Friday, October 9, 2009

How would you feel if you were the only white person in the room?


The last time when I was getting ready to bring Isabel home I spent a lot of time reading about China past and present. How did China and the Chinese people get to a place where they left baby girls (and other - what they may consider - imperfect babies) in public places to be found (hopefully) and care for in institutions?

I knew that at some point in future I would have to tell Isabel that her birth mother left her in a park. I'm not saying this will be easy, I've started bits of that conversation as she has questions even now at 4 1/2. It is what it is and I can't change her story. But I don't want it to be a huge surprise when she 12 year old.

This time getting ready for Nora, I've been checking out blogs and yahoo boards with more and more frequency and an interesting thread that has come up was "do we as parents of interracial adopted kids include other races in lives?" How fair is it for them to feel like they are the only minority in the room for 99% of their lives. Or worst (in my opinion) their identity is white-by- association. So when they go off into the world with out their family beside them (college, jobs, etc) they could lose a big part of their white identity. The world sees them differently from how they see themselves. There is white privilege in this world that we white people don't see; we just expect to be treated in a certain way and we are. It's not something we earn.

I came across this "NPR Explores Trans-racial Adoption"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12136864

Very interesting perspective on a really hard subject.

More to think about.......

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