Nope, didn’t make it up. Got it here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25310337/
My question is how many more just don’t admit to it?
Ok, I know this has to do with Obama and the election, but even though I think the media is making more hype out of it than it needs to, it is a legitimate concern as to the state of our country today, up there with the economy, the war, our dependence on fossil fuels and it’s cost to us, and whether or not someone wears a flag pin (ok patiotism depending on wearing a flag pin isn’t important - or true - but it cracks me up that people think it is).
I can see it when Adam and I share what we are doing. No one ever comes out and makes an obvious racial comment, but things are said that dance around the issue. Like, waiting until we say the country before asking why we aren’t adopting an American, or first asking about the incidence of HIV/AIDS. Sometimes, it’s just the look on a person’s face after we mention the country, like it’s of disappointment, then they realize that they are almost showing their feelings, and then a fake smile breaks through. We either discuss further to where our comfort level will allow, or we just let it go.
It’s the twenty-first century, and people still judge by the color of one’s skin, whether it be out loud or to themselves. It amazes me how it is ingrained in many of us, without many of us realizing it. The other day, I received my first racist e-mail forward since “coming out” with our decision. It was obviously meant as an anti-Obama e-mail, but it wasn’t criticizing his senate record, or his campaign promises, if you know what I mean. I’m not going to say who sent it to us, but I believe that person did not realize how racist it is. This person is probably planning on voting for McCain and observed the beginning part of it that was anti-Obama and thought it would be a cool thing to forward on, or so I want to think.
A while back I said that we are aware that we are doing something that not everyone is going to think is a wise decision, mostly because our kids are going to have a different skin color. I said that at some point I was going to bring it up again. Well, now is as good a time as any.
Someone had posted a comment that once we get the kids we won’t see color. She’s right in that we will only see them as our children to love and cherish. However, we are very much aware that the rest of the community is not going to be so colorblind with respect to our children. We would be stupid and naive to not think otherwise and to not be planning for the inevitable stares and comments and planning on how best to protect our children from that. We would also be stupid and naive to not share our plan with all of you. We would be most stupid and naive to have the plan complete now. It’s an on-going process between classes offered by our adoption agency, and by communicating with each other and our family and close friends.
If you have your own child, and you love your child as a parent shoud, you will understand that your child comes first. If someone says something demeaning to your child or children who are like your child, you are not going to take it sitting down. My sister-in-law has a son with < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />
Should it be any different with our kids? Hell no! While we’ve been “polite” and let the racial comments (and we’re ashamed to say even the “n” word) be said around us in the past before we made this decision to adopt, Adam and I have always believed that racism is uneducated at best, and ingrained at worst. In this day and age, there is no excuse for either extreme anymore. We can’t change our tolerance in the past, but we can control what we do with respect to our kids from here on, and we will not tolerate it anymore. It would be nothing short of hypocritical to our kids if we didn’t have a “zero-tolerance” policy with respect to any derogatory racial comments, even if they are “innocent” comments from somone who doesn’t know better because it’s “ingrained.” That goes for our closest friends and family as well. The person who sent that e-mail was asked to please not send any e-mails like that to us in the future.
We can’t control how anyone thinks, and don’t want to even try, though we would be all the happier if our kids help to soften someone’s hate and erase the prejudice against people of color. We can, however, control what we are exposed to, and especially what our kids will be exposed to, and if it means cutting people out of our lives, so our kids are not exposed to such prejudice and hate, then so be it. There’s enough of it in the world, it doesn’t need to come from us, directly or indirectly.Sorry it’s been so long since we updated. You know how life can get.
The Home Study is complete. We are trying to get the dossier completed by the end of the month. We want to thank everyone who has offered to write letters for us. That’s one part of the process we thought would be hard, trying to figure out who would write letters and whether they would be willing. Instead, it’s trying to figure out who to choose, from all the people who have offered. What a fabulous problem to have. So, if we haven’t chosen you, it’s not because we didn’t want you, just that the government of
We brought both sets of parents and one of my sisters to a seminar last Saturday on bonding and attachment. We weren’t sure how they were going to take all this in, and I don’t think they were sure either. There are parenting suggestions that will seem a little strange until you understand the reasoning behind it, and I think they understood. As far as we can tell, they soaked it up like a sponge and asked to go to any of the other seminars that come up in the future. The funny part was that there was one couple, where the husband went to high school in the next town over from Adam, and they had mutual friends. Another couple, the wife played softball with my sister-in-law, so she recognized Adam’s parents right away. It’s such a small world we live in. It was kind of neat that we were all in about the same stage of the adoption and were all close to the same age and same time married. That also takes some of the scare away, I think.
Afterwards we went with the sister who went with us, and her boyfriend to the Belleville Wine and Jazz Fest. That was a lot of fun. We got information on the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail (www.shawneewinetrail.com) which is a possible trip idea this fall, assuming we don’t have our referral by then, to get away for the weekend. So, we taste all the wine (all Illinois wine, which is just like Missouri wine - some good, some not so much) and got a couple glasses and sat at a table to listen and watch the group playing (Brian Owens - really good) and there was this little girl about 3, about 20 feet away from us, just dancing away. She’s dancing and dancing, and her mom decided she had to go potty so she’s dancing while being led to the potty, and dancing on her way back. Even if there wasn’t any music (which wasn’t ever for long) she’s dancing. Just precious.