Let’s Talk About Race…Cont. (2)

Yesterday, I posted some of the comments of Jane Brown, who is an adoption/diversity consultant with over 30 years of experience working with parents and children of international adoption. I found many of her points in the workshop I attended to be ones that weren’t necessarily emphasized in other adoption resources I’ve encountered, so I’m trying to summarize some of the more salient ones here for people to think about (and so I have a “permanent” transcription for my own use).

Here is her list of how to promote healthy racial identity in our children:

“(1) Talk early and often about race.

(2) Talk about racism and stereotyping–don’t just talk about how nice it would be if everyone were colorblind because the reality is that they are not and the world is not ever going to work that way. We can’t raise our children in a sheltered environment nor insure that they will emerge into one in their lives beyond living with us.

(3) Purchase books about racial differences and adoptions from other countries/cultures (which shows that their country is not the only one that sends children to be adopted). A terrific children’s book: Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester (a Newberry Honor author).

(4) Build skillful communication strategies. (Don’t assume that because you talk a lot, that is what this means.) This should include modeling and expressing both pleasant and unpleasant feelings (BOTH parents), and learning how to encourage children to express theirs.

(5) kNOw RACISM. That means reading about racism, race politics in the USA (especially, but not only for Asian Americans), taking advantage of anti-racism training, learning about what White Privilege is so that you recognize how it works in our lives and will affect our children’s lives. Remember, they will live with us for less than a quarter of their lifetime, and it’s our job to prepare them for their WHOLE lifetime!

(6) Anticipate that children will be bullied if they are attending/participating in predominantly White environments (and that this happens in multiracial/multicultural ones, too). Make sure that the adults intend to address this and have a plan for how they will address it–and that they share this plan with you BEFORE it happens.

Telling children to walk away and ignore teasing/bullying involving race is NOT an adequate plan that supports healthy racial identity development in children of color OR Euro-Caucasian youngsters.

More importantly, enroll your child in schools where they are not the only child of color in their class, or one of only a few children of color in their school. Speak out against schools placing the 3 lone children of color, one each, into the 3 separate third grade classes so that the WHITE kids get a token bit of diversity.

(7) Provide adult role models of color. Every child needs to have meaningful, ongoing relationships with at least one adult of the same race (and, ideally, with lots of them, AND with adults of a variety of races/ethnicities) so as to be able to imagine themselves as the adult they will be and like what they imagine, instead of wishing they were White like you.

(8) Provide contact with other children of color–and not just other transracially adopted youngsters. Children do not transmit healthy and accurate racial identity or cultural awareness to one another. That has to come directly from the source (their ethnic community) and from adults.

(9) Children need a sense of belonging to and ‘their people.’ That has been fundamentally important to ALL people of color for it breaks down alienation or fear that they are not normal and helps build a sense of shared pride and worth. Our kids need this Times Two–with other adopted kids of various races AND with people who share their race/ethnicity. They also need to feel a sense of kinship with all people of color–that they have power and worth AS people of color.

They need to observe us, if we are White parents, demonstrating pride and interest in our own race and ethnicity. They also need to see us demonstrating BALANCED interest in, respect for, and value towards the non-adopted children and those who are adopted but are White or of another race.

When we focus exclusively on their race / culture / ethnicity, we inadvertently risk sending the message that we are really not all that comfortable with, or involved with, people of various races, but instead have made an exception in order to become parents to young children–and are compensating them for that.

(10) We need to develop relationships and friendships with adults of color as White parents (if that is who we are). For we must look to adults and not our children to tell us what it is like to be a person of color in our communities. We need to listen to lots of different voices and not look for the few who say that for them, race is no barrier, and who cling to the belief that our child will, of course, sound just like that at adulthood when that is not very probable–especially given the fact that growing up as a person of color is more complicated when your parent(s) are White.

(11) DO include art work from your child’s culture-of-origin, but consider also hanging art from a variety of cultures and not making your child’s culture the exception–lest that convey the impression that you exoticized that culture.

Also learn about, enjoy, and serve food from your child’s culture in your home. It’s different to have chopsticks next to the forks in the drawer, and to grow up with Chinese ingredients/food being part of what is familiar and comforting, rather than something you have occasionally in a restaurant, served by the only Chinese or Chinese American people you ever get close to.

(12) Most of all, celebrate the fact that you are a multiracial/multicultural family and enjoy how that enriches you, as well as empowers your child to build healthy racial and cultural awareness and identity!

Thanks to Aimee for posting yesterday and asking a question about Jane Brown’s take on why encouraging an awareness in our children’s Chinese heritage might be detrimental to them. I like the distinction Brown makes between fetishizing/exoticizing that heritage–if you only experience it occasionally and only outside your home, and if you showcase Asian/Chinese heritage as the only exception to your Whiteness–and incorporating many and various different racial/culture identities into your home experience so that her heritage becomes part of a wide understanding of what race might be.

Tomorrow, I’ll post about Jane Brown’s term “the pause that refreshes.”