I’ve been doing a lot of praying, soul-searching, researching, asking, and reading about race in America since becoming a mixed race family. One thing that infuriates me in regards to race is how (many) white people disregard the importance of race by claiming to be ‘colorblind.’ Racial identity might not feel important to you if you are white, but we can’t deny we have benefited from being white, and to deny that racial inequalities exist only prolongs the cycle of denial and ‘white guilt.’ I am not perfect in any way, and I have so much to learn and can’t do so all on my own, but I acknowledge it is important to be honest and not just claim racial diversity/acceptance/understanding is important without acting on these things myself.
I really enjoyed this article about transracial adoption. They key, I think, is to be able to have open dialogue with people of other races/cultures without being so damn defensive.
Some paragraphs I felt were key:
Transracial adoption is awkward to discuss at first, because although it is designed to chart a radically integrated future, on the surface its structure repeats the segregated past. Just look at the basic structure of a family and apply race to the equation. The most crude way to put it: Whites are in charge, children of color are subordinate, and adults of color are out of the picture.
Gratefulness is the most powerful silencer in the adoption world. Even if a transracial adoptee breaks the silence to make a criticism about his or her experience, the immediate response always is: Would it have been better if you’d never been adopted? It’s a rhetorical cul-de-sac, a false runaround that continues to stifle conversations about more complicated subjects, like what’s the difference between a family that’s tolerant and one that’s actively antiracist, or why are there so many children of color adopted in the first place?
Click this link to read the article in full: Black Kids in White Houses
Tiffany
Trae
