This blog is the result of imperfect thoughts and ramblings. I hesitate to write about this topic because my narrative is lacking in so many ways. It’s inconsistent and raw and, I’m sure, full of biases I don’t see. It could benefit from a whole paragraph of disclaimers. I hesitate to make disclaimers, because, well, I hate disclaimers.
So
You can look at my adoption experience through a different lens for sure. And maybe this is just version 1.0. A very tiny tidbit of version 1.0. But, this is the lens and version I’m choosing now. Because, now matters.
I adopted two poor black kids from Africa. Quite honestly, that whole concept is born out of white privilege in the first place. And it sickens me; the fact that my current family make-up was bred out of a broken system of racial prejudice and oppression. A system in which I unwillingly participate in daily. I didn’t choose to be white. I didn’t choose to be born in middle class suburbia in western America. I didn’t choose my parents or the values they raised me with, just as my children didn’t choose to be black or born in sub-saharan Africa or raised in poverty. I didn’t know I was being raised with privilege. I grew up in the life I did. I was safe and healthy and provided for. I felt no feelings of angst or maliciousness against anyone of color. I felt no inflated feelings of arrogance or dominance against anyone of color. By geography and demographics, I lived in a small white community in a predominantly white town.
But, really, none of that background matters. I live in a system that oppresses black people and has oppressed black people since the beginning of it’s existence. What matters is what I do with it now.
I am a white mother raising two black children in a bubble of white privilege. That is my reality. And there is an almost constant internal grappling with that. I care about the racial tension of a white mom raising black kids. I care about dissecting white privilege and my place in it. I care about the future of my kids experience in this country as black people. I care about the bigger picture of love. My grappling is figuring out a healthy and redemptive way to do all that with the narrative I currently have in my family.
I have never been naive. But, I will readily admit, when I first brought my son home, I was more focused on his heritage than his race. He is African. His history is that of a Ugandan from the Buganda tribe. There is tension and violence and oppression and pride and power struggles in that history, but it isn’t one that stems from race. I wanted so badly for others to see the difference. I wanted people not to see a white woman holding a black kid, but see the beauty of global unity; of humanity caring for eachother; of love. But, without knowing his history and, quite honestly even in the midst of his history, he is still a black male growing up in America. I didn’t recognize that. I didn’t want to see that. I fought with him about venturing into black American culture in dress and music and friends. Not because I feared black people, but because I cared so much about his heritage. I feared that he would no longer associate with being African.
And I have done him a huge disservice in that area. I have failed to help him embrace his identity as a black American male. He is not solely his race. But, his race is part of who he is and collectively pulls him in to a bigger narrative and bigger history in this country.
And thus, being his mother, I am pulled into that also. I fear for my teenage son in a way that white mothers with white sons do not. Not because of his own choices, but because of a system that assumes; that assigns blame without merit because of what he looks like. I am not even near prideful enough to put myself in the shoes of a black mother with black teenage sons, but, I will say that I am capable of beginning to see the difference. Capable of feeling the difference. Capable of allowing a black mother to say to me, ‘You have no idea what it feels like to raise a black son in this country.’ I am willing to acknowledge that truth, to let the power dynamic shift, to a take a different place in line.
And there is a difference. And quite possibly choosing to acknowledge that difference and sit in the uncomfortable position that places one in, might be at least a start.
Because, black lives matter. If you are saying anything different than this right now, you are completely missing the point.
And you are completely missing out on a vital time in our country to stand for something that can bring change and vitality and redemption and reconciliation and a fullness to humanity that we have never experienced.
And we so desperately need that. Now.