And so it's begun . . .

At dinner the other day, Collin told Flannery that he has a chocolate face. He's done this once before. We were at a rest stop somewhere between MI and MA and Collin was holding the door open for random people. An African-American man walked through and Collin said, "That man has a chocolate face like me!".

Ever since Flannery and I decided to adopt, we've been trying to educate ourselves on transracial adoption and African-American culture. And since this country is far, far from perfect Flannery and talk on a daily basis about how to prepare our children for the racism they will face.

The principal of the school I worked at in Detroit was an intelligent, empowered, African-American woman and much of what Flannery and I teach our children came directly from her philosophy. She encouraged teachers to make the African-American person the norm; books, posters, dolls, authors, clip art, etc. should all have images of predominently African-American people. It was very important, however, that these images fall in the context of our curriculum. There was no reason to have a poster up of MLK (unless we were studying 1960's history), Charles Turner (unless we were studying insects), and Mae Jemison (unless we were studying space). And, most importantly, these people should never be called, "the African-American entomologist" or the "first female African-American astronaut". Placing those adjectives there implies that astronauts are not normally female or African-American. This made finding materials quite difficult and lots of rewriting of articles! However, I found this to be a very empowering philosophy.

The other thing we have found very helpful is the book, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World by Marguerite Wright. She talks of how many parents do more harm than good by talking about culture and skin color at too young an age. Small children can distinguish skin colors at a young age, but they don't understand the cultural conotations that go with skin color in our society. A child who says, "I'm brown" or "I'm white" or "I'm black" may just be talking about color and yet adults read into that with their years of cultural understanding of what "black" and "white" are in this society. Wright also reminds us that if a child says, "I don't want to play with that white kid!" that the child probably doesn't mean, "I don't want want to associate with any white people", but is just using "white" as a descriptor for that child (who just may be mean!!!).

Flannery and I have so far to go, but luckily we have a silly blog to hash out our ideas, tons of people with whom we talk about this on a daily basis, other good friends who have created transracial families, piles of books to read (In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories by Rita James Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda is next!), and lots of internet resources that remind us to keep thinking. This entry on the anti-racist Parent Blog is what inspired me to write!