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Part 3 in a 5-part series
Continued from the previous post
In Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children, Cheri Register touches on many of the same subjects as Jaiya John does in Black Baby White Hands. Register writes:
“In calling ourselves ‘white,’ we imagine ourselves unmarked by race, humanity distilled to its purest, most natural form. Everyone else is named and defined according to how they deviate from the basic human type we presume to be. We are indeed color-blind, but it’s our own color we’re blind to. How and where we live, how we see the world, what we believe, what we take for granted, what we fear, the way we walk and speak, the values we hold dear—all depend on our whiteness.”
Jaiya John believes that part of the reason he and his (black adopted) brother Greg were accepted in the white enclave of Los Alamos, New Mexico, “was because we were so rare. We really didn’t represent an intrusion into the way of life of people in the community. We were being raised culturally to mirror them.”
John comments that his family and the members of his community ignored his race vigorously. They didn’t make it a priority to interact with or seek exposure to African American people or culture. On the rare occasions when they did engage with African American culture, “it felt unnatural, given our normal way of life. It had the feel of a special event involving ‘special people’, rather than just another family experience. John’s family chose to be color-blind in hopes that “a contrived sense of sameness would help me feel at home.”
But “how can you ignore my Blackness?” John wonders. “How can you treat all your children, both White and Black, the same if when the Black children go out the door and into the world, that world treats us differently?
More than anything, John yearned for “secure and meaningful attachments to other African American people.” He wanted the essence of his identity to be validated, not ignored.
“The growth of any positive identity in me was not inherently present just by being loved. I longed to be basted in affirmation. I needed my family to be the first and last bastion for my racial validation. I needed them to actively plant the seed in me that this racial part of my person was a good thing.”
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
Coming Next:
Part 4: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands – Adoptive Siblings: Black Brother, White Sister
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.
We read this book while waiting for our son to be born. We are White & his Birth parents are Kenyan. This book had alot to do with our really making it clear to his Birth parents how much we desired them to remain actively involved in a truely open adoption. They were happy to do so. We have also called on good friends and family who are Black to assist us when it comes to racial issues, but we do live in a very white rural community. We drive our children 45 min to send them to a school that is more diverse, but it still is very white.
While I feel I “got alot” from the book to help me in my transracial parenting, I do agree with the author when he describes himself as “extremely sensitive”. I also noted he did not seem to share his complete experience with his adopted brother who is also Black. He did not seem to have an extra bond with him because of their similar experience being Black adoptees in a White family.
I do feel parents should be prepared to be unprepared when adopting a child of another race. I also feel that it can be a wonderful positive experience. Welcoming my son has really opened my eyes to the world of White privledge that I took for granted.