On the wall hangs a picture of Martin Luther King, and to his left, protecting his weak side, is President Barrack Obama. In her bedroom is a Barbie doll with mahogany skin that lays stiff and lifeless on the floor. On her book self are several books with many characters of color. Their skin colors range from caramel to mocha to milk chocolate to walnut. A beautiful girl whose skin is black coffee, with a splash of cream, is sleeping undisturbed under her Princess and The Frog sheets.
Today is Friday which means she will go to Popeyes Chicken for dinner or Steve’s Soul food restaurant.
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Often when the topic of culture comes up in a transracial conversation, it is mentioned that pictures of people from the adoptees race are displayed and race conscious toys and books are bought and food from their culture are prepared or presented as ways of keeping the child in touch with their culture.
“On Friday, we take her to Taco Bell.”
“Once a week we go out for Chinese food”
I heard these two responses over the last two weeks to the question, “how do you keep your child in touch with their culture?”
My response was shock, disbelief and then a fog of sadness surrounded me. In either situation it just isn’t enough. The pictures, toys, and books are good ways to support an evolving self image. To show that people of their race are valued and important is good. It is a good start, but it isn’t enough.
The biggest hurdle we have to jump over is admitting transracial parents can’t teach their child of color how to be a child of color.
As a parent, I think there is no one in this world that can teach my son like I can. I am the best person to raise him and mold him. Then he got in to fifth grade and started doing fifth grade math. I had to make a choice ; either I differ this to the math teacher or my son will be using his fingers and toes to count the rest of his life. The image of my son standing in a McDonalds line at 20 years old wearing flip flops in the middle of winter so he has access to his ten counters attached to his feet made the decision really easy. This was an area of his life that it was better that I entrusted it to someone else. This didn’t make me a bad parent. It made be a better parent because I surrendered my ego for his best interest.
We gotta leap over this hurdle. Leaping over the hurdle means you’re going to have to ask for help. The old African proverb is screaming at me. “IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD.” For some transracial parents, that means you have to go seek out the right village to help raise your child. But first, it means you have to leave the safety of your hut.
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For the benefit of others, please share ways you are keeping your child in touch with their culture.
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What a great post. I cracked up over the flip flop image but your writing is so correct. I feel lucky for my children that my circle of friends includes people of color. I have intentionally had my children involved at a YMCA in another town so that they would play on teams that had other black kids or have swim classes where they were not the only black child. We travel 20 minutes to a church of our faith in a larger city than our community because there are not only children who are diverse racially but many families built through adoption. I think it is important to cover that particular waterfront too! We have books that feature people of color and art etc but I think it is the person to person connection that is honestly the most important.
In a sort of funny aside, I was chatting w/ a black mom at the park this wk and she asked me who braided and beaded my daughters hair. We do it ourselves at home, I explained. She was hoping I had a salon recommendation as she wants to braid her son’s hair (which truly was um, very free shall we say!) and she doesn’t know how to braid.
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My son is only six, and he has an African American father, but I am white, and we live in an extremely white area. We have realized that we need to move to a more diverse area. This will take a lot of sacrifice on our part, but it needs to be done; he needs friends that look like him. He needs to *be* in his community.
In the mean time, we talk about racial identity with him. He is very aware that I am “pink” and he and Daddy are “brown,” that they are “African American”. We expose him to other people who are African American through DVDs, music, books, etc. He loves Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Barack Obama — they are among his heroes. We seek out other children who are African American, if we see them at parks or playgrounds, and frequent those where African American children play, when we can.
This year, for the first time, we will take him to African American festivals in the big city nearby, including the Juneteenth celebration and the local African American Ballet theater. We do what we can, when we can, so that he realizes he is not alone. But the truth of the reality is, he needs a community where he is not one of few, but one of many. It’s up to us to make that happen.
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My husband and I (both white) are the parents of two African American children. To answer your question, we very deliberately chose to live in a culturally diverse neighborhood, and we’ve made conscious efforts to befriend our neighbors. It was awkward at first, but I think everyone appreciates what we are trying to do for our kids. We do have Princess and the Frog sheets, brown baby dolls, and all kinds of books, both fiction and non-fiction, but I know that is just the surface.
When we first moved to this neighborhood, we learned that many of our white neighbors didn’t like the public school that the elementary-aged kids are zoned for. Most of their kids are taken to private or magnet schools. When I pushed for answers about why they don’t like the local school, they became very evasive, but gradually I figured out that their opinions had more to do with the demographics of the students than their academic achievements. Personally, I was thrilled to find out that when my children begin school, they will be surrounded by friends who can give them what I can’t.
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“E” has Ugandan barkcloth paintings and a Ugandan Basket hanging on her bedroom walls. She sleeps with her dolls purchased in the Ugandan market. We listen to Chameleon together on You tube while she sits in her highchair and eats her yogert. None of this will make her Ugandan when she grows up, but it honors where she came from. It says it’s ok to be proud of your country of birth. What will she “be” here in America?
After watching an interview with Nell Irvin Painter a black woman who just wrote the book “The History of White People” (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124700316) I’m begining to question What am I? Culture is ever changing, ever different, from person to person… While I activly seek out and celebrate the relationships with Black Americans for the benifit of my family, I also recognize culture isn’t easily defined. It goes beyond books, and paintings, and music. Even beyond skin color and accent. It’s wanting to find common ground with another group of people… Who is offering THAT for my daughter?
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Wow, you wrote what I could have, Erika. I am I think in the minority who doesn’t focus on the culture of my daughters skin, but on her as a person and what defines her as a person. Skin color is just skin deep. Being born in Kenya will never make her a Kenyan or give her ANY connection to what it would be like to be a woman in Kenya. Whatever culture really does mean these days, it truly is elusive. Your family is your culture. Your mom and dad create your culture. The way others see skin color cannot be changed, but it should not define our kids either. I wish the world didn’t judge each other based on extremeties, but such a truth will always hold fast.
Yes, having our transracial families/kids finding common ground with others is so much more important than trying to connect to a skin color or culture that means very little to them in reality. I have found of the adult transracial adoptees i know they have all found common ground with others who have the same likes/dislikes, passions, life pursuits, etc… just like the rest of us. They don’t grow up finding some hidden connection to their birth culture because there is no connection–save skin color.
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Heather,
I was able to find a connection to the black community and that was very important to me. If the culture was left up to only my mother and father, I would have been raised as a white child. It is my belief that if you ignore a transracial adoptee’s culture you raise them in a white culture because that is the culture they are submerged in on a daily basis. In essence choosing not to raise them in a culture, by default they are raised “white”whether intended or not.
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If you are not choosing to expose her to any culture, then by omission, you are choosing a white culture. It does define her. My daughter is Chinese, I am not. Regardless of where she was raised she is still Chinese. and your daughter is still Kenyan. I strongly encourage you to hear the hard voices of the adoptees who once was where your child is. They can tell you even more than I can.
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Long before I thought I would ever want to have any children at all, I moved out of a white neighborhood because it wasn’t diverse enough for me. I knew that, if I did have children I would want them to be multilingual and that I would expose them to all different cultures and histories. History belongs to everyone… no one culture can claim a piece for themselves… even if they want to try to ignore what they think of as someone else’s. So, it has always bothered me that we learn only European history in school. As an Army brat, I was lucky to be exposed to many different cultures and to think of it as the norm. I want that experience for my kid, no matter what their birth culture.
As a result, my son has pretty diverse books. He is from Guatemala but I have books that tell stories from Peru, Africa, Russia and anywhere else I can find. As long as it’s a good story, I seek out all different cultures to teach him about. We even try to celebrate holidays of other cultures. We are (pretty much) Christian but we are planning a big Seder Meal for Passover.
That being said, I also want him to have a special connection to his birth culture. We’ve been very lucky to have a friend from Guatemala. She teaches me how to cook special recipes and I cook them on a regular basis but especially incorporate them into holidays (along with the Maltese dishes that my Nana made and some special recipes my MIL has shared with me). We celebrate holidays that are important in Guatemala and look at pictures/videos on the internet of how they are celebrated there. We are also trying to teach him Spanish (again, I would do this anyway but I understand why it is especially important for him to know). And, we also keep in touch with family & friends down there.
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We moved. That is probably the main thing. Our children attend an elementary school where our white child was in the minority. Middle school and High school are more 50/50. Lots of professionals in the community we live in are not white.
Our son participates in an almost all African-American football program with volunteer dads as the coaches. It’s intense and the “style” (culture) of the instruction is not within my comfort zone, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad. He loves it! His teacher commented how much more confident he is this year and that he is becoming a leader among his peers. I know this is in part to feeling good about himself and having strong black men he admires as role models. Not OUR friends, but HIS coaches.
We sent and send our children to a day care/pre-school program that is almost all African-American.
Our neighbors and doctors and bus drivers and principals and teachers and ministers and friends are African-American.
I take them to an African-American barber shop.
I agree that it’s not only about the visual cues and trappings (books, food, etc.) but that is important, it’s also about living with the day to day experience of witnessing how a person either like me or not like me gets through the day, solves problems, deals with conflict, responds to comments spoken and attitudes felt, celebrates and grieves etc. We all need to make room for the fact that the way I experience life isn’t the only or right way.
What will all this mean for our white son? I don’t know. What I know is that every day he wakes up in a house with two parents who look like him – by race and by genetics and that he knows from that alone that he belongs. Our other two children don’t have that foundation to stand on as a starting point.
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My experience is similar to Karen’s except that we moved to a diverse neighborhood before adopting our Ethiopian children. We wanted our biologically related (and white) children to benefit from diversity as well.
Now that I have African children, they are immersed in black culture as much as is possible with white parents. They have many black friends, go to black hairdressers, they are on black cheerleading squads and go to an all black dance studio. Of course they have friends of other races as well, but the majority are black.
Being Jewish, we can not raise them in the black church, but we go out of our way to expose them to other Jews of Color on a regular basis.
We also celebrate their Ethiopian heritage as much as possible. We go to cultural events, cook Ethiopian food, have Ethiopian friends, play Ethiopian music and have Ethiopian art and photos all around our house. We love Ethiopia!
JoAnna
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Kevin (and others), Thanks for this post. I’ve been thinking a lot for the last few months about this question and am hoping that you can provide some insight for me. My son just turned a year old. We have an open adoption with his birthmother (and her extended family) who are white. His birthfather is black and we have no relationship with him, nor does he desire one. This is my dilema – it is really easy for me to talk to my son about being adopted and about his birthfamily – we have pictures of them all over our home and our albums are filled with stories of his birth, our time with them waiting for ICPC to clear, and our subsequent trip to finalize his adoption along with pictures of when his birthmother came to visit at Christmas. I have letters they have written him about how much they love him, etc. to share with him as he is older along with the knowledge that we will have future visits with them. It’s a natural part of our life. BUT … they are all white too.
I want my son to grow up proud of who he is and know that society will see him as black. I have one picture of his birthfather (a profile picture from facebook as crazy as that sounds – but I wanted my son to have something). We live in a diverse area, attend a very diverse church, and have black friends. I know it will be important for my son to have adult role models who are black along with friends who “look like him.” I say all of that to ask, when do I start explaining “color” to him and about his birthfather. He is a very light brown and until his hair started getting coarser, some people didn’t really believe us in all honesty. I hope this is not offensive – I’m just trying to figure out how to approach all of this other than just showing him the picture I have of his birthfather.
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I am a mama to a little girl born in Haiti and after becoming a mixed family realized how limited the “product” world was for families like mine and started designing prints for textiles (like blankets and bags) for the families I see around me every day. You can see it here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/manoallamano
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Becky, let your son guide you. He will notice he is different from the rest of your family. He will ask questions. Be very up-front and honest in your answers, in an age-appropriate manner. My son was around three when he asked why I was pink and he was brown. We just discussed different skin colors at that point – and the conversation didn’t go much further.
When he started asking about how babies are made (around 4.5), we had a discussion about birth. He then asked if he was in my tummy before he was born – and that is when I told him about adoption, and that he had a Birthmommy who carried him in her tummy.
As time has gone on, he asks more questions. I always try to be as honest as I can with him. He’s had some struggles, coming to terms with what “being adopted” means, but overall, he handles it well.
I don’t think it’s a conversation you can script, but it is one for which you can try to prepare, by thinking about what you might say. Let it flow and unfold naturally. Your son will surprise you with his understanding, insight and acceptance.
The hardest question my son has asked was, “Did my Birthmommy cry when she had to give me away?” Mind you, I never told him he was “given away” but he understood her decision, her sacrifice and her pain. I had to fight back my own tears when answering him. I told him that she loved him very, very much, and that yes, she did cry and it made her sad, but that she new he was safe and loved, and that helped her make a good choice for him. I also told him that I loved him very, very much and would always be his Mommy. He handled it well, but in that moment, I knew that he understood the complexity of her decision to place him with us.
It’s all a process. There are no right answers. You have to let your heart be your guide.
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My concern for my boys is that skin color does not define a culture. As I think about college, I hesitate to pigeon-hole my sons into a skin-tone because I want them to achieve because of WHO they are, not for what shade of brown they are. I don’t want to NEGATE the idea of “black culture” but I don’t want to over-emphasize it to the point of making it a shameful thing either. (Fortunately, my kids are young and I have lots of years to think on these things).
We did get invited to a predominantly black church’s VBS again. We went last year… it was FUN! In fact, so fun that we took our 2 neighbor kids along (white as snow). Not one of the 5 children in my van noticed that the church was “black”. LOL. They just know they had a blast and they learned about Jesus.
For us, we have embraced their skin colors as something delightful about them that makes them unique and fun… not as a handicap. We say things like “You are brown, I am pink. Daddy likes mushrooms and the rest of think they’re gross. You like loud and Mommy likes quiet. Isn’t it cool how we’re all so different and yet we’re all one family?”. Adoptive friends of ours have done the opposite… they focused on skin color a lot when the kids were young. Our observation is that those kids now worry about being so different that they think something is wrong with them! Being brown-skinned is just a trait for my boys at this point… just another uniqueness, something to be celebrated not something that’s embarassing… but not so unique that they feel like outsiders.
(I realize I am not explaining this well… We say things to our son like “Yes, you are the only black boy in your class but: Desi is the only one with hearing aids, Caleb is the only one obsessed with dinosaurs, Eric is the only one with red hair, Abbi wears glasses, Julie wears a head covering, Jacob doesn’t have eletricity at home, Ava’s the shortest, Tonio speaks Spanish and Isaiah wears the same Ohio State shirt every day… everyone has something that’s cool about them)
Katie
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It really isn’t about focusing on it or even talking about it for us. It is about raising my daughter as a Chinese child. From the time she was 4, she was attending all Chinese ballet and dance and art class and Chinese church. We didn’t necessarily talk about her brown skin or her being Asian. We just took her to the same places that all the Chinese parents took their kids as a normal part of growing up. So she developed an identity as a Chinese person vs as a white person. There are adult Asian adoptees who have written that they cringed every time they saw a picture or looked in the mirror because it reminded them that they were not white. This is what I did not want my daughter to have. And many of them never verbalized the issue to their parents. I am not saying it as important to talk about it as much as it is to live it.
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You’ve got to be kidding. You’ve actually heard people say they take their kid to Taco Bell to keep in touch with their culture! WOW!
Beautifully written. Sometimes I fear if I ask for help I’ll be seen as a bad parent but you’re right, it will make me a better parent for it. And I’ve noticed recently that I’ve found other black women talking openly with me about my daughter’s hair. Acknowledging themselves that they were challenged to learn how to do their daughter’s hair. This has helped me feel accepted which for me is a big thing.
I like what L Glover said, it is up to us to make sure our child is not always the minority in their daily activities. We live in a diverse neighborhood, she’s in a diverse daycare and we go to a diverse church. We’ll be moving soon and I plan on looking harder to find doctors and other important people in our lives that are of other of another ethnicity.
We’ve got the toys and books but that’s just within our walls. That doesn’t prepare her for the world outside. I’m timid to ask a very old friend of mine if she’d like to act as another Grandma to my daughter. I think we would all benefit from having her in our lives even if for a short time.
My biggest issue is how do you incorporate your child’s culture when they were born in the US. That’s my husband’s reasoning as well. I know that we need to raise our daughter acknowledging her ethnicity but I can’t incorporate special Mexican or African dishes and holidays because that’s not where she is from. She’s from right down the street. Any tips on that. The holidays and such.
But I think reading these comments, that it’s not about the holidays it’s about the day to day. Making sure our children see a diverse world around them.
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