A rant. Separately: a conversation about Asian kids raised in white families.

[randomness]

Well-meaning white people genuinely irritate me.

Yes, the country you live in is racist. How nice of you to notice. I have been living here all of my life. Where have you been?

Oh, that's right. In your white bubble you don't see race. Because we don't exist there in your nice, upper-middle class suburban life.

This isn't the only time race has been a problem in this country. It won't be the last. But I'm sure next time I'll hear the same shock and dismay from well-meaning white people who will, after a decent interval, go back to living their lives, not seeing race. That's what's happened every other time, and it won't be the last time, either.

Meanwhile, I'll go on living in the same place I've been living all my life.

---

Background: There was an acquaintance at the annual quasi-reunion I go to after Thanksgiving. I was talking with a group of friends when the subject of race and kids growing up came up. I started to mention how I was really glad I started school in New Jersey when he butted into the group I was talking with and cracked a joke about that, to which I said, "No, really, and I'll tell you why: The school I went to in New Jersey was mixed-race, and I basically never got crap about race when I was there. When I got to the all-white school system in Connecticut I spent from 3rd to 9th grade getting crap all the time. But what that New Jersey school taught me was that all the racists in my school in Connecticut were crazy, not me."

At that, he winced, turned away, and didn't talk to me for the rest of the party.

I have no doubt he was well-meaning. He tends to be, but he also tends not to deal well with unwelcome news, particularly that which tweaks his white straight male privilege. I imagine he feels like I was unfairly hostile or something.

One of the other people in the conversation then asked me what kinds of things happened to me at school. So I told her. She went to the same school I did when I was being harassed, but apparently managed not to see any of it when it was happening.

She didn't seem very happy she'd asked, either.

---

All that said, I did have a good conversation with one of my other classmates who I hadn't seen in ages. She'd come out (which I'd heard about from her brother some years ago) started a partnership with her then SO over a decade ago and adopted two Chinese daughters (one from Kunming, and one from a small town in Anhui province). The relationship had broken up a few years later, leaving her a single mother with two kids and a pediatrics practice.

Making the best of things she encouraged her daughters to learn about their country of origin, and took them on a trip to China organized by other Asian adoptees. We talked about China, learning Mandarin, and identity for Asian kids raised in white families. Her daughters were really encouraged to learn Mandarin by the trip, as they were unable to speak to people who had been in their lives before their adoption unless they had an interpreter.

One point she observed is that Asian children raised in a white family have one identity when everyone knows them as part of their family; they are treated in a particular way by people who know who they are and that they're part of a white family. Once they leave that context, however, they get treated like any other Asian person, and this can require adjustment.

This is obviously not an adjustment I have ever had to make, so it was intriguing to hear about.

That conversation also reminded me just how many friends I have who are either raising children of a different race or are children who are of a different race from the rest of their families.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

She didn't seem very happy she'd asked, either.

I...bet if I'd been the one in her shoes in that conversation I wouldn't have seemed very happy I'd asked either. I think what I'd actually *be* unhappy about was the fact that I hadn't *noticed* what you'd gone through. I'd certainly be embarrassed by it. But I don't think the difference between looking like I wished I hadn't asked and looking like I wished I hadn't been been oblivious would be significant or obvious.

(If that comes across as whitesplaining, hit me with a noodle and send me away...)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I guess I should give a little more detail.

What she did when she asked was to ask something leading and minimizing, like she was expecting me to confirm that what happened to me wasn't anything serious. I directly contradicted this, and it was that which made her look unhappy.

Now, it could still be as you say, but I think that's useful context.

[redbird]

Thanks for the additional context. There's a difference between being surprised at the details or at how bad stuff is, and telling someone they're exaggerating their experience when it's something one knows nothing about.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I have probably done that before, too. I mean, priority one is not to _argue_ that the person who told you their experience getting shit for not being white has it wrong or that it wasn't about race. Some people never get past that. I have friends who can't get past that regarding misogyny and that's why I won't go on another road trip with them.

Priority two is to try to convey "wow, I wish I'd realized" instead of "wow I wish I didn't know that," but I think a lot of people fail on priority one for a while, and then if they're not jerks they eventually get priority one right and start grappling with priority two, and eventually they manage to say something like "I wish I'd realized, I'm sorry" maybe. But it really does take practice to come up with that.

So yeah, I've prolly done that before, I hear ya. And as for this woman, I hope that eventually she _is_ happy she asked, even if she actually didn't feel that way at the time, because once you understand that the there is crap going on you may never see because it doesn't happen when you're present, and learn that people are generally telling the truth about that stuff that happens when you aren't there to see, you learn a lot of valuable stuff about the world.

[dpolicar]

(nods)
I'm sorry.

[allyphoe.livejournal.com]

My favorite thing about my in-laws living with us: my kid lives in a majority-Chinese household.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

:)

I did think of you when I was talking with my classmate. Different situation, but still.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

A) I'm sorry, and B) If you feel like telling me which friend that guy was, in person some time, I am interested in knowing. (I mean, whether it's someone I have met, or not.)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You haven't met him; this is an entirely separate crowd from the group you met.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I'd expect there to be a noticeable class change going from New Jersey to Connecticut also.

We talked about China, learning Mandarin, and identity for Asian kids raised in white families.

How does that work? Or maybe I mean, how does that work for kids who are adopted very young, so they have a genetic heritage that is unconnected to their social heritage? What is their "identity" in that situation?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'd expect there to be a noticeable class change going from New Jersey to Connecticut also.

I don't think there was as much as you'd expect. The neighborhood in New Jersey was a newly-built development for upwardly-mobile young families.

In Connecticut, my neighborhood was a transition zone between a more working-class suburb and an upper-middle class one. While the distribution curve was wider the nose of the curve was pretty much in the same place.

The real difference was ethnicity. My neighborhood in New Jersey was ethnically mixed: much more Jewish, black, and Asian. The one in Connecticut wasn't just white, it was solidly Catholic and heavily Italian with a plurality of the rest Irish. My school was so solidly Catholic that the day all the Catholic kids went for some event--it may have been confirmation, I'm not sure--I was left in my 6th grade class alone with one other kid and the teacher. I remember the other kid turning to me in some surprise and saying, "You're not Catholic either?"

Or maybe I mean, how does that work for kids who are adopted very young, so they have a genetic heritage that is unconnected to their social heritage?

I think you're making unwarranted assumptions in this case. I'm told that they went back to visit foster families that they were old enough when they left to remember. Key point was that they were not, however, old enough to have retained enough language to converse with.

[allyphoe.livejournal.com]

I imagine that's person-specific, as with any other adoptee issue. I've read some transracial adoptee blogs in which the Asian kids said things like, "every time I looked in the mirror, I was surprised anew that my hair wasn't blond."

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Nothing gets white guys talking about class differences like talking about racism.

[drwex]

Interesting commonality: I went to school for most of my childhood in New Jersey. The high school of that system was literally across the street from Fort Monmouth which, at the time, was one of the army's biggest Infantry training bases. The Army integrated well before most of society, so our school was filled with (mostly black, some brown) children of color. Probably 40-60% in any given year - army kids move around a lot.

Then in mid-high school my family moved to white suburban PA and I was suddenly in a very white school system. It was quite a shock, even as a fully en-bubbled white kid.

Also, I'm sorry your schoolmates treated you badly.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

New Jersey gets a lot of crap for many reasons, some of them deserved, but I learned quite a lot about ethnicity there. As I said, they were mostly good things.

One interesting aspect was that because the Asian kids and the Jewish kids tended to get tracked together, I learned more at an early age about Judaism than I did about Christianity. This did not prepare me for a move to a Catholic town, where the few Jewish kids were also getting their share of crap.

Also, I'm sorry your schoolmates treated you badly.

Thanks, although really that was just life.

In many ways it was a strange interlude between a multi-ethnic grade school and an elite private college, also multi-cultural. I somehow managed to internalize the fact that the interlude was strange, and not the periods that bookended it.

[gingicat]

Yes, my experience going from NYC to Brandeis was like that. And the Asian and black kids were so overwhelmed that they started clubs just to be able to find each other.

The nerds did that too (we called ourselves The Weirdo Coalition) but not-so-oddly enough, we were all white...

[quietann.livejournal.com]

My elementary school, in a nice upper middle class part of San Diego, was across the street from Navy officers family housing, and by that point the Navy, even at the officer level, was integrated racially, so I knew kids from a lot of races. But we were all, or almost all, upper middle class, so we had a lot in common; the Navy kids just moved away much more frequently.

Interestingly, at the bottom of the hill where officers family housing was, there was some family housing for enlisted men. And *those* kids went to a different elementary school, with civilian kids who lived in apartments, not houses. The Navy had a big class divide.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

I remember when you came to my house in Somerville and mentioned a trip to China where you could "be a normal guy." I asked if you were racially harassed a lot and you said "Yeah, down the block from you, five minutes ago." I thought I was pretty with-it, politically, but that was an eye-opener.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough I don't even remember that particular incident. Boston has given me some more memorable ones, though that's probably simply because I spend more time here. On the other hand, I do have a black schoolmate from Compton who refused even to consider moving to Boston with much of his cohort, so perceptions do vary. It is a deeply segregated place, much more so for African-Americans than for Asian-Americans.

One additional point I notice nowadays about China having been back more recently is the degree to which my spoken Mandarin indicates class privilege, and that may well have informed my observations when I came back from that trip. I think I wasn't fully aware of it then, but it's pretty clear to me now.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Don't I hear you. I thought I was going o say more, but I guess I said it in my other comments, so I'll just say this: I really goddamn hear you.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

*reading, listening*

[mamamoira.livejournal.com]

You may recall that not only do I have two internationally-adopted kids, but that all of my siblings are adopted as well (I was the only birth child of my mother's to survive infancy). Two of them were adopted domestically, and are "white" (although my brother, really, has to have some large amount of Latino in him, we just don't know the details). The youngest, my sister, is Korean.

I've heard some horrid stories from my sister of things she experienced in various small-town schools before the family moved to the Twin Cities. But even there, she's been occasionally mistaken for Hmong, which is an experience she has NOT enjoyed, as that is almost an insult, since the Hmong there are generally seen as lower-class and all the dumb assumptions that go along with that.

We certainly considered carefully where we lived, when we were choosing from which country to adopt. We're in a relatively small town in the middle of Oklahoma, but it's a college town, and we live on the "professors" side of town, which means the elementary school is fairly racially mixed. We don't have the percentage of black students that one of the other elementary schools has, but we have a lot of other ethnicities, which is nice. My kids have gotten to meet and be friends with other Indians, and my youngest's two best friends are a Korean girl (born in MN), and a Russian girl (also born in the states, I believe); both kids are bilingual. There's a couple of muslim kids in the school too, so the topic of religion (and lack thereof) has been expanded, which is another thing you don't often see in the Bible Belt. All the elementary schools feed into the same middle/jr/sr high school, so there's a nice mixing alllll the way through.

It's been...refreshing. I occasionally ask the kids leading questions, and the only thing they report experiencing is the usual rich kids/poor kids divide. They both come home regularly outraged at the type of discrimination they learn about in school, or see on tv, or that we discuss theoretically. It's hard to figure out how to prepare your non-white kids for a stupid world.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm glad you came in on this. Thanks!

We certainly considered carefully where we lived, when we were choosing from which country to adopt. We're in a relatively small town in the middle of Oklahoma, but it's a college town, and we live on the "professors" side of town, which means the elementary school is fairly racially mixed.

That really helps. From personal experience I can say that living in a college town often isn't sufficient but if you do end up in a school that's mixed that can help a lot.

It's hard to figure out how to prepare your non-white kids for a stupid world.

Yes, this.