Camp, the final chapter!

Just a few notes on things at camp this year....

Amazing wonderful speakers.... WAY better than last year, very pertinent, insightful, an just plain awesome!

Lisa Marie Rollins who is a black adult adoptee and an amazing writer, actor, playwrite. She is in the final stages of developing a one woman show on her life story being a transracial adoptee. She did the play for us and is was so inspiring. She shared her story though her play, addressed racial issues, and faced adversity. Here is a link to her blog http://birthproject.wordpress.com

The other speaker was John Raible, a biracial adult adoptee and adoptive father. He has been featured on numerous TV shows etc throughout his life. He discussed racism issues, how to handle them, and most importantly what is important in raising a transracial adoptee. He discussed things like living in diverse areas, ensuring your child is not the only black child around, making sure there are black people in your life, ensuring you are giving them the skills that they will need to face racism alone etc. He was also the one who led us through the activity that I talked about before with the people sculpting exercise.... that was just amazing! Here is his blog as well http://johnraible.wordpress.com/

They both were just very honest and did not sugar coat anything. We need to be aware that when parenting black kids, there are things that we need to be very aware of, things that need to be addressed, things that we need to have in place in our lives, and things we need our children to know.

The biggest downfall to camp is the lack of black role models in the kids room but otherwise is a pretty good camp. We had a good time, there was a ton of stuff to keep us busy and we will definitely go again next year. One thing I realized is how lucky we are to have many other adoptive families who look like us in our circle of friends and in our community and that our community is fairly diverse (not diverse enough for my liking but much more diverse than most).

Weekend updates and things I wish I would have said...

My next post in the next day or two will include a bunch of fun pics of Addy and I at Heritage Camp. We had a good time, the speakers were AWESOME! I'll go into that in my next post as well. We got to spend time with some families from last year, meet some new families, and learn more about transracial parenting.

There were a few things however that are still on my mind, things I wish I would have said, things I wish I could change. And since I didn't say them and this is my outlet, you get to read them so click out if you don't want to read on!

There were a few comments by adoptive parents that just rubbed me the wrong way... and not just me a few of the other families brought it up to me to see what I thought as well. And some of you may not get it or may not appreciate my thoughts on the subject and thats just fine as well. I'm not here to judge other peoples parenting but to reflect on my own and try to make sense of it all.

So example 1: We watched a video about 6 grown adult adoptees who were adopted transracially and their thoughts, examples, issues, etc from growing up in white families, many of which had zero other non-white people in their lives. We had about 2 minutes after the video to just briefly share our feelings/thoughts on the video. One member of our table spent the two minutes telling us how, "they need to understand that everyone gets teased over something like if you have glasses and get called 4 eyes or have braces and how its the same thing"....ugh, after he finished it was already time to reconvene and discuss things as a big group so none of us had a chance to nicely share our views on how it is different (camp is supposed to be a safe place to share your feelings, learn etc, so obviously a response needs to be appropriately worded)... I'm pretty sure though that most people would agree that racism is completely different from being called 4 eyes. My question then is how do you help these parents realize the difference in a respectful manner when they probably won't get it anyway and their black children need them to get it. One of the things discussed was how you need to acknowledge the racism that your child brings to you and not dismiss it as "its not that bad" and not to attempt to brush it off by saying things like the previously mentioned conversation. So maybe my question then is how do you help the kids who are having race issues and don't have the same level of support. Obviously I am white and am no where near an expert in racism or responding to it but if you've read some of my posts where I've shared some of our issues, I at least am fully aware of its existence. We see it every day even though some may be passive, its always there and how you respond will affect your kids self awareness and self worth.

2-We had a soul food brunch the last day. One of the kids asked their parent what kind of food it was, "black people food" is the response from the mom. No explanation, significance, discussion, background etc. I didn't witness this one first hand but another mom who sat with us asked us if we thought that was an appropriate response or not. One simple response. For some reason these single line responses bother me but probably because I am someone who wants details. Dont tell me to make a project to make a project but tell me the significance. We had ginger beer the last day.... What is it? Why is it significant? Who drinks it? Why? The deeper meaning is what I am interested in not just that Ginger Beer has something to do with Kwanzaa or Africa or something... I still need to google it!

3-We did an AMAZING exercise with mirroring, sculpting people, etc (sounds weird but it was super cool) and the last one was a group sculpture of the perfect relinquishment scene. It was amazing, painful, and emotional all at the same time. During the discussion, one parent made a comment that I thought was very judgmental toward a birthmom, a birthmom that could represent any birth mom. I believe it was out of pain and anger that they made this comment but it saddened me as I have the utter most respect for the painful decision our birth moms made and although ours have different stories than the one shared, I would hate for people to pass such judgement on our birthmoms. The comment was also very much about adoptive parent entitlement to a baby which I completely disagree with. We are not entitled to any baby, ever, regardless of the situation. Birthmoms can change their minds, can choose another family, can choose to parent. And really, I would much rather a birth mom choose to parent than to place a baby and regret it her whole life. We were very well aware that any birth mom who chose us or any baby who came home with us may not be the one that we parent and although painful, we knew that it was the birth moms best interest that needed to come first. Anyway, I couldnt see who had made the comment, and I'm hoping that it was a recent issue and that they were just still hurting. I know that every bump in our adoption road is what led us to the two kids and two birth moms that we have now and I cannot imagine anything else.

So enough of my soapbox....I just feel a sense of responsibility to all of these kids. Being black and raised in a white family is not easy, and its not always going to be an easy road to navigate but I feel like we are doing everything that we can to be as prepared as we can be and to have supportive black role models in our childrens life. It's the path we chose and we need to remember that we chose this, our kids didn't. We need to support them in our family unit as best we can and ensure our lives are as diverse as possible.

Tomorrows post: The fun and pictures from camp!

Racism....

Frustrating evening... are people really this stupid?

My good friend (in fact one of my best friends) who happens to be biracial came over tonight to hang out since she is leaving to go out of town for a week. She had asked if her friend could come since he was only in town for a few hours. She said he was "normal" so I said ok.... Maybe I should screen these friends of hers better!

Started off fine. She and I talked about my experience at the African American heritage camp that AJ and I went to (so we were talking about black issues), my kids were playing (both African American), and we had eaten dinner. Ty got tired so I brought him upstairs to go to bed. I could hear her friend, we'll call him "boy". I could hear boy saying things to her that I thought were inappropriate. Not sure how it even came up but he kept calling her white, using the word oreo and double stuffed oreo. Now I don't know him at all and so thought maybe they had some inside running joke but thought it was odd since she really doesn't put up with racist crap. But since I was upstairs at the time, I didnt say anything when I came back down (mistake number 1, I should have said something that bothered me immediately).

So we painted our toes/finger nails and had The Housewives of Atlanta on (I know schmucky TV). We weren't really paying a whole lot of attention to it, it was on more on in the background. The boy starts talking about the show so we start to pay attention. The girl on the show (African American) is talking to her African American boyfriend/husband about how he was raised in a white family and her in a black family and how there are differences etc. Boy starts going on about how it doesn't matter, she needs to stop talking about it and move on. My friend told him that no, its important and that the girl on TV just wanted to learn more to do whats best for their kids etc (now we really hadn't heard the whole conversation but whatever, its the housewives!). Boy then makes a comment about how "you people" always try to make issues where there aren't any. You people, really? He states it in different ways a few times, both my friend and I try to tell him that there is a big difference in culture and that it is important and good that they were discussing it. Then it took a turn for the worse... He went on and on about how black people want equality and then make differences and problems. I told him that if you aren't involved in the receiving end of racism then you can't truly understand what it is like. He kept telling us (while pointing and making the crazy sign to his head) that all of this stuff that we were making up was just in our heads... He said it over and over and was getting more inappropriate...

Side note: Addy was in the room, distracted by her newly painted toe nails with stickers, so the words I (and my friend) wanted to use were out of the question since we didn't want her hearing them.

So he went on and on and there was no stopping him or rationalizing with him. The tone and inflection in his voice was like my friend and I were stupid and completely off base. He was obviously the one who was right and who knew everything.

I finally said in a firm "I mean it" kind of way... OK, you need to leave now. He looked at me like I head 10 heads and I just said "seriously" (in the same get out of my house now tone). My friend made a comment about how he needed to stop especially since she was biracial and he was in the house with two black kids. He then sat on the couch. My friend packed up her things and they left.

Its amazing that besides his first inappropriate comments, the majority of his anger was derived from a conversation from a stupid reality TV show (and not even a classy reality TV show) and then his true beliefs really came out.

They had driven separately so her and I talked on the phone after she left. She wouldnt see him again until later that night and she was going to give him the earful that we couldn't in Addys presence. She was appalled at his behavior and it didnt sound like their friendship would be continuing (at least not in the same context).

I felt violated, angry, furious. Who in their right mind would come into a house with two black kids and make racist remarks.... really? I felt awful knowing that my children will face these kind of things and sad that I wouldnt always be there to protect them or to deal with the issues together. We already have had some racism issues but in our own home was just wrong. I am proud that I said something and didnt just let it happen. I am glad that my friend bit her tounge and didnt say what she wanted too and super glad that she is "sharing" those special saved words with him tonight. I'm glad that we role modeled appropriate behavior in front of Addy, because really, that's what it is all about. Facing racism as a family, role modeling appropriate responses so that our children learn how to move forward through racism, and hopefully opening the eyes of people who are ignorant.

So what did I learn...
1- trust your gut
2- say something the first time you hear an appropriate comment
3- stick to your guns
4- don't put up with racism, ever, especially in your home