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.