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Part 2 in a 5-part series
“It must have taken a significant effort on (my parents’) part to avoid thinking about and addressing something so radiantly obvious as the Blackness of two of their children in a family, town, and nation dominated by Whiteness.”
In Black Baby White Hands, Jaiya John looks back on his childhood as a black boy being raised by white adoptive parents. He reflects on the pervasiveness of White culture in the United States, relating a conversation he had with one of his white friends about this issue:
“Issues of connection to his parents and family never haunted his thoughts because it was a glaring given; he was born to them. He never had to deal with the fact that everyone around him in his own house, much less the town, had different-colored skin, different hair, different facial features.”
John grew up in the city of Los Alamos, New Mexico, a city that “was decisively White: numerically, but more importantly, culturally…Just about every single White person around me—my family, friends, and community—had grown up White in a country in which White people were the social norm…The lifestyle, personalities, and overriding tone were the kind of Whiteness that stands on the opposite side of the perceptual Grand Canyon from Blackness. Lack of exposure sowed this seed. No appreciable Black community existed within 100 miles.”
John writes:
“Those rare times when I experienced a ‘Black sighting’ in Los Alamos, a strange mix of emotions ran through me: excitement, like when you’re in a place where no one speaks your language, and finally one person appears who can understand you. And shame, because seeing another Black child reminded me of that same Blackness in me that I was at odds with. A wall of fear would defeat my longing to connect with that other child. As though doing so would violate the cultural dictates of Los Alamos.
Continued in the next post
Other posts in this series:
Part 1: Review: Black Baby White Hands by Jaiya John
Coming Next:
Part 3: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands – Growing up Black in a White Culture
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.
