Racism

The Best and the Worst of America

· August 14, 2014 · What's In The News · , , , , , , , , , , , · No Comments

Tonight, my daughter woke up crying.

A dry diaper, a few ounces of formula, and some gently rocking on Daddy’s chest got her calmed down and back to sleep.  While I waited for her to get into a deep enough sleep so I could move here back to bed without waking her, I scrolled through Twitter on my phone.

My Twitter feed was dominated by two topics.  Both are taking place in the same state, and are only separated by about three or so hours on the interstate.  But, they are worlds apart.  They show us how great we can be, while demonstrating how bad we are.

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I’ve been a fan of the Kansas City Royals for most of my life.  It just made sense – Kansas City is the closest Major League team to my eastern Nebraska home, and when I was in the formidable years when a boy picks the teams they like, the Royals were winning.  Granted, since that World Series title in 1985, being a Royals fan has been an exercise in masochism, frustration, and pity from friends and family.

Now imagine being a lifelong Royals fan born and raised in South Korea.

That brings us to the happy side of my Twitter feed.  SungWoo Lee has been a passionate, hardcore Royals fan since the 1990s – all while living in South Korea.  His dream has been to come to KC and watch his beloved Royals play.  Thanks to the efforts of some KC fans on social media, SungWoo has been living every baseball fan’s dream for the last week:  meeting players, throwing out the first pitch, hanging with Hall of Famer George Brett, and watching the Royals go on an eight game winning streak to move into first place.

One of the guys responsible for bringing SungWoo to KC is a guy I follow on Twitter, The Fake Ned (@TheFakeNed).  He has been tweeting about SungWoo’s visit pretty much non-stop.

Basically, the whole SungWoo experience has been one magical fairy ride that has made the most jaded of Royals fans believe.

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Meanwhile, 230 miles east on I-70 sits the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.  For everything good and wonderful going on in Kansas City, something ugly and scary is going down in Ferguson, MO.  A young black man was shot and killed by police, which has led to civil unrest, protests, police attacks, and a racially charged powder keg of a town.

 

What.

The.

Hell?

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I’m seeing and reading about these things while my not yet one year old black daughter sleeps on my chest.  I think that is what makes it so real and so difficult for me.  Someday I’m going to have to explain this world that we live in to my children.

I’m going to have to tell my children that sometimes you can follow all the rules and still be arrested – or worse.  Explain to them that in many parts of the greatest nation on earth, the color of their skin entitles them to the right to be treated poorly.  Try to instill a respect for an authority that sometimes has no respect for them.  Attempt to raise good, honest, hard-working adults who are not jaded and disillusioned by racism and prejudice that I’ll never truly know.

And I have to balance that brutal honesty while hopefully getting them to believe that there really are good people in the world too.  People that will open their arms for a guy from the other side of the globe, treat him like royalty, and make us believe in the inherent good in people – even if he’s of a different race.  All because he’s a fan of the same historically crappy baseball team that we like?

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Since I’m struggling to put a pretty bow on all of this, I’ll let The Fake Ned have the last word:

 

Racial Jackassery (J)

· April 12, 2014 · Adoption · , , , , , , , , , , · 5 Comments

Yesterday I became aware for the comments made by an Alabama state representative.  During a March 2014 debate on abortion, Rep. Alvin Holmes said this:

“I will bring you $100,000 cash tomorrow if you show me a whole bunch of whites that adopted blacks in Alabama. I will go down there and mortgage my house and get it cash in 20 dollar bills and bring it to you in a little briefcase.”

(A full article can be found here.  Be sure to stick around for the lawmaker’s beautiful application of Godwin’s Law at the end of the article.)

Fortunately, my A to Z challenge letter is “J”, because that quote brings a couple of “J” words to mind*.

Is his joking?

Jeez, I think he really means that.

Ignorant jerk.

What a jackass.

*Lets be honest, that steaming pile of ignorance brings to mind many other words – many of which do not begin with “J”, and very few of which I would publish under my own name.  

Before you start to think this is random outrage over something that was said by a low-level politician 1,500 miles away, you should know this:  I am white.  My wife is white.  Our oldest daughter has a white birth mom and (we believe) a black father.  Our youngest two had black birth parents.  True, we did not adopt our children in Alabama* (ours were all born in Florida), but that does not change my initial reaction:  Alvin Holmes’s comments are shocking and offensive to me.

*But after we received clearance to leave Florida with our youngest daughter, we drove across Alabama on our way home, including a fun-filled 75 minutes of gridlock outside of Birmingham.  Personally, I think that entitles me to a share of the $100,000 in that briefcase.

Once my initial outrage subsides, I find myself torn on this.  There is a part of me that will always stand up for my family – especially against those who think we don’t belong together because the color of our skin doesn’t match.  I’m sure we get odd looks and second glances when we’re out, but I don’t notice.*  I have never had anybody say anything negative to me – but frankly, I chalk that up to living in the Midwest where if we can’t say something nice, we don’t say anything at all.

*Okay, there may have been one time in the grocery store where I felt like a black woman was giving me the stink eye, but that may have just been my paranoia – or the fact that my oldest two were being rather rambunctious. 

So yeah, if we lived within four hours of the Alabama capital building, we probably would have gone to show Rep. Alvin Holmes that we are one of many families who proudly adopted black kids.

Rep. Harris, this white dad and his three black kids will take our $100,000 now.

Rep. Harris, this white dad and his three black kids will take our $100,000 now.

But there is another part of me that wants to let this whole thing go.  In reading some of the other public statements that Rep. Holmes has made, it seems pretty clear to me that has a lot of unresolved anger and distrust for white people.  I completely understand that.  Alvin Harris is a longtime state representative, having served 32 years in the Alabama House.  Alvin Harris is also a black man.  Living in Alabama as a black man, I can only assume Holmes has known very real and very ugly racism and discrimination – the type of which a white kid in Nebraska, born the year Holmes took office (1974) can not even imagine.

Back in my business travel days, I spent some time in small town Alabama.  I remember being shocked by some of the things I heard coming out of the mouths of the people I was working with (i.e. white folks working in a bank).  There were not any direct slurs or words that begin with “N”, but there was plenty of things that I found inappropriate.  My point:  Racism is real in the South, and I have no doubt that Alvin Holmes and the people he loves and represents have been on the receiving end of a bunch of crap from white people.

I also know that one of the toughest things to do is to cure ignorance.  It can be done, but too often it’s not worth the hassle.  With his comments, Alvin Holmes appears to be painting all whites with the same brush.  He is saying that all things being equal, white people would choose white children, so why would any white person want to adopt a black child?  I could list off the reasons why we specifically chose an interracial adoption program through our agency, but I get the impression that would not matter to Rep. Holmes.  In his eyes, we “settled” for black kids instead of white ones.  As horribly, hopelessly wrong as he is, how do you combat that?  I don’t think you can.  Besides, I have better things to do than try to change the mind of somebody who has their mind made up. I’d rather spend that time with my beautiful children.

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(Author’s note:  Wondering why there is a random letter in parentheses in the title of this post?  Not sure how this post corresponds to the daily letter in the April A to Z Challenge?  Like clicking on links?  These questions are all answered here.)

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