Adoptamom, I can’t believe how recent some of your stories are!! No admittance to a pool in 1989?! Wow…
Thanks again, all. This is all very eye-opening.
Adoptamom, I can’t believe how recent some of your stories are!! No admittance to a pool in 1989?! Wow…
Thanks again, all. This is all very eye-opening.
I grew up in the north, but my dad’s whole family was in Fort Worth, Texas. My dad shed his racist attitudes long before I was born while he was in the Navy, and I truly didn’t – and still don’t – understand prejudice based on the color of a person’s skin. Nevertheless, it was fairly rampant in that side of the family. In fact, one of my great-uncles was a slumlord, although I didn’t realize until I was much older that that’s where all his money came from; I just knew he was a scary, nasty man. He certainly fit the slumlord stereotype. My grandparents were not overtly racist – they said the usual stuff, but were never actively rude to a black person to their face, and in fact my grandfather for a time was widely criticized because in the 1940s he insisted on serving customers who came into his feed store in the order they arrived, not bumping white people ahead of black people, and Grandmother later had black people in her house and treated them as graciously as she would treat anyone else. She was a true lady in the old-fashioned sense of the word.
But the whole family took for granted, for example, that Estralita, who was my great-aunt’s maid, lived in basic slavery – she had a room over the garage, but I’m not sure they actually ever paid her any money; she just waited on the family hand and foot 24 hours a day, and was definitely a lifetime retainer. My sister and I also still remember the time when I was 9 and my sister was 11 our grandfather spent 45 minutes trying to justify to us why he still used the word “nigger.” He shortly thereafter graduated to “nigra,” which was as far as Grandmother ever got, but we counted our blessings that we got them that far!
And I will never to my dying day forget the time we were at a fancy downtown department store with Grandmother and my sister, in complete ignorance, drank out of the colored drinking fountain. Grandmother was so horrified and upset that she actually had to go lie down in the store nurse’s office for a little while!
In a different twist on racism, when Grandmother was 95 years old, in the late '90s (she just passed away at 102 a couple of years ago), she was hospitalized with pneumonia, and was dreadfully ill and barely rational. The head nurse on her unit, an older black woman, sent a young black male aide to give Grandmother her bath. I was in Grandmother’s room at the time, and I asked the nurse to please send a woman – color didn’t matter in a female, but it would be dreadfully upsetting to Grandmother to have a black male taking off her clothes and bathing her private parts, and I simply didn’t want to subject her to that. The nurse was very nasty to me about it, but I pointed out to her that while I didn’t like Grandmother’s attitudes, it still wasn’t fair to shock and horrify a 95-year-old woman whose attitudes had been set through most of a long life where racism was an active feature. I still think I did the right thing. (The young male aide understood completely, actually, and was happy to have someone else do it; this wasn’t the first time he’d come across that kind of attitude in an older white female patient, and he at least accepted that when someone is desperately ill, that’s not the best time to try and change a lifetime’s beliefs!)
When I was in my first stint installing this monster computer program that’s now the base of my livelihood, I applied for several internal jobs in that project and got one as an internal consultant.
One of the other jobs was for Training; the guy who got that is a black fellow from Chicago. The company where we worked had bought “his” factory a few years before. Seeing all the new slogans and that it looked like the new owners might mean them, he’d decided to apply for that project job as it would give him enough information to decide whether he wanted to stay or look for greener pastures.
Previous to the buy out, his factory had been an old boys’ club. Lots of business meetings wouldn’t even take place in the factory, but in a local country club as conversations at the water fountain. He explained that to become a member of this club, you had to be invited by three members. I guessed that the club membership didn’t include any blacks, jews, irish, mexicans or italians. He laughed and said I’d nailed it; that club “managed to make me want to call people called Goldberg ‘bro’.” He was born in the late 60s so doesn’t remember when segregation was official, but has no problem believing his parents’ war stories.
The buyout took place in 1999.
That was pretty much the case for “in house servants” in Spain until the '60s and sometimes beyond, and they were the same color. The paternal grandmother of one of my classmates didn’t like her darling son’s intended because “she’s not well-off enough.” The not-well-off-enough girl had met darling-son in college, where she was studying to be a pharmacist (she’s now the head of pharmacology for one of the biggest hospitals in Spain) and came with her own inherited-through-the-centuries servant girl. The two families lived in the same house, making it a total of 9 children and four adults; all the kids went to the same school (back in, say, the 60s, and in the area from where these people came, going to school was in itself rare); meals were eaten in shifts simply because setting up a table big enough for everybody was a pain. Of the five cars, the best two were “Dad’s” and the other three could be used by anybody who had a driver’s license.
C. 1910, my great-grandfather’s first fiancée went to his manor to prepare the wedding. Shortly after her arrival, she informed him that as soon as she was mistress of the manor, she was going to fire “that daft old witch” and kick her old ass out of the house. He informed her that “the daft old witch” and her ancestors had been serving his ancestors since before the Child got lost and found in the Temple, she said “she or me”. I did say “first fiancée”, didn’t I?
My parents sat me down family-meeting-style about a year and a half ago and told me that I shouldn’t ever date girls of other races because my professors would discriminate against me and the kids would be doomed to failure. My dad graduated with an engineering degree before the White Album was released, so I forgive him for not understanding the politics of the average college professor–but I was shocked to see my mom, who got a liberal arts degree in Minnesota in the 70s, sit there and agree with him. And the part about mixed-race kids being doomed to failure was the funniest thing I’d heard in years. But they had a point, right–I mean, who ever heard of Halle Berry, or Derek Jeter, or the Rock, or Jimi Hendrix, or Sammy Davis Jr.? It’s too bad their racial deficit forced them into lives of abject poverty. :rolleyes:
In high school I had a new teacher for Algebra II or somesuch, and since I had some bullshit ADD diagnosis the school had to make an incompetent social worker with lung-melting bad breath (who always felt the need to lean waaaaaaaaay up close when she was talking to me; I wondered at these times how she made it through college without ever learning the basic tenets of oral hygeine) monitor my academic progress. Since she asked, I told her that the new teacher was horrible: she never covered new material until after it was due in the homework, she never gave helpful feedback on the homework, she paid almost no attention to the students the entire time, she was late or missed class entirely on a regular basis and she had to be the only high school math teacher in history who couldn’t handle a class of under 30 students without her own personal TA. After hearing this laundry list of problems, the social worker said “So you don’t like her because she’s black, right?” No, I don’t like her because she’s incompetent. “It’s OK–if it’s because she’s black, you can tell me.” There was nothing I could say or do to disabuse her of the notion that I hated my new math teacher because of her race. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I didn’t raise a stink with the principal about that.
My parents said they’d disinherit me if I were to wed a black woman.
About 20 years ago, my father was in Saudi Arabia, consulting on a very big project. He was being driven round one of the farther portions of the site and spotted what looked like a pile of rubbish. He said that they must clear it up, because it was a fire risk. One of the other passengers, with great embarassment, told him that that was where the Pakistani labourers lived.
I work in Florida and have to deal with deeds quite often. I remember pointing out some of these restrictions to coworkers to see their reactions. One of my bosses uses such restrictions as the prime example of why government does NOT enforce deed restrictions and leaves it as a civil court matter.
Much was made of Bill Clinton playing golf at a Little Rock country club that didn’t allow black members in 1991. It’s not completely a thing of the past.
Okay, the stuff about your in-laws, Mr. Willie, your grandmother, and even the country club doesn’t really surprise me, given the players’ ages and given that I’m sure that there’s still de facto segration going on at country clubs. Oh, and the thing with the white cop? Yeah, par for the course.
But this thing with the social worker? :eek: I can’t believe she even said that with a straight face. … Oh, wait, yes I can.
:eek: Sweet. Baby. Jesus. I’m not even going to pretend to be flabbergasted that she admitted this to you, because I’m not. But still…damn.
Yeah, this doesn’t surprise me, either, though I’d have loved to have been there to see those folks trying to hide their surprise/disgust/whatever uncool thing they felt. And yes, I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when they later discussed that shit amongst themselves or with their friends/families. And I assure you, they **most certainly did ** talk about it later on.
One more thing: I don’t know if anyone has told you this, but as a Black man (a) with friends and acquaintances (White couples and singles and interracial couples) who are raising identifiably Black children (either their biological or adopted children), and (b) who often cringes at the willingness of (generally, White) Americans to adopt children from thousands of miles away when perfectly fine non-White children in America already need homes in America,* I admire that you and **DH ** have taken these children as your own and are apparently willing to suffer the consequences (along with revelling in the joys, of course). One of the consequences, as you may have already discovered, is that you are–to racist dickheads, anyway–no longer just *a * family, but a **Black ** family. IMNSHO, that takes guts. So, yeah, good for y’all!
(And yes, whoever is so inclined may now cue the “Kumbaya” music.)
*So as not to offend (honestly!) those parents who adopt children (who, true, tend to be overwhelmingly of color, but usually not Black) from outside of the United States: I understand some of the reasons that y’all do this–laws that make it possible for the birth parents to change their minds and possibly have the adoptions challenged or even overturned, for instance–but still, as wonderful as I think it is that you adopt children from other countries (where their lives would most certainly suck), I can’t help but feel that Black American children (who, let’s be honest, not too many Americans with the means to raise children want anyway) are getting royally screwed. And that’s a goddman shame.
Aw, hell! Obviously, I meant to say “goddamn.” And hey, if anyone wants to give me a clue as to how to use that nifty edit feature, I’m all ears. Many thanks pre- and post-clue.
There is an “edit” button immediately to the left of the reply button (the reply button in your post, not the “reply to thread”). This edit button is only visible during the short window of time in which you are allowed to edit. If you don’t see the button, the time has passed.
Thank you so, so much, delphica! As I was reading your post, I could indeed see the edit button in my post that preceded yours.
This statement struck a chord in a memory of something that happened when AdoptaSon was a newborn. I thought I’d prepared myself well by talking to the few other parents of black and biracial children that I knew and by reading the limited number of books on transracial adoption that were written back in 1991. Little did I know …
I was so proud to be his mother as he was a gorgeous child with loose brown curls, the most beautiful cafe au lait skin, a perfect bow shaped mouth and his eyes were dark chocolate with eyelashes as long as my arm. I had cabin fever after being cooped up with a newborn for several weeks and decided it was time for a shopping trip at the mall. I dressed him in his cutest outfit, did a little primping myself and off we went.
We went from store to store, just window shopping. As with all new babies, women were peeking into his stroller to take a look at him and it was a while before I noticed that no one was commenting on what a beautiful baby he was, nor would they meet my eyes afterwards. Still not understanding what was happening, I took him to Sears (I think - maybe JC Penney) to get his picture taken. Another customer, a black woman about my age, saw us and made a loud crack to a woman she was with that there was another “man down”. Then it began to dawn on me that because I was white, my son was biracial, and my white husband wasn’t with me that everyone assumed I was married to a black man. Okay … that didn’t bother me, but her blatant hostility did. It also scared me a little because she made no bones about hiding her anger that I’d supposedly “stolen” a black man.
As we left the studio, I began to really pay attention to the women. Older white women looked through me as though I weren’t there. Some older black women did the same, while others gave me either a curt nod or slight smile. White women my age were indifferent for the most part. Black women my age were either indifferent or angry. Younger white and black women were much more accepting and friendly.
What hurt the most was the reaction from the older women. Ladies my mothers and grandmothers age. Women I’d spent my life looking to for guidance, as mentors of sorts. These women were looking through me. I was see through - I didn’t even exist.
That’s the day I began to grow up and recognize on a heartfelt level, not just intellectually, that my family was forever black from that moment on, subject to prejudices that I’d heard of but never been on the receiving end of. My naivete died and I began the long, yet most rewarding, journey of enlightenment.
What a tremendous gift I’d been given to be a part of a black family and to rear my children to be joyful in their heritage, respectful and sensitive to the heritage of others, and accepting of people who walk a different path in life. I know we’re all better people as a direct result of being part of an interracial family.
Someone once said something profound that has stuck with me. She said that if every family embraced a child of a different racial or religious culture, that prejudice would cease to exist because you cannot stop yourself from loving a child. I believe that.
My mom used to work at a store that would donate surplus to a local charity for low income families, until they found out the woman running the place sorted things out, and had a special stash of really nice stuff hidden away for white families. She made the mistake of sharing this with a white woman who’d came in looking for things for her bi-racial kids.
This reminded me of my cousins grandparents, who have never met them despite living an hour away, because they don’t believe in racial mixing.
I was born in Dallas, Texas in 1940 and lived there until 1963. I never attended school with a black person. I never worked side by side with a black person. I remember the signs designating waiting rooms, rest rooms, and water fountains as “Colored” and “White.” Those things were commonplace; that was just how things were. The first time I ever questioned the difference between Black and White was in grade school. We were given new textbooks and our old ones were boxed up to be given to the black school. Our teacher explained that the old textbooks had been found to contain errors and had to be replaced. I remember asking why would we give the old books to the black school while knowing they contained errors. Speaking directly to me, the teacher said it didn’t make any difference because blacks didn’t need an education anyway; most of them would never amount to anything other than maids, janitors, farmers and field hands. Her tone of voice conveyed nothing but arrogance and condescension. IIRC, I was about eight or nine at the time and I promised myself I would never be anything like that teacher. That might be the one promise to myself I’ve been able to keep.
Obviously, you were there and I wasn’t, but this makes me wonder if she had experience with people who wanted to do just that, out of some feeling of guilt or do-gooderism or something like that.
This I can understand. As schools become more and more paranoid about student safety, it would make sense (in their world) not to just accept the statement of some adult about wanting to see some student. Unless you have evidence that they never do this with other parents, maybe there’s a better face to put on it.
Actually don’t blame you a bit. Sounds like a good idea to me.
I’ll put my story in another post. Not that it’s much of a story.
OTOH, a friend of mine was always on the run from his abusive father as a child. Daddy knew not to try to kidnap him near his mom’s house because people in the neighborhood knew what he was up to, so he went to his school. The school always let him in and told him exactly where his son was, no matter how much he (the son) cried and protested. As I understand it, this caused a number of harrowing incidents which permanently affected the young man’s sanity. I mean, this is a guy who couldn’t bear to take a driver’s license test until he was 24 because he would always have a nightmare about being abducted by aliens the night before the test, and when he got behind the wheel he would be paralyzed by fear. There are a lot of very good reasons for the school to make sure they know exactly who’s coming to visit the kids and why.
I am so sorry to hear about your negative experiences, Adoptamom_II. Not surprised, mind you, but sorry nonetheless. How fortunate, though, for you and for your family, that the pain inflicted upon you led you on a path of growth and self-awareness. I have no doubt that you are all better off for it!
How sad, too, that the folks who **really ** needed to grow didn’t–and, for many, probably still haven’t.
Having said that, I think that it might be getting better. One of my dearest friends is a White woman who is married to a Black man (both in their forties). Their (biological) daughter is identifiably Black. They live in North Carolina (he’s originally from North Carolina, she’s not–they’re both Ph.D’s, and they moved there to take jobs at a major university), and as she hasn’t mentioned having the experiences that you’ve shared, I’m guessing that she hasn’t had them. Then, again, their daughter was born in 2002, and they live in an area that’s heavily populated by (given what the homes in the area cost) solidly middle class, educated folks and Northern transplants. (Not, mind you, that the folks up North get a pass on their very real racism. Not by a long shot.)
What an uncouth bitch! From a sociological perspective (and as someone who’s interested in sociology in great part from a race/ethnicity perspective), I understand why this “trend” of interracial marriage (trend in quotes because, IMO, it’s much less a trend than it is people beginning to grow the hell up and see the humanity in others) can be an interesting topic of study and discussion (though, to the degree that people in **my ** circle discuss it, no one has ever said outrighly or even insinuated that a Black man/non-Black woman union was tantamount to “man down”). On a purely human level, however, I really don’t “get” the reactions that this kind of stuff evokes. It’s just stupid, really. (But hey, Adoptamom_II, thank goodness that you were able to avoid accusations of White trashism.)
[As you might imagine, Black men with White partners are not immune to this kind of stuff. Not even Black **gay ** men like yours truly. My ex-husband is White (Swiss, not American). Well, a few years ago, my oldest friend (and one of my dearest)–a Black woman–and I were talking about men that we found attractive, or relationships, or some such stuff, and she said to me, “But you like White men, right?” And I’m, like, “Umm, yeah, just like I like Black men, Asian men, Hispanic men, and so forth.” I wasn’t pissed at her, since she wasn’t being accusatory or judgmental (and I guess not, since her own husband is White!), but I kind of chuckled at myself to imagine that people make certain assumptions just because they see you with a particular kind of person. So interesting. What’s also interesting is hearing women exclaim “What a waste!” when they find out that you’re a gay dude. Still trying to learn to take that as a compliment, doncha know.]
I wish I could believe this as much as you do. Maybe, one day, I will. But…
This is, hands down, one of the most beautiful things I’ve read on the Dope. Or many other places, for that matter! I really hope that you’re telling this to your children, the rest of your family, and to anyone else who’ll listen (and to those who definitely need to hear it).
This occurred to me, too, and having met my share of “guilty” White liberals who put themselves in situations that I wouldn’t, or interacted closely (or at all) with the kinds of people that I most definitely wouldn’t, out of a sense of trying to right some historical (and present) wrongs, I can understand her concern. However, (a) it was, IMO, a highly improper question for her to ask in her official capacity, and (b) even if she felt that the subject needed to be broached (after all, I’d reckon that part of her job would be to get a “feel” for prospective fosters/adopters), there’s a way you say things, and there’s a way you don’t.
My (white) college daughter is dating a black guy, and the other day in the middle of a conversation about him and their relationship and such, she said, “(His mother) is still waiting for him to start seeing black girls.” Every so often she will say, “She still doesn’t like me.” I guess we’ll have to see how things pan out.
I grew up in a small town in rural Illinois. There were no minority people in town, at all. I think it was mostly because there just weren’t, not because of any concerted effort to keep them out, although I’m not saying there wouldn’t have been that effort made if “necessary”. I have a feeling there would have been some trouble or objection, but I hate to accuse people by conjecture.
There was one black family who lived in town for about one school year when I was about 7. I’m sure I didn’t know everything that went on; my parents were big on not talking to us kids about things we didn’t need to know. But the kids came and played in our yard, and I didn’t see anything strange going on, in terms of other kids not coming over. (Everybody played in our back yard.) The twin boys were in my brother’s fifth grade class, and when they wanted to join the local cub scout troop my dad stood up for them being allowed to. Small hints about that were probably the only things I heard about any problem.
After that year they moved to a town a few miles away that actually had some black people and shortly after that both of the twins drowned. Moms from our little town took a whole batch of boys down there to be pallbearers. I never heard that any of the boys who were invited turned it down or weren’t allowed to go. I don’t know that that means anything, really; it might just be one of those things where compassion wins out over other feelings for a while. I just don’t know. Again, conjecture.