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...)

[dpolicar]

(nods)
I'm sorry.

[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.

[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.

[allyphoe.livejournal.com]

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

[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.)

[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.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yeah. And also, probably also relevant to what I was thinking when I posted originally: in her position I'd like to think I would have said "oh god I'm sorry I didn't realize," at the very least, if I was not fundamentally trying to minimize or dismiss your experiences.

It does make me wonder what my high school friend who was mixed race and the only visibly black person at our school might have undergone that I totally missed. :/

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

:)

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

[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]

The thing is, if you asked my classmates then or now whether there was racism at my school I would have predicted you would get a "Hell yeah" as a response. these particular middle- and high-schoolers were not subtle in a time already not known for its subtlety.

Truthfully I was a little wrong-footed by her question. I think the start of the conversation was when my classmate raising two adopted Chinese daughters said she had been glad to see me because she had wanted to ask me my thoughts about negotiating those issues at school. With that as the start of the conversation the question the other woman asked was a bit out of left field.

From what I've seen, becoming the white parent of non-white child gets you thrown in at the deep end of race and ethnicity in this country.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

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

[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]

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.

[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]

Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I don't think she was saying I was exaggerating. I think she had some more comfortable image in her head she was trying to confirm. This I failed to do.

[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."

[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.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

gets you thrown in at the deep end of race and ethnicity in this country.

I wouldn't be surprised, because not only is there the usual racial crap but also race treason against the solidarity of both the parents' and child's races.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

As seen by an outsider, the status totem pole appears to be: New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester County, Connecticut. But you weren't in that part of Connecticut.

it was solidly Catholic and heavily Italian with a plurality of the rest Irish

Yikes, like much of Boston when I got here. Working-class people who had finally clawed their way out of being in the underclass of Catholicism (vide JFK in 1960) by circling the wagons against their oppressors since some time in the mid 1800s. I'm hardly surprised that the culture was hostile to a wide spectrum of "others". I'm kinda surprised your parents moved there, really.

I think you're making unwarranted assumptions in this case.

I more or less understood the case you described. But I was curious what happens to "identity" when one looks to be in one category of people, but actually has nothing in common with them. It's something that I know nothing about but you might have some information on.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I more or less understood the case you described. But I was curious what happens to "identity" when one looks to be in one category of people, but actually has nothing in common with them.

Actually, no.

If they'd been adopted as babies and left without any memories of their country of origin that would be more like what you're describing. But given that they remember something of their country of origin they do actually have something in common with the people they left.

[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.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda surprised your parents moved there, really.

Short answer: there was a job. A tenure-track equivalent position at an Ivy League university.

There really isn't that much to choose from in the other towns in that area, either. At least one of them had a race riot in their high school during the time I would have been a student.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It's entirely possible your high school was better about this than ours. As I said elsewhere in this thread, our student body was not a subtle bunch by the standards of a time much more willing to give offense than the present.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I hope so. Thank you for the whole of this post, though. It makes me think, and that's always good.