Part 4 in a 5-part series

In Black Baby White Hands, Jaiya John describes the special relationship he and his sister, Kristin, had growing up (Jaiya was a black adopted child; Kristin was a white birth child). Jaiya and Kristin went through school in the same grade, but they only had one class together during their entire schooling. They saw each other during recess, at lunch, in between classes or after school.

Jaiya writes:

“It was reassuring to see my sister in that mass of students. Even if just in a passing moment, it soothed my shyness and insecurities to run across someone who had known me almost all my life.”

He also felt awkwardly uncomfortable, because he was always conscious that Kristin was a fair-skinned redhead and he was a “tall, lanky Black boy.” Jaiya sensed that when people saw the two of them together, it was cause for them to recognize how he stood out, not only racially, but because he had a White sister.

When Jaiya saw Kristin coming across the playground, he’d retreat, afraid that he’d be an embarrassment to her. Meanwhile, Jaiya basked in the popularity of being kind, funny, and athletic. So while Jaiya was feeling like a freakish alien in a white world, Kristin was jealous of Jaiya’s popularity. “Her torment was popularity; mine was race,” he writes.

Kristin, too, felt like a minority, as the only girl in a sibling group with two adopted and Black brothers. Jaiya saw Kristin as the minority of one in a peer group of three siblings, whereas he saw himself as a minority of two in a family of seven, in a broader family of dozens; a minority in a community of thousands and an object of scorn for too many in a nation of millions.

As he and Kristin reached adolescence, people who didn’t know them assumed they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Interestingly, the prejudice was directed at them by both whites and blacks when they went out in public together.

When they encountered Black people, “first came the quick glance, their peripheral spotting of a Black male walking with a White female. Then came that energy wave of rising indignity, disgust, revolt, anger, and a desire to say something. I could virtually hear their thoughts gritting through their skulls. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, boy. Last came the physical look of disgust as the person barely held her tongue, barely concealed his flames.”

Jaiya writes, “I detested seeing people of my own race fall prey to the same kinds of prejudiced assumptions and dehumanizing attitudes that had always plagued us as targets.”

Other posts in this series:

Part 1: Review: Black Baby White Hands by Jaiya John


Part 2: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands –The pervasiveness of White culture


Part 3: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands – Growing up Black in a White Culture


Coming Next:

Part 5: How to Handle the ‘Ancestral Map’ School Assignment

For more news and information about adoption, please visit my Web site, www.laurachristianson.com.