Submitted for your amusement (and my snark) -

[kyburg]

Heartsent's class this last Saturday was titled "Celebrating Your Child's Culture."

It's no surprise - the research bears it out - that transracial adoptees have an additional hurdle. They don't look like Mom and Dad, and white parents tend to raise their non-white kids to be, well, white. (You can insert my HUH anywhere you like.)

Suggestions?

Well, if you don't have any Asian friends, you need to think about cultivating some.
And if your home has no Asian things in it, you might consider adding them now.

..

Y'all can stop laughing now. Jim couldn't wait to spring that on caitlin at Famima when we got there. I could hear her laughing inside the store. (They were still outside.)

I do think we'll join Families with Children From China now, rather than later -

But it anyone wants to know if I've ever encountered racism myself? I think this qualifies - amusement aside. Benign, well-meant, and all that.

And my lack of alarm is very typical - to me, there is no real danger in racism, except from annoyance. That's my white-bread legacy. I can be "painted" any color I allow - my race - and the entitlements that come with it - permit it. But it's only paint, after all - or is it?

Depends.

We'll likely add a number of events to the calendar - we already do Chinese New Year, and we're aware of the Moon Festival - and yeah, it's likely we'll add Chinese school on the weekends when she/they hit school age. (We'll go too. Oh, throw us in the briar patch.)

But - we'll also continue to do Nisei Week. The party the Swiss Park throws around the first of August. We'll go to Solvang. And Knoxville. And Kailua-Kona.

And Olvera Street. Maybe, I should add Christmas tamales to the menu for Christmas Eve this year. (GHAD I LOVE THEM.)

And make sure they know the story behind The Ramona Pagent, same as I did growing up.

Our culture. Built out of many diverse origins - but it'll be ours.

White people scare us. I swear, the t-shirts should be made.

Comments

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

I was born in Korea and adopted as an infant by American parents.

It's been an interesting life, and honestly? No complaints. It's hard for me to structure my thoughts on it, though. That being said, if you have any questions about the whole trans-racial adoption thing from the adoptee's side, am more than happy to answer.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

That tells me a bit about your age, aside from the fact you've omitted the year from your profile. :)

Really, it's the research from the Korean adoptees that drives a lot of the interest with the current China adoptees...that, and the sheer number of them being done. (Cottage industry in products, services, books - you name it. You have a kid from China, you're a focus group.)

I like hearing the 'no complaints.' I have Swiss family that adopted from Tibet and Korea themselves, and that's much the same I hear from them. In addition, the Tibet adoption was open enough that he was able to go back and reconnect with them once he was old enough - and he returned to Switzerland by choice afterward.

It continues to surprise me how many resources I have to tap - not that I planned it that way. It's just a very, very pleasant surprise. I'd be willing to listen to anything you think is important - questions?

Dude, did your parents raise YOU to be white?! (Holy cow. I'd like to know how you'd classify that.)

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

Heheh. As it happens, I can still see thirty in the rear-view, although it's slowly starting to fade in the distance behind me. :)

I can think of three distinct episodes where the race thing was kind of weird in my life. The funny one was the guy at the bus stop who told me I spoke real good English. The predictable one was the bully in first grade who did the "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!" taunting thing. The one that I didn't know what to do with happened when I was 17, studying at a program for high schoolers at an Ivy League uni.

My roommate had met a guy who was Korean-American, Korean parents. He was over at our dorm one afternoon and we got to chatting, and at some point I mentioned I was adopted. "Oh," he said, "you're a Twinkie." A what? "A Twinkie. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside."

I kind of blew my stack at that, although I couldn't explain why. I think what really got me was that I didn't think of myself as having been "raised white". I certainly hadn't been raised Korean by Korean parents, but ... what did "white" mean, anyway?

It's kind of glib, but I like to think now that I was pretty much raised to be me, you know? To pick out what I liked and what I identified with, and what was meaningful to me, etc. In the last few years I've gotten more interested in Korean culture and food, but it's not that I particularly feel I was deprived of it growing up.

This is what I mean about poorly-organized thoughts. I suppose the main thing is, it was never a big deal within the family, which for the most part kept it from being a big deal outside the family either. It was what it was.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

I kind of blew my stack at that, although I couldn't explain why.

Easy enough to explain - he meant it in a derogatory way. It implies that you are fake.

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- the derogation was clear. Looking back at it now, it was also the idea that I was somehow less than the sum of my parts -- neither white nor Asian nor worthy of being considered as either.

(What the confusion at the time says about my self-esteem as a teenager is left as an exercise to the reader, but those issues had everything to do with being a quiet bookish girl and nothing to do with being adopted.)

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You ought to see the pissing contests that go on over here between ABA and JOB Chinese.

Go ahead. You don't know the anagram, ask.

[hangingfire.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. I know both, actually, having friends of Filipino, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese descent and varying degrees of separation from the familial country of origin. Luckily, they don't get into the pissing contests, but the anagrams do get bandied about rather freely. Fortunately for this group, all in good fun.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I always find white people trying to be all "ooo, I am totally into foreign cultures" to be a cross between amusing and offensive.

Without learning Chinese and spending some serious time in a Chinese environment, you're only going to get the surface, whited-down, TV-commercial version of Chinese culture.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

It can be a little better than that, if you make the serious effort, but it's never going to be Authentic Chinese - because you're not. And frankly, the real idea is to give her or him (1) the opportunity of going on on their own to learn more (it's equally wrong to Force The Kid into something they don't want) and to (2) make them comfortable in their own skin.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You know, I think there are always going to be people who don't feel they "belong" anywhere - if they can't boot other people out first.

Me, I don't define anything by exclusion - and to me, race and culture are happy accidents. Good, bad and indifferent.

So help me - nobody else gets to decide if I'm a "real" whatever, but me.

"Nov shmoz ka pop?"

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Ahh, yer a real freenbean, you are.

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

Well, being that you and Jim are honorary Asians, I think you'll do fine. If you need Caitlin and me to speak Chinese with the kid, we'll be happy to. I think it'd be important for the kid to learn and hear Chinese at an early age so that she'll have an easier time learning it in school.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

(And us too. It makes no sense to teach half the family, after all.)

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

YOu'll need to order takeout at least twice a week and be sure you can use those chopsticks too..... *boggles* Well-meaning, I guess, but *wince*

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Sweetie, I make my own - and I can get better. *snickers*

I'm just the wrong color, on first blush, for anyone to think differently. Welcome to the club, cracker!

[moropus.livejournal.com]

Don't forget fairy tales. Other cultures do have different fairy tales.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

And if you look at what passes for "mainstream" here in the States?

All origined elsewhere. Yup.