all buttoned up.

Right to Comfort, March Edition

I no longer roll in circles with people who speak wisdom into my life as a matter of divine purpose. I do, however, roll with people who speak a lot of truth into my life in the name of survival. Their words are no less potent, no less encouraging, no less face-wrecking than the ones that were prayed over me since childhood. They are words shared by people who see me and see how I land and where I need to Get It Together.They also see my children and my parenting (for better/worse) and they see my partner-- tired eyes and shaking head-- and then they go in with love. 

When I left the church, I assumed I would no longer be held accountable for my behavior in some kind of spiritually lofty way... I was wrong. Or maybe we just fell into the wrong crowd? I have been thinking about what this looks like and how we buoy and encourage each other while still holding ourselves and others to a high standard of compassion and discourse. And I've been thinking that all the best people I know who are able to navigate life in this way-- which also requires humbleness and a small amount of self-deprecation-- are very curious. Some are curious by nature and some through practice. This curiosity braves discomfort, navigates treacherous dialogue, and claims very little stake in being right. It is a bright light that holds uncomfortable truths without judgement and grasps on to unfamiliar narratives in order to understand the world a bit better. As an in-curious person by nature, I am drawn to this kind of open-endedness and work to practice it. I'm a lousy beginner, though, and try hard not to walk the beam between multiple narratives and high moral standards. 

Curiosity is not the same thing as being open-minded, although the two often cross paths. Portland is a breeding ground for The Most Open-Minded People in the World. But try moving people toward a narrative where their comfort is not the highest priority and you will be met with a virtual wall. Or in the case or school boundaries or low income housing or racial equity, sometimes a real life wall. This Right to Comfort is a tool of I'm adept at wielding-- because at it's core, it's a tool of Whiteness. I'm working on it. 

****

Angela Tucker wrote a wonderful piece on transracial adoption and gentrification. She details the conundrum of white families moving into neighborhoods to provide a cultural mirror for their children of colour while systematically displacing the diverse community they seek. Paul and I moved to our neighborhood 7 years before we adopted August but timing hardly makes a difference as our impact on our part of town has essentially been the same. 

What Happens When White Parents Adopt Black Children and Move to Black Neighborhoods

The Summerquists’ Black neighbors teach their children about the historically Black neighborhood in which they now live. Growing up around other Black folks offers their sons firsthand perspectives on micro-aggressions and insights on racism that Brad and Vickie would not be able to provide from their own experiences.

And while they’re grateful they’ve been able to surround their sons with people who mirror them, Brad and Vickie’s pride is complicated by the knowledge of how the Central District is changing, and how the economics of Seattle continue to impoverish Black people—as well as their own role in these changes.

I love the way Ms Tucker neither absolves nor admonishes the choices we've made as adoptive parents. She just kind of opens the door to discomfort and welcomes us all in to have a seat. I relish this kind of invitation. We bear responsibility for it all. Besides, Paul and I relinquished our right to privacy, our right to comfort and our right to invisibility-as-family, the moment we signed the papers. Now our job is to somehow mitigate the price our children are asked to pay for our decisions. And within that process, mitigate the damage we've caused by participating in a system that rewards Whiteness (see: adoption, housing, employment). 

****

Paul was describing the impact of lack of cultural responsiveness in education on one of our children: "He is unable to perform Whiteness in the same way that his brothers do... and it's killing him and he's exhausted by the constant policing. He's literally stopped being able to take in information because his brain is constantly trying to figure out who is out to get him, real or not".

I thought about this while I was sitting in a workshop and someone who worked in HR shared out at how their audits consistently show the racial disparities in promotions. "Managers usually talk about communication styles as an excuse for non-promotion... and how people are not ready. It's glaring and predictable." 

In Defense of Backtalk

When the powerful and privileged insist on politeness as the prerequisite for listening, they gain two advantages: First, they shift the conversations from the content of an issue — the morality of the subject — to one about the forms being used to advance that conversation. Second, the marginalized don’t decide what tone is too forceful; the tastes of the poor don’t determine what’s profane and what’s acceptable. No, the weak never get to dictate terms to the strong. Our models of appropriateness come from those with power: the educated, the privileged, and those emulating them.

This succinct and biting piece by Miguel Clark Mallet stopped me cold when I read it. It is everything I know and everything I choose to ignore in myself. 

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I'm working on a change of venue for all of this. It's not ready and I promise that it will not be flashy or face-y (mine). My friends are helping and I hope you'll follow me there when it's ready. It's also March, which means the roses I'm thinking have been cut back, I'm thinking about peas and Track Season Is About to Ruin My Life. So, I'll keep you posted.  

The Man Who Walks Among the Stars

 

 

I was going through YouTube videos of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip this week. I drank tea and felt the most Canadian. And then I found this video of him accepting an honour at the Assembly of First Nations in 2016. There is Gord and Justin Trudeau, surrounded by First Nations People. They pray a blessing on him and they both turn and follow the elders' lead. The elders give him a Spirit Name and an Eagle Feather.

 

And then I cried. 

 

****

 

I spend hours at my kids' schools with an open heart and clear eyes and I'm watching staff cause real harm to their Black and Brown co-workers and students. I listen as people whine about their workload and having too much on their plate. I watch their defensive posture and the constant reframing of their own victimhood within our "system". These are the same staff that have spent years in racial equity training. Some of them write articles about social justice and educational equity. And. They've stopped listening, stopped examining their own stuff, and use their fragility as defensive armor. They refuse to examine how their systems create barriers and how their weaknesses are as pronounced as the weaknesses they lament in their students. I look in the mirror and interrogate myself. 

 

"Did you help or hurt today?"

 

"Did you burden someone with your fragility?" 

 

"What price did your children pay for your behaviour?"

 

And then. I participate in beautiful and healing conversations with women relish in exploring their weaknesses. I am able to have a life giving conversation with an educator who knows they aren't seeing what I am seeing and "can you help me see what I'm missing...?". I am delighted and laugh and thank them for holding space for being wrong.

 

I was typing away on FB with friends and people that I admire from a distance about the things we lose when we get defensive. The greatest of these is a chance to grow and learn but equally important are relationships, community, and the practical act of living well. My friend said: "I'm often still operating from a grid of "I'm the expert on me" when there are so many people around me who have a very clear picture of how I come across." I think about my children and the laser focus in which they have me figured out. This sends me reeling. 

 

I have been convinced that once we get on a path that centers race, we will stop settling for incremental change. I believe that it doesn't have to be an either/or: that you can hold _____ and center race in the same hand. You can be a person of deep faith and grow in both your faith and understanding that passive resistance is not resistance at all. You can be committed to socialism and grow in both your understanding of class stratification and the way that race is the undercurrent that determines benefit. You can live in a homogenous place and celebrate your culture and still unpack whiteness by teaching your children about the ways that cultures (of all kinds) normalize values. 

 

My children feel like their world would be much easier if I could just ease up on the screen time restrictions during the week. 

 

****

My dear, sweet child who was our only child when I started writing here, is now one of many. He bears this truth with pride and embarrassment. This family is his greatest teacher and his greatest frustration. I don't know if he understands his proximity to Blackness as a gift. I think he does. I warn him to not use it as shield from doing better than we have done or against pushing people harder than we have pushed. 

 

I need Anti-Racist Heroes to guide him. He will need to pattern his life after greatness, but work hard not to appropriate their message or accept their example wholesale. I watch Gord again-- accepting his gift and his name. He is weeping, and the focus is on the people and voices he sought to elevate-- not on him. And I cried because this is not how we do things in this country. Gord saw it as a gift. So often the helpers overshadow the people we serve to help. Men center themselves in conversations about women. White women center themselves in conversations for Black Women. CIS Het folks center themselves in conversations for Trans people. In my world, educators center themselves in the conversations about the children they are charged to educate. 

 

If I am angry I wonder why you are not.

If I am fine, I assume we are all fine.

We are not all fine. 

 

****

I am reading Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. It is for a book group and I have been reading interviews with Mr. Kendi to try and sort out how to go about discussing the first part of the book. He told Christina Greer:

I would tell my 18-year-old self — and I wish I’d written this book for my 18-year-old self — that the only thing wrong with black people is that we think something is wrong with black people. I spent the better part of my early years thinking that the main problem was black people. And then I switched from that to thinking that the main problem was white people. And, eventually, I realized that the main problem was racist people, was people who were executing these policies out of self-interest. That’s what I would have told myself: that there’s nothing wrong with black people and there’s nothing extraordinary — the only thing extraordinary about white people is that they think something is extraordinary about white people.

 

Gord Downie's Secret Path "This is the best thing I've ever done... nothing else matters to me"

 

 

Pinpointing Racial Discrimination in By Government Officials 20,000 emails, folks. 20,000

The findings appeared to be a striking indication of racial discrimination in seemingly benign and mundane interactions. The tendency to ignore emails sent by African-Americans was particularly pronounced in sheriffs’ offices, but it was also evident in school districts and libraries.

In a clever twist, the authors analyzed whether the replies were polite, counting responses that included either the sender’s name or words like “hi,” “Mr.,” “dear,” “good” (which captures “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “have a good day”) or “thank” (which captures both “thanks” and “thank you”). By this measure, those with apparently African-American names received 8 percent fewer polite responses than those with white names.

And since you might have the tissues at the ready anyway... Lost Together by the Blue Rodeo with Gord Downie earlier this year. 

Missed Opportunities. Part Two. (Adoption. The Bit Where it Starts to Smart.)

"I am not writing an adoption blog", I said a few years ago.

"I'm writing a fabric/sewing/kid/vintage crap blog".

Adoption has been a part of my life and my story for a really long time. It was there long before we filled out the paperwork for August or talked about how our family was going to look. The definition of family, the trauma of family, the complication of family, the appearance of family-- these are concepts that have woven their way through my life and the creation of my worldview more than any other force. When I cracked the door open on our family in this space, I should have either slammed it shut again, or swung wide the gates. I do not get emails or inquiries about bust adjustments or vintage crap, I only get emails about adoption. 

And now, it seems, The Blog is Dead? Maybe I've missed my chance to make it right. 

I want to make sure that I have not misled you or romanticized the choices we have made. I believe, with all my heart, that adoption is about being family for another family. It is about sharing the burden. It is not about finding a child or being chosen from a pile of bios-- it is making a commitment to be family to a family that cannot for whatever reason. I am not naive about the reasons that children are placed. I know that in this country, poverty, addiction, mental illness, and lack of support or safety nets create deep chasms. I know that there are institutional systems that make it easier for a white woman like me to adopt a healthy brown or black baby than it might be for that baby to stay with the family that it was born into. I know that many children are growing up with people who are not keeping them safe. I know that thousands of children are aging out of the foster care system every year and that many of them long for a family to call their own, whilst people like me pay thousands of dollars in fees to bring a tiny person into our home. I know that many mothers making the choice to place their infant, feel as if they have no choice at all-- while we are being fed the "brave and loving choice" narrative by the industry. I recognize that the story or history we are given during the process of placement might be a different story if we look for it in a year or three or ten. There is so much that we cannot prepare for. There are forces way beyond our control.

There are things, though, that are well within our grasp. We need to identify and hold onto those things. We need to start by telling the truth. We need to figure out if we're up for this kind of parenting... for this kind of family. We need to decide if there are ways we can help and support families that does not involve complete separation. We need to be able to allow people to change and grow and get the help they need. We are living proof that parenthood-via-adoption can be beautiful. I would also like to recognize that for as many happy and healthy situations adoption might create, it can also be devastating for kids and families.

I am parenting children that don't look like me, but that doesn't mean I've entirely dealt with all my bias about race or privilege. It's hard work, because I'm choosing to do the work. If you care about people who do not share your skin colour, you must do the work. Just because we have a biracial president does not mean that we are living in a post-racial society. Just because we participated in Orphan Sunday at our church, it does not mean we don't passively participate in the systems that create these orphans.

***

Paul's dad passed away this last year. He was kind and generous and he and Paul had been very close. He was also an unapologetic bigot. When we told him about our plans for adoption he asked us, very simply, to choose another way. He told us that we would have to choose between having a relationship with him or adding baby to our family through adoption. And so, almost seven years ago, Paul faced his dad and made that choice. We were not blind to the potential problem. It wasn't as though we had not expected a difficult transition. Many people had tried to excuse his behaviour, "well, that's just the way things used to be." They tried to tell us that he would change his mind based on a story they had heard from their brother or cousin or friend, "he'll take one look at how happy you all are, and come around! He loves you guys so much-- it will be okay!". It was not okay. It was terrible. Paul had to choose his family over his family.

YOU MIGHT HAVE TO CHOOSE YOUR FAMILY OVER YOUR FAMILY. He never met three of his grandchildren. The last time he saw Sam was just after Sam's third birthday. We left room for him to change his mind... we left room for reconciliation. When Paul called to tell him about Manny, his dad responded by asking about the weather. Still, we never, ever left room for having to apologize for our children. It is the barest of minimums that we could meet. It was an early reminder that Love Does Not Always Conquer All in human relationships.

***

Our family sometimes invites unsolicited attention or makes other people uncomfortable. There are times when we trigger people's frustration or contempt. Their disdain of our choices comes from their own experience or bias. Sometimes (more when the boys were smaller) women stop me in the grocery story with small talk, and I know they're checking to see if the boys elbows are ashy or if their clothes are clean. They might finger their hair and cluck their tongues at me-- offering advice or encouragement. On good days, I am grateful for their attention and I know that they are not looking out for me, but for my children. When I have run out of the house without paying attention to the lotion situation, or I have gone too long between visits to the barbershop, I cringe and smile and offer up lame excuses. Sometimes the You're-Not-The-Boss-Of-Me version of myself (think strong minded 15 year-old) rears its head and I feel self-righteous and frustrated. This is not helpful. We are choosing-- without apology-- to raise our kids within a community where they have role models and peers that look like them (yep, even in Portland!). This means we will face criticism. We are not alone. There are families-via-adoption (even international adoption!), that are doing this work every, single day. I am forcing myself to show up even when I'm uncomfortable. I am constantly acknowledging that we probably don't know what we're doing. I am getting better at asking for help. I see my son stare adoringly at black families and I want to wrap him up and tell him that it's okay and I know that it is confusing. I want to work harder and do better to make sure that he never has to apologize for who he is or how he was raised.

Most days I am a generic teeth brushed/don't hit your brother/homework done sort of parent. Most of the time our lives are filled with the every day stuff that has nothing NOTHING to do with these conversations. Sometimes I'm super crappy at keeping the every day stuff all together, let alone dealing with these Big Conversations that we are committed to having. These conversations are going to come whether or not we're ready for them. In an effort to avoid being knocked flat on my ass, we are trying really hard to have them.

What I want to say is this: all of this... all of this is the very, very least I can do. This is the barest of minimums that we must undertake.

This is the least I can write about. Swing wide the gates.

 

 

Missed Opportunties. Part One. (Adoption)

(photo by Posy Quarterman)

I have been trying to figure out how to preserve some of this writing (print it? book? pdf to hard drive?) and in doing so, I have been reading back through the last 9 years. I wince. I laugh. I think, "woman, you used to sew a lot of clothes. You used to sew a lot of everything". I'm happy I wrote about the kids when they were little. This is their baby book in so many ways. I am doing a lot of remembering which is great! The typos are making me crazy. You'd never know that I aced AP English in HS.

***

I was thinking about an all day seminar Paul and I took after we had submitted our adoption application. It was an orientation at the agency for prospective parents. They covered a lot that day, but the part that has lived with me-- haunted me!-- is the presentation by a woman they had brought in to cover cultural competency. She had been raised in a town South of Portland. She had brothers. She laughed about learning how to hunt and fish as a child while simultaneously learning (as most black and brown kids on this coast learn) "I-5 Stay Alive". She talked about "black hair" and what shampoo is good for babies. She left a card for a salon she liked. She talked about her life. She answered a few awkward questions. She was lovely. It was fine.

Sort of.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? This was not the information these families needed. This was a woman who had been raised by the parents that she was born to. She had a large family and support system. She did not indicate that she knew anything about adoption. Had she placed a baby? Had she been placed as one? At the time, I remember leaving that day feeling like it had been a giant waste of time. This was not helpful. Where were the adult adoptees in the room? Where were the people to say "I grew up in a home like yours and I turned out all right. Here is why"? Or better, where were the people in the room to talk about how it gone horribly wrong? They were missing, and for good reason. This is not a narrative that most agencies have sought to understand.

This was most frustrating because we felt like our agency was sensitive to these issues. As a part of our home study we had to complete a course covering racial identity and the ways it affected our worldview. We were asked to write a series of small essays detailing our history of prejudice, how race had affected our lives, and what practical things we were doing to prepare to raise a child of colour in the place that we had chosen to live. There was required reading. I read beyond the list-- books by adult adoptees-- all of which left me sobbing. I watched documentaries. I read about the history of transracial adoption in this country which included a lengthy account of how and why many social workers and adoption professionals lobbied against it. I read blogs by first/birth/natural parents who had placed their children. I read about the politics of hair and skin. I made sure our bookshelf was full of kids books that would reflect all the colours in our family. We had purposefully chosen to live in a multiculturaI neighborhood. In many ways, we had spent years preparing for this time. I told myself we would figure it out. I told myself that we were as ready as anybody. I told myself it would be okay. It was a baby! All babies need the same thing, yes?

***

I was reminded about all of this in the last few weeks after the fallout from Melissa Harris Perry's segment and subsequent (moving) apology. In response, NPR then aired a segment last week from an adoptive parent and author detailing their own experience parenting very young brown children (this is a beautiful and powerful response to that segment). This was a VERY difficult piece to listen to. This interview was not the story that prospective adoptive parents need to hear. These are not the kind of stories that should instill confidence in the adoption industry. These are, instead, the stories that we tell ourselves to make each other feel better. White folks, these are the stories we tell when we are trying to ignore the fact that we are participating in a system that is built around a crisis of poverty and inequity.

I want to make it clear that I love my children with the fire of a 100 suns. This love moves me to talk about things that make me uncomfortable. This love moves me to find peace in the way that multiple narratives (some of them conflicting) around our story can exist simultaneously. I recognize that this is our story. I know that no two families are the same. My understanding of these issues is evolving and I'm grateful for the people in my life who have suffered through those changes with me. That said, being a parent is not easy and it is often defined by heartbreak and a level of selflessness that would bring a monk to his knees. Being a family built by adoption, particularly transracial adoption, thrusts that heartbreak into the public sphere. If you are an adoptive parent you must make peace with that heartbreak. We have been complicit in our child's lost history. If we cannot acknowledge and seek to understand that loss, how will they be able to?

***

There is a Part Two somewhere in me. (And some of that aforementioned sewing... This is the only way I can think to maintain this space. Multiple narratives, people!) There are folks that write about these issues with far greater poise and power than I do. If you are a person who is looking at becoming a parent through adoption, SEEK OUT THESE PEOPLE. Seek out the hard stories. Make room for criticism of your choices. Understand that much of the criticism might be valid or may come from some place outside your experience.

Do not buy into the myth that Love Is All You Need. If that were true, my babies would not have been placed.

The Unbearable Whiteness of (My) Being. On Words.

Talking about race as a white, middle-ish class, woman is super fun.

So why do it?

***

We have this funny story that we often tell each other about when our children first notice or didn't notice race. We tell it when we're feeling awkward or uncomfortable. We tell it when we're feeling like we need to console ourselves over the deficiencies in our own cultural competency. Sometimes we tell it innocently, because "kids! They say crazy stuff!". The story itself is not wrong, but the way we expect our kids to have a language around race is. We fool ourselves into thinking that being well adjusted and open minded must transfer to our kids by osmosis.

And it does, sort of, but it is not enough. Our kids see hair colour and skin colour just as clearly as my pre-verbal kid can identify the difference between a fork and a spoon. They accept it as normal until one day they don't.

When does that happen? How do we flip that narrative? How do we give our children the language to navigate those differences that they most certainly notice? I don't believe for a second that our little people are colour blind. But I do believe that they don't have the vocabulary or the safe spaces to talk about it. And if they don't have the language for these things, they might begin to believe that those differences are wrong or bad. It's not intentional-- for the most part-- it's just that it's hard! And what if I say the wrong thing?! And aren't we supposed to be beyond all of this?

I know. I get it. Let me assure you: we are not beyond it.

I have to prepare my children for the world we live in as much as I would rather prepare them for the world I hope for. So. In our house we talk about what the N word is and how some people use it with each other to take away its power and that is none of our business. We talk about how it's not an okay word in our family or to use with anyone else. We talk about how it has been used for a very long time to make people feel less than are by the way the look. We speak about these things because these words have been directed towards people we care about. We talk about them because these words are going to be directed at us. We speak about what an ALLY is and how to be one. To Sam, we discuss about how intentional we have to be to make friends with people who might have different backgrounds from us. We explain to him how sometimes our brains have been trained to make assumptions about the *goodness* or compatibility of a person based on what we see on the outside. We tell him that it's hard sometimes, and people won't always understand. It's difficult to be rejected. I tell him that I have not always been the best example of this hard work, but that I am trying.

Sometimes they rolls their eyes and we hear, "I KNOW I KNOW PLEASE STOP". But we do it anyway.

Thankfully, we don't have to do this job by ourselves. We have gracious people around who are open hearted and reflective and are willing to have these hard conversations with us even if they are thinking, "I KNOW I KNOW PLEASE STOP". The boys have friends and adults in their worlds who come from a variety of backgrounds. We help them process what they're feeling or how they are being made to feel. As for me, I say the wrong things. I don't always recognize my own privilege. I'm working on it. I don't have it all figured out.

My friend and I were talking about the divisive words our kids are exposed to. I was explaining some of the challenges we were facing, in part because so many (white) adults don't realize how important it is to identify the hard stuff (for lots of complicated reasons). Besides the fact that she now blames me for ruining her life, she realized very quickly that we can't be complacent. She's part of an interracial family, she's a disability advocate, she is smart and kind, and still, there was a piece that she realized she was missing:

"...I’m proud of myself, though, that I never use hurtful words tied to a person’s skin color, language, disability, or sexual orientation. But now I’m wondering…is this enough? Is it enough to not use these powerful and hurtful words, or do I need to do more? Do they know it’s NOT OK to stand by when they hear others using these words? Do they know it IS OK to stand up for their friends or classmates who are being hurt? Do they know that sticking up for another child would make me proud? Honestly, I don’t know.

Somehow I’ve been assuming that my silence (by not using these words) is teaching them all they need to know. But I’m not sure. I think I need to talk with them, very simply and clearly, about the words we use, the words we hear (or might hear), the power of those words to hurt, and how we should react when it happens. I'm not sure why I haven't done this yet...in a very direct fashion…but I haven't. That will change...starting today."

  ***

For Whites (Like Me): On White Kids

A great summary and response of the very important piece, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

My dad made a short documentary this year with his friend, Isadore. Yummo Comes Home: A Residential School Healing Story. It is primarily aimed at helping churches understand the importance they play in the Truth and Reconciliation Process in Canada, but it also seeks to educate folks on the devestating impacts of privilege among the dominant culture. Plus there are some sweet, old pics of my dad and grandparents.