to promoting healthy identity formation.)

2) we need to surround our children with a diverse community–both in terms of their peer group at their schools, but also in terms of OUR peer group, in OUR homes. We need to demonstrate to our transracially adopted daughter or son that our own adult friends and acquaintances represent a wide spectrum of racial diversity in order for her or him to draw the conclusion that she or he is neither isolated in / inferior to white culture, nor is she or he being exoticized by white culture.

Here is Jane Brown’s own words on the subject. It’s too long to make all her points here today, so I’ll continue this thread over several days. She is responding in this case to a child who was taunted at school for being Chinese American. Please note that when you see the pronoun “I” that it is not SBird herself speaking in this case…

“One of the things that [our kids] need are ADULT role models of color–and not just some who match them racially and ethnically. They need to meet and get to know adults of African American heritage, Hispanic heritage, Native American heritage, bi- and multi-racial heritage, in order to figure out who they can be as persons of color who live in the USA. They need, as well, to WANT to be like those people–and not horrified by the idea that they are Not White and won’t ever be able to shed their skin. They deserve to know that adults of color are warm, interesting, likeable people who are not all that different from the White adults they know, but that they DO struggle with some of the same experiences [as our children do] and have come out feeling pride in who they are, and include the child as like them–a part of their subgroup. They need to be acknowledged and welcomed by those adult–to have regular experiences with them personally, rather than just seeing a few of them at cultural events, or in a store, or in front of a Chinese language class. That does NOT help children to feel an affinity with adults of color–in this case, with Chinese or Chinese American adults–which is what they need. They do NOT need to “other” them and decide that they are not like them, have nothing in common with them. These need to be people who are regularly in their lives–who come into their homes and into whose homes they are welcomed. You cannot get healthy racial identity from White parents, White teachers, and other White adults, White children, or even from other adopted children who match you racially. Nor can you get it from occasional opportunities–like getting to meet Chinese teachers at a Chinese New Year celebration or heritage camp.

Our children need to know that ‘their people’ and other people of color have made worthwhile contributions to our country and society. Also, that these contributions are not glossed over, but are really recognized and valued by those around them–their parents, teachers, schoolmates. They need to see ‘their people’ in AMERICAN history, literature studies, etc…They need to have a positive association with other Asian AMERICANS–not with Chinese people living in China, nor recent immigrants who have not yet melded into American society, for our kids are Chinese Americans now–not Chinese any longer. They need to form a coalition with people who look like them–to know that they belong to and with that group–and that it is a worthwhile group TO be a part of.

Most of all, they need to be immersed in racially diverse schools. I do not mean to come across as threatening or judgemental, but I am going to flat out be honest that there is no way a child of color being raised by White parents is going to develop healthy racial identity if he or she is the only child of color in his/her classroom or school, or the only child of his/her race in a classroom or school. In that situation, we are going to have to admit to ourselves that our child is going to continue to feel “different” regardless of whether there is ever another racialized incident, whether the other kids (and the teachers) accept and like our child, and whether everyone in the school preaches racial diversity as the ideal. It’s not about whether our kids are teased or not, accepted (by White kids) or not, liked or not–it’s about whether they see themselves as normal or not.”

To be continued tomorrow.