The Tempest of Rachel Dolezal

The story of Rachel Dolezal doesn’t have legs: it has octopus arms and labyrinthine twists. Its reach and longevity have been astonishing, and speak to the fragility and pain of understanding race in this world.

I wonder about giving so much attention to someone who has not brought something good into dialogue. That, of course, is too often the nature of information and media today.  The people laboring in civil rights and human rights–doing positive, life-changing work–will never get the kind of coverage that Rachel Dolezal has received.

Among the many mysteries of the Dolezal story has been the role of adoption and the meaning of “transracial.” As the white parent of four transracially adopted children, now all young adults, I’ve never been and never will be black or biracial. I believe I’ve been an imperfect ally, aware of both racism and of white privilege, aware of the need for mentors and role models for my children, aware that exclusion, indignities, and micro aggressions are part of my beloved children’s lives.

The novelty of Rachel Dolezal has captured many keyboards, many hours of time by many people. As someone long involved in transracial adoption issues, I hope to see conversations about race and identity continue, especially in a public forum, though not necessarily focused on one individual. We have such a long way to go, and so many people in our racial and adoptive community continue to be voiceless and vulnerable.

All that said lol, as an ally, I’d be remiss if I did not mention these articles about the realities of transracial adoptees in light of the Dolezal discussions. Important words here.

“Transracial Lives Matter: Rachel Dolezal and the Privilege of Racial Manipulation”

“Rachel Dolezal Draws Ire of Transracial Adoptees”

“Open Letter: Why Co-Opting ‘Transracial’ in the Case of Rachel Dolezal is Problematic”

 

Canadian, American, Ethiopian, Adopted: A Conversation

I’m happy to announce I’ll be hosting a conversation (which will be available on YouTube) among 2 Canadians and 2 Americans, Ethiopian adoptees and white adoptive parents. In some ways, the US and Canada are similar, but there are significant political, cultural, and historical differences. Is there common ground between Ethiopian adoptees raised in different countries? What does it feel like to be an Ethiopian raised in a French-speaking part of Canada? Does growing up in a majority-black US county help form racial identity? Where and how do Ethiopian adoptees “fit in” with immigrants, Africans, and their adoptive families? Let’s start the conversation.

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One conversationalist will be Annette Kassaye MacDonald, a 28-year-old Ethiopian adoptee born outside of Gondar, adopted at one year old, raised by white parents in the Eastern Townships, Quebec, and now living in Montreal. She has 4 older siblings born to her adoptive parents and one younger adopted sibling. Annette graduated from Concordia University (Montreal) in 2013 with a B.A. in political science and human rights studies. She speaks English, French, and Spanish.

Annette Kassaye MacDonald

Annette Kassaye MacDonald

Annette will be joined by Aselefech Evans,  a 25-year-old Ethiopian adoptee born in Shashemene, adopted at 6 years old with her twin sister, raised by white parents just outside Washington, DC, and now living in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She is finishing up her degree in sociology from Bowie State University, and plans to go on for her MSW. Aselefech is a columnist for the online adoptee-centric magazine Gazillion Voices, and also is a contributing writer on family preservation issues for Lost Daughters, an independent collaborative writing project edited and authored by adult women who were adopted as children.

Aselefech Evans

Aselefech Evans

Hosting the conversation with me will be Chris Ardern, a Canadian adoptive mom of two young Ethiopian children, now living in Toronto, Ontario. Chris’s son is 3 years old, and her daughter is 6. Chris, her husband, and their children travel to Ethiopia annually to visit with friends and family. She and her family are very involved with the Ethiopian community in Toronto, from playgroups to Amharic classes.

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I’m the writer of this blog, an American adoptive mom of four now-young adults (including Aselefech), and the grandmother of a wonderful 7-year-old. I’m looking forward to my third trip to Ethiopia this July. I live in Seattle, where I am a freelance writer and artist.

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Our topics:

  • Race (What does it mean to be black in America? In Canada? In Quebec? In Washington, DC? What do the terms Ethiopian-American or Canadian-Ethiopian mean?)
  • Openness in adoption (Connections with birth families and Ethiopians: what’s possible, and what is useful?),

and, if we have time,

  • The impact of the Internet (sharing adopted children’s information and stories, accessing birth families, and more).

Please feel free to leave a message below with any questions you’d like to suggest. You can also email me at Maureen (at) Lightofdaystories.com.

We will be taping the conversation Sunday, February 23, and I will post a link to it as soon as possible. My thanks to Chris, Annette, and Aselefech.

And please stay tuned for more upcoming conversations!

Reviewing Books for Mixed Families, Single and LGBT Parents

The wonderful, valuable Facebook resource Mixed Families, Single Parents, LGBT Parents Read and Raise Healthy Children aims to “support self-esteem literacy of children in mixed race, bilingual, and transracial families, or with single or LGBT parents.” When I saw that they were looking for book reviewers, I tossed my hat in that ring.

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And now, I’m going to review Young Adult books for them. I’m thrilled. My first review, of Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, will appear soon. Maniac Magee touches on adoption as well as racial issues. 

I love books. My family is “mixed,” by way of adoption and biology both. Single parents, LGBT parents, and single LGBT parents are all part of our constellation. When my children were little, there were some good books that had illustrations and stories that reflected their realities, but the field is so much bigger now–as is the number of interracial families and the number of families with single parents or LGBT parents, openly acknowledged. To me, an important part of parenting is modeling reading, as well as sharing a love of reading with your kids. How wonderful now to have a much bigger variety of books that reflect the variety of families.

Please join me on this journey. Get a library card for yourself and your kids. Go “like” the Mixed Families book review page. Books (picture, paperback, electronic, hardcover) change the world.

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Beautiful Women, Ugly Realities: Miss America and Miss Saigon

Anyone in any combination of interracial family (marriage, adoption, in-laws, godchildren, beloveds, whatever) becomes attuned to racism in a special way: when we love someone, it’s painful to feel they are being judged by race alone, or to see that their racial group is being disparaged, excluded, or condemned.

For those of us born, raised, and imbued in white privilege, awareness of racism has a particular poignancy–we don’t experience racism often ourselves. I know that I’m sometimes treated in a store very differently than how my daughters or sons are, for example. That’s a trivial example, in light of violent acts, civil rights violations, housing discrimination, and so on.

Yet that’s the point perhaps.  It’s the seemingly trivial things, the ones where people say “Oh, you’re overreacting” that add up and evolve into the big, ugly ones.

So as a nice, white, middle-aged woman, who has had her fair share of privilege just for being born white, and who loves beyond words her children and grandchild of color, I’m writing today about beauty and racism.

This one goes out especially for folks like me, adoptive parents of children from a mother of another color:

Racism is alive and well.

Two current examples:

Miss America: Nina Davuluri, our newly crowned beauty queen, was born in exotic Syracuse, New York. She won, and immediately a big, ugly, racist backlash began on social media.

Here’s a good article from the beauty pageant magazine Forbes: “Why We Need An Indian Miss America.”

It’s important to speak out, and also to listen.

Miss Saigon: This hugely successful play has been presented around the world since it premiered in 1989. It also has been highly controversial.

The poet/spoken word artist/more Bao Phi has written this beautiful, powerful post called War Before Memory: A Vietnamese American Protest Organizer’s History Against Miss Saigon.

Here is an excerpt, describing a recent protest against the upcoming production of Miss Saigon at the Ordway Theater in St. Paul, MN:

The President and CEO of the Ordway, a white woman, suggests that we all see the show so that it can provoke feelings in us. Though several of us have in fact seen the play, I can’t help it. “My entire family was almost wiped out in that war,” I blurt out. “You think I need to go see your play in order to have my emotions provoked?” There goes my resolve to avoid losing my cool.

 I feel raw. Can barely sit still. I want to vent, to rage, to add my perspective as a Vietnamese person, but I also don’t want to dominate the conversation. I listen to several Asian American women talk about how men assume they or their mothers are prostitutes, or see them as submissive sex objects who will do anything for a white man – a behavior that Miss Saigon reinforces. David Mura is there. His daughter has graduated college. My daughter, not yet four years old, is at home. Her middle name is the Japanese name of Esther Suzuki, who died shortly after the second protest of Miss Saigon at the Ordway.

His whole post is prose, it’s poetry, it’s powerful.

I had posted on my blog here about Miss Saigon, and the protest about its Ordway staging. Really, though, I was primarily writing about the production of “How To Be A Korean Woman,” the nearly sold-out, one-woman play, written and performed by Sun-Mee Chomet at the Guthrie Theater. I’ll be attending the play Sunday afternoon, and then participating on the post-play discussion panel following the performance. Here’s the blurb for the discussion: “Moving Forward: Grappling with Unknowns and Never-Will-Be-Knowns” with Michelle K. Johnson and Maureen McCauley Evans. Michelle K. Johnson works for the State of Minnesota’s 4th Judicial District (Hennepin County) as the Guardian ad Litem Volunteer Coordinator. Maureen McCauley Evans is an artist, writer, and editor who spent many years involved with adoption professionally.

Michelle is a transracial adoptee. I feel confident we will talk about race, adoption, and their intersection, as those are all parts of Sun-Mee’s work.

I recognize these are all hard things to talk about sometimes, but they are important. And I’m grateful to those who are speaking out against racism, and helping me learn.

I’ll close today with the words of a brilliant Middle Eastern poet:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
– Rumi

 

Sibling Connections in Adoption

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That’s my 26 year old son Sean with Genet Tsegay, Miss Ethiopia 2012/13, in a photo taken recently in SIlver Spring, Maryland. Sean has found his way into many photos with beautiful women. The icebreaker between these two, though, might have been different from his usual (not that I truly have any idea what “the usual” might be lol). For this meeting, it might have been something like “Hey, my sisters are from Ethiopia,” and maybe a conversation would have started around the not immediately obvious connection between these two young people from very different places.

One of the areas I find most fascinating in adoption is one that needs more research: siblings. I have no siblings. I have four adopted children; my twin daughters are biologically related. Our family has had many conversations along the way about the fact that all the kids are adopted. They’ve wondered what it would be like to be in a blended family, where some children were the biological children of the parents. They could all share their experiences of “He’s not your real brother?” and “She’s your sister?”

My Ethiopian daughters have reconnected with their 5 older Ethiopian siblings. So my daughters have four brothers, but the way they connect is very different at this point. For one thing, they don’t really share a common language with their Ethiopian siblings, and that’s a big deal. My sons have not explored any biological siblings, but sInce they were adopted in the US, we know they share a common language.  How they would differ from their biological siblings (if any) in terms of childhood, economics, education, religion–it’s hard to say right now.

As an African-American young man, Sean has known racism and discrimination–as well as solid community, love from family and friends of different races, and the ability to travel in many cultures, because of his own (adoptive) family. He shares race with his sisters and brother. Believe me, there have been many conversations around skin tones, stereotyping, the travails of being asked “What are you?” especially while growing up, when my children of different shades didn’t fit neatly into a category, particularly when one or both of their white adoptive parents was on the scene. Adoption can be complicated, and transracial adoption adds another layer of complexity.

I’ve known families with bio kids who adopt, and then see how the newly adopted child changes their home life in unimaginable ways, not all positive, and wonder if they did the right thing for their bio child.

I’ve known adoptive families with one adopted child of color, who stands out vividly in family photos. That difference can promote feelings of incredible isolation and difficulties with identity, though I’ve known parents who work to empower children around their uniqueness.

I’ve known adopted children who wonder about their bio siblings, older or younger, who were not adopted, who stayed with the first mother. That has a poignancy all its own.

I’ve known siblings with no biological connection who are deeply connected, the lack of common blood making no difference.

My son Sean would probably have found a way to chat with Mss Ethiopia, but the fact that he has two Ethiopian sisters created an easy connection. Miss Ethiopia is from the Tigray region of Ethiopia,  a college student, studying architecture–in her own way, perhaps also challenging stereotypes. I don’t know how much she and Sean chatted about his sisters–prolly not a whole lot. I love the fact that we can make wonderful connections sometimes, when we don’t expect to.  And I hope that we continue to have conversations about siblings, race, and adoption.

Angela Tucker and Aselefech Evans On Transracial Adoption, Search, and Reunion

Angela Tucker, featured in the new documentary Closure, and Aselefech Evans will talk about transracial adoption, search, and reunion on Tuesday, June 4 at 7 p.m. PDT. You can watch their conversation live on Google+ Hangouts On Air here, or later on a YouTube page I’ll link to after the conversation.

Angela was adopted as a baby from Chattanooga, TN, and grew up in Bellingham, Washington.  Aselefech was 6 years old when she and her twin sister arrived from Ethiopia to join their US family in Maryland. Both Angela and Aselefech have searched for and reunited with their birth families. Each now in their 20’s, Angela and Aselefech will talk about race, hair, identity, loss, grief, and love, hosted by yours truly, Maureen McCauley Evans.

Interracial Families, Border Crossings, and Luck of the Draw

A recent online conversation among parents who’ve adopted transracially and traveled internationally spurred a wide range of responses.  While crossing borders, some had been asked to provide proof that the child was theirs, some had never been asked, some  carry the adoption decree with them in hard copy or via their cell phones, some had been asked for documentation about their racially-matching children, and some whose kids were melting down wildly at border crossings were or were not asked for documentation.

One mom wondered if being asked for documents to prove parenthood was discriminatory against transracial adoption.

My strong feeling is that being asked for documentation at the border to prove you are a family has nothing to do with us personally.  It’s random. Luck of the draw. It has to do with the possibility of kidnapping, one of (I would guess) the many reasons border guards make excellent eye contact and ask questions that seem rude and intrusive.

Another guess is that the likelihood of having a convo with the guard increases for parents traveling alone with their child of another race, a fish in a barrel presentation for asking whether the other parent gave permission for the child to be transported across international borders.

Canada and the US don’t seem all that disparate until you’re crossing the border. The signs, the rules, the “STOP,” the guns, the dogs, the seeing the folks in the car ahead of you being pulled over to the side and all their car doors opened–serious stuff. It took me one garrulous, nervous trip to learn to answer only what is asked.  Nothing bad happened to me–I just had to get over my compulsion to make small talk with someone who is so not interested in small talk.

When my daughter (Ethiopian), my granddaughter (Ethiopian-Latina), and I (white) drove from Seattle to Vancouver, we were asked whether we had permission from my granddaughter’s father to cross into Canada. Before the drive, I had looked at the Canada border crossing info:

If you are travelling with minors, you must carry proper identification for each child such as a birth certificate, passport, citizenship card, permanent resident card or Certificate of Indian Status. If you are not the parent or guardian of the children, you should also have written permission from the parent/guardian authorizing the trip. The letter should include addresses and telephone numbers where the parents or guardian can be reached.

Divorced or separated parents should carry custody or legal separation documents and/or a letter of authorization to facilitate their entry into Canada.

We had our US passports, my granddaughter’s birth certificate, and the custody decree, plus the contact information. We were asked to present them all only going into Canada, and asked for nothing entering the US.

When they were minors, our kids (all transracially adopted) never travelled internationally with us. My daughters travelled with flight attendant escorts from Ethiopia when they came as 6 year olds to the US in 1994.

It occurs to me that if we’d had to present their birth certificates for international travel when the 4 kids were minors, we could have–but those birth certificates are amended, not original, and therefore a legal fiction of sorts. Legally sanctioned, and acceptable.

Final thoughts for parents of transracially adopted children:

How we formed our families is not of interest to border guards. Whether we kidnapped or are kidnapping the child is of great interest.

Interracial families remain novel in most of the world.

Interracial families attract curiosity, smiles, frowns, disdain, questions from strangers, second glances, others of similar circumstance, sometimes none of the above.

Children pay attention to how their parents respond to the questions about the kids from border guards. Or from friends and family. Especially about race and adoption.

Parents are role models for children, whether they like it or not. Showing them good examples for getting through potentially complex situations (such as border crossings where their reality is closely questioned) matters, because it will happen again and again in the lives of transracially adopted children.