Uncomfortable Zones

There was a very personal and nakedly honest post up at Racialicious a few days ago. It's really been on my mind recently.

The author was raised by Jamaican-American parents who were very bigoted against African-Americans. She was not allowed to associate with African-Americans or explore any aspects of African-American culture.

As she grew up, her experience was that most other African-Americans, with a few notable exceptions, rejected her. She didn't talk correctly. She was often accused of "acting white". She had so many negative experiences she decided to move to West Africa, where she's been for the last two years, and she wants to raise her children there.

The comments really exploded.

Many people were picking apart her post to say that she needed to shoulder some of the blame because she'd internalized too much of her parents' bigotry against African-Americans, even though she'd said she tried not to. Many American black people of African immigrant or Caribbean descent echoed her feelings and the pain of rejection she'd suffered. Others said that they'd made a much more successful transition into a positive blended African-American identity.

It's a depressing conflict. I think it takes place among all groups of color, but it might be the most painful among black people because of the high standard for racial solidarity (as separate from ethnic solidarity, that is).

Of course, my initial urge was to support the original poster. As Racialicious editor Latoya noted, the poster was like a third-culture kid, even though she didn't have a dual nationality upbringing. I really empathized with a) her alienation from her immediate environment b) the fact that she felt more comfortable being a foreigner in a foreign country than a foreigner in her own country.

Much further down in the comment list, a black transracial adoptee weighed in. Her point was very direct. Don't minimize the experience of being rejected and alienated. Some other commenters were walking down that path. "I was called an oreo, but I got over it." Her comment was more like, "Yes, I got over it, but it hurt like hell."

When I was young, the vast majority of the racist abuse I received was from white people. I wonder if it was simpler to process psychologically. Not easier, just less complicated. I had to place the abuse in context. I couldn't afford to personalize it and avoid all white people. If I did, I'd live an insanely dysfunctional existence.

I did feel more betrayed by the same abuse coming from black kids, but I didn't personalize it either.

I absolutely see the danger in soaking in your suffering so much that you use it as an excuse for your own resentment and pointless negativity. But I also think that across American culture and beyond, there's too much of an effort to normalize it, and normalizing it just perpetuates it.

I'm reminded of a fracas I got into a while back. I was talking about some anti-Asian issues and another woman argued that since she'd been teased for stuttering, none of it was really a big deal. Arghh....

But this is the part where I need to be very honest myself. I'm terrified Sunny might go through some of the same things. In fact, he almost certainly will. We don't have control over much of it.

He doesn't sound African-American. There's no trace of any of the different kinds of black American accents. I don't know if he'll pick one up. I spoke with an accent when I moved to America at the age of 6, and I never lost that accent... even though I tried really hard. On the other hand, I know other children and adults who have changed accents in a seemingly effortless way. I want him to be happy whether he picks up an accent or whether he stays with the one he has.

One of the worst social environments for Sunny would be a polarized one where he felt he had to choose one of two sides. Someone I know from a forum (not a TRA) once explained that her worst time ever was in a highly segregated school in which all the black kids were from the same class and same community. Since her (black) family moved in from outside that community, they rejected her. If she wouldn't "act black" according to a pretty narrow definition, it meant she was "acting white".

At least we're in a great location to optimize his environment. I want to put him in a school where there's a diversity of black and African-American identity. So he'll get teased for talking funny and having an Asian mom and a white dad. But then maybe another kid in the same class is from Sierra Leone and talks funny too, and another kid's parents moved from New Jersey, and another kid is a country boy from Mississippi... in an environment like that, the stakes are so much lower. The teasing doesn't have to lead into alienation and corrosion of identity.

It's so disturbing to me that many white transracial adoptive parents don't seem to understand the importance of social environment. They think they can instill a healthy identity in their kids, even in almost entirely white environments. I find that incredibly naive. Parents of color have constant struggles in this area, much less white parents! Realistically speaking, parents don't have that degree of control over their kids' development. I think international adoptive communities often give parents a false sense of empowerment. Read these books by other adoptive parents, put Guatemalan textiles on the wall, eat at the Ethiopian restaurant, tell your Chinese daughter what a rich history China has. I mean, these are all good things, but children don't establish their identity based on things and facts.

Some people get this, but a lot of people still don't.

I left a comment to this effect on the Land of the Not So Calm blog and felt complimented to see it promoted to a post.

It was a huge shock to me, when I first started reading about international adoption a few years ago, that there was this huge wave of Korean adoption in Minnesota. MINNESOTA??? MINNESOTA!!! That was my reaction. Before, I hadn't really thought much about the subject of adoption and social environment, even though I very briefly dated a "KAD". So I don't think what I'm talking about is immediately self-evident. But if you really start thinking about it, it just gets clearer and clearer.

But then, the poster at Racialicious probably had the right environment, but the wrong parents. Wrong because they sabotaged her through their efforts to protect her.

Of course, individual personality plays a huge role as well. Some kids are natural chameleons, at home anywhere they go.

When I was a baby, my father used to hold me out over the edge of balconies in order to cure me of a future fear of heights. There was also a strange reason for this I only found out about much later. Lesson? Not all of our protection strategies work. On the bright side, it didn't mess me up for life, either.

I Keep Telling Myself...

At least it's not Georgia. Deep breath. At least it's not Georgia.

Reiteration of What I'm Here For

I need to remind myself to back off and not get involved in internet negativity.

I had to put someone in an adoption venue on "ignore" because I am tired of all the racist (specifically, borderline mainstream socially acceptable racist) anti-Obama garbage they are spewing. I am not even going to repeat what it is because I'm so sick of it and sick of refuting it.

I hate that kind of bashing. I would never do it to Clinton. I disagree with many of her policies and I don't like her campaign strategy, but I don't feel the need to bash her so viciously.

A reiteration for myself:

My goal in internet communication is to spend the majority of my time 1) being educated by other people's life experiences and ideas 2) educating other people through my life experiences and ideas.

I am not here for backpats. Although support and advice are great, especially supportive advice, and I appreciate it and try to give it back as much as possible, unconditional and uncritical support is something I don't believe in. In some areas of the adoption blogosphere, I've seen it reach incredibly unhealthy levels. The "you can't judge me" syndrome.

I am not here to fix especially regressive and wrong thinking. Ideally, I should not be spending more than 5-10% of my total time on the internet issuing correction slips and getting involved in negative exchanges.

Here are some of the things that tend to trap me in negativity:

1) Race. I spend a lot of my time on racially oriented blogs. Racialicious is my favorite, because it's so well-moderated. It often feels like an oasis of sanity. Nevertheless, discussions of multiracial identity are a hot button there and can really get me upset. I don't believe interracial relationships are better than any other kind of relationship. But it's very personal to me. It's about my parents. It's about my very self.

2) Adoption. I've gone into great detail about the things that are wrong with the adoptoworld. I'm resigned to most of it. I love the metaphor I heard American Family once use, "howling into the abyss". The foster adoption corner is much nicer than the rest of it, but I'm biased that way, of course.

3) Feminism. I consider myself a feminist and I like reading feminist blogs. But there are these constant battles going on that just confuse me to death. I feel like I'm always supposed to take a side along fault lines I don't want to take a side on.

4) Buddhism. I was spending some time on a Buddhist forum, but I felt like I needed to withdraw because it was so white-dominated. I have no problem with the fact that some white people speak Japanese and know Japanese culture better than I do. No problem at all. I was happy to shut up and just listen to them. But when OTHER white people who THINK they know Japanese culture but really DON'T then presume to lecture me on it, it's the most obnoxious thing in the world.

5) Personal Finance and Investing. Sometimes I get tired of the female-dominated communities and their tendency towards cliquishness. Then I remember that male-dominated communities are even worse. I learn a lot of things in this arena that don't make it to my blog, but I hate having to see all the sexism and homophobia. I'm sure there are a lot of women involved in these communities, but most of them keep their femininity anonymous so that they can be communicated to like a human being.

6) In a category by itself... Asian-American issues. I had to drastically scale back my involvement last year, but I'm cautiously getting back in. I want to concentrate on useful, positive posts through APAforProgress.com.

7) In another category by itself... Autism. I've been irregularly reading blogs of autistic people. By the way, I don't believe in vaccine causation. I find the blogs very interesting. And since I have no personal connection to autism, the conflict there doesn't suck me into negativity.

Ah, it felt good getting that off my chest. Now I just need to get back to saying more nembutsu. I've really fallen off lately. Once we move, I'll have a great place to set up, but for now, it's hard to establish the right place and time.

Update and some Housing Thoughts

Still no news on when placement is going to be. We are hoping by the end of the month.

Right now we're in the middle of a really important decision: moving. We want to move to a larger house within a couple miles of our current house.

One of our top locations is just a bit to the south and east. The problem is that the school district is terrible. Well, they're terrible all over Georgia, but this one is especially bad. Many other homeowning parents manage by relying on charter/magnet schools and private schools.

There's a lot of really complicated issues about crime, education, class and race involved here. I try to make decisions based on pragmatism, and it's amazing how much irrational weirdness and fear is involved in neighborhood choice.

Listen to this quote from a forum on local neighborhoods:

If you are going to visit ___ I would suggest you do it in the day only and even then you could be robbed or jacked at any red light. Be sure to get gas before you go there.

I called my husband over and we read that and both laughed like crazy. It's referring to a neighborhood he goes to almost every day for work. My mother lives nearby.

I used to live next to a really bad neighborhood in Miami. I've also stayed in a squat house in the lower East Side in the early 1990s. I know what bad neighborhoods are like. There is no way I would walk more than 100 feet from my house in Miami alone after dark. To me, a bad neighborhood means gunshots, dealers on corners, broken crack vials, burglar bars on every window, cages on A/C units so crackheads don't steal them for the copper, mean pit bulls behind chainlink fences, robberies and murders.

It doesn't mean subdivisions with well-maintained brick ranch homes on quiet streets where the only sounds are birds singing and children playing.

The neighborhood that quote is talking about is a middle-class, predominantly African-American suburb. There are also a fair number of older retired white people there who resisted the initial white flight, a few younger ones who were attracted by the lower property prices, plus some newer immigrant arrivals.

Third Visit

We're back from our third visit.

I felt very sad today. I'm tired from traveling and I'm tired of not knowing when Sunny is going to be moved.

The visit was great. We went to several parks and amusements. We burned off a lot of his energy by running around and flying kites and playing soccer. If he doesn't get a lot of physical activity during the day, his foster mom says he doesn't sleep well. But whenever we're around, he always sleeps well!

A cute thing happened at one of the parks we visited. Sunny met another little boy his age and accidentally kicked him in the head! That's not as bad as it sounds... Sunny loves to imitate the gymnastics that his older sisters practice, and his best move is one where he grabs hold of something about waist level, then kicks up and spins both feet in the air above his head. He showed off the move to his new friend at the playground, and there was a little bit of sneaker-to-head contact.

"OW!"

Sunny made a shocked face and his mouth turned into a perfect "O".

"I didn't mean that! Sorry! Let me rub your head and make it better!"

Then he rubbed the other boy's head and made sure everything was OK. A few seconds later, head kick forgotten, they teamed up and proceeded to attack a large rock with pretend light sabers. I think the rock won.

When we left at the end of our visit, Sunny was sitting in the yard, playing with a twig. His foster mom told him to watch in the sky for an airplane, because we'd be on it, waving goodbye to him.

If we don't get placement within a month, I guess both or one of us will go up again for another visit. We can't really afford it, but it's just such a long time.

Being with Sunny doesn't make me extraordinarily happy or anything like that. It just feels natural and normal. Now that we're not together again, I don't feel quite like myself.

Revealing Resemblance

I've been debating with myself for almost a month whether to blog about this or not. It means giving out a piece of personal information that's going to make it much easier for people to identify me in real life. On the other hand, I don't see how I'm going to avoid mentioning it at some point as I keep blogging.

Sunny and I have a fairly strong resemblance. Maybe it'll fade as he gets older. But right now, he looks like the baby I had with Tiger Woods. I didn't notice it as first, but then as people of several different races kept pointing it out, I accepted it.

My feelings were very complex. We look alike, but he doesn't look like my husband. What does this resemblance signify? It's like a triangle that should be equilateral but isn't. My husband doesn't love him any less... Should I be happy about it? Or simply neutral? If I'm happy should I be guilty for feeling happy?

A lot of people are going to assume that he's my biological child by a previous marriage. This will eventually mean that we'll get 50% less awkward questions about adoption and race. So that's a strong positive.

I hate awkward questions about race, but I've been getting them my whole life, so I've built up quite an immunity. But it's a good thing he'll be spared some of them. So in the larger scheme of things, I should look at this as a positive.

I'm definitely planning on getting some genetic analysis done for him. I'm hoping to do it for myself as well. Just like Sunny, my paternal family tree is shrouded by adoption. I've contacted a few companies already, but they seem to concentrate on Europe and Africa, and none of them had Ainu-specific detail. I imagine it will become available in the near future, however.

I'm excited that these tools are available nowadays. Sunny can use the information as part of a toolkit to build up a story for himself, a story that connects with the larger story of America. Where did he get his Asian eye shape? Perhaps from the Chinese laborers that built the railroads in the 19th century and then merged into the black population. Watching the first African-American Lives show, I think several participants had a family history of Native American descent that actually turned out to be East Asian after testing.

I just got into a slightly testy conversation over here about genetic testing and racial background (by the way I think it's wonderful that Yondalla has such a strong grasp on these issues). The more I get involved in these types of discussions, the harder it is to separate multiracial and transracial identity issues.

It's, well, interesting being the multiracial daughter of an intraracial adoptee, from an interracial relationship, in an interracial marriage and about to transracially adopt a multiracial son from an interracial relationship. The great thing is that past a certain point, I don't see how it can get any more complicated!

When we started on our adoption path, I gave up on the mental image of having a child that would look like me. But I couldn't get rid of the expectations that others had on me in that regard... and this is hard to explain, although I've touched on it several times. I'll try again.

When we made our match with Sunny, there was one other child in the picture, although the picture was hazier and the match was much less certain. All we knew was that the caseworker was interested in our family. We had a picture and paragraph description of a little girl. A beautiful little girl who was listed as "Hispanic" and had light skin and facial features that were more Asian or Asian/Indigenous than Caucasian.

Isn't it suspicious that the only two matches we had in a year, after making hundreds of inquiries, were of children who had some physical resemblance to me? And isn't it odd that it's a resemblance totally based on race, although the children were of different races? And that it seemed like we never had a chance for any of the Asian children I tried for?

I'm not being paranoid; I'm just being realistic.

Oe Victorious!

I have had a huge amount of respect for Mr. Oe ever since I read his masterpiece, "A Personal Matter". His body of work on modern Japanese identity is incredible and thought-provoking. He's an uncompromising gadfly and it's nice to see him come out on top.

Suit Against Writer in Japan Dismissed

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Published: March 29, 2008

TOKYO — A Japanese court has rejected a defamation lawsuit against Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel Prize Laureate for literature, agreeing with his assertion that the Japanese military was deeply involved in the mass suicides of civilians in Okinawa at the end of World War II.

In a closely watched ruling, the Osaka District Court threw out a $200,000 damage suit on Friday that was filed by a 91-year-old war veteran and another veteran’s surviving relatives, who said there was no evidence of the military’s involvement in the suicides. The plaintiffs had also sought to block further printing of Oe’s 1970 book of essays, “Okinawa Notes,” in which he wrote of how Japanese soldiers told Okinawans they would be raped, tortured and murdered by the advancing American troops and coerced them into killing themselves instead of surrendering.

“The military was deeply involved in the mass suicides,” Judge Toshimasa Fukami said in his ruling on Friday. Judge Fukami cited the testimony of survivors that soldiers handed out grenades to civilians to commit suicide with, and the fact that mass suicides occurred only in villages where Japanese troops were stationed.

The defamation lawsuit, filed in 2005, was seized upon by right-wing scholars and politicians in Japan who want to delete references to the military’s coercion of civilians in the mass suicides from the country’s high school history textbooks. Last April, during the administration of the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, the Ministry of Education announced that references to the military’s role would be deleted from textbooks.

Some 110,000 people rallied in protest last September, in the biggest demonstration in the prefecture since the early 1970s. The protests, as well as Mr. Abe’s resignation and his replacement by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, a moderate, led the Ministry of Education to reinstate most of the references in December.

The about-face was an embarrassment for the Japanese government, which has always denied accusations by China and South Korea that it engaged in historical whitewashing, and has asserted that its school textbooks are free of political bias.

“The judge accurately read my writing,” Mr. Oe, 73, said at a news conference.

Timeline Changes

We're all very down about how long the placement is taking. Originally, it was supposed to have happened by now. It looks like it might take up to another month.

I'm not panicking. It's just paperwork. The wait is not out of the ordinary. But I feel terrible, my husband feels terrible and it must not be easy for Sunny either. When kids are this young, they should really have a faster transition. His foster mom is also not happy, because she thinks a great school transition opportunity was missed with spring break.

I've decided we're going to go up and visit for another weekend. I'm not sure how much of the cost will get reimbursed, maybe none, but what the heck. I found a good deal on a ticket and it's pretty much cleared with all the necessary parties.

This time I'm going to make sure to get a cheap hotel with a kitchenette. We're kind of food snobby. Sunny is not located in a region that has any tradition of what I define as decent cooking. We politely suffered from this during our first visit. But if I can't cook meals, we're going to be stuck eating at Crac*ker Barrel at least twice a day. That's how bleak the food choices are. At least the Barrel has 1) a low-carb menu 2) some flavor to their food.

I'm so happy I finally know when we'll be seeing Sunny again.

The Lesson of Hiroshima for the U.S. Presidential Election

(cross-posted at APA for Progress)

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of hearing a presentation by a Hiroshima survivor. Here's his story as I remember it.

Mr. Teramoto was ten years old when the atom bomb hit Hiroshima. One second he was leaning over a desk to write a postcard to a friend; the next second he was on his back amid the rubble of his former house. An aunt pulled him out. His face was covered in blood. He begged her to stop and rescue his mother too, but she was too focused on getting him to safety. She slung him across her back and ran away.

That was the last he ever saw his mother. He found out later that she had dragged herself out and made it to the bank of the river. She died within days and her body was cremated where it lay, next to so many others.

Sheltering by another bank, Mr. Teramoto remembers seeing the river filled with corpses. They floated up and down with the tide, the same ones over and over again. He showed us photos and also drawings representing these scenes.

Art by KIHARA Toshiko, Hiroshima survivor

Due to his position when the bomb hit, and the fact that he managed to escape exposure to contaminated water, Mr. Teramoto is still a vigorous and healthy man. He draws on this energy to educate people about what happened in Hiroshima. He's been giving talks like this for decades. I imagine that survivor's guilt is something he struggles and negotiates with constantly. He's chosen to relive those events over and over again so that others can grow to understand the lesson of Hiroshima.

The basic lesson is simple. This must never happen again. Whether the bombing was "justified" is of secondary relevance. Here in the U.S. discussions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can get bogged down in that debate. As a Japanese-American, I feel the issue very deeply. Many Japanese-Americans fought bravely against Japan's government, a military dictatorship that poisoned other countries and their own people as well. But I also believe racism was an integral part of the decision to drop not one but two atomic bombs on Japanese soil.

But the primary matter of importance is what the past of Hiroshima symbolizes for our common global future. This is the idea that Mr. Teramoto wants to spread all over the world.

The events of Hiroshima are receding. The cold war era is over. In my lifetime, there will eventually be no more survivors traveling the world and giving presentations. But there will still be insane numbers of nuclear weapons and the potential for a future conflagration.

Mr. Teramoto's colleague, the head of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, put forth a terrifying scenario. Further destabilization in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Increased anti-American activity in the mountainous border region. Militaristic American government. The solution? Perhaps just one targeted atomic bomb. Maybe some villages will be caught in the way...

The current idiotic regime has substantially withdrawn from nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament agreements, citing, of course, the increased security risks of a "post 9/11 world". John McCain is even more likely to use nuclear weapons, judging by his strong tendency towards loathsome paranoid jingoism. Either Clinton or Obama would be a massive improvement and would likely get us back on the path to honoring our nuclear treaties.

Personally, I'm an Obama supporter, and I believe he will be better on this issue. While it's difficult to detangle candidate's position statements to find an unequivocal answer to a relatively simple question, several factors convinced me. During one debate, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates whether U.S. security concerns trumped humanitarian concerns. Clinton responded that yes, they did. Obama gave what I considered the correct answer; the two concerns cannot be separated. Also, Clinton's vote in favor of the Iraq War showed me that in a crisis, she might go by current popular opinion instead of the long-term best interests of the world. Obama has specifically stated that he will not consider using a nuclear weapon to destroy a terrorist training camp. Clinton's answers on nuclear nonproliferation have also been much more equivocal and vague than Obama's answers.

Anyone who is concerned by this issue (and I think "anyone" should really mean "everyone in the world") should do their own research and act on it. Here's a relatively neutral link to start off with.

I was profoundly affected by Mr. Teramoto's talk. I hope I've been able to pass on to readers even a small portion of the urgency and gravity of his mission. This must never happen again.

Viiiiiiiine City (Tornado Cleanup)

I've been in a photo mood recently.





There were local volunteer groups plus other groups from all over the country. The debris is getting cleaned up pretty quickly with so many people on the job now.

Yardwork

My husband and I signed up with a volunteer group and did some tornado clean-up this morning. Then we did some yardwork at home. I'm going to install rain barrels tomorrow.

Here are some pictures from my garden. I need to work harder this year and concentrate heavily on natives and drought-resistant plants.

Uncertainty and Preparation

I wish I knew when Sunny's final placement was going to be. We're really hoping for within a month.

The great thing about having visited Sunny is that we know he's in a nice home with great foster parents. We don't have to worry about him!

We're calling him every two or three days and talking to him for a minute or so. Mainly "what did you do today" conversations. Today, I told him I bought him a piggy bank (he'd asked me for one at his last visit). He yelled at his foster mom, "GUESS WHAT! MOM GOT ME A PIGGYBANK!" He was so excited. A simple thing, but it really made me happy.

We're in the middle of school choice issues right now. Our first choice doesn't look as certain as it did before. We'll need backups, and backups to the backups. There are a lot of options and we're starting to narrow them down bit by bit. Some factors are: academics, student-teacher ratio, classroom style conducive to a kid with short attention span, close to us so he can make friends with kids who don't live too far away, public (charter/magnet) versus private, cost, diversity.

Diversity is not our number one concern since a) Sunny is black b) we live close to the center of a majority-black city. We're looking at a range of schools from 40-100% black. In this context, I think of diversity as a balance that goes beyond black/white to include Asian and Latino kids, and with a mix of several different cultures and languages. I think this kind of diversity will be more important as he gets older, but right now it's not on the top of my list of priorities. The one thing I'm a little concerned about is his cute Midwest accent picked up from Polish/Irish-Americans. How much will it make him stand out? In first grade, I don't think it matters that much yet.

Sunny is extroverted, talkative and confident. His ADHD diagnosis doesn't hamper him much in social skills. If he's not getting attention, he does get frustrated very quickly. But he likes to share. I'm guessing that he'll be happy in a wide variety of social situations with other kids.

A Few Reactions to Obama's Speech

I really identified with this part of Obama's speech:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

I love America, dammit! Now I'm getting teary-eyed.

I also just read a post over at Poplicks by Junichi that takes a very insightful perspective on the speech.

It's not often you see multiple news channels broadcasting lengthy speeches by major presidential candidates on white privilege and systematic racism. And by "not often," I really mean "never."

The speech further contributes to the fascinating study of how Obama deals -- and doesn't deal -- with issues of race. As a political maneuver, Obama brilliantly crafted a text that simultaneously connects and disconnects himself with the civil rights movement and black leaders today. He carefully criticized the black community in exchange for being able to criticize the white community, all the while maintaining a positive and hopeful stance.

And I definitely agree with Junichi on his last and more critical point. I'm an Obama supporter, but I really wish Obama would adopt a more balanced approach to Palestinian-Israeli relations. On the other hand, that would probably be political suicide. I can only hope that when he's elected and the pressure lets off a little, he can afford to distinguish himself by promoting more even-handed solutions to peace in the Middle East.

I hate to open a can of worms here, but it seems obvious to me that the United States will never help to achieve peace in the Middle East until it is willing to acknowledge the moral and legal wrongs of both Palestinians and Israelis, the wrongs of the U.S., other western occupiers, and cultural imperialists, as well as the fundamentalist, violent nutjobs who undeniably perpetuate the endless cycle of violence.

In my book, any politician who focuses on the 1,033 Israelis who have been unconscionably killed since September 29, 2000 -- while ignoring the 4,494 Palestinians who were unconscionably killed by Israeli security forces -- is not bringing the change needed to our foreign policy. (Source for stats: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights.)

Obama's opposition to the war on Iraq only goes so far in extending a hand to the other countries and people we should be reaching out to in the hopes of becoming stalwart allies.

Given that Obama is constantly forced to deal with ignorant whispers that he is secretly Muslim, I understand his need to firmly renounce the "hateful ideologies of radical Islam" and to reach out to the Jewish community. Anti-Semitism is a real, ugly, and major problem here and abroad. But so is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry, and I wish Obama were willing to take those on, as well.

Tornado Photo

Here's a photo of Friday's tornado. Terrifying!

Whoa... tornado!

I'm watching the news. Downtown Atlanta has been totally trashed by a tornado! No one has died (keeping my fingers crossed). I'm farther to the east of downtown, and we experienced a bad hailstorm that terrified my dog, but nothing close to tornado strength.

P.S. Sometimes I find it so hard to understand the priorities of the sports-oriented. On the news, people keep talking about how worried they are about some Georgia vs. Kentucky game that got interrupted due to large chunks of the Georgia Dome falling off, and our terrible state of existential insecurity because we don't know when the Georgia Kentucky game is going to be held again. This is just astounding to me. What about power and water for residents? I will have to check in tomorrow for that news.

The De-Asianification of "21"

This post by Jenn from Reappropriate has already been cross-posted all over, but I thought I'd give it an extra plug here.

I was quite irritated when I saw the trailer for this movie. "21" is a great, true-life story about a group of MIT students who started a card-counting operation and won millions from casinos. These were Asian-Americans whose Asian-ness was pretty central to their initial success at card-counting. Wow, what a great opportunity to show Asian-American men engaged in an exciting activity that's not kung fu! But of course the movie was de-Asianified in favor of white leads. This has been going on for so long, and it has GOT to stop. I won't be seeing this movie.

A Moving Article about Barack Obama's Mother

The article is here: "Free-spirited wanderer set Obama's path. 'What is best in me I owe to her,' candidate has said of his idealistic mother".

One of the reasons I jumped on the Obama bandwagon fairly late is that I felt such a strong identification with him. I really didn't want that to influence my political judgement, so I stayed neutral for a long time. Here are some reasons why I identify with him. The article raised several more reasons.

- both third-culture kids
- growing up in environments as the racial outsider
- being multiracial, with a white mother, but identifying primarily as single-race
- lack of strong ties to father's home country (although my own father was much more present throughout my life than his father)
- single, hard-working, unconventional, fearless, idealistic, generous, strong-willed, competent, independent mother
- close relationship with maternal grandparents
- very close relationship with mother

When I was 15, I went off to boarding school. By the age of 16, I'd left that school, our finances had changed drastically, and I was working as a waitress and mostly supporting myself. I was ready to leave home at 15; I was always very independent. But that didn't mean I had conflicts with my mother. It was something we both agreed on. We've always been very close, even when we lived far apart. We live close now, and we have dinner with her almost every other night. When I hear about people who have bad or distant relationships with their mothers I just sigh and say "I'm sorry". I do my best to empathize, I really am sorry, it's just hard to put myself in their shoes.

This was the part that really got to me... I teared up a little.

"I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book — less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life," he wrote in the preface to his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." He added, "I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her."

I rarely talk about my mother. She's so close to me, it's hard to even see her. But if she ever went away, I don't know what I'd do.

Really Quick Message

I miss Sunny :-(

Quick Message About Anonymity

So far I know of two blog readers who found out they're connected to me in real life.

This is a little disturbing, since I try to stay as anonymous as possible here, with no pictures and no work/educational/organizational discussion.

Both these readers strike me as extremely nice and thoughtful people, so I'm not worried about them, I'm just worried that more and more people may start to connect my real-life and internet identities. I'm not a supersocial person, or any kind of public figure, but I am kind of conspicuous.

I think I'm going to establish a back-up password-protected mirror blog. I do promise I won't "go dark" entirely, but if I start feeling really conspicuous, I may need to turn down the lights a little bit and remove some of the more personal information.

Second Impressions

We had our second visit with Sunny.

The next time he comes here, it should be forever. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly when yet, but we're hoping within a month.

We're getting to know him better. Here are some more of his qualities. He's extremely observant and always remarking on his environment, keeping up a constant stream of "that's cool!" and "that's funny!" and "Mom! Dad! Look at that!" He's a little timid sometimes, but his curiosity usually wins out. For example, he said he was scared of the whirlpool bath, but then he couldn't resist turning the button on after he was in the tub, and now he can't wait to take another whirlpool bath.

He's very open about what he feels, and what he wants, and what he doesn't want. The main behavior problem we had with him was quite predictable and mundane: vegetableophobia! I've had some success by promising him a stick of sugarless gum after dinner if he eats all his veggies.

Other than vegetables, he likes almost everything. He likes to go on errands, he likes to go shopping, he likes to put the dishes away, he likes to hug, he likes to help me dig holes in the garden.

He pops out of bed in the morning and does a little dance. He hardly gets tired and doesn't need naps.

He needs a lot of attention. He can't really play by himself for more than a few minutes. He also has a tendency to run from activity to activity. We're gently trying to keep him focused on doing one thing at a time for longer periods of time (like 10-15 minutes).

He's great with the dog. In fact, I wish he would play with the dog a little bit more, but our dog just isn't stimulating enough. Our dog loves playing fetch in short bursts, but that's about all he can do; his favorite hobby is sleeping in the sun.

Sunny does pretty well with structure and was following bedtimes and morning times with very little argument. He dawdles in his routine a bit when he gets distracted, but I don't think we're going to have difficulty when school starts and our routine gets stricter. I've promised to get him a wristwatch to help him keep track of time, and he's excited about that.

He asked me one or two times every day, "Am I being a good boy?" I told him that he was the best boy in the whole world. The question makes me sad. He must wonder what would happen to him if he wasn't good. Would he be taken away and given yet another mother and father? After placement he's probably going to test us to see what happens if he's not "a good boy".

His foster mother had told him, "it's your job now to love your new mom and dad". She told him that she already had so many kids who loved her, but we didn't have any kids, so he was given the important job of being our new son.

I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, putting this kind of obligation on him is worrisome. It's a lot of pressure. On the other hand, every time anyone gives him a little job to do, he positively glows. "I can help!" or "I can do it!" Having a job can mean a lot of different things. For Sunny, where he is right now, I think "job" means being important and being in control and being part of things, and all of that makes him happy. If I tell him "such and such is not your job" it would represent the removal of a degree of control.

I'm going to neither deny nor reinforce his foster mom's narrative. We'll just wait and see how he feels after placement and what his therapist says. I might be more worried that he'd stifle his feelings... if he wasn't such a naturally expressive child.

At one point he said, "I miss Mommy (firstname)" which is what he calls his bio mom. I copied a picture from his lifebook of the two of them together, framed it and gave it to him to put in his room. He said "thank you!" and hugged me.

The two of them look great in the photo, but there are some things in the background that are kind of depressing once you know the whole story. I cropped it out as much as possible.

I did write "the letter" and sent it off. I kept it very simple. I told Sunny's biomom that we'll stay in contact and send updated photos; that she can write him as much as possible, and although it's likely we won't show the letters to Sunny until he is more secure in his new home, we will carefully save everything for him. I said that when he gets older we'll support his decisions about contact. I closed by wishing her well, and saying that we'll always respect the bond they have, and the fact that they love each other.

Sunny's worker has told her that Sunny's adoption is like a second chance for her to eventually form a healthy relationship with him. Maybe this will have a really positive result for her as well as for Sunny.

When it comes to Sunny's bio father, things are very hazy. I found his picture on the internet. I haven't decided at all what to do on that end. We need to wait for some more information.

I think Sunny is going to have a lot of challenges because of a rough start in life, but he has so many strengths as well. Also, he has less of a background of abuse, neglect and instability than most kids his age who have gone through TPR... his worker said she believes that in his case, the system really worked, due to an original caseworker who was on the ball. Sunny trusts that the people in his life are good and loving, and that the world might be a little scary around the edges, but it's ultimately a safe place. If he's nervous, he has someone's hand to hold; if he can't work something out, someone will come and help him. I'm so glad we don't have to teach him all those things.

Our main challenges are going to be maintaining patience and evenness and steering him away from too much television and video games. Like I said, he needs a lot of attention, and it can get a bit tiring. The easiest times with Sunny are taking him around with us and seeing new things. It's going to be a lot of fun traveling with him. When we have to spend many hours at home, it takes much more energy to keep him occupied.

His medication is not as much of an issue as I thought it would be. We're just going to maintain it for the first several months after placement, and then revisit the issue to see if we can taper down. His medication doesn't have any effect on his energy level or personality. These hourlong tantrums we were warned about almost seem mythical. I guess we shouldn't get too complacent though...

At a few points in the visit I felt euphoric, at other points a little panicky. "Wow... there's a small human being in my house who's relying on me!" Most of the time it just felt natural.

He's such a happy and exuberant little kid.

How do Social Workers Rank Families?

I just read an interesting post at Busy Intersection. The blogger summarizes a Minnesota study on how social workers tend to determine the desirability of families. The findings probably won't surprise anyone who has been involved in the matching process. A few excerpts from the excerpts:

Relatively "easy" Caucasian children who are five or younger usually are placed with younger heterosexual couples who appear to be part of the mainstream in terms of qualities such as personality, personal appearance, style of home, and type of religion practiced.

Finally, race appears to play a part in preferences. A home study workers said, "By law, we can look at cultural competence, but by law we can’t look at racial things." In other words, social workers cannot consider race when placing children but they do. A conventional, heterosexual African-American couple is likely to be preferred for a younger African-American or mixed race child over any other potential placement.

I wrote about some of this last year in a post on The Transracial Adoption of Children with Special Needs.

I think there are social workers out there who don't let their own biases get in the way... but the practice as a whole is definitely very biased. Although factors like race and sexual orientation get all the press, it looks like religion and "conventionality of lifestyle" are incredibly important too.

I'm not saying any of these factors shouldn't be used in matching, but on their own, they don't encompass who a family is or whether they're the best family for the child.

Parents play into this as well. High-demand couples (young, Caucasian, Christian, heterosexual, conventional, good-looking, able-bodied) soon realize they can ask for more high-demand children (infants or toddlers, female, Caucasian, fewer special needs). And social workers let low-demand singles or gay couples know they have to broaden their parameters if they want to get matched. It's heavily market-based, even though the parents aren't spending any money.

It's a subsystem that faithfully reflects the larger system: our messed-up world.

Call-ins for Obama

I helped out tonight at a Texas call-in party for Obama. It was a lot of fun. I hate talking on the phone, so I was just going to do support-type stuff for the callers. However, I got roped into a couple unexpected Spanish-language calls. The people I talked to said they couldn't vote themselves, so I inquired about citizen relatives and just asked them to tell their relatives to vote for Obama in both the primary and caucus. They seemed receptive.

Openness in Foster Care Adoptions?

Does anyone know of any resources about openness in foster care adoptions with cases of involuntary TPR?

I've read a fair amount about private open adoptions, but honestly, so much of it doesn't seem applicable in terms of logistics.

We want to maintain contact for when Sunny is older. The key word here is healthy contact. We definitely plan on following the advice of the caseworker, who says that we should keep communication anonymous and through her office. I'd like to start off by writing a letter soon.

It's difficult to work out exactly how we're going to maintain this, given Sunny's maturity level and the problems that afflict his maternal family of origin. Difficult, but not impossible. The best-case scenario is that she turns her life around, but who knows when that could happen?

Sunny has positive but vague memories. He seems to mentally picture a first mom and grandmother in the far-away past, a second mom in the present and a third mom in his future.

I think I'm just going to take it very slowly and postpone most of these issues until Sunny settles in with us. Then we'll have input from therapists, too.

Recent Horrible Heinous Bills Introduced by Georgia Legislators

I had a great day today. We had a barbecue and a shower! I'll talk about it later. Thanks so much to everyone who left me congratulations on the last post.

Right now I'm upset about a newsletter I just received that listed some horrible, horrible bills.

English; Official Language of the State of Georgia; Declare (HR 413) - was adopted by the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee by a vote of 10-4. The resolution calls for a statewide referendum on whether the state Constitution should be amended to declare English as the official language.

Completely pointless anti-immigrant crap.

Confiscating vehicles of illegal immigrants (HB 978) - would allow police who catch a person violating a traffic law to impound the vehicle if the driver is an illegal immigrant.

I'm sure this will stop illegal immigration.

Feticide; Drug Ingestion; Create Offense (HB 1204) - would create a new crime, "feticide by drug ingestion," defined as when a person willfully and without legal justification solely causes the death of a viable fetus by the ingestion of drugs, and would be punishable by life in prison.

RU486 = life in prison. Thankfully, this one doesn't have a chance of getting anywhere.

Georgia-North Carolina and Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission (HR 1206, SR 822) - The House and Senate adopted similar legislation which asserts that a flawed 1818 survey mistakenly placed Georgia's northern line just short of the Tennessee River. The bills call for the governor to establish a commission to further investigate the matter.

This is a particularly stupid one. Our response to drought should be to encourage conservation, long-term planning and smart growth. Instead, these legislators have decided to spend lots of valuable time trying to ANNEX THE FREAKING TENNESSEE RIVER. This is a serious attempt and a lot of legislators are behind it. Guess what, this isn't 1818 anymore, we can't just gather up a militia and invade Tennessee... but maybe they're stupid enough to try.

State Agencies; Designate English as Official Language; Prohibit Requiring Employees to Speak/Learn any other Languages for employment (SB 335) - would designate English as the official language and prohibit a state agency or political subdivision of this state from requiring an employee to speak or learn any language other than the official language of the state in order to be employed, maintain employment, or to be eligible for a promotion.

More anti-immigrant crap attempting to officially mandate a standard of permanent ignorance in government service. They might as well just fire anyone who can speak a second language. Luckily, our public education system is so terrible that most Georgia natives would keep their jobs.

First Impressions of Our Son

This is going to be a really hard post to write! Excuse me if it's not that long... I'll try to write more later.

We had our first visit this weekend.

Sunny is the cutest, sweetest, funniest little boy in the world! I wish I could post pictures. I sent one to my dad -- AKA the bitterest, grumpiest, contrariest man in the world -- and his immediate response was: "a beautiful child!"

Sunny is smart! When we went to visit a restaurant, he was really excited because our GPS system told us to turn right, but he knew it was on the left (he had visited it only once before) so he "beat the GPS". He's proud he can spell blue and red (but not yellow yet). He figured out the zoom button on my videocamera, and explained the concept of a DVR/Tivo to me; his foster mom doesn't have one, but they do at his friend's house.

When we all first met, he was happy but a little anxious. He dealt with it really well. Every once in a while he would say "hugs!" and run and hug me or my husband or his foster mom. He calls us his mom and dad to differentiate from the other mom and dad, the ones that he shares with the rest of a large, rambunctious (but also nice and well-behaved) group of kids.

His foster mom says his current medication is doing well, and has really cut down the tantrums and improved his school behavior. Unlike the other drug, bad side effects haven't shown up yet. He didn't have any tantrums at all while we were with him. He has a short attention span and gets frustrated easily, but if we tell him "no" he only goes into a dramatic pout for about 5-10 seconds and then moves on.

We haven't 100% decided our approach to the medication yet. We'll see how things go after placement.

When he moves in, we're not going to have any kind of video games or even electronic games. I noticed that with these games, all the other kids in the house are older, and he thinks he's at their level when he's not, so he gets frustrated and wants to move on to another game after playing one for 15 seconds. Having a lot of brothers and sisters is good, on one hand, because he has practice with social skills. He's great at sharing. He'll play for a little bit then say "you play now!" But being the youngest is hard on him, too. He loves jobs and chores and being in charge of things.

I think we're really lucky he's had such a good placement... his foster mom is great. Naturally our family will do things differently, but I instantly agreed with more than 90% of the things she is doing and took a lot of mental notes to try and parent in a similar way.

I've decided he's either going to be an engineer or a lawyer.

We went to Cracker Barrel for dinner, and due to heavy volume, we got trapped in the store section for ten minutes. Here's an example of lawyer-like behavior involving the exploration of multitude of possible interpretations:

"Can I have that?" (points at Moon Pie)
- "No. Too sweet."
(pouts) "Can I have a snack"?
- "Maybe a little cracker"
"Can I have that little cracker?" (points at Moon Pie, which is gigantic)
- "No. It's not a cracker and it's too sweet."
(pouts) "Can I have a sandwich"?
- "Maybe at dinner"
"Can I have that sandwich?" (points at Moon Pie)
- "No."
(pouts)

I could see that kind of tenacity working in a courtroom, if you take out the pouting parts!

The adults that know him agree, he has "a light inside him". When he smiles or laughs or yells "OH YEAH!" it's just so powerfully contagious.

A First Black Presidency in the Light of Mexican History

(cross-posted at Rachel's Tavern)

There is an interesting discussion going on right now over at The Field Negro about what the first black President would actually mean for America.

Here are some points I'll summarize from the post and then from the ensuing discussion.

• Many white people may be voting for Obama in the assumption that if he's elected, racism will magically cease to exist. This false perception might actually make things worse for black people.


• But the people in charge right now (Republican conservatives) don't believe racism exists anyway.


• Obama's potential victory would represent a great advance for black people, especially in their sense of self-worth.


• Obama is running for President of America, not President of Black America. As such, it's wiser to vote not from a black perspective, but from an American citizen perspective.


• Black people should not expect that black elected leaders will accomplish everything; change also needs to come from the individual and community level.

I want to take a detour and talk about a fascinating precedent from our neighbor, Mexico. This precedent helps gives a global perspective to the question "what could the first black President mean for America."

Benito Juárez (1806-1872) was the president of Mexico for four terms in the 19th century. The story of his personal background and rise to power is awe-inspiring. He was the son of Zapotec villagers in the mountains in the south of Mexico. One day, he walked down from the mountains into town and took shelter at a church. He was 12 years old, illiterate, and could not speak Spanish, only Zapotec.

Educated by priests, he learned Spanish, studied law, became a lawyer, then a judge, then began a political career. The barriers to all of this cannot be overstated. 19th-century Mexico was a caste-ridden society with full-blooded indigenous people at the bottom, mestizos in the middle and the white criollos at the very top. At every single step of the way, his facial features would have marked him out for exclusion and prejudice.

His Liberal party stood for reform against the more traditionalist Conservatives. He believed in secular, humanist and egalitarian ideals. He considered himself an ally of Lincoln, and when the Confederacy asked his government for help, he threw their emissary in jail, then deported him, "saying he would never give support to a country that held nearly one-third of its people in permanent bondage." He believed in the separation of church and state and wanted to end the rule of the Catholic Church, which controlled vast amounts of land, the educational system and great political power.

The Conservatives hated him so much that when Juárez was elected, they invited in the French army to take over Mexico. They would rather destroy Mexico's independence than live under a Juárez presidency.

Juárez's government fled to the north of Mexico and regrouped. He spent much of his time in office fighting off the French, and finally won. The French-installed usurper, Emperor Maximilian I, was sentenced to death. Four years later, Juárez died of a heart attack while working in his office.

Juárez is one of Mexico's best-loved Presidents. His face is on peso notes; he is everywhere memorialized in municipal names and public statues. Juárez is praised for preserving Mexico's independence against invading Europeans and advancing Mexico from semi-feudalism into the early stages of capitalism. His successor, the long-reigning Porfirio Díaz, is as hated as Juárez is loved. Díaz basically sold out Mexico to the United States and let it slide back into stagnation; his reign was so incredibly regressive it led to the Mexican Revolution of 1911.

What did this mean for indigenous Mexicans? After all, Juárez was the first truly native ruler in 300 years, since the time of Moctezuma and Cuauhtémoc. In this respect, his legacy was mixed. His rule was undoubtedly good for all Mexican citizens, especially when he's compared with his most miserable predecessors and successors. He did much to release the death grip of feudalism and theocracy. On the other hand, to drive forward his vision of modernity, he was ruthless and held no ethnic loyalty. His land reforms destroyed a particular form of communal land ownership and left indigenous people much more vulnerable to having their remaining land expropriated. He attacked not only traditions that hurt them, but traditions that helped them.

Today, the status of Mexico's indigenous people is better than in the 19th century. But it's still not very good. The modern-day veneration of Juárez coexists with severe structural oppression and an informal caste system. To give you some idea of how strong this system is… I once browsed some Mexican job ads and noticed a requirement for many jobs: "buena presentación". I asked a Mexican friend what this meant. "Is it like 'professional demeanor'?" He said, cynically, "it means you shouldn't look too Indian or they won't hire you."

19th-century Mexico isn't 21st-century America, of course. The parallel is inexact but illuminating. The first black President of America won't signify an end to racism… perhaps even not in 100 years. It's just one of many steps in many intersecting paths along the way. On the other hand, a lot can happen in 100 years. I don’t think I'll see the end of racism and casteism in my lifetime, but I still hold out hope it will happen in the lifetime of my grandchildren.

Obama Sweeps Hawaii - So Ha!

This is probably going to be my final word on the whole "Asians won't vote for black candidates" silliness.

After Super Tuesday, I wrote:

Latino and Asian Obama supporters are going to work twice as hard now. It's possible that with greater name recognition we can reverse the trend.

One test of my theory is how well Obama does among Asian voters in Hawaii. With all his Hawaiian family ties, he should do very well.

Well today...

Obama Wins Hawaii in a Landslide

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who was born and raised in Hawai'i, won the state's Democratic presidential caucus in a landslide yesterday. Obama had 28,347 votes, or 76%, to U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton's 8,835 votes, or 24%, with 100% of the precincts reporting.

Ha! I've never been a gambler, but I feel like I should have put some money down on this race.

Foster Care Adoption Advice for People Starting Out - Part I

I just got a comment I should address now, as it's one that other readers may also be asking. Elaine comments:

... when you adopt from foster care, are you a foster mother first and then after a period of time you can finalize an adoption? Does the foster care system give you support (educational, emotional, resources, etc) during the pre-adoption period? Do you receive any financial support prior to finalization? What if problems arise? I am interested in the whole foster care system and adoptions from it.

There are three ways you can adopt from foster care. This doesn't count long-term foster placements by the way; these are just routes that lead to adoption.

1) Straight fostering. You get a foster license and begin taking foster placements. You can specify what kind of placements you accept. You will be expected to support whatever goal has been decided for the child. When one of your foster children is freed for adoption due to termination of parental rights, you will often be positioned first in line to adopt them.

2) Foster-to-Adopt. You get a foster license and begin taking foster placements, with the understanding that you are in this with the end goal of adopting. Your placements will be "adoption track" placements. This doesn't guarantee that the end result will not be reunification or kinship placement.

3) Straight Adoption. This is what I signed up for. You get a foster license, although it's often modified and different from a regular license. Your placement will be of children whose parental rights have already been terminated.

One of the big issues with foster care adoption is that it's incredibly variable. Some counties or states don't have foster-to-adopt programs at all. You can still foster with the goal of adopting, but your status is the same as any other foster parent.

There are three different kinds of intermediaries to use:

1) Directly through the state. Your local county will probably have the most placements. They will likely focus on fostering and foster-to-adopt. Straight adoption is not their priority. They only place local kids and will not cross state lines. There will be varying degrees of function and dysfunction... counties with less money will have really minimal services, everything is run on crisis mode and removed kids often have to spend the night on a couch in the social worker's office or even in jail. Most everyone I know says that their level of support from the local county/state is horrible, turnover is intense and that they are routinely lied to.

2) Private agency. There are many different kinds. I chose a local, secular agency. Some of the religious ones have restrictions I don't agree with. The large mainstream Protestant ones -- e.g. Lutheran, Methodist -- often don't have restrictions. These agencies contract with the state to place children. They will do a range of fostering, foster-to-adopt and straight adoption. My agency specializes in straight adoption from foster care. These agencies are usually completely free, like the state. You will get varying degrees of support, but I have always heard that you get more support from an agency than you would from the state.

3) Semi-Independent. If you go this route you pay someone to write your homestudy, pay your own lawyer, etcetera. I'm not familiar with this route so I can't say much about it. I've heard it's extremely difficult. Caseworkers for children don't like to talk directly to parents in the beginning stages.

There are two kinds of kids:

1) Special needs. Almost any child up for straight adoption is going to have special needs. It's a meaning of the term that basically indicates "harder to place". Here's the Georgia definition:

As defined for the purpose of adoption, Special Needs includes:
* African-American children older than one year of age
* Three or more brothers and sisters who need to be placed together
* Children age eight and older
* Children with documented physical, emotional or mental disabilities
* Two brothers and/or sisters, one of whom has a special need

In Atlanta, African-American children between one and eight are only technically listed as special needs. There are many parents who are very excited to adopt them. But in other areas of the state, such as predominantly rural white areas, they might be much harder to place.

I've heard some people say that having race listed as a special need is racist. The way I see it, it's that being a victim of racism is a special need. It simply reflects an ugly reality. Racial disproportionality in the foster care system is a terrible problem.

Special needs children will come with Medicaid and variable monthly subsidies. NACAC has more information.

2) Non-special needs. I don't know much about this area. I think these are infants. They might not get Medicaid or a subsidy, but sometimes they do. If a woman gives birth at a hospital, walks away and never comes back, and the infant is healthy, I think this would be the category.

Some more general guidelines and support specifics:

• Infants and very young children don't go into straight adoption unless they have major real special needs. Fostering or foster-to-adopt is the established route if you are only willing to adopt a very young child.
• The state will often be in "tit for tat" mode with foster parents: if you want an "adoptable" kid, you need to rack up brownie points by taking care of some "unadoptable" ones. The whole dynamic sounds kind of creepy, with everyone exploiting each other. I think that's why some locations don't even have foster-to-adopt programs. It seems like it's better to rely on a core of great foster parents who can whole-heartedly support a non-adoption goal, but there are often not enough of these around.
• When you foster, you are always paid a fostering subsidy. When you are in a straight adoption pre-adoptive placement you also get a subsidy. After you adopt you get a subsidy based on special needs level. Adoption subsidies are less than fostering subsidies; adoption ultimately saves money for the state.
• A special needs adoption gives you a $10-11,000 tax credit. These adoptions don't cost much money, so it's not a reimbursement, it's just a lump sum that reduces your taxes paid. The credit can be taken over several years. If your income is very high it phases out. The terrible part is that if your income is low and you don't pay enough taxes, you might not get the whole amount! Also, if you adopt a larger sibling group, it's very unlikely you'll get the full amount for each child back.
• Children with special needs are covered by Medicaid.
• Any route you take involves extensive mandatory training. My husband and I have taken almost 40 hours of formal training (and much more in informal research). The quality of the training can vary. I thought ours was great but I've heard other people say theirs was terrible.
• Foster-to-adopt can be difficult for people with no children. If you are desperate for a child the emotional impact of returning a child can be stronger. On the other hand, if you already have children, there's another impact to consider... how will they handle having a brother or sister going away?
• There are a million problems that can and do arise. Failed placements or adoption disruption, of course.
• In terms of pre-placement emotional support, I doubt the state will give you anything. The social workers are too busy taking care of immediate emergency needs of children to babysit foster or adoptive parents. You may get more support from agencies. Generally, we're on our own. It can get really depressing. Just look at some of my posts from December. Internet and local support groups are incredibly helpful. I would have quit this six months ago if I hadn't already met people who had done it successfully.
• After placement, support is (again) variable. Respite care is important. The only way to find out about post-placement support is to talk to people in your location.

Non-Grumble

I take some of what I said in the last post back.

I was just at a large lunch, and when I talked about our upcoming visit it sparked a great conversation with an adult adoptee. She shared a lot of her perspective, and at one point she said, "maybe I'm going into too much detail here" but I just said, "go ahead, after all, I'm a new parent and I'm soaking everything up like a sponge!"

Grumble Grumble

Most of the time now, I'm just really excited and busy. Adoption preparation keeps me busy. Plus, this is beautiful weather and prime gardening time (last weekend I spent 4 hours every day ripping up sod and mulching). Work keeps me busy. Blogging keeps me busy. I've signed on to guest blog at APA for Progress as well as Rachel's Tavern.

Still, I'm going to take some time here to grumble.

I'm starting to tell more and more people about our adoption. The reaction tends to be what I consider normal, except for one thing. I've been getting a lot of "which country"? And then I have to explain that we're adopting a 5-year-old boy. I've started saying "we're adopting a very tall and active baby". It's very odd. The reaction isn't quite negative, just sort of bemused. Often people will say "my (insert relative) adopted a baby from (insert country)" and then just go quiet.

I think I must have gotten very accustomed to foster care adoption world. I realized this recently when someone told me "my 7-year-old was physically and sexually abused by her father" in a regular tone of voice and my only response was an equally regular "oh, ok". In most social circles this kind of dialog would be just plain weird.

In the predominantly white middle-class social environment that I'm inhabiting about 80% of the time, I guess international infant adoption is the default adoption. Frankly, that irritates me. I mean, I understand the reasons. I've written about many of them here on this blog. Still, encountering this in action is more affecting than I thought it would be.

International adoption has some horrendous problems but I'm not against it on principle, and we might have tried adopting from Japan if that route had fewer roadblocks. But I don't think it should be the default. I am not going to walk around with a holier-than-thou attitude because we adopted from foster care... but I will do my best to gently remind people there are a lot of kids in this country. Foster care adoption is not for everyone, but it should at least show up on the radar.

House Bills to Support on Foster Care

I read about these at the NACAC blog, Reform Foster Care Now. There have been several bills introduced recently which sound like they should be supported. I'll email Hank Johnson about them.

The latest:

Key House Leader Introduces Broad Child Welfare Reform Bill

On February 14, Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA), chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support (which has jurisdiction over the nation’s child welfare system) introduced The Investment in Kids Act, which seeks the first comprehensive reform of the U.S. child welfare system in nearly 30 years.

“Every American kid deserves a safe home and a secure life, and in the case of vulnerable children, it is up to us to make sure that happens,” McDermott said.

The legislation (HR 5466) would:

• provide additional funding to help states in their efforts to strengthen families and protect vulnerable children;
• make all foster children eligible for assistance for the first time (only 43% of foster children received federal aid in 2006);
• provide assistance to states to improve and retain their child welfare workforce;
• eliminate the aging out of foster kids at age 18 by extending support to the age of 21; and,
• provide financial support to grandparents and other relatives who want to care for foster children.

These critical changes would provided needed support that help vulnerable children have permanent families, and ensure that those families have the support they need.

Children can't wait. The time for reform is now.

The Meeting with Our Caseworker Went Well

Once we finally got face-to-face contact today, I felt better. We got a lot of good advice and took copious notes. Now we're ready for subsidy negotiation.

The amount of appointments is daunting. We need at least five separate:

1) a comprehensive psychological assessment appointment
2) a psychiatrist
3) a therapist
4) a pediatrician
5) a dentist

This doesn't count any educational or other type of assessment appointment.

We're starting to narrow down the field, but it's going to take a lot of work next week.

During the visit, we'll meet Sunny, his foster family, his caseworker again, maybe a teacher, and his therapist. I want to wait to make a therapist appointment here until we talk with his current therapist and get more of an idea of what to look for.

We're going to bring some small portable games to play with Sunny, like Uno. Our caseworker advised us to get some quality time together with him... low stimulus, like just hanging out in our hotel room or going on a walk.

Doctors and Social Workers

The foster mom told me that Sunny has been taken off his medication because he was exhibiting side effects. Now, his doctor has decided to put him back on a completely different medication. I'm a bit worried about this. I was hoping we would get to meet him in an unmedicated state. It doesn't sound like he's horribly unmanageable and miserable off medication, so why put him on a different medication at this point? This really underlines the necessity of getting him a good doctor here. I want to be 100% sure that any medication he takes is really in his long-term best interest. I'm not casting aspersions on his foster mom; she's simply following the advice she's given.

I'm also frustrated because it's been so hard to contact our caseworker all this week and last week. We have some really important paperwork to go over. I email, I leave one voicemail message a day, I call three times a day: morning, mid-afternoon and late afternoon. I consider that persistent, but not obnoxious. It doesn't work. My secret weapon is that my husband works from home, so I can always send him by the office. This is what he did yesterday, and now we finally have an appointment. Our caseworker said that they're doing an unprecedented amount of matching and having lots of staffings; they're "experiencing growing pains". I told him that's just a slippery way of saying "we're understaffed". I do think they're doing their best, but let's get real, understaffing there has been a serious problem for at least a year now.

I'm going to complain about my husband now. He reads my blog and knows about this complaint already. He trusts doctors and social workers and other experts way too much! I'm more suspicious. I believe in showing respect for experts. Yes, they know more than I do. However, these experts don't have my best interest as their sole interest. They have lots of other motivations, like "how can I handle this patient so my insurance company is happy" or "I don't want to get in trouble for breaking a rule" or "I'm really tired today and I'm just going to spout a bunch of crap so that this person will get confused and go away and then I can take a nap". These people have to earn my trust; I'm not going to take their words as holy commandments.


I don't want to end on this grumbling note, especially on Valentine's Day. I'll end with a picture instead. I love my husband :-)

Anna Mae He Case: "Anna Mae Goes to China"

Here's a long article about a major milestone in the Anna Mae He case. I wrote about my reaction to this case last year. My opinion of the Bakers is of course very, very negative. However, I'm glad to note that both families seem to be working together a bit, at least enough to preserve the positive relationship between their daughters.

I just want to note that the tone of the ABC News article is really over the top and offensive at several points. I know that Anna Mae will go through culture shock in China. I don't want to minimize that. But children move between countries all the time. I've certainly experienced it myself. Also, I don't see the news media engaging in this kind of emotional outpouring over the many 9-year-olds who are deported to Mexico after spending their entire lives in this country.

Take this passage:

The child's cultural roots are evident. She thinks Hannah Montana is cool (but can't tell you why); she skates around on retractable roller skate shoes, and at every opportunity, she pulls out her Game Boy. She likes to read, is a straight-A student, and wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up.

And how well she fares in her new home in China is the big question on the lips and in the hearts of everyone from her adoptive parents in Tennessee, to judges who have ruled on her case, social workers who have sought to monitor the transition, friends and family of both the Bakers and the Hes, and an international television audience.

First of all, I wouldn't grant the Bakers the title of "adoptive parents". And secondly, there is NOTHING on that list of "cultural roots", besides Hannah Montana, that is specifically American. A Game Boy? I guess only Americans are allowed to have those. They're such an important part of our cultural heritage! It's as if the writers of this piece expect that the day after landing in China, Anna Mae will be forcibly stripped of her American gear, issued a pointy hat and a bucket and sent out into the rice paddies for the rest of her life.

Message to the Obama Thief

I had two Obama signs in my front yard. You stole one of them last night. I guess you thought one was enough for me.

I know Obama signs are hard to find, and the official online store has been backordered for weeks. I don't care. Buy them somewhere else!

I had two yard signs for a reason; it's because I live on a busy street and want to cover several angles. Now I'll have to buy a replacement. Just because you like Obama doesn't mean you get a license to be a yard sign sneak thief! ARRGH!

Short Timeline and Getting Ready Post

I've been doing most of the shopping. But I got a funny call from my husband today.

"Please, please, talk me out of buying this $200 table that's shaped like a train."

I was able to talk him out of it.

We bought our plane tickets yesterday. We'll be visiting towards the end of this month. Then his caseworker will take Sunny on a weekend visit here. Then, by the end of spring break, he'll move in permanently, with adoption tentatively scheduled in six months.

His foster mom says that Sunny's looking forward to moving somewhere warm where he can play outside more. She says they've been talking about his adoption, and although he doesn't fully understand it, he has some idea. As their conversation goes, he'll miss her (but she'll still be in his life as a relative) and his friends (but he'll make new ones). She says he isn't really that confused by the fact that he's going to have a new "mom" and "dad", because the other young children in the house often have multiple moms and dads.

I'm planning on taking two weeks maternity leave. Since we need to get him back in school as soon as possible, there's no point in taking more (I think). I can use those two weeks to work on appointments: therapists, pediatricians, school. Then I'll go on a reduced schedule for a month, so that I leave at 3pm and help my husband with after-school stuff until our routine starts to settle down.

Racism and Biological Family

Well, we have a timeline. I'll probably make a post about that later. Things are moving quickly. My only worry right now is that my worker has been very slow in getting back to me. I'm in contact with Sunny's caseworker and with his foster mother. His foster mother seems like a really nice, competent and down-to-earth woman.

Sunny's caseworker says that his biological mother would like to talk to me. I've already agreed to exchange letters through the agency. Apparently, it's not a good idea to have identifying information. She's not dangerous, but I think she's still an addict. The caseworker could put both of us on a conference call, so we wouldn't need to give out a phone number.

I said that I'd rather wait. We can always do it at a later time. I really want to exchange some letters first. That way I'll know more about her and she'll know more about me. Also, I'm more articulate in written form than I am verbally. I'm especially not good at talking to adults in emotional pain; my words dry up. She's written me a letter already and left it at the agency, and we'll get it when we travel there on the first visit.

The message that comes to mind is that 1) we will be dedicated to taking care of Sunny 2) we will be honest, but not put her down, and tell Sunny that she faced problems that preventing her from taking care of Sunny as she wanted to 3) we are pulling for her to achieve a good life for herself 4) we can keep up written correspondence, and at some point when Sunny is stable in his new home and feels ready, telephone correspondence.

I feel a lot of sympathy for her. It's a terrible thing to lose your child. Terminal of Parental Rights has already been done, and she knows there is no possibility, ever, of getting him back. The caseworker says "she is very remorseful". She dropped out of contact for quite a while, but got back in touch with the agency when she found out Sunny was being adopted. We'll need to be prepared for the fact that contact will likely be erratic.

Learning more bits and pieces of the story, I was surprised by how much sympathy I felt for her... and how much negativity I felt towards her mother. All I know about the maternal grandmother is that their family is "very dysfunctional" and that the caseworker thinks she didn't support Sunny and his mother well, or try very hard to keep him from entering the foster care system, because Sunny's father is black. That really strikes a nerve for me.

When I was in my twenties, and after my grandparents had both passed, my mother felt able to be more frank with me about the tensions around my birth. Her parents told her she was ruining her life by having a baby with a Japanese man. And ruining my life, too. Before being born, my life was already pre-ruined!

After I was born, there was no talk of ruination and they instantly became the loving grandparents I remember. I was extremely close to my grandfather. My grandmother was not warm and fuzzy -- sharp and angular is more like it -- but I also remember her as loving me very much.

When my mother told me all this, it wasn't much of a surprise or a shock. If she'd told me when I was 12, it would have hurt me immeasurably. But by my twenties I was mature enough to understand it in context. Given the time and the place, my grandparents' reaction was predictable. It didn't make me think any less of them.

There are varying degrees of infection by racism, and I feel quite unforgiving towards those who have it so bad they can't even reach out and help a little baby.

Obama's Poor Showing among Asian and Latino voters

(cross-posted at rachelstavern.com)

I was a passive onlooker in the primary fight until about three weeks ago, when I took the plunge into camp Obama.

I think Obama did very well last night, and he won my home state of Georgia, but I'm really disappointed that Latino voters were voting against him 2-to-1, and Asians 3-to-1. This has been the cause of much gnashing of teeth over at AsianAmericansforObama. Before Super Tuesday, we were reading predictions that Obama would win the Asian-American vote in California. Looks like that poll was completely wrong.

There are two possible factors people are throwing around: racism and conservatism. I don't want to discount the fact some Latinos and some Asians are racist against black people. No two racial or ethnic groups in this country have a perfect history of harmony with each other. Indirect racism could be even more powerful. A Latino or Asian voter might have nagging doubts as to whether the majority of voters -- white people -- will really support a black person in the general election. Simplistic versions of the racism argument -- "Latinos don't vote for black candidates" -- have already been taken apart and debunked at rachelstavern.com and at numerous other places, so I'm not even going to bother talking about them.

My theory is that the main factor is not racism at all, but conservatism. I don't mean conservative ideology, I mean conservative outlook. Many of these voters are newer Americans, or they have ties to communities where others are newer Americans. The mindset is often "don't rock the boat". I know some people with resident cards who are nervous about going to quite peaceful political demonstrations... "just in case". Another example: an ex-roommate of mine, a foreign student, once gave a large donation of money to the Fraternal Order of the Police. Since he didn't have any money at all to spare, we asked him why on earth he did that... it was simply because he got a phone call from an FOP telemarketer. "In my country, when the police ask for money, you give it to them."

This kind of anxiety can continue over into citizenship and be imparted to the next generation. It feeds into conservatism and works against lesser-known transformational candidates like Barack Obama. Clinton has name recognition. She has strong connections to the current political establishment. From this point of view, she's the safer candidate.

Other polls show a strong generational divide: younger for Obama, older for Clinton. This definitely cuts across Latinos and Asians as well. I was shocked by the Asian-American results because all the Asian-American blogs I read are pro-Obama. The really big dog in the pack -- Angry Asian Man -- came out as an Obama supporter! But these bloggers tend to be younger, obviously.

Latino and Asian Obama supporters are going to work twice as hard now. It's possible that with greater name recognition we can reverse the trend.

One test of my theory is how well Obama does among Asian voters in Hawaii. With all his Hawaiian family ties, he should do very well.

Edited to add: Here is a much more sophisticated analysis of the same issue, just posted by Jeff Chang at HuffPo. And another by Kai at Zuky.net.

Weekend Update

Sigh. The bad news for Atlanta police just doesn't stop. Shot by a Buford cop!

BUFORD, Georgia (AP) -- Two off-duty officers from different police departments wounded each other in a gunfight in the middle of a road in an Atlanta suburb, authorities said.

Neither officer's wounds were life-threatening, police said. Their conditions were not immediately known on Saturday.

Officer Jay Daily, a five-year veteran of the Duluth Police Department, exchanged multiple gunshots Friday afternoon with Fulton County Officer Paul Phillips, police said.

Daily was in custody Saturday, charged with aggravated assault, Cpl. Illana Spellman of the Gwinnett County, Georgia, police said.

[...]


"It's been baffling to us why this situation even occurred," said Duluth Police Chief Randy Belcher. "It's an embarrassment to this agency."

We did some very productive school research today, and then went shopping for furniture. It's so difficult because we still know so little at this point. We were looking for a sturdy bed and found a great one for $99 at Ikea. It's simple and made out of coated metal. But then we started vacillating.

"What if he has a bed he's already really attached to?"
"You can't ship kid's beds anyway, they're usually poor quality and just fall apart."
"What if he's used to a really firm mattress and the mattress we get is too soft?"
"Um, we'd better hold off on buying the mattress."
"We're buying a metal bed, OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE'S ALLERGIC TO METAL OR SOMETHING"

... and so on.

We decided to buy the bed but not put it together yet, since it has a 90-day return policy.

Still no word on timeline. Our companion from the agency, Mr. Ridiculously Competent Single Dad, adopted from the same county, and his timeline from match to placement was about three and a half months. We might go quicker because he was the first, and now the paperwork route is clearer. Our next step is a "formal presentation." There's also subsidy negotiation and visitation planning. We need to be mentally prepared for long, frustrating and even terrifying delays.

By the way, I'm in touch with Mr. Single Dad. It turns out Sunny and his son don't have any prior connection, though. His son had alphabet soup diagnoses and was on numerous medications, but Mr. Single Dad thinks much of this was due to needs overstatement... he got his son off all of the drugs except for one daytime ADHD med, and says he hasn't seen even a single sign supporting a RAD diagnosis.

So many of these kids have problems and behaviors that no one tells you about... or else the people involved do know, and they'll just lie to you. But the other side of the coin is that maybe things look worse than they actually are.

Endorsement News

My mother switched from Edwards to Obama now, so we're a united family. Obama has actually stopped visiting Georgia because his victory here on February 5th is looking like a sure thing.

In other endorsement news, "Cooter" from the Dukes of Hazzard is an Obama supporter. The news really caught my eye because when I was a little kid, my grandfather gave me an autographed "Cooter" photo from some political event and it was framed in my room for the longest time...

Cooter: ‘Obama beats all I ever saw’
January 31st, 2008 by Andisheh Nouraee in News

Former Rep. Ben Jones, aka Cooter from “The Dukes of Hazzard,” today endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.

Said Jones in a press release:

As a lifelong Southerner, I am much impressed by his sincerity, his down to earth style, and his earnest approach to people of all backgrounds.

Obama could not be reached for a statement, but this afternoon his campaign bus successfully jumped a ravine, after which the junior senator from Illinois leaned out a window and fired arrows of dynamite at rival Sen. Hillary Clinton’s bus. Clinton was not injured, but according to a spokesman, the former First Lady “felt snubbed.”

The press release announcing Cooter’s endorsement is after the jump. Yee-haw!