Wednesday, February 20, 2008

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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting blog. Having a daughter from Taiwan, a son with Down Syndrome and another son who is off the charts scholastically, I"m often taken aback by rude/judgmental/ignorant comments. I'm soon to be adding a son from ET, so I'm bracing myself for even more crap. If anything, my experiences have taught me we as a society are not as 'evolved' as we'd like to think. We (me included) often make assessments based on superficial and missing data. I think we have to continue to fight for a better world for our kids and teach them they have to push for a better world also. We are light years ahead of where we were 100 years ago. We've light years to go before we get to where we need to be.

Jan

Anonymous said...

Clarifying the word "Crap" on a previous post: I mean "Unwanted, unsolicited, inaccurate, statements about me and my family by complete strangers who know nothing about me and are basing their statements on a 5 second cursory glance at my family" Or maybe they just have been wanting to make a 'political statement' towards multi-racial families and mine just happened to be the first family they found.

I'm not really confrontational by nature, but can be when someone 'attacks' my family.

VALARIE said...

Thanks for clarifying but you didn't have to. This is an "express yourself as boldly as you like" blog.

Anna said...

Thank you for passing on that blog, I think its great. I always admire learning about new experiences.

Original Court Date: April 18, 2009
Final Court Date: May 18, 2009
[607 total days & 165 days w/IAN]