Unknown Speaker 00:00 Wait. And this panel is, I guess three individuals perspectives on multiracial families. I'm here because I am the adoptive mother of two multiracial children. I have a son David, who is eight, who is African American, Caucasian, possibly other admixtures, which we do not have documentation. And a daughter, Rebecca, who is six, who is African American, Caucasian, Swedish, Italian American, or as we sometimes referred to, or Heinz is 57. varieties, my husband is also Caucasian. And that experience, colors maybe while I'm talking first, because since I'm talking not as an outsider, because I'm very much a part of this multiracial family. But I'm talking about looking at the outside experiences that my children who represent the known multiracial component of our family experiences that they are going to have, to which I am a bystander, if you will. And there are really three aspects of this as I've thought about what it means to be the particularly the parent who represents the dominant power aspect of our society, at least, perhaps soon not to be dominant in terms of numbers, but at this point in time, still dominant in terms of power, what kinds of issues that's raised for me, and what I see my children experiencing as they grow up in our present society. And one of the first issues is that because our children are adopted, the race and the adoption play off of each other, and then sense for us are never totally separate. Like we had the smallest desire to hide the fact that our children are adoptive children. That wouldn't have been possible, in our case, because our children by appearance look different from my husband and me. And they don't look different equal. Actually, our daughter who was six can easily pass and I think for many people does pass she appears to be Caucasian. At least at this point in her life, her son appears to be a white skinned African American. And we find that that colors help people relate to us, we're walking down the street, and it'll be Oh, where did he come from? And that's usually the question people will not usually ask us what race our children children are, or what race our son is, particularly, but they will say many, many times, Oh, where did they come from? And my husband usually takes great pleasure in answering Kansas. And then waits to see what people are going to say next. This has already been an issue for him even at the age of eight. The area of the city we live in Jamaica is a very diverse community, ethnically socioeconomically and everything else. My husband is a Methodist minister, and we're in a church that is predominantly African, Caribbean and Filipino. Several of the African boys in Sunday school class, my son is this was a conversation reported to us by the Sunday school teacher. They were saying, I'm African American. They said no, you're not. He said, Yes, I am. I said no. United can't be got two white parents, how can you be our parents? And he said, Well, I'm adopted. And this was a discussion that went back and forth. For a while we were actually very pleased that David seemed to have a sense of his identity, his identity as he wanted to claim it was standing up for what he saw himself to. I think a second thing it's done for me. So that's the first point the interaction of race and adoption. The second point for me has been to expand my understanding of the role race plays in our society in a way that I don't think I would have learned any other way. It's one thing intellectually to know it, but when you see your children having experiences when you translate the statistics into how your son's going to be treated, Unknown Speaker 04:37 and what people are going to think if he likes his car, keys out of the car and sitting there picking with a wire to get back in the car, how that would be interpreted versus how it might be interpreted by a non African American male, or how people will just feel like someone's walking down the street by herself. Here's him jogging Going along behind her, what message that will carry. So I've never been someone for whom a cab wouldn't stop. Or I've never been someone to whom all those labeling things or assumptions can happen if you aren't quite in the society. And knowing that that is something that is going to occur for my children as yet unpredictable times. So far, to my knowledge, they've not had serious discriminatory situations of which they've been certainly not ones that they verbalized. But we summer in Maine, and out of David's hearing one time, the question was, Oh, is he your fresh air child for the summer. So all that these assumptions that are made of our society, it really caused me to understand that the playing field isn't horrible way that I wouldn't have been. And the third thing for me is learning to respond. And knowing I will have to learn to respond to difficulties that my children may have to which I've never been exposed. So that when some incidental witness one happens, or when they're quite apart from incident when they're just threading their ways, through diverse parts of their heritage, and again, the complications that will come through race piece of it, and the adoption, and how they may choose to be not one not the other, but their own identity. And however they define that. I want to be empathetic and understanding that it may just be No, I don't know exactly what that's like for you. We love you anyway, we would like to support you in whatever way that we can. And the piece of our culture, that piece of our identity that you want to take, take it with our blessing and gift and there are other parts of your heritage that we wish you were playing, we want you to know that we also it's meant changes in our lifestyle, when we adopted our children made our decision to stay in New York City, because we wanted to raise our kids. Many, many, many different people have many different parts. So to minimize perhaps lobbyists. So it's meant a different prism on a lot of the aspects that I think our society is dealing with acted out in perhaps very small steps within our family and recognizing I'm going to have as much to learn from my children as my children to learn from each other. So that's been kind of my one on one course of experience, homegrown diversity and I represent the way I think it will come clear in some ways, generational difference. I am one of my children, interracial marriage. My father is Eastern European Jewish descent, Unknown Speaker 08:42 my mother Unknown Speaker 08:46 and my experience is very different. I grew up in New York, I grew up in Queens in a neighborhood called Unknown Speaker 09:05 as far as you can go. And in the 60s and 70s Laurelton was a fairly mixed neighborhood and also one in which there were Unknown Speaker 09:20 quite a few Unknown Speaker 09:21 multiracial families. So I think we have a strange experience at that time of not being Unknown Speaker 09:29 such family Unknown Speaker 09:31 grew up with other similar situations. My parents one of the lessons I think of my experience, is that Unknown Speaker 09:50 you can't in such a situation, hope that things will work out if you don't take on these issues directly. My parents attitudes, we don't talk about it doesn't exist. We're a family. And we don't really need to work on any of these questions. And so they never, ever, ever discussed any of these issues with us. And that I think, a lot of difficulties because of the kinds of experiences that kids are starting to question, I actually get this as an adult very often Unknown Speaker 10:40 what are must be some other. And as a as a child, I was never given the answer. And it's profoundly destabilizing for a child to live in a situation where people assume that your family can't possibly be family. And you're just constantly in all seven of us were out doing some people made it clear that could not imagine that we want Unknown Speaker 11:27 to go out to restaurants at dinner, sit down and ask my father if he wanted a separate check. That kind of thing was just very destabilizing my parents would deal with these things as they came up, but never in a way that made these incidents more never talked about race never, never helped us to think about what it would mean to to construct identities as individuals Unknown Speaker 12:05 as multiracial. I think Unknown Speaker 12:14 in a lot of ways for them that comes from from the experience of being married, in America actually looking to be married, we cannot go out to Texas. My father was in the army and my mother is not American, she's learning American race. And the first years of their marriage they lived and so I think that their attitude of ignoring things there's a lot of pain behind it and I think that sort of an extreme comparison but they act as people have been through profound experiences of violence survivors past and my parents hold this these years of living in the South in a place that they just won't talk about and actually as a child Unknown Speaker 13:35 and as an adult, I learned that it was actually so difficult that it just so I know that their their failure to really progress comes from their own father as well. His decision to marry my mother at the same time a decision of his family I don't know anyone my father's family never had any content. Unknown Speaker 14:12 And so that that choice in that pain also made it difficult to think of as a child as an adult, it's it's very difficult to live as a kind of racially indeterminate person. Unknown Speaker 14:38 People always say, what are you? Where did you grow up? What could you possibly do? It's difficult a lot of times people come up to me and begin speaking Spanish and I don't speak Spanish. And and I become a race traitor and a holder Partly because they're the assumption is that I don't speak Spanish, I'm hiding from some from my Spanish heritage by refusing to speak. That's put me into a very interesting situation. And I'm also indeterminant because of the disjuncture between the perceived Unknown Speaker 15:23 discharge and also multiracial and inter religious component. Some ways, it's hard to separate, I definitely intersect in important ways. And, you know, my life is made that much more difficult because I have this so it's hard to, it's hard to be racially indeterminant, it's hard to own every aspect of my life, as a person has connections in different cultural areas, although we were cut off from my father's family. There are things about American Jewish life in history that are that are part of culturally and otherwise, and it's hard to hold that together in a social world where connections so it's difficult to keep them together. But I think the lesson is that you have to be very Unknown Speaker 16:57 self conscious about different issues, or parents, marriage. Americans are married Unknown Speaker 17:13 because America is somewhat different, and then their issues for the children. And parents have to understand what they're getting into identity formation is so difficult for everyone that you have to do. Focused on its problems and process. The situation is complicated. Unknown Speaker 18:02 Clinical Social Worker, health services kind of combine Polly and Judith. talk and talk about international adoption. That's been the focus of not in the last five years, but certainly 18 years. The whole purpose of my being living in because of international adoption, so to speak about families who adopt Korean and the other Asian children in the parents are Caucasian, in my work with these children. And so just briefly give you a history of Korean adoption Unknown Speaker 18:51 began during the after the Korean War. 50s when there are lots of biracial children, Korea being extremely homogeneous country, paternalistic. The government decided they didn't know what to do with these Unknown Speaker 19:13 streets. So they decided that the father should come father meaning United States. So adoption began as a government where biracial children in Korea and other like Japanese, Japan and China, there's no question of what happens is, if you're born, your name is put into the registry of the Father's ancestry. Unknown Speaker 19:39 So if you're a biracial father being you don't have that registry so basically it's not even the fact that you're not considered. So the international adoption began during The late 50s. It began with a missionary by the name of Unknown Speaker 20:06 who adopted eight children. And so, my involvement with the whole international adoption came about because my mother is very dedicated and committed to international adoption. And I grew up in Minnesota, and the reason we grew up in Minnesota was that Oregon and Minnesota tend to have the highest number of children, and Minnesota in particular, in the last few years, have adopted over 12,000 Children exclusively. So that's a huge number of children for a very small state with not many people. And if you can kind of stereotypically or visualize yourself about what Minnesota might be like, there's lots of Scandinavian tall, broad shoulder blonde people. And these little Korean children running around calling them daddy's everybody grew up in the suburbs. It's a really, it can be a unique experience in that you are the only person who has dark hair, olive skin tone, or dark skin and short. So my work began with them by facilitating teen groups. And teen groups consisted of three and adopted children between the ages of 13 to 18. And what we found out by that was that by the time that they reach puberty, their identity, like what Judas is saying, and what, what Polly's children are already experiencing, it's already been kind of for me. And there's such negative concept of themselves not having been exposed to anything that's culturally there, that we started to really move towards working with younger children. So our team will stay. I mean, they move on to teach. But our work started. They started from age eight. And what we learned is that start younger, the younger, the better, that they become more exposed to their heritage, their culture, their history, that they can kind of combine that or start to integrate what they're learning their external features, because internally, they're just as wide as their parents, but externally, because they're always being fingered, or pointed, asked all these questions that they really needed to learn, they needed to educate themselves to be able to integrate. So when I moved to Chicago to attend graduate school, I kept running into these families with parents, and children. Grocery stores and shopping centers are adopted. And they would be really happy to many of them had been, but there is no such group as in Chicago and the suburbs of Chicago. So I publicized through an agency that I like to start a support for families who have adapted. And many, many families came together, volunteering, and they talked about how kids were being teased in school and not knowing parents themselves, not knowing how to deal with it. Because what Polly said, they didn't know how to defend themselves. This is something they've never gone through. They know what it was like when they were babies, and they would go into the shopping centers. And people will say, Oh, what a cute baby looks like how much was here? How much was she? These are anyone that somehow you have the right to ask these kinds of blatant questions to multiracial and it was really unexperienced for me to talk with the parents about what it was like to raise a child and to defend yourself, against your family, defend yourself against the community, defend yourself to the schools and to raise this child as healthy as possible. And they really felt that lot of them Unknown Speaker 24:52 have to have a support group for Unknown Speaker 24:55 the parents themselves and kids so parents would meet every month and allocate Kids and bases. What I found out from these children were that they had not tasted Korean food, even though there's a huge Korean, Korean. A lot of the families have never been the Korean. They don't have any idea of the cultural heritage of anything. They don't know where some of the parents, why did you? And they said, first of all, wait for a second, they really thought that they would assembly, somebody. So I realized that it wasn't just the children that I had to start. It was actually the parents, so that when they talk to their children, these things don't come out of their mouth, or the children. So some of the issues with the children that I began to work on, is to kind of give them a purpose. Why are we meeting every month? If you got me they were healthy, they were happy. They were doing well in school everything. So why are we meeting and it was because to celebrate our culture to to let them know it was okay to and to get support when when they're being teased. Or they're being stereotyped or prejudiced. To get to know other people who are also from Adaptive, because they were all like spread out Chicago is very flat and spread it out. So everybody lived in different suburbs, and they didn't necessarily come together. So this in order to support the support, everybody traveled at least one hour to get to this place. And so it was a real commitment. And it took me months of convincing them because they were afraid a lot of the parents are afraid if my child meets another Korean child, one might happen and their fantasies were really wild. Like, they might want to do a search and go to Korea and find their real parents, you know, lots of fantasies from the parents. And not everybody joining but I had about 20 kids between the ages of eight to 12, which was wonderful. And I realized that I couldn't do this take on this task all by myself. And what I decided to do, I was working at the University of Chicago. And I publicized to the college students who do like to be a big brother, sister, and I recruited about 20 college students. And it turned out very interestingly, many of the college students who volunteer to become a big brother and sister themselves do not speak Korean or Korean. So when they came to our meetings, they loved having Korean food, I found the grocer who made our and he was just really loved. And, and all these teenagers are all these preteens, plus these college students are all learning about their heritage at the same time. And actually, it became a wonderful experience because Korean adopted children felt that all because although I realized nothing. And they met these big brothers and sisters who really didn't know themselves and they didn't feel inferior to them, and so, they really felt like partners Unknown Speaker 28:43 exploring their heritage. Unknown Speaker 28:45 Some of the issues that we discussed how to do it, because everybody comes with a document and what it has to say is that in the document, it has to state that the child had been the word abandoned is illegal, that allows them to be So, we have to explore that. What does that mean a few things Unknown Speaker 29:18 like that. So exploring that. That and I had to explain to them that many times birth mothers will place you in a police station for at somebody's house to step on a busy street to be taken to be taken to so Unknown Speaker 29:57 there has to be some interpretation For many of the children that I worked with, although the international adoption started with biracial children lots of families losing their parents, they were all and so many of the children who are Korean and the biracial children who have been adopted, there's no more biracial Unknown Speaker 30:41 but the biracial children there was recently a huge study that really, surveys people who have been adopted in the 60s and how they feel about adoption and overwhelming Unknown Speaker 31:06 themselves in many so there's lots of positive things so my work with these three teams started with and then we talk a lot about work. It's interesting that a lot of these kids at that age didn't want to talk about Unknown Speaker 31:32 your silly idea Unknown Speaker 31:35 of the father. That's how they understood that the mother alone Unknown Speaker 31:43 that's why she had to Unknown Speaker 31:47 explain it. They were not have the Unknown Speaker 31:55 pictures but there's too much personal information Unknown Speaker 31:58 wiped out. But I hadn't dropped pictures of holiday. Unknown Speaker 32:07 Remember, one was and he said Unknown Speaker 32:30 she, she's, she's, she's watching. I feel her presence. Unknown Speaker 32:37 Or another girl drew a picture of a young woman. And she said, I hope she's really hip. And I hope she looks I hope I look like her and I hope she's fun because my parents are kind of old and new local roads. So I want her to be like me, I want her to be energetic. I want her to be you know, I want to identify with another girl, a woman who had other children and she said, I have to think about Unknown Speaker 33:10 every single shot with these kids Unknown Speaker 33:21 even though they were so busy she said if I don't think about her she said and then I had them write some letters. Each time they were they really wanted them to know that they were happy with their parents here. who they were and what they did together on the last page. Unknown Speaker 33:52 And the they were all sent even though we were just writing to see how. So I was really surprised that their creativity their openness Unknown Speaker 34:15 adoptive parents, now the use of language is very be put up for adoption in Korea. So the fact that they gave birth to us is a real choice because they are not accepted. So they had to turn on or enter somewhere in the country. Unknown Speaker 34:48 So it's not an easy task. So they chose adoption Unknown Speaker 34:59 and So we talked about what it means to have somebody who's given rather than. So we'll be coming educators. And so we talk a lot and many of them who see me Why come home to tell them that I was teased, they're the ones who take care of their lives. And I don't like the words like Unknown Speaker 35:37 natural or unnatural. Unknown Speaker 35:41 Children know that you are the real birth parents loved you so much that they gave birth to you so, we talk a lot about me was also very interestingly, last name is poison Feld. And people might look at this and they don't match. And a lot of hate Parents Night or activity nights when parents can't because all the kids try to match you with who your parents might be. Nobody can match. And I'm so embarrassed or people say well, your face Unknown Speaker 36:22 glued together. So Unknown Speaker 36:26 what's what's your problem? So you had a problem. So talking about yes Unknown Speaker 36:42 that's my, that's my spine. And so name is a really, really important thing. And then we also talked about our community Unknown Speaker 36:55 and so a lot of girls, Unknown Speaker 37:01 a lot of very girls raising rock, strong, smart and achiever that kind of meaning. So it was very, very nice for them to have that. They weren't given that a lot of them's had adopted and biological children. And it's interesting because a Unknown Speaker 37:37 lot of siblings going on about so they go to culture camp, they come to our family nights and they eat more Unknown Speaker 37:46 food they want to show that they they really liked it they we teach songs and dances and they will all the words to all the songs and in a way, being a special being without can be overwhelmed. Because when they're at school, teachers but be special Unknown Speaker 38:24 I get just as much as my other brother and sister. So we have to talk about lots of Unknown Speaker 38:35 there's lots of still Unknown Speaker 38:40 talking about parents. Like the things that I said earlier also. They wanted to talk to you about coming in and I really advocate you also you have to be not just identity so it became a really a family there. The five years that I Unknown Speaker 39:39 search through these tools. None of my kids are at that age of searching. But in my mom Mother's Day recently Unknown Speaker 39:58 she was about to reach My Unknown Speaker 40:05 mother suffered Unknown Speaker 40:10 a dishwasher at a very small restaurant supporting her child. She became so ill, that she wants Unknown Speaker 40:21 to have somebody take care of her child. And so her neighbor was that the grandmother came over and said, Why don't you let you know that she can get good education. She's, like so young, this grandmother's son, frequently visit the house of a parent of a mother, and also took this child to the orphanage, where she stayed for a while. And then she 10 years later, she decided she said that she never forgave her mother, she fantasize that the mother who was needed to marry was coming by who actually took her and she married, she decided that her mother married so she lived with this idea that she wasn't that she couldn't wait. Her mother, in the meantime, had been sending lots of presents with the dishwashing one and she didn't die. She went into remission. But when this girl visited her mother she was against and she wanted the mother one to be so nice. She got all dressed up in a one to the beauty parlor with whatever money she had for her daughter. So she came to meet her the girl was outraged how cuz she looks so good. And not take care of me. And when the translation she found out she started so after Unknown Speaker 42:21 she decided to shoot, Unknown Speaker 42:24 to be to be with she didn't know how long so she's there and she couldn't have done it. Without her. We really gave her a lot of courage to be so when I talk about internet culture I think that I've seen a lot of parents with their children Unknown Speaker 43:05 I want you to be proud of your query in this but I want nothing to do that's not so much of my work has been summarized. And I have to say I haven't been involved in this for five years. But as you can see, I'm really passionate about this and really committed and I was so surprised that five years later I see these different children and their identity formation so much stronger. They know they're not going to Unknown Speaker 43:43 be coming home crying if somebody called them shame or split eyes or how can you see they've gone through enough to be able to fight and to have their parents to feel proud of themselves. So I really feel like being able to be open to talk about anything shopping I used to be Sarah so even though it wouldn't treat it It's. I spoke with various agencies share because I find it very confusing? Secret Unknown Speaker 49:11 also raises patients listen Unknown Speaker 49:57 a couple of parts of the question of of choosing The background was second child to try and make them feel comfortable with each other it's not my biological parents decide about each one of us completely different. So in terms of answering their questions and not thinking that you absolutely have to make sure that I do EVERYTHING I NEVER Unknown Speaker 51:13 do I would, I would echo that in the sense and certainly when we and sometimes you stumble into these kinds of situations, I did not go into adoption, necessarily intending to adopt children, I wanted to child. And in fact, I want to have a child because my husband and I were both under shorty at that time that we would probably need to do an international adoption. Because the odds of our finding a child in this country, my understanding was that children of color were not going to be placed with me and my white husband, and that there weren't going to be any white children available. Yeah, therefore, we were on our way overseas. And on our way overseas, namely social worker Coronavirus, who happen to have adopted, we're on our way to talk to her, she said, Oh, by the way, I just had a call from someone. And apparently there is a mother who's going to have a biracial child, you and John might think about whether that would be something you'd be interested in. You go back into your own backgrounds. My husband, prior to entering the ministry had actually been on his way into African American Studies, lived in Harlem, and it's been a couple of years in the Peace Corps and really spent a lot of his life and ministry had always tended to live in diverse parts of the city, shall we say, et cetera, et cetera. When we talked about it, and thought about it, and didn't know what the hell, we're saying, yes or no to but decided that that was okay with us. And there must be some way to learn about how you dealt with these kinds of issues. But it was clear to us it would mean a lot of learning on Saturday. So when we went on Sunday to talk to this friend about adopting in Central America, low and behold, we were given the name of a lawyer. And we did and were introduced by telephone to his birth mother, who was actually it was African American. To make a long story short, she elected to keep the child after the baby. As far as intense lows. And the day that she decided to do that we got another call from a lawyer because there was another young woman in his office. This young woman was actually adopted herself. She was Caucasian. And there were two potential birth fathers in the wings. And one potential birth father was white and the other potential birth father was African American, and this child that she was expecting one way or the other. And we spoke to her on the phone. And, in fact, my question to her was, we want to keep the white baby up for adoption. And she managed to convince me she was not inability to feel that she provided for a child that she wanted to and her feeling that she had had a very good life with her adoptive parents. She was pregnant choice was to bring the pregnancy with the child up for adoption because she was so When our son was born, is when we discovered that we had that category. And then with number two, we actively wanted by virtue two years, and by virtue of and I'm very grateful to our son because it had it not been for our son, perhaps we could not have gotten a second child because he got us this wonderful category of interracial and got us to be able to adopt to a very good adoption agency the second time. Anyway, back to the original question. When our son was six, he began, he's always had a temper, but when he was six, went to hell in a handbasket, and he was having major tantrums, just horrible, horrible tantrums. Now we have always been open about adoption. That is, I think it's clear always that he had been adopted my husband, in fact, a person in the house. Getting people was not adopted. So if anyone's an anomaly to me, who actually knows whose mother or father or father Unknown Speaker 56:21 David began having these horrible tantrums. We went to speak to one social workers actually at the agency. And after listening to our, our woes, and our son's woes, and she said, Well, you know, how are you talking to David about his adoption? And I said, Well, I've been, you know, I've really been, he knows, and we've been very open about it. But I've been waiting for him to ask. And she said, Oh, he asked me, I just haven't understood the way he's asking. And it was like, one of those is clicks. And she said, Please, she says, Bring it up, tell stories, giving us a whole raft of books about Tigers with leopard babies, and you know, all different ways you could approach this looking different and things like that. She said, even if he if he doesn't pick up on it, that's fine. It's like you don't have to have an intense conversation every time you're dragging them to school. But if you bring it up, you're creating the message that maybe just that these are okay topics to talk. You'll pick up on it when it's ready to pick up on it, but you desperately need to bring it up. You can't expect him. If you don't bring it up, he's going to pick up that it's such a charged area that nobody wants to talk. So I'm a big fan of bringing it up and then occasionally having to figure out well, how do you talk about something that's clearly getting into stuff that they either don't have the language or the concepts. Our daughter is now starting to tantrum in a big way, when she's always been a rather sweet, practical child, in some respects, compared to a brother. And one night and she was screaming, you know, I hate you, I hate you if he was some other unreasonable demand. And I said, Oh, we're back. I said, you know, I bet you feel that I am just the worst mother in the world. And if you could just, you could just go live with your birth mother that everything would be perfect. So much. Yes, yes. And she burst into tears. But she then proceeded to tell me and then my son comes in, throws his arms around me and says, I like this money better. And go away. But then Rebecca says to me, she said, Oh, mommy, she says, I want you to she says what you know, she says, I've known my birth mother longer than you. I knew her first. And there's that real sense of origin with her. And this is the whole part of her background. She hasn't been in touch with what she wants to know. And of course, I mean, I used to fantasize being adopted for huge portions of my life. You know, I've only reluctantly laid that to rest. And I can imagine what she feels like really being adopted and as strong as those fantasies are at times when she's angry with me or my husband doesn't like or whatever. And we just say to her, you know, when you're when you're grown up, we will help you find them. Now, what I haven't told her is that she has a half sister who's three years old. Now, this is my projection, but I can imagine it's six years old that we really do. Well. What's wrong with my Like my mother, you were telling me she gave me up because she wanted a better life for me. But she kept. No, that's to me to a child. That's got to come. That piece of it, I can't touch there. But we do try to bring it up and talk about it. And we tried to bring up this summer, partly in response to Oh, issues of wanting to exposure. We know that the white, Caucasian, they got a lot of so we were picking a day camp this summer and we got to pick the Central Plains, Jamaica, why were twins college day camp, my husband writes a really good experience for our kids to be in Jamaica, Jamaica, why this would be probably almost totally African American, that they get relatively less contact with them. Then Asian implication, which is very small. It was a disaster and hated my daughter had stomach pains for two weeks my son tantrum so we're going back Unknown Speaker 1:01:11 my daughter verbalizes on the way to him I don't want to go to camp. Yeah, if it was a class issue was what they were running into. Someone normally race issues really a class issue secure. Oh, could you tell us about class so what was the most obvious difference to her? Was it she was different from every other kid in the room? And these were kids and we're being raised culturally somewhat differently. You know, we're sort of louder a little bit more extroverted just a different thing. It wasn't a good mix. So you will know it doesn't mean you make all the right footsteps and sometimes you really in a big way, but at least we try to talk about when it comes to shoes Unknown Speaker 1:02:08 out of nowhere he started washing himself and taking longer mom and dad I got so dark and I'm like mom and dad and Unknown Speaker 1:02:25 dad so wash it off and he's washing off so much that he was like getting Unknown Speaker 1:02:31 until you can talk about letting you have you have all these things ready to give them and then they'll ask you something even then to give them something and I think that even when you say that word is always there so you're kind of Unknown Speaker 1:03:13 at least that's the question Unknown Speaker 1:03:19 like, I have a grandson he has two little girls and teach us one. The baby wasn't in the sense it wasn't solving a problem for her she doesn't want it and it's a black versus white American very loving, extended What do you say? Is the culture I don't think is anyone an American who say the fact that my great grandmother is associated with Germany I question politically correct. That's a question Unknown Speaker 1:04:44 for African American culture. In communities and cultures that are the same thing As much as you do Unknown Speaker 1:05:06 her her culture. Unknown Speaker 1:05:11 And I've been exposed to that there's also there's African American. And that to me is not it's not forcing. Unknown Speaker 1:05:28 History is what everyone, but how much is it a part of his life as he grows up? Unknown Speaker 1:05:36 That's absurd. It's very important. It's very important to him right now that he comes from Kenya. Now, in fact, does he know. But the point is that it's important to your right now there will be a time when he's a teen, and we really get into the history that will realize it's much more likely from West Africa than from Kenya for right now. That is definitely I don't know exactly what that role is. But it is very clear that this is one of the Totems if you will, one that he is using to build his sense of humor. And I would also say that that sense of expanding and synthesizing is one identity happens to the parents of multiracial children together, it certainly happened to me in a big way. I also have a mother and I have a project I'm going to get involved in. One of the things that's happened for me, I mentioned, the expanding race awareness is that my family background pretty much on both sides is white plantation owners in a big way. And I walk around with a very large sense of guilt, a great deal with a time because I know perfectly well what my own grandmother would have said that she lived to see David, and I know what my forebears have done to slaves in this country in a big way. Well, I also know that I have a cousin. There's a big, very long, complicated southern Gospel story involving why my Aunt Mary to her deathbed, because the man that she married infected had a lot of mistress for years. But the point is that it's recently occurred to me and this is because we've adopted our children that I've got a lot of non Caucasian relatives that I'm not aware of yet. And my mother's real into genealogy, and I'm just helping interest her in this aspect of the genealogy of the family. And so it's really this a wonderful book, the sweeter the juice, I don't know if any of you know, Shirley, Taylor, Taylor. And some of the people in her family there have been Irish petition grandmother and her and her mother sister passed. And this led to a schism and part of it is her identification with race and whatnot. So I think there's, it's been enriching for me, it's like, all of a sudden, I'm beginning to see myself as as multiracial way that I ever did before and finding that rather neat, as opposed to threatening, where the color of water and I think increasingly, we're seeing people, right, and we're turning into such a multiracial society in this country, and, you know, these kids we're talking about, or I hope gonna be the commonality. And I think it is going to be important to, we aren't just going to be a much nicer melting pot. So I hope that we are going to carry our cultural identities and our sense of our cultural forebears forward even while we learn to learn from very different groups as well. Unknown Speaker 1:09:05 History It makes it really exciting, all the things that how important Unknown Speaker 1:09:15 because I talked about Korean children being adopted by Korea has a very distinctive history. They have something but they are only Korean outside. They are totally American and white to whatever their parents values are inside. So imagine yourself, you are white, and put my face on. But my whole family's white, and you have to go out and be confronted by ignorant people every single day of your life. Welcome, your name is Sonny. What do you know the why are you adopted? I'll give you an example. When I came to New York, four years ago, my house To the subways Unknown Speaker 1:10:05 every single day of my life, when I have I am confronted by at least by people, either Oh, you must, what are you, okay? Like when Unknown Speaker 1:10:21 things start speaking in some indicated ancient language, they will start doing something else or something else or something else. And that can keep up. But your your, your grandson has a black face, people are going to attack him for attacking, not in a negative way. But they're always going to be asking, he has to defend not only himself but his adoptive family and his black family who, who plays. So he's always going to be facing three different selves. His himself as a white person inside looking black outside is about to family. And his black family, and why couldn't a black family is another thing as equal, so he's gonna be confronted this every single day. So he's got an amazing amount of love and self esteem, to be able to that's been my experience in working with children, who are parents regardless. Unknown Speaker 1:11:33 And ignoring or trying to just pretend that it's not an issue. Unknown Speaker 1:11:39 That is he's glad outside right? Will Unknown Speaker 1:11:45 might lead him to feel that there's something wrong with the topic. It's not something that anybody in families interested in. And then on the other side, there's the danger of all of a sudden people are saying that people are dropping from Cultural Center. And that's the other the black thing is, and I think you said it really well, that it has to become a family project. But he has to be made to understand Unknown Speaker 1:12:13 that it's okay, that it's okay for him to be the other members of his family. And that they know people like they interact. They interact with him. And that's, it's not necessarily doesn't necessarily have to take the shape or make you can do African food, but it has to, you have to do something. Unknown Speaker 1:12:43 We don't know how he's going to form his identity. We don't know what how he will go on. And, you know, what, what will go on in his head and his psyche, and some very close friends of ours is Eastern Jewish, and she is Ecuadorian, very dark skinned and appears African. And as she says she can always when she's confronted with this Census Department forms, there's a slot on there that she feels fits her right, no one will remember which one it is. But she says that of the seven choices that the government gives you to describe your identity. There's one that she's comfortable with her daughter, there was not so her daughter fills out the box. So they found very different routes to to their own identity, and yet hurts the identity. And that would be my argument for the culture being important for your friends, because you don't know yet how he's going to weave together all these threads that come from his various characters. And that's the argument for the family becoming as familiar with all of this as it sensibly possible. Echoing shinies thing it's not sort of sending a kid walk for fresh culture, or African or African American history, culture, but of the sense that this is a valued part of the whole family exploration and things that you begin to do together as family so in one example, I never celebrated Kwanzaa before we had our two multiracial children we have a part of our midwinter celebration Unknown Speaker 1:14:47 issue it is constructed African American Unknown Speaker 1:14:56 Yeah, and the two are the two are not the two are not in Conflict and these are things that you can explore and it's something that introduces my son to a very positive aspect of important his culture both within this country and the African American community and a sensing our African roots are important and that this is a part of ourselves something that I absolutely love because I also don't like to try to change the subject to especially they're very complicated because I have color and I don't want to think that mines are wrong if that was if that was Unknown Speaker 1:18:30 necessarily bad, I don't know. I have to say that's really hard, but I think it also very good, especially. Unknown Speaker 1:19:05 Many, many thoughts there were there were many reasons why the summer was a bad experience. It was two weeks at the end of an eight week period and all the other kids have been together for six weeks already. So there was already a big strike against our two children. I think that these are issues we certainly will continue to make a lot of efforts to have our children in diverse settings and diverse from the point of view of class, as well as race. However, obviously, unintentionally. We picked a situation that so far stepped over their abilities to cope at that particular point in time. And I was not about to deny their very valid feelings to be different. And I think that's what they really say. And David didn't put it on the level of support So what was our six year old daughter? Who did? Maybe because she looks lighter? And also maybe because she was younger? concept development is not as sophisticated. So we tried to validate Yes, it was obviously uncomfortable for you. It was hard, they both did quite well. During the two weeks, we tried to give him a lot of praise for that. We're learning to cope in a situation that was of explicitly trying to suggest to our daughter that some of these things that she was talking about, might not be due so much to the race, as to she would say, I want to go with all this black kids. really hear that you're uncomfortable there. But we can talk about it that way. And yet, part of your heritage is white. So that sounds kind of funny, you know, so we would try to address the one piece but not tonight, they will be an issue, we'll continue to try to revisit them humbly in doses that are better titrated to their ability to cope. We just hit one that went over their ability to deal with her. Totally unintended reasons. They don't realize that when they're in church in Sunday school, which from a color point of view, they stand out just as much as they did at the gym. But there, there's more of a connection, they're there for common purpose. It's not even that the class issue isn't there. To some extent, the class issue is there, but it's muted by a connectional wisdom that wasn't present at a wide date. So that's one way. And I think we have to It's now five to three, if anybody wants to continue after the official policy, the panel. That's great. Thank you very much.