Another Blog I Like

I just came across this blog and have to add it to my list. This is the most honest, unflinching view from a white single mother who has adopted an Ethiopian child. While others tiptoe around issues of race she smacks you in the face with it. As we would say in the neighborhood, she gives out a little to everybody. Her equal opportunity views on stupidity regardless of race are not only funny but incredibly insightful.

Read about her "post-racial" world on her blog, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Here are a couple of articles.

Brookti and Me 3 Years On
I’ve been reading a lot recently about our new “post-racial” world, where we have “transcended race,” where a black man is running for president and white people are actually voting for him. I’m wondering, if we have transcended race so successfully, why are we reading so much about it’s impact on the presidential contest?
Judging from my own experience, we have not transcended race, not by a long shot. I am white, my five year old daughter Brookti is black. Pre-Brookti, I felt fairly anonymous walking down the street in New York City. When I first adopted Brookti, being new at the game, I would often lose my temper. Perhaps my outrage was due to the loss of an unconscious Caucasian sense of entitlement...

Brookti and Me Episode #2
I expected freaky racial—and class—‘episodes’, which are inevitably intertwined, when Brookti touched down. I knew the most common ones to expect and assumed I’d easily brush them off. What I didn’t expect: how intricate the race/class hiearchys are (I did expect the level of hostility on both sides), how fiercely protective I would be of Brookti (I knew I would be fierce, but not that fierce) or how insanely defensive, or how ridiculously paranoid. Or probably I know all of the above, but when these ‘episodes’ actually happen to you it’s a different feeling altogether.